Clay had imprudently gathered the several matters of his Compromise into one bill, which was soon sneeringly nicknamed “the Omnibus Bill.”  It was sorely harassed by amendments, and when at last, on July 31, the Omnibus reached the end of its journey, it contained only one passenger, viz., a territorial government for Utah.  Its trip had apparently ended in utter failure.  But a careful study of individual proclivities showed that not improbably those measures might be passed one by one which could not be passed in combination.  In this hope, five several bills, being all the ejected contents of the Omnibus, were brought forward, and each in turn had the success which had been denied to them together.  First:  Texas received $10,000,000, and for this price magnanimously relinquished her unfounded claim upon New Mexico.  Second:  California was admitted as a free State.  Third:  New Mexico was organized as a Territory, with the proviso that when she should form a state constitution the slavery question should be determined by the people, and that during her territorial existence the question of property in a slave should be left undisturbed by congressional action, to be determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.  Fourth:  A more efficient Fugitive Slave Law was passed.  Fifth:  Slave trading in the District of Columbia was abolished.  Such were the terms of an arrangement in which every man saw so much which he himself disliked that he felt sure that others must be satisfied.  Each plumed himself on his liberality in his concessions nobly made in behalf of public harmony.  “The broad basis,” says von Holst, “on which the compromise of 1850 rested, was the conviction of the great majority of the people, both North and South, that it was fair, reasonable, and patriotic to come to a friendly understanding.”

Thus in the midsummer of 1850 did the nation, with intense relief, see the imminent disaster of civil discord averted,—­or was it only postponed?  It was ominous that no men who were deeply in earnest in public affairs were sincerely satisfied.  The South saw no gain which offset the destruction of the balance of power by the admission of California.  Thinking men at the North were alarmed at the recognition of the principle of non-intervention by Congress concerning slavery in the Territories, a principle which soon, under the seductive title of “popular sovereignty” in the Territories, threatened even that partial restriction heretofore given by the Missouri Compromise.  Neither party felt sufficiently secure of the strength of its legal position to be altogether pleased at seeing the doctrine of treating the slave in the Territories as “property” cast into the lottery of the Supreme Court.  Lincoln recognized the futility of this whole arrangement, and said truly that the slavery question could “never be successfully compromised.”  Yet he accepted the situation, with the purpose of making of it the best that was