Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/311

Rh tion prohibited slavery, said: &quot;We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in her constitution. It was her right, and I am not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise. That is her business; but I stand upon the great principle that the South has right to an equal participation in the territories. I claim the right for her to enter all with her property and securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you if you wish it, but the right to enter all or divide I shall never surrender.&quot; Mr. Toombs stated the general Southern idea in the words &quot;the right to enter all or divide, by which he meant the right of each section to enter with recognized property all the territories, or a division of the territories on the old line of 36° 30’, or any fair and equal partition. Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. Douglas worked together to secure a Congressional declaration against Congressional restriction on the local action of territories, and succeeded in securing an agreement to a motion to that effect made by Mr. Norris, of New Hampshire. Mr. Green, of Missouri, proposed the recognition of the old Missouri Compromise line through all the new territory, but his proposition was rejected. Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, then asked for a law that the should be objected to because its constitution authorized slavery, which was refused by nearly an exclusively sectional vote. At this juncture Mr. Soule, of Louisiana, proposed a test vote by an amendment to Utah Territorial bill simply declaring that Utah shall be received into the Union with or without slavery as its constitution may prescribe at the time of its admission. This raised the question whether under any circumstances, another State authorizing the use of slave labor would be allowed to emerge from the Territorial into State government. It has been said that the fate of the compromise, with all its happy consequences, rested at that hour on one man. That man was the august Senator