If the case had been disposed of in that way, who can doubt that such would have been the character of the denunciations which would have been hurled upon the devoted heads of those illustrious Judges with much more plausibility and show of fairness than they are now denounced for having decided the case fairly and honestly upon its merits?

nounced, and before the opinions of the Court could be the merits of the case, as they are now denounced and published and read by the people, the newspaper press in abused for not having don, the result would have been the interest of a powerful political party in this country, to remand Dred Scott and his children to perpetual began to pour forth torrents of abuse and misrepresenta- Slavery under the decisions which had already been tions, not only upon the decision, but upon the character pronounced by the Supreme Court of Missouri, as well and motives of the venerable Chief Justice and his illus- as by the Circuit Court of the United States, without trious associates on the bench. The character of Chief obtaining a decision on the merits of his case by the SuJustice Taney and the associate Judges who concurred preme Court of the United States. Suppose Chief Juswith him, require no eulogy-no vindication from me.tice Taney and his associates had thus remanded Dre They are endeared to the people of the United States by Scott and his children back to Slavery on a plea i̟ their eminent public services-venerated for their great abatement or any mere technical point, not touching th learning, wisdom and experience and beloved for the merits of the question, and without deciding whether spotless purity of their characters and their exemplary under the Constitution and laws as applied to the facts of tives. The poisonous shafts of partisan malice will fall the case Dred Scott was a free man or a slave, would they harmless at their feet, while their judicial decisions will not have been denounced with increased virulence and stand in all future time, a proud monument to their great- bitterness on the charge of having remanded Dred ness, the admiration of the good and wise, and a rebuke Scott to perpetual Slavery without first examining the to the partisans of faction and lawless violence. If, merits of his case and ascertaining whether he was a unfortunately, any considerable portion of the people of slave or not? the United States shall so far forget their obligations to society as to allow partisan leaders to array them in violent resistance to the final decision of the highest judicial tribunal on earth, it will become the duty of all the friends of order and constitutional government, without reference to past political differences, to organize themselves and marshal their forces under the glorious banner of the Union, in vindication of the Constitution and the supremacy of the laws over the advocates of faction and the champions of violence. To preserve the Constitution inviolate, and vindicate the supremacy of the laws, is the first and highest duty of every citizen of a free Republic. The peculiar merit of our form of government over all others, consists in the fact that the law, instead of the arbitrary will of a hereditary prince, prescribes, defines and protects all our rights. In this country the law is the will of the people, embodied and expressed according to the forms of the Constitution. The Courts are the tribunals prescribed by the Constitution, and created by the authority of the people to determine, expound and enforce the law. Hence, whoever resists the final decision of the highest judicial tribunal, aims a deadly blow to our whole republican system of government—a blow which, if successful, would place all our rights and liberties at the mercy of passion, anarchy and violence. I repeat, therefore, that if resistance to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a matter like the points decided in the Dred Scott case, clearly within their jurisdiction as defined by the Constitution, shall be forced upon the country as a political issue, it will become a distinct and naked issue between the friends and the enemies of the Constitution-the friends and the enemies of the supremacy of the laws.

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION.

The material and controlling points of the case-those which have been made the subject of unmeasured abuse and denunciation-may be thus stated:

1. The Court decided that under the Constitution of the United States a negro descended from slave parents is not and cannot be a citizen of the United States. 2. That the act of the 6th of March, 1820, commonly called the Missouri Compromise act, was unconstitutional and void before it was repealed by the Nebraska act, and consequently did not and could not have the legal effect of extinguishing a master's right to his slave in that Territory. While the right continues in full force under the guaranty of the Constitution, and cannot be divested or alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily remains a barren and a worthless rigt, unless sustained, protected and enforced by appropriate police regulations and local legislation, prescribing adequate remedies for its violation. These regulations and remedies must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and wishes of the people of the Territory, as they can only be prescribed by the local Legislatures. Hence the great principle of popular sovereignty and self-government is sustained and firmly established by the authority of this decision. Thus it appears that the only sin involved in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act consists in the fact of having removed from the statute-book an act of Congress which was unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and void because passed without constitutional authority, and constituted in lieu of it the great fundamental principle of self-government, which recognizes the rights of the people of such State and Territory to control their own domestic concerns.

I will direct attention to the question involved in the first proposition, to wit: That the negro is not and cannot be a citizen of the United States.

We are told by a certain political organization that that decision is cruel-is inhuman and infamous, and should neither be respected nor obeyed. What is the objection to that decision? Simply that the negro is not a citizen. What is the object of making him a citizen? Of course to give him the rights, privileges and immunities of a citizen, it being the great fundamental law in our Government, that under the law, citizens are equal in their rights and privileges. It is said to be inhuman-to be infainous-to deprive an African negro of these privileges of citizenship, which would put him on an equality with the other citizens of the country.

