ments, so that but a small portion of the original remained, and it passed only as "a bill to provide for the territorial government of Utah." It was sent to the house, where it was received with merriment. Its dismemberment was called "upsetting the omnibus." Subsequently, all the bills originally included in Mr. Clay's omnibus were passed. California was admitted as a free state; the territory of New Mexico organized; the boundary of Texas established; the territory of Utah organized. The bill also to abolish the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the fugitive slave law were passed. These acts are substantially as follows:

ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA.

Whereas, the people of California have presented a constitution and asked admission into the Union, which constitution was submitted to congress by the President of the United States, by message, dated February 13th, 1850, which, on due examination, is found to be republican in its form of government—

Be it enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled, That the state of California shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatever.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That until the representatives in congress shall be apportioned according to an actual enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, the state of California shall be entitled to two representatives in congress.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the said state of California is admitted into the Union upon the express condition that the people of said state, through their legislature or otherwise, shall never interfere with the primary disposal of the public lands within its limits, and shall pass no law, and do no act, whereby the title of the United States to, and right to dispose of, the same, shall be impaired or questioned; and they shall never lay any tax or assessment of any description whatsoever on the public domain of the United States; and in no case shall non-resident proprietors, who are citizens of the United States, be taxed higher than residents; and that all the navigable waters within the said state shall be common highways, and for ever free, as well to the inhabitants of said state as to the citizens of the United States, without any tax, duty, or impost therefor; provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed as recognizing or rejecting the propositions tendered by the people of California as articles of compact in the ordinance adopted by the convention which formed the constitution of that state. Approved, September 9, 1850.

THE TEXAS BOUNDARY.

Be it enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled, That the following propositions shall be, and the same hereby are, offered to the state of Texas; which, when agreed to by the said state, in an act passed by the general assembly, shall be

binding and obligatory upon the United States, and upon the said state of Texas; provided, that said agreement by the said general assembly shall be given on or before the first day of December, eighteen hundred and fifty.

First. The state of Texas will agree that her boundary on the north shall commence at the point at which the meridian of one hundred degrees west from Greenwich is intersected by the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, and shall run from said point due west to the meridian of one hundred and three degrees west from Greenwich; hence her boundary shall run due south to the thirty-second degree of north latitude; thence on the said parallel of thirty-two degrees of north latitude to the Rio Bravo del Norte; and thence with the channel of said river to the gulf of Mexico.

Second. The state of Texas cedes to the United States all her claims to territories exterior to the limits and boundaries which she agrees to establish by the first article of this agreement.

Third.—The state of Texas relinquishes all claim upon the United States for liability for the debts of Texas, and for compensation or indemnity for the surrender to the United States of her ships, forts, arsenals, custom-houses, custom-house revenue, arms and munitions of war, and public buildings, with their sites, which became the property of the United States at the time of the annexation.

Fourth. The United States, in consideration of said establishment of boundaries, cession of claims to territory, and relinquishment of claims, will pay to the state of Texas the sum of ten millions of dollars, in a stock bearing five per cent. interest, and redeemable at the end of fourteen years, the interest payable half-yearly at the treasury of the United States.

Fifth.-Immediately after the president of the United States shall have been furnished with an authentic copy of the act of the general assembly of Texas, accepting these propositions, he shall cause the stock to be issued in favor of the state of Texas, as provided for in the fourth article of this agreement.

Provided also, That no more than five millions of said stock shall be issued until the creditors of the state, holding bonds and other certificates of stock of Texas, for which duties on imports were specially pledged, shall first file, at the treasury of the United States, releases of all claims against the United States for or on account of said bonds or certificates, in such form as shall be prescribed by the secretary of the treasury, and approved by the president of the United States.

ORGANIZATION OF NEW MEXICO.

The second section of the "act for the organization of New Mexico," enacts that all that portion of the territory of the United States bounded as follows, to wit: beginning at a point on the Colorado river where the boundary line of the republic of Mexico crosses the same; thence eastwardly with the said boundary line to the Rio Grande; thence following the main channel of said. river to the parallel of the thirty-second degree of north latitude; thence eastwardly with said degree to its intersection with the one hundred and third degree of longitude west from Greenwich; thence north with said degree of

longitude to the parallel of the thirty-eight degree of north latitude; thence west with said parallel to the summit of the Sierra Madre; thence south with the crest of said mountains to the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude; thence west with the said parallel to its intersection with the boundary line of the state of California; thence with the said boundary line to the place of beginning, be, and the same is hereby, erected into a temporary government by the name of the territory of New Mexico; provided, that nothing in this act contained shall be construed to inhibit the government of the United States from dividing said territory into two or more territories, in such manner and at such times as congress shall deem convenient and proper, or from attaching any portion thereof to any other territory or state; provided further, that when admitted as a state, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.

The eighteenth section enacts, that the provisions of this act be suspended until the boundary between the United States and the state of Texas shall be adjusted; and when such adjustment shall have been effected, the president of the United States shall issue. his proclamation, declaring this act to be in full force and operation, and shall proceed to appoint the officers herein provided to be appointed for the said territory.

UTAH TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT.

