Congressional Action Quotes
His admonition did little good. That Congress passed fewer bills than any other in history.
Note the perception of Davis, typical of Southerners at the time, that Southerners were being excluded from California. The logic was this: California had many opportunities in land, gold, and other natural resources. Since California had a Constitutional provision against slavery, no Southerner could enter the new state with his slaves without fear of their being set free. If Southerners bought land or wanted to hunt for gold, they could not bring their slaves to do the heavy work. Therefore, they were excluded from the economic growth of the state. The idea of the whites doing the heavy work themselves of traveling without their family slaves was so foreign to the aristocratic planter class, that it was never considered by them as a possibility. Therefore, they were excluded. However, many of the lower class Southerners of all races saw great opportunities in California where they could compete on an equal footing even though they had no slaves or land.
In 1848 a pro-slavery mob in Washington DC Gamaliel Bailey's anti-slavery publication, The National Era, which soon thereafter was the publisher of the serialized Uncle Tom's Cabin. Hale introduced a bill in the Senate outlawing rioting in the District of Columbia. The Southern Senators objected violently and this served as a catalyst for the for the most extensive public debate that had ever been held on the slavery issue. Hale probably intended this. He was the first public anti-slavery Senator.
