Presidential Candidates:. David W. Bartlett

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СКАЧАТЬ United States. If that principle is wrong, the bill is wrong. If that principle is right, the bill is right. It is unnecessary to quibble about phraseology or words; it is not the mere words, the mere phraseology, that our constituents wish to judge by. They wish to know the legal effect of our legislation.

      "The legal effect of this bill, if it be passed as reported by the Committee on Territories, is neither to legislate slavery into these territories, nor out of them; but to leave the people to do as they please, under the provisions and subject to the limitations of the Constitution of the United States. Why should not this principle prevail? Why should any man, North or South, object to it? I will especially address the argument to my own section of country, and ask why should any northern man object to this principle? If you will review the history of the slavery question in the United States, you will see that all the great results in behalf of free institutions which have been worked out, have been accomplished by the operation of this principle and by it alone.

      "When these States were colonies of Great Britain, every one of them was a slaveholding province. When the Constitution of the United States was formed, twelve out of the thirteen were slaveholding States. Since that time six of those States have become free. How has this been effected? Was it by virtue of abolition agitation in Congress? Was it in obedience to the dictates of the Federal Government? Not at all; but they have become free States under the silent but sure and irresistible working of that great principle of self-government, which teaches every people to do that which the interests of themselves and their posterity, morally and pecuniarily, may require.

      "Under the operation of this principle, New Hampshire became free, while South Carolina continued to hold slaves; Connecticut abolished slavery, while Georgia held on to it; Rhode Island abandoned the institution, while Maryland preserved it; New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania abolished slavery, while Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, retained it. Did they do it at your bidding! Did they do it at the dictation of the Federal Government? Did they do it in obedience to any of your Wilmot Provisoes or Ordinances of '87? Not at all; they did it by virtue of their rights as freemen under the Constitution of the United States, to establish and abolish such institutions as they thought their own good required.

      "The leading feature of the Compromise of 1850 was Congressional non-intervention as to slavery in the territories; that the people of the territories and of all the States, were to be allowed to do as they pleased upon the subject of slavery, subject only to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States.

      "That, sir, was the leading feature of the compromise measures of 1850. Those measures, therefore, abandoned the idea of a geographical line as a boundary between free States and slave States – abandoned it because compelled to do it from an inability to maintain it – and in lieu of that substituted a great principle of self-government, which would allow the people to do as they thought proper. Now the question is, when that new compromise, resting upon that great fundamental principle of freedom, was established, was it not an abandonment of the old one – the geographical line? Was it not a supersedure of the old one, within the very language of the substitute for the bill which is now under consideration? I say it did supersede it, because it applied its provisions as well to the north as to the south of 36° 30'. It established a principle which was equally applicable to the country north as well as south of the parallel of 36° 30' – a principle of universal application."

      Mr. Douglas's bill passed both branches of Congress and became a law, after passing through a severe ordeal both in Congress and before the people. Its passage gave the popular branch of the next Congress into the control of Mr. Douglas's political enemies, for the bill in a majority of the free States was very unpopular.

      On the first Monday in December, 1857, Mr. Douglas took his seat in the Senate with many anxious eyes upon him, for it had already been rumored that he would differ with the administration upon its conduct of Kansas affairs, and would take issue with the President in his forthcoming message. Rumor was right – the message was read – it did in effect recommend the indorsement of the Lecompton Constitution – and Mr. Douglas had the courage and boldness to stand up in defence of his peculiar doctrines of popular sovereignty, which he thought had been violated by the Lecompton Constitution. His great opening speech was delivered on the ninth of December, 1857. The President's message had been read the day previous and Mr. Douglas had indicated his purpose on the next day to speak upon it. Accordingly when the Senate assembled on Tuesday, the old Senate-hall was crowded to its utmost capacity and hundreds were unable to effect an entrance. The curiosity of the public to learn the position which the Illinois senator would take upon this important question was intense, and many of the members of the house were present. Mr. D. rose, apparently as cool as he ever was in his life, although, in the opinion of some of his Democratic friends, his decision, which after careful thought he had reached, to oppose the Lecompton Constitution, would ruin all his political prospects. He began by quoting the peculiar language of the President's message, and, perhaps in a vein of irony, contended that the President was opposed to this Lecompton Constitution, which, though under the circumstances he was for accepting, he did not like. It was evident that the President, in his absence at a foreign court, had fallen into an error in reference to the principle of the Nebraska bill. We now quote Mr. Douglas:

      "Now, sir, what was the principle enunciated by the authors and supporters of that bill, when it was brought forward? Did we not come before the country and say that we repealed the Missouri restriction for the purpose of substituting and carrying out as a general rule the great principle of self-government, which left the people of each State and each Territory free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States? In support of that proposition, it was argued here, and I have argued it wherever I have spoken in various States of the Union, at home and abroad, everywhere I have endeavored to prove that there was no reason why an exception should be made in regard to the slavery question. I have appealed to the people, if we did not all agree, men of all parties, that all other local and domestic questions should be submitted to the people. I said to them, 'We agree that the people shall decide for themselves what kind of a judiciary system they will have; we agree that the people shall decide what kind of a school system they will establish; we agree that the people shall determine for themselves what kind of a banking system they will have, or whether they will have any banks at all; we agree that the people may decide for themselves what shall be the elective franchise in their respective States; they shall decide for themselves what shall be the rule of taxation and the principles upon which their finance shall be regulated; we agree that they may decide for themselves the relations between husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward; and why should we not then allow them to decide for themselves the relations between master and servant? Why make an exception of the slavery question, by taking it out of that great rule of self-government which applies to all the other relations of life? The very first proposition in the Nebraska bill was to show that the Missouri restriction, prohibiting the people from deciding the slavery question for themselves, constituted an exception to a general rule, in violation of the principle of self-government; and hence that that exception should be repealed, and the slavery question, like all other questions, submitted to the people, to be decided for themselves.

      "Sir, that was the principle on which the Nebraska bill was defended by its friends. Instead of making the slavery question an exception, it removed an odious exception which before existed. Its whole object was to abolish that odious exception, and make the rule general, universal in its application to all matters which were local and domestic, and not national or federal. For this reason was the language employed which the President has quoted; that the eighth section of the Missouri act, commonly called the Missouri Compromise, was repealed, because it was repugnant to the principle of non-intervention, established by the compromise measures of 1850, '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.' We repealed the Missouri restriction because that was confined to slavery. That was the only exception there was to the general principle СКАЧАТЬ