P 685 
 .P962 
 Copy 1 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 A- Mi4i 
 
 HON. GEORGE S. PUGH, OF OHIO, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 CONDITION OF AFFAIRS IN KANSAS TEMITOM. 
 
 
 'j^' 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, MAY 26,. 1856, 
 
 -^OT- CCf^^^^ 
 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 
 
 1856. 
 
AFPAIES IN KANSAS. 
 
 The bill to authorize the people of the Territory of Kan- 
 sas to form a constitution and State government, preparatory 
 to their admission into t)ie Union when they have the requi- 
 site population, being under consideration, 
 
 Mr. PUGH said: The condition of affairs in 
 Kansas Territory, for the past year, has been such 
 as to fill the heart of a patriotic statesman with 
 unaffected sorrow and alarm. Together, like twin 
 sisters, that Territory and the Territory of Ne- 
 braska came into existence, on the 30th of May, 
 1854, by virtue of one act of Congress, and with 
 organizations in all respects the same. In Ne- 
 braska, so far as we can learn, quiet and order 
 have prevailed, and the foundations of a prosper- 
 ous State have been securely established. But 
 Kansas, almost from the hour of its birth, has 
 been the arena of conflict, violence, and blood- 
 shed. These disorders became more intense, as 
 ■well as more frequent, from month to month, until 
 the assembling of Congress in December last; 
 and at an early period of the session — before the 
 House of Representatives had notified us of its 
 organization — attained a serious degree of import- 
 ance. The season in which we are accustomed 
 to celebrate the advent of the Prince of Peace on 
 earth — when, of old, the angels, in manifest glory, 
 proclaimed " good will "to all mankind — that sea- 
 son, so sacred and festal, brought us tidings of 
 the most terrible character; tidings that discon- 
 tent had ripened into rebellion, and strife pro- 
 ceeded to the bitterness of civil war. The prom- 
 ises of the new year came not to soothe our 
 anxieties; but, instead, a solemn message from 
 the President, advising us that all the appliances 
 of conciliation had been exhausted, and that we 
 must prepare for an appeal to arms if we would 
 maintain the supremacy of the laws. And now, 
 since the last adjournment of the Senate, even 
 more dreadful reports have reached our ears; and 
 the " bloodylssue " threatened, as well as foretold , 
 by the convention which met at the Big Springs, 
 in September, presses onward to a fiercer stage 
 and still more frightful consequences. In this 
 great emergency, Mr. President, each Senator 
 and Representative of the United States in Con- 
 
 gress, ought to regard well his course, and be- 
 waVe, lest through him, our mighty Republic 
 should come to a fatal and inglorious ruin. 
 
 These reflections indicate with suflicient clear- 
 ness the path I shall endeavor to tread. And it 
 is rather to my constituents, for my own sake, 
 that I now proceed to declare the conclusions, 
 both of law and fact, in reference to the general 
 question, at which I have deliberately arrived. 
 
 And first in order, I come to the substitute 
 offered by the Senator from New York [Mr. 
 Seward] to the bill reported by the Committee 
 on Territories. That proposes the admission of 
 Kansas into the Union as a State, upon the con- 
 stitution adopted by the convention of delegates 
 which assembled at Topeka on the 23d of Octo- 
 ber last. To this, sir, I have two preliminary 
 objections, and each of them is insuperable: 
 
 1. I do not believe that the Territory contains 
 rnoro than twenty-four thousand inhabitants; and 
 not that number, certainly, if one half the accu- 
 sations made by the Senator from Vermont, 
 [Mr. CoLLAMER,] in his speech, some weeks 
 ago, be true. The votes given at the regular elec- 
 tion for a Delegate in Congress, last fall, together 
 with those which Andrew H. Reeder pretends 
 to have received, on the second Tuesday of Oc- 
 tober, amount to some six thousand; and as the 
 inhabitants are chiefly men without families, or 
 men who have left their families in the States 
 whence they emigrated, I consider it a liberal 
 estimate — and, indeed, an extravagant one — to 
 say that the population is equal to four times the 
 number of voters. The Senator from Vermont 
 does not claim, in his report, more than twenty- 
 five thousand. 
 
 To countervail this fact, as far as possible, the 
 Senator from New York asserts that no specific 
 number of inhabitants is required, by the Con- 
 stitution, for the admission of any State. Per- 
 haps, sir, such a requisite has not been expressed 
 in terms; but when the Constitution declares, 
 article first, section second, "the number of 
 Representatives [in Congress] shall not exceed 
 one for every thirty thousand, it was intended, I 
 
think, to fix that number as the least constitu- 
 ency to be allowed for a Representative, except 
 in the case of an original State, or a State admit- 
 ted with a larger population, and reduced, by- 
 emigration, or some other cause, below the stand- 
 ard. 
 
 If this were otherwise, however, I should not 
 be disposed to admit any State with so meager 
 a population. It would be unjust to New York, 
 or Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or Virginia, if her vote 
 could be nullified, in this House, by the vote of 
 two Senators, representing a less number of in- 
 habitants, by two thirds and more, than the act 
 of Congress prescribes for the constituency of a 
 single member in the other House. 
 
 2. TheTopeka constitution never was adopted 
 by the citizens of the Territory, nor even by a 
 respectable number of them. It did not receive 
 more than seven hundred and nineteen votes, all 
 told, in a Territory which contains five or six 
 thousand legal voters. Tliere is no pretense, in 
 the papers submitted to us, that the people ever 
 ratified it. The petitions from Leavenworth, 
 presented with the constitution, make no such 
 claim. They intimate, to be sure, that the people 
 would have ratified it on the 15th of December, if 
 the polls had been regularly opened, and the elec- 
 tion allowed to proceed. Whether this be scf, 
 or otherwise, I cannot decide; but I am certain 
 that no ratification — such as the Constitution 
 itself requires — ever was given. I cannot hesi- 
 tate to say, therefore, that the " State of Kansas" 
 is a mere fiction, and its governor, legislators, 
 judges, et cetera, are but titular dignitaries. 
 
 I do not think it worth while, at present, to 
 urge any other objection; the facts are plain, and 
 their legal effect is beyond all disputation, or the 
 necessity of serious comment. 
 
 It is next suggested rather darkly in the 
 "views" submitted by the Senator from Verr 
 mont, as a member of the Committee on Territo- 
 ries, that we should annul, ab initio, the proceed- 
 ings and action of the late Territorial Legislature. 
 This would be an extraordinary, and, indeed, 
 high-handed exercise of power — one for which 
 there is no precedent, so far as I can discover, in 
 jhe history of congressibnal enactments. I must 
 have a very clear case to warrant me in such in- 
 terference; and that case must establish, by cer- 
 tain and unanswerable testimony, these proposi- 
 tions: 
 
 1. That the members of the Legislature, or a 
 majority of them, were not properly elected. 
 
 2. That their acts of leg.slation are of a char- 
 acter intolerable to Americun citizens. 
 
 3. That there is no rurncdy, less violent, for 
 the evils alleged. 
 
 Because, sir, it is a serious matter to avoid, in 
 toto, a body of statutes under which marriages 
 have been celebrated, estates distributed, property 
 acquired, and rights otherwise established. I am 
 not prepared to say that such an abrogation of 
 the statutes, ex post facto, would cancel marriages 
 or divest estates; but it would give rise to many 
 doubts, and great confusion, uncertainty, and 
 distress. 
 
 The Senator from Vermont has endeavored to 
 show, in his report and by his speech, that the 
 Territorial Legislature was — to use his own lan- 
 guage — a " spurious foreign" Legislature; or, in 
 other words, that its members were not elected 
 
 by the bona fide residents and voters. He has 
 likewise asserted, that some of the laws which it 
 enacted were peculiarly oppressive and tyrannical. 
 But I do not discover, in his report or his speech, 
 or in the speeches of his coadjutors, even a remote 
 allusion to the last, and, after all, most important 
 of the requisites I have specified. Let us admit, 
 for a while, that his accusations are literally true: 
 is there no redress on this side of revolution .' In 
 my judgment, sir, there is. A new House of 
 Representatives will be chosen in October, and in 
 one year from that time a new Council. If the 
 Governor — armed as he now is with the military 
 power of the Union — should repress invasions or 
 tumults at the election, and secure to the inhabit- 
 ants an unmolested right of suffrage, cannot all 
 obnoxious laws be repealed according to the reg- 
 ular and accustomed form ? 
 
 The Senator declares this impossible, however, 
 until after the election of 1857; because, he says, 
 the councilors, already chosen, will resist to the 
 uttermost the wishes of the other House. I take 
 such a suggestion to be, upon its face, rather im- 
 probable; but, as an extreme case, let us imagine 
 it to be well founded. What then? Is the con- 
 dition of the citizens of Kansas any worse than 
 that which has, at times, befallen the citizens of 
 a State.' How often, sir, have the citizens of 
 Indiana been deceived by the professions of legis- 
 lative candidates, and induced to bestow their 
 confidence only to find it betrayed without scruple, 
 and themselves bitterly oppressed ? It has hap- 
 pened, and too frequently, in the State of Ohio. 
 But, sir, neither the citizens of Indiana, nor those 
 of Ohio, ever dreamed of redress except through 
 patience, submission for the present, and a change 
 of rulers in due time. Are the citizens of Kan- 
 sas so much better, I ask, that we must invent 
 some unexampled remedy, next to a forcible rev- 
 olution, rather than exact of them a little for- 
 bearance? 
 
 But, sir, let us proceed to the other requisites 
 I have specified, and see if the Senator from Ver- 
 mont can establish either of them. First, then, 
 is the question whether the Territorial Legislature 
 of Kansas was a " spurious," or a valid. Legis- 
 lature. It seems to be taken as true, in both the 
 reports submitted from the Committee on Terri- 
 tories, that in seven districts — represented in the 
 Legislature by three councilors and nine repre- 
 sentatives — the election of March 30, 1855, was 
 tumultuous and irregular. We have heard much, 
 here and elsewhere, of the conduct of certain citi- 
 zens of Missouri upon the border of Kansas, who 
 are charged with having invaded the Territory in 
 organized companies, with arms in their hands, 
 with music and banners, and driving the qualified 
 voters from the polls. When we come, however, 
 to the specification of all these charges — when we 
 demand the occasion, the place, the circumstances 
 — in every instance, so far as I have been able to 
 discover, the venue is laid in one or another of 
 the seven districts, or in some precinct where the 
 returns of the election were disregarded. That 
 violence may have occurred elsewhere — that the 
 right of suffrage may not have been exercised, in 
 every instance, with as much freedom as it should 
 have been — that illegal votes may have been re- 
 ceived, and legal votes rejected — these things, 
 Mr. President, may have transpired. I cannot 
 deny the assertion; nor, certainly, can I affirm it. 
 
No testimony to that effect has been produced 
 here; none has been discovered b}' the Comnnittee 
 on Territories, or even by the Senator from Ver- 
 mont, a member of that committee, who dissents 
 from the conchisions at which his colleagues 
 orrived. Neither the Housv of Representatives, 
 nor its Committee on Elections, after a delibera- 
 tion of two or three months, could find any such 
 evidence; and, as a last resort, an expedient of 
 the most desperate character, three gentlemen 
 have been appointed to visit the Territory, well 
 provided with money and political influence, 
 armed with unlimited power to send for persons 
 and papers, in the eager hope of discovering some 
 fact, supported by the oath of some person, to eke 
 out the multitude of assertions so lustily and 
 recklessly made fora year past in public speeches, 
 arid through the newspapers. 
 
 In this emergency, sir, the faith of the Senator 
 from Iowa [Mr. Harlan] soared above all diffi- 
 culties, lie exhorted us to adopt these assertions 
 as matters of history, and not as matters contro- 
 verted between rival parties, unsustained by offi- 
 cial records, and to be established (if at all) upon 
 clear and authentic evidence. He compared the 
 assurance of their correctness, derived from' the 
 vague declarations ofinterested witnesses, anony- 
 mous writers, private correspondents, itinerant ! 
 lecturers, partisan newspapers, not only with our 
 assurance that Louis Napoleon is the ruler of the 
 French empire, but even — I deplore such a com- 
 parison — with our assurance that the " Savior of j 
 mankind was once made manifest in the flesh." 
 Yes, Mr. President, as matters of history, that 
 was the phrase. How it may have been, sir, 
 with others upon that occasion,! know not; but, 
 for my part, I was forcibly reminded of BoUng- 
 broke's bitter apophthegm, " All history must be 
 false!" 
 
 The Senator is not alone, however, in this 
 achievement. Certain members of the Ohio Legis- 
 lature, with a lofty contempt for particulars, with- 
 out any regard to the acknowledged sources of 
 truthor rules ofevidence, have comprehended, as- 
 certained, and decided the whole question. They, 
 forsooth, knew all about it. Naught, sir, did 
 they care for the committees, or the commission- 
 ers, designated in either House of Congress: 
 their eyes beheld, their ears heard, accurately, 
 what transpired at the distance of more than a 
 thousand miles. And they seem to have post- 
 
 Soned the transaction of their proper legislative 
 usiness, deferred the performance of their own 
 duties to another year, in order, graciously, to 
 " instruct" my colleague and myself, as well as 
 twenty-one members of the other House, and the 
 Governors of all the States in the Union, how to 
 solve a disputed question of fact. Sir, I believe 
 the citizens of Ohio will regard such behavior — 
 as I regard it — a mere and empty ebullition of 
 partisan zeal. 
 
 I repeat, Mr. President, violence may have 
 occurred in other districts or precincts than those 
 specified; but there is no evidence of it, and noth- 
 ing to render it even probable. When the fact 
 shall have been established — if it ever can be 
 established — by such testimony as we ought to 
 receive in a case of great and solemn interest, I 
 will be ready to act with some degree of confi- 
 dence. At present, however, I do not believe 
 that either a majority of the Council, or a ma- 
 
 jority of the House of Representatives, consti- 
 tuting the Territorial Legislature of Kansas, were 
 unduly elected, or that the Legislature was, in 
 any sense, a " spurious" one. I should not be 
 astonished, sir, if some degree of turbulence had 
 prevailed in every precinct and at every poll. 
 That would only be in keeping with the course 
 of elections elsewhere in the United States for the 
 last eighteen months. None of the scenes de- 
 picted as having occurred in the seven districts 
 of Kansas, on the 30th of March, 1855, exceed, 
 in tumultuous array, or in the other qualification 
 of banners, music, and fire-arms, the scones which 
 transpired at Cincinnati on the first Monday of 
 April, in the same year. Nor were the conse- 
 quences, in any respect, more alarming and sor- 
 rowful. For days and nights together a furioua 
 mob kept that city in almost breathless fear — as- 
 saulted, time and again, the habitations of inof- 
 fensive men, feeble women, and helpless children — 
 and was subdued, at length, by an appeal to 
 arms, and at the sacrifice of human life. I will 
 not relate what is said to have occurred at Louis- 
 ville and at New Orleans during that year. Those 
 are matters which I know only from report. 
 
 But I wish to remind the citizens of Ohio that, 
 whilst a majority of their Legislature had tears 
 to shed over the turbulent elections of Kansas 
 Territory, it looked with calm and even cold 
 indifference at the violence, the bloodshed, the 
 inexcusable wickedness, perpetrated at an elec- 
 tion held in their own midst. No man has been 
 punished for these transactions; no man has even 
 been prosecuted. The " cause " of the Kansas 
 insurgents is commended, by legislative resolu- 
 tions, to the " warm sympathies " (if the public; 
 but the outrages inflicted on our citizens at home 
 have not been thought worthy of notice. The 
 ears of the Governor and the Legislature were 
 deaf, pertinaciously, to the appeals of our own 
 people: they would hear the " shrieks for free- 
 dom"afarofr, thousands of miles, in Kansas Ter- 
 ritory; but as for the occurrences in Cincinnati — 
 the destruction of ballot-boxes, burning of ballots, 
 poll-books, and tally-sheets, driving of judges 
 from their places, abusing the Mayor in the exe- 
 cution of his office, beating and wounding peace- 
 able voters, firing muskets and pistols into houses 
 filled with women and children — establishing a 
 reign of imminent terror throughout one third of 
 the city, and alarming all the rest— these were 
 matters of no consequence! 
 
 The Senator from Vermont feels the urgency 
 of this question, and has undertaken, therefore, 
 to demonstrate that the foray of the Missouri 
 border-men must have extended into other dis- 
 tricts than the seven already specified. His 
 argument depends altogether upon the fact that, 
 by the census taken in January, 1855, it was 
 ascertained that the Territory contained two thou- 
 sand nine hundred and five voters, whereas at the 
 election,(March30,) more than six thousand votes 
 were cast. 
 
 To this, however, a conclusive answer was sug- 
 gested by the distinguished Senator from Illinois, 
 [Mr. Douglas,] upon the spur of the moment; 
 it is, that the Territory was opened for settlement 
 late in the previous year, and few immigrants 
 had time to do more than select their locations, 
 and mark out the limits of their "claims" for 
 preemption; or, at furthest, break up the soil, 
 
and sow grain for the ensuing season, when the 
 winter overtook tliem. Without houses or other 
 shelter— without food , or even a change of raiment 
 —in a wild crfuntry— what course could these men 
 take, Mr. President, except return to their former 
 abodes in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, or 
 seek refuge in the border settlements of Missouri ? 
 And, sir, hundreds of these very men — cmi- 
 
 f rants from other States, (some even from New 
 Ingland,) sojourning in Missouri for the winter 
 *— men who had " claims" staked off, and crops 
 ■planted in Kansas, are styled "non-resident 
 voters," "border ruffians," " Missouri invad- 
 ers," because they repaired to the Territory in 
 March, 1855, and voted at the election. Had 
 they a ri^ht to vote ? To be sure , Mr. President, 
 their fam'ilies were not in Kansas, because they 
 had not erected even cabins upon their farms to 
 protect those families against the snows of winter ; 
 but they were bond fide residents of the Territory, 
 and qualified voters in every conceivable sense. 
 Even Governor Reeder, as the exec\itive minutes 
 will show, had not his family in Kansas at that 
 time; yet no man denies, 1 imagine, that he was 
 an actual inhabitant, and, as such, entitled to the 
 right of suffrage. 
 
 Tlicse circumstances, Mr. President, show that 
 the census cannot be taken as a fair indication of 
 the number of legal voters. It was ordered on 
 the 15th of January, but the fact is recorded out 
 of its proper place, in the executive minutes, by 
 more than a month, It only appears after three 
 entries, dated February 27th, and by that time 
 the census was almost completed. I do not pre- 
 tend to give a reason why this was done; but cer- 
 tainly, if an, inhabitant of Kansas, domiciled in 
 Missouri for the winter, had gone to the records 
 of the executive office, at Shawnee Mission, he 
 could not have learned the time, or the manner in 
 which, or the persons by whom, the census was 
 to be taken. When Ca;sar Augustus promul- 
 gated the famous decree, " that all the world should 
 be taxed," notice was given for every man to re- 
 turn " into his own city," and there be assessed; 
 but when Governor Reeder wished to enumerate 
 the inhabitants of Kansas Territory, in order to 
 ascertain the legal voters, it does not seem that 
 any notice was given, or, indeed, any record 
 made, until the census had been nearly or quite 
 finished. 
 
 Before the 3d of March, as the executive min- 
 utes show, all the returns of the enumeration had 
 been delivered to tlie Governor; so that the cen- 
 sus was taken at the most inclement season of the 
 year, in a country where few houses had been 
 erected, and when one li(alf the inhabitants, or 
 more, had been compelled to seek shelter at their 
 former places of residence, or in the neighboring 
 State of Missouri. 
 
