er,
shall compel me to vote for the positive introduction of slavery,
either south or north of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and
justly, too, our British ancestors for the introduction of this
institution upon the continent of America, I am, for one, unwilling
that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California and
New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach Great
Britain for doing for us."

The Wilmot Proviso made its appearance for the last time when Seward
offered it as an amendment. It failed in the Senate by a vote of
23 to 33.

Finally, when the bill for the admission of California was ready
for a vote, Turney of Tennessee moved to limit the southern boundary
of the State to 36 deg. 30', so as to allow slavery in all territory
south of that line. This failed, 24 to 32, the South voting almost
unitedly for the amendment.

Mr. Benton was a prominent exception. To him the friends of freedom
owed much for support, by speech and vote. While he opposed Clay's
plan, he voted with the free State party on all questions of slavery,
save on the Wilmot Proviso, which he deemed unnecessary to the
exclusion of slavery from territory where the laws of Mexico, still
in force, excluded it.

The California bill passed, August 13th, 34 to 18. Clay is not
recorded as voting. He may have been absent or paired. Webster
had become Secretary of State, and Winthrop succeeded him in the
Senate. To emphasize the opposition, ten Senators immediately had
read at the Secretary's desk a protest, with a view to its being
spread on the Journal. This was refused, after a most spirited
debate, as being against precedent.(77) The protest was a long
complaint against making the Territory of California a State without
its being first organized, territorially, and an opportunity given
to the South to make it a slave State, and for admitting it as a
free State, thus destroying the equilibrium of the States; the
protestors declaring that if such course were persisted in, it
would lead to a dissolution of the Union. A bill establishing New
Mexico with its present boundaries, also Utah, was passed in August,
leaving both to become States with or without slavery. A fugitive-
slave act was likewise passed at the same time in the Senate. The
whole of the bills covered by the compromise having in some form
passed the Senate, went to the House, where, after some animated
discussion, they all passed, in Septemb