In 1846 and 1847 the slavery agitation raged fiercely in the nation and in Congress upon the question of applying a slavery prohibition in the form known as the Wilmot proviso to all the territory to be acquired from Mexico under the treaty, the negotiations for which were then pending. The Wilmot proviso was voted down, and the treaty was consummated Feb. 2, 1848, and Mexican territory, embracing California, Utah and New Mexico was acquired without prohibition of slavery, but the territory was free under the Mexican law, and all Mexican inhabitants who should elect to become citizens of the United States, were entitled to become so at the proper time to be judged of by Congress, and to be incorporated into the Federal Union according to the principles of the Constitution. At the commencement of the session of the XXXIst Congress in 1849, the slavery agitation had reached a degree of intensity before unknown. The territory acquired from Mexico, in consequence of this agitation had been left without civil government. California, full of northern emigrants in search of gold, had in the absence of any action of Congress, exercised her inherent right of self-government and formed a State Constitution prohibiting slavery, and was asking admission to the Union. Utah and New Mexico were ripe for territorial governments. The Texan boundary was unsettled. The South was opposing the admission of California as a Free State and insisting on its division, and demanding the distinct legalization of slavery in the territories south of the Missouri line of 36 deg. 30 min., and the extension of that line to the Pacific, and demanding also a more stringent fugitive slave law, and the North was demanding the admission of California and the establishment of the Wilmot proviso over all the territory to be organized, and demanding also the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The contest for speaker in the House continued from the 3d to the 22d December, 1849, resulting in the election of Howell Cobb over R. C. Winthrop. So ominous of trouble were the signs of the political sky, that President Taylor, in his annual message, took occasion to caution the Congress against the introduction of topics of a sectional character, and to repeat the solemn warning of Washington against furnishing any ground for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations. The history of the legislation of 1850 is too well known to need detail here. It resulted in another compromise, by which six important measures all involving the slavery question were adopted. These were 1. The admission of California as a free State. 2. The settlement of the Texas boundary, limiting its northern line to 36 deg. 30 min. 3. The formation of territorial government for Utah, and 4. The like for New Mexico. 5. The abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and 6. The Fugitive slave law.