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 DOUGLAS' DOCTRINE 
 
 /y 
 
 OF 
 
 POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 IN THE TERRITORIES 
 
 ITS 
 
 COUNTERPART 
 
 BY A MISSOUKIAK 
 
 * 3H\^> 
 
 ST. LOUIS: 
 
 PRINTED BY R. V. KENNEDY &CQMPANY 
 
 OFFICE OF THE CITY DIRECTORY. 
 
 1860. 
 

 TO THE 
 
 HON. FRANCIS P. BLAIR, JR., 
 
 THIS PAPER IS SUBMITTED, 
 
 In respect to the thoughtfulness and resolve with which he 
 has received and advocated the views and plan of Mr. Jeffer- 
 son, on the subject of Negro Colonization — a question of 
 importance to the white and black races in the Union, involving 
 material interests of the highest order to the one, and of 
 humanity to the other; and which, from the very fact of its 
 pure and unmixed usefulness, elicits the usual opposition that 
 arises and confronts the benefit of the people. 
 
MR. DOUGLAS' DOCTRINE 
 
 OF 
 
 POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 IN TILE TERRITORIES; 
 
 ITS 
 
 BY A MISSOURIAN. 
 
 The views of Mr. Douglas, in elucidation of the principle 
 of Popular Sovereignty, are given in the September number 
 of Harper's Magazine ; the article is elaborate, and contains all 
 the facts and reasoning that can probably be advanced in its 
 support. We may safely rely, that upon this exposition the 
 Senator places himself in defence of his doctrine of "Squatter 
 Sovereignty." If the basis be substantial, in conformity with 
 the faithful interpretation of Constitutional provision, Mr. 
 Douglas has done eminent service to the Nation, for which he 
 should be well remembered — if, on the other hand, facts are 
 strained and disjointed, and a perverted, nay, corrupt interpreta- 
 tion of Constitutional Law is manifest therein, upon analysis, the 
 necessary result follows, of disappointment commensurate with 
 the design, and the loss of faith in the opinion of the people — 
 the most fatal blight in our country to the prospects of a public 
 man. 
 
 The importance of a political subject is usually considered 
 a just ground for amplification in its treatment. Mr. Douglas' 
 treatise has the merit of extensive research. Yet take away the 
 magnitude of the matter, and the facts bearing upon it are few, 
 and the reasoning manifest; the Senator, however, having 
 concluded otherwise, has treated the subject with a large array 
 
of statement, the application of which is more than ambiguous . 
 I do not deny, but am pleased to acknowledge, that the gentle - 
 man has evinced varied tact and wariness in his arrangemen t. 
 He states the position of the Republican Party on the Consti- 
 tutional power of Congress overthe Territories, and of the right 
 and duty of Congress, in the exercise of that power, to prohibit, 
 among other things, slavery therein, in the language of their 
 Convention; he places the doctrine of the National Democracy in 
 the line of irreconcilable opposition thereto, but admits it would 
 beuncandid to deny that there are radical differences of opinion 
 in that party, respecting the powers and duties of Congress, 
 and the rights and immunities of the people of the Territories 
 under the Federal Constitution, (on the subject of Slavery.) 
 He then divides the National Democracy into three segments, 
 upon the proper construction of the constitutional provision 
 touching the powers of Congress over Slavery in the 
 Territories ; and after ignoring the interpretation of two of 
 them, he declares himself, as usual, in favor of the following, 
 as the Constitutional doctrine : 
 
 First: Those who believe that the Constitution of the 
 United States neither establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the 
 States or Territories beyond the power of the people legally to 
 control it, but 'leaves 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.' 
 
 Having given his reasoning in antagonism to the interpreta- 
 tion that the Constitution establishes Slavery in the Territories, 
 to be vindicated as some of the National Democracy contend, 
 either by the Territorial Legislature, or, in lack thereof, by 
 Congress, or by the Judiciary, by virtue of Constitutional 
 authority, and independent of any Legislative action whatever, 
 as by some leaders of the Democracy is proclaimed, Mr. 
 Douglas settles down to an array of facts and reasoning in 
 support of his construction of the Constitution. Such is the 
 plan of the treatise ; he states and opposes the the conven- 
 tional views of the Republican party — he wipes away the ultra 
 interpretation of those of the Democracy who maintain that 
 the Constitution creates Slavery in the Territories, either by 
 subordinate Legislation, or, propria vigore ; and concludes that 
 the people of a Territory, and no other authority, have, under 
 the Constitution, the right to regulate the question. Such is 
 the system of his address, plain enough when analysed and 
 stripped of various excrescences that profusely surround it. 
 
 From this it appears that any one who differs with Mr. 
 Douglas need have no care of defending, except incidentally, 
 
the Republican Doctrine — that Doctrine is now the assailant, 
 and Mr. Douglas is on the defense. Having defeated, as he 
 deems, the interpretation of the Republican Party in Congress 
 by the Compromise Acts of 1850-54, he sits entrenched within 
 the fortress of a Legislative section and invites attack. The 
 proper course then is to simplify proceedings — omitting, except 
 of necessity, any vindication of the interpretation by the 
 Republican party, of the Constitutional right of Congress over 
 the question of Slavery in the Territories, and much more, 
 neglecting altogether the intemperate views of that portion of 
 his own party, which Mr. Douglas himself proclaims unsound, 
 let us analyze the facta and reasoning of the Senator, and award 
 him the result of impartial justice. 
 
 One difficulty, however, presents itself at the outset, which 
 ought not to exist — the language of Mr. Douglas' proposition 
 is informal and obscure — nay, it is worse, but I prefer moderation ; 
 in grave proceedings, however, of momentous import, this is 
 unpardonable; and yet, if we rectify the language of the 
 Senator, what will become of his reasoning ? Read his first 
 classification as above, and insert between the words "but" 
 and "leaves", to make the sentence sense, the words "that it" 
 (viz : the Constitution of the United States,) and the Senator 
 has made a rich bequest to the Nation, in the following 
 unparalleled conclusion of his proposition: "First: Those 
 who believe that the Constitution of the United States neither 
 establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the States or Territories 
 beyond the power of the people legally to control it, but (that 
 it, the Constitution of the United States,) leaves 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." Such is the written wisdom of Senator 
 Douglas, and to so ripe a conclusion does he lead his readers. 
 I know the force of early education, and I can pardon its 
 dialectics. Here, in the West, the Creole expression, " cul de 
 sac" has been applied to a section of country once so entangled 
 that he who was unlucky enough to enter it, could not find his 
 way out ; and if the Constitution of the United States, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Douglas' parlance, is so liberal as to give the people 
 of a Territory perfect freedom to form and regulate the domestic 
 institution of Slavery in their own way, subject only to the 
 restrictions contained in that Constitution, I cannot see how 
 the gentleman escapes the position of the western wight who 
 first found himself in "the bottom of the hag." If the true con- 
 struction of the Constitution be, that the people of a Territory 
 have nothing to say on the subject, except by authority of 
 
6 
 
 Congress, through their Territorial Legislature, what is the 
 amount of this gift of perfect freedom so loudly harped upon? 
 
 But even the first part of his proposition is peculiar, and, I 
 fear, places the Senator in a worse dilemma. It would be strange 
 if the true interpretation of it cancelled his petted theory. 
 Mr. Douglas belongs to that class of the National Democracy 
 "who believe that the Constitution of the United States neither 
 establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the States or Territories, 
 beyond the power of the people legally to control it," the 
 converse whereof asserts, in unmistakable meaning, that the 
 Constitution establishes or prohibits Slavery in the States or 
 Territories at will, but within the power of the people legally to 
 control it ; thus he admits, in his own proposition, the Constitu- 
 tional right to regulate the subject of Slavery not only in the 
 Territories, but (tell it not South,) in the States, where, when 
 it exists, it is a legal institution, that no Republican dreams 
 of disturbing. The power of the people legally to control slavery 
 is impotent surplusage, idle to introduce into a controverted 
 subject, and partaking largely of scenic clap-trap — has it not 
 always, until within a few years, existed without question or 
 mooting? — have not the people of South Carolina, to-day, the 
 right to control Slavery legally, and expel it from their borders 
 if they choose? But how can the Constitutional provision, 
 thus, as Mr. Douglas admits, establishing or prohibiting slavery 
 in the Territories, (I omit States, in mercy to the gentleman,) 
 be enforced, except by Congressional action, and have not the 
 people of a Territory in their election of a Legislature, (as is 
 uniformly followed,) full power over the subject of Slavery, as 
 over every other subject matter that interests them locally? I 
 but glance here at the results which legitimately follow from 
 the logical interpretation of the language of the Senator; they 
 are radiant with hope, and if the mildest of the Democratic 
 sections, led on by a man of energy and ambition, in the 
 well-poised sentence that concentrates and embodies his con- 
 struction of the Constitution, find that they are marshalled 
 under false colors, and are marching North, too far North, 
 when told, in the loud tones of their leader, that their step 
 and mission are South, these gentlemen, a numerous body, 
 untinged with fanaticism, and obedient only to the will of the 
 Constitution, will pause and retreat from the covert ambush of 
 Mr. Douglas' favorite proposition. 
 
 But let us try to disregard language, and vindicate the 
 Senator's intent, however expressed. Except he beguiles us 
 and seeks to delude our virgin judgment, Mr. Douglas means 
 to inform the Nation that the Constitution of the United 
 
States confers no power upon Congress to interfere with the 
 question of Slavery in the States or Territories whatever, but 
 that the people thereof, and they alone, control it — I omit the 
 words "subject only to the Constitution of the United States" for 
 if Mr. Douglas is sincere, they are inapposite. Doubtless 
 Congress, under the Constitution, has the right of yea or nay 
 when a Territory applies for admission as a State, but, except 
 in this instance, which he cannot deny, and which leaves him 
 in a dread position, his theory excludes all Congressional 
 interference. This is the only doctrine I can unravel from his 
 circumlocution, and although subtlety has varied resources, 
 and can conveniently change the complexion and meaning of 
 a proposition indifferently expressed, sometimes for a purpose, 
 I submit to the public 'if this is not the true intent of the 
 doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty? 
 
 When the gentleman interposed the words "subject only to 
 the Constitution of the United States," why not elucidate his 
 exception, by declaring, in a word, in addition thereto, where, 
 in the Constitution, the provision lies, that makes the action 
 of the people in a Territory or State, on the question of 
 Slavery, subject to its control. If the people of a Territory 
 are perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institution 
 of Slavery by leave of the Constitution, as Mr. Douglas 
 reiterates, should he not be careful to point out where the 
 subjection of this perfect freedom is implied or expressed in 
 the Supreme Law — what is its amount and limit ? In the 
 absence of such authority, which he has not adduced, and 
 cannot, I will treat this language as it merits, in considering 
 the meaning of a political proposition of an American States- 
 man — I will pass it without notice — for among other reasons, 
 if the Constitution of the United States subjects the perfect 
 freedom of the people of a State or Territory _ to form and 
 re'gulate their domestic institution of Slavery in their own 
 way, to restriction, it necessarily establishes or prohibits 
 Slavery therein at pleasure. If such be the result, what becomes 
 of the Senator's hallucination? I shall, therefore, omit 
 noticing it, out of respect to the subject, or, if I touch upon 
 it again, it shall be when it may perchance benefit the Senator, 
 if possible — nor would it do to allow a national mischief to have 
 any chance of further existence. 
 
