organization of Utah and New Mexico did not establish a general principle
at all. It had no feature of establishing a general principle. The acts
to which I have referred were a part of a general system of Compromises.
They did not lay down what was proposed as a regular policy for the
Territories, only an agreement in this particular case to do in that way,
because other things were done that were to be a compensation for it.
They were allowed to come in in that shape, because in another way it was
paid for, considering that as a part of that system of measures called
the Compromise of 1850, which finally included half-a-dozen acts. It
included the admission of California as a free State, which was kept out
of the Union for half a year because it had formed a free constitution.
It included the settlement of the boundary of Texas, which had been
undefined before, which was in itself a slavery question; for if you
pushed the line farther west, you made Texas larger, and made more slave
territory; while, if you drew the line toward the east, you narrowed the
boundary and diminished the domain of slavery, and by so much increased
free territory. It included the abolition of the slave trade in the
District of Columbia. It included the passage of a new Fugitive Slave
law. All these things were put together, and, though passed in separate
acts, were nevertheless, in legislation (as the speeches at the time will
show), made to depend upon each other. Each got votes with the
understanding that the other measures were to pass, and by this system of
compromise, in that series of measures, those two bills--the New Mexico
and Utah bills--were passed: and I say for that reason they could not be
taken as models, framed upon their own intrinsic principle, for all
future Territories. And I have the evidence of this in the fact that
Judge Douglas, a year afterward, or more than a year afterward, perhaps,
when he first introduced bills for the purpose of framing new
Territories, did not attempt to follow these bills of New Mexico and
Utah; and even when he introduced this Nebraska Bill, I think you will