V; ♦' i°^ V "^ 6°* c> * \/ ^/ p' \ * «7^ ^ # m %'• .To • .0- -o 1 - Apr T a0° V ••»*• ^ . ^_ 0° ^ THE RELATION OF PHILIP PHILLIPS TO THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE IN 1854 BY HENRY BARRETT LEARNED Reprinted from the Mississippi Vallby Historical Review Vol. VIII, No. 4, March, 1922 & M3 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW Vol. VIII, No. 4 March, 1922 THE RELATION OF PHILIP PHILLIPS TO THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE IN 1854 x Here and there in the annals of American history several rather casual references may be found to a lawyer and publicist who died in Washington, D. C, on January 14, 1884, almost thirty-eight years ago. To Philip Phillips, known familiarly to his friends in the fifties of the last century as "Colonel" Phillips, the bar of the supreme court of the United States paid tribute in February following his death ; and simple resolutions to his honorable memory as a man and a lawyer were duly re- corded in the files of that court at the request of George F. Edmunds, republican senator from Vermont. 2 In the course of the tributes there were a few suggestions of days then long past when as a democratic representative from the Mobile dis- trict of Alabama Colonel Phillips, sitting in the sessions of the thirty-third congress, had taken part in activities and counsels associated with the troubled passage to law in May, 1854, of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Bitterness of feeling and acrimony over that act which once divided parties and aroused the heat of the slavery issue north and south into a hot flame have, it may be assumed to-day, passed away long since. But problems still difficult and perhaps impossible of precise solution which arose out of the situation are likely for some time to come to interest students of history. On one of these problems the following con- siderations may throw a side light. As far back as 1874 Henry Wilson, in his work on the History i This paper was read at a meeting of the American historical association held in St. Louis, December 29, 1921. 2 In memoriam. Proceedings of the supreme court of the United Stales on the death of Philip Phillips and the action of the court thereon (Washington, 1884). 304 Henry Barrett Learned m. v. h. r. of the rise and fall of the slave power in America, referred casually to Philip Phillips. 3 More recently Mr. Ray, in his study of the questions of the origin and authorship of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, has shown that he was aware of Colonel Phillips' special interest in the repeal, like that of many another southerner. 4 And John Bach McMaster, in the eighth volume of his history published in 1913, cited in a footnote a passage from Phillips' autobiography, a copy of which he found in the manuscript collections of the Library of congress. 5 No one, however, has yet taken the trouble to examine Phillips' work during January, 1854, while the Nebraska bill was under- going a process of change. The problem of considering Phillips' contribution to that process is simplified by the fact that all essential changes in the bill appear to have occurred be- tween January 4 and February 7. The chief author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Addressing Douglas in the senate on February 23, 1855 — just a year after the leading events which come within the range of this consideration — Senator Wade of Ohio burst out in this wise : "I ask the gentle- man if his Nebraska bill was not concocted by a secret conclave, in the night time?" "No, sir," answered Douglas, "the Nebraska bill was not concocted in any conclave, night or day. It was written by myself, at my own house, with no man pres- ent. " e In making this direct reply the senator from Illinois was thinking of hours of labor put by him on the amended Nebraska bill which as chairman of the senate committee on territories he had reported to the senate on Wednesday, January 4, 1854. Probably he recalled at the same time, a little vaguely, the special report which accompanied on that momentous day the amended bill. Could he, it may fairly be asked, have wholly forgotten the leading circumstances which forced, in January days following, the process of altera- 3 (Boston, 1872-1877), 2:383. 4 P. Orman Ray, The repeal of the Missouri compromise. Its origin and author- ship (Cleveland, 1909), 213, 214; compare Ray, "The genesis of the Kansas- Nebraska act," in American historical association, Annual report, 1914 (Washington, 1916), 1:267. s A history of tJw people of the United States (New York, 1885-1913), 8:195. « Congressional globe, 33 congress, 2 session, appendix, 216. Vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 305 tion and change of which at the time, in 1854, he must have been fully cognizant? We know now that the repeal of the Missouri compromise — the most significant feature of the matured bill which became law on May 30, 1854 — was worked into Douglas' bill between January 4 and February 7. The writer will try to show what Colonel Philip Phillips, then a representative