[Laughter.] But, sir, if that sort of satisfaction was given which is ordinarily demanded and given on similar occasions, government ought to accept it; and if it did not, I would repudiate the action of the government. The Captain-General who denied admission to the Crescent City into the port of Havana, ought to have been recalled by Spain on the demand of this government, or some other atonement for the offence ought to have been demanded. The President ought not to have rested satisfied until he got it. That is my judgment. If Spain was obstinate, and offered us nothing but war, let the consequences be upon her own head. Let me not be misunderstood. I say emphatically and distinctly that I do not desire to see our government seeking for war, or, as the common expression is, "picking a quarrel" with Spain, or any other government. I prefer peace with that government and with all govern

ments.

One sentiment which the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Venable] advanced, I endorse most fully. So long as Spain holds the Island of Cuba, and holds it securely, I am content that she shall keep it. But I will make no speech against its acquisition. I will make no argument against its acquisition. I would have Spain and all the world to understand distinctly that we always desire the island; and that if Spain ever parts with it, we mean to have it, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. I would not encourage her to look to other quarters for a purchaser or an owner, in case she were disposed to part with the island. I would not encourage others to hope that they might acquire it on any terms short of absolute force. Hence I say, I would make no arguments against its acquisition. Arguments should be to prepare the people of this country, and of all countries, for its acquisition by the United States. I would prepare the minds of our people to make sacrifices for its acquisition-sacrifices in money, and, if necessary, sacrifices of another character.

The gentleman from North Carolina has made one of the strongest arguments I ever heard against the acquisition of this island, under any circumstances. This was indeed too bad. Sir, what must be the effect of such a speech upon the public mind? If it has any effect at all—and that it must have an effect, his high position before the House and the country assures us--it must be to cause the public mind to pause, to hesitate, to doubt the propriety of the acquisition. He says it would throw the country into a commotion; that it would disturb the public mind; that conflicts between the North and South would be revived. What must be the effect of such declarations? Why, it must be to induce every man at heart a patriot, every conservative man-in the country, who trusts to these declarations, to resist the acquisition of the island at all hazards, and against all persuasion. No man trusting the soundness of the gentleman's logic, and filled with his evil forebodings, but would resist the acquisition as he would resist a pestilence. The gentleman says it will prove a very Pandora's box.

Mr. VENABLE. Would my friend be willing to acquire Canada? Mr. BROWN. I certainly would not be willing to make as great sacrifices to acquire Canada, as I would to acquire Cuba; but if there were a prospect of getting Canada, I am not prepared to say that I would resist the acquisition, and especially if our northern brethren showed themselves liberal in allowing us to get a little more land for the South. But

as my friend from North Carolina is of a kindly disposition, I will ask him the same question: would he go for acquiring Canada?

Mr. VENABLE. I would not.

Mr. BROWN. I said when I rose, that I did not design to make a speech upon this subject. The gentleman from North Carolina had expressed opinions so foreign to my own, and so contrary to what I deem to be the interest of the South, and of the whole country, I felt it due to myself, considering my party relations with that gentleman, to say at once, that I do not concur in the views he expressed.

Mr. VENABLE. Will my friend permit me to ask one additional question?

Mr. BROWN. Certainly.

Mr. VENABLE. I desire to know whether under any circumstances, the gentleman would be willing to annex Cuba as a free state, if slavery did not exist there?

Mr. BROWN. I do not think that I would readily consent to it, and the gentleman might have gathered as much from my remarks before. I said I wanted to acquire this territory as an outlet for slavery, as a means of extending the area of slavery. I will do nothing under a disguise. I will practise no fraud or deception upon anybody, personally or politically. I do not say that I would not be in favor of the annexation of Cuba under any circumstances; but I confess that a vast amount of my zeal and enthusiasm would ooze out very suddenly, if I knew it was coming to us as a free state. I want it; and I want it as a slave state, and as an outlet for slavery. In a military, and in a commercial point of view, its acquisition would be vastly desirable, even as a free state. But I will not longer detain the committee.

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS.

In the Senate of the United States, February 24, 1854, the Senate having under consideration the bill to organize the territories of Nebraska and Kansas, Mr. BROWN said::

MR. PRESIDENT: It has been my determination, from the beginning of this discussion, not to participate in it to any considerable extent, and I am not now about to depart from that determination. I will occupy the floor but a few minutes; and senators who desire to speak may be assured that they will have an opportunity of doing so this evening, if they choose.

