not to alarm the North. In planning his compromise, he had these troubles to deal with: 1. The South was bitterly opposed to the admission of California as a Free State, because it would break that rule by which formerly new states had been admitted only in pairs, one Free State and one Slave State. It would thus disturb the balance of power between Free and Slave States in the Senate, and substantially give the North the benefit of the conquests made in the Mexican war. But the admission of California as a Free State, its people having declared themselves against the introduction of slavery, was so clearly right in itself that it could hardly be put in question. 2. As to New Mexico and Utah, the remainder of the territory obtained by conquest, the North insisted upon the application of the Wilmot Proviso, the absolute exclusion of slavery. But the Southern hotspurs declared that if the Wilmot Proviso were adopted, the Union should be dissolved at once. 3. Texas claimed as her western boundary the course of the Rio Grande. This would have included the larger part of New Mexico; and, as Texas was a Slave State, while New Mexico under the Mexican law had no slavery, the recognition of the Rio Grande boundary would have transformed a large free territory into a part of a Slave State, to be used in the future for the formation of new Slave States. A much narrower boundary was insisted upon by Northern, and also, upon historical grounds, by some Southern men;