 Mr. Douglas' doctrine then, the true meaning of the propo- 
 sition in his first classification, which he upholds and embellishes, 
 apart from any redundancy of words that have no application, 
 or if any, one fatal to his purpose, is, that under the Constitution, 
 the people of a State or Territory are perfect freemen to form 
 
8 
 
 and regulate their domestic institution of Slavery in their own 
 way. To elucidate this, without any necessity, he addresses 
 himself with varied historical learning, Colonial, Revolutionary 
 and National. In a series of facts, recited from the history of 
 of the Colonies, Virginia especially, he maintains the distinction 
 that he draws in the first place between Federal and Local 
 authority, and argues that while the Colonies, to the very last, 
 implicitly yielded imperial authority to Great Britain, they 
 still insisted upon their right of making their own local laws, 
 forming their own domestic institutions and managing their 
 own internal affairs, Slavery included, in their own way, 
 subject only to the English Constitution, as the paramount 
 law of the Empire. 
 
 He further avers that the Colonies recognized and conceded 
 to the Imperial Government all general powers, including the 
 right to institute their government, by granting charters, 
 under which, the inhabitants residing within the limits of any 
 specified territory, might be organized into a political community, 
 with a government consisting of its appropriate departments, 
 executive, legislative and judicial; but that conceeding all 
 these powers, the Colonies emphatically denied that the 
 Imperial Government had any rightful authority to impose 
 taxes upon them without their consent, or to interfere with 
 their internal polity — claiming that it was the birthright of all 
 Englishmen, inalienable, when formed into a political com- 
 munity, to exercise and enjoy all the rights privileges and 
 immunities of self-government, in respect to all matters and 
 things, which were local and not general, internal and not 
 external, Colonial and not Imperial, as fully as if they were 
 inhabitants of England, with a fair representation in Parliament. 
 The statement proceeds to say "that our fathers of the 
 Revolution were contending, not for independence in the first 
 instance, but for the inestimable right of local self-government 
 under the British Constitution — the right of every distinct 
 political community, dependent Colonies, Territories, and 
 Provinces, as well as sovereign States, to make their own local 
 laws, form their own domestic institutions, and manage their 
 own internal affairs in their own way, subject only to the 
 Constitution of Great Britain, as the paramount law of the 
 Empire;" further "the Government of Great Britain had 
 violated this inalienable right of local self-government by a 
 long series of acts on a great variety of subjects." 
 
 I rescue myself here from the tedium of further quotation, 
 so prolific of the style peculiar to Mr. Douglas, and which, 
 being his own, differs materially from the S} r nopsis of the 
 
9 
 
 argument in favor of the Compromise Act of 1850, which he 
 extracts and condenses in his defense, and to which he puts in 
 a surreptitious claim of quasi, that is at once repudiated _ by 
 the luminous language of Mr. Clay. He sought to conciliate 
 the Nation upon a morbid subject, but was yet too pure, even 
 for the highest object of human ambition, to interpolate the 
 text of the Constitution, or give it intentionally a false gloss. 
 I will cheerfully yield to the weight of the inferential reasoning 
 of the Senator, whatever he claims for it fairly, if the facts of 
 Colonial remonstrance on the subject of Slavery, and the 
 tyranny of the British crown in answer thereto, be correctly 
 stated, which I deny. A parallel is drawn between the Con- 
 stitution and Government of Great Britain and her American 
 Colonies, (differing in legislation on the matter of Slavery,) 
 on the one side, and the Constitution and Congress of this 
 Union and the rights of the people of its Territories therein, 
 on the other ; and the inference drawn is, that the constant 
 struggle of the Colonial Legislatures against the interference 
 of the British crown, contrary to the Constitution of England 
 and the rights of the Colonies as denned in their Charters, 
 being facts well known to the Congress of 1774, induced them 
 to include the following among the series of their resolutions : 
 " That they are entitled to a free and exclusive power in their 
 several Provincial Legislatures, where their right of represen- 
 tation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and 
 internal polity :" and that, therefore, because of this resolution, 
 and still more because of the action of the Federal Convention 
 of 1787, which formed the present Constitution, wherein the 
 dividing line between Federal and Local authority, in respect 
 to Terrtories, was distinctly marked, it is patent, that in all the 
 Legislation, inchoate, progressive, or final, connected with the 
 Constitution, it could not have been within the intent of these 
 organic founders to introduce therein any provision authorizing 
 the interference of Congress on the subject of Slavery in the 
 Territories. 
 
 The attempt to draw a parallel between Great Britain and 
 her Colonies, and the United States and her Territories, is not 
 only infelicitous, but positively offensive. Can the Senator 
 point out where, in the British Constitution, any letter breathes 
 the distinction which he so fancifully draws between imperial 
 and local rights in the Colonies ? can he lead us to any provision 
 the most faint in the Colonial charters (mere patents of several 
 kings, given and revoked at pleasure, yielding no inalienable 
 birthrights, as Mr. Douglas mockingly intimates,) which 
 segregates the local rights of the Colonies from the general 
 
10 
 
 privileges of the crown? Can lie produce any act of the 
 British Parliament — whose legislation the Senator should be 
 informed was the supreme law, overruling, at pleasure, this 
 British Constitution that he so tastefully puts in juxtaposition 
 with the Constitution of our country — suspending at will the 
 Habeas Corpus Act, the right of trial by jury, and other com- 
 ponent parts of this mythical sex inscripta, can he adduce 
 any act of this supreme authority, during our Colonial existence, 
 that conferred one jot or tittle of privilege upon or recognized 
 an inalienable right of any American Colony, independent of 
 the parent power ? If such things do not exist, what becomes 
 of his statement that the Revolution was based upon the non- 
 recognition, by England, of the inalienable local rights of the 
 Colonies, when they had none ; why, after a bare mention of 
 the imposition of taxes without the consent of the payer, does 
 he studiously avoid the fundamental cause of the Revolution, 
 (taxation without representation,) and lay the burden of that 
 weighty movement upon the subordinate question of local 
 rights, that did not legally exist, and never were declared 
 inalienable, until the American Charter arose. Does he term 
 the taxation, against which the Colonies rebelled, an internal 
 and not an external matter ? and if by compulsion he is forced 
 to admit it an imperial impost, against which the Colonies had 
 no objection save one, viz : the denial to them of a voice in 
 the laying of it, either in the Parliament of Great Britain, by 
 their representatives there, or by the confirmatory vote of the 
 local Legislature, how does he affirm it, that the interference 
 by England with what he calls the internal polity of the 
 Colonies, (the Slavery question,) was not treated by her and 
 resisted by them, as an imperial right? Will it be said that 
 the dividing line between Federal and Local authority was 
 ever heard of, much less legalized, in any government of the 
 world, before the demarcation was first drawn by the Colonists 
 and solemnly affirmed in the Constitutions of the United 
 States ? That it was mooted and canvassed in the Colonies, is 
 obvious, as every other subject of political right was treated — 
 but it was merely embryotic and invasive, novel and revolu- 
 tionary, never recognized, but on the contrary scorned and 
 abhorred by Mr. Douglas' model Government of Great Britain, 
 from whom we derive, quoth he, our political theory and 
 system, as he delineates in such exact parallel. The privileges 
 of the English Charters were all that legally belonged to the 
 Colonies, and of these, whatever they were, they were only 
 tenants at will — not a ray of political right illuminates these 
 dreary documents — they dole out petty powers as a miser 
 
11 
 
 dispenses small charity, while lie grasps the real treasures 
 witl 1 a death hold. It is an incomprehensible slight to the intel- 
 ligence of the Nation, that the productive rights of States and 
 Territories, as authoritatively enunciated in the Federal Con- 
 stitution, and bearing the impress of perpetuity, should be 
 indecently trifled with, by an elaborate assimilation with the 
 barren grants to the Colonies, contained in the Charters of 
 their kings, arbitrary as they were, and revocable at will. Is 
 not history an open page, and can its facts be altered by Mr. 
 Douglas' declamation ? the American Revolution was based 
 not upon any violation by England of rights and privileges 
 by her conferred upon the Colonies, and which she afterwards 
 interdicted them in the exercise of, but upon the utter abne- 
 gation and tyrannous denial to her Colonial subjects of a right 
 (representative taxation,) which was enjoyed by her people 
 at home, aided and abetted by her stern refusal to the Colonics, 
 of the exercise of certain other rights, which they claimed to 
 be, first just, finally inalienable, of dealing, for instance, with 
 the domestic question of Slavery— to use the gentleman's 
 familiar, not to say homely language — in their own way. These 
 Charters were not even the true representatives of value — they 
 were more honest on their face, however, than the Senator's 
 interpretation of them ; he reads them as containing the gold 
 and silver standard of the Constitution of our country — 
 what a mockery ! They were tested by truer alchemists, Mr. 
 Jefferson for one, and pronounced base, whereupon they were 
 seized and destroyed by the iron hand of the Revolution. 
 
 The Senator can take nothing by this adroit attempt at 
 inferential aid from the preliminary quarrels, the war of words, 
 between England and the Colonies. There is no paternity in 
 the descent of a political right, which, though claimed and 
 embryotic, was never in existence, towards one that can be 
 plainly found living in a written Constitution — neither are we 
 required to understand the voice or silence of an instrument, by 
 the light of preliminary facts, so dim and indistinct as to render its 
 characters cabalistic. Mr. Douglas cannot deceive the American 
 people into the belief that, because England would not permit 
 the Colony of Virginia to check and restrain the policy of 
 negro importation and increase, " by the inhuman use of the 
 Royal negative," the framers of the Constitution, therefore, 
 would be deterred from inserting, in that instrument, a provision 
 authorizing the very right which the Colonies claimed. He 
 cannot wrench the facts of Colonial history from their true 
 application, although he will not take them, so to speak, as 
 they come, nor has he the power to extract from the disjointed 
 
12 
 
 statement any reasoning in aid of his wry inferences, which, 
 even a gownsman cannot dissipate. I pass from this attempt 
 at inferential aid, in behalf of the doctrine of "Squatter Sove- 
 reignty," by virtue of the effect of our Colonial history, 
 conceived with a shrewdness and treated with a transparency 
 altogether worthy of t^e gentleman's capacity. 
 
