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For six long months, Clay led the contentious debate. Mississippi Senator Henry Foote suggested combining the resolutions into a single bill, which Clay referred to as a “sort of omnibus” into which Foote introduced “all sorts of things and every kind of passenger.” The idea took hold, and Clay endorsed the Senate’s first “omnibus bill.” He proclaimed it to be “neither southern nor northern. It is equal; it is fair; it is a compromise.” On July 22, Clay delivered his last major speech in the Senate, calling for passage of the omnibus bill. If passed, the North would gain California as a free state and an end to the slave trade in Washington, DC, while the South would get a stronger fugitive slave law and the possibility of western slavery through popular sovereignty. This compromise, Clay insisted, represented the “reunion of [the] Union.”
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Makes slaves of us all?
I think I need to go to the Law Library and find the actual "official" Enabling Act, and ask for (pay for) copies.
Compromise of 1850
Transcribed
GOT IT
An Act for the admission of the State of California into the Union.
Whereas the people of California have presented a constitution and asked admission into the Union, which constitution was submitted to Congress by the President of the United States, by message dated February thirteenth, eighteen hundred and fifty, and which, on doe examination, is found to be republican in its form of government:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the State of California shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That, until the representatives in Congress shall be apportioned according to an actual enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States, the State of California shall be entitled to two representatives in Congress.
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the said State of California is admitted into the Union upon the express condition that the people of said State, through their legislature or otherwise, shall never inter- fere with the primary disposal of the public lands within its limits, and shall pass no law and do no act whereby the title of the United States to, and right to dispose of, the same shall be impaired or questioned ; and that they shall never lay any tax or assessment of any description whatsoever upon the public domain of the United States, and in no case shall non-resident proprietors, who are citizens of the United States, be taxed higher than residents; and that all the navigable waters within the said State shall be common highways, and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of said State as to the citizens of the United States, without any tax, impost, or duty therefor: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as recognizing or rejecting the propositions tendered by the people of California as articles of compact in the ordinance adopted by the convention which formed the constitution of that State.
APPROVED, September 9, 1850.
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the said State of California is admitted into the Union upon the express condition that the people of said State, through their legislature or otherwise, shall never inter- fere with the primary disposal of the public lands within its limits, and shall pass no law and do no act whereby the title of the United States to, and right to dispose of, the same shall be impaired or questioned ; and that they shall never lay any tax or assessment of any description whatsoever upon the public domain of the United States, and in no case shall non-resident proprietors, who are citizens of the United States, be taxed higher than residents; and that all the navigable waters within the said State shall be common highways, and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of said State as to the citizens of the United States, without any tax, impost, or duty therefor: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as recognizing or rejecting the propositions tendered by the people of California as articles of compact in the ordinance adopted by the convention which formed the constitution of that State.