Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/331

Rh unanimous vote of the convention, including fifteen members who had migrated to California from the Slave States. The Constitution was ratified by a popular vote of 12,066 against 811. President Taylor, who wished to meet Congress with the governments to be instituted in the newly acquired territories as accomplished facts, and hoped that the people of New Mexico too would take the task into their own hands, instructed the military officers commanding there not to obstruct, but rather to advance, popular movements in that direction.

The slave-holding interest watched these proceedings with constantly increasing alarm. The territories taken from Mexico were eluding its grasp. Instead of adding to the strength of the South, they would increase the power of the Free States. It was a terrible shock. The mere anticipation of it had brought forth suggestions of desperate remedies. In May, 1849, a meeting at Jackson, Mississippi, had resolved that a state convention be held to consider the threatened rights and interests of the South. That state convention met, and issued an address to the Southern people proposing a Southern “popular convention,” to be held on the first Monday in June, 1850, at Nashville. The cry of disunion was raised with increasing frequency and violence. Many meant it only as a threat to frighten the North into concession. But there were not a few Southern men also who had regretfully arrived at the conclusion that the dissolution of the Union was necessary to