"First, That all questions pertaining to Slavery in the Territories, and the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, by their appropriate representatives, to be chosen by them for that purpose." The bill thus reported was soon after, on Mr. Douglas's motion, recommitted, and on the 23d reported again by him from his Committee on Territories, with material alterations. For, meantime, Mr. Archibald Dixon,' of Kentucky, had given due notice that, whenever this bill should come up, he would offer the following amendment: “SEO. 22. And be it further enacted, That 6 so much of the 8th section of an act approv | ed March 6, 1820, entitled An Act to au- which lies north of 36 degrees 30 minutes 'hibited,' shall not be so construed as to apply to the Territory contemplated by this act, or to any other Territory of the United States; but that the citizens of the several States or Territories shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories or States to be formed therefrom, as if the said act, entitled as aforesaid, and approved as aforesaid, had never been passed. This blunt proposition that the Missouri Compromise, in so far as its stipulations favored the consecration of the Territories to Free Labor, be utterly repudiated, now that so much of it as strengthened Slavery håd taken full and vigorous effect, was received with more surprise than satisfaction by the engineers of the original measure. The Union, then the Democratic organ at Washington, promptly denounced it as a Whig January 16th, 1854. device to divide and disorganize the Mr. Douglas, thus outbid, resolved to start afresh. On the 23d aforesaid, he reported from his Committee a bill so different from its predecessor as hardly to resemble it, save that it contemplated the same region. Instead of one Territory, to be called Nebraska, and stretching from the parallel of 36° 30' north latitude on the south to that of 43° 30' on the north, and from the western boundary of Missouri and Iowa on the east to the crests of the Rocky Mountains on the west, he now proposed to create two Territories, one to be composed of so much of said region as was directly west of the State of Missouri, to be known as KANSAS; the other to comprise the residue, and be known as NEBRASKA. (The south line of Kansas was moved northward from latitude 36° 30' to latitude 37°, in order to make it conform to the boundary between the lands of the Cherokees and those of the Osages.) And, with reference to Slavery, the new bill contained these provisions : 'Elected as a Whig-afterward a Democrat. MR. DOUGLAS MODIFIES HIS NEBRASKA BILL. 229 "SEO. 21. And be it further enacted, That, in order to avoid all misconstruction, it is hereby declared to be the true intent and meaning of this act, so far as the question of Slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following propositions and principles, established by the Compromise measures of one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to wit: "First. That all questions pertaining to Slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, through their appropriate representatives. should have an opportunity of understanding Second. That 'all cases involving title 'to slaves,' and 'questions of personal free-porated into the bill, as originally reported 'dom,' are referred to the adjudication of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. "Third. That the provisions of the Constitution and laws of the United States, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all the 'organized Territories,' the same as in the States." Proceeding to that section which provides for the election of a delegate to Congress from Kansas, instead of the original stipulation "That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory as elsewhere in the United States". The following important reservation was now added: "Except the section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which was superseded by the principles of the Legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise measures, and is declared inoperative.” The section which authorized Nebraska to send a delegate was amended in precisely the same manner. the amendment which alludes to Slavery ually concerned, I am perfectly satisfied north latitude. "I here take occasion to remark, merely with a view of placing myself right before the Senate, that I think my position in relation to this matter has been somewhat misunderstood. 