The southern press. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1850-1852, 1850-07-02

she has her inherent rights as well as CallIofnia
proper. She is the oldest in date before and in
her State organization. Her constitution extends
her limits to the crest of the Sierra Nevada, and
down the Sierra TO the Santa Barbara mountains !;
thence along the Pacific to the Gulf of California,
embracing the whole of the Southern coast. Can
you cut her short of those limits TO sanction the
posterior usurpation of California; Deseret acted
in her right, If California did, when framing her
constitution and her boundaries, having been as
serted long prior to California, (by seven monhs)
ought to prevail. II Deseret must be considered
as being in subsection TO California, why was she
not summoned to the Monterey Convention
But (says the delegate from San Francisco, Mr..
Gwin,) have they any right to complain! Are
we not the majority Does any one pretend to
say, in this house or elsewhere, that the districts
Of California, established under the proclamation
of the governor, do not contain population that
is not represented here? Have not thousands
reached the country since we were elected As
a minority were they not bound to submit to the
will of the majority? Sir, are we not here for
cling a State government upon portion OF the
people of California, whose delegates have, by
their recorded votes, stated the fact that their con-
stituents are unanimously against State govern
ment, and in favor of territorial organization
Gentlemen affect TO believe that IN
taking large extent Of territory not represented
here, and from which no opposition to our action
has been made known to us, we are doing a great
act of injustice to those people; when, at the
same time, we have here before us the direct pro-
test against a State government OF a portion of
the inhabitants Of this Territory who are repre-
sented But do we stop Do we refrain from
committing this act of injustice5 No, sir; we go
on and include them.
Then, Mr.. President, might is to supersede right.
If not, why join the four protesting to the west
ern districts, and force them into submission to
the State government organized by the conven-
tioni Why take from them the right to provide
for themselves that form of government which
best suits themi They are Californians also and
most of them the Californians for whom provis-
ion was intended to be made, and protection was
secured, in the treaty that transferred them to us
and the first act of the conqueror is to bring them
by feat of political legerdemain, within the pale
and under the authority OF a government to which
they were UNANIMOUSLY opposed
The whole matter of the boundary, then, was
cunningly devised to be merely nominal, purposey
unreal, and thoroughly deceptive. 1t was to be e.
teciipe and rrepersibie for single object-to er-
ciude the South forerer from, all share in the Terrific
ries through spolations Of her rights and dsgrada
ton of her sorereignty Without an alternative that
does not end in ingtorios submission on rPtore Qf
the Union.
am now drawing rapidly to close; and l
promise the Senate that | shall do my best to
shorten us much as possible the remaining re-
marks which intend submitting to its considera-
ton, for feel that have trespassed already too
long upon its patience.
My substitute proposes to restrict the limits of
California to the SO deg. 30 min. parallel of north
latitude.
The original line of the Missouri Compromise,
Mr.. President, came not at the South's instance,
nor was it adopted through the South s choice.
Her assent to it was constrained; it was the only
alternative left her between the spoilation and
abandonment of her equal rights north Of SO deg.
80 miu, and the dismemberment of the Union;
nd tn tho che SACRIFICED the other and
was thus despoied Of three-fourths of the slave
holding territory of Louisiana. With the North
the case was altogether different. She deemed 1t
her interest to partition the territory by an east
and west line, and in such way that while
Southerners were excluded from migration and
settlement north of the line, Northerners were
left free to migrate and settle on both sides of it,
as they were before. Through the power of
numbers she established this principle Of terrific
rial partitions, and with the privilege of choice
she fixed on the degree Of latitude where the line
should run.
This was in in 1920. Precisely one-fourth Of a
century thereafter, 1S45,) Texas, with her i'm
mense territory, was before Congress for admis-
sion into the Union. The North insisted that the
line of the Missouri Compromise should be APP
piled to her territory. 1t was in vain to tell her
that not foot of this territory the property
| of the United States, but belonged exclusively to
| the State of Texas, She replied that the princi-
pie of territorial partitions between the North and
the South upon the line of 36o 30 had been
| finally settled by the Compromise of 1890 had
been adhered to for one-fourth Of century, and
was now as binding the constitution itself.
She was inexorable the South yielded again,
and the Missouri line was stretched through the
State of Texas.
Scarcely three years had elapsed before the
question of the Missouri Compromise was again
nooted in Congress- 1t came up on the Oregon
territorial bill. All of Oregon south of the Column
bia river had been acquired under the Louisiana
treaty of 1903, and Of course was included in the
Missouri Compromise of 1920. But all of Ore
gon north of that river acquired under the Florida
treaty of 1919, which was not ratified until 1921
Well the North claimed all Of Oregon as free ter
ritory by force of the Compromise, and the South
recognised her right to it upon the basis of that
adjustment,
| The very last instance in which the question
arose between the free and the slave States occur
| red in the act Of acquiring California and New
Mexico, some two years ago; and that was the
first and only instance, after twenty EIGHT years OF
seadfast adherence to the principle of territorial
partitions, in which the free States betrayed the
wish to depart from and repudiate that princi-
| pie.
| The circumstance occurred in this Senate, con-
vened in executive session to deliberate upon the
ratification of the treaty Of Guadalupe Hdalgo.
On that occasion, the Senator from Connecticut
! Mr. BALDWIN called upon the free States to dis
avow and repudiate the line Of the Missouri Com
promise, by offering an amendment extending the
Wilmot Proviso over every acre of the Territories
proposed to be coded by the treaty. The ground
which the Southern Senators took upon that
amendment was this If you abandon the line
of the Missouri Compromise, and adopt this
amendment, we will at once bring the treaty to a
vote and reject i-leaving you without an inch of
domain upon which to infict so fragrant an injus-
tice upon the rights of the South! And as there
were thirty Southern Senators in a Senate of sixty,
and it would have required forty affirmative votes
| (two-thirds) to ratify, and twenty-one negative
votes would have been sufficient to reject it, even
in full Senate, it was plain enough that the
Southern Senators had it in their power to make
good what they said they would do in such a con-
| iuncture. The amendment was therefore voted
down by decided majority, and the treaty was
adopted without it. Sir, without word in the
South s praise, it may be said, and no Senator
here will deny it, that without the South s military
share in the war, without her monetary share in
expenses, and, above all, without her votes for
the ratification of the treaty, We should not now
have had single acre of the territory to wrangle
about. Not an inch of it could you have had, but
by repudating the Wilmot Proviso, and through