Presidential Candidates:. David W. Bartlett

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СКАЧАТЬ of the time, which became so memorable. In the famous Oregon controversy and excitement he belonged to the "fifty-four forty or fight" party, and in his public speeches, as well as in private, took a very determined stand against the pretensions of Great Britain. Here is a paragraph from a speech of his in the House at this time:

      "It therefore becomes us to put this nation in a state of defence; and when we are told that this will lead to war, all I have to say is this: preserve the honor and integrity of this country, but at the same time assert our right to the last inch, and then if war comes, let it come. We may regret the necessity which produced it, but when it does come, I would administer to our citizens Hannibal's oath of eternal enmity, and not terminate it until the question was all settled forever. I would blot out the lines on the map which now mark our national boundaries on this continent and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself."

      To show the position of Mr. Douglas on the Oregon question, we will quote two paragraphs from one of his speeches:

      "I choose to be frank and candid in this declaration of my sentiments on this question. For one, I never will be satisfied with the valley of the Columbia nor with 49°, nor with 54° 40′, nor will I be while Great Britain shall hold possession of one acre on the northwest coast of America. And I will never agree to any arrangement that shall recognize her right to one inch of soil upon the northwest coast; and for this simple reason. Great Britain never did own, she never had a valid title to one inch of that country. The question was only one of dispute between Russia, Spain and the United States. England never had a title to any part of the country. Our Government has always held that England had no title to it. In 1826, Mr. Clay, in his dispatches to Mr. Gallatin, said, 'it is not conceived that the British Government can make out even a colorable title to any part of the northwest coast!'…

      "The value of the Oregon Territory is not to be measured by the number of miles upon the coast, whether it shall terminate at 49°, or at 54° 40′, or reach to 61° and the Arctic Ocean. It does not depend on the character of the country, nor the quality of the soil. It is true that consideration is not virtually of attention; but the great point at issue – the great struggle between us and Great Britain – is for the freedom of the Pacific Ocean; for the trade of China and of Japan, of the East Indies, and for the maritime ascendency on all these waters. That is the great point at issue between the two countries, and the settlement of this Oregon question involves all these interests. And in order to maintain these interests, and secure all the benefits resulting from them, we must not only go to 54° 40', but we have got to exclude Great Britain from the coast in toto."

      In the course of the debate in committee of the House upon resolutions giving notice to Great Britain of the abrogation of the treaty between this country and Great Britain, Mr. Ramsey moved to strike out all after the word resolved (in one of the resolutions) and insert, "That the Oregon question is no longer a subject of negotiation or compromise." We quote from the record:

      "Tellers were ordered and ten members passed between them, amid shouts of laughter, cries of 54° 40' forever, clapping of hands and stamping of feet, which the chairman was some time in suppressing; and the negative vote was then taken and stood 146. So the amendment was rejected."

      The names of the ten "fifty-four forties," were as follows:

      Archibald Bell, of Arkansas.

      Alexander Ramsey, of Pennsylvania.

      William Sawyer, of Ohio.

      T. B. Hoge, of Illinois.

      Robert Smith, of Illinois.

      Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois.

      John A. McCleeland, "

      John Wentworth, "

      Cornelius Darrah, of Pennsylvania.

      Felix S. McConnel, of Alabama.

      It will be noticed, that then, as now, Mr. Douglas had the faculty of carrying his State delegation with him.

      Mr. Douglas has, while in Congress, favored the appropriation by the general government of money for internal improvements upon the Jackson plan of strictly confining such appropriations to objects of national and general, not of State or local importance.

      He has frequently voted for river and harbor bills – voted for the Independent Treasury bill, and has, in and out of Congress, utterly denied the power of Congress over the franchise in the States. Mr. Douglas was an early supporter of the Mexican war. "He opposed the incorporation of the Wilmot proviso into the two or three million bills. He believed the people's time had not come for any action on that subject. Slavery was now prohibited in Mexico. If any portion of that country should be annexed to the United States without any stipulation being made on that point, the existing laws would remain in force. …If the question was pressed for immediate decision, he could perceive no other mode of harmonizing conflicting sentiments, but by the adoption of the Missouri Compromise Line."

      Mr. Douglas voted to bring up the Homestead bill which was before the last Congress and which passed the House, showing that he is in favor of that important measure.

      We now come to the history of Mr. Douglas in connection with the Kansas-Nebraska bill.

      The battle which he waged with his political opponents and won upon that bill is so fresh in the memory of all our readers that it will not be safe, or necessary, to go into a minute history of the struggle. In the winter of 1852-3, Mr. Douglas reported a Nebraska bill from the Territorial Committee of which he was chairman, which contained no repeal of the Missouri Compromise or enumeration of his peculiar Popular Sovereignty doctrines. In the great debate over the compromise measures in 1850, no one ever called in question the Missouri Compromise. In the winter of 1852-3, Senator Atchison, of Missouri, declared in his seat in the Senate that the Missouri prohibition could never be repealed.

      The Kansas-Nebraska bill as reported from the Committee appeared first without any repeal of the Missouri restriction – on the 7th day of January it was first presented. On the 16th, Mr. Dixon, a Whig senator from Kentucky, proposed an amendment to the bill reported from the committee which repealed the aforesaid compromise. This movement was at first opposed by leading Democrats and their organ the Union, but in a very few days Mr. Douglas, either because he saw the justice of the repeal of the restriction or thought it would advance his political interests, acquiesced in the amendment and made it a part of his bill. We make a few brief extracts from Mr. Douglas's argument in the Senate, Jan. 30, 1854, in support of his bill:

      "Sir, I wish you to bear in mind, too, that this geographical line, established by the founders of the Republic between free territories and slave territories, extended as far westward as our territory then reached; the object being to avoid all agitation upon the slavery question by settling that question forever, as far as our territory extended, which was then to the Mississippi River.

      "When, in 1803, we acquired from France the territory known as Louisiana, it became necessary to legislate for the protection of the inhabitants residing therein. It will be seen by looking into the bill establishing the territorial government in 1805 for the territory of New Orleans, embracing the same country now known as the State of Louisiana, that the ordinance of 1787 was expressly extended to that territory, excepting the sixth section, which prohibited slavery. Then that act implied that the Territory of New Orleans was to be a slaveholding territory, by making that exception in the law. But, sir, when they came to form what was then called the Territory of Louisiana, subsequently known as the Territory of Missouri, north of the thirty-third parallel, they used different language. They did not extend the ordinance of 1787 to it at all. They first provided that it should be governed by laws made by the governor and the judges, and when, in 1812, Congress gave to that territory, under the name of the Territory СКАЧАТЬ