divided by such extended line, leaving some north and some south of it.
On Judge Douglas's motion, a bill, or provision of a bill, passed the
Senate to so extend the Missouri line. The proviso men in the House,
including myself, voted it down, because, by implication, it gave up the
southern part to slavery, while we were bent on having it all free.

In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California. This
attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that on, or soon
after, the meeting of the new Congress in December, 1849, she already had
a population of nearly a hundred thousand, had called a convention,
formed a State constitution excluding slavery, and was knocking for
admission into the Union. The proviso men, of course, were for letting
her in, but the Senate, always true to the other side, would not consent
to her admission, and there California stood, kept out of the Union
because she would not let slavery into her borders. Under all the
circumstances, perhaps, this was not wrong. There were other points of
dispute connected with the general question of Slavery, which equally
needed adjustment. The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive slave
law. The North clamored for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave
trade in the District of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from
the windows of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves
of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to
Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been openly
maintained for fifty years. Utah and New Mexico needed territorial
governments; and whether slavery should or should not be prohibited
within them was another question. The indefinite western boundary of
Texas was to be settled. She was a slave State, and consequently the
farther west the slavery men could push her boundary, the more slave
country they secured; and the farther east the slavery opponents could
thrust the boundary back, the less slave ground was secured. Thus this