There are one or two points in the bill on which I will present my views briefly; and there are two or three topics involved incidentally in the debate to which I will address a remark or two, and then I shall have done.

The bill proposes to annul, or, in stronger phrase, to repeal, the Missouri compromise; and to this extent it meets my cordial approbation. I am not the advocate of this repeal because of any confident expectation that slavery is ever to find a resting place in these territories.

Slavery may or may not go there. The inclination of my mind is that it never will. But this is a topic not to be discussed here, and therefore I pass it by without further remark.

The Missouri compromise ought to be annulled or repealed, because it has been, from the beginning, without authority under the Constitution. For more than thirty years this legislation has stood upon the statute-book, a blot upon its justice, and a mockery of the Constitution

which it violates.

All the arguments against the constitutionality of the Wilmot proviso stand with equal force against the constitutionality of the Missouri compromise. It is needless for me to argue that, if Congress had no power under the Constitution to exclude slavery from the territories acquired from Mexico, it had none to exclude it from those acquired from France; or, to state the proposition a little different, if Congress has no power to establish an arbitrary line and assert its constitutional power over slavery on one side of it, it has none to establish it and assert its power on the other side.

If Congress had the power in 1820 to exclude slavery from all the territory north of 36° 30', it had the same power in 1850 to exclude it from all the territory south of that line. And, per contra, if it did not have the power to exclude it south of the line in 1850, then it did not have the power in 1820 to exclude it north of the line.

The venerable senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass] deserves great credit for his masterly effort to correct a wide-spread, and, at the North, almost universal error, on this point. Thousands I know there are who date their convictions on this subject from the delivery of the great speech of that senator, in which he reviewed with so much power the arguments to sustain the proviso. I do the senator no more than justice, when I say his arguments have never been answered-like fine gold, they have grown brighter as they have been rubbed.

As a friend of the Constitution, I thank the senator for his efforts in this behalf. He proved the unconstitutionality of the proviso; and in doing that, he established beyond dispute the unconstitutionality of the Missouri compromise. For, I repeat, Congress had no more power to exclude slavery north of 36° 30′ in 1820 than it had to exclude it south of that line in 1850.

But it has been said that the Missouri compromise is a contract-the eloquent senator from Massachusetts used the stronger term-he called it a compact; and on this ground, he and others have undertaken to defend it. It was neither the one thing nor the other. It was not a contract, nor was it a compact. If it was a contract, who were the parties to it? To make a valid contract, there must be parties able to contract, willing to contract, and they must actually have contracted. I must go further, and say, there must be something given on one side, and something received on the other. In all, every one of these essentials, the transaction before us is deficient. I should undertake to maintain by irrefragable proof, if I had engaged to discuss this question thoroughly, first, that there were no contracting parties; second, that at least one of those whom you claim as a party had no will to contract, and did not contract; and third, that no consideration passed from one party to the other, whereby the contract, if made, was rendered binding. Shall it be contended, further, that Missouri was a party to this pre

tended contract? It has already been said Missouri was admitted into the Union as a slave state, on condition that slavery should be for ever prohibited north of 36° 30'; and the senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] declared with great bitterness that the South, with the consideration in her pocket, now comes forward to repudiate the contract. Sir, had not Missouri the right, the constitutional right, to come into the Union with or without slavery, as she, in her own written constitution, should prescribe? I have thought that even rampant fanaticism did not deny this. Then how could you, in derogation of her rights under the Constitution, demand of Missouri a price for her admission into the Union?

But, sir, allowing that Missouri undertook to buy her way into the Union-an admission that can only be made for the sake of the argument -and that for this purpose she bargained for the exclusion of slavery in perpetuity from all territory north of 36° 30', what does it amount to? Nothing; absolutely nothing. Missouri had jurisdiction within her limits, and not one inch beyond. She had no right to buy an advantage or a privilege for herself by surrendering that which did not belong to her. As well might the tenant or rightful owner of a house bargain with a robber, that if he would let him alone, he might plunder his neighbors with impunity. If he bought his own peace, well; but certainly he could impose no obligation on his neighbors to submit to the plundering.

If we put this transaction on the basis of contract between the North and the South, it is not more capable of defence. Here you have to create parties, ideal parties, before you commence the bargain. To say this is a contract between the North and the South, is to set up in the imagination things that do not exist in fact. There is no separate North, no separate South-has not been, and I hope never will be. We are but one, and it takes two to make a contract. If we had a Northern Union and a Southern Union, the two might contract. But, as we are but one, the first great essential to a binding contract is wanting, to wit: parties capable of contracting.