 The election was lield on the 30lh of March , 
 1855, in virtue of a proclamation dated twenty- 
 two days previous. Is it wonderful, in such cir- 
 cumstances, that all those residents of Kansas 
 who Were sojourning in Missouri should have 
 rushed into the Territory, should have voted, and 
 should even have returned to their places of tran- 
 sient abode in Missouri, to await the coming of 
 mild weather before removing to their farms in 
 Kansas, and commencing to build their liouses .' 
 Tlve 30th of March is a bleak season in that lati- 
 tude. Itisnotatime,sir,at which any man could 
 
 well afford to live in tents, or commence, upon 
 the prairies, to erect a permanent habitation. Is 
 it wonderful that hundreds of the people of Kan- 
 sas, who had returned for the winter to Illinois, 
 Indiana, and Kentucky, should have made haste 
 to regain the Territory in order to vote, and then 
 sought a present shelter in the cities or towns of 
 western Missouri? Is it even wonderful, sir, 
 that in all this confusion and tumult, when the 
 Territory was without laws, and almost without 
 a government; while thousands of absentees en- 
 titled to vote were speeding toward Kansas; while 
 every steamer which ascended the river, day after 
 day, was crowded with new-comers and return- 
 ing settlers, — that the vague rumors of a great 
 Massachusetts corporation, with millions of cap- 
 ital, organized for the purpose of securing the 
 best lands of the Territory, and, by pouring in 
 a flood of New England fanatics, not only ex- 
 cluding others from a choice of favorable loca- 
 tions, but establishing a colony from' which of- 
 fensive operations could be set on foot against the 
 property and the peace of Missouri — even if these 
 rumors were entirely without excuse, even if 
 none of the persons sent out by the corporation 
 had carried arms of a new and peculiarly destruc- 
 tive character, or indulged the Jeast aggressive 
 speech or threat — should have influenced some of 
 the citizens and young men of western Missouri, 
 alarmed for their safety at home, or wishing to 
 obtain locations in Kansas, or instigated by a 
 sense of injury, well or ill founded, to join in the 
 multitude of those who were rushing into the 
 Territory, or proceed in companies, with arms 
 dis])layed, with drums beating, and colors flying, 
 (although this part, I believe, is mere exaggera- 
 tion,) and engage in the general disturbance — 
 some to seek their fortunes in the new commu- 
 nity, some to create mischief, some to vote, some 
 to drive voters from the polls, some to make 
 speeches, and some only to make a noise .' 
 
 Sir, these excesses are not uncommon in the 
 older States of the Union, and far less in the 
 western and southwestern States. They were, 
 u))on this occasion, the inevitable results of the 
 manner in which the census had been taken, and 
 the suddenness with which the election was or- 
 dered, the untimely period chosen for it, and the 
 brief notice to all concerned. I repeat, sir, that 
 I do not presume to question the motives of Gov- 
 ernor Reeder in this transaction; he has enough 
 to answer, to explain, and (if possible?) to justify 
 before God and his countrymen; and I will invent 
 no charges against him. 
 
 Strangely enough, however, the results of the 
 enumeration in January, 1855, do not materially 
 assist the Senator from Vermont in proving his 
 assertion. These executive minutes show that 
 the principal and almost entire excess of votes — 
 about which we have heard so much — occurred 
 in the seven contested districts. I have taken the 
 trouble to compare the returns of the census with 
 the returns of the election, district by district, 
 precinct by precinct, and such is the result of all 
 my examination. 
 
 The census proves that, on the 15th of Janu- 
 ary, 1855, there were two thousand nine hundred 
 and five voters in the Territory. I do not stop to 
 count the four hundred and eight aliens in addi- 
 tion, each of whom could vote (by the Kansas 
 act) as soon as he had taken the oath of alle- 
 
giance, and declared his intention to become a 
 citizen of the United States. I stand upon the 
 fact that two thousand nine hundred and five 
 voters were admitted by the census. 
 
 On the 30th of March, more than ten weeks 
 afterwards, there were six thousand three hun- 
 dred and thirty-one votes cast — showing an in- 
 crease of three thousand fourhundrodand twenty- 
 six beyond the census. But in those districts and 
 grecincts alone, the returns of which Governor 
 .eeder rejected, the increase amounted to two 
 thousand two hundred and seventy-nine votes. 
 Add to these, sir, the excess of two hundred and 
 seventy in Bull Creek precinct — for that was vir- 
 tually nullified, also, by Governor Recder's de- 
 cision — and we have two thousand five hundred 
 and forty-nine as the increase of votes in the con- 
 tested districts. Take that sum from the total 
 already mentioned, and there remain eight hun- 
 dred and seventy-seven votes, as the increase in 
 all the other (uncontested) districts. 
 
 Again, sir, without changing the results of the 
 election, we could reject one hundred and forty- 
 three votes in Potawatomie precinct, against 
 which some complaint seems to have been made; 
 and this would leave an increase of only seven 
 hundred and thirty-four votes. 
 
 Thus far, I repeat, the results of the election in 
 March, 1855, will not be disturbed — except as 
 to three councilors and six representatives (the 
 three representatives, for Leavenworth, having 
 been chosen again at the May election) in the 
 Territorial Legislature. And if we follow the 
 counsel-s of the Senator from Vermont as to the 
 tenth representative district — if we suppose the 
 election to have been vacated, and some other 
 candidate than Mr. Tebbs to have been elected — 
 we must reject the excess of votes (one hundred 
 and fifty-nine) in that district likewise. Thus, 
 after the mighty achievement of unseating one 
 representative — for that is all — we should find the 
 legal voters of Kansas to have increased from 
 January 15 until March 30, only five hundred and 
 seventy-five ! 
 
 And yet, Mr. President, the Senator from Mas- 
 sachusetts [Mr. Sumner] who asks us to believe 
 this implicitly, asks us to believe, oZso, that when 
 the constitutional convention met at Topeka, in 
 October, 1855, the Territory had grown from a 
 population of eight thousand six hundred and 
 one, \nale and female, old and young, citizens 
 and aliens, white and black, freemen and slaves, 
 to fifty or even sixty thousand inhabitants ! 
 
 The Senator from Vermont complains that the 
 two Houses of the Territorial Legislature, re- 
 spectively, set aside the second election, held on 
 the 22d of May, 1855, for councilors and rep- 
 resentatives of the seven districts. 
 
 This, sir, is true; and the question arises, there- 
 upon, by what authority was that election or- 
 dained .■* The question is not whether the election 
 for councilors and representatives on the 30th 
 of March should or should not be allowed to 
 stemd; because I proceed, throughout, upon the 
 idea that to the extent of those districts it was 
 irregular and tumultuous. The question is, what 
 authority had the Governor in this respect? 
 What power had he to order a new election for 
 any district? The right of every legislative as- 
 sembly to decide upon the election of its own 
 members — free of all interference by the execu- 
 
 tive, or even the judicial department — is as old as 
 the first Parliament that ever held a session. Let 
 us consider, for one moment, the consequences 
 of a different doctrine. Wherever a protest was 
 filed, as these executive minutes show, Governor 
 Reeder set aside the election — although, in one 
 case, the protestants were the unsuccessful can- 
 didates. No testimony was adduced; no trial was 
 allowed; nor was any notice given. And so, it 
 would seem, elections are to Tie vacated, mem- 
 bers elect deprived of their offices, the right of 
 representation taken from the people, and, prac- 
 tically, the whole legislative power usurped by 
 the Governor, as often as defeated candidates 
 choose to protest against the result ! Granted, 
 if you please, that illegal votes were cast, by the 
 hundred, in these districts: it did not follow, by 
 any means, that all the illegal votes were given 
 for the successful candidates; or that, rejecting 
 them, the successful candidates had not a clear 
 mmority of legal votes. 
 
 If, by the Kansas organic act. Congress had 
 conferred upon the Governor (as some suggest) 
 the power to set aside an election, and order a 
 new one. Congress would have transgressed its 
 own authority, and the provision would have 
 been altogether void. What! Mr. President, arm 
 one man with a right to unseat councilors and 
 representatives; give certificates to whoever he 
 may like; order new elections at his own pleasure ! 
 What is this, I ask, but unlimited and despotic 
 control of the government? It would not be a 
 Legislature, sir, that was so constituted. It 
 would be a mere cabal, pot appointed by the peo- 
 ple, to register the Governor's own decrees. I 
 grant that, by the twenty-second section of the 
 organic law for Kansas Territory, the Gov- 
 ernor was a returning officer — that it was his 
 duty to receive and canvass the returns of the 
 first election, and wherever the returns were reg- 
 ular, upon their face, grant certificates to the 
 parties thereby appearing to have been elected. 
 
 If the returns were informal or irregular in any 
 material respect, he might, perhaps, refuse the 
 certificates of election. He was to declare the 
 result from the official returns made to him, and 
 not from protests, affidavits, or papers of that 
 description. He was, to be sure, a judge of the 
 fact; but the law prescribed what evidence, and 
 what only, he should receive. 
 
 In case of equal votes, in case of death, resig- 
 nation or vacancy of that kind, the Governor 
 could order a new election; but he could not 
 make a vacancy, and then order it to be filled — 
 whether by a new election, or otherwise. That 
 power belonged, exclusively and inherently, to 
 the Council as respected its members, and to the 
 House as respected its members. " There isno 
 other body known to the Constitution," said 
 Chancellor Kent, " to which such a power might 
 safely be trusted." (Commentaries, vol. 1, 
 sec. 11.) 
 
 Let us take the case, Mr. President, as I have 
 supposed it. In seven districts, including three 
 councilors and nine representatives, the electjpn 
 was not only illegal, but the returns were informal, 
 and even fatally defective. Governor Reeder de- 
 clined to give certificates to the parties having the 
 highest n'umber of votes. I do not complain of 
 that; but he had no right to order a new election, 
 either on the 22d of May, or at any other time. 
 
8 
 
 There was a quorum of the members, in each 
 House, duly elected: he had ascertained that — 
 declared it — given certificates to the parties. Here, 
 sir, he should have left the business; and upon 
 the two Houses, when assembled, was devolved 
 the task of examining the elections in all the dis- 
 tricts — not upon the returns alone, but to the full 
 extent and very matter of fact. I have no doubt, 
 for these reasons, that the election ordered by 
 Governor Reeder, on the 22d of May, was en- 
 tirely unauthorized and void; and that it was the 
 duty of each House, as soon as the Legislature 
 had been organized, to examine the election of 
 March 30, 1855, in all the contested districts, re- 
 ject the illegal votes, count the legal ones, and 
 decide which of the candidates were, in fact, 
 chosen at that election; or, in case this could not 
 be ascertained, to annul the election, and order a 
 new one. Let us see, then, whether the two 
 Houses did any more; whether, as alleged, they 
 exceeded their right and their duty as a Legis- 
 lature. On the first day of the session, July 2, 
 the House of Representatives adopted thi« reso- 
 lution: 
 
 "That all persons who may desire to contest the seats of 
 any persons now holding certificates of election as members 
 of this House, may present their protests to the Committee 
 oh Credentials, and that notice thereof shall be given to 
 tlie persons holding such certificates." 
 
 That every legislative body has the power, even 
 without a contest, to inquire into the right of its 
 members to their seats, is very clear, and affirmed 
 by a multitude of precedents. Nowhere has it 
 been exercised more frequently, perhaps, than 
 by one or the other Hous«*of the Ohio Legislature. 
 
 The Committee on Credentials proceeded, un- 
 der this authority, to examine the case of each 
 member, as well of those who assumed to have 
 been elected on the 22d of May, as of those who 
 had received certificates at the regular (March) 
 election. What was the result.' Out of twenty- 
 two members present — there were but twenty-six 
 in all — the right of fifteen members was aflirmed 
 by unanimous voice. As to the other seven cases, 
 it would appear, four members of the committee 
 (out of five) reported, ^' having heard and exam- 
 ined all the evidence, touching the matter of inquiry 
 before them," that the gentlemen who received the 
 highest number of votes on the 30th of March 
 were duly elected; or, in other words, counting 
 the legal votes alone, upon the law and the testi- 
 mony adduced, the illegal votes did not change or 
 at all affect the result. 
 
 And now, Mr. President, on what pretext did 
 the fifth committee-man dissent? Did he deny 
 the fact of election, by legal votes, on the 30ih of 
 March.' No,sir,nothingof the kind. Itwasupon 
 the pretext that Governor Reeder had, by law, 
 the final, exclusive, and absolute right to decide 
 the election of the members; and as he had set 
 aside the choice made in seven districts on the 
 30th of March, the House could inquire no fur- 
 ther. I have shown that this proposition was 
 not only devoid of authority in the statute, but 
 contrary to all the law, written and unwritten, 
 that ever existed. It only remains to show, there- 
 fore, what the claim was, and here I find it, sir, 
 in the protest of the rejected members: 
 
 " We, the undersigned, members of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives of Kansas Territory, believe the organic act or- 
 ganizing the said Territory gives this House no power to oust 
 any member from tliis House who has received a certificate 
 
 from the Governor; that this House cannot go behind an 
 election called by the Governor, and consider any claims 
 based on a prior election. We would, therefore, protest 
 against such a proceeding, and ask this protest to be spread 
 upon the journal of this House." 
 
 The proceedings in the Council, I understand, 
 were of like character. 
 
 One suggestion more. Whatever speech Got- 
 ernor Reeder may have made at Easton,in Penn- 
 sylvania, or elsewhere, prior to his removal from 
 oflice, there is no occasion, when he was called 
 to act as Governor, that he did not affirm the 
 title of the Legislature, as a regularly-elected and 
 constituted body, in all imaginable forms — by 
 messages, and other appropriate recognitions — 
 until the day (August 16) when he was removed. 
 He denied the right of the two Houses to adjourn 
 their session from Pawnee City, and he applied 
 the veto power several times upon that ground 
 alone. Certain it is, therefore — until they crossed 
 the path of his expected fortune, until they re- 
 moved from his city of Pawnee, on the western 
 verge of the settlements, to the Shawnee Mis- 
 sion — the members of the Legislature had no 
 cause to suspect that he disputed their authority 
 as rightfully-elected councilors and representa- 
 tives. 
 
 That the removal was perfectly legal, as well 
 as expedient, I do not entertain a doubt; and for 
 ourselves, at least, no Senator has attached any 
 importance, thus far, to that topic, on which the 
 Governor addressed the Territorial Legislature at 
 such length, and which he made the first pretext 
 of his disobedience to the territorial laws. You 
 have on your table, Mr. President, the proceed- 
 ings of a court-martial by which an officer of the 
 Army was tried, and dismissed the service, for 
 lending his influence — such, at all events, was 
 the charge — to advance the speculation of Gov- 
 ernor Reeder in the Pawnee military reserve. 
 On his part, I am forced to conclude, the assertion 
 of illegality at the March election — except in 
 the seven contested districts — was a mere after- 
 thought, and adopted only when his first excuse 
 had proved to be unavailable. 
 
 But, sir, even if we allow that the Council and 
 the House erred, or acted improperly, in admit- 
 ting three councilors and six representatives who 
 had never been elected, what would it matter? 
 The majority of each House had been rightfully 
 chosen; and the decision, though erroneous, or 
 otherwise improper, is final and conclusive in 
 law. So it is, sir, with the judgment of courts, 
 and I have known many of them which 1 deemed 
 erroneous, and even some which I deemed par- 
 tial. 
 
 The Senator from Vermont suggested, in his 
 speech, that the admission of the councilors and 
 representatives for the seven districts robbed the 
 Governor of his veto power. But that, sir, is a 
 pure mistake. There were only three councilors, 
 out of thirteen, in these districts — not one fourth 
 of the whole number; and, even if they had voted 
 to sustain a veto message, no different result 
 would have been attained. But the Senator lays 
 stress, chiefly, upon the House, inasmuch as 
 there were twenty-six members in all, and nine 
 of them (little more than one third) represented 
 the contested districts. 
 
 But, as the Senator from Illinois suggested, 
 three of these nine were reelected, on the 22d 
 of May, at Governor Reeder 's own election; and 
 
ihe question turns, really, upon the case of six 
 memoers — less than one fourth of the whole 
 number. And, besides, the functions of the 
 House are at an end; and new members must be 
 chosen in October. 
 
 The veto messages were overruled, in each in- 
 stance, by votes nearly or quite unanimous, and 
 none of then* were upon questions of any import- 
 ance except the removal of the Legislature to 
 the Shawnee Mission. 
 
 Whicliovcr way we turn, therefore, the results 
 of the election in the seven contested districts 
 made no difference ut all. More than three 
 fourths of the members in each House were le- 
 gally entitled to act and vote as members; and the 
 statutes which they enacted ((.-xcept in so Air as 
 those statutes may contravene the Constitution of 
 the United States, or the ]irovisions of the Kansas 
 act) are as valid and bindingasany laws evet*en- 
 acted; and if there be one obnoxious to the objec- 
 tion just excepted, in whole or in part, the courts 
 are open, and all persons} aggrieved may there 
 find redress. 
 
 Mr. President, even if the case were not thus 
 irrefutable at every point, no justitication could 
 be made for the course pursued by Governor 
 Reader and his associates at the convention of 
 the Big Springs, and afterwards at Topeka. The 
 two Houses which assembled atPawneeCity, and 
 thence adjourned to the Shawnee^ Mission, con- 
 stituted the Territorial Legislature of Kansas de 
 facto, even if the election of March 30, 1855, had 
 been irregular and illegal in every precinct. Not 
 by an a|)peal to Sharpe's rifle, or any arbiter of 
 that description, can questions of title or legal 
 right be settled The acts of an othcer rfe facto, 
 whether elected or not, are valid, and, as resjiects 
 the public, are conclusive. Whilst I had the 
 honor of occupying a scat in the Ohio Legisla- 
 ture, six or seven years ago, thousands of the 
 people believed — erroneously, sir, of course — 
 that I had never been elected. Many of the stat- 
 utes enacted at that session were passed by a 
 majority of one vote, and the vote was my own. 
 Judges and other officers were elected by the 
 decision of my vote; but I never heard that any 
 man disobeyed the judges or resisted the statutes, 
 because he believed that I had no right to vote 
 for the one or the other. 
 
 I repeat, sir, that the acts of an officer de facto, 
 whether executive, legislative, or judicial, arc not 
 only valid, but, as respects the public, are con- 
 clusive. This doctrine has been announced, time 
 and again, by the courts of England and Amer- 
 ica: it has been established, beyond all dispute, 
 for more than two hundred years. (The State 
 vs. Ailing, 1:2 Ohio Rep., IG. Scovil i'5. the city 
 of Cleveland, 21 Ohio Rep., 126. The People 
 vs. Hopson, 1 Denio,574. Greenleaf vs. Low, 4 
 Denio, 170.) 
 
 1 have ah'eady noticed the suggestion, that 
 certain statutes enacted by the Territorial Legis- 
 lature are intolerable, anci that Congress should 
 interpose, in some manner, to prevent the oppres- 
 sion thereby threatened. The preamble of the 
 resolutions, adopted by the Ohio Legislature, 
 affirms that "such restrictions" have been im- 
 posed *' upon the right of suffrage, at future elec-. 
 tions, as will exclude the opponents of slavery 
 from the polls." If the " opponents of slavery 
 are those only who disregard the obligations of 
 
 the Constitution of the United States — who live 
 under our beneficent form of Government, and 
 enjoy all its advantages, but refuse to acknowl- 
 edge its authority, or submit to its laws — then, 
 perhaps, they are excluded from the right of 
 suffrage in Kansas, as they might well be ex- 
 cluded everywhere. Whatarethe "restrictions" 
 imposed? That the voter shall, if challenged, 
 take an oath to support the Kansas territorial 
 act and the two acts of Congress for the rede- 
 livery of fugitive slaves. Where is the injustice 
 of this provision? The organic act is the con- 
 stitution of the Territory, and to be respected, 
 during the territorial condition, as the constitu- 
 tion of a State is respected by its citizens. What 
 is more common, sir, than to exact from the voter, 
 when challenged, an oath to support the consti- 
 tution of his State? This does not oblige him to 
 approve the constitution as a measure, but only 
 to promise that, while it continues in force as 
 the constitution, he will obey it, as all patriotic, 
 well-behaved, peaceable citizens do. The Kansas 
 statute has precisely this extent. No man is re- 
 quired to approve the principles of the organic 
 act, or of the acts relating to fugitive slaves, but 
 merely to swear that he will not violate those 
 laws— promulgated, as they have been, by com- 
 petent authority — so long as they continue in 
 force. I can discover no reasonable objection to 
 this. The organic act, I have said, is the terri- 
 torial constitution: it declares (section 28) that 
 the acts of February 12, 1793, and September 
 18, 1850, for the redelivery of fugitive slaves, 
 shall extend to the Territory of Kansas, and 
 thus gives them all the 'effect of a fundamental 
 provision. Those who cannot live under such a 
 code of laws, therefore, need not become inhabit- 
 ants of the Territory, or, if in it, need not remain 
 there. They have no honest claim to vote — no 
 more than an inhabitant of Ohio, whose con- 
 science is so tender or so morbid (whichever you 
 please) that he will not swear to support the con- 
 stitution of the State. 
 