The act to establish a territorial government for Utah provides: That all that part of the territory of the United States included within the following limits, to wit: bounded on the west by the state of California, on the north by the territory of Oregon, on the east by the summit of the Rocky mountains, and on the south by the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude, be, and the same is hereby, created into a temporary government, by the name of the territory of Utah; and, when admitted as a state, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission; provided, that nothing in this act contained shall be construed to prohibit the government of the United States from dividing said territory into two or more territories, in such manner and at such time as congress shall deem convenient and proper, or from attaching any portion of said territory to any other state or territory of the United States.

The act proceeds to provide for the appointment of a territorial governor, secretary, marshal, judges, &c., and for the election of a council of thirteen, and a house of representatives of twenty-six members; also for a delegate in congress. All recognized citizens to be voters.

The governor shall receive an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars as governor, and one thousand dollars as superintendent of Indian affairs. The chief justice and associate justices shall each receive an annual salary of eighteen hundred dollars. The secretary shall receive an annual salary of eighteen hundred dollars. The said salaries shall be paid quarter-yearly, at the treasury of the United States. The members of the legislative assembly

shall be entitled to receive each three dollars per day during their attendance at the sessions thereof, and three dollars each for every twenty miles' travel in going to and returning from said sessions, estimated according to the nearest usually traveled route.

That the legislative power of said territory shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act; but no law shall be passed interfering with the primary disposal of the soil; no tax shall be imposed upon the property of the United States; nor shall the lands or other property of non-residents be taxed higher than the lands or other property of residents. All the laws passed by the legislative assembly and governor shall be submitted to the congress of the United States, and, if disapproved, shall be null and of no effect.

That the constitution and laws of the United States are hereby extended over, and declared to be in force in, said territory of Utah, so far as the same, or any provision thereof, may be applicable.

The debates upon the bills in both houses were animated and interesting. Mr. Seward, of New York, touched upon the principal topics embraced in the general questions of slavery, as presented at this session, as follows:

"But it is insisted that the admission of California shall be attended by a compromise of questions which have arisen out of slavery!

I am opposed to any such compromise, in any and all the forms in which it has been proposed; because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises, which are not absolutely necessary, radically wrong and essentially vicious. They involve the surrender of the exercise of judgment and conscience on distinct and separate questions, at distinct and separate times, with the indispensable advantages it affords for ascertaining truth. They involve a relinquishment of the right to reconsider in future the decisions of the present, on questions prematurely anticipated. And they are acts of usurpation as to future questions of the province of future legislators.

Sir, it seems to me as if slavery had laid its paralyzing hand upon myself, and the blood were coursing less freely than its wont through my veins, when I endeavor to suppose that such a compromise has been effected, and that my utterance for ever is arrested upon all the great questions-social, moral, and political-arising out of a subject so important, and yet so incomprehensible. What am I to receive in this compromise? Freedom in California. It is well; it is a noble acquisition; it is worth a sacrifice. But what am I to give as an equivalent? A recognition of the claim to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia; forbearance toward more stringent laws concerning the arrest of persons suspected of being slaves found in the free states; forbearance from the proviso of freedom in the charters of new territories. None of the plans of compromise offered demand less than two, and most of them insist on all of these conditions. The equivalent, then, is some portion of liberty, some portion of human rights in one region for liberty in another region. But California brings gold and commerce as well as freedom. I am, then, to sur

render some portion of human freedom in the District of Columbia, and in East California and New Mexico, for the mixed consideration of liberty, gold, and power on the Pacific coast. But, sir, if I could overcome my repugnance to compromises in general, I should object to this one, on the ground of the inequality and incongruity of the interests to be compromised. Why, sir, according to the views I have submitted, California ought to come in, and and must come in, whether slavery stand or fall in the District of Columbia; whether slavery stand or fall in New Mexico and Eastern California; and even whether slavery stand or fall in the slave states. California ought to come in, being a free state; and, under the circumstances of her conquest, her compact, her abandonment, her justifiable and necessary establishment of a constitution, and the inevitable dismemberment of the empire consequent upon her rejection, I should have voted for her admission even if she had come as a slave state. California ought to come in, and must come in at all events. It is, then, an independent, a paramount question. What, then, are these questions arising out of slavery, thus interposed, but collateral questions? They are unnecessary and incongruous, and therefore false issues, not introduced designedly, indeed, to defeat that great policy, yet unavoidably tending to that end.

Mr. Foote. Will the honorable senator allow me to ask him if the senate is to understand him as saying that he would vote for the admission of California if she came here seeking admission as a slave state.

Mr. Seward. I reply, as I said before, that even if California had come as a slave state, yet coming under the extraordinary circumstances I have described and in view of the consequences of a dismemberment of the empire, consequent upon her rejection, I should have voted for her admission, even though she had come as a slave state. But I should not have voted for her admission otherwise.

I remark, in the next place, that consent on my part would be disingenuous and fraudulent, because the compromise would be unavailing. It is now avowed by the honorable senator from South Carolina, (Mr. Calhoun,) that nothing will satisfy the slave states but a compromise that will convince them that they can remain in the Union consistently with their honor and their safety. And what are the concessions which will have that effect? Here they are, in the words of that senator:

'The north must do justice by conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled-cease the agitation of the slave questionand provide for the insertion of a provision in the constitution by an amendment, which will restore to the south in substance the power she possessed of protecting herself, before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of this government.'

These terms amount to this: that the free states having already, or although they may hereafter have, majorities of population, and majorities in both houses of congress, shall concede to the slave states, being in a minority in both, the unequal advantage of an equality. That is, that we shall alter the constitution