slave institutions, California represented a strong
flank movement threatening destruction to slavery. Her vote in
the Senate gave a majority of two to the free States. The equality
of the sections had been steadily maintained in the Senate since
the admission of Louisiana in 1812. The break now was ominous;
the claim of equality had been disregarded; the superstition which
upheld it was dispelled, and the defenders of slavery could see
only a long procession of free States marching from the North-West
to re-enforce a power already irresistibly strong. From what
quarter of the Union could this anti-slavery aggression be offset?
By what process could its growth be checked? Texas might, if she
chose to ask for her own partition, re-enforce the slave-power in
the Senate by four new States, as guaranteed in the articles of
annexation. But the very majesty of her dimensions protested
against dismemberment. Texas was as large as France, and from the
Sabine to the Rio Grande there was not a cotton-planter or a cattle-
herder who did not have this fact before his eyes to inflame his
pride and guide his vote against parting with a single square mile
of her magnificent domain. New Mexico and Utah were mountainous
and arid, inviting only the miner and the grazier and offering no
inducement for the labor of the slave. The right guaranteed to
these territories in the Compromise of 1850 to come in as slave
States was, therefore, as Mr. Webster had maintained, a concession
of form and not of substance to the South. Seeing slavery thus
hemmed in on all sides by nature as well as law, and sincerely
believing that in such a position its final extinction was but a
question of time, the Southern leaders determined to break the
bonds that bound them. From their own point of reasoning they were
correct. To stand still was certain though slow destruction to
slavery. To move was indeed hazardous, but it gave them a chance
to re-establish their equality in the administration of the
government, and for this they determined to risk every thing.

To the westward and north-westward of Missouri and Iowa lay a vast
territory which in 1854 was not only unsettled but had no form of
civil government whatever. It stretched from the north line of
Arkansas to the border of British America,--twelve and a half
degrees of latitude,--and westward over great plains and across
mountain ranges till it reached the confines of Utah and Oregon.
It w