 But, sir, the case of Kansas in this particular 
 docs not stand alone. The ordinance of July 
 13, 1787, required of the Governor, judges, and 
 other officers, an oath oraffirmationof " fidelity," 
 as well as the ordinary official oath or affirma- 
 tion, and that contained a provision, necessarily, 
 that they would maintain the six articles of 
 compact, Th(j sixth and last article stipulated, 
 in express terms, that all fugitive slaves should 
 be redelivered to the masters from wliom they 
 had escaped. 
 
 Another criticism has been made, sometimes, 
 upon this statute, namely: that it does not require 
 a qualification of residence, but allows any man 
 to vote, whether resident or non-resident, on pay- 
 ing a tax of one dollar. This allegation is en- 
 tirely erroneous. The statute defines the qualifi- 
 cation of a voter in clear and explicit language: 
 
 " Every free while male citizen of the United States, 
 and every free male Indian who is made a citizen by treaty 
 or otherwise, and over the age of twenty-one years, who 
 shall be an inhabitant of this Territory, and of the county 
 or district in which he otters to vote, and shall have paid a 
 territorial tax, shall be a qualified elector for all elective 
 officers." 
 
 The voter, you observe, must be an inhabitant; 
 and, if so, he cannot be a non-resident. The two 
 descriptions are perfectly incompatible. To be 
 sure, no previous term of residence is prescribed; 
 
10 
 
 but that has not been usual in the Territories, or 
 even the new States, where the object is to invite 
 immigration by all reasonable inducements. No 
 such term of residence was prescribed in the 
 ordinance of July 13, 1787, for those who had 
 been citizens of any of the Slates. 
 
 As to the stipulation that each voter should 
 have paid a territorial tax — against which some 
 objections are urged — it is only what the first 
 constitutic)n of Ohio required. Th.e same stipula- 
 tion has been made, also, in most of the other 
 States; and,atthisvery session, the Senate passed 
 a bill for the District of Columbia, in which it 
 niay be found — and without any olijcction. 
 
 It is true, sir, that one of these territorial taxes 
 was a poll-tax of one dollar; but the voter need 
 not have paid that if he had paid any other tax 
 assessed for territorial purposes. Nor, if any 
 man had paid it, would that render him " an in- 
 habitant" of tlie Territory, or authorize him to 
 vote. I am not a friend of poll-taxes; I have 
 always admired thai provision in the first consti- 
 tution of Ohio by which poll-taxes were prohib- 
 ited for Stale or county purposes. But such 
 taxes are levied in other Slates, and, among 
 others, in the State of Massachusetts. Why, 
 then, all this tirade against them in the Territory 
 of Kansas ? 
 
 The Ohio resolutions affirm, also, that the 
 Legislature of Kansas appointed "its own crea- 
 tures" to all the territorial offices — by which ele- 
 gant phraseology is meant, I suppose, that the 
 officers were chosen by the Legislature. This, 
 to a very limited extent, is true, but, in the main, 
 is a gross mistake. The r»nly officers to be chosen 
 by the Legislature, permanently, are the auditor 
 and treasurer of the Territory, and district at- 
 torneys; and these are chosen for periods of four 
 years. The law of Kansas, in this particular, 
 ' follows the first constitution of Ohio — a constitu- 
 tion under which, for almost forty-nine years, the 
 State enjoyed a degree of prosperity second to 
 that of no community, either in ancient or mod- 
 ern times. That constitution provided for the 
 election of the secretary of State, treasurer of 
 State, auditor of Slate, judges of the supreme 
 and common pleas courts, and many other 
 officers, by the Legislature, and for periods of 
 service varying from three to seven years. 
 
 The laws of Kansas declare, also, that until 
 the election of October, 1857, a probate judge, 
 two commissioners, and a sheriff, ki each counlj^ 
 shall be chosen by the Legislature; but then, and 
 always thereafter, those officers are to be chosen 
 by the people. The necessity for their election 
 by the Legislature, temporarily, is quite plain, 
 inasmuch as by the organic law (section 25) the 
 commissions of all officers appointtd by the Gov- 
 ernor expired at the adjourninent of the Legis- 
 lature. Without such an election, therefore, the 
 Territory would have been bereft of subordinate 
 and local officers. The probate judge and the 
 commissioners together appoint justices of the 
 peace, constables, and county officers. In this 
 reaped, also, the laws of Kansas pursue the first 
 constitution and early statutes of Ohio. By the 
 constitution, the Legislature elected three asso- 
 ciate judges in each county; and these judges, 
 for a long while, appointed the clerk, attorney, 
 and other county officers. The sheriff and the 
 coroner alone were elected by the people. Of 
 
 course, sir, the members of the Ohio Legislature 
 could not have been ignorant of the history of 
 their own State; but they were so anxious to 
 remove a mote from the eye of their neighbor, 
 as to have forgotten the good advice of the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 It has been objected, also, that most of the 
 laws were copied, without alteration, from the 
 revised statutes of Missouri. I see nothing 
 objectionable in this. The Legislature acted 
 wisely, indeed, when it availed itself of the care 
 and learning with which the statutes of Missouri 
 had been compiled, remodeled, and consolidated 
 into a regular code. But, sir, those who make 
 the objection should recollect that, by their favor- 
 ite ordinance of July 13, 1787, the Governor and 
 judges were forbidden to adopt any law for the 
 Northwestern Territory , unless it had been copied 
 from the statute-book of some one of the States. 
 
 The Senator from Vermont, however, com- 
 plains chiefly of the eleventh and twelfth sections 
 of an act for the definition and punishment of 
 certain offenses. The eleventh section is in these 
 words: 
 
 " If any person print, write, introduce into, publish, or cir- 
 culate, or ciiuse to be brou;^ht into, printed, \\ ritten, pub- 
 lished, or circulated, or shall knowiii;;ly aid or assist in 
 bringing into, printing, publishing, or circulniing within this 
 Territory, any book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, handbill, 
 or circular, containing any statements, arguments, opin- 
 ions, sentiments, floctrines, advice, or innuendo, calculated 
 to promote a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellions disafl'ec- 
 tion among the slaves in this Territory, or to induce such ^ 
 slaves to escape from the service of their masters or to re- 
 sist their authority, he shall be guilty of a'felony, and be 
 punished by imprisonment and hard labor for a term not 
 less than five years." 
 
 The purport of this enactment is not (as the 
 Senator imagines) to punish a man for declaring, 
 in print or otherwise, that slavery is an injurious 
 or improper institution, but for attempting to pro- 
 mote a servile insurrection; or, in the very words 
 of the act, "promote a disorderly, dangerous, 
 or rebellious disaffection among the slaves of the 
 Territory," or "induce such slaves to escape 
 from the service of their masters." Sir, I regret 
 the necessity for such legislat'ion; but, wherever 
 slavery exists as an institution, laws of that char- 
 acter must be adopted. Governor Recdcr assured 
 the Legislature of its power, in this respect, by 
 his inaugural message. "A Territorial Legisla- 
 ture," he said, " may undoubtedly act upon the 
 question to a limited and partial extent, and may 
 temporarily prohibit, tolerate, or regulate slavery 
 in the Territory, and in an absolute or modified 
 form, with all the force and effect of any other 
 legislative act, binding until repealed by the same 
 power that enacted it." 
 
 Now, if the Legislature had a right to " tolerate 
 or reguhite slavery" in tlie Territory, it had the 
 right to provide — and was under a solemn obli- 
 gation to provide — against insurrection and re- 
 bellion among the slaves; and any man, anywhere 
 in the United States, who publishes or circulates 
 a. " book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, handbill, 
 or circular," inciting other men, black or white, 
 to overthrow the established Government by 
 force, to disturb the peace of the community, to 
 resist the execution of the laws — no matter with 
 what excuse he fortifies such conduct — deserves 
 to be punished. His offense, at common law, is 
 that of publishing a seditious libel — and punish- 
 
11 
 
 able with more severity, far more, than is pre- 
 scribed ill the Kansas statute. 
 
 To call un act which holds men accountable for 
 publications calculated and intended to excite a 
 servile insurrection, with all its horrors of blood- 
 shed and rapine, an assault on the liberty of speech 
 or of the press, is a mere trick of language, and, 
 if generally admitted, would end in the destruc- 
 tion of those two inestimable rights. The true 
 doctrine is expressed, sir, in all our State con- 
 stitutions, namely, that no citizen shall be subject 
 to censorship beforehand, but shall be responsible 
 for an "abuse" of liis privilege, detrimental to 
 the public or individuals, by indictment, or pri- 
 vate action. The Kansas statute, I repeat, docs 
 not forbid any one to publish a fair discussion of 
 slavery, its objectionable features, its evil conse- 
 quences — not at all. It only punishes the offense 
 of stimulating slaves to rebellion, or to run away 
 from the service of their masters, and to tliat ex- 
 tent, in my opinion, it is defensible. No well- 
 behaved citizen need ever stand in fear of its pen- 
 alties. 
 
 The twelfth scctioTi is of a character quite dif- 
 ferent; 
 
 " If aay free person, by speaking or by writing, assert or 
 maintain that persons have not the ris;ht to liold slaves in 
 this Territory, or sliall introduce into this Territory, print, 
 jHiblisii, write, circulate, or cause to be introduced into this 
 Territory, written, primed, pubUshed, or circulated in this 
 Territory, any book, paper, majjanine, paniptijet, or<tireular, 
 containin<; any denial of the right ofpersoiis to liold slaves 
 in tliis Territory, such person sliall be deemed guilty of fel- 
 ony, and punished by imprisonmentathard laOor for a term 
 of not less than two years."- 
 
 This, perhaps, does not embrace a publication 
 discussing the characterof slavery as an institu- 
 tion, or even the question of its establishment; it 
 relates to a denial of the authority of the Legis- 
 faturc in the premises. So it was interpreted by 
 the Governor, the judges, the attorney, the mar- 
 shal, and many of the councilors and represent- 
 atives, in the address published at Leavenworth, 
 November 14, 1855: 
 
 " There is nothing in the act itself, as has been charged, to 
 present a free discussion of the subject of slavery, its 
 bearing on society, its morality or expediency, or whether 
 it would be politic or impolitic to make this a slave State, 
 can be discussed here as freely as in any State in this Union, 
 without infringing any of the provisions of the law. 'I'o 
 deny the right of a person to hold slaves under the law in 
 tins Territory, is made penal but, beyond this, there is no 
 restriction to the discussion of the slavery question in any 
 aspect in which it is capable of being considered." 
 
 Neither this section, nor the eleventh, I under- 
 stand, has ever been executed — nor, indeed, has 
 their execution been attempted. In the peculiar 
 circumstances of the Territory, however, I think 
 the twelfth section was unjust; and, as it might be 
 abused by a corrupt magistrate, I wish to sec it 
 abrogated. Such legislation has become too 
 fashionable of late years, whenever men are em- 
 bittered against their opponents. 
 
 But, sir, in respect to penal statutes, the pres- 
 ent Legislature of Ohio is not above critici-sm. 
 One of the Houses has passed a bill — which the 
 other is expected to pass, likewise, at the ad- 
 journed sesftion — whereby the sale, or even the 
 gift, of a glass of wine, beer, al^, or cider, in any 
 circumstances, is made punishable by a fine for 
 the first transgression, and by imprisonment, as 
 well cis fine, in the second. Yes, sir, those who 
 complain of severity in Kansas legislation have 
 actually declared that, if a man should find his 
 
 neighbor by the roadside, weary, sick, or wound- 
 ed, and, either for the sake of love or money, 
 
 should relieve that neighbor with oil and wine 
 
 as the good Samaritan did — he ought to be hauled 
 before some justice of the peace, and summarily 
 as well as severely punished. And, I suppose, 
 if our Saviour were to come again upon earth, and 
 repeat the miracle which He performed in Cana 
 of Galilee, instead of being overwhelmed with 
 gratitude for so beneficent an exhibition of the 
 Divine power, they would condemn Him to the 
 pillory or the stocks. 
 
 Indeed, Mr. President, the vagaries of legisla- 
 tion — and, especially, of penal statutes — are so 
 strange, and even so ludicrous, that one should 
 hardly treat them with an argument. The wisest 
 of statesmen have not been exempt from such 
 follies. In the model code proposed by Jefferson, 
 for the definition and punishment of crimes, I 
 find this section: 
 
 " .\ll attempts to delude the people, or to abuse their un- 
 derstanding by exereise of the pretended arts of witchcraft, 
 conjuration, enchantment, or sorcery, or by pretended 
 prophecies, shall he punished by tlucking and whipping, at 
 the discretion of a jury, not exceeding fifteen stripes." 
 
 Under such a law, I fear, several Senators on 
 the other side (my colleague included) would be 
 in danger — to the extent, probably, of the fifteen 
 stripes — for their " pretended" prophecies, often 
 repeated, as to the results of the next presidential 
 election. 
 
 Mr, President, it is due to myself, as well as to 
 others, that I should confess how widely I mis- 
 apprehended this part of the subject at the com- 
 mencement of our session. I had read in the 
 newspapers, and certainly believed, that none 
 were admitted to the right of suffrage in future 
 elections except those who would take an oath 
 to maintain the entire body of statutes adopted 
 by the Territorial Legislature; and it is quite prob- 
 able, sir, that, in conversation and correspond- 
 ence, frequently, I have declared such an enact- 
 ment to be unjust in principle, and indefensible 
 anywhere. 
 
 The venerable Senator from Michigan [Mr. 
 Cass] suggested, in his able and thoroughly-pa- 
 triotic speech, that it would become us — the sup- 
 porters of the Nebraska bill — to adopt some fair 
 and moderate course in reference to these territo- 
 rial statutes. I always listen to his counsels with 
 pleasure; but never, sir, did I listen with more 
 pleasure, with more gratitude, than on that occa- 
 sion. I believe it would be wise, prudent, and, 
 upon the whole, equitable, calculated to allay, in 
 a great measure, the excitement which now pre- 
 vails in some of the northern States, and satis- 
 factory, I hope, to well-disposed citizens every- 
 where, if Congress should undo the restrictions 
 and tests contained in these acts of the Territo- 
 rial Legislature. To be sure, as I have shown, 
 they are not without the color of precedent-, but 
 such precedents, after all, are better avoided than 
 imitated. 
 
 The territorial statutes, however objectionable, 
 did not provoke the insurrectionary movement in 
 Kansas. It began ere they had been enacted-, and 
 it has continued without the least regard to their 
 operation or effect. That is demonstrated clearly 
 in the report submitted by the Senator from Illi- 
 nois, [Mr. Douglas,] as chairman of the Com- 
 mittee on Territories. 
 
12 
 
 Whence, then, have arisen these discords and I 
 troubles? From the unauthorized interruption of 
 the citizens of Missouri, in great part, as 1 believe 
 — but deeper than all that, as the real and respons- 
 ible cause, from the establishment of an organ- 
 ized company, incorporated by the Legislature 
 of Massachusetts, to invade the Territory and 
 lake possession of it, to render ineffectual the com- 
 petition of individuals, to forestall the settlement 
 of that question which the organic act had left to 
 the calm, deliberate, and peaceable decision of 
 tlie people. The operations of the company were 
 not as extensive, nor as imjiortant, perhaps, as 
 they have sometimes been represented; but they 
 have led, nevertheless, to all the controversies, 
 all the serious quarrels, all the bloodshed, with 
 which Kansas has been cursed to this hour. They 
 have separated into hostile factions, arrayed with 
 arms against each other, a body of settlers who 
 should have devoted all their energies to the main- 
 tenance of peace and the foundation of a new and 
 great Commonwealth. Mycolleague has several 
 times asserted, with great excitement of manner, 
 that citizens of the Free-State party (so called) 
 have been "murdered in cold blood" by their 
 antagonists — but only such excitement could have 
 prevented his detecting the absurdity of this as- 
 sertion. Men of both parties have been killed, 
 houses burned, and other property injured or 
 destroyed. But there has been no " cold blood" 
 in all this: it has been hot blood on both sides — 
 blood heated by a thousand incentives to strife. 
 The inhabitants were (and, I fear, still are) en- 
 raged at each other; and have sacrificed all that 
 ia dear to both parties, thus far, at the instance 
 and for the pleasure of political aspirants. It is 
 not so much the question, in my judgment, 
 whether Kansas shall be a slaveholdnig or a non- 
 slaveholding State — as whether the men of one 
 faction, or of the other, shall be exalted to power. 
 
 I do not intend to speak of the Massachusetts 
 Emigrant Aid company at length. The Senator 
 from Alabama [Mr. Clay] has exposed its pur- 
 poses and its conduct with such accuracy of 
 detail — such clearness of perception — that little is 
 left for the rest of us. I wish to notice, how- 
 ever, a suggestion to which the Senators from 
 New York and Alassachusetts attached so much 
 importance. It is, that the corporation violated 
 no law; and as for comity between the States, 
 we have no rule^ upon that subject, except those 
 which are expressed in the Federal Constitution. 
 Sir, if Senators stand upon this doctrine, where 
 (let me ask them) did the State of Massachusetts 
 find authority to create a corporation whose busi- 
 ness was to be conducted without her own limits, 
 and chiefly within the limits of another govern- 
 ment? She had no authority for that; and,, if 
 we should apply a strict rule to her actions, the 
 emigrant aid company would be condemned at 
 once. It could not make any contract or manage 
 any enterprise, beyond her own limits; and, far 
 less, hold property in Kansas. It is upon the 
 rule of comity alone that the corporations of one 
 State are allowed to transact business, or even 
 bring suits, in anotlier State — a rule of comity, 
 moreover, which is not expressed in the Federal 
 Constitution. Let us hear what the Supreme 
 Court has said : 
 
 " It is very true that a corporation can have no legal 
 eiiiitence out of ibe l)Oundari«ij of tlie sovereignty by wbicli 
 
 it is created. It exists only in contemplation of law, and 
 by force of the law ; and whore that law ceases to operate, 
 and is no longer oblij;alory, the corporation can have no 
 existence. It must dwell in the place of its creation, and 
 cannot migrate to another sovereignly." — The Bank of 
 .Augusta, vs. Earle, 13 Peters, 588. 
 
