but the Texans proclaimed their determination to enforce their claim by the sword if necessary. 4. The South complained that the constitutional obligation to return fugitive slaves from one state to another was not fulfilled by the North, and that, therefore, more stringent legislation must be insisted upon, while the catching of fugitive slaves was especially odious to the Northern people. 5. The North continued to agitate the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave-trade between the different Slave States, while the South insisted that such measures would be subversive of their rights and dangerous to their security.
To meet these difficulties Clay proposed, in a set of resolutions to be followed by appropriate bills, a series of measures intended to compromise all conflicting interests and aspirations. The first declared that California should be speedily admitted as a state, — of course with her free-state constitution; the second, that, as slavery did not by law exist and was not likely to be introduced in any of the territories acquired from Mexico, Congress should provide territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah, without any restriction as to slavery, — thus sacrificing the Wilmot Proviso, — without, however, authorizing slave-holders to take their slaves there, — thus adjourning the slavery question as to those territories to a future day; the third and fourth, that a boundary line between Texas and New Mexico should be fixed, giving to
