pronounced expansionist and as the congressional leader in all
matters pertaining to the Territories, he acquired detailed
information as to the qualities of these new possessions, and he
spoke, therefore, with a good degree of authority when he said,
"If there was one inch of territory in the whole of our
acquisitions from Mexico where slavery could exist, it was in the
valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin." But this region
was at once preempted for freedom upon the discovery of gold.

Douglas did not admit that even the whole of Texas would remain
dedicated to slavery. Some of the States to be formed from it
would be free, by the same laws of climate and resources which
determined that the entire West would remain free. Before the
Mexican War the Senator had become convinced that the extension
of slavery had reached its limit; that the Missouri Compromise
was a dead letter except as a psychological palliative; that
Nature had already ordained that slave labor should be forever
excluded from all Western territory both north and south of that
line. His reply to Calhoun's contention that a balance must be
maintained between slave and free States was that he had plans
for forming seventeen new States out of the vast Western domains,
every one of which would be free. And besides, said he, "we all
look forward with confidence to the time when Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and probably North Carolina and
Tennessee will adopt a gradual system of emancipation." Douglas
was one of the first to favor the admission of California as a
free State. According to the Missouri Compromise law and the laws
of Mexico, all Western territory was free, and he was opposed to
interference with existing conditions. The Missouri Compromise
was still held sacred. Finally, however, it was with Douglas's