 I counsel those two Senators, therefore, to look 
 beyond the letter of the Constitution in this 
 respect, and to govern themselves rather by the 
 wholesome idea on which our Federal Govern- 
 ment is founded — that of equality between the 
 States, and non-intervention of one State with the 
 domestic affairs of another. Upon this idea, we 
 know the Kansas act intended to establish, for- 
 ever, the policy of our territorial governments. 
 In the true sense of the question, then, this Mas- 
 sachusetts corporation did violate the law — many- 
 laws — in a most willful and officious manner. It 
 violated the law of comity between the States; it 
 violated the principles of the Kansas territorial 
 act; it vif>lated the faith pledged in our Federal 
 Constitution. In another respect, also, the cor- 
 poration has greatly offended. How, except by a 
 sheer perversion of our statutes, did the company 
 acquire title to section after section of the public 
 lands — in exclusion of individual settlers — and 
 with a view (as its circular declares) to sell them 
 hereafter at an advanced price, and divide the 
 profits among its Massachusetts stockholders? 
 Was such the design of your preemption laws ? 
 No, sir! It is a violation of those laws — a bold 
 and reckless attempt to seize the best portions of 
 the public domain, in fraud of the rights of actual 
 settlers, for the conjoint purposes of private profit 
 and sectional agitation. I never heard — I cannot 
 even imagine — a more palpable outrage, as well 
 against the laws of the United States, as against 
 the peaceof the Territory, and the rights of indi- 
 vidual citizens everywhere, than this emigrant aid 
 contrivance. It has been lauded by its friends, 
 here and elsewhere; but I believe it to be a gigantic 
 engine of mischief and wickedness. It has filled 
 the Territory with confusion and bloodshed; has 
 exasperated the two sections of the Union against 
 each other; has led to those horrid scenes of 
 ribaldry at which all Pandemonium rejoiced — 
 scenes where 
 
 " The Priest 
 Turns Atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled 
 With lust and violence the house of God." 
 
 In Massachusetts, to be sure, it is a moneyed 
 corporation, and it appears, even in Kansas, only 
 as a landed proprietor. But, sir, beneath these 
 garbs we find a secret, oath-bound political and 
 military organization, with its "grand general" 
 at Lawrence; its " grand vice general" at Topeka; 
 its " grand paymaster" at Leavenworth; its colo- 
 nels, officers, sentinels, soldiers, and recruits, in 
 every neighborhood. 
 
 I have said, sir, that Nebraska and Kansas 
 were established by one law. Nebraska has had 
 peace — Kansas only confusion. Toward Kansas 
 the emigrant aid company directed its operations — 
 Nebraska it left alone. Herein consists the whole 
 difference ! 
 
 Thus far, Mr. President, of the Questions di- 
 rectly before the'Senate. But the resolutions of 
 the Ohio Legislature embrace other and kindred 
 topics, on which many Senators have spoken &t 
 length. I sheill be pardoned, I trust, for a similar 
 digression. 
 
 Some of those Senators declare that Congresjr 
 
13 
 
 has the right, under the Constitution, to prohibit 
 slavery in tlie Territories; that, by the Kansas 
 act of May 30, 1854, Congress abdicated its 
 ■autliority in an improper manner; and that the 
 effectual method of obviating all difficulties (if 
 we reject the State constitution now proposed) 
 would be to restore the prohibition contained in 
 the act of March 6, 1820, section eight. The 
 resolutions of the Ohio Legislature assert, more- 
 over, tliat those who framed our Federal Govern- 
 ernment designed to prohibit the institution of 
 African slavery in all the Territories, and, there- 
 by, the creation of new slaveholding States. 
 
 The Senators from Vermont and Iowa do not 
 claim 8o much. They claim, however, that the 
 intention was to tolerate slavery wherever it then 
 existed in the Territories, and prevent its estab- 
 Jishment wlierevor it did not exist. 
 
 I deny all these propositions. I believe that 
 Congress has no authority over the citizens of 
 the United Slates inhabiting the Territories, ex- 
 cept to provide for the protection of their persons 
 and property against violence, or other wrongful 
 aggressions, until such time as they are able, by 
 the adoption of a State government, to protect 
 themselves. I believe that Congress has no legis- 
 lative power (properly so called) over the Terri- 
 tories, and its whole authority is that of a landed 
 proprietor, and a. trustee of sovereignty for the 
 inhabitants. Beyond this limit — ijeyonil the right 
 to control the use and disposition of the public 
 domain, and so far abridge the political action of 
 the inhabitants as to preserve their allegiauce to 
 the Federal Government, and ultimately admit 
 them as a State into the Union — beyond this limit, 
 I say, all exertions of power by Congress amount 
 merely to usurpation. 
 
 It follows, Mr. President, that the fathers of the 
 republic did not, in my opinion, profiose cither 
 10 restrain or encourage, establish or abolish, the 
 institution of slavery in the Territories, or any- 
 where else. 
 
 The Senator from Vermont has said, with de- 
 liberate emphasi.s, that the Constitution does not 
 recognize property in men. I might answer, with 
 equal emphasis, that it nowhere defines, or even 
 indicates, what shall or what shall not be prop- 
 erty, in the United States, except where it speaks 
 of the public domain, forts, arsenals, and the 
 like. That was not the office of the Constitution. 
 It established a government which, as respects 
 our own people, is purely federal in character, 
 and has no concern with the rights of property, 
 except as they are defined by the laws of the 
 Several States. And, sir, it so happens that the 
 only species of property to which a special pro- 
 tection was vouchsafed in the Constitution, is 
 the right of one man to the "service or labor " 
 of another. Whether this be property, in strict- 
 ness of acceptation, I care not to decide. It is 
 a right founded upon the laws of a State, and 
 guarantied by the express compact of all the 
 States. 
 
 Both these Senators have been challenged, as 
 others of their sect have been challenged, in times 
 past, to specify the language of the Constitution 
 from which they derive the vast congressional 
 power now claimed; but no language is adduced, 
 after all, except that of article fourth, and section 
 third: 
 
 " The Congress shall have power to dispose of, and make 
 
 all needful rules and regulations respecting, the territory 
 or otiicr property belonging to the United States." 
 
 This section does not confer any legislative 
 power, nor does it even speak of any subject 
 over which legislative power can be exercised. 
 It merely declares that Congress, as an agent, 
 shall exercise the proprietorship of the lands and 
 other property of the Union. For, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, let us observe: 
 
 1. The power of disposition is quite as large 
 and as absolute as that of regulation; and if Con- 
 gress could legislate, in a political .sense, for the 
 inhabitants of a Territory, it could, in exercise 
 of the power of disposition, transfer their alle- 
 giance to some foreign Government, or even to 
 an individual, by a mere alienation of title to the 
 land. 
 
 2. The language is the *' territory," " belong- 
 ing to the United States," and not, as often mie- 
 
 ?uoted, tlie territories (plural) of tke United State$. 
 n other words, the section refers to the public 
 lands, as such, and not in any political sense — 
 the public lands within the limits of a State, as 
 well as those without. And hence the section 
 proceeds in the alternative, "the territory or 
 olker property belonging to the United States." 
 
 The Senator from Iowa calls for the judicial 
 decisions upon this point, and I shall endeavor 
 now to satisfy him. 
 
 In the case of Gratiot and others, 14 Peters, 
 537, the Supreme Court said: 
 
 "The term 'territory,' as here used, is merely descriptive 
 of one kind of properly, and 'is eriuivalent to the word 
 lands." 
 
 In the case of Pollard's Lessee us Hagan, 3 
 Howard, 221, the court said: 
 
 " We think a proper examination of this subject will 
 show that tin; United States never held any municipal sov- 
 ereijfnty, jurisdiction, or rialit of soil in and to the territory 
 of which Alabama, or any of tlienew States, was formed, 
 except for temporary purposes." 
 
 These purposes the court defines to be an exe- 
 cution of " the trusts" created by the deeds or 
 treaties of cession — namely, the trusts of provid- 
 ing for the organization of a new State, and its 
 admission into the Union. 
 
 The Senator. from Vermont has ridiculed as 
 very absurd that provision of the organic act 
 which extends the Constitution of the United 
 States over the Territory of Kansas, and asked, 
 witli an air of trium|)h, "Who ever supposed that 
 the Constitution did not, ex propria vigore, prevail 
 in all the Territories?" I might answer, as the 
 Senator from Illinois has answered, that Daniel 
 Webster supposed so, and made an elaborate 
 argument in this Chamber to prove it; but I have 
 another authority to the same effect, namely, the 
 Supreme Court of the United Slates. In the case 
 cited by the Senator himself — the facts of which, 
 by the way, he misapprehended altogether — the 
 case of the American Insurance Company vs. 
 Canter, (1 Peters, 511,) it was decided that the 
 courts of a Territory are not conUitutional courts, 
 and, necessarily, that the Constitution does not 
 extend to the Territories by the force of its own 
 provisions. 
 
 The Constitution is for the S<atcsalone; it is the 
 Constitution of the United States, and not of the 
 Territories, or even of the States and the Terri- 
 tories together. Its authors never dreamed of a 
 territorial government to be created by Congress, 
 and, of course, made no provision for any such 
 
14 
 
 government. At the time the Constitution was 
 signed, in September, 1787, every acre of land 
 which had (hen been ceded by tiie States, of which 
 they had the least knowledge or conception, was 
 embraced by the ordinance of the Continental 
 Congress, adopted in July of that year. This 
 ord-inance purported, by its own terms, to be an 
 irrevocable compact between the citizens of the 
 original States and those who should inhabit the 
 territory in all future time. I acknowledge, Mr. 
 President, that, under the power to make treaties, 
 the Federal Government can acquire territory; 
 as, also, that the power of conquest is incident to 
 the power of levying war. But the framers of 
 the Constitution did not dream that an opportu- 
 nity for annexation or conquest would ever pre- 
 sent itself; they had no conception of the import- 
 ance of the western country, and far less of our 
 empire beyond the Mississippi river and upon the 
 Pacific coast. 
 
 The region west of the Mississippi, as well as 
 that bordering upon the Mexican gulf, belonged 
 to Spain, then the most splendid of the European 
 monarchies, and one which has always pursued 
 the policy of sacrificing the happiness of her peo- 
 ple at home in order to maintain the integrity of 
 her foreign dominion. The framers of our Con- 
 stitution did not contemplate an extension of 
 the Union in any direction. Canada had a stand- 
 ing invitation, for )iine years, in the Articles of 
 Confederation; and as she did not accept it during 
 that period, all hopes of her accession were aban- 
 doned. I have not said, sir, that the framers of 
 the Constitution were opposed to an extension of 
 our boundaries. They saw no probability of it, 
 and therefore made no provision for Territories 
 thus to be acquired. Let us not wonder, conse- 
 quently, at the views entertained by Mr. Jefier- 
 8on at the time of the Louisiana purchase, and 
 his suggestion of such an amendment to the Con- 
 stitution as would ailirm that exercise of power. 
 Unhappily, sir, the advice was not adopted; for 
 in his time, before abolitionism had arisen to dis- 
 turb the peace of the Union, some fair, wise, and 
 just provision could have been made upon this 
 subject in the Constitution. 
 
 As apolitical government had been established 
 for all the territory supposed to belong to the 
 United States at that time, under the ordinance of 
 July, 1787, the constitutional Convention deemed 
 it only expedient to provide for the disposition 
 and management of the public lands as the prop- 
 erty of the Union. And hence the clause to 
 "which I have referred not merely fails to confer 
 legislative or political dominion over the Terri- 
 tories, but a proposition of that character was en- 
 tirely rejected. Thus, on the 18th of August, 
 1787, it was moved, in the convention, that Con- 
 gress should have power — 
 
 " To dispose of the unappropriated lands of the United 
 States ; 
 
 " To Uislilule temporary governments for the new States 
 arising tlicrein." — Journal of the Convention, p. 12t>0. 
 
 The first proposition was adopted, and is ex- 
 pressed, substantially, in the Constitution; the 
 second was rejected. 
 
 But, sir, the Constitution affords us additional 
 evidence. Its framrrs understood the wide dis- 
 tinction between a clause authorizing Congress 
 to make " rules and regulations" for the disposi- 
 tion or management of the public lands, and a 
 
 clause conferring upon Congress legislative or 
 political dominion. In the eighth section of the 
 first article, among the powers delegated, we 
 find: 
 
 " To exercise exclusive le;;islation in all cases whatso- 
 ever over sucli district (not execciiiiiK ten miles square) as 
 may, by cession of particular Stall's, and the acceptance of 
 Congress, become the seat of the Government of the United 
 States." 
 
 This power was limited, expressly, to a dis- 
 trict not exceeding ten miles square — so jealous 
 were our fathers of the authority of the Federal 
 Government aiid of the exercise of a power thus 
 arbitrary in cliaractcr. Yet, after all, a power 
 more despotic and irresponsible has been deduced 
 — or, rather, its deduction has been attempted — 
 from language entirely inappropriate, and over a 
 region greater than the area of the original 
 States. 
 
 Whence, then, is derived the authorityof -Con- 
 gress over the Territories? J answer, INlr. Pres- 
 ident, that it is a trin^t arising from, and expressed 
 in, all the deeds of cession from the States, and 
 the treaties with France, Spain, and Mexico, by 
 which we have acquired new domain — a trust for 
 our citizens who may inhabit those Territories, 
 and to be exercised snli;ly with a view to their 
 becoming one of the; political communities known 
 as States in our Union. And, therefore, what- 
 ever restriction or regulation of a legislative char- 
 acter would prevent the State, when formed, from 
 standing on terms of equality with the original 
 thirto<;n States, is improper, unjust, and tyran- 
 nical, whilst the territorial condition continues. 
 It may lie, sir, that no hand is powerful enough 
 to stay the exercise of congressional legislation; 
 and in that sense, perhaps, the authority of Con- 
 gress would seem to be unlimited. But even un- 
 limited authority docs not confer the sanction of 
 ri2;ht ujion an arl)itrary regulation. I agree with 
 Edmund Burke, that " arbitrary power is a thing 
 which no man can give." 
 
 A regulation of the domestic and local affairs 
 of a community — whether you call it a State, a 
 Territory, or by what title soever — in opposition 
 to, or disregard of, the wishes of the inhabitants 
 — restraining them from the advantages enjoyed 
 by their fellow-citizens in other States or Terri- 
 tories, for the development of their material re- 
 sources, the forms of labor which are best suited 
 to their soil, climate, and circumstances — such a 
 regulation, in my judgment, is a very gross abuse 
 of power wherever the power does exist, and a 
 tyrannical assumption wherever it does not. 
 And when we consider that the whole scope of 
 a territorial government is to provide for the fu- 
 ture admission of the community over which it 
 exists into the Union as a State, the proposition 
 becomes too clear for any dispute — except from 
 those who love to cavil upon trifling distinctions, 
 or rather upon distinctions without any difference 
 — that whatever n^striction cannot be imposed on 
 the State after admission, cannot be imposed at 
 that time; and whatever cannot be imposed as a 
 requisite to admission, cannot, in good faith, be 
 imposed during the territorial form of govern- 
 ment. It would be a distinct breach of the 
 "trusts" upon which alone Congress exercises 
 dominion over the Territories — tlie trusts, name- 
 ly, of providing for the erection of new States, 
 and their admission into the Union. For, as was 
 
15 
 
 said by the Suprome Court in the case of Pollard's 
 Lessee vs. Hagan, already cited — 
 
 " Whenever the United States sliall have fully exeeutcd 
 those trusts, the inuniei|);\l siivereignty of the new States 
 will be complete tlirousliout tliinr respeetive hnnlers, and 
 they and tli(! original States will he upon an equal foothig 
 in all respects whatever." — '3 Howard, '2-Jl. 
 
 To forestall the exercise of State sovercig:nty, 
 upon a quistion which is domestic and local in its 
 character, would be not only unjust and unfair, 
 but fraudulent. 
 
 In apology for such an abuse of power, never- 
 theless, the Senator from New Vork declared to 
 us, in set phrase, that slavery was and ever had 
 been a mere " outlaw" in our political system. 
 This proposition, Mr. President, is wholly un- 
 tenaijle. So far from being an outlaw, as claimed, 
 that is the only municipal institution of the States 
 (as I have siiown) over which the Constitution 
 extends an express protection; and I may add, 
 that it has existed at some period or other in every 
 nation, and with every people, of whose history 
 we have the least record. Nor can there be any 
 doubt that slavery is recognized and protected to 
 the present hour by the law of nations, upon the 
 high seas, and in all places where it has not been 
 excluded under the operation of a local law. The 
 Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Benjamin] cited the 
 Institutes of Justinian some wciks since, to the 
 effect that slavery is a creature of the law of na- 
 tions;* and thereupon the Senator from New York 
 attempted to ridicule the citation by informing us 
 that Justinian was a Roman emperor — and per- 
 haps a tyrant — who lived many hundreds of years 
 ago. But, sir, the Senator must know that Jus- 
 tinian did not invent (and probably never read) 
 the Institutes which bear his name; that they were 
 composed by the most learned and eminent men 
 of the empire, and that to-day, they furnish law 
 to more than two thirds of the civilized world. 
 The very paragraph cited by the Senator from 
 Louisiana is reiterated by Domat, the great ex- 
 pounder of the civil code in modern times, as well 
 as by numerous other acknowledged authorities. 
 Unquestionably, therefore, it is the law, as under- 
 stood in continental Europe, in Mexico, in Central 
 and South America. The courts of England teach 
 the same doctrine. In the case of a French vessel, 
 Le Louis, engaged in the African slave trade, 
 which had been seized by an English cruiser, and 
 brought into port for condemnation. Sir William 
 Scott (than whom there is no more solid author- 
 ity on questions of international law) declared 
 even the traffic in slaves upon the high seas to be 
 one which no nation could render illegitimate to 
 the citizens or subjects of another. That was in 
 the High Court of Admiralty, December 15, 1817. 
 (2 Dodson's Adm. Reports, 238.) At Hilary 
 term, 1820, the Court of King's Bench — Abbott, 
 Chief Justice; Bayley, Holroyd, and Best, jus- 
 tices — made a .similar decision. (Madrazo vs. 
 Willcs, 3 Barn, and Alderson, 353.) That was 
 an action brought by the owner of a Spanish 
 vessel, engaged in the Africat) slave trade, against 
 the commander of an English armed ship for a 
 seizure upoii' the high seas, and the liberation of 
 the negroes imprisoned. 
 
 *Servitus autera est constitutio juris gentium, qua qttis 
 dominio alieno, contra naturani, subjieitur. — Book 1, title 3, 
 section 2. 
 
 The Senator from Louisiana cited, also, the 
 decision of our Supreme Court in the case of a 
 Spanish vessel. The Antelope, captured with al- 
 most three hundred negroes on board, brought 
 from the coast of Africa, which vessel had been 
 libeled in the admiralty of the United States for 
 condemnation, it was argued by some of the 
 ablest lawyers this country has ever produced — 
 by William Wirt, Attorney General, and Francis 
 Scott Key, for the appellnnts; and by John Mc- 
 Pherson Berrien and Charles J. Ingersoll for the 
 claimants. The judges were unanimous in the 
 opinion that slavery is recognized by the law»of 
 nations, and even the African slave trade is not 
 prohibited. In commenting on this decision, to 
 be sure, the Senator from New York attempted a 
 refinement by admitting that a slave trader could 
 not be calUrd a " piratical "outlaw. Sir, the dis- 
 tinction amounts to naught. There is no outlaw 
 upon the seas, except a pirate. He, alon<!, of all 
 sailors, is unprotected on the highway of nations. 
 The pirate belongs to no country, and his offenses 
 are against the whole world. Any one is au- 
 thorized to arrest him, and the courts of any 
 nation may convict and execute him. In Octo- 
 ber, 1834, twelve men of Spanish birth were tried 
 for piracy at Boston, and seven of them were 
 convicted and sentenced to death. They had been 
 captured by a British officer, but, as their last 
 outrage was committed against an American ves- 
 sel, they were sent to the United States for trial. 
 They could as well have been tried and punished 
 for this offense in England. — (United States vs. 
 Gibert, 2 Sumner, 24.) 
 
