However, by the time Congress met, Douglas had made out his own programme; and it differed in one respect from anything that the President, or for that matter anyone else, had suggested.  He proposed to admit both New Mexico and California; i.e. all of the territory acquired from Mexico, into the Union as a State.  Some years later, Douglas said that he had introduced his California bill with the approval of the President;[263] but in this his memory was surely at fault.  The full credit for this innovation belongs to Douglas.[264] He justified the departure from precedent in this instance, on the score of California’s astounding growth in population.  Besides, a territorial bill could hardly pass in this short session, “for reasons which may be apparent to all of us.”  Three bills had already been rejected.[265]

Now while California had rapidly increased in population, there were probably not more than twenty-six thousand souls within its borders, and of these more than a third were foreigners.[266] One would naturally suppose that a period of territorial tutelage would have been peculiarly fitting for this distant possession.  Obviously, Douglas did not disclose his full thought.  What he really proposed, was to avoid raising the spectre of slavery again.  If the people of California could skip the period of their political minority and leap into their majority, they might then create their own institutions:  no one could gainsay this right, when once California should be a “sovereign State.”  This was an application of squatter sovereignty at which Calhoun, least of all, could mock.

The President and his cabinet were taken by surprise.  Frequent consultations were held.  Douglas was repeatedly closeted with the President.  All the members of the cabinet agreed that the plan of leaving the slavery question to the people of the new State was ingenious; but many objections were raised to a single State.  In repeated interviews, Polk urged Douglas to draft a separate bill for New Mexico; but Douglas was obdurate.[267]

To Douglas’s chagrin, the California bill was not referred to his committee, but to the Committee on the Judiciary.  Perhaps this course was in accord with precedent, but it was noted that four out of the five members of this committee were Southerners, and that the vote to refer was a sectional one.[268] An adverse report was therefore to be expected.  Signs were not wanting that if the people of the new province were left to work out their own salvation, they would exclude slavery.[269] The South was acutely sensitive to such signs.  Nothing of this bias, however, appeared in the report of the committee.  With great cleverness and circumspection they chose another mode of attack.