5 and the eleven free States had an equal representation with the eleven slave States in the Senate of the United States. The slave States unanimously insisted on an unqualified admission of Missouri. The free States, with less unanimity, demanded that the new State should renounce Slavery. The controversy seemed to shake the Union to its foundations, and it was terminated by a compromise. Missouri was admitted as a slave State. Arkansas, rather by implication than by express agreement, was to be admitted, and it was afterwards admitted, as a slave State. . On the other hand, Slavery was forever prohibited in all that part of the old province of Louisiana yet remaining unoccupied, which lay north of the parallel of 36° 30z north latitude. The reservation for free labor included the immense region now known as the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and seemed ample for eight, ten, or more free States. The severity of the struggle and the conditions of the compromise indicated very plainly, however, that the Vigor of national intervention in favor of free labor and free States was exhausted. Still, the existing statutes were adequate to secure an ultimate ascendency of the free States. The policy of intervention in favor of slave labor and slave States began with the further removal of the borders of the Republic. I cheerfully admit that this policy has not been persistent or exclusive, and claim only that it has been and yet is predominant. I am not now to deplore the annexation of Texas. I remark simply that it was a bold measure, of doubtful constitutionality, distinctly adopted as an act of intervention in favor of slave labor, and made or intended to be made most effective by the stipulation that the new State of Texas may hereafter be divided and so reorganized as to constitute five slave States. This great act cast a long shadow before it—a shadow which perplexed the people^of the free States. It was then that a feeble social movement, which aimed by moral persuasion at the manumission of slaves, gave place to political organizations, which have ever since gone on increasing in magnitude and energy, directed against afurther extension of Slavery in the United States. The war between the United States and Mexico, and the acquisition of the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and Upper California, the fruits of that war, were so immediately and directly consequences of the annexation of Texas, that all of those transactions in fact may be regarded as constituting one act of intervention in favor of slave labor and slave States. The field of the strife between the two systems had become widely enlarged. Indeed, it was now continental. The amazing mineral wealth of California stimulated settlement there into a rapidity like that of vegetation. The Mexican laws which prevailed in the newly-acquired Territories dedicated them to free labor, and thus the astounding question arose for the first time, whether the United States of America, whose Constitution was based on the principle of the political equality of all men, would blight and curse with Slavery a conquered land which enjoyed universal Freedom. The slave States denied the obligation of these laws, and in- , sisted on their abrogation. The free States maintained them, and demanded their confirmation through the enactment of the Wilmot Proviso. The slave States and the free States were yet in equilibrium. The controversy continued here two years. The settlers of the new Territories became impatient, and precipitated a solution of the question. They organized new free States in California and New Mexico. The Mormons also framed a Government in Utah. Congress, after a bewildering excitement, determined the matter by another compromise. It admitted California a free State, dismembered New Mexico, transferring a large district free from Slavery to Texas, whose laws carried Slavery over it, and subjected the residue to a Territorial Government, as it also subjected Utah, and stipulated that the future States to be organized in those Territories should be admitted either as free States or as slave States, as they should elect. I pass over the portions of this arrangement which did not bear directly on the point in conflict. The Federal Government presented this compromise to the people, as a comprehensive, final, and perpetual adjustment of all then existing and all future questions having any relation to the subject of Slavery within the Territories or elsewhere. The country accepted it with that proverbial facility which free States practice, when time brings on a stern conflict which popular passions provoke, and at a distance defy. This halcyon peace, however, had not ceased to be celebrated, when new-born necessities of trade, travel, and labor, required an opening of the region in the old province of Louisiana north ot 36° 30z, which had been reserved in 1820, and dedicated to free labor and free States. The old question was revived in regard to that Territory, and took the narrow name of the Kansas question, just as the stream which. Lake Superior discharges, now contracting itself into rivers and precipitating itself down rapids and cataracts, and now spreading out its waters into broad seas, assumes a new name with every change Ox form, but continues nevertheless the same majestic and irresistible flood under every change, increasing in depth and in volume until it loses itself in the all-absorbing ocean. No one had ever said or even thought that the law of Freedom in this region could be repealed, impaired, or evaded. Its constitutionality had indeed been questioned at the time of its enactment; but this, with all other objections, had been surrendered as part of the compromise. It was regarded as bearing the sanction of the public faith, as it certainly had those of time and acquiescence. But the slaveholding people of Missouri looked across the border, into Kansas, and coveted the land. The slave States could not fail to sympathize with them. It seemed as if no organization of Government could be effected in the Territory. The Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] projected a scheme. Under his vigorous leading, Congress created two Territories— Nebraska and Kansas. The former (the more northern one) might, it was supposed, be settled without Slavery, and become a free State, or several free States. The latter (the southern
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