 These men were charged as " pirates and fel- 
 ons," according to the law of nations, and of 
 course were not sent to Spain for punishment or 
 trial. But, although Great Britain and the United i 
 States have both denounced the African slave 
 trade — have declared it to be a capital offense — 
 our Government cannot punish or otherwise mo- 
 lest an Englishman for engaging in it. " The 
 courts of no country," said Chief Justice Mar- 
 shall, " execute the penal laws of another." 
 (10 Wheaton, 123.) The African slave trade is 
 piratical, to be sure, for our citizens, not by the 
 law of nations, but in virtue of our own statutes. 
 If any of otir citizens should engage in it, there- 
 fore, we can punish the offense; but no other na- 
 tion can lay a hand upon him. ' 
 The case of a French schooner, La Jeune 
 Eugenie, in the circuit court for the district of 
 Massachusetts, has been cited as an opposite de- 
 cision. Mr. Justice Story held, to be sure, that 
 inasmuch as the African slave trade had been 
 forbidden by the laws of France, no claim of own- 
 ership could be preferred to slaves rescued from 
 captivity on the high seas in behalf of a French 
 subject. But 'instead of pronouncing slavery an 
 outlaw, the courtdecided exactly otherwise. What 
 the Senator from New York read to us two weeks 
 ago was in reference to the African slave trade 
 —of which Mr.. Justice Story well said, that be- 
 side the question of enslavement, it involved 
 necessarily a breach of all moral duties and humane 
 precepts. As to the institution of slavery, how- 
 ever, the judge declared that it had a" legitimate" 
 existence. — (2 Mason, 445, 446.) 
 
 But this is not all. I find that, even prior to 
 the Constitution, our revolutionary fathers con- 
 sidered slaves as legitimate property , and extended 
 
16 
 
 to the master all the protection of the confedera- 
 ted Government. In the provisional articles of 
 Eeace with Great Britain, signed at Paris, Novem- 
 er30, 1782, by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, 
 John Jay, and Henry Laurens, as American 
 commissioners, it was stipulated that the British 
 forces should retire from the limits of the United 
 States without " carrying away any negroes or 
 other property "of the inhabitants. — (U. S. Stat- 
 utes, vol. 8, p. 57.) The British commanders did 
 not observe this article; and General Washington, 
 after having addressed them several remonstrances 
 without effect, laid the matter before the Conti- 
 nental Congress. It was referred to a committee 
 for consideration; and finally, August 9, 1786, a 
 resolution was adopted that the Secretary of For- 
 eign Affairs should cause the numbers, names, 
 and ownership of all negroes " belonging to the 
 citizens of each State, and carried away by the 
 British in contravention of the late treaty of 
 peace," to be ascertained, and lists thereof made. 
 — (Journals of Congress, vol. 4, p. 680.) 
 
 Between the 5th of April and the 25th of No- 
 vember, 1783, as Mr. Jefferson tells us, three 
 thousand negroes were thus taken away; and 
 our Government required, and at length com- 
 pelled, the Government of Great Britain to pay 
 for them. What authority, then, has the Sen- 
 ator from New York in asserting that American 
 slavery is an institution beyond the pale of the 
 law ? I leave him to the answer which these facts 
 afford. I do not state them, sir, because I admire 
 the institution, but because they are facts; and it 
 is our duty to decide all public questions in the 
 light of truth, upon established principles of law, 
 without any perversion of historical records. 
 
 Frequent reference has been made to the legis- 
 lation of Congress, in early times, to show that 
 the original purpose of the Federal Government 
 was to exclude slavery from the Territories. I 
 am willing to abide an impartial review of all 
 those enactments. 
 
 In the fifth resolution of the Ohio Legislature, 
 you will recollect, our attention is specially in- 
 vited to the scheme of governments adopted by 
 the Continental Congress on the. 23d of April, 
 1784. It may be found at length in the compila- 
 tion of the public land laws, and contains no pro- 
 vision to exclude slavery from the States to be 
 constituted and afterwards admitted into the 
 Union. I begin with this scheme, Mr. President, 
 because it was the first ever proposed; because 
 Thomas Jefferson is said to have been its author; 
 because it embodies all the essential features of 
 the ordinance of July, 1787, except the anti-sla- 
 very clause. The deed of Virginia to the United 
 States for the Northwestern Territory was dated 
 the 1st of March, 1784, so that this scheme fol- 
 lowed closely upon the cession. I admit, sir, that 
 a clause was proposed for the restriction of sla- 
 very after the year 1800, and Mr. Jefferson voted 
 for it; but his reasons and those of his associates, 
 as I will soon demonstrate, were of a temporary 
 and special character. The clause was rejected 
 at that time, only seven States approving its 
 principle; and the scheme went into effect with- 
 out any provision upon that subject. To the 
 General Assembly of Ohio, therefore, on the 9th 
 of April, 1856, almost seventy-two years after 
 the transaction, has been reserved the honor of 
 discovering that " the original American policy" 
 
 was embodied in a clause thus rejected, on full 
 consideration, by a decisive vote. Sir, to my 
 humble apprehension, the "original" policy of 
 our Government, in this respect, the true "Amer- 
 ican" policy, should be gathered from the scheme 
 as it was finally adopted. 
 
 Three years later, in the Continental Congress^ 
 Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, proposed an 
 ordinance for the government of the Northwest- 
 ern Territory, and on the 13th of July, 1787, it 
 received the votes of eight States for adoption. 
 Mr. Jefferson was then in Europe. The ordi- 
 nance contains many clauses not authorized by 
 the Articles of Confederation; and of these, the 
 most prominent is that for the admission of the 
 new States to be formed under its provisions. 
 Accordingly, in the Federalist, No. 3G and No. 
 42, Mr. Madison declared that it was a clear case 
 of usurpation by the continental authorities. 
 With a consciousness of the defect of congres- 
 sional power in this regard, Mr. Jefferson's 
 scheme proceeded upon the idea of establishing 
 colonial States, and that no direct legislative con- 
 trol could be exercised over them. Provision 
 was made, consequently, for a charter to be 
 issued, under the seal of the Confederation, by 
 which the form of a compact might be assumed, 
 as between the Congress on the one side, and the 
 Colonies on the other. Mr. Dane adopted the 
 same idea for the legislation of July, 1787, and 
 his ordinance de(;lares that six articles therein 
 enumerated " shall be considered as articles of 
 compact between the original States and the 
 people and States in the Territory, and forever 
 remain unalterable, unless by common consent.'' 
 The anti-slavery clause constituted the sixth and 
 last of these articles; and I call the attention of 
 the Senate to the fact, especially, because it 
 it explains the series of congressional acts rela- 
 tive to the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. 
 Michigan, and Wisconsin, upon which the Sen- 
 ator from Iowa planted himself. 
 
 We have thus seen that in July, 1787, the Con- 
 tinental Congress adopted a restriction of slavery 
 which it had rejected three years before. Why 
 this change.' The scheme of 1784 embraced all 
 the territories ceded and to be ceded by the States; 
 but the ordinance of 1787 was limited to the ter- 
 ritory northwest of the Ohio river, and was based 
 entirely upon the Virginia cession. Now, sir, it 
 so happened that from the commencement of the 
 revolutionary war, until the signature of the Fed- 
 eral Constitution, in September, 1787, the State 
 of Virginia was employing all her influence and 
 all her votes to suppress the African slave trade. 
 Restrained from the consummation of that pro- 
 ject by the oft-repeated royal veto upon the colo- 
 nial statutes, the people of Virginia, in conven- 
 tion of delegates, August, 1774, agreed neither to 
 import nor purchase another slave fi-om Africa, 
 the West Indies, or any place abroad. Four 
 years afterwards — as soon almost as she had 
 thrown off British allegiance — Virginia enacted a 
 law to prohibit the foreign slave trade. Jetferson 
 was its author; but to Madison's perseverance 
 and energy (as Jefferson himself said) is due a 
 large share of the success. In the constitutional 
 convention, we all know, Virginia proposed that 
 the introduction of slaves from abroad should be 
 forbidden after the year 1800, or, if possible, at 
 once. She was supported in this by Delaware, 
 
17 
 
 New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; but she was de- 
 feated by tlie votes of" the two Carolinas, Georjia, 
 and Maryhvnd, with the votcsof New Hampshire, 
 Massachusetts, and Connecticut. New York did 
 not give her any assistance, and Rhode Island 
 was not represented. The extreme South wanted 
 more slaves; the eastern States were engaged in 
 the African slave trad--, and objected to its sup- 
 pression. 1 repeat, Mr. President, the three 
 States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and 
 Connecticut — Maine was then u part of Massa- 
 chusetts, and Vermont of New York — united 
 with Nortli and Soutii Carolina, Georgia, and 
 Maryland, on the 2.5th of August, 1787, in de- 
 claring that the African slave trade should be tol- 
 erated until January, 1808, a period of almost 
 twenty-one years. It was in vain that George 
 Mason pointed to the example of Virginia, and 
 implored the convention not toperpetiiale slnvcry 
 upon the American continent. (Mad, on Papers, 
 vol. 3, pp. 1.S98, 13!)9.) Newport, in the State 
 of Rhode island, was the place from which ves- 
 sels engaged in the slave trade were fitted out; 
 but Massachusetts furnished a large portion of 
 the capital, and realized a share of the profits. 
 
 Let us pause here, Mr. President, for one mo- 
 ment. At this period (1787) the abolition of 
 elavery was a possible, and even a probable occur- 
 rence. The citizens of Virginia, Delaware, Penn- 
 sylvania, and New Jersey, were anxious to pre- 
 vent the further influx of slaves, and thus prepare 
 for the emancipation and colonization of those 
 already introduced. The slaves of the Carolinas 
 and Georgia were f(!w in number. There was not 
 a cotton factory on this continent. The cotton- 
 gin had not been invented. Cartwright had just 
 contrived the power-loom, but it was not in use. 
 The first cotton sent from the United States to 
 England was in 1785; but it was not until the first 
 year of Washington's administration (1789) that 
 sea-island cotton was planted here, and wpland 
 cotton cultivated for exportation. Previous to 
 that time, of course, slavery was not profitable, 
 and might have been abolished. I wish to engage 
 in no criminations; but I must say that it does not 
 become the New England States at all to quarrel 
 with the South about slavery, or affect any special 
 degree of virtue upon the subject. More slaves 
 were brought into the Union from abroad between 
 1787 and 1808, than were here at the time of the 
 adoption of the Federal Constitution. Madison 
 warned the convention, in express terms, of the 
 consequenceswhich have since ensued. " Twenty 
 years," he said, "will produce all the mischief 
 that can be apprehended from the liberty to im- 
 port slaves." (Madison Papers, vol. 3, pp. 1427, 
 1428, 1429.) 
 
 In all Jefferson said or wrote respecting the 
 institution of slavery, he coupled it with the 
 African slave trade; and he looked upon the sup- 
 pression of that as an indispensable prerequisite 
 to emancipation. In one of his most remarkable 
 papers — where he enumerates all those achieve- 
 ments the memory of which consoled him in 
 old £ige with the reflection that he had not lived 
 in vain — we find his Virginia statute for the ab- 
 olition of the slave-trade ; but neither in that paper 
 nor in his elabo.-ate autobiography, nor in any of 
 his letters or documents, (so far as I can remem- 
 ber,) does he make the least reference to the prop- 
 osition for excluding slavery from the Territories. 
 
 How singular, Mr. President,if he deemed that so 
 eminentand essential a matter as is now claimed — 
 if he supposed it to be (as the O'lio Legislature 
 declares) an exposition of" the original American 
 policy" on the subj(!ct of our territorial govern- 
 ments — that he should never have imagined it 
 worthy of his own comment, notice, or even 
 recollection ! 
 
 Jefi'erson was anxious to suppress the horrors 
 of the African slave trade; and as the Congress 
 of the Confederation had no power to effectuate 
 this great reform, directly, he urged upon the State 
 of Virginia to circumscribe the market for slaves, 
 and thus, indirectly, abate the foreign traffic, by 
 an exclusion of slavery from all her domain north 
 and west of the Ohio river. I'ut Virginia had re- 
 solved to donate this empire to the Confederation, 
 and therefore referred him to the continental 
 authorities. He appeared in Congress as a Del- 
 egate in 1783, aided to complete the cession of the 
 Northwestern Territory, and at once offered his 
 territorial scheme, with an anti-slavery clause, in 
 order to accomplish the design which he had so 
 long cherished. He failed, however, as I have 
 stated;butupc>n James Madison and the otherdel- 
 egates from Virginia, in the next Congress, was 
 devolved the execution of his purposes. This, sir, 
 will explain the sixth article of the ordinance 
 adopted July 13, 1787, excluding the institution 
 of slavery from the Northwestern Territory. But 
 after the Federal Constitution had been signed at 
 Philadelphia, on the 17ih of September, 1787, 
 such an exclusion became entirely useless, inas- 
 much as a compromise had been made in thai in- 
 strument whereby Congress was empowered to 
 suppress the African slave trade in the year 1808. 
 The anti-slavery article of the ordinance was dic- 
 tated, therefore, by reasons of a temporary char- 
 acter, and, as I will prove in a few moments, 
 was purposely omitted in all new cases of terri- 
 torial government, after the adoption of the Fed- 
 eral Constitution. 
 
 Perhaps, Mr. President, some Senator may 
 suppose that 1 have deal.t in mere conjecture, and 
 ask me for the witness by whom 1 establish a 
 fact of such pregnant and decisive consequences. 
 Sir, I call him not only from the grave, but from 
 silence hitherto as impenetrable almost as the 
 grave itself. Among the manuscripts purchased 
 by Congress from the executors of James Mon- 
 roe, in the possession of our Committee on the 
 Library, and as yet unpublished, is an original 
 letter from James Madison, dated Montpelier, 
 February 10, 1820, of which 1 will read an 
 extract: 
 
 '• I have observed as yet, in none of the views taken or 
 the ordinance of 1787. interdicting slavery northwest of the 
 Ohio, an allusion to tiie circuinstanee that, when it passed, 
 the Congress had no authority to proliibit the importation 
 of slaves from abroad ; that all tlie Slates hud, and some 
 wore in the full exercise of the riftht to import thcni; and, con- 
 sequently, that there wjis nomo.luin which Congress could 
 check the evil but the indirect one of narrowing the space 
 open for the reception of slaves. 
 
 " Had a Federal authority then existed to prohibit directly 
 and totally the importation from abroad, can it be doubted 
 that it would have bebn exerted, and that a regulation 
 h.avins merely the effect of prcventin<; the interior disposi- 
 tion of slaves actually in the United States, and creating a 
 distinction among the States in the degrees of their sover- 
 eignty, would not have been adopted, or perhaps thought 
 of.'" 
 
 You will recollect, Mr. President, that Madi- 
 son was a member of the Congress which en- 
 
18 
 
 acted the ordinance. He knew, therefore, all 
 the circumstances attending its adoption; and 
 here, by his own liand, those circumstances arc 
 related. The occasion of the letter was itself 
 solemn, and even momentous. In February, 
 1820, while the Missouri coiltroversy engao:ed 
 universal attention — when the ordinance of 1787 
 was made tlie staple (tis it has since been) of all 
 the argument for congressional intervention — we 
 find tiuit Monroe, then President of the United 
 States, addressed Madison for advice; and Mad- 
 ison, from a retirement no longer disturbed by 
 partisan suggestions, informed him of the special, 
 temporary, and exceptional reason upon which 
 the anti -slavery clause was founded. 
 
 Why, sir, let us n call what happened at the 
 second session of the First Congress. North Car- 
 olina did not come into the Union until after 
 Washington's administration had commenced, 
 and then at length surrendered her western do- 
 main — the jiresent State of Tennessee. On the 
 26th of May, J79U,an act was passed to establish 
 a government for the region thus ceded. (United 
 States Statutes, vol. ], p. 123.) It extended the 
 provisions of the ordinance of July 13, 1787, 
 except the anti-slavery clause, over the territory of 
 the United States south of the Ohio river. The 
 Senator from Iowa undertook to account for this 
 by a suggestion that North Carolina so stipulated 
 in her deed of cession; to which I answer, that if 
 it had been the estalilislied policy of the Govern- 
 ment (as now pretended) to exclude slavery from 
 the Territories of the Union, Congress never 
 would have accepted tlie grant upon such terms. 
 The cession of Virginia was rejected by the Con- 
 tinental Congress from .January, 1781, until March, 
 1784, because of certain conditions exacted by 
 that State, and from which, in October, f783, her 
 Legislature receded. So that, if the policy of 
 Congress had been what the Senator claims. 
 North Carolina would have been forced to aban- 
 don the condition proposed. 
 
 But the Senator says, also, that Congress tol- 
 erated slavery in Tennessee, because it existed 
 there at the time, and prohibited the same insti- 
 tution in the territory northwest of the Ohio river, 
 because it did not exist there. The Senator is 
 misinformed in this particular. There were slaves 
 in the Northwestern Territory when the ordi- 
 nance of 1787 was adopted; in fact, sir, there 
 were none but slaviholding settlements. These 
 were at Detroit, now in the State of Michigan, 
 where the Pawnee Indians were held as slaves, 
 and at St. Vincennes, Indiana, and Kaskaskia, 
 Illinois, where negro slavery existed. As late 
 as February 12, 1793, slav('S were held in the 
 Territory, by color of law; and the fugitive slave 
 act of that date, the first ever passed, expressly 
 provided for their recapture. (United States 
 Statutes, vol. 1, p. 3L»2.) Moreover, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, slavery existed in what now constitutes 
 Indiana and Illinois, despite the ordinance of 
 July 13, 1787, from the time of its first settle- 
 ments until after both those States had been ad- 
 mitted into the Union. In certain resolutions 
 unanimously adopted December, 1806, by the 
 Legislature nf Indiana Territory, to which I shall 
 have occasion to allude hereafter, this fact is re- 
 lated to Congnss in the most positive terms. 
 The first constitution of Illinois, adopted August 
 26, 1818, sanctioned the title to all slaves then 
 
 within the State; and Illinois excluded slavery, 
 as a permanent institution, by a small number of 
 votes. 
 
 In this connection, Mr. President, I would ask 
 why, if the anti-slavery clause of the ordinance 
 of 1787 was intended to have so permanent and 
 extensive a character as now claimed, did not the 
 constitutional convention, which was sitting at 
 Philadelphia at the time of its enactment, embody 
 that provision in the Constitution of the United 
 States.' It could not have escaped the attention 
 of the members — many of whom were likewise 
 members of Congress; and the fact is, as I have 
 shown, that their attention was directly called to 
 the question of conferring on Congress a legisla- 
 tive power over the Territories. All this is inex- 
 plicable, sir, except in view of the statement con- 
 tained in Mr. Madison's letter. 
 
 It is true that the same Congress which refused 
 to exclude slavery from the region south of the 
 Ohio river, had passed an act on the 7th of August, 
 1789, whereby the ordinance of 1787 was modified 
 in two unimportant particulars, and that this was 
 done, as the preamble states, to adapt the ordi- 
 nance to the Federal Constitution. But thatafiirm- 
 ance rested, as did all the subsequent acts for the 
 subdivision of the Northwestern Territory and 
 the admission of the States formed out of it, upon 
 an idea that the ordinance was (as its own terms 
 declare) a " compact" between the people of the 
 Territory and the people of the thirteen original 
 States, and was " forever" unaltei-able. Even in 
 the act of Ajiril 19, 1816, for the admission of In- 
 diana as a State, it is recited that the six articles 
 of the ordinance to which I have alluded, were 
 "irrevocable" articles. (United States Statutes, 
 vol. 3, p. 289.) I do not acknowledge that this 
 was a correct exposition of the legal effect of the 
 Constitution of the United States upon the ordi- 
 nance; but I say that it was the opinion enter- 
 tained by Congress and by all the courts of tho 
 northwestern States, until December, 1850, when 
 the case of Strader vs. Graham, 10 Howard, 82, 
 was decided by the Supreme Court here. It is 
 merel)' idle, then, to citr; either the ordinance or 
 the act of August 7, 1789, or any of the acts relat- 
 ing to the Northwe.stern Territory or States, as 
 an indication of the general policy of the Consti- 
 tution or of Congress. 
 