from Alabama, had to do with this particular feature of the bill. For several years prior to 1854 efforts had been made to organize a government for Nebraska territory, a vast region containing almost half a million square miles of land inhabited by a few hundred white settlers and by scattered tribes of In- dians. The region was all that was left of the Louisiana pur- chase ; it extended northward from the Arkansas river and New Mexico to the Canadian border, and westward from Missouri to the Rocky mountains; it included the present states of Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and a part of Colorado. It was a veritable empire, almost unknown in character, but promising future developments tempting in political, social, and industrial directions. A comparatively recent attempt to organize its government had failed at the close of the thirty-second congress in March, 1853. In December f ollowing, soon after the opening of the first session of the thirty- third congress, Senator Dodge of Iowa reintroduced the old measure. It was this bill elaborated and revised which Douglas brought forward on January 4, accompanied by a special report. Observe that the Douglas bill contained on January 4 no reference to the Missouri compromise. Only two sections of the bill, sections 14 and 21, touched upon slavery. The important one of these declared among other things that, so far as the question of slavery was concerned, the bill was designed to carry into practical operation the principles established by the com- promise measures of 1850; "all questions," it said, "pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new states to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, through their appropriate representatives." 7 The special report went into sundry details and was explana- tory of the bill. It quoted exactly the well-known eighth section of the act admitting Missouri as a state in 1820 — a section which i Section 21. 306 Henry Barrett Learned m.v.h.r, excluded slavery forever from the region of the Louisiana pur- chase north of 36° 30' . It gave evidence that Douglas or his com- mittee had taken carefully into the reckoning the controversy be- tween north and south that might arise over the question of slavery in the Nebraska region. But it recommended neither an affirmation nor a repeal of the eighth section of the old Missouri act. ' ' Your committee, ' ' said the report, "do not feel themselves called upon to enter into the discussion of these controverted questions. They involve the same grave issues which produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 1850. " 8 Considered together, the revised bill and the special report are evidence sufficient to account for the prompt arousing of con- troversy, for neither the bill nor the special report left a clear impression. Intended as an interpretation of the bill, the re- port was especially startling in at least three respects: (1) It forced into a general principle phraseology drawn from the com- promise measures of 1850 and hitherto considered applicable only to Utah and New Mexico, so far as slavery was concerned. Re- ferring to this aspect of Douglas' position, the Washington Daily Union said: "He plants himself resolutely upon the compromise of 1850 as a final settlement — not final merely as to the Territo- ries then in dispute, but final as to all future legislation for terri- torial governments." 9 Again, (2) it voiced the views of a north- ern democrat from Illinois, easily the leader in the senate of his party — a party which had won its presidential victory largely on the ground of promising peace, if not silence, on the slavery issue. Finally, (3) it called attention to the conflict of opinion existing in the country over the question of the constitutional validity of the Missouri act of 1820. In this aspect of the report the New York Tribune was quick to detect trouble. "An overt attempt is set on foot," it declared, "in Mr. Douglas's Nebraska bill to override the Missouri Compromise." Then, after quoting exactly the language of the well-known eighth section of the Missouri act, it continued: "This plain and unequivocal a , declaration that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall V I $ Senate reports, 33 congress, 1 session, no. 15, 1:30. Printed also in the Washington Daily Union, January 6, 1854, and in the National Intelligencer (Wash- ington, D. C), January 7. 