Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/378

368 did, indeed, make some important concessions. His original resolutions contained a declaration that slavery did not by law exist, and was not likely to be introduced, in the acquired territories. That declaration he gave up. In the Committee of Thirteen he also very reluctantly accepted the duty of reporting an amendment that the territorial legislatures should “have no power to pass any law in respect to African slavery,” which was adopted. And finally another amendment passed providing that the territories in question, when fit to be received as states, should be admitted with or without slavery, as their respective constitutions might determine. But what did all this mean? Clay argued that, if in the newly acquired territories slavery actually existed, it could not be abolished, or, if it did not exist, it could not be introduced by any act of the territorial legislature. Did slavery exist in New Mexico and Utah? Clay insisted that it did not; the champions of slavery, that it did, — that, if indeed it ever had been abolished by Mexican law, the Constitution of the United States, being by the act of acquisition spread over the territories, superseded that Mexican law, and carried with it the right of the slave-holder to take and hold his “property” there. This doctrine Clay most emphatically denied. But, as opinions differed upon all these points, the compromise proposed that these differences should be referred for decision to the Supreme Court of the United States. This could not permanently sat-