Between these extremes were grouped the followers of Senator Cass of Michigan, who was perhaps the most conspicuous candidate for the Democratic nomination.  In his famous Nicholson letter of December 24, 1847, he questioned both the expediency and constitutionality of the Wilmot Proviso.  It seemed to him wiser to confine the authority of the general government to the erection of proper governments for the new countries, leaving the inhabitants meantime to regulate their internal concerns in their own way.  In all probability neither California nor New Mexico would be adapted to slave labor, because of physical and climatic conditions.  Dickinson of New York carried this doctrine, which was promptly dubbed “Squatter Sovereignty,” to still greater lengths.  Not only by constitutional right, but by “inherent,” “innate” sovereignty, were the people of the Territories vested with the power to determine their own concerns.

Beside these well-defined groups there were others which professed no doctrines and no policies.  Probably the rank and file of the party were content to drift:  to be non committal was safer than to be doctrinaire; besides, it cost less effort.  Such was the plight of the Democratic party on the eve of a presidential election.  If harmony was to proceed out of this diversity, the process must needs be accelerated.

The fate of Oregon had been a hard one.  Without a territorial government through no fault of their own, the settlers had been repeatedly visited by calamities which the prompt action of Congress might have averted.[247] The Senate had failed to act on one territorial bill; twice it had rejected bills which had passed the House, and the only excuse for delay was the question of slavery, which everybody admitted could never exist in Oregon.  On January 10, 1848, for the fourth time, Douglas presented a bill to provide a territorial government for Oregon;[248] but before he could urge its consideration, he was summoned to the bed-side of his father-in-law.  His absence left a dead-lock in the Committee on Territories:  Democrats and Whigs could not agree on the clause in the bill which prohibited slavery in Oregon.  What was the true inwardness of this unwillingness to prohibit slavery where it could never go?

The Senate seemed apathetic; but its apathy was more feigned than real.  There was, indeed, great interest in the bill, but equally great reluctance to act upon it.  What the South feared was not that Oregon would be free soil,—­that was conceded,—­but that an unfavorable precedent would be established.  Were it conceded that Congress might exclude slavery from Oregon, a similar power could not be denied Congress in legislating for the newly acquired Territories where slavery was possible.[249]