 The Constitution provides, that " Congress shall have power 
 to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations 
 respecting the Territories, or other property belonging to the 
 United States ;" this is a provision that has some bearing on 
 the subject of territorial treatment — the import of the term 
 " Territory," the extent and scope of its meaning become then 
 essential to understand the object of this Constitutional 
 provision. Mr. Douglas strenuously advocates that it shall be 
 interpreted according to the understanding of the day in which 
 it was first used. Why should he dread any knavish abuse 
 of the word ? it had never been used or understood, says he, 
 at the time the Constitution was framed, to designate a political 
 community or government of any kind, in any law, compact, 
 deed of session or public document, but had invariably been 
 used in its geographical sense, to describe the superficial area 
 of a state or district of country, as in the Virginia Deed of 
 Cession of the " territory or tract of country" Northwest of the 
 Eiver Ohio ; or, as meaning land in its character of property, 
 in which latter sense it appears in this clause of the Constitution 
 when providing for the disposition of the "territory or other 
 property belonging to the United States." These facts, says 
 he, taken in connection with the kindred one, that during the 
 whole period of the Confederation and the formation of the 
 Constitution, the temporary governments, which we now call 
 territories, were invariably referred to in the deeds of cession, 
 laws, compacts, plans of government, resolutions of Congress, 
 public records and authentic documents, (the Statesman is as pro- 
 fuse as a country attorney,) as States, or "new States," conclu- 
 sively show that the words "territory and other property," in the 
 Constitution, were used to designate the unappropriated lands 
 and other property which the United States owned, and not 
 the people who might become residents on those lands, and 
 be organized into political communities after the United States 
 had parted with their title." The meaning of all which 
 crowded verbiage is that in the year 1787, when the Constitu- 
 tion was constructed, the term " territory" meant land in its 
 character of property, and did not designate a political 
 community or government of any kind. Such is the definition 
 that pleases Mr. Douglas, and although a very limited one, 
 
13 
 
 jet, for this instance, it pleases us also. But, as it appears by 
 Mr. Douglas, there were in those days temporary governments, 
 now by us called Territories, then, that is, during the whole 
 period of the Confederation and the formation of the Consti- 
 tution (from 1778 to 1787,) known and referred to as States, 
 or new States, I would enquire of the gentleman, from what 
 source these go vermental formations arose ? But was there any 
 Territorial organization in existence from 1778 to 1787, the 
 period he quotes — if there was none, and if the origin of our 
 government is not yet lost, like that of the Eoman, in fable, 
 and never will be, I foretell, except Mr. Douglas assumes the 
 character of its historian, what becomes of his interpretation 
 of a provision that had its existence in the future, and did not 
 operate on the present or the past, for the reason that there 
 were none. If they were in existence, it must be by some 
 authority, and where, except in this provision, is that authority 
 to be found. This power, granted Congress by the Constitution, 
 was the first born offspring of a new order of political necessity ; 
 it was never needed before, and was given at the proper time 
 as an authority to govern the future. Many political organi- 
 zations having sprung up since 1787, not called States, or 
 " new States" — which never did exist, except in Mr. Douglas' 
 mythology — but Territories, as the term is now understood by 
 the people of this country, and was always understood from 
 the beginning of the formation of the governmental organiza- 
 tions called Territories, I am here prepared to enquire, if the 
 Senator is prepared to answer, how and by what authority, 
 except of this provision of the Constitution, these solemn 
 governmental organizations were created. This clause, accord- 
 ing to his statement, merely grants Congress an auctioneer's 
 license to cry its lands, or the authority of a peddler to 
 dispose of its governmental rubbish. I always thought, 
 however, that the ownership of property implied the right of 
 adjustment, transfer and sale, without the aid of a provision of 
 the Constitution of the United States to justify it — but I will 
 yield it, to accommodate the Senator ; if he struggles 
 to humiliate and dishonor the bright Charter of American 
 Rights, I will accompany him any distance, until he 
 reap the full reward of his impiety. If the Constitu- 
 tion was scrupulously careful to provide for the meanest 
 details of the Territorial household, its authors must have 
 been singularly provident and elaborate, in regard to the 
 birth and nurture of the occupant. These republican nurse- 
 lings were dearer in the eyes of the stern patriots of the 
 Revolution, than all the baby progeny of kings. The Constitu- 
 
14 
 
 tion was to be the text book from which the Federal Govern- 
 ment and its administrators were to draw their instructions for 
 territorial management. Mr. Douglas admits, strange to say, 
 that the provision empowering Congress to institute temporary 
 governments for the new States, arising in the unappropriated 
 lands of the United States, submitted by Mr. Madison in the 
 Convention and referred to the proper committee, was after- 
 wards embodied and now exists as a power in the Constitution. 
 I demand of him where, in the Constitution, if not in this 
 needful rule and regulation clause, where he all but swears 
 it does not exist — if not there, where then, thou embodiment 
 of consistency and logic ! Those Revolutionary sires, whom 
 the gentleman never lets slip the opportunity of piously 
 lauding, with the calm unction and affected sigh of a faded 
 beauty, who lives by what she lost, must have been very 
 heartless fathers, in making no provision for the legitimate 
 offspring of the country ; yet, after all, the founders of the 
 Constitution were not these improvident progenitors, nor are 
 the Territories foundlings, as Senator Douglas would cruelly 
 inform them — they are the decen dents and co-heirs of the general 
 government, raised and protected by its parent hand, according 
 to the letter and spirit of this Constitutional provision, without 
 which there was no connecting tie, no family link between the 
 relatives — the Constitution makes the Territory a child of the 
 Federal Government and an inheritor of State rights — the 
 doctrine of " Squatter Sovereignty," like the spirit of evil, for 
 an unholy purpose, would originate strife between child and 
 parent, exile the stripling from the threshold and hearth of 
 its founder, invent where it could not find, stubbornly deny 
 where it could not overlook, palliate and avert where it must 
 meet, and mystify where it could not blot out ; and all this, 
 with a bluster of patriotism, and an air of disinterested love 
 of the public, that naturally befits Mr. Douglas. 
 
 A distinction is sought to be drawn between the amount of 
 Congressional authority, legal in the Territories, and that over 
 the District, the seat of the government of the United States, 
 from the difference of language used in the Constitution. The 
 right of the exercise of exclusive legislation, in all cases what- 
 soever, over the District of Columbia, and all places in the 
 States, where the general Government erected needful buildings, 
 forts, magazines, &c, makes the difference, it is said, in the 
 powers, and draws the line between Federal and Municipal 
 authority. Sovereignty, wherever placed, is a unit, and retains 
 all it vast proportions naturally, except when shorn thereof 
 in part by express original compact ; limited sovereignty is the 
 
15 
 
 distinctive theory of our system, and the great extent to which 
 we have carried it, has worked wonders in the good govern- 
 ment of men ; it is an American invention, the patenting of 
 which cost profusely, but it pays better than the discovery of 
 the needle, the art of printing, electricity, or the cotton gin ; 
 the language which embodies this vital principle must be 
 construed with the utmost circumspection, nor }-et its intent 
 reached with any niggard hand ; above all it must be preserved 
 sacred from the taint of causistry. When the provision in 
 the Constitution, concerning the mode of government, what- 
 ever it is, of the Territories and the District, were enacted, 
 there was no Territorial organization in being, and the District 
 laud was not yet acquired of the States ; the Constitutional 
 provisions were, therefore, prospective in their operation ; the 
 species of provision that was applicable to a District, was not, 
 however, applicable to a Territorv — in process of time, the 
 Territory would become a State, which form the District could 
 never assume, under any circumstances — hence the separate 
 provisions and the difference in them — the one provides for a 
 permanent organization, the other for a transitory form of 
 government ; besides, the Constitution erected the Federal 
 Government by subtracting from State sovereignties certain 
 attributes, which loss, the Territories, when they lapsed into 
 States, should also encounter ; a condition that need not at all 
 be regarded in the case of the District — her fate was final, that 
 of a Territory diurnal — hence a necessary difference of Consti- 
 tutional provision — The exercise of exclusive legislation, in 
 all cases, whatever, over the District — being an unrestricted 
 petty sovereignty, differing from the State and Federal sove- 
 reignties, as defined and limited, elsewhere, in the Constitution 
 —is granted expressly, to guard it forever, as it was a perpetuity, 
 from such analogies as those of Mr. Douglas; but, in the case 
 of Territories, the undisputed sovereignty therein, that 
 enured instanter to the Federal Government the moment she 
 acquired the soil, as, for instance, the gift from Virginia, in 
 178-4, remained paramount and intact by Constitutional 
 restriction, it being beside the necessity of the case, to 
 interfere with the solemn right of sovereignty for a transient 
 and fleeting occasion ; hence Federal power in the District of 
 Columbia and the localities of forts, arsenals, &c., is marked 
 out distinctly, being an exclusive power, different from any 
 other in the Constitution ; and hence, also, Federal power in 
 the Territories, without its sovereignty therein being at all 
 questioned, is required in the general language befitting the 
 case, "to dispose of the territory, or other property, belonging 
 
16 
 
 to the United States, and to make all needful rules and regula- 
 tions respecting the same," being nothing more, whilst it 
 endorses the absolute inherent sovereignty in the Federal 
 Government over the Territories, in the most comprehensive 
 terms, than pointing out how that sovereignty should be 
 exercised by " Congressional Legislation" — analyse the pro- 
 vision : ' ' Congress shall have power to dispose of the Territory 
 belonging to the United States" — "dispose" — does the 
 language furnish a more comprehensive term for the purpose ; 
 perhaps, in the copiousness of his diction, the Senator could 
 supply it — but Mr. Madison, who was not given to wordiness, 
 selected it as the apposite term "to authorize Congress to 
 institute temporary governments for the new States" — nay, so 
 absolute is the aspect in which this and its kindred language 
 in the provision regards the sovereignty of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment over the Territories, that the terms employed "dispose" 
 — " rules and regulations" is the language used by the Autocrat 
 respecting his serf, and the master of his slave— you are not 
 compelled even to legislate for them — sic volo sicjubeo. It is 
 admitted that Mr. Madison submitted to the Constitutional Con- 
 vention, as of certain powers, the one "to institute temporary 
 government for the new States," and that the provision, of which 
 we are treating, was the result of this proposition, or, in the words 
 of Mr. Douglas, " here we find the original and rough draft of 
 these several powers as they now exist in their revised form 
 in the Constitution." What sense of public honor then belongs 
 to the corrupt assertion that this clause of the Constitution merely 
 confers power on Congress " to provide for the survey and 
 sale of the land, military sites, old ships, cannon, muskets, or 
 other property, real or personal, which belonged to the United 
 States, and are no longer needful for any public purpose ?" Of 
 equal decency— also, that is, in defiance of all decency, is the 
 following reputable statement, "such a power, had it been 
 vested in Congress, would annihilate the svereoignty and 
 freedom of the States, as well as the principle of self govern- 
 ment in the Territories wherever the United States happened 
 to own a portion of the public lands within their respective 
 limits, as at present, in several States and Territories," 
 (enumerating twenty of them.) To what shifts political, like 
 other crime, drives its votaries ; Mr. Douglas, having doggedly 
 affixed a vicious interpretation to the Constitutional text, is 
 compelled to take refuge in the States, in order to justify his 
 version of a provision, which he himself admits, was prepared 
 by Mr. Madison and embodied in the Constitution only for the 
 Territories, and here in this notable passage contends that his 
 
17 
 
 interpretation is conclusive, because, if the owner of property 
 in a State, (the Federal Government, for instance,) exercises 
 the right of ownership by selling it, a right that is inherent, 
 and needs no law to authorize its exercise, the sovereignty and 
 freedom of the State are annihilated and the great principle of 
 self-government in the Territories is ruined; he has taken 
 refuge in the States, a fugitive for the crime committed in the 
 Territories, and I here invoke the aid of the Constitutional pro- 
 vision to reclaim him. 
 
