one meant by the negotiators of the treaty of 1846, but this contention was arranged by arbitration in 1871-the German Emperor acting as arbitrator and deciding in favour of the United States. The more difficult question as to the division of these great acquisitions between slavery and freedom remained to be settled.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY, 1849-1861.

The Anti

tion.

THE Missouri compromises settled the question of slavery extension for many years, and at the same time made the division between the slave and free slavery agitasections more permanent. But the issue involved in that contest had hardly been set at rest when other questions turning on slavery arose. The people of the North, for the most part, were busily employed in acquiring wealth. The northern merchants and manufacturers agreed with the southern slave-owners in a desire to leave the whole subject of slavery undiscussed and undisturbed. There are to be found, however, from time to time, in all parts of the world, earnest souls whose consciences will not permit them to blink at what seems to be wrong, no matter how their material interests may be affected by their actions. Such an one was William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831, while nullification was threatening to disturb the peace of the country, he began at Boston the publication of a paper devoted to the abolition of negro slavery and called "The Liberator." The South Carolina politician was satisfied with nullification-as a first step at least; the Massachusetts agitator clamoured for no union with slave-owners, and denounced the Constitution as "an agreement with Hell." In the same year that Garrison

began the publication of "The Liberator," a slave insurrection broke out in Virginia under the leadership of Nat Turner. There was no connection between the two events, but the Southerners became wild with excitement. The legislature of Georgia offered a reward of five thousand dollars for Garrison's arrest and conviction, and not a copy of "The Liberator" could be openly sold south of the Potomac. Incitement to murder in the South had its counterpart in mob violence in the North. Garrison was locked up in the Boston jail to protect him from the rioters, and William Ellery Channing, publishing a tract against slavery, was deserted by the greater part of his congregation. The matter soon became an affair of national importance owing to the lack of wisdom displayed by the Southern leaders in trying to prevent the presentation of anti-slavery petitions to Congress. John Quincy Adams, the ex-president, was now a member of the House of Representatives. He led the battle for freedom on this issue of the right of petition, and gained for himself a place in the history of the United States as honourable as it is unique. The murder of an abolitionist newspaper editor, named Lovejoy, brought to public notice one of the most splendid orators of all time, Wendell Phillips. At a meeting held in Fanueil Hall, Boston, he rebuked "the recreant American," who in the interest of the slave-holders had "slandered the dead." The abolition movement seemed to be losing strength, however, when the acquisition of Texas, New Mexico, California, and Oregon brought the nation once again face to face with the problem of the extension of slavery. Once again, under the lead of Henry Clay, the nation flinched and strove to avoid the issue by compromise.

Oregon was situated so far north that all parties seem to

Settlement of California.

have agreed to extend to that territory the principles of the Ordinance of 1787 as to slavery. With regard to California, the case was different.

That territory extended far to the south of the line of the Missouri Compromise. Before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been concluded, a workman on Colonel Suter's mill-race, near the site of the present city of Sacramento, noticed a few bits of gold in the earth taken from the trench. Slight exploration confirmed the discovery, and a small package containing the precious metal was sent to Washington and there placed on exhibition. Then followed a movement such as the world had never witnessed before in historic times. Over land and over water, the gold-seekers thronged to California. A majority of these early pioneers, "the forty-niners," were northern men and themselves laboured for the gold. Between February, 1848, and November, 1849, more than eighty thousand emigrants entered the country. In the latter month they held a convention, drew up a State constitution prohibiting slavery, and applied to Congress for admission to the Union as a free State. Congress thus was forced to come to some decision as to the disposal of the territory acquired from Mexico.

The "Wilmot Proviso," 1846.

General Taylor was now (1849-50) President, having been elected by the Whig Party in November, 1848. He was a Louisiana sugar planter and the owner of a hundred slaves, and was the father-in-law of Jefferson Davis, one of the Senators from Mississippi. President Taylor, at the time of his inauguration, seems to have believed the Northern anti-slavery men to have been the aggressors. He soon discovered that the aggression was on the other side. Moreover, he fell under the influence of William H. Seward of New York, one of the anti-slavery leaders in the Senate. Taylor determined to hurry California and New Mexico into the Union as free or slave states, as the people of each region might determine. When Congress met, however, Clay worked out a plan for a compromise which would settle all the pending questions which in any way involved slavery, in the interests of conciliation and good

feeling. The precise motives which actuated Clay at this time have been much debated. Some writers have asserted that a jealousy of Taylor, his successful rival, was the leading motive, and others have suggested that he really believed that secession on the part of the slave States was imminent. The accuracy of the insight of those who believed that the Union was really in danger in 1850 has however been impugned. No matter what was the cause of Clay's action, it is certain that the discussions which it aroused greatly increased whatever bitterness of feeling there may have been. This contest had been somewhat forestalled by the attempt of the antislavery men to devote these new territories to freedom before they were acquired. This they endeavoured to accomplish (1846) by attaching to the bill appropriating money to enable the President to buy land from Mexico, a proviso that slavery should be forbidden for ever in any territory acquired from Mexico. This was known as the Wilmot Proviso because it was introduced by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. The bill was defeated at the moment owing, curiously enough, to the fact that the clocks of the two Houses did not agree, so that the Senate did not take action until after the House had finally adjourned; the bill thus failed to pass at that session. The appropriation was made a short time afterwards, without the proviso. The extremists in the North were determined that sooner or later the policy embodied in the Wilmot Proviso should become the law of the land. The Southern extremists were determined to break up the Union, if it were passed into law. General Taylor, with rare insight, recognized that the easiest way would be that the people of the proposed States should settle the matter before the politicians could meddle with it. Clay, however, took possession of the subject and proceeded to dispose of the whole matter in his own way.

Clay's compromise scheme included the simultaneous