It may sound strange, but it is a fact, that the governing of the new territory caused so much trouble that more than once it was seriously proposed in Congress that Mexico should be asked to take it back again. General Sherman was credited with the declaration that if the identity of the man who caused the annexation of Texas could be established, he ought to be court-martialed and shot. However, all this changed when the vast capabilities and immeasurable worth of the new countries were understood. The section speedily developed a wealth, enterprise, and industry of which no one had before dreamed. THE SLAVERY QUESTION. The real peril involved in the acquisition of so much territory lay in the certainty that it would revive the slavery quarrel that had been put to sleep by the Missouri Compromise, nearly thirty years before. The North demanded that slavery should be excluded from the new territory, because it was so excluded by Mexican law, and to legalize it would keep out emigrants from the free States. The South demanded the authorization of slavery, since Southern emigrants would not go thither without their slaves. Still others proposed to divide the new territory by the Missouri Compromise line. This would have cut California in two near the middle, and made one part of the province slave and the other free. Altogether, it will be seen that trouble was at hand. Before the outbreak of the Mexican War, Congressman David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, introduced the Proviso known by his name. It was a proposal to purchase the territory from Mexico, provided slavery was excluded. The introduction of the bill produced much discussion, and it was defeated by the opposition of the South. THE OREGON BOUNDARY DISPUTE. Great Britain and the United States had jointly occupied Oregon for twenty years, under the agreement that the occupancy could be ended by either country under a year's notice to the other. Many angry debates took place in Congress over the question whether such notice should be given. The United States claimed a strip of territory reaching to Alaska, latitude 54 deg. 40', while Great Britain claimed the territory south of the line to the Columbia River. Congress as usual had plenty of wordy patriots who raised the cry of "Fifty-four forty or fight," and it was repeated throughout the country. Cooler and wiser counsels prevailed, each party yielded a part of its claims, and made a middle line the boundary. A minor dispute over the course of the boundary line after it reached the Pacific islets was amicably adjusted by another treaty in 1871. STATES ADMITTED. It has been stated that the bill for the admission of Iowa did not become operative until 1846. It was the fourth State formed from the Louisiana purchase, and was first settled by the French at Dubuque; but the post died, and no further settlements were made until the close of the Black Hawk War of 1832, after which the population increased with great rapidity.