The mutual congratulations indulged in by the Southern managers over the accomplishment of the pro-slavery program for territorial expansion, were interrupted by intelligence of the most startling character. Before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been signed, gold was discovered in the Sierras, and the occupation of California by emigrants, principally from the Northern States, was an immediate result. Thus, the conquest of Mexico--the prize trophy in the triumphal procession of pro-slavery events--carried with it, by the irony of fate, the Nemesis of her despoiled people. Within two years a Free State had been carved out of the Territory which the South had won for slavery. The contests which were had over the admission of Missouri into the Union, and the annexation of Texas, were trivial in comparison with the storm that burst upon the Thirty-first Congress over the admission of California. The already strained relations between the North and the South reached the limits of tension; and but for the tabling of the "Wilmot Proviso," and the adoption of the "Compromise" measures, the cords that bound the Union would have snapped then and there. "The first weeks of the session were more than enough to show in its full breadth and depth, even to the duller eyes, the abyss that yawned between the North and the South."[65] "All the Union men, North and South, Whigs and Democrats, for the period of six months were assembled in caucuses every day, with Clay in the chair, Cass upon his right hand, Webster upon his left hand, and the Whigs and Democrats on either side."[66] It was during this debate that Mr. Seward announced the doctrine of the "_higher law_": The Constitution regulates our stewardship; the Constitution devotes the domain (the territories not formed into states) to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a _higher law than the Constitution_, which regulates our authority over the domain and devotes it to the same noble purposes. Webster thus began his great speech: I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American.... The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths.... I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my Cause.[67] Said Toombs of Georgia: