with the latter, except it divided the territory into two territories, with a government for each, and added a provision for the formal repeal of the Missouri compromise, instead of leaving its repeal to be implied.

In his speech on the Nebraska bill, Mr. Douglas said: "We were aware that, from 1820 to 1850, the abolition doctrine of congressional interference with slavery in the territories and new states, had so far prevailed as to keep up an incessant slavery agitation in Congress, and throughout the country, whenever any new territory was to be acquired or organized. We were also aware, that in 1850 the right of the people to decide this question for themselves, subject only to the constitution, was substituted for the doctrine of congressional intervention. Therefore, the only question in framing this bill was this: Shall we adhere to, and carry out, the principle recognized by the compromise measures of 1850, or shall we go back to the old exploded doctrine of congressional interference, as established in 1820? There were no alternatives. We were compelled to frame the bill upon one or the other of these two principles. The two great political parties of the country stood solemnly pledged before the world to adhere to the compromise measures of 1850, in principle and substance.' A large majority of the Senate profess to belong to one or the other of these parties, and, hence, were supposed to be under a high moral obligation to carry out the principle and substance' of these measures in all new territorial organizations. The report of the committee is in accordance with this obligation." This report said: "In the judgment of your committee, those measures (of the compromise of 1850) were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of the difficulties arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to establish certain great principles, which would not only furnish adequate remedies for existing evils, but in all time to come avoid the perils of a similar agitation, by withdrawing the question of slavery from the Halls of Congress, and the political arena, and committing it to the arbitrament of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for, its consequences." "The bill, which your committee have prepared, proposes to carry these propositions and principles into practical operation in the precise language of the compromise measures of 1850." "The legislation

of 1850 abrogated the Missouri compromise, so far as the country embraced within the limits of Utah and New Mexico was covered by the slavery restriction. It is true that those acts did not, in terms and by name, repeal the act of 1820, as originally adopted, or as extended by the resolutions annexing Texas in 1845; but the acts of 1850 did authorize the people of those territories to exercise 'all rightful powers of legislation consistent with the constitution,' not excepting the question of slavery; and did provide that when those territories should be admitted into the Union, they should be received with, or without slavery, as the people thereof might determine at the date of their admission. These provisions were in direct cenflict with a clause, in any former enactment, declaring that slavery should be forever prohibited in any portion of said territories, and, hence, rendered such clause inoperative and void to the extent of such conflict."

In the 5th clause of the 1st section of the act of 1850, establishing the boundary of Texas, is the following proviso, introduced as an amendment by Mr. Mason, viz.: "Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to impair or qualify anything contained in the 3d article of the 2d section of the joint resolution for annexing Texas to the United States,' approved March 1st, 1845; either as regards the number of states that hereafter may be formed out of the state of Texas or otherwise." [The 3d article here referred to is the one also providing for extending the line of 36' 30'.] In his speech of the 3d of March, 1854, Mr. Douglas, commenting on this proviso, said: "The object of this amendment was to guarantee to the state of Texas, with her circumscribed boundaries, the same number of states which she would have had under her larger boundaries, and with the same right to come in, with or without slavery, as they pleased. We have been told, over and over again, that there was no such thing intimated as that the country cut off from Texas was to be relieved from the stipulations of that compromise." Mr. Douglas, after quoting from the debates of 1850 proving this to be false, continues: "It will be seen that the debate goes upon the supposition that the effect was to release the country north of 36' 30' from the obligation of the prohibition, and the only question was whether the declaration that it should be received into the Union, with or without slavery,' should be inserted in the Texas bill, or the Territorial bill." Before the Kansas-Nebraska

bill, in which the clause was inserted, formally repealing the Missouri Compromise act, was reported by Mr. Douglas, Mr. Sumner (who opposed the compromise of 1850), on the 17th of January, 1854, gave notice that he would move an amendment to the original Nebraska bill, reported on the 4th of January (which was in the precise language of the territorial bills of 1850), reaffirming the Missouri compromise of 1820. His amendment was accordingly moved, and ordered to be printed. This was, therefore, the first movement made to abrogate the compromise of 1850, by re-establishing the Missouri compromise, not only in New Mexico, where it had been superseded by another law, but by substituting the principle of it in the place of that established in 1850. This movement not only opened afresh the great issue of 1850, but made the formal repeal of the Missouri compromise in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, reported on the 23d of January, necessary, as a proper replication to the amendraent proposed by Mr. Sumner. That amendment would have been as fatal in law to the Territorial act for New Mexico of 1850, so far as there was included in that act Louisiana territory, as it would have been to the Nebraska bill. Who, then, is more responsible for all the agitation of the slavery question, which followed, than Mr. Sumner? On the 19th of January, a manifesto, signed by Mr. Sumner and Mr. Chase, in which they appealed to their friends throughout the country to rally to their support in the agitation of this question, spoke of the Missouri compromise line as the subject of a "sacred pledge," and of a "solemn compact. Just here in point of time, and in the origin of events, is to be found the beginning and the cause from which came, in torrents of passion, that angry contest which rent the nation asunder, drenched our land in blood, and cursed it with all the crimes of civil war. Those who had been known as Restrictionists, soon afterwards, in course of time, became known as Republicans. In their first manifesto, they called that "sacred," which they had uniformly profaned; that a "pledge," which they had never kept; that "solemn," which had been the subject of their sneers; the friends of which, among them, had been hung in mockery and burned in effigy; that a "compact," which, when its very terms required fulfillment, they broke both in letter and spirit.

