The result of the agitation was that for some time no government could be formed for any part of the new territory. The exasperation of feeling between the two sections of the Union, and the danger to that Union itself, became so great that in 1850 the more moderate of the leading statesmen of the country, with Clay and Webster at their head, devoted themselves to the adjustment of the threatening questions and their efforts resulted in the adoption of certain measures commonly called the "Compromise Measures of 1850." These measures consisted of a bill for the admission of California into the Union, under a constitution excluding slavery, which had been irregularly adopted a bill to establish a territorial government for Utah and a bill to establish the northern and western boundaries of Texas with her assent, and to establish a territorial government for New Mexico, it being provided in the territorial bills that states created out of the two territories organized when the population should be sufficient, should be admitted into the Union with or without slavery, as the people themselves might decide. Along with these bills another was passed for enforcing the provision of the Constitution in regard to the return of fugitive slaves, as the former one could not be executed because most of the free states had prohibited their officers from acting under it. These measures as a whole were not acceptable to the extreme men of either section, but the more moderate portion of the two leading political parties hoped that they would put an end to the agitation and restore peace and concord to the country. Such appeared to be their first effect, and both of the great political parties, into which the country had been divided, without reference to sections for many years--Democrat and Whig--in their platforms of principles adopted in the canvass for President in 1852, gave their adhesion to the "Compromise Measures of 1850" as a final settlement of the questions embraced by them. In 1848, a portion of the "free-soilers" had run Martin Van Buren, a former President and a defeated candidate for the Democratic nomination, as their candidate for the Presidency, but the party did not have cohesiveness enough to give him its whole vote, and in 1852 the "free-soil" party had no candidate, the members of it voting with the parties to which they had previously been attached according to their predilections, though there was still much muttering by the leaders. The abolition party proper, however, had a candidate for form's sake.