EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

417

tation in the acts of political parties, we would be forced to conclude that the law of the Constitution is nothing more than the law of opportunism. The pro-slavery wing of the Democratic party having been successful in joining Texas to the United States, and transforming it from free soil to slave soil, saw a larger and more valuable acquisition in the California country; it should be added to the United States and together with Texas, be organized as a counterbalance to the vast region west of Missouri, and north of the line 36° 30'. If we properly weigh the dominant demands of slavery in the issue involved in the Mexican war, we will find that war, at least on our part, one of the most unjust and indefensible in history. The California country was bound ultimately to become a part of the United States, that was written in the laws of migration and the movements of population. Nor in strict construction of the Constitution can it be denied that the United States might acquire it either by treaty or conquest. At the time of the war, no man claimed that slavery was not the power which impelled us to the acquisition. But latent in the results of the war were economic questions which were to be solved in unexpected ways. Viewed strictly as an event in the constitutional history of the country, the annexation of Texas and its immediate effect, the Mexican war and the acquisition of the California country, were as bold an application of loose construction theory as that made by Jefferson in 1803. A dominating principle in American government was constantly being worked out, that the national Constitution could not be administered for the purposes laid down in its preamble unless it was broadly construed. The recognition of this principle was weakening the theory of State sovereignty. Whatever truth lay in this statement which Randolph had made in the Fed

418

EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

eral Convention respecting the jealousy of the States for their sovereignty, a larger truth was gradually disclosing the jealousy of the people for national sovereignty.

Expansion of our national domain to the Pacific, in 1848, revived the old question of slavery extension, and put the Missouri Compromise in an entirely new light. Complaints had long been heard from the South that Northern communities were refusing to aid in executing the fugitive slave act of 1793, and the half century of complaint now culminated in resolutions of Southern legislatures, which indicated less of widespread alarm at the conduct of the North toward the act of '93, than of determination to extend slavery to the Pacific.1 The South was beginning to have dreams of a slave-holding empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and southward far into the tropics. It was dreaming of controlling the markets of the world through a monopoly of the production of cotton.2 But the realization of this dream would depend upon the security and extension of slave labor. The people of the slave-holding States began to talk of rights of property which were higher and deeper than the Constitution.3 Congress, the legislature of Virginia claimed, had no power whatever over slavery. The Louisiana legislature announced that the people of the South must maintain the rights of the South "peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must." In every slave State the Mexican war was vindicated; acquisition of Texas

1 See Alabama Resolutions, February 14, 1843, and the list referred to in notes, p. 423.

2 Calhoun's letter to William R. King, August 12, 1844, in Calhoun's Works.

3 Alabama Resolutions, January 27, 1845; Kentucky Bill of Rights, Constitution, 1850, Article XIII, Section 3.

4 Virginia Resolutions, March 8, 1847.

5 Resolutions, February 20, 1837.

NORTHERN STATE RESOLUTIONS.

419

was considered as nothing more than its re-annexation and the majority of the voters held that Congress had no power to impose conditions on slavery extension or to trespass on State sovereignty in any way.1 Florida and South Carolina went further, for their legislatures urged that the South be put in a state of defense.2

5

4

The resolutions by Northern legislatures were less extreme but no less firm in their demands. There was unanimity of opinion that the joint occupancy of Oregon with Great Britain should cease.3 Illinois, strongly favored the re-annexation of Texas, but toward slavery extension all the Northern legislatures were hostile. New York insisted that slavery should be forbidden in all the newly acquired regions. The typical Northern resolution was that of Ohio, which demanded that the ordinance of 1787 should be extended over all the territory acquired from Mexico, and the legislature of this State claimed that Congress had power to exclude slavery from acquired territory. Thus, the North and, the South agreed in demanding the expansion of the country to the Pacific, but disagreed over the extension of slavery. The extremes of opinion were expressed by the legislatures of Vermont and Virginia; the one declaring that the perpetuation of slavery was a violation of the national

1 Mississippi Resolutions, February 25, 1842; South Carolina, December 17, 1841; Tennessee, February 7, 1842.

2 Florida Resolutions, January 13, 1849; South Carolina Resolutions, December 20, 1850.

3 Michigan Resolutions, March 11, 1844; Illinois Resolutions, February 21, 1843; February 27, 1845.

4 Resolutions, February 27, 1845.

5 Resolutions, January 27, 1847; January 13, 1848; January 16, 1850.

6 Resolutions, February 13, 1847; February 25, 1848.

7 Resolutions, February 24, 1848.

compact; the other that any limitation of it or attempt to prevent the removal of slavery from the territory was unconstitutional. There could be no mistake in fixing on the great national issues, slavery extension, and it continued to develop ominous proportions until the adoption of the thirteenth amendment twenty years later. At the close of the Mexican war conservative anti-slavery sentiment at the North was demanding that the principles of 1787 and of the Missouri Compromise should be applied to the California country.2

The movement of population had been setting westward for many years, but the crest of the wave did not reach Iowa and Oregon until about 1840. Between these two regions was a vast unoccupied and unbroken wilderness. Iowa was free soil by the Missouri Compromise, but at the time that Compromise was made, the Oregon country was occupied jointly with Great Britain and it seemed impossible that it would be brought within the control of Congress during the century. The contest for its possession came to an end in 1842, and within three years immigrants were passing in increasing numbers into Oregon, chiefly from Missouri and the Southwest. It became necessary to give it a territorial government, and on the sixth of August, 1846, Stephen A. Douglas, of the House Committee on Territories, reported a bill organizing the Territory of Oregon. In Committee of the Whole, the anti-slavery clause from the ordinance of 1787, was added, but no further action was taken during the session. When Congress reassembled Douglas again reported his bill, but the anti-slavery amendment was voted down in Com

1 Vermont Resolutions of 1844; Virginia Resolutions, March 8, 1847; January 20, 1849.

2 Pennsylvania Resolutions, January 22, 1847; see the Massachusetts Resolutions of April 23, 1838.

mittee of the Whole. Burt, a member from South Carolina,1 promptly revived the amendment, because, as he said, the entire territory lay north of the Missouri Compromise line. His purpose was not so much to exclude slavery north of the line, as to legalize it south of it, and thus establish a precedent for future use. Texas had been "reannexed," but the South was not satisfied and its legislatures were demanding more slave territory. Burt's amendment, however, was rejected and Congress adjourned with Oregon still unorganized. When it re

3

assembled in December, 1847, it was met by Polk's message2 urging action on the Oregon question, but it still delayed, and not until the twenty-ninth of May, when the President sent a special message on the subject, did it set seriously to work to pass a territorial bill. On the second of August, by a sectional vote, the North against the South, the bill was passed in the House with an antislavery provision. The Senate, on the tenth, struck out this provision, but the amendms + originally proposed by Douglas was carried, by which the line of the Missouri Compromise was extended to the Pacific. On the following day the House having rejected the Douglas amendment passed its own original bill, to which the Senate. finally agreed, the principle of the ordinance of 1787, restricting slavery, was thus embodied in the organization of our first Territory on the Pacific.

With the creation of the Territory of Oregon, the entire national domain, excepting the California country, was given a civil organization. Oregon was eliminated

1 December 15, 1846.

2 December 7, 1847; Richardson, IV, 532.

8 Yeas 128, nays 71.

4 August 14, 1848; Statutes at Large, IX, 323. In the Senate 29 to 25 of negative votes from slave States.