to it in some parts of the Union... According to the census of 1830, the number was 4,505; and in 1840 it was reduced to 3,320: showing a reduction in ten years of nearly one-third. If it should continue in the same ratio, the number, according to the census now about to be taken, will be only a little upwards of two thousand.

But a majority of the committee think differently in regard to the slave trade within the District... That trade, a majority of the committee are of opinion, ought to be abolished. Complaints have always existed against it, no less on the part of members of Congress from the South than on the part of members from the North. It is a trade sometimes exhibiting revolting spectacles, and one in which the people of the District have no interest, but, on the contrary, are believed to be desirous that it should be discontinued. Most, if not all, of the slaveholding States have, either in their constitutions or by penal enactments, prohibited a trade in slaves as merchandise within their respective jurisdictions. Congress, standing in regard to the people of this District on this subject in a relation similar to that of the State Legislatures to the people of the States, may safely follow the examples of the States...

The views and recommendations contained in this report may be recapitulated in a few words:

1. The admission of any new State or States formed out of Texas to be postponed until they shall hereafter present themselves to be received into the Union, when it will be the duty of Congress fairly and faithfully to execute the compact with Texas by admitting such new State or States;

2. The admission forthwith of California into the Union, with the boundaries which she has proposed;

3. The establishment of territorial governments, without the Wilmot proviso, for New Mexico and Utah, embracing all the territory recently acquired by the United States from Mexico not contained in the boundaries of California;

4. The combination of these two last-mentioned measures in the same bill;

5. The establishment of the western and northern boundary of Texas, and the exclusion from her jurisdiction of all New Mexico, with the grant to Texas of a pecuniary equivalent; and the section for that purpose to be incorporated in the bill admitting California and establishing territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico;

6. More effectual enactments of law to secure the prompt delivery of persons bound to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, who escape into another State; and,

7. Abstaining from abolishing slavery; but, under a heavy penalty, prohibiting the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

If such of these several measures as require legislation should be carried out by suitable acts of Congress, all controversies to which our late territorial acquisitions have given rise, and all existing questions connected with the institution of slavery, whether resulting from those acquisitions or from its existence in the States and the District of Columbia, will be amicably settled and adjusted, in a manner, it is confidently believed, to give general satisfaction to an overwhelming majority of the people of the United States. Congress will have fulfilled its whole duty in regard to the vast country which, having been ceded by Mexico to the United States, has fallen under their dominion. It will have extended to it protection, provided for its several parts the inestimable blessing of free and regular government adapted to their various wants, and placed the whole under the banner and the flag of the United States. Meeting courageously its clear and entire duty, Congress will escape the unmerited reproach of having, from considerations of doubtful policy, abandoned to an undeserved fate territories of boundless extent, with a sparse, incongruous, and alien, if not unfriendly, population, speaking different languages, and accustomed to different laws, whilst that population is making irresistible appeals to the new sovereignty to which they have been transferred for protection, for government, for law, and for order...

145. THE NASHVILLE CONVENTION

The Nashville Convention met originally June 3, 1850; nine slave states were represented by leaders of the irreconcilable group who believed the South could not compromise. The convention held a second session in November without important action. The resolutions are the platform of the Southern group opposed to the Compromise of 1850. From the Alton (Ill.) Telegraph and Democratic Review, Friday, June 21, 1850.

RESOLUTIONS Adopted by the Nashville Convention.

Resolved, That the Territories of the United States belong to the people of the several States of the Union, as common property; that the citizens of the several States have equal rights to emigrate with their property to these Territories, and are equally entitled to the protection of the Federal Government in the enjoyment of that property, so long as the Territories remain under the charge of that Government. Resolved, That Congress has no power to exclude from the Terri

tories of the United States property lawfully belonging to the States of the Union; and any act which may be passed by Congress to effect this result, is a plain violation of the Constitution of the United States.

Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to provide governments for the Territories, since the spirit of American institutions forbids the maintenance of military governments in time of peace; and as all laws heretofore existing in Territories once belonging to foreign powers, which interefere with the full enjoyment of religion, the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, and all other rights of persons and property, is secured or recommended in the Constitution of the United States, are necessarily void as soon as such Territories become American Territories, it is the duty of the Federal Government to make early provisions for the enactment of those laws which may be expedient and necessary to secure to the inhabitants of, and emigrants to, such Territories, the full benefit of the constitutional rights we assert.

