Mr. Benton was a prominent exception. To him the friends of freedom owed much for support, by speech and vote. While he opposed Clay's plan, he voted with the free State party on all questions of slavery, save on the Wilmot Proviso, which he deemed unnecessary to the exclusion of slavery from territory where the laws of Mexico, still in force, excluded it. The California bill passed, August 13th, 34 to 18. Clay is not recorded as voting. He may have been absent or paired. Webster had become Secretary of State, and Winthrop succeeded him in the Senate. To emphasize the opposition, ten Senators immediately had read at the Secretary's desk a protest, with a view to its being spread on the Journal. This was refused, after a most spirited debate, as being against precedent.(77) The protest was a long complaint against making the Territory of California a State without its being first organized, territorially, and an opportunity given to the South to make it a slave State, and for admitting it as a free State, thus destroying the equilibrium of the States; the protestors declaring that if such course were persisted in, it would lead to a dissolution of the Union. A bill establishing New Mexico with its present boundaries, also Utah, was passed in August, leaving both to become States with or without slavery. A fugitive- slave act was likewise passed at the same time in the Senate. The whole of the bills covered by the compromise having in some form passed the Senate, went to the House, where, after some animated discussion, they all passed, in September following, and were approved by President Fillmore.