he Senate in 1849, for the purpose of compromising
the sectional difficulties as he had compromised those of 1820 and of
1833. His speech, as given, will show something of his motives; his
success resulted in the "compromise of 1850." By its terms, California
was admitted as a free State; the slave trade, but not slavery, was
prohibited in the District of Columbia; a more stringent fugitive slave
law was enacted; Texas was paid $10,000,000 for certain claims to the
Territory of New Mexico; and the Territories of Utah and New Mexico,
covering the Mexican acquisition outside of California, were organized
without mentioning slavery. The last-named feature was carefully
designed to please all important factions. It could be represented to
the Webster Whigs that slavery was excluded from the Territories named
by the operation of natural laws; to the Clay Whigs that slavery had
already been excluded by Mexican law which survived the cession; to the
northern Democrats, that the compromise was a formal endorsement of the
great principle of popular sovereignty; and to the southern Democrats
that it was a repudiation of the Wilmot proviso. In the end, the essence
of the success went to the last-named party, for the legislatures of the
two territories established slavery, and no bill to veto their action
could pass both Houses of Congress until after 1861.

The Supreme Court had already decided that Congress had exclusive power
to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, though the
fugitive slave law of 1793 had given a concurrent authority of execution
to State officers. The law of 1850, carrying the Supreme Court's
decision further, gave the execution of the law to United States
officers, and refused the accused a hearing. Its execution at the North
was therefore the occasion of a profound excitement and horror. Cases
of inhuman cruelty, and of false accusation to which no defence was
permitted, were multiplied until a practical nullification of the law,
in the form of "personal liberty laws," securing a hearing for the
accused before State magistrates, was forced by public opinion upon the
legislature of the exposed northern States. Before the excitement
had come to a head, the Whig convention of 1852 met and endorsed the
compromise of 1850 "in all its parts." Overwhelmed in the election which
followed, the Whig party was popularly said to have "died of an attempt
to swallow the fugitive-slave law"; it would have b