to the amount of three million five hundred thousand dollars. Boundary and other disputes were settled, and New Mexico and California became acknowledged territories of the United States. It was in the very month when the treaty was signed at Guadaloupe Hidalgo, that gold was found at Captain Sutter's Mill on the American fork of the Sacramento River in California; and the official statement of the fact that gold was abundant in that territory, made in the President's message in December following, caused an emigration to the Pacific coast, not only from our States, but from other countries. Since then the yield of the precious metal there has been enormous; and in some of the other Territories in the western portion of our republic, immense quantities of silver, as well as gold, have been discovered.

Mr. Polk's administration, which closed in the spring of 1849, was chiefly distinguished by the events and results of the war with Mexico, and the settlement of the Oregon boundary question, already noticed. The war was very unpopular, at first, with a large proportion of our citizens; but the unparalleled achievements of our little army there first excited the pride of the Americans, and then aroused their enthusiasm, and the war very soon became popular. It was carried through in a manner highly honorable to our country, and its acquisition of territory not only enriched the republic but greatly extended its domain. In May, 1848, Wisconsin was admitted into the Union as a State, making the whole number of States thirty.

The exploits of General Zachary Taylor at an early period of the war with Mexico, made him exceedingly popular throughout the Union, and the Whig National Convention that assembled at Philadelphia on the 1st of June, 1848, nominated him for the Presidency of the republic, with Millard Fillmore for the Vice-Presidency. Both were elected in November following, and on the 5th of March, 1849 (the 4th fell on Sunday), he was inaugurated the twelfth President of the United States, Chief-Justice Taney administering the oath of office. General Taylor was eminently a "plain, blunt man," with no pretensions to polished manners, but with every characteristic of a true gentleman. He chose for his constitutional advisers John M. Clayton for Secretary of State; William M. Meredith, Secretary of the Treasury; George N. Crawford, Secretary of War; William B. Preston, Secretary of the Navy; Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Interior, a department which had just been created; Jacob Collamer, Postmaster-General, and Reverdy Johnson, Attorney-General.

President Taylor's administration was marked by events which led to very important results. In August, 1849, General Riley, then military governor of California, summoned a convention of delegates to meet at Monterey, on the Pacific coast, to form a State constitution. California had

CHAP. XX.

CALIFORNIA ORGANIZED AS A STATE.

1377

not yet been organized as a Territory; but it was so rapidly filling up with the elements of a new and powerful State, that its speedy admission into the Union as such seemed probable. These elements were then principally goldseekers, who were mostly enterprising young men. The convention met, and on the first of September (1849) they adopted a State constitution, an article of which excluded slavery from that Territory forever. This action

the actual formation of a State by the voice of the people-was accomplished twenty months after gold was first found at Sutter's Mill. It produced warm debates in and out of Congress, and excited a violent controversy throughout the republic on the subject of slavery, which ended only when that institution was utterly destroyed.

Under their State constitution, the Californians elected Edward Gilbert

and G. H. Wright, delegates to the National House of Representatives; and the State Legislature, at its first session, appointed John Charles Fremont and William M. Gwinn, United States Senators. The latter carried the State constitution with them to Washington city, and in February they presented a petition to Congress, praying for the admission of California into the Union of States. It was perceived that a compromise on the subject of slavery must be effected to avoid serious difficulty, for the supporters of the system of slave-labor boldly declared their intention to dismember the republic, if California should be admitted into the Union with its constitution forbidding the existence of slavery in that domain. A joint resolution was offered for the appointment of a committee of thirteen to consider the subject of territorial governments for California, New Mexico and Deseret (the latter settled chiefly by a Mormon community), with instructions to report a plan of compromise embracing all the questions then arising out of the institution of slavery. The resolution was adopted in April, and Mr. Clay was made chairman of the committee. He had already submitted a plan of compromise to the Senate, and spoke eloquently in favor of it; and on the 8th of May he, in behalf of the committee of thirteen, reported a bill intended as a pacificator. It provided for the admission of California as a State; for a territorial government for New Mexico and Deseret or Utah; for a law which would compel the return, to their masters, of all fugitive slaves; for the suppression of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and for a settlement of the boundary of Texas. This bill, containing such a variety of important propositions, was called the "Omnibus Bill," but as a whole it was known as the Compromise Act. It was not satisfactory to the slaveholders, notwithstanding its large concessions. to their interests; and in June they held a convention at Nashville, in Tennessee, and by resolutions presented to the country alternatives for the settlement of the controversy, namely, the security, by an enactment of Congress, of protection to their property in slaves, for those who should. choose to emigrate into any of the Territories, or a partition of the Territories between the free and slave labor sections of the Union, on the basis of the Missouri Compromise.