 A great deal has been said in praise of the 
 ordinance, here and elsewhere, as if it were the 
 perfection of human achievement. How singu- 
 lar that, like the Missouri restriction of Marcli 
 6, 1820, its virtues should not have been discov- 
 ered until after it ceased to exist. During the 
 whole period of its operation in the Territory 
 now constituting the Statesof Ohio, Indiana, and 
 Illinois, the ordinance was disliked and even de- 
 tested by the people. Why should this have 
 been otherwise ? Until the Territory contained 
 five thousand free male inhabitants of full age, 
 the legislative authority was vested in a Governor 
 and three judges, appointed by tiie President, 
 and not responsible, in any degree, to those over 
 whom they exercised so great a dominion. That 
 this authority was abused by the Governor and 
 judges, there are many records of Congress to 
 demonstrate. 
 
 The ordinance invested the Governor with an 
 absolute veto, one that all the members of the 
 Territorial Legislature together could not over- 
 
19 
 
 rule. It was exercised by the first Governor, 
 Arthur St. Clair, so frequently, and in a manner 
 so reckless and wanton, as to have left an im- 
 pression to this hour upon the political character 
 of Ohio. In May, 1851, almost half a century 
 after the ordinance had ceased to operate, a con- 
 vention of de!(-2;ates assembled to revise the State 
 constitution; and although experience had shown 
 the wisdom of a qualified or limited veto, such 
 as the President exercises, the tradition of St. 
 Clair's despotism was so vivid, and the senti- 
 ment of the people so well understood, that all 
 attempts to conf(.'ra like authority upon the Gov- 
 ernor met with si^^nal defeat. Never, since Ohio 
 was a State, has the veto power been tolerated 
 ill any shape or foim. 
 
 The ordinance required a property qualifica- 
 tion for all officers and electors. A member of 
 the Territorial Legislature was required to have, 
 in his own right, a .fee-simple of two hundred 
 acres, and an elector a like estate in fifty acres; 
 and this, sir, at a time when the public lands 
 were sold only in large tracts, and at enormous 
 prices. Agrunstsueh a restriction upon the right 
 of suffrage the inhabitants of the Territory pro- 
 tested from first to last. 
 
 Ohio has been styled, of late years, the " first- 
 born" of the ordinance. This title is one which, 
 in early times, she would have considered as no 
 compliment. Certainly she was not a dutiful 
 child. Her Slate governmejit was formed with- 
 out the sanction, and against the will of the Ter- 
 ritorial liCgislatLire. It was upon an earnest 
 appeal from the inhabitants — disqualified to vote, 
 most of ihem, under the ordinance — that the act 
 of April 30, 180:2, to authorize the adojition of a 
 State constitution was passed. Even the Dele- 
 gate in Congress, elected, of course, by the " qual- 
 ified" voters, opposed it. ButPresident .Tefferson 
 lent his ear and his influence nobly to the com- 
 plaints of an oppressed people. The act of Con- 
 gress enlarged the right of suffrage at the election 
 for memners of the convention far beyond the 
 provisions of the ordinance. In truth, Mr. Pres- 
 ident, the ordinance was trodden under foot by 
 the people, and all who then exercised authority 
 under it were treated with contempt and derision. 
 While the convention was in session at Chilli- 
 cothe, Governor St. Clair demanded the right of 
 addressing it in his official character; but the del- 
 egates refused to recognize him — refused to hear 
 him at all, until he asked the privilege merely as 
 an individual. They required him to disband 
 the Territorial Legislature which had appointed 
 a session at Cincinnati about that time. Of this, 
 however, there was no need; the Legislature had 
 been driven from Chillicothe by a popular tumult 
 the previous year, and its members concluded not 
 to provoke such extremities again. There never 
 was a community so disgusted with its form of 
 government. 
 
 Strange to relate, Mr. President, one of the 
 most obnoxious features in the ordinance at that 
 time was the anti-slavery clause. It was evaded 
 in Ohio by a simjile process. An indenture was 
 executed in Virginia by which a slave covenanted 
 to serve his master for life; and then the slave 
 was taken to the Northwestern Territory as an 
 apprentice. To such 'an extent did this prevail 
 under the ordinance, that when the first constitu- 
 tion of Ohio was adopted, November 29, 1802, a 
 
 provision was inserted to annul such indentures 
 thereafter. 
 
 In the residue of the Territory, Indiana and 
 Illinois, this question assumed a more serious 
 importance. In November, 1802, while the Ohio 
 convention was in session, the inhabitants of the 
 Indiana Territory (comprising what is now Illi- 
 nois as well as Indiana) elected delegates to a 
 territorial convention, by which their grievances 
 might be considered and made known to Con- 
 gress. The convention assembled at Vincennes 
 in December of that year, and General Harrison 
 pr(!sided over its deliberations. A memorial to 
 Congress was prepared, signed, and sent to the 
 House of Representatives. Tlie original docu- 
 ment is now before me — authenticated by Gen- 
 eral Harrison's signature and by the territorial 
 seal — taken from the files of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. As it has never been printed, to my 
 knowledge, I will read those paragraphs which 
 relate to the prohibition of slavery and to qual- 
 ified suffrage: 
 
 To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
 States in Congress asseinldcd : 
 
 The memorial and petition of the inhabitants of the In- 
 diana Territory respoctfiilly shovveth : 
 
 That nine tenths of your memorialists being of opinion 
 that tlie sixth article of compact, contained in the ordinance 
 for the ^overinnent of the Territory, has been extremely 
 prejudicial to their interest and welfare, requested the Gov- 
 ernor, by petitions from each of the several coinuies, to 
 call a general convention of the Territory for the purpose 
 of taking the sense of the whole people, by their represent- 
 atives, on a subject to them so interesting, and of afterwards 
 taking such measures as to thetn might seem meet, by pe- 
 tition to your honorable bodies, not only for obtaining the 
 repeal or suspension of the said article of compact, but al.so 
 lor that of representing and petitioning for the passage of 
 such other laws as would, in the opinion of the convention, 
 be conducive to the general welfare, population, and hap- 
 piness of this distant and unrepresented portion of the 
 United States. 
 
 This convention is now sitting at Vincennes, and have 
 agreed to make the following representation to the Con- 
 gress of the United States — not in the least doubting but 
 that everything thoy can desire (not prejudicial to the Con- 
 stitution or to the interest of the General Government) will 
 readily be granted to them. 
 
 The sixth article of compact between the United States 
 and the people of the Territory, which declari^s there shall 
 be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in it, has pre- 
 vented the country from populating, and been the reason 
 of driving many valuable citizens possessing slaves to the 
 Spanish side of the iVIississippi — most of whom, but for the 
 proliibition contained in the ordinance, would have settled 
 in this Territory — and tlie consequence-i of keeping that 
 prohibition iu force will he that ol' obliging the numerous 
 class of citizens disposed to emigrate to seek an asylum in 
 that country where they can be permitted to enjoy their 
 property. 
 
 Your memorialists, however, and the people they repre- 
 sent, do not wish for a repeal of this article entirely, but 
 that it may be suspended for the term often years, and then 
 to be again in force ; but that the slaves brought into the 
 Territory during the continuance of this suspension, and 
 their progeny, may be considered and continued in the same 
 state of servitude as if they had remained in those parts of 
 the United States where slavery is permitted, and from 
 whence they may have been removed. 
 
 Your memorialists further show, that they view that part 
 of the ordinance for the government of the Territory wliich 
 riiquires a freehold qualification in fifty acres of laiid, as 
 elector for members to the Giin^ral Assembly, as subversive 
 of the liberties of the citizens, and tending to throw too 
 great weight in the scale of wealth. They, therefore, pray 
 tiiat the right of suffrage (in voting for representatives to 
 the General Assembly) may be extended to the free male 
 inhabitants of the Territory, of the age of twenty-one years 
 and upwards, but under such regulations and restrictions as 
 to you in your wisdom may seem proper. 
 
20 
 
 your memorialists are well aware that the consideration 
 of the numerous objects contemplated by this memorial 
 will require more time than can well be t^pared from the 
 important and general concerns of the Union; but when 
 tlii'y retlect upon their nc>rlected and orphan like situation, 
 they are cinboldened to hope that their wants and wishes 
 will meet with all the induli,'ence and attention necessary 
 to secure to tliein the relief which is so essential to their 
 welfare and happiness. 
 
 Done at Vnicennes, in the Indiana Territory, the 28th 
 day of December, in the year of our Lord 1802, and of the 
 independence of the United States the twenty-seventh. 
 
 By order of the convention, 
 
 WILLIAM I1I:NKY HARRISON, 
 President, and delegate Jrom the county of Knox. 
 
 Test: 
 
 John Rice Jones, Secretary. 
 
 [Territorial seal.] 
 
 This memorial was ]ircsented to the House of 
 Representatives on the 8th of February, 1803, 
 and was referred to Messrs. Randolph, Griswold, 
 Robert Williams, Lewis R. Morris, and Hoge, 
 as a select committee. 
 
 On the 2d of March, 1803, the committee made 
 an adverse rcpoit on both the particulars which 
 I have speciiii'd. (American State Papers, " Pub- 
 lic Lands," vol. 1, p. 160.) This was referred, 
 says the Clerk's indorsement, to " a Committee 
 of the Whole^House to-morrow." The morrow, 
 unfortunately, was the last day of the Congress, 
 and the sabject, of course, was not considered. 
 Two facts are worthy of notice in this connection: 
 First: The African slave trade had notbeenabol- 
 ished; it was still entitled to a license of five 
 years, almost, under the Constitution. Second: 
 A scheme for the concerted insurrection of slaves 
 in Virginia had been discovered three years pre- 
 viously, and the public mind had not recovered 
 from that alarm. I 
 
 On the 15th of December, 1803, the memorial j 
 was eigain considered, together with the report 
 of the select commiitee, and thereupon Messrs. 
 Rodney, Boyle, and Rhea, of Tennessee, were 
 appointed a new committee to examine it. These 
 gentlemen reported, February 17, 1804, in favor 
 of the prayer of the petition, and especially that 
 the sixth article of the ordinance should be sus- 
 pended for ten years, " so as to permit the intro- 
 duction of slaves born within the United States 
 from any of the individual States." (Am. State 
 Papers, "Miscellaneous," vol. 1, p. 387.) In 
 respect of limited suffrage in the Territories, the 
 committee said: 
 
 " It must be the true policy of ilic 'T^itcd States, witli 
 the millions of acres ol habitable eoiinuy which she possess- 
 es, to cherish those principlis which •■ave birth to her in 
 dependence and created her a nation, by affording an 
 asylum to the oppressed of all countries." 
 
 A resolution was reported, therefore, contem- 
 plating what is now called "alien" suffrage. 
 
 This report, also, was coirnnilted to a Commit- 
 tee of the Whole House, but never was consid- 
 ered, I suppose, as there is no trace of any vote 
 or discussion. 
 
 At the next Congress, December 18, 1805, the 
 subject was again brought before the House, and 
 was referred to Messrs. Garnett, Morrow of 
 Ohio, Parke, Hamilton, Smith of South Car- 
 olina, Walton, and Van Cortlandt. This com- 
 mittee reported in favor of the petition, February 
 14, 1806. (Am. State Papers, " Miscellaneous," 
 vol. l,p. 450.) 
 
 It will be noticed that Jeremiah Morrow, then 
 the sole Representative of the State of Ohio, was 
 a member of the committee; and, as the report was 
 
 unanimously made, it might be well to ascertain 
 what his opinions were. I will quote, therefore, 
 from this document: 
 
 " Having attentively considered the facts slated in the 
 said petitions and memorials, they are oC opinion that a 
 qualified suspension, for a limited time, of the sixth article of 
 the compact between the orijiinal States and the people and 
 States west of the river Ohio, would be beneficial to the 
 people of the Indiana Territory. The suspension of this 
 article is an object almost nniversally desired in that Terri- 
 tory. It appears to your committee to be a question en- 
 tirely difierent from that between slavery and freedom, 
 inasmuch as it would merely occasion the removal of per- 
 sons, already slaves, from one part of the country to anottier. 
 The good eliticts of this suspension, in the present instance, 
 would be to accelerate the population ot' that Territory, 
 hitherto retarded by the operation of that article of compact, 
 as slaveholders emigrating into ih ewestern country might 
 then indulj^e any preference which they might feel for a set- 
 tlement in the Indiana Territory, instead of seeking, as 
 they are now compelled to do, settlements in other States 
 or countries permitting the introduction of .slaves. The 
 condition of the slaves themselves would be n)uch amelio- 
 rated by it, as it is evident from experience that the more 
 they are separated and diffused, the more care and attention 
 are bestowed on them by their masters ; each proprietor 
 h.iving it in his power to increase their comforts and conve- 
 niences in proportion to the smallness of their numbers. The 
 daiig('rs, ton, (if any are to be apprehended,) from too large 
 a black population existing in any*one section of country, 
 would certainly be very much diminished, if not entirely 
 removed. But whether dangers are to be feared from this 
 source or not, it is certainly an obvious dictate of sound 
 policy to guard against them as far as possible. If this dan- 
 ger does exist, or there is any cause to apprehend it, and 
 our western brethren are not only willing but desirous l« 
 aid us in taking precautions against it, would it not be wise 
 to accept their assistance.'' We should benefit ourselves 
 without itijuring them, as their population must always so 
 far exceed any black population which can ever exist in 
 that country, as to render the idea of danger from that source 
 chimerical. 
 
 " Your committee consider the regulation contained in 
 the ordinance for the government of the territory of the 
 United States, which requires a freehold of fifty acres of 
 land as a qualification for an elector of the (Jeneral Assem- 
 bly, as limiting too much the elective franchise. Some 
 restriction, however, being necessary, your committee con- 
 ceive that a residence continued long enough to evince a 
 determination to become a permanent inhabitant, should 
 entitle a person to the rights of suffrage. This probationary 
 period need not extend beyond twelve months." 
 
 Thecommiltee reported these resolutJ^ms, with 
 others, for adoption: 
 
 " That the sixth article of the ordinance of 1787, which 
 prohibits slavery within the Indiana Ten itory, he suspended 
 for ten years, so as to permit the introduction of slaves, 
 born within the United States, from any of the individual 
 States. 
 
 "That every while freeman of the age of jwenty-onc 
 years, who has resided within the Territory twelve months, 
 and within tl-e county in which he claims a vote six month? 
 immediately preceding the election, shall enjoy the righti< 
 of an elector of the General Assembly." 
 
 It may be, Mr. President, that the citizens of 
 Ohio will sanction the doctrines expressed in the 
 resolutions of the present Legislature; but, if so, 
 they will depart from the landmarks established 
 by that staunch old patriotand pioneer, Jeremiah 
 Morrow, in the days when he alone spoke for 
 Ohio in the other House of Consress — those ever- 
 memorable days, too, when Thomas Jefferson 
 stood at the helm of our Federal Government. 
 
 But, sir, I have not finished the history of this 
 matter. Tired of delays, at length the inhabit- 
 ants of Indiana Territory took the law into their 
 own hands; and, by an act of their Legislature, 
 recognized slavery as a territorial institution. 
 The fact is stated in two other documents (never 
 published) which I have before me — taken like- 
 wise from the files of the House of Representa- 
 tives. They were presented, it seems, on the 
 
21 
 
 17th of Januarjr, )806, and referred to the select j 
 committee previously appointed, of which Mr. j. 
 Garnctt was chairman. They will best explain jj 
 themselves: I 
 
 " At a meeting of the citizens appointed to form a com- j 
 mittee fioni the several townships in the counties of St. 
 Clair and Randolph, to take into consideration and repre- 
 sent to the General Government the grievances of these 
 counties, the ^Jtli day of November, 1805: 
 
 " Present in committee : Janioshcnion, John Messenger, i 
 William Scott, John Whilisidc, Moses Short, John Edgar, 
 10. Backus, John Bcaird, F.. r.ildovback, John Everts, Wil- 
 liam Cliaffin, Kalph Drury, Hniry Kevin, William Gohigs, 
 Samuel Konney, Robert Robinson, Jean F. I'erry, N. Jar- 
 rott, Etienne Pansannce, and William Biggs. 
 
 "On motion, unanimously resolved. That t'olonel John 
 Edgar be chairman, and Robert Robinson clerk of this com- 
 mittee. 
 
 "iieso/rcrf. That a memorial be prepared stating the griev- 
 ances of these counties ; that it be signed by the members 
 of this committee, and transmitted to the Senate and House 
 of Representatives of the United States in session. * * 
 
 " And whereas the ordinance of 1787 for the Government 
 of this Territory is respected by the people as the consti- 
 tution of their country, this committee ealertain a hope 
 that the General Government, after guarantying to tlie 
 people the privileges in that ordinafice contained, will not 
 pass unnoticed the violation thereof by the late act of the 
 Legislature of this Territoiy, authorizing the importation 
 of slaves and involuntary servitude for a long term of years. 
 
 "And although this committee ent(!rtain no doubt but that 
 the act in question will render service by adding a spring to 
 the growth of this country, they express the disapprobation 
 of a people who never will consent to a violation of that 
 ordinance for this privilege of slavery. When Congress 
 sihall deem a change of the ordinance expedient, they will 
 cheerfully agree to the measure." 
 
 Some Senator may suppose, perhaps, that the 
 committee-iTien ortheirconstituents were opposed 
 to slavery, and resented the idea of its introduc- 
 tion. Not at all, sir. They wished a division of 
 the Territory, and this complaint was inserted 
 with others, in order to make out a case of usurp- 
 ation against the Territorial Legislature. The 
 establishment of a court of chancery was another 
 pretext for complaint. In their inemorial (which 1 
 1 have here) they implore Congress to allow them j 
 the privilege of holding slaves: | 
 
 "The memorial of the undersigned persons, being a com- | 
 niittce appointed by the inhabitants of the Illinois, for the 
 purpose of laying their grievances before the National Legis- 
 lature, respectfully showeth : 
 
 " That this country is composed of that part of the domain of 
 the United States on the northwest of tlie river Ohio, which, 
 by the ordinance or compact of 1787, has been designated to 
 form the western State, bounded by the Mississippi, the 
 Ohio, the Wabash, a north line drawn from Vincennes to 
 the divisional line between the United States and Canada, 
 and by this line to the Lake of the Woods and the Missis- 
 sippi. 
 
 " That for the purposes of a temporary government, it 
 now fornisa niemberof the Indiana Territory, and is divided 
 into two counties, Randolph and St. Clair. 
 
 " That the form and extent of this government have, 
 from certain circumstances, become not only undesirable, 
 but productive of the most pernicious effects; and your me- 
 morialists most humbly solicit your attention while they 
 detail these circumstances, while they siiggest the propriety 
 of a division of this government, and the erection of that 
 part of it, above described, into a separate colony. 
 
 " V'our memorialists approach your honorable body with 
 the more confidence on this subject, since they flatter them- 
 .«elves that the nation has become sensible of the situation 
 in which they have been, their long struggles, their unpro- 
 tected state, their patient submission to inconveniences, 
 aad their claims to be now heard." 
 
 " Your memorialists would further beg leave to solicit, 
 as a thing which would be promotive of the prosperity of 
 tbis country, the permission to hold slaves in it. 
 
 " The principle of domestic servitude we do not advocate ; 
 yet domestic servitude has found its way into the United 
 States— it is immovably established there. When an evil 
 
 becomes irremediable, is it not wisdom to convert it, if pos- 
 sible, to some use .' 
 
 '• However unnecessary this state of servitude may be 
 thought in the eastern part of this Territory, no man has 
 doubled its importance here, where, among whites, health 
 and labor are almost incompatible ; here, too, a country to 
 which it would probably bring back the principal settlers of 
 Upper Louisiana, since they have been driven from home 
 by the fear of losing their servants."' 
 
