It is not necessary in this historical sketch to dwell on the advantages or disadvantages of this plan. All that needs to be said about it here is, that it commended itself to Mr. Buchanan as a plan more acceptable to the people of both sections of the Union than any other that could be devised. It was defeated by the proposal of the so-called “Wilmot Proviso,” which aimed to exclude slavery from all possible introduction into any part of this newly acquired territory, without regard to the principle of division which was the characteristic of the Missouri Compromise, and without recognizing any claim of the slaveholding States to an equal enjoyment of the common territory of the Union, in the manner in which they asserted that claim. The Southern claim was that of a right to emigrate into any Territory of the United States, with slaves, as part of the property of the emigrant, just as a Northern man could emigrate into such a Territory with whatever personal property he chose to take with him. When, therefore, the admission of California as a State, and the organization of Territorial governments for the other provinces of Mexico that had been ceded to the United States came before Congress, they came accompanied by a great sectional excitement, that was partly due to the anti-slavery agitation that had been going on in the North, and partly to the struggle for an increase of the political power of the free States on the one side, and of the slave States on the other, according as the future character of these new acquisitions might be determined. Having now reached the year 1850, the reader stands at a period at which the character of freedom had been long impressed upon the whole of the Northwestern Territories; at which the character of the whole region of the Louisiana purchase had been for thirty years determined by the principle of the Missouri Compromise; and at which, what remained to be done was to adjust, by a final settlement, the future character of the territory acquired from Mexico, and to act upon any other questions concerning slavery that demanded and admitted legislation by Congress. There were two such questions that did not relate to the newly acquired territory. One of these concerned the toleration of the domestic slave trade in the District of Columbia, the abolition of which was loudly demanded by the North. The other related to a Southern demand of a more efficient law for the extradition of fugitives from service.