 The Senator is rather partial to political inuendo; when 
 he finds _ himself stripped of all direct authority in the 
 Constitution to invest a Territory with the insignia of 
 government, after he weakly abandons the only provision 
 that furnishes them, he falls back upon the mysteries 
 of inference and the power of comparison — u the provision," 
 says he, " to authorize Congress to institute temporary govern- 
 ments for the new States or Territories and to provide for 
 their admission into the Union, appears in the Constitution in 
 this form, "new States may be admitted by Congress into this 
 Union," — "the power," he continues, "to admit new States' 1 
 and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to 
 that end, may fairly be construed to include the right to 
 institute temporary governments for such new States or 
 Territories, the same as Great Britain could rightfully institute 
 similar governments for the Colonies, but certainly not to 
 authorize Congress to legislate in respect to their municipal 
 affairs and internal concerns, without violating that great 
 fundamental principle, in defence of which the battles of the 
 Keyolution were fought." Mr. Douglas, knowing that Terri- 
 torial governments have been created by Congress under the 
 sanction of the Constitution, sets out with a firm resolve to 
 lose the authority where it exists, and to find it where it is 
 not. The 3rd Section of the fourth Article of the Instrument 
 has two subdivisions in very few words — in these lines the power 
 is comprised, or nowhere ; Phocion could not have written 
 them more succinctly, nor Tacitus more terse — in fact, a greater 
 than the Greek for brevity, or the historian for clearness, 
 composed the simple words that create and govern those 
 infant empires. But Mr. Douglas waywardly selects the 
 creating for the governing power ; he will not accept the truth, 
 no more than the mistress her gift, except indirectly. The 
 power to admit new States, and (grant him his interpolation,) 
 to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to that 
 end, may not fairly be construed to include the right to 
 institute temporary governments for such new States or 
 
 2 
 
IS 
 
 Territories under any circumstances. The power to admit is 
 totally distinct from the power to govern: the one is of form, 
 the other of substance. According to Mr. Douglas' version, 
 we may as well as aught else read his reasoning, as authorizing 
 Congress to institute governments for the infant State, after its 
 admission. Bur. although the statesman reasons as the worsted 
 Athlete fought wildly. I cannot, for the honor of the Presi- 
 dency, allow the candidate to perpetrate the blunder of a 
 Driveller. Mr. Douglas surely means that the power of 
 Congress to admit an organized Territory into the family of 
 s, after having reached a certain grade oi' maturity, 
 including numbers of inhabitants, proper form of State 
 Constitution, application and requirement, although an Act of 
 finality, which terminated the territorial life, and gave another 
 existence to the community, included, also, the right to 
 exercise, not a subsequent or inferential, but a prior function 
 of power, viz, to govern the Territories, as England did her 
 Colonies, with a discrimination in favor of municipal and 
 internal legislation ; still this is bad reasoning; even the 
 schools pronounce it so. Were it the contrary case, there would 
 be a vivid show of reason for him in the absence of Constitu- 
 tional provision. If the Constitution omitted all mention of 
 the power of Congress to admit new States, endorsing as it 
 does the inherent power of the Federal Authority to institute 
 temporary governments for the Territories, the inferential 
 argument of the gentleman would be valid, because the 
 Territorial government, form and style, were only temporary, 
 and must necessarily ripen into the majority of State existence; 
 but a Territory may well be admitted by Congress Constitu- 
 tionally into the Union as a State, without its ever having 
 had any concern with the Territorial mode of life, in case the 
 Constitution were silent on the subject. And, in fact, although 
 the Constitution declares how the Territory is to be governed 
 by Congress, when the soil belongs to the Union, yet, such is 
 the liberality of construction properly given to this power of 
 the admission of new States, that even when the territory, that 
 is the soil composing one, never before belonged to the Federal 
 Government, it is still unhesitatingly admitted by Congress 
 upon proper application. What becomes of Mr. Douglas' 
 inferential power of Congress to govern a Territory, from the 
 right of admission of new States, in the case of Texas ? Did 
 this Government own the soil of the Territory previously, or 
 exercise any jurisdiction there? Such is the humiliation to 
 which a wilful misconstruction of one Constitutional provision, 
 and an unnatural construction of another, reduce the argument 
 
19 
 
 o: :..-- :■•;-■: -:...::.— II--. :.: -. :'. - • 
 
 he j -tract and vindicate the t from soda 
 
 rinciple in disptr. Britain and the 
 
 1 
 
 ven made Senator 
 — .: literated the 
 
 • _-.-;„- 
 
 .:.-.-•.. -iy.r. ■-..- ; : ... \\_._ ~...\ .'_ .r..... !-r. .:. -iris- :: — _::':_ 
 the battles of the devolution w _ 
 
 the gentleman, tvranr . . ■ it fdnda- 
 
 -. - 
 
 r.il 
 : oi ci - 
 
 r elect: Mr. 
 
 I j 
 
 mterferenee with American rights, as i _ . 
 
 I 
 
 - . - . 
 
 Ml Douglas - 
 
 fa : - : - : 
 
 - Scott cag '.'.■ m - 
 
 easily satii 11 I ■ . • 
 
 timid man would .torn 
 
 ruin of . . _. - 
 
 - ourt: fori 
 
 ned. fbr after lir. g ing omes 
 
 chill-. the f inaL 
 
 rlne of ? _ in the 
 
 "out a d. 
 
 ip like a - appal him. Mr. I>ouglas 
 
 — - 
 plan: 
 
 rritory outs - . .- _ .Lmits 
 
 Stsrtee id 1 i : ;..-:.: ~ :~g uemp- 
 
 y-juired:- 
 upon pon the same oal provision. 
 
 9 may be admitted by Congress into this 
 — ~ " :o acquire 
 
 But agreeing in the liffer 
 
 in its results Mr. I ■ _ las . firms 
 
 "Popular - s - i-oring in the 
 
 ritories/' of this rignt to acquire and to - — ::h a 
 
20 
 
 terminus attached to it, thus, " the Constitution of the United 
 States neither establishes nor prohibits Slavery m the 1 em- 
 tories, beyond the power of the people legally to control it; 
 but (it) leaves the people thereof perfectly free to form and 
 regulate their domestic institutions, (slavery) in their own way, 
 subject only to the Constitution of the United States. Here 
 is the goal of Mr. Douglas' reasoning. Not so but far 
 different the dictum of the Court. In a series of professional 
 inference and in language, clear and free from all vulgar 
 redundancy, the Supreme Court proceeds step by step, from the 
 same Constitutional provision, to show, first, the inevitable 
 consequence of that provision, as to the right of the federal 
 Government to acquire territory, then, the power to preserve 
 it beino- the necessary consequence of acquisition, and to 
 apply it°to the purposes for which it was acquired; next the 
 right to institute temporary governments therefor, and then 
 in more minute recital and detail, the powers and restrictions 
 of these Territorial Governments, and the rights of persons 
 and property therein. Let me not be understood as yielding 
 any unfair preference to the reasoning of the Supreme Court 
 over that of Mr. Douglas ; far from it— I hold an equal balance, 
 although I confess to a leaning towards dignity in language. 
 The Court have not, of course, combined their reasoning on 
 the slavery question in the Territories, into an extract with a 
 title in two words endorsed on it, ready to distribute out gratis 
 as a panacea for the political ills of the country ; but like able 
 i urists well versed in the doctrine of construction, and warping, 
 thereby, the plain intent and spirit of the Constitution the 
 canker vice inherent in all ages in the Interpreters of law, they 
 lead to the conclusion, among other things, "that the govern- 
 ment and the citizen both entering a Territory under the 
 authority of the Constitution, with their respective rights 
 defined and marked out, and the property of a citizen being 
 protected by the Constitution, if that property be a slave 
 (which, by the Constitution, is recognized as such,) no legis- 
 lation of Congress, or of the Territorial Government its 
 creature, nor consequently of thepeople of aTerntory whoelect 
 the Legislature, can exercise any power over such slave 
 property, beyond what the Constitution confers, nor lawfully 
 deny aiiv right which it has reserved"-to meet this result, 
 it is idkto say that Slavery is subject to the local law like 
 all other property of the citizen, as Mr Douglas would fain 
 make us conside/it; for there is no local law all the law m a 
 Territorv is Congressional-in other words, the Congressional 
 is the local law. Here there is an open rupture, with defiance 
 
21 
 
 to the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. Mr. Douglas depre- 
 cates it, and insists that this cannot be the true construction of 
 the Opinion, and that the Court means something else, for he 
 seems to consider the Opinion as oracular, and that undertaking 
 to interpret the true meaning of the Constitution, it stands 
 itself in need of a high priest to discover its own import. If 
 the Slavery question be included among the forbidden powers, 
 that is cannot be reached or affected in any way in the Terri- 
 tories by any legislation, Congressional or Territorial, but is 
 there carried and preserved, like all other property, sacred by 
 force of the Constitution, then Mr. Douglas is in despair ; for 
 the authority that brings and guards it so sacredly in the 
 Territories, exercises the same kind offices towards Slavery in 
 the States, and Pennsylvania and Illinois are no more 
 exempt from the institution Constitutionally, than Kansas or 
 Utah. And such is the meaning of the oracle as interpreted 
 by another authority, the chief Executive of the Nation, who 
 announces that the Supreme Court decides that Slavery "exists 
 in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, 
 and that Kansas is, therefore, at this moment, as much a Slave 
 State as Georgia or South Carolina,'' — to which interpretation 
 Mr. Douglas responds in despair, "Why does it not exist in 
 Pennsylvania by virtue of the same Constitution?'' 
 
 Mr. Douglas and the Supreme Court do not then agree as to 
 the legal condition of Slavery in the Territories. Starting 
 from the same centre, they reach different points of the 
 circumference. There must be something radically wrong in 
 their primary position, else sensible men like the Senator, and 
 sensible and learned men like the Court, could not have 
 wandered away so far from each other and from the truth. 
 They have mistaken the Constitution. Hence the fanciful 
 folly of this doctrine of " Popular Sovereignty" — an insult to 
 the high intelligence of the country, although an invention 
 worthy of the erratic genius of its author. Hence, also, the 
 commentary on slavery by the Supreme Court — a monstrous 
 product, making evil no longer partial but universal, and 
 justifying the commission of political felony throughout the 
 land, in the name of a benign Constitution. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States, notwithstanding its 
 novelty as an institute, and the vast influence that it brings to 
 bear upon the subject matters of which it treats, being the 
 most important that interest mankind either for good or evil, 
 is nothing but a law, and, notwithstanding its vital authority 
 and scope, contains within itself no element of creative power 
 beyond the simplest act of legislation. A State statute, 
 
22 
 
 erecting a turnpike in Missouri, or a municipal corporation in 
 Ohio, is obscure legislation, yet it possesses the same kindred 
 germ of authority that is inherent in the Constitution. On 
 the other hand, the potent Constitution is limited by the same 
 natural inability that confines the insignificant statute. When 
 the act of the Legislature grants the turnpike right, or the 
 corporation privilege, it defines and limits the right or the 
 privilege, but it does not assume a power beyond its sphere, 
 and create or bestow the locality of the city or the road. 
 These things are in esse, provided beforehand by a power 
 different from the legislative, and belonging to another order 
 of acquisition altogether — they are of the matters which 
 legislation may act upon, but cannot confer. The Constitution 
 having adjusted with wondrous comprehension and brevity, 
 several powers on the subject matters entitled to priority, 
 addresses itself, in the third section of its fourth Article, to 
 ascertain and define what powers it will entrust to its agent, 
 Congress, in regard, first, to the admission of new States into 
 the Union, and secondly, to the disposing of and making all 
 needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other 
 property belonging to the United States. It does not confer 
 the soil, the material substance out of which the new States 
 are to be carved, nor the territory, the disposal of which, and 
 the making of all needful rules and regulations respecting 
 which, it grants to Congress, for this the Constitutional provision 
 itself distinctly declares belongs to the United States — belongs 
 to the United States either in esse or in futuro, and whenever 
 so belonging, to come instanter under the operation of the law 
 of the Constitution — that law applicable to the Territory which, 
 belonged to the Federal Government when the Constitution 
 was adopted, as, for instance, the gift of Virginia in 1784, and 
 applicable in all future time to all other territory acquired by 
 the United States by virtue of the right inherent in every 
 sovereignty, viz: Gift, purchase, or conquest. The acquisition 
 of territory is an inherent right in a Nation, not conferred by 
 constitutional law; so penetrating is this truth, that one 
 instance will suffice, which I shall put in the form interrogata- 
 tive : Did the Constitution of the United States confer on the 
 Nation the soil of the thirteen Colonies, or did the Nation 
 acquire it by conquest from Great Britain, independent 
 altogether of a Constitution, not then existence ? When the 
 land was acquired, it was first partitioned into States; this 
 was one disposition made of it, independent of the Constitution. 
 Again, the Nation altered its political status and adopted a 
 new rule called the Constitution, for the government of the 
 