9 January 5, 1854. Vol. viii, No. 4 R e p ea i f the Missouri Compromise 307 ever exist in our Northwest Territories is unceremoniously bustled aside by Mr. Douglas, who makes the Compromise measures of 1850 the scapegoat for his sin in doing it." 10 Hardly more than a week elapsed after the appearance of the bill and the special report before the newspapers north and south were commenting on the question of the repeal of the Missouri compromise. Had that repeal been contemplated, it was asked, by the makers of the Nebraska bill ? By the following February 7 the bill had been elaborated and so altered that its language was perfectly clear in respect to the doubtful point. In other words, Douglas' final amendment offered to the senate on that day declared the eighth section of the act of March 6, 1820, to be "inoperative and void." And this language went unchanged into the law. 11 The first attempt publicly to bring about the repeal of the Missouri compromise by the introduction of an amendment to that effect into the language of the Nebraska bill was made by a southern whig, Senator Archibald Dixon, a Kentucky slaveholder. Brought to the attention of the senate on Monday, January 16, the Dixon amendment was designed to be the concluding section — section 22 — of the bill in its then existent form. The amend- ment called for the withdrawal of the eighth section of the old Missouri act of 1820 from application to the Nebraska territory and permitted citizens of all states and territories "to take and hold their slaves within any of the territories of the United States, or of the States to be formed therefrom, as if the said act . . . had never been passed." That the injection of the Dixon amendment into the situation greatly disturbed Douglas there is good ground for believing. 12 But that the incident prob- ably tended toward quickening the process of reshaping the bill of January 4 is likewise clear. Although it is true that the Dixon amendment as such never io January 6, 1854. 11 In tracing the course of the Nebraska bill — known as S. 22 and H. E. 236 — the writer has depended upon the original printed files of bills to be found in the Library of congress and known as Senate bills, 33 congress, 1 session (1853-1854) and House of representatives, Bills and resolutions, for the same congress. The Kansas-Nebraska act, signed by President Pierce on May 30, 1854, is in Unite. I States, Statutes at large, 10:277-290. 12 Archibald Dixon to Henry S. Foote, September 30, 1858, in H. M. Flint, Life of Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1860), 172-173. 308 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. b. became law, it had the effect promptly to bring out and sharply to define the issue. The tumult of popular discussion, already loud, became louder. During the week following January 16 politicians in the national capital became extraordinarily active. Among leaders and their following there was much discussion over the possible repeal of a time-honored measure. Sharp editorials appeared on the Nebraska question. Judging from them and from some variety of letters written by Washington correspondents, it was evident that the attitude of the adminis- tration, that is to say, of President Pierce and his cabinet advisers, was frequently a matter of serious doubt and grave question. In brief, the mere proposal of the Dixon amendment helped markedly toward a reopening of the question of slavery extension. That, it appeared, was the real issue of the day. It is at this point in the consideration that the figure of Colonel Philip Phillips of Alabama should be brought into view. It was about this time — in January, 1854— that as a member of the house committee on territories he formulated in writing an amendment which was designed, like Dixon's, to repeal the Missouri compromise. Unlike Dixon's, what may be called the Phillips amendment was never given publicity either at the time of its formulation or later. In the long course of debates in congress there was no reference made to it. Its language, so far as the writer can discover, has never been printed. To-day it is to be found only on a copy of the original print of the bill of January 4 — presumably Colonel Phillips' own copy used at the time that the bill was pending in the senate committee — and in a slightly different form on a loose sheet of blue letter paper on which it was probably first drafted. Both drafts are in a collection of family papers which were deposited several years ago by Mr. P. Lee Phillips, Colonel Phillips' son, in the Library of congress. That the Phillips amendment was known to Senator Douglas and to a few other leading members of the thirty-third congress is certain. Abundant evidence, although largely circumstantial and indirect, reveals Colonel Phillips as an active worker for the repeal. If he worked often behind the scenes, in caucus or conference or conclave (as he undoubtedly did work) , he had, nevertheless, a part in the general process that vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 309 after January 4 was making for the reshaping of the Nebraska bill. What Dixon attempted to accomplish in a public way Colonel Phillips attempted to bring about quietly and un- obtrusively. While neither Dixon nor Phillips can be con- sidered the author of the repeal, both men worked for the con- summation of the repeal in the language of the law and helped forward the process by means of which it was clearly set in the statute of May 30. Philip Phillips served for only a single term in the national house of representatives, from December, 1853, to March, 1855, and retired at his own request. Political position and prefer- ment were merely incidents in his long life. His chief work was that of a lawyer who took rank before his death in January, 1884, as a jurist of unusual distinction. From the close of the civil war he made his home in Washington, D. C. There as a member of a group of lawyers known in those days as ' ' the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States" he served lawyers outside that group after the maimer of a barrister. Before the supreme court he presented or argued hundreds of cases after 1865. