As a last resort, a select committee was appointed, of which Senator Clayton became chairman.  Within a week, a compromise was reported which embraced not only Oregon, but California and New Mexico as well.  The laws of the provisional government of Oregon were to stand until the new legislature should alter them, while the legislatures of the prospective Territories of California and New Mexico were forbidden to make laws touching slavery.  The question whether, under existing laws, slaves might or might not be carried into these two Territories, was left to the courts with right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.[250] The Senate accepted this compromise after a prolonged debate, but the House laid it on the table without so much as permitting it to be read.[251]

Douglas returned in time to give his vote for the Clayton compromise,[252] but when this laborious effort to adjust controverted matters failed, he again pressed his original bill.[253] Hoping to make this more palatable, he suggested an amendment to the objectionable prohibitory clause:  “inasmuch as the said territory is north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30’ of north latitude, usually known as the Missouri Compromise.”  It was the wish of his committee, he told the Senate, that “no Senator’s vote on the bill should be understood as committing him on the great question."[254] In other words, he invited the Senate to act without creating a precedent; to extend the Missouri Compromise line without raising troublesome constitutional questions in the rest of the public domain; to legislate for a special case on the basis of an old agreement, without predicating anything about the future.  When this amendment came to vote, only Douglas and Bright supported it.[255]

Douglas then proposed to extend the Missouri Compromised line to the Pacific, by an amendment which declared the old agreement “revived ... and in full force and binding for the future organization of the Territories of the United States, in the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was originally adopted."[256] This was President Polk’s solution of the question.  It commended itself to Douglas less on grounds of equity than of expediency.  It was a compromise which then cost him no sacrifice of principle; but though the Senate agreed to the proposal, the House would have none of it.[257] In the end, after an exhausting session, the Senate gave way,[258] and the Territory of Oregon was organized with the restrictive clause borrowed from the Ordinance of 1787.  All this turmoil had effected nothing except ill-feeling, for the final act was identical with the bill which Douglas had originally introduced in the House.