The following December Congress met in regular session—the 31st since the organization of the federal government. The Senate consisted of sixty members, among whom were Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. Clay, who had returned to public life. The House had 230 members; and although the Whigs had a small majority, the House was so divided on the slavery question in its various phases, that the election for Speaker resulted in the choice of the Democratic candidate, Mr. Cobb, of Georgia, by a majority of three votes. The annual message of the President plainly showed that he comprehended the dangers to the Union from a continuance of sectional feeling on the slavery question, and he averred his determination to stand by the Union to the full extent of his obligations and powers. At the previous session Congress had spent six months in endeavoring to frame a satisfactory bill providing territorial governments for California and New Mexico, and had adjourned finally without accomplishing it, in consequence of inability to agree upon whether the Missouri compromise line should be carried to the ocean, or the territories be permitted to remain as they were—slavery prohibited under the laws of Mexico. Mr. Calhoun brought forward, in the debate, a new doctrine—extending the Constitution to the territory, and arguing that as that instrument recognized the existence of slavery, the settlers in such territory should be permitted to hold their slave property taken there, and be protected. Mr. Webster’s answer to this was that the Constitution was made for States, not territories; that it cannot operate anywhere, not even in the States for which it was made, without acts of Congress to enforce it. The proposed extension of the constitution to territories, with a view to its transportation of slavery along with it, was futile and nugatory without the act of Congress to vitalize slavery under it. The early part of the year had witnessed ominous movements—nightly meetings of large numbers of members from the slave States, led by Mr. Calhoun, to consider the state of things between the North and the South. They appointed committees who prepared an address to the people. It was in this condition of things, that President Taylor expressed his opinion, in his message, of the remedies required. California, New Mexico and Utah, had been left without governments. For California, he recommended that having a sufficient population and having framed a constitution, she be admitted as a State into the Union; and for New Mexico and Utah, without mixing the slavery question with their territorial governments, they be left to ripen into States, and settle the slavery question for themselves in their State constitutions. [Illustration: H. Clay]