23 
 
 country. To require of the framers of that Constitution to 
 grant therein, to the Nation, the right of the acquisition of 
 territory, upon which the Constitution was to operate, is a 
 demand of that which it was not in the power of the conscript 
 fathers to bestow. They knew their sphere and they kept it, 
 Theirs was the wisdom to elaborate a system of good govern- 
 ment for the territory, belonging to the Nation, without vainly 
 usurping a power that was not theirs to exercise. Hence the 
 language of the provision is singularly free from any such 
 usurpation. If the power to acquire territory for the creation 
 of new States, to be disposed of and ruled in its embryo 
 condition in a certain way, was intended to be conferred upon 
 the Nation by the framers of the Constitution, a proposition 
 that would stultify their intelligence, why is there not 
 eviscerated by construction from the same Constitutional 
 provision, the gift to the Nation of the power to acquire other 
 property, such as ships of war, arsenals, &c. ? Is it an inherent 
 right in the Nation to acquire such property as this, and yet 
 does it require a Constitutional provision to authorize the 
 acquisition of territory — does the Constitution draw such a 
 distinction in national property? Congress is empowered 
 "to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatever, oyer 
 all places purchased by the Legislature of the State in which 
 the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, 
 dock yards, and other needful buildings;" thus when territory 
 is needed for federal purposes in a State, since there the 
 General Government has no inherent right of the acquisition 
 of land, being a component part of the whole, with rights 
 reserved, the Constitution confers upon Congress the power of 
 purchase and exclusive jurisdiction, not constructively, but in 
 explicit language, altogether distinct form the total silence in 
 regard to the acquisition of territory, outside the original 
 limits of the United States. If the Constitution speaks out 
 in regard to the acquisition of a dock yard by the Federal 
 Government, and the exercise of jurisdiction therein, a matter 
 comparatively insignificant and temporary, and yet obtaining 
 a positive provision, although the territory lay within the 
 precincts of one of the component parts of the Federal 
 Sovereignty, how much more explicit and elaborate, beyond 
 the reach of tortuous construction or fallible inference, would 
 not the framers of the Constitution have pointed out and 
 defined, if they conceived they possessed the power, how 
 territory outside the original limits of the United States was 
 to be acquired by the Federal Government, whether by gift, 
 by purchase, (as in the cases of Arsenal sites,) or by conquest 
 
24 
 
 — especially when such, territory was destined for the most 
 exalted purposes, not the erection of forts, magazines, 
 arsenals and dockyards, but the erection of empires, co-ordinate 
 with the original States, and sweeping, when launched, into 
 line with them under the shadow of the mighty banner of the 
 Constitution — such transcendent interests would not be over- 
 looked, nor slightly touched upon, much less exposed, as the 
 subj ect matter of speculative philosophy of old was to conj ecture, 
 to the tender mercies of judicial or political construction. 
 The right of the acquisition of territory then being a right 
 inherent in the sovereignty, and outside the sphere of the 
 Constitution, does not flow, as Mr. Douglas and the Supreme 
 Court infer by construction, from the power expressly granted 
 to Congress to admit new States into the Union, and hence 
 the Senator and the Court have mistaken the Constitution. 
 
 The acquisition of territory is a right inherent in every 
 sovereignty, which sovereignty, unless limited by Constitu- 
 tional provision, is absolute over every matter subject to 
 legislation in the territory when acquired — sovereignty cannot 
 be parcelled out, distributed, or confined otherwise than by 
 original compact — if there is no limit or restraint imposed 
 upon it, it is absolute in itself, and to subtract from its absolute 
 nature, you must show the authority. "When the Federal 
 Government acquires a territory, its power therein, over every 
 subject matter, Slavery included, is supreme, unless confined 
 and limited by the Constitution of the United States. Let us 
 inspect the Constitution, then, and examine its provisions, 
 what of them are, upon the subject of Slavery in the Terri- 
 tories : the relation of Master and Slave is extracted from the 
 third subdivision of the second section of the fourth article of 
 the Constitution, thus: "No person, held to service or labor 
 in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, 
 shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
 discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered 
 up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may 
 be due ;" herein is the only provision made by the Constitution 
 in regard to Slavery in the United States, and the cautious, nay, 
 tender use of terms patent in its langnage, manifests distinctly 
 the reluctant spirit of the humane men, who, by compulsion, 
 drafted and adopted it. What Mr. Douglas and the Supreme 
 Court coarsely term Slavery, the Constitution, with the regard 
 due to fallen humanity, denominates service or labor, a 
 different grade of descent altogether, let the gentlemen know, 
 from the bathos of Slavery — and they, who, with equal 
 accuracy, are degraded by the titles of Slave and Master, (as 
 
25 
 
 much a degradation to the one as to the other,) are properly 
 named therein, by natural transposition, a servant or laborer, 
 a party claimant or creditor. I feel for the indignities offered 
 by the powerful to the weak — they excite emotions I cannot 
 control — " Names," exclaims the Senator, " often deceive 
 persons in respect to the nature and substance of things" — he 
 could have employed far more appropriate language than this 
 for his purpose, where he uses it, but it suits me here exactly, 
 and I claim it without compliment, although it is very probably 
 the only claim I shall ever make upon the wisdom of the 
 Senator — if there be anything in the quotation, I stamp, by 
 virtue thereof, the charge of deception upon Mr. Douglas and 
 the Supreme Court, in that thej have used "names which 
 deceive persons in respect to the nature and substance of 
 things," and to make it the more poignant to the gentleman, I 
 employ, with the utmost propriety, his own language as the 
 sentence of his condemnation. The solemn periods of states- 
 manship and of the august Tribunal of Law of the last resort, 
 should not be contaminated with the professional epithet of 
 the slave-dealer — there should be no bias, for there should be no 
 feeling — no bias of language, as well as no bias of its spirit and 
 import, lest the use of the wrong term should lead, as it 
 invariably does, to the wrong interpretation. When the chief 
 agents of the Constitution, it seems, intend to admeasure out 
 its spirit unfairly, like petty dealers, they have recourse to the 
 use of fraudulent weights and measures. 
 
 No portion of the Constitution, save this veiled and guarded 
 provision, seeks apology at the hands of mankind — elsewhere 
 the genius of the great law rules firmly over its vast confines, 
 and speaks of the interests confided to his charge in language 
 not to be misunderstood ; here alone his air is deprecatory and 
 his tongue falters, for he was called upon to make a sacrifice 
 of human right at the passionate pleading of his fair and 
 favorite twin daughter of the South, and he was forced by 
 affection for the fond minion to yield — doubtless she was 
 entitled to every other indulgence save this — independent of 
 her native charms, the rich and magnificent scenery of her 
 abode, the lavish wealth that surrounded her in Orient 
 profusion, she could point to the heroic deeds of her sons 
 emblazoned on the fields of carnage and the page of history — 
 she was entitled to every consideration in the gift of the 
 Constitution ; alas ! that she was so beloved and deserving as to 
 entreat and obtain a boon, which being violative of human 
 right, has been injurious to none other's welfare more than to 
 her own. 
 
But call the thing itself labor or slavery, and call the person 
 
 owing it a laborer or a slave, immaterial as to the question of 
 
 the power of the legal - - lion of the subject in the Terri- 
 
 — Mr. Douglas quotes the Supreme Court to the efl 
 
 from the a which provides for the rendition of 
 
 _ - - the right of property in slaves is distinctly 
 
 and v asly affirmed in: stil :. ' — and coinciding 
 
 Opinion herein, h : is further, and points out 
 
 what s of persons 1 aon explicit! si I - shall be 
 
 I staves, viz: the persons held to service or labor in a 
 
 Si " let the laws thereof — nol - I sfi — .. this position. 
 
 ver. he extends the limit of his term, and avers that 
 
 Stat - Territory also, proving by various referene - I 
 
 3t totion, to Mr. J. - nd Mr. Madison, that the 
 
 word was mdiscriminately apphed to a §ta1 r Territory — 
 
 the extension of the term's import, however, cannot avail him : 
 
 supreme Court were - of the meaning 
 
 of th os Is : limitation '■•under the laics Q fas Mr. 
 
 _ - and could strain S into a Territory with as 
 
 much facility, I .: they avoided the fatal pass g in silence, 
 
 forthev knevr - bag. One word, by way of preliminary, 
 
 ver — the use of redundant epithet or adverb is always 
 
 proof of - - as — vrhen a man wants to 
 
 :f the truth of that which is repugnant to 
 
 he is liberal of language in the same proportion as he is 
 
 : fact, and interlards the use of it with superlatives 
 
 and impietv — the language of truth, on the contrary, is simple 
 
 - bives. N " the right of property in b! 
 
 tisl .: .-'.-- nd expressly affirmed in the Constitution."' 
 
 ■a the Supreme C: :—. ~ith such ambitious confidence and 
 
 - - : m the contrary, if the right of property 
 
 - . in contradistinction to the right of prope: 
 
 the labor or service which the person owes, is to be found 
 
 I ''.. if is inferentially stated, and not distinctly and 
 
 aatyi But Mr. Douglas, whohar] M m s Leerily always 
 
 with the Supreme Court whenever they make a forced or 
 
 unfaithful exposition, as usual with that - - : drove Timon 
 
 to misanthropy, excels even the tautology of a Court of 
 
 ry. 
 
 U A slave," Bays Mr. Douglas, "'is a person held to service 
 
 or labor in a Stat — and further "the 
 
 wor : ^ - is used in the clause providing for the rendition 
 
 of fogitzv - applicable to all pohtical communities under 
 
 the authority of the Unit States iuding the Territories, 
 
 3 the sc ral States :f the Union" — therefore, Mr. 
 
ran held toservice 
 or labor in a Si . — 
 
 would appear I J.6. most 
 
 - /.ator him :— • - 
 
 in a "State or Ten - - - re—it 
 
 vivifyin g : Law ordained by the L _ - 
 
 authority Stan ebtcf 
 
 « or lat . " - ~ and the pe: 
 service or lab: : -lave— bnt he m: abor 
 
 to another in t 3l - .ud the laws thereof : 
 him : - - - 
 
 itmavpc- II " shall be ni 
 
 slavefor service "or labor due in:.. ;Sta1 — 
 
 -erinde^ -zing 
 
 the recorerv of a : i rromlah: land 
 
 unnatural of Mr. I glaa and the S 
 
 of the pr - to the amour- _ given by 
 
 the C I t they - — " 
 
 import of the 
 
 meddling itself with slavery 
 capacitv. shall effect for the ~ 
 
 Doui. - -. a Territory, whe: 
 the recoverv of a fugitive from labor, because 
 inter: I - power c: 
 
 the State to make such a reco-r 
 
 L L Law of 1 3tal —here the re: ' .- - — 
 
 the verv limited four" -" 
 
 . piled upon it so la- - 
 
 - can no longer be traced ban " " 
 of the Goths — the provision mere". 
 
