Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/382



men, who were inured to toil and abhorred slavery. President Taylor, who was anxious to avoid the reopening of a bitter contest upon which the Whig party was hopelessly divided, sought to forestall the danger by sending a trusted agent to the Pacific Coast, immediately after his inauguration, to urge the early application of the citizens of California for its admission into the Union as a free State, before the slavery propagators would gain a formidable foothold on its soil.

A convention was called, a constitution framed prohibiting slavery. But the “irrepressible conflict” could not be prevented. It was in vain that compromises were agreed to, they only postponed the day when it must be settled by physical force. The compromise measures finally agreed to by the Thirty-first Congress were: the admission of California as a free State, settlement of the Texas boundary, organization of Utah and New Mexico as Territories without prohibiting slavery within their limits, the enactment of a rigid law for the arrest and return to their masters of all slaves escaping from bondage and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

General Dodge of Iowa took an active part in the discussion of these measures, he and Senator Jones voting for the fugitive slave law and against the exclusion of slavery from the territories. General Dodge, in a speech, rejoiced that Iowa had never indorsed the “Wilmot Proviso,” which sought to exclude slavery from the territories. There can be no doubt that Senators Dodge and Jones truly represented a majority of the people of Iowa at this time, as it was almost the only northern State which had refused to instruct its members of Congress to support the “Wilmot Proviso.” President Taylor died on the 9th of July, 1850, in the midst of the bitter controversy and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, who was an earnest supporter of the compromise measures.