The Campaign of '48 assumes another important aspect, in that Mr. Lincoln took an active part in it; it fixed his ideas on slavery, and impressed him with the utter hopelessness of reconciling the North and South on this question. Mr. Lincoln had made his debut in the House in December, 1847, with the famous "Spot Resolutions." In the Spring of '48 he urged his Illinois friends to give up Clay and support Gen. Taylor. He attended the Whig Convention at Philadelphia and was well satisfied with the nominations and the prospects of victory. Late in July he made a strong speech for Taylor on the floor of the House, attracting the attention of the campaign managers to such an extent that he was sent to New England where he delivered a number of speeches, pleading with the New Englanders not to join the Free-Soil movement, but to vote with the Whig Party. Here he saw the strength of the anti-slavery movement, and what he heard made him think deeper on the great question of the hour. After listening to one of Governor Seward's speeches at Boston, in September, he said, "Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your speech; I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give more attention to it than we have been doing." Later in the campaign Mr. Lincoln stumped Illinois for Taylor. When the Thirty-first Congress convened for its first session, on December 3, 1849, all was confusion and uncertainty in regard to the situation. A great many felt that the crisis had been reached at last, and that nothing but a civil war could result. The South feared that its long cherished plan of more slave territory was to be frustrated, and the anxiety in the North that the territory acquired from Mexico might be made slave was equally great. An event now occurred that brought matters directly to an acute crisis and necessitated a settlement or a war. Gold had been discovered in California early in 1848, and instantly there was a tremendous influx of population, with the result that late in 1849 California was ready for admission into the Union, not as a slave State, as the South fondly hoped, but as free soil. With the convening of Congress came the President's message, and it was a severe blow to the South, for it advocated the admission of California as a free State. The South now indeed saw its plan rapidly weakening. Violent opposition was at once made to the admission of California as disturbing the equal balance between the two sections, and in addition the South complained bitterly of the difficulty of capturing slaves who escaped into the free States. She also complained of the constant agitation of the slave question, and now demanded that the territories should be open to slavery, and asserted that any attempt to enforce the Wilmot Proviso or to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia would lead to an immediate dissolution of the Union.