9 "I have been charged, through one of I am "The amendment which I notified the Senate that I should offer at the proper from Illinois into the bill which he has retime, has been incorporated by the Senator Mr. Douglas called up his new bill for consideration next morning; when not only Messrs. Chase and Sumner, but Mr. Norris, of New Hamp-ported. to the Senate. The bill, as now shire, Gen. Cass, and other Democrats, desired that time be given to consider the grave changes which 8 January 24, 1854. amended, meets my views, and I have no as far as I am able to do so, aid and assist • The Union. are anxious to carry through this proposi- | "I never did believe in the propriety of passing the Missouri Compromise. I thought it was the result of necessity. I never thought that the great Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), when he advocated that measure, did so because his judgment approved it, but because it was the result of a combination of circumstances which drove him to the position he assumed; and I have never thought that that measure received the sanction either of his heart or of his head. "The amendment, then, which I gave notice that I would propose-and which I intended to have proposed, if it had not been rendered wholly unnecessary by the amendment reported by the Senator from Illinois, from the Committee on Territories, of which he is the honored Chairman-I intended to offer, under the firm conviction that I was carrying out the principles settled in the Compromise acts of 1850; and which leave the whole question of Slavery with the people, and without any Congressional interference. For, over the subject of Slavery, either in the States or Territories of the United States, I have always believed, and have always contended, that Congress had no power whatever, and that, consequently, the act of 1820, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise act, is unconstitutional; and, at the proper time, I shall endeavor to satisfy the Senate and the country of the truth of these propositions." To which Mr. Douglas responded as follows: affirmatively legislated Slavery into the Territories. The object of the Committee was neither to legislate Slavery in or out of the Territories; neither to introduce nor exclude it; but to remove whatever obstacle Congress had put there, and apply the doctrine of Congressional non-intervention, in accordance with the principles of · the Compromise measures of 1850, and allow the people to do as they pleased upon this, as well as all other matters affecting their interests. "The explanation of the honorable Senator from Kentucky shows that his meaning was not what many supposed it to be, who judged simply from the phraseology of the amendment. I deem this explanation due to the Senator and to myself." Mr. Messrs. Webster, Clay, and Calhoun had all passed from the earth since the inception of Mr. Clay's Compromise in 1850. Not one of them lived to hear that that Compromise had lifted the interdict of Slavery from the whole region solemnly guaranteed to Free Labor forever by the Compromise of 1820. Webster, certainly, never dreamed of such a thing, when he vehemently denounced, as insane, malignant folly, the attempt to fasten a like prohibition on the bill organizing New Mexico-as an effort to debar slaveholding on snowy crags and arid deserts where no slave could be subsisted-as a superserviceable attempt to "reenact the laws of God,” as if their Author were unequal to the task He had undertaken. In the accord of Messrs. Douglas and Dixon, an undertone of discord may be detected. Mr. Dixon repudiates the restrictive provision of the Compromise of 1820 as void ab initio, for want of constitutional power to enact it. Congress could not lawfully exclude Slavery from the Federal domain-therefore, did not, to any purpose. Mr. Clay consented to that Restriction because he must, not because he would-(as if this DOUGLAS AND DIXON ON THE COMPROMISES. 231 could be legally held to service-into said Territory; the act of planting Slavery in fact there, being one which legislation might facilitate and invite, but which individual action must initiate and achieve. And he did not now contend that the legislation of 1850 had even removed the obstacle to such establishment, but only that the action he proposed was "in accordance with the principles of the Compromise measures of 1850”—that is to say, it applied to Kansas and Ne were not always the case in compromises each party conceding something he would gladly retain, in order to secure something else that is otherwise beyond his reach.) But that Mr. Clay deliberately bargained to secure what he greatly desired (the admission of Missouri), knowing that the stipulated consideration was utterly beyond the power of Congress, therefore a blank nullity—that, Mr. Dixon did not assert, nor would any true friend of the great Kentuckian's memory insinu-braska-Territories secured, upon due ate it. Whatever Mr. Dixon's belief on the subject, it is certain that Mr. Clay deemed the Missouri Compromise a valid contract, and that he never dreamed that it was either unauthorized by the Constitution or superseded by the Compromise of 1850. No champion, no adversary, of this latter arrangement ever suggested, whether as an argument for, or an objection to, this scheme, that one of its effects or incidents would be the repeal of the Missouri Restriction, and a consequent opening to Slavery of the region stretching westward and