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in December, 1807. He was partly educated there and as a youth was sent to New England to continue his studies at the famous academy of Captain Alden Partridge, 13 where, from 1823 to 1826, he must have known as a fellow student for a year or so Gideon Welles, later secretary of the navy under Presidents Lincoln and John- son. He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1828. Four years later he was a member of the South Carolina con- stitutional convention, in which he opposed the doctrine of nullification. He served for a short time in the South Carolina legislature. He was not thirty years old when he decided to remove to Mobile. From there he was twice sent to the Alabama state legislature. In 1852 he appeared as a delegate at the Balti- more convention which nominated Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire as the democratic candidate for the presidency. At the very outset of his term in the thirty-third congress he was put upon the house committee on territories. As' a member of this committee he felt called upon to work for what he con- 13 For a sketch of Partridge and his influence, see Henry B. Learned, "Captain Alden Partridge," in the Nation, 90:554-555. 310 Henry Barrett Learned M.v. H. R. ceived to be the true interests of his party and his section of the south — the repeal of the Missouri compromise. 14 The Phillips amendment read as follows: "That the people of the Territory through their Territorial legislature may legis- late upon the subject of slavery in any manner they may think proper not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, and all laws or parts of laws inconsistent with this authority or right shall, from and after the passage of this act, become inoperative, void and of no force and effect." 15 We are without contemporary evidence as to the time at which Colonel Phillips felt called upon to formulate this proposition. Kef erring to the subject rather more than six years later — on August 24, 1860 — he said that he had formulated it "a few days after the introduction of the bill ' ' of January 4. 16 At any rate, he wrote it into an original printed copy of that bill, as it already has been stated. And from the time of the appearance of that particular form of the bill he can probably be reckoned as among those observers who regarded the Douglas draft of the Nebraska bill as lacking in clearness on the subject of slavery in the territory. The Dixon amendment, it will be remembered, was put in strong language and called directly for a repeal of the eighth section of the Missouri act of 1820. Phillips ' proposition, by comparison, was designed to accomplish in the end the same thing, for it too would have made the old law, so far as it applied 14 For this account the writer has relied largely on a careful sketch of Philip Phillips to be found in William A. Ellis, Norwich university, 1819-1911 : her history, her graduates, her roll of honor (Montpelier, Vermont, 1911), 2:199-200. 15 Copied from a scrap of blue paper in Phillips' handwriting. The slightly different formulation of the amendment, also in Phillips' handwriting, on the original printed copy of the bill as presented on January 4, shows that Phillips intended that his amendment should be inserted in section 1 of that bill. This second formulation reads: "And that the people of said Territory through the territorial Legislature hereafter provided may legislate upon the subject of Slavery in any manner they may think proper not inconsistent with the principles of the Constitution of the TJ. S. — And all laws or parts of laws inconsistent with this authority or right shall, from and after the passage of this act, be and become in- operative, void, and of no force and effect." To this he adds a comment: 1 "This is a proposition of my own submitted to Senator Hunter and others, [initialed] P. P." i' 6 See Phillips ' letter entitled ' ' The repeal of the Missouri act, ' ' dated August 24, 1860, at Washington, D. C, and printed the next day in the Constitution (Wash- ington, D. C). In this letter the writer recalled interviews with Douglas and President Pierce in 1854. vol. viii, No. 4 B e p ea i f the Missouri Compromise 311 to the Nebraska region, void and inoperative. But its language was less direct. It was probably formulated a few days after Dixon's amendment of January 16. Near that time it was sub- mitted to Senator Hunter of Virginia and to a few others actively interested in having the Missouri compromise repealed. That is as much as can now be said. Bef erring in 1860 to the Douglas first draft of the Nebraska