rth of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the
Missouri and Texas compromise line. Its southern boundary is the
parallel of 42 degrees, leaving the intermediate distance to be 330
geographical miles. And it is because the provisions of this bill are
not inconsistent with the laws of the Missouri compromise, if extended
from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean, that I have not felt at
liberty to withhold my sanction. Had it embraced territories south of
that compromise, the question presented for my consideration would have
been of a far different character, and my action upon it must have
corresponded with my convictions.

Ought we now to disturb the Missouri and Texas compromises? Ought we at
this late day, in attempting to annul what has been so long established
and acquiesced in, to excite sectional divisions and jealousies, to
alienate the people of different portions of the Union from each other,
and to endanger the existence of the Union itself?

From the adoption of the Federal Constitution, during a period of sixty
years, our progress as a nation has been without example in the annals
of history. Under the protection of a bountiful Providence, we have
advanced with giant strides in the career of wealth and prosperity. We
have enjoyed the blessings of freedom to a greater extent than any other
people, ancient or modern, under a Government which has preserved order
and secured to every citizen life, liberty, and property. We have now
become an example for imitation to the whole world. The friends of
freedom in every clime point with admiration to our institutions. Shall
we, then, at the moment when the people of Europe are devoting all their
energies in the attempt to assimilate their institutions to our own,
peril all our blessings by despising the lessons of experience and
refusing to tread in the footsteps which our fathers have trodden? And
for what cause would we endanger our glorious Union? The Missouri
compromise contains a prohibition of slavery throughout all that vast
region extending twelve and a half degrees along the Pacific, from the
parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes to that of 49 degrees, and east from
that ocean to and beyond the summit of the Rocky Mountains. Why, then,
should our institutions be endangered because it is proposed to submit
to the people of the remainder of our newly acquired territory lying
south of 36 degrees 30 minutes, embracing less than four degrees of
latitude, the question whether, in