was just as clearly a slavery question as any of the others.

These points all needed adjustment, and they were held up, perhaps
wisely, to make them help adjust one another. The Union now, as in 1820,
was thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union rightfully
inclined men to yield somewhat in points where nothing else could have so
inclined them. A compromise was finally effected. The South got their new
fugitive slave law, and the North got California, (by far the best part
of our acquisition from Mexico) as a free State. The South got a
provision that New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may come in
with or without slavery as they may then choose; and the North got the
slave trade abolished in the District of Columbia.. The North got the
western boundary of Texas thrown farther back eastward than the South
desired; but, in turn, they gave Texas ten millions of dollars with which
to pay her old debts. This is the Compromise of 1850.

Preceding the Presidential election of 1852, each of the great political
parties, Democrats and Whigs, met in convention and adopted resolutions
indorsing the Compromise of '50, as a "finality," a final settlement, so
far as these parties could make it so, of all slavery agitation. Previous
to this, in 1851, the Illinois Legislature had indorsed it.

During this long period of time, Nebraska (the Nebraska Territory, not
the State of as we know it now) had remained substantially an uninhabited
country, but now emigration to and settlement within it began to take
place. It is about one third as large as the present United States, and
its importance, so long overlooked, begins to come into view. The
restriction of slavery by the Missouri Compromise directly applies to
it--in fact was first made, and has since been maintained expressly for
it. In 1853, a bill to give it a territorial government passed the House