3. No more slave states.
No more slave territories.

Whigs attempt a compromise.

COMPROMISE OF 1850.

1. California a free state.
2. Popular sovereignty in territory acquired from Mexico.
3. No slave trade in District of Columbia.
4. Texas takes present boundaries.
5. Two new territories, Utah and New Mexico.
6. New fugitive-slave law.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TERRITORIES BECOME SLAVE SOIL

%384. Franklin Pierce, Fourteenth President.%--Although the struggle
with slavery was thus growing more and more serious, the two great
parties pretended to consider the question as finally settled. In 1852
the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce and William E. King, and
declared in their platform that they would "abide by and adhere to" the
Compromise of 1850, and would "resist all attempts at renewing, in
Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question." The Whigs
nominated General Winfield Scott, and declared that they approved the
fugitive-slave law, and accepted the compromise measures of 1850 as "a
settlement in principle" of the slavery question, and would do all they
could to prevent any further discussion of it.

[Illustration: Franklin Pierce]

So far as the Whigs were concerned, the question was settled; for the
Northern people, angry at their acceptance of the Compromise of 1850 and
the fugitive-slave law, refused to vote for Scott, and Pierce was
elected.[1]

[Footnote 1: Pierce carried every state except Massachusetts, Vermont,
Tennessee, and Kentucky.]

The Free-soilers had nominated John P. Hale and George W. Julian.

%385. The Nebraska Bill.%--Pierce was inaugurated March 4, 1853. He,
too, believed that all questions relating to slavery were settled. But
he had not been many months in office when the old quarrel was raging as
bitterly as ever. In 1853 all that part of our country which lies
between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, the south boundary
of Kansas and 49 deg., was wilderness, known as the Platte country, and was
without any kind of territorial government. In January, 1854, a bill to
organize this great piece of country and call it the territory of
Nebraska was reported to the Senate by the Committee on Territories, of
which Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was chairman. Every foot of it was
north of 36 deg. 30', and according to the Missouri Compromise was free
soil. But the bill provided for popular sovereignty