presidential careers this country has ever seen.  The plan had only one defect.  It would not work.  One scheme after another was brought before the Senate, only to fail.  Finally, Mr. Webster introduced his own, which was merely to authorize military government and the maintenance of existing laws in the Mexican cessions, and a consequent postponement of the question.  The proposition was reasonable and sensible, but it fared little better than the others.  The Southerners found, as they always did sooner or later, that facts were against them.  The people of New Mexico petitioned for a territorial government and for the exclusion of slavery.  Mr. Calhoun pronounced this action “insolent.”  Slavery was not only to be permitted, but the United States government was to be made to force it upon the people of the territories.  Finally, a resolution was offered “to extend the Constitution” to the territories,—­one of those utterly vague propositions in which the South delighted to hide well-defined schemes for extending, not the Constitution, but slave-holding, to fresh fields and virgin soil.  This gave rise to a sharp debate between Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun as to whether the Constitution extended to the territories or not.  Mr. Webster upheld the latter view, and the discussion is chiefly interesting from the fact that Mr. Webster got the better of Mr. Calhoun in the argument, and as an example of the latter’s excessive ingenuity in sustaining and defending a more than doubtful proposition.  The result of the whole business was, that nothing was done, except to extend the revenue laws of the United States to New Mexico and California.

Before Congress again assembled, one of the subjects of their debates had taken its fortunes into its own hands.  California, rapidly peopled by the discoveries of gold, had held a convention and adopted a frame of government with a clause prohibiting slavery.  When Congress met, the Senators and Representatives of California were in Washington with their free Constitution in their hands, demanding the admission of their State into the Union.

New Mexico was involved in a dispute with Texas as to boundaries, and if the claim of Texas was sanctioned, two thirds of the disputed territory would come within the scope of the annexation resolutions, and be slave-holding States.  Then there was the further question whether the Wilmot Proviso should be applied to New Mexico on her organization as a territory.

The President, acting under the influence of Mr. Seward, advised that California should be admitted, and the question of slavery in the other territories be decided when they should apply for admission.  Feeling was running very high in Washington, and there was a bitter and protracted struggle of three weeks, before the House succeeded in choosing a Speaker.  The State Legislatures on both sides took up the burning question, and debated and resolved one way or the other with great excitement.  The Southern members held meetings, and talked about secession and about withdrawing from Congress.  The air was full of murmurs of dissolution and intestine strife.  The situation was grave and even threatening.