The Kansas-Nebraska bill passed the House, on the 22d of May, 1854, by a vote of 113 to 100; this majority being greater for

the confirmation of the compromise of 1850, including the formal repeal of the Missouri compromise, than for the original act of 1850. By states this vote was eighteen for and thirteen against. In the Senate the bill passed by a vote of thirty-five to thirteen. By states, twenty-one yeas, seven nays, and three divided.

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In order to understand more fully the events which followed the passage of this bill, it is well just here to give an extract from a speech made, before it passed, by Mr. Douglas, in the Senate, in which he said: "We have had notice served upon us to-day that the cry of repeal' is to resound through the land. The Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Sumner) has told us that the pulpits of New England are to pour forth their denunciations against the execution of an act of Congress for the return of fugitives from service. We are told by that Senator and others that because we repeal a law, which has been upon the statute book since 1820, and has been inoperative during the whole period for the reason that there were no people upon whom it could operate, they regard themselves as released from the obligations resting upon them to support. the Constitution, and from their oaths to observe its injunctions. Men here who occupy seats only by virtue of an oath to preserve the Constitution, tell us that, because of the passage of this law, they will commit perjury, they will violate the Constitution, they will repudiate their oaths, they will defy God and man, in resistance to the constitution and the law of the land. Sir, the Senator from Massachusetts has told us to-night that these protesting clergymen from New England will engage in that work of perfidy, and perjury, and treason against the Constitution." On the 12th of March, 1856, Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, submitted a report to the Senate, in which the following passages occur: "Finding opposition to the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska act unavailing in the Halls of Congress, and under the forms of the constitution, combinations were immediately entered into, in some portions of the Union, to control the political destinies, and form and regulate the domestic institutions of those territories and future states, through the machinery of Emigrant aid societies. In order to give consistency and efficiency to the movement, and surround it with the color of legal authority, an act of incorporation was procured from the Legislature of Massachusetts, in which it was. provided in the first section that twenty persons therein named, and

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their associates, successors and assigns, are hereby made a corporation, by the name of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, for the purpose of assisting emigrants to settle in the West.' The committee here enter into a detail of the Massachusetts society, and remark: "When a powerful corporation, with a capital of five· millions of dollars invested in houses and lands, in merchandise and mills, in cannon and rifles, in powder and lead, in all the implements of art, agriculture, and war, and employing a corresponding number of men, all under the control and management of non-resident directors and stockholders, who are authorized by their charter to vote by proxy to the extent of fifty votes each, enters a distant and sparsely-settled territory with the fixed purpose of wielding all its power to control the domestic institutions and political doctrines of the territory, it becomes a question of fearful import how far the operations of the company are compatible with the rights and liberties of the people." "Exaggerated accounts of the large number of emigrants on their way, under the auspices of the Emigrant aid companies, with the view of controling the election for members of the territorial legislature, which was to take place on the 30th of March, 1855, were published and circulated. These accounts, being republished and believed in Missouri, where the excitement had already been inflamed to a fearful intensity, induced a corresponding effort to send at least an equal number to counteract the apprehended result of this new importation.' Thus, these political agitators of the slavery question, such as Sumner, Seward and Chase, after their signal defeat in the national councils in 1850 and 1854, sought by Emigrant aid societies to extend this sectional conflict from the halls of Congress to the plains of Kansas; and by 'Personal Liberty bills', and unlawful combinations in the several states, to resist successfully the fugitive slave law; all of which culminated in 1856 in the formation of the Republican party, with John C. Fremont as their candidate for President. Mr. Buchanan received the nomination of the Democratic party for the same office; which he accepted with its platform endorsing, in words of unqualified approval, the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854. He carried nineteen states, and Col. Fremont only eleven. Maryland voted for Mr. Fillmore. The popular vote for Col. Fremont was 1,341,264; while the whole vote against him was 2,802,703. Mr. Buchanan's electoral majority over both his oppo