LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE

288

professed to favor popular liberty, yet were insisting that a hasty and imperfect code of laws, designed to suit earlier days and framed under the influence of a British corporation, should

be forced upon the people of the Territory until

become a

it

should

"A

baser system of quack legislation never blacker decree of disfigured the records of civilized mjan! despotism, in principle, was never fulminated since the edict State.

A

of Nantes!"

During the debate various amendments which were proposed in order to nullify the compromise features were voted down. Hale, Davis (Mass.), Clarke, Baldwin (Conn.) all attempted in one form or another to defeat the purpose of the clauses dealing with New Mexico and California, but with no No vital amendment was made and the bill in essensuccess.

the form reported by the com/promise committee was passed by the Senate on a vote of 33 to 22. All but three of tially

membership responded to their names when the roll called, and one of these three had "remained till a late hour" when he had been "obliged to go home on account of 42 The twenty- two votes against the bill were all fatigue." from the North, except for two from Kentucky and one (Bell) from Tennessee. Nine Senators from the free States, four of them westerners, voted for the bill. Thirteen Whigs were for the measure while four opposed it. The House had just gotten started with its Oregon bill the full

was

when

the Senate

During

Compromise bill reached the Speaker's desk. the Senate debate, which had been closely watched by

the Representatives, some Congressmen had announced to the President their intention to vote for it when it should

reach them, but the strength of the northern non-slave vote

was shown by

the summary manner in which it was disposed Smith of Indiana expressed the sentiments of most of his northern colleagues when he said that the bill contained no promise of settling the controversy, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, taking the same ground, moved, as a of.

42 Webster was not present, and Jones of Iowa did not take December, 1848.

his

seat

until