From the hour when the treaty was received in Washington, however, the discussion as to the conduct of the war naturally languished; the ablest speeches of the day before became obsolete in the presence of accomplished facts; and the interest of Congress promptly turned to the more important subject of the disposition to be made of the vast domain which our arms had conquered and the treaty confirmed to us. No one in America then realized the magnitude of this acquisition; its stupendous physical features were as little appreciated as the vast moral and political results which were to flow from its absorption into our commonwealth. It was only known, in general terms, that our new possessions covered ten degrees of latitude and fifteen of longitude; that we had acquired, in short, six hundred and thirty thousand square miles of desert, mountain, and wilderness. There was no dream, then, of that portentous discovery which, even while the Senate was wrangling over the treaty, had converted Captain Sutter's mill at Coloma into a mining camp, for his ruin and the sudden up- building of many colossal fortunes. The name of California, which conveys to-day such opulent suggestions, then meant nothing but barrenness, and Nevada was a name as yet unknown; some future Congressman, innocent of taste and of Spanish, was to hit upon the absurdity of calling that land of silver and cactus, of the orange and the sage-hen, the land of snow. But imperfect as was the appreciation, at that day, of the possibilities which lay hidden in those sunset regions, there was still enough of instinctive greed in the minds of politicians to make the new realm a subject of lively interest and intrigue. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.] At the first showing of hands, the South was successful. In the Twenty-ninth Congress this contest had begun over the spoils of a victory not yet achieved. President Polk, foreseeing the probability of an acquisition of territory by treaty, had asked Congress to make an appropriation for that purpose. A bill was at once reported in that sense, appropriating $30,000 for the expenses of the negotiation and $2,000,000 to be used in the President's discretion. But before it passed, a number of Northern Democrats [Footnote: Some of the more conspicuous York; Wilmot, of Pennsylvania; among them were Hamlin, of Brinckerhoff, of Ohio, and McClel-Maine; Preston King, of New land, of Michigan.] had become alarmed as to the disposition that might be made of the territory thus acquired, which was now free soil by Mexican law. After a hasty consultation they agreed upon a proviso to the bill, which was presented by David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania. He was a man of respectable abilities, who then, and long afterwards, held a somewhat prominent position among the public men of his State; but his chief claim to a place in history rests upon these few lines which he