 I have related the action of the third select com- 
 mittee upon the Indiana inemorial, to which, as 
 I have said, these two documents were likewise 
 referred. That report was committed to the Com- 
 mittee of the Whole House, but I cannot find 
 that it ever came to a vote, or was even dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 The Legislature of Indiana Territory perse- 
 vered, however, in its application. In December, 
 1806, it adopted, unanunously, a series of resolu- 
 tions upon the subject, and a copy was presented 
 to the Senate as well as to the House. (Ameri- 
 can State Papers, "Miscellaneous," vol. 1, p, 
 467.) I will read one of the resolutions: 
 I "Resolved unanimously. That the citizens of this part of 
 1 the former Northwestern Territory consider themselves as 
 I having claims upon the indulgence of Congress, in regard 
 j to a suspension of the said article, because, at the time of 
 [ the adoption of the ordinance of 1787, slavery was toler- 
 [ ated, and slaves generally possessed by the citizens then 
 j inhabiting the country, amounting to at least one half the 
 j present population of Indiana, and because the said ordi- 
 1 nance was passed in Congress when the said citizens were 
 not represented in that body, without their being consulted, 
 and without their knowledge and approbation." 
 
 1 Upon these resolutions in the House, a fourth 
 committee was appointed, of which Mr. Parke 
 ! was chairman. This committee reported on the 
 ! 12th of February, 1807, in ftivor of the rights 
 j claimed by the Territorial Legislature. (Amer- 
 j ican State Papers, " Miscellaneous," vol. 1, pp. 
 ! 477, 478.) I will not detain the Senate with 
 1 reading from this report. 
 
 ; By this time, as we have seen, the question 
 I had becoine complicated with that of dividing 
 I the Territory, and at the next session, (December 
 j31, 1808,) a report was made in favor of such 
 I division. (American State Papers, " Miscella- 
 I iieous,"vol. 1, pp. 945, 946.) A slight concession 
 had been made by the act of February 26, 1808, 
 in respect to the right of suffrage. (2 United 
 I States Statutes, 469.) 
 
 On the 3d of February, 1809, the Territory 
 was divided, and Illinois obtained a separate 
 government. (2 United States Statutes, 314.) 
 This was followed by an act on the 27th of the 
 same month, providing that the members of the 
 Legislative Council in Indiana should be chosen 
 by the people. (2 United States Statutes, 525.) 
 By the acts of March 3, 1811, and May 20, 1812, 
 the right of suffrage in both Territories was 
 extended to the full limit suggested in Mr. Gar- 
 nett's resolution. (2 United^States Statutes, 659, 
 741.) 
 
 Here ended the intervention of Congress; but 
 the Legislature of Illinois Territory followed the 
 example set by that of Indiana, and African sla- 
 very continued to exist there (as I have said) until 
 and after the adoption of a State government. 
 
 This recital demonstrates another fact. It is, 
 that legislation can exercise no permanent influ- 
 ence in deciding whether slavery shall or shall 
 not be established, or even continued. Vain and 
 futile to the last degree is any enactment on that 
 subject. The condition of the country, its climate, 
 
22 
 
 soil, and staples of production, the supply of 
 laborers — these arc the decisive elements, and 
 these, in spite of all ordinances or other statutes, 
 will at lengtli decide. It proves, also, that the 
 institutions, adopted under a territorial form of 
 government by the people, do not indicate always 
 the character of the State after its admission into 
 the Union. Indiana and Illinois are non-slave- 
 holding States — not because the ordinance of 
 1787 so provided, but because the labor of Afri- 
 cans was found to be unproductive, and the in- 
 flux of population from Europe (which began 
 after Napoleon's downfall) supplied a host of la- 
 borers in the northwest, far more efficient, intel- 
 ligent, and useful than slaves ever can become. 
 
 Let us return, however, to tiie primitive legis- 
 lation of Congress. Soon after John Adams as- 
 sumed the Presidential chair, it would seem, the 
 discovery was made that a portion of the domain 
 which now constitutes the States of Alabama and 
 Mississipjii, did not belong to Georgia — as there- 
 tofore supposed — but had been acquired from 
 Great Britain by the limits prescribed in the 
 treaty of peace. And therefore, on the 7th of 
 April, 1798, a territorial government was estab- 
 lished over it. Here, certainly, is an occasion 
 for Congress — fettered by no terms of cession — 
 to have realized that "American policy" which 
 the Ohio Legislature instructs me to pursue. 
 The inhabitants were few in number, and the 
 slaves less — not so many, at all events, as were 
 then ?held in the territory northwest of the Ohio 
 river. But Congress only extended the ordinance 
 of July 13th, 1787, " excepting and excluding 
 the last article," over that region — or, in otiier 
 words, refused to prohibit slavery at all. (United 
 States Statutes, vol. ], pp. 549, 550.) 
 
 Thfjnext case in order is that of Louisiana. 
 It was during Mr. Jefferson's administration, 
 March 2G, 1804. The tenth section alone is 
 worthy of notice. That prohibits the importation 
 of slaves from any port or place without the limits 
 of the United States, or of slaves brought into the 
 United States after a certain period. It should be 
 mentioned in this connection, that an act of Con- 
 gress had been passed February 28, 1803, im- 
 posing severe penalties on the master of a vessel 
 whicli imported negroes, from abroad, into any 
 State whose Legislature had forbidden the traffic. 
 (2U. S. Stat., 205.) The Louisiana act, how- 
 ever, did not prevent the. introduction of slaves, 
 except as before mentioned, from any part of the 
 United States. (2 U. S. Stat., 286.) 
 
 These are all the acts of Congress which pre- 
 ceded the Missouri question; and from these, 
 I submit, no argument can be drawn in favor of 
 congressional intervention. 'Mean while, it should 
 be recollected, five slaveholding States had been 
 added to the Union — Kentucky and Tennessee 
 while Washington was President; Louisiana 
 during Madison 's administration ; Mississippi and 
 Alabama during that of Monroe. Where can 
 wediscover'at all the settled "policy, "of which 
 we now hear so much — the determination that no 
 slaveholding State beyond the original thirteen 
 should ever be permitted .' Sir, there was no such 
 policy or determination: it is a mere invention; 
 a false coinage, of later and degenerate times. 
 
 I have tried the patience of the Senate too much 
 already, to venture upon a discussion of the cir- 
 cumstances which attended the application, re- 
 
 peated rejections, and final admission, of Missouri 
 into the Union. Suffice it to say, sir, that the 
 pretext employed against her — the fact, namely, 
 that she was a slaveholding State — is a pretext 
 cmjiloyed on that occasion for the first time. It 
 was denounced b)'^ Jefferson (who was then alive) 
 in the most bitter language; it was denounced, 
 also, by Madison, by Jackson, and by Harrison. 
 The letters of all these pul)lic men, addressed to 
 Monroe, as President, may be found in the un- 
 published collection to which I have alluded. 
 
 This memorable controversy was the last 
 struggle of the Federalists, as such, for political 
 power. It originated with the Hartford conven- 
 tion; and then, as now, the proposition to exclude 
 slavery from the new Stales and Territories went 
 hand-in-hand with a proposition to alter the natu- 
 ralization laws. Mr. Madison declares, in the 
 ; letter from which I have quoted, that it was a 
 1 scheme of "coalesced leaders" to divide "the 
 I Republicans of the North from those of the 
 : South," and make " the former instrumental in 
 ; giving the opponents of both an ascendency over 
 j the whole. " The Kansas question of our day is 
 [ but a repetition of that performance. 
 
 The concession made by the act of March 6, 
 1820, was unwise, and, as it proved, entirely un- 
 available. I do not censure those great and pa- 
 j triotic men who assented to it as an expedient for 
 I terminating the dispute. They hoped it would 
 i prove a "compromise" indeed — that it would 
 1 settle the question forever — that the Union would 
 j have security and the people an unbroken peace. 
 1 Fn the same situation, assuredly, I should have 
 ' done as they did. 
 
 j But, sir, alas, the mistake was a fatal one. It 
 brought no security and no satisfaction. It un- 
 settled all that had been settled before. It only 
 1 encouraged new aggression; and in the midst of 
 our war with Mexico, when the zeal of every pa- 
 triot should have been kindled with a new flame, 
 the most hideous feature of ancient Federalism 
 — clad only in another guise — once more received 
 the approbation of the House of Representatives. 
 From the date of the Missouri act, in March, 
 1820, a hollow truce had prevailed; and the evil 
 day was postponed, thrice and again, by the 
 coupling of new States together — a slaveholding 
 I State with a non-slaveholding State — Missoun 
 with Maine, Arkansas with iVIiehigan, Florida 
 with Iowa, Texas with Wisconsin. This, sir, is 
 the " peace " which the Senator from Vermont 
 accuses the last Congress of having broken; and 
 if this be peace, tell me, in God's name, what is 
 discord ! 
 
 From the day of its enactment, I repeat, until 
 the day of its abrogation, with one exception, 
 never did the representatives of the North agree 
 to the line of the Missouri compromise. Some 
 resisted it in the case of Arkansas, and some in 
 the case of Florida. In the case of Texas, to be 
 sure, they voted for its application — and because 
 that would exclude slavery from a portion of the 
 domain to be acquired. But in no other instance, 
 sir, from first to last. I shall not relate the troub- 
 lous controversy which grew out of our Mexican 
 acquisitions; but as the Senator from Vermont 
 was so earnest in his charge that the southern 
 Senators and Representatives had repudiated a 
 solemn compact, had violated the pledge of their 
 fathers, had broken the faith of the nation, I must 
 
23 
 
 refer to an occurrence with which he ought to be 
 familiar. No Senator denies, I presume, that 
 Oregon was a part of the original Louisiana Ter- 
 ritory, and subject, therefore, to the terms of the 
 (so called) Missouri compromise. On the 15th 
 of January, 1847, whilst the Oregon territorial 
 bill was before the House of Representatives, 
 Mr. Burt, of South Carolina, moved to amend 
 the clause in which slavery was prohibited by 
 the addition of this preface: 
 
 " Inasmuch as the whole of the said Territory lies north 
 of thirty-six desrces thirty niiiuitfs north latitude, known 
 as the line of the Missouri compromise." 
 
 This was not a proposition that slavery should 
 be permitted in Oregon, nor that the southern 
 States, or their people, should have any imme- 
 diate or practical advantage. It was only to de- 
 clare that the act of March 6, 1820, was a com- 
 promise in good faith; or, as the Senator from 
 Vermont now calls it, a solemn compact, and to 
 base a congressional prohibition of slavery upon 
 the fact of its existence. The subject was de- 
 bated, and came, at length, to a formal vote. 
 There were 82 members in the affirmative, and 
 113 in the negative — tiie former chiefly from the 
 southern States, and the latter entirely from tlie 
 northern States. The Senator from Illinois [Mr. 
 Douglas] voted in the affirmative, and the Sen- 
 ator from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] voted in the 
 negative. (Congressional Globe, vol. 16, p. 187.) 
 They were both members of the House at that 
 time. Upon whose skirts, then, is the blood of 
 this precious compromise } 
 
 It was in the midst of a controversy whether the 
 principle of the Missouri compromise should or 
 should not be maintained, that the inhabitants 
 of California — abandoned by Congress to all the 
 miseries of anarchy on the one hand, or military 
 despotism on the other — exhibited the most sub- 
 lime spectacle ever presented, in my judgment, by 
 a community of American freemen. Without re- 
 sorting to books or political philosophers for any 
 ad vice they proceeded to establish a government for 
 themselves; and before Congress had determined 
 whether slavery should or should not be allowed 
 in that country, adopted their own State consti- 
 tution and decided the question at once. That, sir, 
 was a case where " popular sovereignty" came to 
 the rescue, and a well-timed rescue it was. And, 
 thereupon , without prolonging the old quarrel, but 
 dismissing forever the ghost of the murdered Mis- 
 souri compromise, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster — 
 with the venerable Senator from Michigan, the 
 distinguished Senator froin Illinois, and others — 
 adopted the case of California as a precedent for 
 all future cases, and inserted a provision to this 
 effect, at once, in the territorial bills for Utah and 
 New Mexico. That compromise, too, we are 
 accused of having violated. Sir, is it not won- 
 derful that all the survivors of that gallant band 
 which supported, and finally carried in triumph, 
 the territorial acts of September, 1850, should 
 now be charged with a misinterpretation of their 
 own purposes and language — and this, too, upon 
 the authority of a Senator (from Vermont) who 
 never lifted his hand to assist in that achieve- 
 ment, or of the Senators from New York and 
 New HaiTipshire, [Messrs. Seward and Hale,] 
 who resisted to the very last? I appeal to you. 
 Senators, who — eitherin this House or the other — 
 gave your votes and influence to that great meas- 
 
 ure of peace and constitutional vindication, the 
 compromise of 1850: did you not all, without a 
 single exception, vote for the Nebraska bill.' 
 
 If the compromise of 1850 was intended merely 
 as the settlement of a case then before Congress, 
 it was not worth one half the trouble bestowed 
 in securing its adoption; and the conventions of 
 the two great parties which assembled in Balti- 
 more, in June, 1852, committed an egregious act 
 of folly when they affirmed a case already decided , 
 and beyond reconsideration. But if the compro- 
 mise be, as I have always supposed, the establish- 
 ment of a principle applicable in all cases, hence- 
 forth and forever, it was a splendid achievement, 
 and as appropriate to crown the career of Henry 
 Clay and of Daniel Webster, as to vindicate the 
 patriotism and mature wisdom of the Senator 
 from Michigan, and inaugurate the brilliant man- 
 hood of the Senator from Illinois. It was wisely 
 affirmed, in that view, by the two conventions of 
 which I have spoken; and m that view, undoubt- 
 edly, it superseded the effect and principle of the 
 Missouri compromise, and established, instead, 
 the doctrine of congressional non-intervention. 
 
 Much has been said, in late years, concerning 
 the extension of slavery, and that has now be- 
 come the Shibboleth of a political organization. 
 If by this phrase, "extension of slavery," ia 
 meant an increase of the number of slaves — 
 whether by the reiistablishment of the African 
 slave trade or in any other wise, I concur in all 
 the objections urged; but, if it has reference only 
 to the removal from one place to another, within 
 the United States, of those who are already in 
 bondage, and especially the removal of a master 
 with his slave from a State where the excess of 
 population, the exhaustion of the soil, or any 
 other cause, has rendered it impossible, or diffi- 
 cult, for him to provide the slave a due allowance 
 of food and raiment, as the recompense for toil, 
 to another State, or a Territory, where the labor 
 of the slave will be productive, and will iVnprove 
 the master's condition as well as his own, I am 
 unable to perceive the philanthropy, or the polit- 
 ical economy, which would warrant a tithe of the 
 condemnations pronounced. A square "mile, in 
 South Carolina, can support only a certain num- 
 ber of human creatures — whether black or white 
 — as all must be aware. As population increases, 
 therefore, some must emigrate to regions less 
 densely settled; or else, while the number of in- 
 i habitants increases, the means of subsistence 
 remaining the same, want, misery, and starva- 
 tion must ensue. These will fall, in the first in- 
 stance upon the slave, inasmuch as he is the in- 
 ferior, the dependant, the subject. To him, thus 
 restrained of the right of locomotion, it is an act 
 of the highest beneficence that his master should 
 be enabled to transport him to another region, 
 more favorably conditioned, where those staples 
 to the production of which alone African labor 
 is adapted, can be ultimately cultivated with ad- 
 vantage'. 
 
 What would be the condition of the southern 
 Atlantic States, to-day, if Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, 
 Arkansas, and Texas had not been opened to 
 their colonization? Sir, instead of prosperous 
 communites of white men, they would now only 
 be populated by the black race — would have 
 degenerated to the forlorn and even desolate con- 
 
24 
 
 dition of Hayti and Jamaica. The white man 
 would have been driven forth. The negro would 
 remain. Instead of noble pillais, supporting the 
 edifice of our Federal Union, they would be like 
 those broken columns, disfigured and useless, 
 which signify to the lone traveler where Nine- 
 veh, and IJabylon, and Persepolis once reared 
 their massive towers. Inst(^ad of burning stars, 
 in the galaxy of our Republic, they would have 
 been quenched by the blacknes.s of darkness for- 
 ever. 
 
 To the negro, therefore, as well as to the white 
 man, to us of the northern States, to the Union 
 at large, to the great cruise of ci\ ilization and 
 human advancement — for our own sake, in the 
 generation wiiich now lives and thi; generation to 
 come, it is an affair of vital moment — of the very 
 uttermost concern — that we should not commit 
 the capital mistake of driving the wiiile man from 
 our southern States, and abandoning more than ; 
 one third of this empire to the dominion of tlie 
 negro. For, such, sir, will be the end, or some- 
 thing worse. As population pressc.'S upon the 
 means of subsistence, year after year, the white 
 race also will begin to suffer — to ijecome degraded, ' 
 feeble, and defenseless — until that dread calamity ; 
 supervenes, a servile insurrection, when our 
 brethren of the South, with their wives and little ; 
 ones, are overcome by the force of numbers, and \ 
 either exterminatf d or driven from their ancient 
 homes and fire-sides. Would yon, then, rccog- j 
 nizc the negro as a I'ellow-citizen ? Would you [ 
 permit liim to exercis^^ the political power of the 
 southern States? Would you suffer some brawny 
 knave, half brute and half savage, to sit in this ' 
 Hall as a Senator ? No, sir, you would not ! Des- \ 
 
 Cite the physiological comparisons, to which we 
 avc listened, concerning the two races, the Cau- 
 casian of the North would never associate on I 
 terms of such equality with the base and inca- 1 
 pable negro. He would hasten to the rescue of] 
 uis kinsman in the South; he would exterminate ; 
 the negro utterly from the face of the earth, or | 
 else reduce that miserable race everywhere to a 
 servitude more cruel, more desperate, more re- 
 lentless, than ever was depicted in novel or in ' 
 rhyme. 
 
 Prom this horrible issue, sir, an easy escape 
 is at hand. Let the slave, as well as the master, ; 
 have room! Iiet the southern Slates, like the!; 
 northern States, send forth colonics, avoid the | 
 dangers of too great a population, and, while they I 
 secure thus their own peace, and the peace of 
 the Union, the negro liimself will receive a boon j 
 more desirable than present emancipation. Have |j 
 we not room, in all our western domain, for the : 
 South as well as for the North ? Are there not . 
 regions where cotton, sugar, and rice, can be ; 
 cultivated? — staples for the production of which 
 African labor is available, and even profitable; 
 but to which the white laborer will not give his 
 loil. The Caucasian cannot abide the heat of a 
 southern summer; while to the negro that is not 
 objectionable, but grateful. Have we not room, 
 I demand, for all our colonies ? 
 
 Why, sir, in the State which I represent, in 
 Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and 
 Iowa, there are millions of acres of the virgin 
 soil — acres that await only the care of the hus- 
 bandman to quit their wild luxuriance and cover 
 themselves with fields of abundant grain. In 
 
 ! Arkansas, likewise, and the regions westward, 
 as well as in Texas, there are lands which can 
 produce rich and noble harvests; but which the 
 white man, for a hundred years to come, never 
 , will cultivate with his own hands. Senators! 
 : you do not increase slavery, nor the number of 
 slaves, lij' such a diffusion. You do not give 
 this institution new power, or additional stability, 
 or further advantage. You mitigate its evils; 
 you postpone — if not forever avoid — the conflict 
 , of two irreconcilable races; you improve llie con- 
 dition of both; you point out the only chance of 
 euianci|)alion — except through bloodshed — which 
 the negro can ever have — the only cliancc which 
 the white man will ever give him, with bloodshed 
 or without, to attain the least degree of comfort 
 and happiness. 
 
