Utah; what was to be done with them?  Why, Gentlemen, from the best investigation I had given to the subject, and the reflection I had devoted to it, I was of the opinion that the mountains of New Mexico and Utah could no more sustain American slavery than the snows of Canada.  I saw it was impossible.  I thought so then; it is quite evident now.  Therefore, when it was proposed in Congress to apply the Wilmot Proviso to New Mexico and Utah, it appeared to me just as absurd as to apply it here in Western New York.  I saw that the snow-capped hills, the eternal mountains, and the climate of those countries would never support slavery.  No man could carry a slave there with any expectation of profit.  It could not be done; and as the South regarded the Proviso as merely a source of irritation, and as designed by some to irritate, I thought it unwise to apply it to New Mexico or Utah.  I voted accordingly, and who doubts now the correctness of that vote?  The law admitting those territories passed without any proviso.  Is there a slave, or will there ever be one, in either of those territories?  Why, there is not a man in the United States so stupid as not to see, at this moment, that such a thing was wholly unnecessary, and that it was only calculated to irritate and to offend.  I am not one who is disposed to create irritation, or give offence among brethren, or to break up fraternal friendship, without cause.  The question was accordingly left legally open, whether slavery should or should not go to New Mexico or Utah.  There is no slavery there, it is utterly impracticable that it should be introduced into such a region, and utterly ridiculous to suppose that it could exist there.  No one, who does not mean to deceive, will now pretend it can exist there.

Well, Gentlemen, we have a race of agitators all over the country; some connected with the press, some, I am sorry to say, belonging to the learned professions.  They agitate; their livelihood consists in agitating; their freehold, their copyhold, their capital, their all in all, depend on the excitement of the public mind.  The events now briefly alluded to were going on at the commencement of the year 1850.  There were two great questions before the public.  There was the question of the Texan boundary, and of a government for Utah and New Mexico, which I consider as one question; and there was the question of making a provision for the restoration of fugitive slaves.  On these subjects, I have something to say.  Texas, as you know, established her independence of Mexico by her revolution and the battle of San Jacinto, which made her a sovereign power.  I have already stated to you what I then anticipated from the movement, namely, that she would ask to come into the Union as a slave State.  We admitted her in 1845, and we admitted her as a slave State.  We admitted her also with an undefined boundary; remember that.  She claimed by conquest the whole of that territory commonly called New Mexico, east of the Rio Grande.