o her
admission, and there California stood, kept out of the Union because
she would not let slavery into her borders. Under all the circumstances,
perhaps, this was not wrong. There were other points of dispute connected
with the general question of Slavery, which equally needed adjustment. The
South clamored for a more efficient fugitive slave law. The North clamored
for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District
of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of the
Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of negroes were
collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets,
precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty
years. Utah and New Mexico needed territorial governments; and whether
slavery should or should not be prohibited within them was another
question. The indefinite western boundary of Texas was to be settled. She
was a slave State, and consequently the farther west the slavery men could
push her boundary, the more slave country they secured; and the farther
east the slavery opponents could thrust the boundary back, the less slave
ground was secured. Thus this was just as clearly a slavery question as
any of the others.

These points all needed adjustment, and they were held up, perhaps wisely,
to make them help adjust one another. The Union now, as in 1820, was
thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union rightfully inclined
men to yield somewhat in points where nothing else could have so inclined
them. A compromise was finally effected. The South got their new fugitive
slave law, and the North got California, (by far the best part of our
acquisition from Mexico) as a free State. The South got a provision that
New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may come in with or without
slavery as they may then choose; and the North got the slave trade
abolished in the District of Columbia.. The North got the western boundary
of Texas thrown farther back eastward than the South desired; but, in
turn, they gave Texas ten millions of dollars with which to pay her old
debts. This is the Compromise of 1850.

Preceding the Presidential election of 1852, each of the great political
parties, Democrats and Whigs, met in convention and adopted resolutions
indorsing the Compromise of '50, as a "finality," a final settlement, so
far as these parties could make it so, of all slavery agitation. Previous
to this, in 1851, th