morning, the 4th of March when it receded from its amendment. Its action, however, clearly revealed its spirit and purpose. Professing to believe it vitally important to organize governments in New Mexico and California, it had amended an appropriation bill for that purpose. But the House insisting, the Senate rejected its proposition, and thus revealed its object, in putting in peril, in the closing hours of the session, the civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, to have been, not the establishment of government, but the establishment of slavery. So, after a contest of more than two years, the Slave Power had defeated the proposed inhibition of slavery in the territory won by the blood and treasure of the nation, and Mr. Polk left to his successors the unsolved problem, whether slavery should enter into, or be excluded from it. CHAPTER IV. EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY FROM OREGON. Characteristics of Slave Power. Oregon, its boundaries and government. —Winthrop proviso. Douglas's bill. - Burt's amendment. New bill. - Hale's amendment. Senate debate. - Bright's motion. — Calhoun's new dogma. Underwood's speech. - Remarks of Baldwin, Niles, Berrien, Johnson, Dix. Calhoun's position. His character. - Berrien, Phelps, Davis, Mason, Johnson of Georgia, Jefferson Davis. Clayton's proposition. - Compromise committee.- Report. - Great debate. - Clarke's amendment. - Baldwin's amendment. John Davis's amendment. Passage of the Clayton bill. - Laid on the table in the House.. - Caleb B. Smith's bill. Palfrey's amendment. Passage of the bill in the House. - Douglas's proposition. Remarks of Mason, Dayton, Webster, Butler, Calhoun, Niles, Reverdy Johnson. -- Rejection of Foote's motion. Extension of the line of the Missouri compromise. Passed in the Senate. Defeated in the House. - Menacing demands of Mr. Calhoun. Benton's motion. Remarks of Bell, Houston and Benton. Benton's motion agreed to. - Passage of the Oregon bill. Message of the President. - Triumph of freedom. AMONG the villanies of which slavery was said to be the "sum" was its essential dishonesty. Conceived in fraud, it began and perpetuated its existence by the most flagrant outrage on the commonest and most sacred of human rights. Consequently the Slave Power, its embodiment, was never fair and honorable, high-minded or magnanimous. Never true to its pledges, and never bound by formal compacts, it very naturally treated with equal disregard the unwritten laws of social comity and good neighborhood. Gratitude and reciprocity were as foreign to it as justice and integrity. Its friendships were only simulated, and even its professions of regard were measured by the benefit hoped for therefrom. It clung to persons and parties only so long as they could be used, and when they ceased to be serviceable they were discarded and flung away. Not an inapt illustration was afforded by its treatment of the Northern Democracy on the Oregon question. The fidelity of Northern Democrats on the Texan issue, the fearful burden they assumed in consequence, and the inroad it made on their ranks, were matters of common notoriety. For the sake of appearances, if nothing more, they demanded something like reciprocity from their Southern allies when the question in debate referred to northern extension on the Pacific. When, therefore, the dispute arose concerning the northwestern boundary between the United States and British America, the Northern Democrats assumed, as a party issue, the most extreme limit as their demand. The limit fixed upon was the parallel of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, north latitude. The title of the United States up to that line, they contended, was clear and unquestionable. "Fifty-four, forty or fight" became their watchword and rallying-cry. But the Southern Democrats, true to their instincts, though ready to encounter any danger, national or partisan, to extend the boundaries southward, made no concealment of their lack of interest or zeal in this cry for northern extension. That there was danger of this added territory being free if acquired, that England might reject and resist such a claim, were sufficient reasons why they did not desire it, while no counterbalancing considerations were allowed in the form of obligations due for past favors and the past fealty of their Northern allies. Having used them in carrying to a successful issue the Texas scheme, they recognized no obligation to reciprocate the favor, and so the "fifty-four forty" came down quietly and quickly to forty-nine. Before, however, this settlement of the dispute with Great Britain, and while it was in abeyance, there had been attempts to provide a government for Oregon. As far back as 1844 a bill had been introduced, not only singular in the time of its introduction, as its