bill, Phillips wrote that he remembered that the bill "contained the same provision as had been engrafted on the acts of 1850 for organizing New Mexico and Utah, to wit : 'That when admitted as a State the said Territory shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at the time of their admission. ' ' ' He continued in this wise : ' ' The consideration of this subject was presented to my mind as a member of the House committee specially charged with it, and believing that the provision referred to could not work out the equality and fairness which on its face it promised, while a statute existed which completely excluded slaveholders from settling in the Territory up to the very period of inaugurating the State constitution, I submitted to a distinguished southern Senator ... a written proposition for the repeal of this 8th section. ... In the meantime Mr. Dixon of Kentucky, a southern Whig, had given notice in the Senate that he would propose the repeal." 1T It may be at once remarked that, in assuming in 1860 that his proposition of 1854 involved a direct repeal of the eighth section of the Missouri act, Phillips went rather too far and claimed too much. But that he was active and probably influential in help- ing to shape the ultimate form of the repeal is, the writer thinks, true. An unusual occurrence on Sunday, January 22, 1854, caught the attention of several Washington correspondents: a con- ference or conclave, doubtless intended to be kept secret, was held on that day at the White House. It was held just, the day before Senator Douglas submitted for the second time to the senate his Nebraska bill markedly altered and including pro- visions for the organization of two territories, Nebraska and Kansas, and expressly "superseding" the eighth section of the i7 Constitution, August 25, 1860. 312 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. r. Missouri act of 1820 — declared " inoperative" — by the prin- ciples of the compromise measures of 1850. Naturally this con- ference at the White House was looked upon as an incident of peculiar interest and, in quarters hostile to the administration, with great suspicion. It was assumed, generally speaking, that this secret meeting established or fixed the attitude of the president and his cabinet, hitherto considered to be doubtful, as in favor of the new form of the bill ; in other words, as in favor of the doctrine of "superseding" the troublesome section of the Missouri act by the more recent law of 1850. Although the word "repeal" did not occur in the language of the bill, never- theless the bill was understood to involve the design of a repeal. There are several accounts of this White House meeting of January 22. The Washington correspondent of the Netv York Herald wrote a letter regarding it on the next day, January 23, which appeared in print on Tuesday, January 24. He had gathered impressions from some unknown source, impressions which sounded as though he had gained them from a participant ; and his story, told with considerable detail, appeared to be plausible. Twenty-five years later, in September, 1879, Jeffer- son Davis wrote for Mrs. Archibald Dixon an account of the meeting as he remembered it. 18 In June, 1876, Philip Phillips, a participant at the meeting, set down recollections of it in the course of a fragmentary autobiography intended for his children. It is quite the most explicit record of the meeting now known to exist. According to all accounts, the meeting was held for the pur- pose of obtaining President Pierce's approval of the new form of the Nebraska bill with its startling and novel doctrine of "superseding" one law by another. This approval, it is agreed, was then and there obtained. In brief, the administration be- came committed to a formulation — at the moment, to be sure, in process of development toward a more definite and final formulation — that after February 7 made fairly secure the actual repeal of the Missouri compromise restricting line, if the bill became law. !* Mrs. Archibald DLxon, The tribe history of the Missouri compromise and its repeal (Cincinnati, 1899), 458. Compare Jefferson Davis, The rise and fall of the confederate government (New York, 1881), 1:27-28. Vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 313 No quite definite conclusion can be reached at present as to the time at which, the meeting took place. Davis' record makes it appear to have been held on Sunday morning, perhaps before the hour of church. The account in the Herald set no time. Phillips' record asserts that the meeting, prearranged by Senator Douglas, occurred soon after nine o'clock in the evening. Who took part in the conference? According to Jefferson Davis, at the time President Pierce's secretary of war, he arranged for the meeting and was present. Phillips, on the other hand, makes no reference to Davis. Besides himself, Phillips says that the president saw at the conference Senators Douglas, Atchison of Missouri, R. M. T. Hunter and James M. Mason of Virginia, and Representatives William 0. Goode of Virginia