 These are not alone my suggestions. They 
 are the suggestions of the fathers — of Thomas 
 •Tefferson, James Madison, and Jam^s Monroe, 
 whose names the Senator from Massachusetts 
 I invoked so many times. In all Jefferson's dis- 
 quisitions upon slavery, the evils which attend 
 I it, and the remedies for those evils, he m.'ver failed 
 to declare that either immediate emancipation, or 
 emancipation without colonization, would prove 
 a bitter curse alike to the negro and the white 
 man. From 1774 to 1787, as I have shown, he 
 had great hopes, and an ardent desire, for the suc- 
 cess of gradual emancipation, coupled with col- 
 onization. He wished, therefore, to stop the in- 
 troduction of slaves. He bent all his energies — 
 as did Madison — to the accomplishment of that 
 enterprise. How he failed, and why he failed, 
 the Senator from Massachusetts has reluctantly 
 testified. From that period, .Tefferson abandoned 
 the idea of emancipation in his lifetime, or in any 
 definite series of years, and devoted himself to 
 the discovery of some method by which the evil.">i 
 of slavery could be mitigated, and the chances of 
 its final eradication increased? What was the 
 method which he devised? You have it, Mr. 
 President, in his Louisiana territorial act. It was 
 to allow the citizens of the Atlantic States a lib- 
 erty of removal with their slaves to the Territo- 
 ries and new States; or, in his own phrase, to 
 diffuse slavery over a large area, and thus avoid 
 the terrors of insurrection, decrease the hardships 
 of bondage, and render feasible, in some degree, 
 a restoration of the .African to his fatherland. I 
 do not speak without authority here; and I now 
 ask the Senate to consider the evidence. In a 
 letter to John Holmes, dated April 22, 1820, Mr. 
 Jefferson said: 
 
 " or one ilihig I am certain — that as the passage of slav<» 
 t'roiii one State to another would not malce a slave of a Binglc 
 htnnan being who would not be so without it, so their dif- 
 fusion over a greater surface would niakcthcni individually 
 happier, and propoitiotially facilitate the aeconiplishmenl 
 of their enianci[iation, by dividing the burden on a greater 
 number of coadjutors." 
 
 Such, also, were Madison's views. In a letter 
 to President Monroe, dated February 23, 1820, 
 that eminent statesman said: 
 
 " I have certainly felt all the influence that could justly 
 flow from a conviction that an uncontrolled dispersion of 
 the slaves, now within the United States, was not only best 
 for the nation, but most favorable for the slaves also — both 
 as to their prospects of emancipation, and as to their con- 
 dition in the mean time." 
 
 But a complete exposition has been written for 
 us by the hand of James Monroe. That he was 
 in constant and confidential correspondence with 
 
25 
 
 Jefferson and Madison during the whole Mis- 
 souri contest, is now clearly established. He 
 received advice from them, and coincided with 
 their opinions, as well as sympathized entirely 
 in their sentiments. That he yielded, with great 
 reluctance, to the prohibition of slavery in the 
 national domain north of 36° 30', is too well 
 ascertained, and solely upon the suggestion that 
 no other compromise appeared to be practicable. 
 At one period, it seenr\s, he determined to inter- 
 pose the veto power, and actually prepared a 
 message, the draft of which, in his own hand, is 
 yet extant. It contains a full decision of every 
 point embraced in this debate; but I will read, at 
 present, only the last two or three paragraphs: 
 
 "That should the slaves be confined to the States in 
 which slavery exists, as liie free population will continue 
 to emigrate, the disproportion between them will, in a few 
 years, be very preat; and at no distant period the whole 
 country will fall into the hands of the blacks. As soon as 
 this disproportion rea(>hes a certain stale, the white popula- 
 tion would probably abandon those States to avoid insur- 
 rection and massacre. What would become of the country 
 in that state.' Would the General Government support 
 tlie owners of the slaves in their authority over them, after 
 the States, individually, had lost the power.' or the slaves 
 being in possession of those States, and independent of their 
 owners, woiyd the States be recognized as belonging to 
 tliem,and their Representatives be received in Congress? 
 
 "That it would be better to compel the whites to remain, 
 and the blacks to move," &c. 
 
 " That slavery is nottheottspringof the Revolution ; that 
 it took place in our colonial state ; that all further importa- 
 tions have been prohibited since the Revolution, under laws 
 which are rigorously enforced ; that in our revolutionary 
 struggle the States in which slavery existed sustained their 
 ahare in the common burdens, furnished their equal quotas 
 of troops, and paid their equal share of taxes ; that slavery, 
 tliough a national evil, is felt most seriously by the States 
 in which it exists ; that it would be destructive to the whites 
 to confine it there, and to the blacks, as the distribution of 
 them over an extensive territory, and among many owners, 
 will secure them a better treatment ; that the extension of 
 it to new States cannot possibly injure the old, as they will 
 cl.aim all their rights, since no attempt can ever be made or 
 idea entertained of requiring them to admit slavery ; that 
 an attempt to fix on the States having slavery any odium, 
 is unmerited, and would be ungenerous." 
 
 Sir, I can add naught to this testimony or these 
 arguments; and if the Senator from Massachu- 
 setts would follow the exaniple of the sages and 
 patriots of our Revolution — would hearken to 
 their counsels, and walk in theirpaths — how much 
 better for himself, and for us all ! It is the way 
 of rfie Constitution — a rigorous maintenance of 
 equality between the States. 
 
 I have no fears of competition between the 
 labor of white men and the labor of slaves in 
 our Territories, or, indeed, elsewhere. There 
 is ample space, ample occasion for both. The 
 labor of the one cannot be successfully bestowed, 
 at present, upon those pursuits which are adapted 
 to the labor of the other. Let the citizens of each 
 State, or Territory, decide for themselves, with 
 a view to their own wants and condition, whether 
 slaves shall or shall not be admitted. Lotus have 
 no prohibitions by act of Congress — no arbitrary 
 lines. That was a dangerous and almost fatal 
 error. The wonderful prescience of Jefferson 
 alone was not deceived by the Missouri compro- 
 mise; and all his predictions have been fulfilled. 
 
 Mr. President, I am neither an enemy of the 
 negro, nor a friend of the institution by which he 
 is subjugated. I wish the negro well. I wish 
 him liberty and happiness — but I wishhimliberty 
 at such time, in such circumstances, and by such 
 means, as will not debase and ruin the white man, 
 
 or overthrow the great safeguards of our own 
 liberty, and the liberty of those in whom we are 
 most interested. Let the negro have, at present, 
 as much comfort and happiness as, in his condi- 
 tion, can be attained. Let him not be restrained 
 by limits within which he must either perish or 
 subdue his master. He will not be made free by 
 our intervention. Congress can do him no ser- 
 vice. Congress can only, whenever it interferes, 
 add to the sorrows of his condition. Whether 
 the negro be capable of higher civilization — and, 
 if so, when or how he will attain it, — these are 
 questions I am not able to decide. He is now, 
 even as a slave, far advanced in the scale of prog- 
 ress, beyond all his brethren in Africa. Free- 
 dom, thus Air, has not advantaged him. The 
 condition of free negroes, in the non-slaveholding 
 States, is worse even, and more pitiable, than 
 that of the slave. I do not speak of exceptional 
 cases — of such as have risen, occasionally, above 
 the level of their race — nor of negroes in the north- 
 eastern States, or in the northern portion of my 
 own State. There are not enough , in these local- 
 ities, to excite the prejudices of the white man. 
 I speak of those thousands and tens of thousands 
 scattered along the Ohio river. In Cincinnati, 
 alone, there are thousands of such who have lit- 
 erally no rights — menials in every sense — without 
 protectors or protection — eking out a miserable 
 existence, dependent on public and private char- 
 ity, spending a largo part of their lives in prison, 
 exposed to abuse and outrage of every description. 
 It IS a hopeless condition, Mr. President, because 
 the free negro has no friends. He does not enlist 
 the sympathy of Abolitionists — for he cannot 
 vote, and no assault can be made, through hini, 
 upon the security of the southern States. Indi-' 
 ana and Illinois drive him from their borders; and 
 if he should turn even to the " free State" men 
 of Kansas — to the men who are " now battling," 
 as the Senator from Massachusetts declares, " for 
 the liberty of all," they, too, would exclude him 
 by a fundamental act. 
 
 At one period of our history, as I have said, 
 the emancipation and colonization of the African 
 was quite practicable. Then did Massachusetts 
 interpose; and the foreign slave trade, under her 
 protection, was too powerful, and, in the end, 
 victorious. But now, sir, a Senator from Mas- 
 sachusetts rises to denounce the conduct of those 
 who controlled the destinies of his State, in past 
 time, as utterly infamous. " The acknowledged 
 turpitude," he called it, "of a departed genera- 
 tion." That Senator deals largely in the classics; 
 and I commend him to the words of the Roman 
 poet who rejoiced that he had never defiled the 
 ashes of his fathers. Sir, I do not owe Massa- 
 chusetts any allegiance; I have not a drop of her 
 blood in mv veins. But I will defend the memory 
 of those whom the Senator assailed. They were 
 wise, and even humane, according to the measure 
 of their generation; would that we might all be 
 as worthy in our own ! These were the men who 
 gave Massachusetts her glory, her wealth, her 
 freedom. And when the Senator paraphrased 
 that great adjuration of Demosthenes, he did not 
 appeal to the spirits of modern times, of the men 
 who imagine themselves so much better and 
 more philanthropic than all their ancestors — but 
 to the spirits of the mighty dead — of those 
 I who, although they tore the African from his 
 
26 
 
 home and- sold him into bondage, would not be 
 slaves themselves — who trampled under foot the 
 British stamp-act and overthrew the British nav- 
 igation laws — who first, at Lexington, and Con- 
 cord, and Bunker Hill, resisted a monarch in 
 arms, and poured out their blood to fertilize that 
 soil wlience grew the tree of American independ- 
 ence. And, sir, if the Massachusetts of this 
 day does condemn the Massachusetts of yester- 
 day with such bitterness and mortification as the 
 Senator pretends, let her now contribute from the 
 stores of that immense wealth which the Sena- 
 tor has boasted, to assist the southern States in 
 restoring to Africa the descendants of the captive 
 whom she brought hither. 
 
 The new Shibboleth, of which I have spoken, 
 is not uttered for the sake of the slave; it does 
 not touch the question of humanity at all. It is 
 only the watchword of a political crusade, and 
 employed to advance the project of humihating 
 and subjugating the southern States. To be sure, 
 sir, wc have heard of the three-fiftlis clause, so 
 called, as one which should not be extended, in 
 its effect, by the admission of new slaveholding 
 communities; But how can this be material to 
 the argument? Each slave will be counted, in 
 the apportionment of taxes and representation, 
 whether he remains in Carolina or is taken to a 
 new State. Opposition to the three-fifths clause, 
 in the Constitution, is another point of doctrine 
 taught by the Hartford convention. Why, sir, 
 what is this clause? It is only that, in the ap- 
 portionment of representatives, as well as direct 
 taxes, five southern negroes shall be estimated as 
 tliree white men. If the " Republican" orators, 
 so called, would denounce this clause for a dif- 
 ferent reason — if they arraigned the Constitution 
 because it had stripped from the slave two fifths 
 of his humanity and thus reduced him to a frac- 
 tion of manhood — there would be some consist- 
 ency, at least, in their behavior. 
 
 Why should not the southern negroes be 
 counted? The northern negroes are counted — 
 not as five to three, but as five to five. So are 
 women, children, persons not naturalized, luna- 
 tics, idiots, and criminals. If the southern negro 
 be a human creature, although a slave, why 
 .should he not be counted as such? Sir, I wih 
 tell you ? This was a compromise — not one which 
 the South desired, but one which was forced upon 
 her by the northern delegates. They admitted 
 that the slave was a man; but, said they, he is 
 also the subject of ownership, and of taxation! 
 And so they proposed, and the South agreed, 
 that only three fifths of a slave should be esti- 
 mated for representative purposes; and, as a 
 racompense for the disadvantage, that direct taxes 
 ehould be levied in the same ratio. Thus the 
 compact was made, and thus it should be main- 
 tained. 
 
 But, sir, the struggle is not for the other House 
 of Congress: it is for this House, and for the 
 presidential chair. The northern States are 
 exhorted to unite against the southern States. 
 Wherefore? To prevent the admission of a new 
 slaveholding State ? How does that injure us ? 
 Beyond thu limits of delegated power in the 
 Constitution, Ohio cannot be affected by the 
 action of the Federal Government. She is sover- 
 eign. She is, in all other respects, independent. 
 If the Constitution were faithfully executed, in 
 
 spirit and in letter, it could make no difference to 
 us in Ohio, as regards our prosperity, our rights, 
 our domestic affairs, if all other States of the 
 Union tolerated, and even cherished, slavery as 
 an institution. And so, if the Constitution be faith- 
 fully observed henceforth, it is of no consequence 
 — not the least — whether the slaveholding or the 
 non-slaveholding States be the more numerous. 
 The Senators from Massachusetts and New 
 Yorkhave marshaled their cohorts to "dislodge" 
 the South from "high places." This, sir, is 
 but the prelude to something else. The control 
 of our Federal Government, when obtained, will 
 enable their partisans to chastise, afiiict, and lay 
 waste one half the Union. It cannot be done, of 
 course, as long as the Constitution is observed; 
 and, therefore, the design may be expressed, 
 more distinctly, as a design to usurp the Federal 
 Government, in order, by the force of mere num- 
 bers, to disregard and destroy the Constitution 
 of the United States. Sir, it can terminate in 
 nothing else. Even if Senators on the other side 
 were ever so sincere in the declaration that they 
 will not concern with slavery as it now exists in 
 the States, they could not keep such an assur- 
 ance; they would be overborne by their own fol- 
 lowers; and either compelled to violate their word, 
 or give place to others less scrupulous. For 
 whenever this triumph of sectionalism shall be 
 complete — if so terrible a calamity can occur — 
 the men whom you have taught to believe that 
 slavery is wicked above comparison, and there- 
 fore must be prohibited in the Territories, and 
 abolished in the District of Columbia — the men 
 who have learned, from you, to interpret tlie 
 Constitution as they please — will insist that pub- 
 lic duty, the voice of conscience, the higher law, 
 all impel them to liberate the African at once. 
 And you must yield to the demand — or else, like 
 the Girondins, be hurled from your places and 
 sacrificed to the wrath of the demons you will 
 have raised and inspired. Then would the sat- 
 urnalia be celebrated — as when the negroes of 
 Hayti were emancipated, suddenly to turn upon 
 and exterminate their masters; when the guillo- 
 tine would be restored, perhaps for the punish- 
 ment of those southern "aristocrats" against 
 ! whom the Senator from New York inveighed 
 ! with so much bitterness. When some new ""em- 
 , bassy of the human race" would wait upon the 
 j Senate, with another Anacharsis Clootz at its 
 I head, and behind him the froward women and 
 i imbecile men, white and black, native and for- 
 eign, whose congenial occupation is only to outdo 
 each other in profane and foolish tirades — when 
 the Deity would be dethroned by formal resolu- 
 tion, the places of His worship converted into 
 recruiting stations, and the ministers of His gos- 
 pel habitually indulge the arts of an auctioneer. 
 
 I implore you. Senators, to pause, to survey 
 the narrow isthmus on which we stand. This 
 combination of the northern States against the 
 southern States, where will itterminate ? Already 
 from this Chamber the dread appeal has gone 
 forth. It will either remain unanswered — thanks 
 to the wisdom of the people — or it will come back, 
 in another session, with millions of fearful echoes; 
 and each echo the knell of ruin. 
 
 Not such, Mr. President, were the appeals of 
 Washington, or Jefferson, or Jackson. The 
 slightest discord between the North and the 
 
27 
 
 South grated harshly on their ears, and filled 
 their hearts with pain. Jefferson turned from the 
 very verge of his grave to declare: 
 
 " The Missouri question, by a geographical line of divis- 
 ion, is the most porlciit<Ms one I liave ever contemplated." 
 (Letter to Monroe, March 3d, 18-20.) 
 
 Jackson has warned us, in immortal accents, 
 to beware of Abolitionism in all its Protean shapes. 
 And where, sir, could we find a more appropri- 
 ate commentary on the speeches of the Senators 
 from New York and Massachusetts than is con- 
 tained in the Farewell Address of George Wash- 
 ington.' The reference is familiar, and, it may 
 be, iiackneyed; but when the citizens of fifteen 
 States are personified by an offensive title — "The 
 Slave Pou'cr" — and thus exposed to the hatred 
 of their fellow-citizens — when to the most flagrant 
 misrepresentation of their opinions and aims is 
 added the assault of new parties, public and 
 secret, political and religious, based solely on geo- 
 graphical discrimination; — when I see all these 
 signs, Mr. President, I know that the awful crisis 
 has come at last — the crisis in which the people 
 of the United States must either turn with affec- 
 tion, with gratitude, with confidence, to the 
 admonitions of Washington, or turn away to 
 destruction forever! If the millions of simple- 
 hearted agriculturists, mechanics, and laborers 
 — men too honest themselves to suspect others of 
 deceit and falsehood — do not arouse, and that 
 speedily, vain are all theories of popular govern- 
 ment— -vain the wisdom of sages — vain the faith 
 of patriots — vain the blood with which " the 
 noble army of martyrs" has testified in past time, 
 
 Mr. President, awful as may be this crisis — 
 impending the issues of life and death to us, to 
 our beloved country, to freedom, to civilization, 
 nay, sir, even to the African himself — my hope 
 does not fail. The Senator from Massachusetts 
 took occasion to inform us, to be sure, that he [ 
 and those who are associated with him in polit- 
 ical action will achieve a complete victory m the '■ 
 course of the present year. I am not a prophet, 
 sir, as that Senator assumes to be; I am only an 
 humble, devout, and trustful believer in the ways . 
 of Divine Providence. But I find in the Holy 
 Book which has been written for our guidance : 
 in both temporal and spiritual affairs, a text | 
 worthy of the Senator's consideration: " Let not \ 
 
 him that girdelh on his harness boast himself as he 
 that putteth it off!" The Senator has a desperate 
 conflict before him — one where he will be resisted 
 with a courage so brilliant, a zeal so virtuous, a 
 perseverance so stubborn, that the very stars, in 
 their courses, will seem to fight against him as 
 they fought against Sisera of old. The Senator 
 need not flatter himself by arguments drawn 
 from the year 1854. That tempest of delusion 
 has nearly spe^it its strength; it was sudden, but 
 short-lived— desolating in the assault, but soon 
 to be followed by grateful rains which will rein- 
 vigorate the seeds of patriotism once sown in the 
 hearts of the American people, and since parched 
 and withered, alas ! by the great material pros- 
 perity we have so long enjoyed and abused. 
 
 The future, Mr. President — the future! Let 
 the Senator from Massachusetts look forward, 
 and tell me whereabout, in the whole horizon. 
 North or South, East or West, he can descry a 
 single omen of that stupendous misfortune with 
 which he proudly threatens us. Sir, it must be 
 otherwise. God is morciful, and in His mercy 
 will I trust. From the trials of the last two years 
 —from all the gloom of bigotry, fanaticism, and 
 public demoralization, so predominant, a new 
 and more splendid procession of events in our 
 history must begin— the age of principles, more 
 comprehensive, more equttable, more salutary, 
 than have been taught since that fearful Missouri 
 question first shook the Republic from its center 
 to its extremities: 
 
 Magnus ab integro saeelorum nascitur ordo : 
 Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna ! 
 The clouds of sorrow break away from our 
 enraptured vision; and already, upon the firma- 
 ment above, behold emblazoned in eternal char- 
 acters the triumphant signal of the Union of our 
 fathers — the Constitution by which that Union 
 was established — the civil and religious liberty 
 of which the Union and the Constitution are such 
 magnificent and perpetual guarantees. Senators! 
 Let us all rejoice in this mighty deliverance. Let 
 us not only take a better resolution for the con- 
 troversies which environ and waste our lives, but 
 gather fresh and pure hopes for the untold millions 
 who will lift their eyes to these heavens after we 
 shall have finished our days on earth, and gone 
 to sleep as all our fathers have gone. 
 
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