crossing the plains they must have looked like a moving army. "In the day their trains filled up the road for miles, and at night their campfires glittered in every direction about the places blessed by grass and water." The faint-hearted turned back, the weak died of hardship and disease and were buried beside the trail, but the greater number successfully braved the perils of the mountains and the desert and reached the land of their desire.

During 1849 more than eighty thousand persons arrived in California. The Sacramento valley was filled with mining

camps, and San Francisco was rapidly becoming a great city. California Many of the "Forty-niners" were rough and lawless men, and seeks admission for a time there was little protection for life and property in into the the new gold field. But the better class of citizens organized Union into "vigilance committees," punished the criminals, and soon established law and order in the new community. Before 1849 closed they made a state constitution forbidding slavery and asked Congress to admit California into the Union.

REFERENCES.

Sparks, The Expansion of the American People; Garrison, Westward Extension; Texas; Royce, California; Dodd, Expansion and Conflict; Schafer, The Pacific Northwest; Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West; Paxson, The Last American Frontier; Histories of the United States by McMaster, Schouler, Rhodes, and Wilson.

TOPICAL READINGS.

1. The Story of the Alamo. American History, 176-180.

Lodge and Roosevelt, Hero Tales from

2. The Acquisition of Texas. Sparks, The Expansion of the American People, 310-323.

3. Across the Continent on the Oregon Trail. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VII, 287-288.

4. Hunting Buffalo on the Plains.. Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 327-338.

5. A Journey in the Rocky Mountains. Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 264-279.

6. Fremont's First Trip to the Rocky Mountains. Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains and the West, 40-57.

McMurry,

7. Fremont's Trip to Salt Lake and California. McMurry, Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains and the West, 60-93.

8. Polk's Reasons for War with Mexico. Hart, American History

Told by Contemporaries, IV, 20-23.

9. A Speech in the Senate denouncing the Mexican War. American History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 24-26.

Hart,

10. Taylor's Campaign. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VII, 440-461.

11. The Conquest of California. Sparks, The Expansion of the American People, 324-335.

12. Scott's Campaign. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VII, 505-523.

13. The Rush to California. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VII, 585-614, or Sparks. The Expansion of the American People, 336-350.

14. The Adventures of a "Forty-niner." Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 43-48, or McMurry, Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains and the West, 99-113.

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE.

Poems: Joaquin Miller, The Defense of the Alamo; Whittier, Texas; The Angels of Buena Vista; The Crisis; Lowell, The Biglow Papers; Longfellow, Victor Galbraith; O'Hara, The Bivouac of the Dead; Lytle, The Volunteers.

Stories: Irving, Astoria; Parkman, The Oregon Trail; Atherton, The Valiant Runaway; The Splendid Idle Forties; Watts, Nathan Burke; Wilson, Lions of the Lord; Barr, Remember the Alamo! Munroe, With Crockett and Bowie; Golden Days of Forty-nine; Canfield, Diary of a Forty-niner; Bret Harte, Luck of Roaring Camp; Tales of the Argonauts; Gabriel Conroy; Bayard Taylor, Eldorado.

Biographies: Clay, Henry Clay; Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton; Bruce, Life of General Houston; Howard, General Taylor; Wright, General Scott.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

1. For what did the Whig party stand? What is meant by calling Tyler a "State-rights Democrat"?

2. How did the capital of Texas get its name? How large is Texas? What are the chief natural resources of Texas? Of the Oregon country? Of California? Were the Texans right in rebelling against Mexico?

3. Trace on the map the route of the overland trail to Oregon.

4. Did the antislavery Whigs who refused to vote for Clay in 1844 act wisely?

5. Did the United States or England have the better claim to the Oregon country? Why?

6. What is meant by the remark, “California was sure to repeat the history of Texas"?

7. Have you ever read any of the Biglow Papers? In what dialect are they written?

8. Did Texas have a just claim to the disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers? Which side began the Mexican War?

9. Trace on a map the boundaries of the Mexican cession of 1848. Of the Gadsden Purchase. Would it have been better for the Mexicans if we had annexed all of their country in 1848? Why?

10. If you had been one of the "Forty-niners" which of the routes to California would you have chosen? Why?

11. Name and locate all the additions to our territory from 1783 to 1853.

12. Question for debate: Resolved, That the conduct of our country in engaging in war with Mexico was justified by the facts in the case.

Shall the

West be free

or slave territory?

Four

answers to

this question

Fugitive slaves

CHAPTER XIX

DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE

The Slavery Controversy.-Ever since they freed their slaves just after the Revolution, the people of the northern states had been anxious to prevent the extension of slavery into the new lands in the West. In this purpose they had been partly successful. The Ordinance of 1787 excluded slavery from all the land north of the Ohio River. By the Missouri Compromise of 1820 it was forbidden in that part of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30' except the state of Missouri. In 1848 it was prohibited in the new territory of Oregon. At this time the whole country was much agitated over the question whether slavery should be permitted or forbidden in the vast region just won from Mexico.

Four answers to this question were suggested and each had its ardent adherents. Many northern men believed that Congress ought to keep slavery out of all the territories of the United States. Such men had been earnest supporters of the Wilmot Proviso. Most southern men agreed with Calhoun, who held that a southern man had just as good a right to take his slaves into the territories of the United States as a northern man had to take his horses. Some people were in favor of making the line of 36° 30' the boundary between slave and free territory all the way to the Pacific. This would have divided California into two states, one slave and one free. Others wanted to leave the question to the decision of the actual settlers in each territory concerned, and let them make their state slave or free as they pleased. This idea was known as "popular sovereignty" and is sometimes called "squatter sovereignty."

The territorial question was not the only bone of contention between the North and the South at this time. Many northern men thought it a shame that slaves were bought and sold in the capital of the nation, and some of them wanted to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The South complained that it was very difficult to recover runaway

slaves who reached the northern states.

This was true,

because the abolitionists had a regular system of helping fugitive slaves to escape. The agents of the "Underground Railroad," as this system was called, hid the fugitives in their houses The "Underor in secret places during the day, and at night carried them ground Railroad" in their wagons to another "station" on the road toward Canada. When the runaways reached Canada they were safe, because slavery was forbidden by law in all parts of the British Empire.

The presidential election of 1848 was held while the people were deeply concerned about the question of slavery in New Mexico and California. Neither of the two great parties dared The election of 1848 to take sides upon this question. Each of them had many members in the North and in the South, and it was impossible to get the men from both sections to agree about slavery. General Zachary Taylor, the popular hero of the Mexican War, was nominated for the presidency by the Whigs. Taylor was a Louisiana sugar planter who owned many slaves, but he had never urged the extension of slavery in the territories. Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Democratic candidate, favored letting the people in each territory settle the slavery question for themselves. He hoped that "popular sovereignty" would please the Democrats in both sections of the country. Many northern antislavery men refused to vote for either Taylor or Cass. These men now formed the Free-soil party, declared that they favored "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men," and made Martin Van Buren their candidate for the presidency. The Whigs won for the second and last time in their history, and on March 4, 1849, Zachary Taylor became president of the United States.

The Union in Danger.-When Congress met in December, 1849, the continued agitation of the question of the extension of slavery into New Mexico and California had stirred up so The slavery much bitter feeling between the North and the South that question it could no longer be disguised or denied that the Union was in the Union danger. The demands of both sections were being stated with a temper which could not be mistaken.

The legislature of Virginia declared that the exclusion of

threatens

slavery from the new territory would compel the people of that The position state to choose between "abject submission to aggression and of the South.