and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. In respect to steps taken preliminary to the conference, he names also Senator A. P. Butler of South Carolina as having a share. The correspondent of the Herald thought that Senator Jesse D. Bright of Indiana was present — like Douglas a northern Demo- crat. From Phillips' record it would appear that Atchison and Douglas acted as the leaders of the group. Phillips related that shortly after January 4, moved by his conviction that the Douglas bill of that date was confusing rather than clear on the question of slavery extension in the Nebraska territory, he first expressed this thought to his friend, Senator Hunter, and to a few others. Somewhat later in the month he sought out David Atchison, then acting president of the senate by reason of the death in April, 1853, of Vice President William R. King of Alabama, and confided to him his view of the Douglas measure. A brief conference followed, perhaps on the next day — a conference in which Atchison, Douglas, and Phillips took part. On Thursday, we are told — presumably January 19, three days after the Dixon amendment had been brought to public attention — Senator Douglas and Representative Breckin- ridge called on Phillips; on this occasion, at the request of Douglas, Phillips drafted his form of amendment already quoted. 19 Soon after this, probably on the next day (Friday), a conference "in the rear of the Patent Office" was held between Mm and a few leading politicians, mostly senators; and this is See ante, p. 310. 314 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. r, group, apparently in sympathy with Phillips' thought, agreed to the form of his proposed amendment and authorized Phillips to communicate their conclusion to Douglas. This was done by Phillips on Saturday, January 21. That same day, according to Phillips' recollection, Douglas arranged with President Pierce for the White House conference that took place on Sunday, per- haps in the evening. 20 It is worth observing that in these secret arrangements Douglas appears to have been the only man of the senate com- mittee on territories taking any part, and that Philip Phillips was the single member of the house committee who is mentioned. Yet the probabilities are that others, not named and not present, knew what was going on. In any such matter heavy with con- sequences Douglas would have taken merely the lead, fortified as he was by Atchison's approval and presence, to say nothing of that of the others. While it is true that the details of any such meeting as that which took place on Sunday, January 22, 1854, can never be exactly known, we need be in no great doubt as to its essential object in the light of such circumstances as can be verified. Re- ferring to President Pierce on that Sunday, Jefferson Davis, whose account can probably be trusted on this aspect of the matter, wrote: ''When the bill had been fully explained to him, its text, its intent, and its purpose, he, as anticipated, declared his opinion in its favor, and the gentlemen left him with the assurance they came to obtain before testing the question of their bill before the two Houses of Congress." 21 According to Phillips' statement, President Pierce met the committee "in the library" of the White House. Douglas and Atchison, having driven there ahead of the others, were with the president. "I was struck," wrote Phillips, "by the cold formality which seemed to prevail. The subject was soon entered upon ; but I do not propose to repeat what occurred, further than this : the President said, 'Gentlemen, you are entering a serious under- 20 Details of a more or less picturesque kind can be found in the manuscript fragment of Phillips' autobiography. The writer has examined the Marcy papers for additional light, but without result. When the papers of Caleb Gushing or those of John C. Breckinridge become available to the investigator, perhaps several questions now unanswerable will then be solved. 21 Dixon, History of the Missouri compromise and its repeal, 458. Vol. vin, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 315 taking, and the ground should be well surveyed before the first step is taken.' The result of this conference is found," he added, "in the act, May 30, 1854." 22 The text of the revised Nebraska bill, submitted to the senate by Douglas on the following day, Monday, January 23, satisfied Senator Dixon, as is well enough known. Probably it also satis- fied Phillips. Both men were eager to obtain, by the doctrine of "superseding" one law by another or otherwise, the abrogation of the famous eighth section of the act of 1820. 