the admission of
California as a Free State and insisting on its division, and demanding
the distinct legalization of slavery in the territories south of the
Missouri line of 36 deg. 30 min., and the extension of that line to the
Pacific, and demanding also a more stringent fugitive slave law, and the
North was demanding the admission of California and the establishment of
the Wilmot proviso over all the territory to be organized, and demanding
also the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

The contest for speaker in the House continued from the 3d to the 22d
December, 1849, resulting in the election of Howell Cobb over R. C.
Winthrop. So ominous of trouble were the signs of the political sky,
that President Taylor, in his annual message, took occasion to caution
the Congress against the introduction of topics of a sectional
character, and to repeat the solemn warning of Washington against
furnishing any ground for characterizing parties by geographical
discriminations.

The history of the legislation of 1850 is too well known to need detail
here. It resulted in another compromise, by which six important measures
all involving the slavery question were adopted. These were

1. The admission of California as a free State.

2. The settlement of the Texas boundary, limiting its northern line to
36 deg. 30 min.

3. The formation of territorial government for Utah, and

4. The like for New Mexico.

5. The abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and

6. The Fugitive slave law.

California, Utah, New Mexico and Texas all embraced territory on both
sides of the Missouri Compromise line. California was the first State
south of that line that had ever asked for admission to the Union with a
Constitution excluding slavery.

The cardinal feature of the Compromise of 1850 was the abandonment of a
geographical line to separate free and slave territory, and the distinct
recognition of the principle of non-intervention by Congress with
slavery. The compromise in terms recognized the right of the people of
the territories to be admitted to the Union with or without slavery as
they might desire--that was its very essence as distinguished from the
Compromise of 1820.

The principle of non-intervention in the territories had been logically
involved, in the national platforms of the democratic party since 1840,
but it had never until 1850 received the direct sanction of the
Congress.