Resolved, That to protect property existing in the several States of the Union, the people of these States invested the Federal Government with the power of war, negotiation, and of sustaining armies and navies, and prohibited to State authorities the exercise of the same powers; .. whatever the States deal with as property, as such the Federal Government is bound to recognize and defend; therefore, it is the sense of this Convention that all the acts of the Federal Government which tend to denationalize property of any description, recognized in the Constitution and laws of the States, or that discriminate in the degree and efficiency of the protection to be afforded to it, or weaken, or destroy the title of any citizen upon American territories, are plain and palpable violations of the fundamental law under which it exists; that the slaveholding States cannot, and will not, submit to the enactment by Congress of any law imposing onerous conditions or restrictions upon rights of masters to remove with their property to the Territories of the United States, or to any law making discriminations in favor of the protection of other property against them.

Resolved, That the performance of their duty is required by the fundamental law of the Union- the equality of the several States comprising the Union cannot be disturbed, without disturbing the frame of the American institutions. This principle is violated in the denial to citizens of slaveholding States to the power to enter into the Territories with their property acquired in the States; the warfare against this right is a war upon the Constitution; the defenders of this right are defenders of the Constitution, and those who deny

or impair its existence, are unfaithful to the Constitution, and if disunion follows, the destroyers of these rights are the disunionists.

Resolved, That the recognition of this principle would relieve the questions between Texas and the United States of their sectional character, and would leave them for adjustment, without disturbance from sectional prejudices and passions, upon considerations of magnanimity and justice.

Resolved, That a recognition of this principle would infuse a spirit of conciliation in the discussion and adjustment of all the subjects of sectional difficulties, which would afford a guarantee of an early and satisfactory termination.

Resolved, That in the event a dominant majority shall refuse to recognize the great constitutional rights which we assert, and shall continue to deny the obligations of the Federal Government to maintain them, it is the sense of this Convention that the Territories should be treated as property, and divided between the States of the Union, so that the rights of both sections be adequately secured in their respective shares; that we are aware that this course is open to grave objections, but we are ready to acquiesce in the adoption of the line of 36 deg. 30 min., north latitude, extending to the Pacific ocean, as an extreme concession, upon consideration of what is due to the stability of our institutions.

Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Convention that this controversy should be ended, either by the recognition of the constitutional rights of the Southern people, or by an equitable partition of the territory. That the spectacle of a confederacy of States involved in quarrels over the fruits of a war in which the American arms were covered with glory, is humiliating. That the incorporation of the "Wilmot Proviso" in the offer of settlement a proposition which fourteen States regard as disparaging and dishonorable—is degrading to the country. A termination of this controversy by the disruption of the confederacy, or by the abandonment of the Territories, to prevent such a result, would be a climax to the shame which attaches to the controversy, which it is the paramount duty of Congress to avoid.

Resolved, That this Convention will not conclude that Congress will adjourn without making an adjustment of this controversy; and in the condition in which the Convention finds the questions before Congress, it does not feel at liberty to discuss the methods suitable for resistance to measures not yet adopted, which might involve dishonor to the Southern States.

146. THE TEXAS AND NEW MEXICO ACT

A part of the Compromise of 1850.

Statutes at Large of the United States, Vol. 9, pp. 446-452.

BE it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following propositions shall be, and the same hereby are, offered to the State of Texas, which, when agreed to by the said State, in an act passed by the general assembly, shall be binding and obligatory upon the United States, and upon the said State of Texas: Provided, The said agreement by the said general assembly shall be given on or before the first day of December, eighteen hundred and fifty:

FIRST. The State of Texas will agree that her boundary on the north shall commence at the point at which the meridian of one hundred degrees west from Greenwich is intersected by the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and shall run from said point due west to the meridian of one hundred and three degrees west from Greenwich; thence her boundary shall run due south to the thirtysecond degree of north latitude; thence on the said parallel of thirty-two degrees of north latitude to the Rio Bravo del Norte, and thence with the channel of said river to the Gulf of Mexico.

SECOND. The State of Texas cedes to the United States all her claim to territory exterior to the limits and boundaries which she agrees to establish by the first article of this agreement.

THIRD. The State of Texas relinquishes all claim upon the United States for liability of the debts of Texas, and for compensation or indemnity for the surrender to the United States of her ships, forts, arsenals, custom-houses, custom-house revenue, arms and munitions of war, and public buildings with their sites, which became the property of the United States at the time of the annexation.

FOURTH. The United States, in consideration of said establishment of boundaries, cession of claim to territory, and relinquishment of claims, will pay to the State of Texas the sum of ten millions of dollars in a stock bearing five per cent. interest, and redeemable at the end of fourteen years, the interest payable half-yearly at the treasury of the United States.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That all that portion of the Territory of the United States bounded as follows: Beginning at a point in the Colorado River where the boundary line with the republic