23 But both men were better satisfied, it is reasonable to conclude, when Douglas, abandoning this peculiar doctrine on or about February 7, acknowledged that congress should not be permitted to intervene in either states or territories, so far as slavery was concerned, and put forward his last amendment to that effect on that day, thus making the old eighth section "inoperative and void." The doubts of the democrats, particularly of the southern slave- holders, slowly but surely vanished as the great series of debates proceeded. And on May 30, with the approval of the administra- tion, the Missouri compromise had gone into the limbo of doctrinaire legislation, never to be revived. We obtain just a glimpse of Phillips' thought on the subject in his autobiography, when he refers to his amendment as follows: "When I made this proposition, I was well satisfied that slavery could never be established in the high latitude of those territories [i. e. Nebraska and Kansas]. I was actuated by what I then regarded as a theoretical right. If the bill had organized the territories without referring to the question of slavery, I should probably have said nothing. But in the form in which it was presented [i. e. on January 4], I regarded it as 22 Autobiography in manuscript. 23 Douglas argued that the eighth section of the Missouri act of 1820 had been "superseded" by the compromise measures of 1850. The novel and startling aspect of this doctrine of supersession, which Douglas advocated as early as January 23, was due to the fact that, so far as the writer can discover, no such doctrine had ever been suggested between the legislation of the compromise of 1850 and the Nebraska bill of January, 1854. The eighth section of the Missouri act of 1820 remained, according to the usual opinion in 1850, undisturbed. Of course new legislation is not infrequently designed to supersede earlier laws. Douglas, however, soon abandoned his theory and felt forced by February 7 to go straight to the point and declare in so many words that the old section of 1820 was "inoperative and void." 316 Henry Barrett Learned m.v. h. e. delusive. That this measure increased the slavery agitation and hastened the crisis of 1861 is very probable. ' ' On Friday, February 10, there was printed in the Washington Union what would appear to have been an inspired editorial in that organ, well known to be in the closest touch with President Pierce and his cabinet. It was entitled ' i The administration and the Nebraska question," and a part of it read as follows: Without seeking to interfere with the action of Congress, the President has frankly and unreservedly expressed his conviction in favor of the principle of congressional non-intervention to all who have sought his opinions. As to the form of the proposition, he has not cared to inter- pose his preference ; but as to the substance of the proposition, he has consulted freely and anxiously. It is an entire mistake to suppose that the senators and representatives who have had the subject under their charge have not sought the benefit of his consultations, and have not secured the approval of his judgment in maturing a subject of so much moment. We make this remark with emphasis. . . . The bill, as pro- posed to be amended by Mr. Douglas, declaring the Missouri Compromise inoperative and void, because it is inconsistent with the principles of the Compromise of 1850, and securing to the inhabitants of the Territory the right to regulate the subject of slavery for themselves . . . cannot fail, when passed, to meet his ready approval. Here was a reflection probably made by some one who knew the facts concerning the Sunday session of January 22, that "secret conclave" in which Philip Phillips had a part. We can- not say that he had with him on that occasion his written prop- osition. It is reasonably clear, however, that he had already committed it to writing, probably, as he recalled, at Douglas' request on the Thursday previous. And either he or Douglas may have used it as a basis for some discussion ; but of this dis- cussion there is no recorded trace. The publicity already given to Dixon's amendment since the previous Monday would have made it an easy matter for President Pierce and the other mem- bers of the conference to discuss that too, had they so desired. Neither Phillips' nor Dixon's respective propositions can be clearly differentiated in the language of the law. On that language both of them, it may plausibly be argued, probably left a trace. Only this thought does the writf wish to emphasize by way of conclusion: the scanty records left by Philip Phillips in manuscript or in print need leave no aoubt that any careful Vol. viii, No. 4 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise 317 study of his career in the thirty-third congress must throw a side light on the repeal of the Missouri compromise. Like many another, known or unknown to history, he aided the process mak- ing for this result. In the writer's judgment, the repeal of the Missouri compromise can not be ascribed to any single man. The result of an historical process, the repeal was accomplished, as everybody knows, in the spring of 1854. Such accomplish- ments in legislation as the repeal — whatever we may think of them — are rarely brought about without the active efforts and earnest cooperation of many minds. Henry Barrett Learned Washington, D. C. W46 O v ^ *o • » • A O J* * -'war* «r * •" »:* '*> ^' v*P*\* A>«^ V ^ ** aVj* -^lil^ c^n o^^WKSS?* a>"^ O p o .0' '• -w .A* « • r • . ^ <& **' C 4 ^^ v .. ^ ". r ^0^ .J