Northern abolitionists and even moderate antislavery elements would rejoice, believing, probably correctly so, that slavery’s future was doomed, that the newly acquired territories of New Mexico and Utah would follow suit, that Southern power would become irreparably weakened, that slave owners would become further isolated and vilified, and that the peculiar institution, deprived of oxygen and unable to spread further, would wither and die. Southerners believed almost all of the same things, which meant they viewed California’s admittance with a sense of foreboding and outrage.
