Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/372

362 Carolina, and Florida, and one each from Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri, ten in all, signed a protest setting forth that the admission of California as a Free State destroyed the equal rights of the slave-holding states in the confederacy; that it was “contrary to former precedent, and to the spirit and intent of the Constitution;” that it was part of a policy “fatal to the peace and equality of the states” they represented, which “must lead, if persisted in, to the dissolution of that confederacy, in which the slave-holding states have never sought more than equality, and in which they will not be content to remain with less.”

On August 15 the bill to establish a territorial government in New Mexico was passed, providing that New Mexico, when fit to be received as a state, might come in with or without slavery, as her Constitution should then determine; and that in the mean time cases involving title to slaves in the territory should go for decision to the Supreme Court of the United States. On August 26 the Senate passed the fugitive-slave bill, but in a form more unfavorable to the negro than that in which it had been reported by Clay's committee; a provision giving the person captured as a fugitive slave the benefit of a trial by jury as to his status in the state in which the claimant resided, was struck out.

The Texas boundary bill created a great stir in the House of Representatives. As the prospect of