Westward extension, 1841-1850, by George Pierce Garrison.

1849]

SLAVERY ISSUE

3I3

Carolina boldly proclaimed disunion.1 The North
was hardly less excited; the legislatures of all the
states of that section except Iowa passed resolutions
favoring congressional prohibition of slavery in the
territories, and a number took action looking towards the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in
the District of Columbia.2
Thus, amid energy-consuming sectional quarrels
that prevented the discharge of urgent national duties, the strenuous Polk administration drew to a
close. Though it had accomplished large results, it
left much unfinished work involving an exceedingly
complex and difficult group of problems. Should
slavery be excluded from California and New Mexico
by congressional action? Should it be excluded
from a part of both by extending the line between
slavery and free soil to the Pacific? Or should they
be left free to exclude it or not, as they might choose,
on the principle of squatter sovereignty? Should
that part of New Mexico east of the Rio Grande follow the fortunes of the part west of the river? Or
should it be made a slave-holding district by conceding the boundary claimed by Texas? The struggle for solutions to these pressing problems necessarily brought under review the whole subject of
sectional differences concerning slavery, and suggested a compromise that should endeavor to adjust them all. Thus were added to the group of
troublesome issues those relating to the return of
1 Rhodes, United States, I., Io5-107. 2 Ibid., o07.