The question of the power of Congress to legislate on the subject of slavery in the Territories, was again raised, at this session, on the bill for the establishment of the Oregon territorial government. An amendment was offered to insert a provision for the extension of the Missouri compromise line to the Pacific Ocean; which line thus extended was intended by the amendment to be permanent, and to apply to all future territories established in the West. This amendment was lost, but the bill was finally passed with an amendment incorporating into it the anti-slavery clause of the ordinance of 1787. Mr. Calhoun, in the Senate, declared that the exclusion of slavery from any territory was a subversion of the Union; openly proclaimed the strife between the North and South to be ended, and the separation of the States accomplished. His speech was an open invocation to disunion, and from that time forth, the efforts were regular to obtain a meeting of the members from the slave States, to unite in a call for a convention of the slave States to redress themselves. He said: “The great strife between the North and the South is ended. The North is determined to exclude the property of the slaveholder, and, of course, the slaveholder himself, from its territory. On this point there seems to be no division in the North. In the South, he regretted to say, there was some division of sentiment. The effect of this determination of the North was to convert all the Southern population into slaves; and he would never consent to entail that disgrace on his posterity. He denounced any Southern man who would not take the same course. Gentlemen were greatly mistaken if they supposed the Presidential question in the South would override this more important one. The separation of the North and the South is completed. The South has now a most solemn obligation to perform—to herself—to the constitution—to the Union. She is bound to come to a decision not to permit this to go on any further, but to show that, dearly as she prizes the Union, there are questions which she regards as of greater importance than the Union. This is not a question of territorial government, but a question involving the continuance of the Union.” The President, in approving the Oregon bill, took occasion to send in a special message, pointing out the danger to the Union from the progress of the slavery agitation, and urged an adherence to the principles of the ordinance of 1787—the terms of the Missouri compromise of 1820—as also that involved and declared in the Texas case in 1845, as the means of averting that danger.