I do not know that I can better conclude what I have to say on this point than by introducing an extract from a speech delivered by myself on this subject in the House, June 3, 1848. It will be found at page 645, Appendix to the Congressional Globe of that year. I said :-

"We shall be told, that by the act of March 6, 1820, and the several succeeding acts admitting Missouri into the Union, commonly called the Missouri compromise, the power in Congress to a limited extent, to exclude slavery from a territory, was conceded. The argument is neither just nor sound; but its introduction here gives me an opportunity, which I eagerly embrace, of expressing my opinions of that compromise. It has been the theme of many eloquent harangues; and of all the thousand orators who have thrown garlands on the brow of its great author, or strewn his pathway with richest flowers, none have apostrophized more eloquently than those whose theme has been this far-famed Missouri compromise."

You will observe that in this speech I fell into a very common error, or, at least, what is now claimed to be an error, of attributing the authorship of the Missouri compromise to Mr. Clay. I proceeded:

"But, notwithstanding this, it stands out a fungus, an excrescence, a political monstrosity.' It was the first, greatest, and most fatal error in our legislation on the subject of slavery. It violated at once the rights of one-half the Union, and flagrantly outraged the Federal Constitution. It undertook to abrogate the constitutional privi

leges of one-half of the states, and, without any adequate or sufficient consideration, to surrender the rights of every slaveholder in the Union. The compromise has been called a contract. But a contract, to be binding, must be mutual in its obligations; there must be something given on one side, and something received on the other. By this compromise-this misnamed contract-the slave states gave up their right of settlement north of the parallel 36° 30'; but the non-slaveholding states did not surrender their right to settle south of that line. The free states have all the rights they ever had. The South gave up everything, and received nothing. North of 36° 30′ no slaveholder dare go with his slaves; south every northern man may settle with whatever chattels he possesses. The compromise is wanting in all the elements of mutuality which render a compact binding, and is therefore void. This Thirtieth Congress has no right to surrender, by gift or barter, the political rights of one-half of the Confederacy, or even one state of the Union; and yet this Congress has all the constitutional powers that belonged to the Sixteenth Congress, which enacted the compromise."

I pass from this subject to the consideration of the amendment offered by the mover of the bill [Mr. Douglas], and now, by the vote of the Senate, become a part of the bill itself. The phraseology is not such as I would have chosen, and yet, having scrutinized it, I am willing to sanction it; indeed, I have sanctioned it by my vote. If it had suited the purposes of others to allow it to stand without comment, it would have suited mine. But I will not sit still, and allow an interpretation to be given to words that have received the sanction of my vote, altogether at variance with what I intended when I gave the vote. From day to day we have heard senators, in terms more or less distinct, declare, without limitation, that this bill gives the people of the territories the right to exclude slavery. In plain English, that it recognises the doctrine of 66 squatter sovereignty," as this new theory has been termed. I do not think so, and if I did, I would withhold from the bill the sanction of my vote. I utterly deny and repudiate this whole doctrine of squatter sovereignty. But, before I proceed to an examination of it, I must pause to consider another feature embodied in the amendment proposed by the honorable senator, the mover of this bill.

The amendment declares that the act of 1820, commonly called the Missouri compromise, is inconsistent with the legislation of 1850, known as the compromise of that year; and is, therefore, declared inoperative and void. If I did not know the astuteness of the senator who drew up this amendment [Mr. Douglas], and how unlikely he would be to run into such an error, I should think there was an inaccuracy in deducing the conclusion that the legislation of 1820, in reference to one territory, is inoperative and void, because it is inconsistent with the legislation of 1850, in reference to another territory. It is very certain that the legislation of 1820, as regards the territory north of 36° 30', was inconsistent with the same legislation, as regards the territory south, and yet both stood, and have continued to stand, for thirty years and more. is equally certain, that if Congress has the power to exclude slavery from the territories, and the power is simply permissive, and not mandatory (as it certainly is not), under the Constitution, then Congress may exercise it in one place, and forbear its exercise in another; and the failure to exercise it in Nebraska, for example, would not render inope rative and void its exercise in Kansas.

It

If the act of 1820, that excluded slavery from all the territory north of 36° 30', was constitutional, it may stand, and it is logically ina ccurate to say that it becomes inoperative and void simply because the leg islation