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