 - 1 at the ::me of its | : - - 
 
 : in a future State or Ternl - the laws 
 
 enact :_.- - jf a per- I :r labor in a 
 
 State by J : - L I Law, and " .'. ring thats 
 
 State where e 
 perhaps, one the very opposite, shall not be «ed in 
 
 rf the law or regulation c : Stal whi ah he 
 
 - pes, but be c I up. on claim : I 
 
 such - rial may be dm — nor is it herein s 
 
 rhat pro: £ _ " ------ 
 
 ~_ Supreme 1 - .-•:-. ::!:"_ upon 
 
 I that the I ■ — in thespinl 
 
 and term- it is intra 1 by then- 
 
 Slav IS verv for Laborer and Service^ 
 a person, whom comparative anate: 
 
28 
 
 physically finished (independent of the master mind,) by the 
 mould of the Hand of the Almighty, as the subject body of 
 a Chief Justice, into a chattle, a bureau, or an ambling mule, 
 it is believed by the honest masses to be inhumanely Penal — 
 it is not entitled then to any facilities either of construction 
 or enforcement — if the provision be impotent and lame from 
 malformation, and the remedy of the prohibited wrong beyond 
 reach from uncertainty, it does not become a christian Congress, 
 Court and Senator to pretend to the gift of miracles irreligious- 
 ly, and assume to make the blind see and the lame walk — 
 the age of miracles with some of them at least is past — Mr. 
 Douglas has pretensions, but I have no confidence in his ever 
 working a miracle — there is nothing in the provision that 
 exclusively or by priority requires the Federal Government, 
 its Legislature, or officers to be the medium or agents of the 
 delivery — the sentence is barren of instruction thuswise, 
 either affirmatively or by the Court's favorite process of 
 inference — its silence surprises, and means all it does not say — 
 if asked, how can you enforce the provision except by Con- 
 gressional action and the agency thereby created, in the cause 
 of humanity, I repulse the interrogatory as insolent, and will 
 not furnish the aggressor with any weapon of offense — if I 
 wrest from his hand, which I now haughtily do, the sword of 
 the executioner, unjustifiably furnished him by Act of 
 Congress, it is enough for me so to disarm him — I am not 
 called upon to cull from the brilliant armory of the Constitu- 
 tion the bloody weapon of the brigand — it is not there. 
 
 I am, in politeness, here required to apologize to Mr. Douglas 
 for unintentional neglect, arising from a division of favors, 
 which I did not propose at the outset, between him and the 
 Supreme Court — I shall devote myself, therefore, more exclu- 
 sively to the gentleman henceforth to the end, and here cast 
 off from me the Tribunal — not that I do not part from these 
 judges with regret, and they may some day obtain from me 
 the sole and strict attention to which they are eminently 
 entitled — but I am now engaged and interested in Mr. Douglas, 
 and shall not be tempted to quit the pleasant pursuit, even for 
 the golden prize that surely awaits the explorer, after he has 
 demolished this Judicial Fabric and searched its ruins. 
 
 I admit I have toyed with the Senator in the Barrier in 
 which he has placed himself — secure of him, I have paused 
 and taken rest — Tamerlane inhumanly constructed an Iron 
 Cage m which he immured and exhibited his victim — but he 
 was a Pagan and a tyrant, and no example whatever for an 
 American gentleman — I weave no meshes either of cob- web 
 
29 
 
 or of iron — Mr. Douglas' tissue is of his own formation, and 
 encloses him as artistically as a spider's woof, and as inexorably 
 as ribs of steel — " A slave is a person held to service or labor 
 in a State or Territory, under the laws thereof — Territorial 
 laws which must be conformatory to the Constitution, are the 
 only ones in force in the Territory, and can be enacted only 
 by Congress or its Deputy, the Territorial Legislature, elected 
 as Congress provides — if the Territorial law holds a person 
 to service or labor, and thereby makes him a slave, the 
 transmutation is the act of Congress, the agent of the Consti- 
 tution, or if the Territorial law does not hold a person to 
 service or labor, and is silent thereon, thereby negatively 
 refusing to make a person owing service or labor a slave, or, 
 if it positively declares that such person shall be nevertheless 
 free, it is equally the act of Congress, the agent of the Consti- 
 tution; that can pass no law or do no act without the authority 
 of its principal — Territorial, like State law, can thus establish 
 or prohibit slavery in the Territory at will — such, now, is Mr. 
 Douglas on slavery in the Territories ; collate herewith his 
 pronunciamento to his followers and the Nation, " The Con- 
 stitution of the United States neither establishes nor prohibits 
 slavery in the States or Territories beyond the power of the 
 people legally to control it, but leaves 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" — when Congress deputes its legislative power to a 
 Territorial Legislature, it elects its deputy by the vote of the 
 people — but the act of the lawful agent is the act of his 
 principal, and the law of the Territorial Legislature, either 
 establishing or prohibiting slavery, is the law of Congress 
 authorized by the Constitution. Let Mr. Douglas suit himself 
 — if a slave is a person held to service or labor in a Territory 
 under the laws thereof, the Constitution of the United States 
 does establish or prohibit slavery in the Territory at will, 
 beyond all other power, and through the agencies, which it 
 must necessarily employ, either Congress, or its deputy, the 
 Territorial Legislature, elected as Congress provides, and 
 Congress is not limited to any form of deputy or mode of 
 election — that is discretionary — and if the laws of a Territory 
 establish or prohibit slavery at will, these laws being the act 
 of Congress, slavery is thus established or prohibited in the 
 Territory by the Constitution. The subtle drift of Mr. Douglas 
 tnat when Congress deputes its authority to the Territorial 
 Legislature, in whole or in part, the Legislature is elected by 
 the people, who may thereby be said to have the power to 
 
30 
 
 establish or prohibit slavery at will, shall not avail him, for it 
 smells rank to heaven of the Legerdemain which is called 
 Little, without the huge Adfix. The will of the people here 
 is the will of Congress and the Constitution, selected by the 
 master powers on account of its exact reflex and similitude, 
 and totally absorbed and unknown when the result is reached — 
 it cuts back to its authors and is its authors' act. So much for 
 the counterfeit casuistry that would not pass current even 
 in the schools. If the Senator, then, be correct in his state- 
 ment (for, be it observed, I make none of my own, but 
 studiously keep aloof from any contact with him whatever,) 
 that a slave is "a person held to service or labor in a Territory, 
 under the laws thereof" he assumes the office of the Lictor, and 
 precipitates his own pronunciamento headlong from the 
 Tarpeian Eock of the Constitution — and worse still, he commits 
 in addition the crime of parricide, without the merit of a 
 Roman Sacrifice for the good of his country, for the malefactor 
 whom he immolates is his own illegitimate oflspring. 
 
 In support of his Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty Mr. 
 Douglas cites the Act of Congress of 1850, called the Com- 
 promise Measures, the resolutions of political parties, Whig 
 and Democratic, assembled in National Convention in 1852 for 
 the nomination of candidates for the offices of President and 
 Vice President, adopting and affirming the principle of these 
 Compromise Measures on the question of slavery in the 
 organization of Territorial Governments and the admission of 
 new States, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, of 1854, based on the 
 principle of the Compromise Measures, so far as they are 
 applicable to territorial organizations, the unanimous vote of 
 the Delegates of the Democratic party from every State in the 
 Union, in National Convention assembled in 1856, recognising 
 and adopting the principles contained in the Organic Laws 
 establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and the 
 letter of Mr. Buchanan, the nominee of this Convention, 
 approving the recent legislation of Congress respecting 
 domestic slavery — the principle involved in these multitudinous 
 citations, as far as they refer to the organization of Territories 
 is, that the people of the Territories should decide the slavery 
 question for themselves through the action of their Territorial 
 Legislature. Much stress is laid upon the promise of peace to 
 the country, made in the speeches of Senators, the resolutions 
 and reports of Conventions and their committees, and the 
 affirmatory letter of the present Chief Magistrate, by the 
 adoption of this precept. Let us select a few of these conso- 
 lations : " The wisdom of those measures is attested, not less 
 
31 
 
 by their salutary and beneficial effects in allaying sectional 
 agitation and restoring peace and harmony to an irritated and 
 distracted people, than by the cordial and almost universal 
 approbation with which they have been received and sanctioned 
 by the whole country" — "by the uniform application of the 
 Democratic principle of non-intervention by Congress with 
 slavery in State or Territory, or in the District of Columbia, to 
 the organization of Territories, and to the admission of new 
 States, with or without domestic slavery as they may elect, 
 the equal rights of all will be preserved intact, the original 
 compacts of the Constitution maintained inviolate, and the 
 perpetuity and expansion of this Union insured to its utmost 
 capacity of embracing in peace and harmony any future 
 American State that may be constituted or annexed with a 
 Republican form of Government" — "the recent legislation of 
 Congress," reads Mr. Buchanan's letter, "respecting domestic 
 slavery, derived, as it has been, from the original and pure 
 fountain of legitimate political power, the will of the majority, 
 promises, ere long, to allay the dangerous excitement — this 
 legislation is founded upon principles as ancient as free 
 government itself, and in accordance with them has simply 
 declared that the people of a Territory, like those of a State, 
 shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist 
 within their limits. 
 
 Upon these and similar promises of good result to the peace 
 and welfare of the country, Mr. Douglas relies for proof of 
 the efficacy of the Doctrine of Popular Soveriegnty — they 
 differ however somewhat from the certificates that usually an- 
 nounce the virtue of other specifics, these being always furni- 
 shed by patients or their friends, after they have tested the 
 truth of the cure, and have been wholly, or in part restored 
 thereby, whereas the endorsements of the infallible compound 
 of Popular Sovereignty, are purely prophetic, and these good 
 friends of the patient public, Senators, Conventions and 
 Presidents, generously subscribe the flaming certificate before 
 the medicine is tested — how if the facts nullify the promises, 
 and convert the Partiot Douglas into a very Cassandra, whose 
 vaticinations by the decree of heaven, must never be credited — 
 have the Compromise Measures of 1850, has the Kansas 
 Nebraska Act of 1854, the resolutions of National Conven- 
 tions, and the endorsement of a Presidential Candidate meta- 
 morphosed a policy into a principle, an expediency into a 
 right, or the non-intervention by Congress with slavery in a 
 Territory, or the District of Columbia, into the want of the 
 Constitutional power of such intervention? have they con- 
 
32 
 
 vinced us that the Constitution does not authorize its agent, 
 Congress, to decide whether slavery shall or shall not exist 
 within the limits of a Territory, where no other Legislative 
 power lives or can live, by virtue of the Constitution, except 
 the Legislative power of Congress exercised either per se or 
 authoritatively per alium ? have they convinced us that there 
 can be two Legislative Organizations in a Territory, the one 
 Constitutional and Congressional, to act upon every topic of 
 Legislation, save slavery, and the other, a Popular Sovereignty 
 Legislature, of which the framers of the Constitution never 
 dreamed to ascertain and enact the wishes of the people of the 
 Territory on the question of slavery alone ? have they con- 
 vinced us that salutary and beneficial effects in allaying sectional 
 agitation and restoring peace and harmony to an irritated and 
 distracted people, have followed from the wisdom of those 
 measures, when the blood of Kansas, (the nursling of one of 
 those Acts that carried healing on its wings,) still runs in the 
 memory of man as deeply as when it fell in torrents on her 
 soil, or when, still worse, the Senator, who fain would claim 
 the whole paternity of the monstrous doctrine to himself, and 
 allow to others no share in its procreation, unlike the foetid gift 
 of the Gods to their poor and barren host, has, since the passage 
 of these Acts, up to the present hour, made sectional agitation, 
 irritation and distraction, on the slavery question, a profession, 
 which he practises unweariedly on the most liberal terms, a con- 
 tingent fee? What affinity exists between the vigorous andlusty 
 Constitution, and such hermaphrodite legislation, Conventions 
 and Statesmen ? Is there no blush on the face of vulgar 
 ambition that it should parade before the Nation this morbid 
 rhetoric, a painted and spangled garb, such as is studiously 
 worn by the diviner to impress his audience with the belief 
 of his familiarity with fortune ? The philosophic Statesman, 
 when he beholds good result notwithstanding the abeyance of 
 principle, sits silent if not satisfied, and pleased with the 
 benefit accruing to his country, ruminates calmly on the 
 occasion of the ripe harvest which she reaps and he did not 
 sow ; but what manner of man is that, philosophic Statesman 
 or bad citizen, who forebodes peace when it is war, general 
 harmony when it is sectional agitation, universal approbation 
 when it is irritation and distraction everywhere, equal rights, 
 original compacts, perpetuity and expansion, when it is a 
 jumble and a chaos, into which the Constitutional system is 
 cast by these raw apprentices, who vainly struggle to reunite 
 the fragments they have disjointed, and call, each his patch 
 work, the old Constitution. I care not whether they be Gods 
 