adoption then might have been cause of war with England, but containing the strange provision, that the sole power of framing and establishing the laws, slave or free, for the Territory, should be given to two officers, the governor and judge, to be appointed by the President. As the administration was under the control of the Slave Power, and as Indian slavery was already existing in this territory, there was the well-grounded fear that, though lying north of thirtysix degrees thirty minutes, the adoption of the bill would somehow inure to the damage of freedom. This fear, with the solicitude that England would deem its adoption just cause of war, created a determined purpose in those who dreaded both slavery and war to defeat the project, especially as there were evidences of an arrangement between Northern and Southern men by which Southern support of this project was made the condition precedent of Northern votes for the Texas scheme. Prominent in this effort was Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts. To prevent, as he avowed, "the two irresponsible lawgivers" from "legalizing the existence of slavery in Oregon," he moved the adoption of a provision, involving the principle of the ordinance of 1787, and the famous "Wilmot proviso," of a later date. His purpose, however, as he afterward explained, was mainly strategic, he supposing that the adoption of such a provision would render the measure so distasteful to Southern members as to prevent their support of the bill thus hampered by his amendment. He failed, however; for, though his provision was adopted, the South voted for the bill; which was carried in the House, but failed in the Senate. In 1846, Stephen A. Douglas, then a member of the House, reported a bill for the government of Oregon with its northern boundaries fixed by a treaty with England. This bill, amended so as to prohibit slavery, was adopted by the House, but it never reached a vote in the Senate. At the next session, he introduced another bill, to which Mr. Burt of South Carolina proposed, as an amendment, that slavery should be prohibited, "for the reason" that Oregon was territory north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, the line of the Missouri Compromise, dividing freedom from slavery. But the amendment was rejected, and the bill, though passing the House, failed in the Senate. Early in January, 1848, Mr. Douglas, having been transferred to the Senate and to the leadership of its Committee on Territories, introduced a similar bill into that body. Near the close of May Mr. Hale introduced an amendment incorporating the principle of the ordinance of 1787 into the act VOL. II. proposed. A debate of great earnestness and forensic ability followed, continuing several weeks, in which Southern mem bers indulged in their accustomed style of invective and attempted intimidation. In his support of the amendment, Mr. Hale spoke with his usual courtesy and good-nature, but expressive of his defiance of all threats, and of his determination to press the matter of slavery prohibition according to the dictates of his judgment and conscience. "I am willing," he said, "to place myself upon the great principle of human right, to stand where the Word of God and my own conscience concur in placing me, and then bid defiance to all consequences." He was replied to by Democratic senators with great vigor, and with some display of feeling. Mr. Hannagan of Indiana accused him of provoking "a protracted, useless, idle, and pestiferous discussion"; Mr. Bagby of Alabama said the amendment "cast a direct, unnecessary, and gratuitous insult in the teeth of the people of the South"; while Mr. Foote expatiated largely on the dangerous consequences of the proposed amendment. Mr. Hale withdrew his amendment; but his withdrawal did not stop debate. One section of the bill, the twelfth, proposed to recognize the laws framed by the settlers of Oregon, which excluded slavery, and to grant to its inhabitants the rights, privileges, and immunities secured to the inhabitants of Iowa, where slavery had been prohibited. Jesse D. Bright of Indiana, subsequently expelled from the Senate for giving aid and comfort to the Rebellion, moved to strike out this section. This necessarily opened the whole question of the relations of slavery to the general government. It was really the question afterward more tersely expressed: Shall slavery be national or sectional? Shall the Federal government take it under the ægis of its protection, or shall it be remanded to local laws and municipal regulations? As the slavemasters did not expect Oregon would ever be largely slaveholding, the discussion became rather one of principles than of measures. In it Mr. Calhoun urged his peculiar views, and proclaimed his recently discovered dogma, that the national flag carried |