of two branches; you confer upon them the right to legislate upon all rightful subjects of legislation, except negroes.  Why except negroes?  I am not therefore prepared to say that under the Constitution we have not the power to pass laws excluding negro slaves from the territories.  But I do say that if left to myself to carry out my own opinions I would leave the whole subject to the people of the territories themselves.”

In a sense Clay was the center of attraction, both because he had returned after a long absence and because he was expected to use his conciliatory power toward a settlement which would satisfy both the North and the South.  He had come to Washington expecting to be received with open arms by President Taylor.  He had been disappointed.  He was not overstrong, being in his seventy-third year.  But his old charm had not faded, his power over men had not abated.  He had loved a drink, a game of cards; he was a slave owner, from a slave state; he had not been consistent in his thinking and his preachment.  True to his peculiar gift of leadership and negotiation, he had framed a compromise which provided for the admission of California as a free state.  This contradicted the doctrine of the right of the state to come into the Union free or slave, as it chose.  The bill provided further for the admission of Utah and New Mexico with or without slavery as they might choose.  This impugned the admissional doctrine of California.  It provided for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and for the passage of a fugitive slave law, such as would satisfy the South.  A motley bill!  Calhoun was against it.  He demanded the extension of slavery into the territory acquired from Mexico, and proposed an amendment to the Constitution providing for two presidents, one from the South and one from the North, with a veto over each other’s acts.  Any absurdity for the sake of slavery!  Perhaps disease had something to do with this unreason.  He died in April before any law was passed.

Webster supported Clay’s bill, thus standing for the admission of Utah and New Mexico with or without slavery as they might decide.  Douglas in the discussion, with his eye for the concrete, pointed out that the ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri Compromise as well, were practically dead letters.  As to the free law respecting Oregon, Oregon had previously fixed the freedom status for herself.  As to the fantastic proposition of striking a balance between the North and the South, giving them equal new states of freedom and slavery, he pointed out that that was a moral and physical impossibility.  The cause of freedom had steadily advanced, the cause of slavery steadily failed.  “We all look forward with confidence to the time when Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and probably North Carolina and Tennessee, will adopt a gradual system of emancipation.  In the meantime we have a vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, which is rapidly filling up with a hardy, enterprising, and industrious population, large enough to form at least seventeen new free states.  Now, let me inquire, where are you to find the slave territory with which to balance these seventeen free territories, or even any one of them?”