north-westward from Missouri. Mr. Douglas, it will be seen, indorses none of Mr. Dixon's assumptions. He had misunderstood Mr. Dixon's original proposition, supposing that it intended to "legislate Slavery into the Territory." He could mean by this nothing more nor other than that he misunderstood Mr. Dixon's as a proposition to legislate Slave law-that is, law under which slaves 9 "Is it not hard," asked Mr. Badger, of North Carolina, during the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, “if I should choose to emigrate to Kansas, that I should be forbidden to take my old mammy [slave-nurse] along with me?""The Senator entirely mistakes our position," consideration, to Free Labor, by sacred agreement in 1820-a principle which Congress had, under very dif ferent circumstances, applied to New Mexico-a most unlike and peculiar region-in 1850. 9 Mr. Dixon, it will be remarked, had not yet attained to the ultimate orthodoxy of the South with respect to the rights of slaveholders in the Territories. He only held that Congress had no right to exclude them with their human chattels. That it was bound to recognize and protect their property in slaves, and that the people of the Territories could have no right, prior to their organization as a State, to exclude or inhibit Slavery, were dogmas as yet confined to the more ardent devotees of Calhounism, and so far from being accepted, that they were scarcely comprehended by the great body of the supporters of the Compromise. length, and ably, by Messrs. Douglas and several others in favor, and by Messrs. Chase, Seward, Sumner, Wade, and others, in opposition. But the disparity in numbers between its supporters and its opponents was too great -nearly three for to one against it to allow much interest to attach to the successive discussions and divisions, save as they serve to cast light on the real character of the measure, especially with respect to Slavery. A few of these will here be noted. Mr. Chase, having attempted 10 to strike out so much of the clause last quoted as declares the Restriction of 1820 "superseded" by the Compromise of 1850, and been beaten by 30 Nays to 13 Yeas, Mr. Douglas" himself moved that said clause be stricken out, and replaced by the following: "Which being inconsistent with the principle of Non-Intervention by Congress with Slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850 (commonly called the Compromise measures), is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." This, of course, prevailed: Yeas 35; Nays 10: whereupon Mr. Chase moved 12 to add thereto as follows: "Under which, the people of the Territory, through their appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of Slavery therein.” This touchstone of the true nature and intent of the measure was most decisively voted down; the Yeas and Nays being as follows: YEAS-Fessenden and Hamlin, of Maine; Sumner, of Massachusetts; Foot, of Ver 10 February 6th. 11 February 15th. 12 March 2d. 13 Gen. Cass, the inventor of "Popular Sove mont; Smith, of Connecticut; Fish and Seward, of New York; Chase and Wade, of Ohio; Dodge (Henry), of Wisconsin-10. NAYS-Norris and Williams, of New Hampshire; Toucey, of Connecticut; Brodhead, of Pennsylvania; Clayton, of Delaware; Stuart, 13 of Michigan; Pettit, of Indiana; Douglas and Shields, of Illinois; Dodge (A. C.) and Jones, of Iowa; Walker, of Wisconsin; Hunter and Mason, of Virginia; Pratt, of Maryland; Badger, of North Carolina; Butler and Evans, of South Carolina; Dawson, of Georgia; Fitzpatrick and C. C. Clay, of Alabama; Adams and Brown, of Mississippi; Benjamin and Slidell, of Louisiana; Morton, of Florida; Houston and Rusk, of Texas; Dixon, of Kentucky; Bell and Jones, of Tennessee; Atchison, of Missouri; Sebastian and Johnson, of Arkansas; Gwin and Weller, of California—36. So the Senate decisively voted that the people of the new Territories, formed by this act from the region shielded from Slavery by the Compromise of 1820, should not have the right, under this organization, to prohibit Slavery, should they see fit. On motion of Mr. Badger, of North Carolina, it was further (Yeas 35, Nays 6) Provided, That nothing herein shall be construed to revive or put in force any law or regulation which may have existed prior to the act of 6th of March, 1820, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting, or abolishing Slavery." On motion of Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, it was further provided that immigrants from foreign countries who had merely declared their intention to become naturalized citizens should not be voters in these Territories. On this proposition, the Yeas were 23 (all from Slave States); the Nays 21 (all from Free States). Mr. Chase now moved an amendment fixing a day of election, appointing commissioners to lay off Counties, etc., etc., and enabling the reignty," who was in his seat and voted just before, did not respond to the call of his name on this occasion. |