33 
 
 or men in the form of Presidents or Conventions, who rob the 
 Constitution of its Territorial rights; I care not for the 
 imposing pretense of grandiloquent publication, when it 
 embodies no fact and testifies to no truth ; I abjure the 
 technical silence that would make believe, that the Compromise 
 Measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 met no 
 soldierly opposition from stern veterans of the Constitution, 
 the old and immortal guard, or the inuendo that every member 
 of these Democratic Conventions was, by birthright, a states- 
 man, according to the Constitutional standard, because he 
 applauded these acts of political harlotry openly committed in 
 the day of the loss of public virtue ; these things have no 
 weight or influence with me, when I plant the ordinance of 
 1787 drafted under the eye if not by the pen of Mr. Jefferson, 
 (although it is said by Mr. Douglas, with his usual manliness, 
 that it was passed by the remnant of the Congress of the 
 Confederation, in New York, after its most eminent members 
 had gone to Philadelphia,) against the opinion of the Supreme 
 Court denying its Constitutionality, and the Missouri Com- 
 promise Act of 1820 against the Douglas Act of 1854 which 
 repeals it. The Ordinance of 1787 is the twin brother of the Con- 
 stitution, born in the same year, of the same august parentage, 
 with Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison the same sponsors for both, 
 and however differing in proportion, as members of a family will, 
 belonging to the same pure republican stock of legislation ; 
 the Compromise Act of 1820 lived a blameless and quiet life 
 of public utility for thirty-four years, during which every 
 virtue that was originally claimed for it was realized. The 
 harbinger of calm, it more than performed its promise — 
 imbued with the spirit of the Constitution, it breathed peace 
 and induced repose — not only North of its line, 36°30', where 
 it ruled supreme, did sectional feeling abate, and the fell spirit 
 of slavery strife die out, but even South thereof, where its j urisdic- 
 tion was joint, such was the genial and lenient nature of the 
 law, no controversy arose on the partnership account — but Mr. 
 Douglas' Constitutional slumbers were disturbed by its 
 existence on the statute book, and the tender conscience of 
 Mr. Cass was sorely troubled with doubts of its legitimacy ; 
 hear the elderly Secretary, then Senator, "I have already 
 stated my belief that the rightful power of internal legislation 
 in the Territories belongs to the people" — another votary in 
 these hopeful times of a double headed Legislature in the 
 Territories. This blow at the Missouri Compromse, first given 
 by letter in 1848, to cultivate and seduce sectional support for 
 the Presidency, cost the gentleman dearly, and he had the 
 
34 
 
 right to remember the law with a vengeance — he did, and 
 voted successfully with Mr. Douglas to repeal it, the wisest 
 and most beneficent act of legislation ever passed by Congress, 
 before which the Tariff and Bank questions pale and shrink, 
 in reference to the internal peace and repose of the country — 
 but it shall revive, summoned from its cerements into a new 
 existence by the potent call of the Constitution. Mr. Douglas 
 places the utmost reliance upon the action of Senators and 
 Conventions and Presidential candidates — the Missouri Com- 
 promise Act relies solely on the self-interest of a multitudinous 
 people, who will be no longer disturbed by Mr. Douglas' never 
 ending slavery agitation, and the miserable ambition that 
 begets it — when the elements are ripe, the lightning flashes to 
 restore nature's equipoise — objects either elevated or low, 
 Senators or negroes, melt before its transit — the indignation 
 of the American people, when deceived, is not as potent as 
 the dread artillery of heaven, but it executes swift vengeance 
 for all human purposes, whilst the thunder of their voice 
 rumbles fearfully along the hills and elevations of power, as 
 it purges the political atmosphere. 
 
 Were it asked of a dispassionate and intelligent citizen, 
 whose judgment was not warped by any personal purpose, 
 other than what is common to him with every individual 
 member of the Nation, "read me these three clauses of the 
 3rd and 2nd Sections of the 4th Article of the Constitution, 
 and expound to me their true import, viz: Sec. 3rd, clause 1st : 
 ' New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union ; 
 but no New State shall be formed or erected within the juris- 
 diction of any other State, without the consent of the Legis- 
 latures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress' — 
 2nd, ' The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make 
 all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or 
 other property belonging to the United States, and nothing in 
 this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any 
 claims of the United States or of any particular State' — Sec. 
 2nd, clause 3rd, 'No person held to service or labor in one 
 State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in 
 consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged 
 from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim 
 of the party to whom such service or labor may be due ;' " 
 such a citizen may truly answer, in terms somewhat similar 
 hereto. "When the power of the admission by Congress of 
 new States into the Union was authorized by the Constitution, 
 the only territory belonging to the Federal Government was 
 that ceded by Virginia in 1784, called the North West Terri- 
 
42 
 
 the matter at all, except by means of the Territorial Legisla- 
 ture, which Congress under the Constitution authorizes them 
 to elect — what species of political Legerdemain is this ? Does 
 the gentleman consider the national intellect idiotic, and that 
 we have lost all reverence for the founders of the true doctrine 
 of Popular Sovereignty, to allow him thus to pilfer our 
 birthright, and plunder and defile their wisdom ? Does he rank 
 himself beside the colossal proportions of Thomas Jefferson ? 
 Does he announce to this Nation that he has discovered what 
 Jefferson lost ? Yery well, I proclaim, although it is amiable 
 in Mr. Douglas to put inferentially Mr. Jefferson as a subaltern 
 to himself, that such is my weakness, in accordance with the 
 divine delicacy of the import of the classic lines (I implore 
 the pardon of the Senator,) I would rather seem wrong with 
 Mr. Jefferson than be right with Mr. Douglas. 
 
 I have done. In the adopted State of the Senator, among 
 other gifts conferred on her liberally by the hand of a genial 
 nature, is a stream, either branch of which is lovely enough 
 to adapt itself to my present purpose — so placid is its bosom, 
 that the ingenuous youth of the country can safely float upon 
 it in his tiny cock-boat, lingering around its islets, or drifting 
 sportively along its fragrant banks — let the gentleman beware 
 —the calm stream becomes occasionally, from cause, a heady 
 and an angry current, rupturing those banks, and spreading 
 into a wide waste of waters, to cross which in the leaky skiff 
 that Mr. Douglas paddles, would be perilous — I warn him of 
 his safety. 
 
 Erratum. — In the dedication of this pamphlet, the word 
 received," in the 5th line, should read revived. 
 
41 
 
 terms "Popular Sovereignty," and the conclusion that men's 
 minds would naturally run to, that, as it was insisted upon so 
 strenuously by the Senator for the first time, it had no previous 
 existence in either the theory or practise of the Government 
 — this ruse has had its day — the self-complacency with which 
 the gentleman has formerly stroked his chin at the ephemeral 
 success of his project, has given way to the alarm that always 
 follows the discovery of a little petty plot. The doctrine of 
 Popular Sovereignty is the very germ of the Constitution, 
 and the noble offspring of its founders and defenders, from the 
 first hour of its existence to the present, and Mr. Douglas is 
 as much entitled to any special part in the great principle, as 
 a pirate is to a portion of the cargo he feloniously plunders, 
 or to the inspiration of the author whose volume he publishes 
 as his own — he not only robs the Constitution and the uniform 
 line of Congressional action for upwards of half a century, of 
 the doctrine, but the moment he gets it into his grasp, he 
 emasculates it. Popular Sovereignty in the Territories was 
 always exercised in its full proportions, manly and exalted as 
 they are, until of late when Mr. Douglas takes hold of the 
 magazine, and peddles out the principle in broken doses. 
 When Congressional action was heretofore applied to a Territory, 
 the voice of the Nation at large was heard on the subject, and 
 every interest was consulted and defended — the pro-slavery 
 interest especially, for that by the Constitution, the white man 
 who owned a hundred negroes had sixty-one voices in Congress, 
 whilst the white man who owned no negroes had only one — 
 the slave owner, therefore, could not complain of his interest 
 being neglected, when the national will, on the pure principle 
 of Popular Sovereignty, was consulted and expressed in Con- 
 gress, in legislating for the Territory — but beyond this, the 
 uniform rule of that legislation from the admission of Ken- 
 tucky in 1792 to the late auspicious times of Senator Calhoun 
 and Douglas, was to confer upon the people of the Territories 
 the right to elect their own Legislature, and thus secure a true 
 representation of the will of the majority as to local or general 
 interests — does the Senator want a better Popular Sovereignty 
 Doctrine than this, being the doctrine of the founders? It 
 appears he does, and let us see what it is : he vehemently 
 exclaims, exclude the question of slavery in the Territories 
 out of Congress, where the will of the people, the entire 
 Nation, to whom the Territory belongs, can be alone heard, 
 on the true principle of Popular Sovereignty, and let the 
 people of the Territory settle the question for themselves, 
 when they have no power under heaven to do so, or to touch 
 
36 
 
 granted, in legal form, her Southwest territory to the shores of 
 the Pacific — it is apparent herefrom what anticipations as to 
 the admission of new States into the Union, the framers of 
 the Constitution entertained — let us remember that what 
 Virginia had already ceded in the Northwest, and what might 
 be expected for similar cession in the Southwest, was a species 
 of terra incognita, that the adventurous spirit of our people 
 was comparatively unknown, and that the impetus which 
 freedom gives a nation, to ascertain and vindicate its territorial 
 rights, had, as yet, no scope of time to exert itself. The Con- 
 stitution, then, embodied in this provision cases that have 
 never yet occurred, and the assertion may be fairly ventured, 
 that they never contemplated, as a body, the admission of 
 new States by Congress into the Union out of any other 
 territory than what then belonged to the original thirteen 
 States — hence the reason why States or Territories are indis- 
 criminately termed States, because they were or were of 
 States. The purchase of Louisiana was not yet anticipated, 
 nor the annexation of Texas, nor the conquest of Utah and 
 California — Cuba was not yet yearned after — coupled with these 
 impressive reasons, founded on surrounding facts, and apparent 
 in the Constitutional language itself, the transitory existence 
 of a Territory, to-day, a wilderness, to-morrow, the abode of 
 the adventurous citizen, drawing to him, by the attractions of 
 a virgin soil and a novel life, the very acme to many of 
 the existence of a freeman, in a few years crowds of daring 
 men, until their number reached the Congressional climax, 
 when by natural and brief process this chrysalis condition was 
 changed into the full grown existence of State life, the Con- 
 stitution did not then define, nor was it needed to define with 
 the same accuracy or scope of provision a political condition, 
 that was normal and transient, which it was both needful and 
 provident, it should with unerring care and in distinct language, 
 adopt for a new State and a new Federal government, that 
 was finally settled and was meant to be perpetual — hence, the 
 limited and guarded sovereignty granted to the Federal Gov- 
 ernment by the Constitution over the States that were 
 and the States that were to be, the law defining, with 
 rigid accuracy, positively and negatively, how far that 
 sovereignty was to reach and where it was to cease — 
 hence, too, the reservation to the States and the people 
 of all the rights not granted to the Federal Government — and 
 hence, also, the unlimited sovereign power, inherent in the 
 General Government over the Territory, is untouched by 
 any other restriction, if restriction it may be termed, and that 
 
