people thereof, in conformity to the forms and in subjection to the provisions of the Constitution?

The opponents of the bill tell us that agitation is no part of their policy, that their great desire is peace and harmony; and they complain bitterly that I should have disturbed the repose of the country by the introduction of this measure. Let me ask these professed friends of peace and avowed enemies of agitation, how the issue could have been avoided? They tell me that I should have let the question alone—that is, that I should have left Nebraska unorganized, the people unprotected, and the Indian barrier in existence, until the swelling tide of emigration should burst through, and accomplish by violence what it is the part of wisdom and statesmanship to direct and regulate by law. How long could you have postponed action with safety? How long could you maintain that Indian barrier, and restrain the onward march of civilization, Christianity, and free government by a barbarian wall? Do you suppose that you could keep that vast country a howling wilderness in all time to come, roamed over by hostile savages, cutting off all safe communication between our Atlantic and Pacific possessions? I tell you that the time for action has come, and cannot be postponed. It is a case in which the "let-alone" policy would precipitate a crisis which must inevitably result in violence, anarchy, and strife.

You cannot fix bounds to the onward march of this great and growing country. You cannot fetter the limbs of the young giant. He will burst all your chains. He will expand, and grow, and increase, and extend civilization, Christianity, and liberal principles. Then, sir, if you cannot check the growth of the country in that direction, is it not the part of wisdom to look the danger in the face, and provide for an event which you cannot avoid? I tell you, sir, you must provide for continuous lines of settlement from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Ocean. And in making this provision you must decide upon what principles the territories shall be organized; in other words, whether the people shall be allowed to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, according to the provisions of this bill, or whether the opposite doctrine of congressional interference is to prevail. Postpone it, if you will; but whenever you do act, this question must be met and decided.

The Missouri Compromise was interference; the compromise of 1850 was non-interference, leaving the people to exercise their rights under the Constitution. The Committee on Territories were compelled to act on this subject. I, as their chairman, was bound to meet the question. I choose to take the responsibility, regardless of consequences personal to myself. I should have done the same thing last year, if there had been time; but we know, considering the late period at which the bill then reached us from the house, that there was not sufficient time to consider the question fully, and to prepare a report upon the subject. I was, therefore, persuaded by friends to allow the bill to be reported to the Senate, in order that such action might be taken as should be deemed wise and proper.

The bill was never taken up for action; the last night of the session having been exhausted in debate on the motion to take up the bill. This session the measure was introduced by my friend from Iowa (Mr. Dodge), and referred to the Territorial Committee during the first week of the session. We have abundance of time to consider the subject; it was a matter of pressing necessity, and there was no excuse for not meeting it directly and fairly. We were compelled to take our position upon the doctrine either of intervention or non-intervention. We chose the latter, for two reasons: first, because we believed that the principle was right; and, second, because it was the principle adopted in 1850, to which the two great political parties of the country were solemnly pledged.

There is another reason why I desire to see this principle recognized as a

rule of action in all time to come. It will have the effect to destroy all sectional parties and sectional agitations. If, in the language of the report of the committee, you withdraw the slavery question from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and commit it to the arbitrament of those who are immediately interested in and alone responsible for its consequences, there is nothing left out of which sectional parties can be organized. It never was done, and never can be done on the bank, tariff, distribution, or any other party issue which has existed, or may exist, after this slavery question is withdrawn from politics. On every other political question these have always supporters and opponents in every portion of the Union-in each state, county, village, and neighborhood-residing together in harmony and goodfellowship, and combating each other's opinions and correcting each other's errors in a spirit of kindness and friendship. These differences of opinion between neighbors and friends, and the discussions that grow out of them, and the sympathy which each feels with the advocates of his own opinions in every other portion of this wide-spread republic, adds an overwhelming and irresistible moral weight to the strength of the confederacy.

Affection for the Union can never be alienated or diminished by any other party issues than those which are joined upon sectional or geographical lines. When the people of the North shall all be rallied under one banner, and the whole South marshaled under another banner, and each section excited to frenzy and madness by hostility to the institutions of the other, then the patriot may well tremble for the perpetuity of the Union. Withdraw the slavery question from the political arena, and remove it to the states and territories, each to decide for itself, such a catastrophe can never happen. Then you will never be able to tell, by any senator's vote for or against any measure, from what state or section of the Union he comes.

