is "American Conflict," still more so.)]

CHAPTER II.

The Session of 1849-'50.--The Compromise Measures.--Virtual
Abrogation of the Missouri Compromise.--The Admission of
California.--The Fugitive Slave Law.--Death of Mr.
Calhoun.--Anecdote of Mr. Clay.

The first session of the Thirty-first Congress (1849-'50) was a
memorable one. The recent acquisition from Mexico of New Mexico and
California required legislation by Congress. In the Senate the bills
reported by the Committee on Territories were referred to a select
committee, of which Mr. Clay, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky,
was chairman. From this committee emanated the bills which, taken
together, are known as the compromise measures of 1850.

With some others, I advocated the division of the newly acquired
territory by an extension to the Pacific Ocean of the Missouri
Compromise line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude.
This was not because of any inherent merit or fitness in that line, but
because it had been accepted by the country as a settlement of the
sectional question which, thirty years before, had threatened a rupture
of the Union, and it had acquired in the public mind a prescriptive
respect which it seemed unwise to disregard. A majority, however,
decided otherwise, and the line of political conciliation was then
obliterated, as far as it lay in the power of Congress to do so. An
analysis of the vote will show that this result was effected almost
exclusively by the representatives of the North, and that the South was
not responsible for an action which proved to be the opening of
Pandora's box.[9]

However objectionable it may have been in 1820 to adopt that political
line as expressing a geographical definition of different sectional
interests, and however it may be condemned as the assumption by Congress
of a function not delegated to it, it is to be remembered that the act
had received such recognition and _quasi_-ratification by the people of
the States as to give it a value which it did not originally possess.
Pacification had been the fruit borne by the tree, and it should not
have been recklessly hewed down and cast into the fire. The frequent
assertion then made was that all discrimination was unjust, and that the
popular will should be left untrammeled in the formation of new States.
This theory was good enough in itself, and as an abstract proposition
could not be gainsaid; but its pr