rritory thus acquired there never shall be slavery."

This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso. It created a great
flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill
passed with it through the House. The Senate, however, adjourned without
final action on it, and so both appropriation and proviso were lost for
the time. The war continued, and at the next session the President renewed
his request for the appropriation, enlarging the amount, I think, to
three millions. Again came the proviso, and defeated the measure. Congress
adjourned again, and the war went on. In December, 1847, the new Congress
assembled. I was in the lower House that term. The Wilmot Proviso, or the
principle of it, was constantly coming up in some shape or other, and I
think I may venture to say I voted for it at least forty times during
the short time I was there. The Senate, however, held it in check, and it
never became a law. In the spring of 1848 a treaty of peace was made
with Mexico, by which we obtained that portion of her country which now
constitutes the Territories of New Mexico and Utah and the present State
of California. By this treaty the Wilmot Proviso was defeated, in so far
as it was intended to be a condition of the acquisition of territory.
Its friends, however, were still determined to find some way to restrain
slavery from getting into the new country. This new acquisition lay
directly west of our old purchase from France, and extended west to the
Pacific Ocean, and was so situated that if the Missouri line should be
extended straight west, the new country would be divided by such extended
line, leaving some north and some south of it. On Judge Douglas's motion,
a bill, or provision of a bill, passed the Senate to so extend the
Missouri line. The proviso men in the House, including myself, voted it
down, because, by implication, it gave up the southern part to slavery,
while we were bent on having it all free.

In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California. This
attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that on, or soon
after, the meeting of the new Congress in December, 1849, she already had
a population of nearly a hundred thousand, had called a convention, formed
a State constitution excluding slavery, and was knocking for admission
into the Union. The proviso men, of course, were for letting her in,
but the Senate, always true to the other side, would not consent t