Why, then, can we not withdraw this vexed question from politics? Why can we not adopt the principle of this bill as a rule of action in all new territorial organizations? Why can we not deprive these agitators of their vocation, and render it impossible for senators to come here upon bargains on the slavery question? I believe that the peace, the harmony, and perpetuity of the Union require us to go back to the doctrines of the Revolution, to the principles of the Constitution, to the principles of the compromise of 1850, and leave the people, under the Constitution, to do as they may see proper in respect to their own internal affairs.

Mr. President, I have not brought this question forward as a northern man or as a southern man. I am unwilling to recognize such divisions and distinctions. I have brought it forward as an American senator, representing a state which is true to this principle, and which has approved of my action in respect to the Nebraska Bill. have brought it forward not as an act of justice to the South more than to the North. I have presented it especially as an act of justice to the people of those territories, and of the states to be formed therefrom, now and in all time to come.

I have nothing to say about northern rights or southern rights. I know of no such divisions or distinctions under the Constitution. The bill does equal and exact justice to the whole Union, and every part of it; it violates the rights of no state or territory, but places each on a perfect equality, and leaves the people thereof to the free enjoyment of all their rights under the Constitution.

Now, sir, I wish to say to our southern friends, that if they desire to see this great principle carried out, now is their time to rally around it, to cherish it, preserve it, make it the rule of action in all future time. If they fail to do it now, and thereby allow the doctrine of interference to prevail, upon their heads the consequence of that interference must rest. To our northern friends, on the other hand, I desire to say, that from this day henceforward, they

must rebuke the slander which has been uttered against the South, that they desire to legislate slavery into the territories. The South has vindicated her sincerity, her honor, on that point, by bringing forward a provision, negativing, in express terms, any such effect as a result of this bill. I am rejoiced to know that, while the proposition to abrogate the eighth section of the Missouri act comes from a free state, the proposition to negative the conclusion that slavery is thereby introduced comes from a slaveholding state. Thus, both sides furnish conclusive evidence that they go for the principle, and the principle only, and desire to take no advantage of any possible misconstruction.

Mr. President, I feel that I owe an apology to the Senate for having occupied their attention so long, and a still greater apology for having discussed the question in such an incoherent and desultory manner. But I could not forbear to claim the right of closing this debate. I thought gentlemen would recognize its propriety when they saw the manner in which I was assailed and misrepresented in the course of this discussion, and especially by assaults still more disreputable to some portions of the country. These assaults have had no other effect upon me than to give me courage and energy for a still more resolute discharge of duty. I say frankly that, in my opinion, this measure will be as popular at the North as at the South, when its provisions and principles shall have been fully developed and become well understood. The people at the North are attached to the principles of self-government; and you cannot convince them that that is self-government which deprives a people of the right of legislating for themselves, and compels them to receive laws which are forced upon them by a Legislature in which they are not represented. We are willing to stand upon this great principle of self-government everywhere; and it is to us a proud reflection that, in this whole discussion, no friend of the bill has urged an argument in its favor which could not be used with the same propriety in a free state as in a slave state, and vice versa. But no enemy of the bill has used an argument which would bear repetition one mile across Mason and Dixon's line. Our opponents have dealt entirely in sectional appeals. The friends of the bill have discussed a great principle of universal application, which can be sustained by the same reasons, and the same arguments, in every time and in every corner of the Union.

PRESIDENT PIERCE AND THE NEBRASKA BILL.

A strong effort was made at the time the Kansas Nebraska Bill was introduced to withhold from President Pierce the full measure of justice touching his support of that measure, particularly that provision repealing the Missouri restriction. The enemies of the bill sought every means to sow discord among its friends, and the most wretched slanders were industriously circulated. These continued long after the bill had become a law. As late as October 6, 1855, the New York Post, speaking of the repeal of the Missouri restriction, repeated a whole series of them, condensed into the following paragraph:

"Douglas was at first hostile to the scheme. He refused, as chairman of the Committee on Territories, to propose Atchison's repealing amendment to the Nebraska Bill. Cass was opposed to it; and when introduced at last by Douglas, who surrendered to Atchison, Cass admitted in his speech, prefatory to his voting for it, that it was dangerous and unnecessary. The President was opposed to it, as was disclosed by the Union, which opposed

the repeal of the Missouri Compromise when first broached in Douglas' ambiguous bill, although the editor is, and was known at the time to be, zealous for the repeal. His holding back was merely in respect to the President's scruples, who was doubly committed against the resurrection of the slave struggle, first by his inaugural address, and then in his maiden message to Congress."

