its work; the whole
North was alive to its importance, and Presidential and Congressional
_timber_ blossomed or withered accordingly as it did or did not
fly a banner inscribed "_Wilmot Proviso_."

Calhoun, professing great alarm and great concern for the Constitution,
on February 19, 1847, introduced into the Senate his celebrated
resolution declaring, among other things, that the Territories
belonged to the "several States . . . as their joint and common
property." "That the enactment of any law which should . . .
deprive the citizens of any of the States . . . from emigrating
with their property [slaves] into any of the Territories . . .
would be a violation of the Constitution and the rights of the
States, . . . and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself."

Here was the doctrine of state-rights born into full life, with
the old doctrine of nullification embodied. Benton, speaking of
the dangerous character of Calhoun's resolution, said of them:

"As Sylla saw in the young Caesar many Mariuses, so did he see in
them many nullifications."

Benton, quite familiar with the whole history of slavery before,
during, and after the Mexican War, himself a Senator from a slave
State, says the Wilmot proviso "was secretly cherished as a means
of keeping up discord, and forcing the issue between the North and
the South," by Calhoun and his friends, citing Mr. Calhoun's Alabama
letter of 1847, already quoted, in proof of his statement.

By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February, 1848) for $15,000,000
(above $3,000,000 more than was paid Napoleon for the Louisiana
Purchase), New Mexico and Upper California were ceded by Mexico to
the United States, and the Rio Grande from El Paso to its mouth
became the boundary between the two countries. Upper California
is now the State of California, and the New Mexico thus acquired
included much of the present New Mexico, nearly all of Arizona,
substantially all of Utah and Nevada, and the western portion of
Colorado, in area 545,000 square miles, which, together with the
Gadsden Purchase, by further treaty with Mexico (December 30, 1853)
for $10,000,000 more, completed the despoiling of the sister
Republic. The territory acquired by the last treaty now constitutes
the southern part of Arizona and the southwest corner of New Mexico.

Almost contemporaneous with the invasion of Mexico, and as part of
the plan for the acquisition of her territory, Buchanan, then
Secretar