35 
 
 torj, a tract of country North-west of the River Ohio, indif- 
 ferently denned as to "boundary, and a wilderness occupied by 
 the savage Indian, with very sparse exceptions — undoubtedly 
 it was anticipated, that as Virginia had ceded, so in like 
 manner other States of the Union that owned surplus territory, 
 with only nominal or fictitious possession of it, would follow 
 her example and relinquish to the United States their 
 Sovereignty therein — this is apparent from the further pro- 
 vision in the same clause of the section, declaring that no new 
 States shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any 
 other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two 
 or more States or parts of States, without the consent of the 
 Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress, 
 being the mode adopted in the case of the Virginia cession, 
 which was first passed by her Legislature, afterwards accepted 
 and ordered to be recorded and enrolled among the Acts of 
 the United States in Congress assembled — it is memorable 
 here, however, that not a word is uttered as to the acquisition 
 of Territory outside the limits of the United States, either 
 populous or waste, filled with cities or with forests, that being 
 a right inherent in the Nation — other things are also apparent 
 from the language of this provision — that, for instance two 
 States or parts of two States may be ceded as Territory to the 
 General Government, for the reason in the first case, that the 
 citizens of two small States may consider their condition 
 would be benefited by a mutual union of both into one State 
 of ample proportions," by the Constitutional process of first, a 
 Territorial, next a new State existence, and in the second, for 
 the reason that two States may consider, that each having a 
 tract of country belonging to it, a profitless surplusage to 
 itself, and too small for a State purpose, but each lying contiguous 
 to the other, and furnishing sufficient dimensions for a State, 
 maybe patriotically ceded to the United States, on the Virginia 
 plan — no instance of a cession in the first mentioned case ever 
 occurred, State prida very probably forbidding the merging 
 of one State into another, under any circumstances, or even 
 relinquishing a small tract of country, though excessive, as 
 many of them could, for territorial purposes — herein is to be 
 traced the conjectural opinion of the Convention in the matter 
 of Territories, and the sources of their formation — no settled 
 purpose or view, but merely anticipatory — North Carolina, 
 however, in 1789, in compliance with the suggestion made in 
 the Constitution, and in imitation of Virginia, from whom that 
 suggestion was taken, and whounder the advice of the prophetic 
 Jefferson, ceded before the adoption of the Constitution, 
 
37 
 
 it is not more properly advisory, than what is to be found in 
 the 2d clause of the 3rd section, conferring upon Congress the 
 
 ?ower, in the exercise of the National Sovereignty over the 
 'erritories. "to dispose of and make all needful rules and 
 regulations respecting them or other property belonging to the 
 United States" — not denning what the rules and regulations 
 were to be, with the same jealous care that, in the case of 
 Federal and State Sovereignties, is observable, but requiring 
 merely the agency of Congress in peculiarly adequate terms, 
 and in true conformity to the different stage of political existence, 
 to transact thus far the temporary and transient duties of the 
 General Sovereignty in the Territories — the terms used, also, 
 are of the most arbitrary import, as before observed, and 
 plainly declare the different grade of political importance, 
 in which the framers of the Constitution held the full grown 
 rights of the Federal and State Sovereignties, and the infant 
 tutelage of a Territory — there is nothing to be discovered in 
 any degree of great importance being attached to these waste 
 lands by the Nation in 1787, or in the fact that their political 
 existence as Territories, if political existence it was to be, a 
 matter then more of distant expectancy and hope, than of 
 speedy or even approximate result, would be aught else than 
 an organization non-essential and brief, to justify the Convention 
 to make any reservations discriminating in favor of the 
 Territories and against the unqualified Sovereignty of the 
 Federal Government, on any subject of legislation either 
 local or general — there is no special authority conferred upon 
 the Federal Government by the agency of Congress to lay and 
 collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to provide for 
 organizing, arming and disciplining a militia, or other exalted 
 Governmental Powers, and yet who will assert, that Congress 
 the agent of the General Government, cannot exercise these 
 powers in a Territory under the General Law — nor is there 
 any special power granted to create a corporation or establish 
 a ferry therein, and yet who denies the right of the agent 
 Congress, or its sub-agent the Territorial Legislature, to pass 
 such laws. There is nothing special legislatively given, and 
 nothing special legislatively reserved in the Constitution in 
 regard to the Territories, being the very reverse of the position 
 of the Federal and State Governments, a proof irresistible 
 that the legislative power of Congress over every subject 
 matter of legislation, general or local, slavery inclusive, in the 
 Territories, is the indisputable law of the Sovereignty. 
 
 Supposing that the term "State" was indiscriminately used, 
 and that it occasionlly meant Territory as applied to Territory 
 
38 
 
 subsequently acquired, and not ceded by any of the original 
 thirteen States, a very violent supposition, as put by Mr. 
 Douglas, what was there in the condition of the existence of 
 slavery in the Country in 1787, that would call for a special 
 Constitutional reservation in its favor in the Territories, where 
 it did not exist, when the institution, as it is now respectably 
 called, was on the wane in the States where it did exist, and 
 the limit of the importation of slaves, the source from which 
 slavery was supplied, was even fixed in an Article signed in 
 1774, by the Delegates from all the Colonies, thus early taking 
 the first determined step towards its final dissolution — for the 
 flag of slavery has varied its elevation considerably, both in 
 Colonial and Independent America, sometimes raised highly, 
 especialy in the Colonies, when even Virginia denounced it, 
 and again in 1787, after the Independence of the Country, aye 
 the Country itself was conquered from England, trailing in 
 the dust, the patriots and pure men of the land with General 
 Washington at the head, as at the head of every other 
 National Good, taking prudent measures for freeing the people 
 from this last cruel vestige of British avarice and power — is 
 it compatible, that reservations were entertained and duly 
 weighed in the minds of the Convention, in favor of a vicious 
 and unpopular system, and its special protection in wide 
 spread wastes, where no slave to serve nor master to claim 
 service from him dwelt, at a time when every prospect of its 
 speedy dissolution was clear, when very many of the States 
 were on the eve of taking decisive action on it, when the 
 intent of individual manumission was openly expressed, as a 
 public example and a private duty, by those eminent men in 
 numbers, whose word was a fiat, is it reasonable to push 
 conjecture to such verges, that construction can discover in the 
 Constitution, framed by these men, protection and exemption 
 in the Territories, for this nearly obsolete system of social 
 debasement, when the language of the great instrument itself 
 is strictly silent thereon ; was a transient form of government 
 ordained to possess permanent features, only in behalf of a 
 dying system of social life, that was spurned by the Nation, 
 not in the locality where it yet lingered, but where it was never 
 yet introduced, and had very little prospect ever of a home ; 
 was the Sovereignty of the Federal Government to be shorn 
 of all its attributes in the Territories on the subject matter of 
 slavery alone, when it exercised imperial sway without any 
 Constitutional limit on every other subject matter of Legisla- 
 tion, local or national — the conclusion which every dispassionate 
 man will arrive at is, that the framers of the Constitution 
 
39 
 
 taking no thought of slavery in the Territories, as they 
 employed no language direct, granting to it freedom and 
 reservation from Congressional action thereon, so did they not 
 wrap up such intent in the plain and intelligible terms of the 
 1st and 2d clauses of the 3rd Section of the 4th Article of the 
 Constitution — and that the inherent right of Sovereignty in the 
 Federal Government over the Territories, and of legislation 
 by Congress on all matters therein, slavery included, is not 
 impinged by these or any other clauses of the instrument, 
 If Congress, Constitutionally, has the power of unlimited 
 legislation in the Territories, the 3rd clause of the 2d Section 
 of the 4th Article, respecting a fugitive from labor, is a very 
 subordinate provision, out of which the ability or ingenuity 
 of a Statesman or of any man, can evolve nothing of material 
 import ; it is a provision of detail, in terms the most discreet, 
 and simply guards, that if a person owes labor, he shall not 
 successfully avoid the payment of the debt, by fleeing from 
 the State where the debt is due, or by being discharged from 
 its payment by force of the law of the State to which he 
 escapes, but shall be delivered up — this is its extent and no 
 more, the sanction by the Constitutional Law of an act of 
 comity between sister States, wherein the debt of a citizen of 
 one of them is involved, and which, from its rare and 
 extraordinary . nature, being not money nor chatties of any 
 kind, but the involuntary service of a human being, a laborer, 
 to whom, however worthy, his hire is not paid, contrary to the 
 doctrine of honesty, is capable of exit and escape, impelled by 
 every instinct that drives us, and aided by the resources, how- 
 ever limited, of the divine mind — it is an anomoly in the nature 
 of claim, and so regarded by the Constitution in the terms 
 that it employs, giving no precedence to that of the master in 
 favor of slavery, over that of the slave in favor of freedom, 
 for, among other things, the labor debt is to be first ascertained, 
 and is a condition precedent to the delivery ; the interpretation 
 that makes color presumptive evidence of slavery, and puts it 
 to the proof of freedom or non-indebtedness of labor, is not 
 patronized by the Constitution, but is one of these wolfish 
 dogmas of the petty law, that its professors have in all time 
 been prolific of inventing, with a few, very few honorable 
 exceptions, who have sided with liberty ; the great majority, 
 especially those eminent in rank, whether on or off the bench, 
 being instinctively prone to aid and abet tyranny, and the 
 ranker it is, the more ingenious and plausible the defences 
 these men ever invent and surround it with. In the 3rd clause 
 of the 2d Section, being the service or labor clause, no 
 
40 
 
 encouragement or patronage is given in behalf of the expansion 
 of slavery in the States even, and very scanty is the countenance 
 it there receives to retain what it claimed — were it favored, 
 instead of being shunned, were it treated as a just right, instead 
 of a compulsory wrong, how differently would the Constitu- 
 tional language declare itself — and least of all, can the faintest 
 reference to slavery in the Territories or the application of the 
 fugitive clause therein be traced — the provision, such as it is, 
 made in the Constitution restricting and directing States, over 
 which without this authority Congress could not afterwards 
 act, was deemed needful, whereas in the Territories, that the 
 Federal Government supremely ruled in virtue of its unre- 
 stricted sovereignty, Congress could at any time enact provision 
 on the subject of fugitive labor and its delivery." 
 
 Eeasoning similar hereto, but more comprehensive and 
 elaborate, always standing within the circle of the Constitution, 
 could be advanced by an intelligent and disinterested citizen, 
 as to the true import of these clauses — but such is the power 
 of passionate clamor, raised and kept up by the seductive 
 influence of the relation of master and slave, a love the more 
 bewitching the more it is illegitimate and unholy, that the 
 strained uses to which the plain language and import of the 
 Constitution have been put of late, are regarded by certain 
 men as no longer unnatural or dangerous — they are taken up 
 and coolly converted in the study of the Statesman, and the 
 chambers of the Judiciary — precedent has no force, and the 
 uniform course of legislation prepared and presided over by 
 Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison is slighted or belied by 
 metaphysical and legal subtlety, or bullied with the raw 
 dexterity of a western stump speech. Plow precipitately has 
 Mr. Douglas not fallen from the sublime, when, in one of his 
 vagaries in aid of this doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, he 
 invented in its support the other new doctrine of Sovereignty 
 in abeyance and in trust, a grand discovery, which places the 
 gentleman, as a jurist, at the head of this or any other age, 
 and which rebukes the wisdom of the Codes of all time — 
 would it not be well, that he be permitted to take unto himself 
 leisure and retirement, in order to perfect his treatise on the 
 unknown doctrine of Sovereignty in Abeyance, and bequeath 
 it to his country, a rarer inheritance than even any that may 
 unfortunately befal her from his Chief Executive occupations. 
 
 Mr. Douglas has announced his Doctrine of Popular 
 Sovereignty in the Territories, as an invention of which he is 
 the first discoverer, and for which he claims a patent from the 
 people — he instinctively apprehended the plausibility of the 
 
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