On the 9th of October, 1855, the Washington Union contained the following authentic denial of the slanders, and an equally authoritative exposition of the position of President Pierce :

"This is a total perversion of the history of the Nebraska Bill and of the introduction into it of the clause repealing the Missouri restriction. It is not true that either Senators Douglas or Cass, or President Pierce, was ever opposed to the repeal of the Missouri restriction. These statesmen were the early, the earnest, and the consistent advocates of the principle of congressional non-intervention in the territories, and of necessity were opposed to the recognition by act of Congress of the Missouri restriction, which was in direct conflict with that principle. The only question that presented itself to Senator Douglas, as chairman of the Committee on Territories, was whether the Nebraska Bill should be drawn in the language of the Compromise of 1850, and be a litteral copy of the New Mexico and Utah Bills, so far as the slavery question was concerned, and therefore be a repeal of the Missouri restriction by necessary implication, or whether, in addition to the language of the Compromise of 1850, there should be a clause expressly repealing the Missouri restriction."

"After the bill was introduced the abolition leaders in Congress denounced it with violence as a violation of the Missouri compact; moreover, doubts were suggested by southern men as to whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was so clear as to satisfy slave-owners that they might settle in the territory and risk a judicial decision as to their property with safety. On the other hand it was suggested by northern men that there was no doubt about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; but there was doubt whether the legal effect thereof was not to revive the Louisiana law of 1803, by which Nebraska was slave territory. To remove all room for doubt, and to free the question of non-intervention in Nebraska from all controversy, Senator Douglas himself brought forward the amendments which placed the bill in the shape in which it passed.

"It is due to the truth of history to state, also, that the amendments were seen and approved by President Pierce and General Cass before they were offered in the Senate by Senator Douglas. These three gentlemen were the earnest and consistent advocates of the Nebraska Bill, from its inception to its final passage, and we are entirely certain that its legal effect in the shape in which it passed is identically that which they attributed to it in the shape in which Mr. Douglas first introduced it. We go further, and affirm, with entire confidence in our ability to maintain the assertion, that the bill as it finally passed does not differ in the slightest degree in principle from the Compromise of 1850."

We have thought this much due to Gen. Pierce. The Nebraska Bill was not forced upon his administration. He was not a man to submit to a wrong, or to acquiesce in a wrong. It was his measure-having his full approval before it was proposed to Congress.

CHAPTER XI.

KNOW-NOTHINGISM AND ANTI-NEBRASKAISM.

WHEN the bill passed Congress, the storm of hostility to its enactment was in full progress. The vote in the House upon. its passage was classified as follows:

The action upon this bill separated the Northern and Southern Whigs. During the winter and spring there had been organizing, under the powerful appliances of secrecy and mystery, a new party. At first it was known as the "Know-nothing" party, under which style it continued to be known as long as it was successful, after which it adopted the general title of the "American" party.

The Nebraska Bill had a very large number of opponents among the Democracy of the Northern States. The Abolition leaders at the North proposed a union of men of all parties, having for its object the exclusion from Congress of every Northern man who had voted for the bill. Into this unfortunate movement a very large number of Democrats thoughtlessly plunged. The new party was styled the "Anti-Nebraska" or "Fusion" party, being a combination of the Abolitionists, Free-soilers, Anti-Nebraska Democrats, Whigs, and Knownothings. It was under the deluding misrepresentations of the real terms and objects of the Nebraska Bill, and not because of any affection for the proscriptive doctrines of the Know-nothings, that thousands of Democrats were eventually led on step by step, until they found themselves sworn members of the dark-lantern order. The combination was soon a powerful one. It controlled cities, states, and sections. Every where the new party pledged itself to the most ultra doc