For four months a discussion and a controversy, which shook the repub lic to its very foundations, was carried on in Congress and among the people -a controversy on the slavery question more violent than any which had yet occurred. The Compromise Act was violently opposed in both sections of the Union, but, of course, on opposite grounds. The extreme pro-slavery men regarded it as a surrender of their most vital claims, to the political sentimentality of the North; and they resolved not to submit to it. Threats

CHAP. XX.

FILLMORE'S ADMINISTRATION.

1379 of disunion were loud, violent, and numerous; and opposition to the Compromise took the shape of a political party first in Mississippi, with Jefferson Davis as leader. It spread into other slave-holding States, and appeared formidable. The opposition to the measure in the Northern States was comparatively feeble; but there was a powerful minority in these free-labor States who were strenuously opposed to the Fugitive-Slave law, which formed a part of the Compromise, as unworthy of the sanction of a civilized nation. Yet the majority of the northern people acquiesced in the measure because it promised peace and the maintenance of the commercial prosperity which then prevailed.

In the midst of the excitement occasioned by this controversy, the country was startled by the death of the President, caused by bilious fever, which occurred on the 9th of July, 1850, when he was in the sixty-fifth year of his age. There was much real mourning on account of his death, for the reflecting men of all parties relied upon his justice, integrity and firmness in the right, in that hour of apparent peril to the republic. Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President, became the constitutional successor of President Taylor, and on the day after the death of the latter, Mr. Fillmore took the prescribed oath of office as President of the United States. On the following day, William R. King, of Alabama, was elected president pro tempore of the Senate, and became acting Vice-President.

The several members of the cabinet of President Taylor tendered their resignations to Mr. Fillmore, who accepted them, and immediately nominated others for his constitutional advisers. These were Daniel Webster, Secretary of State; Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury; Charles M. Conrad, Secretary of War; William A. Graham, Secretary of the Navy; Alexander H. H. Stuart, Secretary of the Interior; Nathan K. Hall, Postmaster-General, and John J. Crittenden, Attorney-General. These names impressed the people with confidence in the administration of Mr. Fillmore.

The most important measures of the government that were pending at the death of President Taylor, and which claimed the early attention of President Fillmore, were the several bills included in the Compromise Act. These were all adopted, with slight modifications, and became laws in the month of September, by receiving the signature of the President. Mr. Seward offered an amendment to the act for the suppression of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, which provided "That slavery in the District be entirely abrogated; that its abolition depend on the vote of the inhabitants; and that in case, on such vote being taken, it should be in favor of emancipation, the sum of two hundred thousand dollars be appropriated to pay the owners of the slaves for whatever loss they may suffer."

This amendment, after a brief discussion, was rejected by five yeas to forty, five nays.

During Taylor's administration, some unpleasant feeling had been engendered between the governments of the United States and Spain, by an invasion of Cuba by a military force organized in this country. It will be observed hereafter, that the men and measures connected with these movements, were intimately associated with the actors in, and the preliminary events of the late Civil War. General Lopez, a native of Cuba, who led an expedition to that island from the United States, was backed by many men who were conspicuous in the secession movements ten years later. The avowed object of the invasion was to stir up the Creoles, or native Cubans, to a revolt for the purpose of overthrowing the local government, casting off the Spanish yoke, and forming an independent State. No doubt this was the principal and perhaps the only design of Lopez, but not of the politicians at his back. Their chief object undoubtedly was to seize Cuba, and make it a part of a great slave empire of the South—a proposition shamelessly set forth in the discreditable "Ostend Manifesto" of a later day. Lopez and his followers landed at Cardenas, in Cuba, at the middle of April, 1850, where he expected to be joined by some of the Spanish troops and a host of native Cubans and with them to overthrow the government of the island. He was disap pointed. The troops and people did not appear, to co-operate with him, and he returned to the United States to prepare for a more formidable invasion.

The introduction of the Compromise Act, the invasion of Cuba and the admission of one State and three Territories into the Union, were the most prominent features of President Taylor's administration. That State was California; the Territories were New Mexico, Utah, and Minnesota. The name of the latter is the Indian title of the River St. Peter, a large tributary of the Upper Mississippi, and means sky-colored water.