In the meantime the slavery question had been receiving daily attention. The strife over the Speakership had necessarily involved it, and constantly provoked its animated discussion. The great issue was the Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories, then popularly known as the "Wilmot proviso"; and the first vote on it was taken December 31st, upon the motion to lay on the table Mr. Root's resolution which embodied it. The yeas were 83, nays 101; being a majority of only 18 in its favor. The Southern men seemed to gather hope and courage from this vote. On January 4th, the President sent in his special message relative to California and New Mexico, announcing his famous "Non-action" policy, which was simply another name for the "Non-intervention" dogma of Gen. Cass. A year before he had declared that the new Territories must not be "surrendered to the pistol and the bowie-knife"; but a new light now dawned upon him, and he advised Congress to leave the Territories to themselves till their people should be prepared to ask admission into the Union as States. He talked glibly about "geographical parties" and the "operation of natural causes" as any trained Whig politician, and seemed to have totally forgotten his repeated pledges not to interfere with the action of Congress respecting "domestic questions." While the hand of the Executive was thus at work, extreme men in both Houses led the way in violent and inflammatory speeches. "When we ask for justice, and to be let alone," said Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, "we are met by the senseless and insane cry of Union, Union! Sir, I am disgusted with it. When it comes from Northern gentlemen who are attacking us, it falls on my ear as it would do if a band of robbers had surrounded a dwelling, and when the inmates attempted to resist, the assailants should raise the cry of peace, union, harmony!" He gave out the threat, that unless the slave-holders were allowed to extend their system over the virgin soil of our Territories, they would block the wheels of Government, and involve the nation in the horrors of civil war. He charged that the free States "keep up and foster in the bosoms Abolition Societies, whose main purpose is to scatter fire-brands throughout the South, to incite servile insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to invade the persons of our white women." Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said he regarded slavery "as a great moral, social and _religious_ blessing,--a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master." He graciously admitted that Northern people thought slavery an evil; but he added, "Very well, think so; _but keep your thoughts to yourselves_." Jefferson Davis, then as ever afterward, the apostle of disunion, declared that "slavery existed in the tents of the patriarchs, and in the households of His own chosen people"; that "it was established by the decree of Almighty God," and