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REMARKS ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA DOCTRINE IN REGARD TO TERRITORY.

It will be our endeavor in the following pages, to consider the question that is now injuriously dividing the national opinion, in a mood more philosophical, and if possible more conclusive, than that of sectional or partisan feeling; and, at the same time, to discuss some dangerous doctrines, that have passed unnoticed, or at least unconfuted, during its recent agitation in the Senate and in the House.

"In the Senate of the United States, July 18th, Mr. Clayton of Delaware, chairman of the select committee on the territories of Oregon, California, and New Mexico, reported a bill for the organization of territorial government in each of them."*

It is proposed in this bill, to allow the will of the citizens of Oregon, expressed in the temporary system of laws which they have adopted, to prevail against the introduction of slaves in their territory, and in regard to other regions, to refer the whole matter to the Supreme Court, to be decided in private controversy.

If the Court decides, in the first controversy that may arise and be referred to it, that slaves cannot be held in the territories, the Wilmot Proviso principle takes effect, and slavery is forbidden in the territories of the United States.

If it decides that they can be held, then the Calhoun principle takes effect, and slavery is fixed upon all territories not protected by the ordinance of 1787, the Missouri Compromise, or the concession to the citizens of Oregon.

Thus it appears that the Supreme Court will have to bear up against the whole South or the whole North. It must decide in toto for the whole territory in question.

The clauses in the Constitution upon which the Court will be obliged to ground its opinion, in regard to the existing law, and touching the power of Congress to make laws, should that be agitated, are the following:

"1. No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into an

National Intelligencer, July 19th, 1848. The other, shall, in consequence of any law or regu

committee consisted of four from the North and four from the South.

lation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of

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