Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/343

 ADMINISTRATION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE. 311

em members voting against it. Such had been the legislation upon the subject when the committee of the Senate of 1850 was called upon to perform its duty. The vote on the Oregon bill had made it evident that the North would not be satisfied with the application of the Missouri Compromise line as a settlement, and it was as evident that the South would not consent to any act which should deny to the people of the states of that section any rights or privileges in the territories conceded to the people of the states of the North. It was plain that a new policy must be adopted which could be approved by the people of both sections. After much deliberation, the committee, through Mr, Clay its chairman, reported a series of bills intended to meet the present exigencies, and if adopted, to bring a finality to slavery agitation. These bills provided for the admission of California with a constitution forbidding slavery ; for territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, with the provision that, when admitted as states, these territories should be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitutions should prescribe at the time of their admission ; for the relinquishment by Texas, for a consideration, of all territory north and west of a proposed boundary line ; for the suppression of the slave trade in the District of Columbia ; and for an amendment of the fugitive slave act, so called. The South regarded these bills, excepting the fugitive slave bill, in their application to the territories in question, as large concessions to the North ; as the only territory in which slavery could probably have an existence, was Southern California, from which it was precluded by the constitution which had been framed by the people of California, and under which the bill reported proposed its admission as a state into the Union ; and they regarded the fugi- tive slave bill as only intended to carry into effect a plain provision of the constitution. Notwithstanding the objections in the South to the Missouri Compromise policy, yet the members of Congress from that section preferred the application of its principles to these territories, to the adoption of the pol- icy reported by Mr. Clay. They decided to make a test case on the bill for the admission of California. Accordingly, when that bill was before the Senate, Mr. Turney, of Tennessee moved an amendment, in which it was provided, — ■ " That the line of 36 degrees and 30 minutes of north latitude, known as the Missouri Compromise line, as defined by the eighth section of an act entitled, ' .\n act to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a constitu- tion and state government, and for the admission of each state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, and to prohibit slavery in certain territories,' approved March 6, 1820, be, and the same is, hereby declared to extend to the Pacific Ocean ; and the said eighth section, together with the compromise therein effected, is hereby revived and declared to be in full force and binding for the future organization of the territories of the United States, in the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was originally adopted." The question was taken by yeas and nays, and the amendment was rejected by a vote of twenty-four to thirty-two. Every sena- tor from the North, including Messrs. Hale, Hamlin, and Seward, voted nay ; and every senator from the South, except four, voted yea. The North by a unanimous vote refused to apply the principles of the Missouri Compromise to the territory of California, and the South, with only four members dissenting, voted to apply them. This settled the question, and, after the adoption of amendments, the bills, substantially as reported by Mr, Clay, were passed by de- cided majorities.

These measures inaugurated an entirely new policy in regard to slavery in the territories. In the place of limitations by arbitrarily drawn geographical lines, was substituted authority in the people of the several territories to deter- mine for themselves the question of slavery within their Kmits, in the same way

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