The case of Dred Scott was an action of trespass, vi et armis, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Missouri, for the purpose of establishing his claim to be a free man, and was taken by writ of error on the application of Scott to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the final decision was pronounced by Chief Justice Taney. The facts of the case were agreed upon and admitted to be true by both parties, and were in substance, that Dred Scott was a negro slave in Missouri, that he went with his master, who was an officer in the army, to Fo.t Armstrong, on Rock Island, and thence to Fort Snelling on the west bank of the Mississippi River, and within the country covered by the act of Congress known as the Missouri Compromise: and then he reaccompanied his master to the State of Missouri, where he has since remained a slave. Upon this statement of facts two important and material questions arose, besides several incidental and minor ones, which it was incumbent upon the Court to take notice of and decide. Now, let me ask my fellow-citizens, are you prepared to The Court did not attempt to avoid responsibility by dis- resist the constituted authorities of this country, in order posing of the case upon technical points without touch- to secure citizenship, and, through citizenship, equality ing the merits, nor did they go out of their way to decide with the white man. (Voices, "No! no!") If you are, you questions not properly before them and directly present- must reverse the whole policy of this State-the organic lan ed by the record. Like honest and conscientious judges, of our own State. In order to carry out that principle of as they are, they met and decided each point as it arose, negro citizenship and negro equality under the law, you and faithfully performed their whole duty and nothing must not only reverse the organic law in our own State, but their duty to the country by determining all the but of every other State in this Union. But you have not questions in the case, and nothing but what was essen- accomplished it then; you must make furious war upon tial to the decision of the case upon its merits. The State the slaveholding States, to compel them to emancipate and Courts of Missouri had decided against Dred Scott, and set at liberty their three millions of slaves. When that declared him and his children slaves, and the Circuit shall be done, before you have secured that great princiCourt of the United States for the district of Missouri ple of equality to the son of Africa, you must strike out had decided the same thing in this very case which had of the constitution of Illinois that provision which prevents thus been removed to the Supreme Court of the United a negro, whether free or slave, from crossing the Ohio or States by Scott, with the hope of reversing the decision of the Circuit Court and securing his freedom. If the Supreme Court had dismissed the writ of error for want of jurisdiction, without first examining into and deciding

the Mississippi, and coming into Illinois to reside. When you shall have made that change in our organic law, and turned loose all the Africans that may choose to come from the slaveholding States to settle upon our prairies,

and turn Illinois into a negro colony, rather than into a State of white men, still you have not secured to the negro the rights of citizenship on an equality with the white man You must then strike the word "white" out of the constitution of our own State, and allow the negro to come to our polls and vote on an equality with yourselves. You must also change the Constitution in that respect that declares, that a negro shall not be eligible to office, and declare that a negro shall be eligible to your Legislature, to the bar, bench, and gubernatorial chair. And still you have not reached that point to which we are told we must go, of placing the negro on an equality with other citizens. You must admit him to the jury-box, and license him by law to marry a white woman. And then you will have secured nearly all the privileges that the decision of the Supreme Court has denied him. (Applause.)

alienate them. They did not mean the negroes and Indians-they did not say we white men and negroes werd born equal; but they were speaking of the race of people who colonized America, who ruled America, and who were declaring the liberties of Americans, when they proclaimed the self-evident truth that those men were born free and equal. And if you will examine the journal of the Couti nental Congress you will find this great principle carried out. No one of the colonies would then consent to the Declaration of Independence until they had placed on the record the express reservation, that each colony reserved and retained to itself the sole and exclusive right of regulating its own domestic concerns and police regulations. It was made a fundamental condition of the Declaration, that this right should be forever reserved beyond the power of Congress or other Confederation or power on I submit to you, fellow-citizens, whether any man can earth, except the free will of their own people. The artipronounce the decision inhuman and infamous, without cles of confederation were based upon the same great funresorting to that great principle, which, carried out, damental principle, and the Constitution of the United puts the negro on an equality with other citizens. But States was adopted for the purpose of preserving and carlisten to the speeches of any one of those who sympathizerying into effect the same grand principle that made us so much with the poor African that they are not willing to one people for one specified object, but reserved to each allow him to occupy an inferior position, and you will find State and each locality the sole and exclusive privilege of that they all adhere to the position of negro equality. For managing its own domestic concerns. instance, did you ever hear any of them make a public speech in which he did not quote the Declaration of Independence, that "we hold all men are born free and equal," and then appeal to you to know whether Slavery could be justified or palliated by any man who believed in the De claration of Independence. Do they not argue that by this instrument negroes were declared to be born equal to white men; and hence, any man who is opposed to carrying out that great dear principle of theirs, of negro equality with the white man, is opposed to the Declaration of Independence.

Now, my friends, permit me to reply to this assumption, that the Declaration of Independence declared the negro to be equal with white men, by a few historical facts recorded in our school-books, and familiar to our children. By reference to the History of the United States, you will find that on the Fourth of July, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was put forth, the thirteen colonies were then, each and all of them, slaveholding colonies. Each signer of the Declaration, without an exception, represented a slaveholding constituency. Every battle of the Revolutionary War, from Lexington and Bunker Hill to King's Mountain and Yorktown, was fought in a slaveholding constituency. The treaty of peace with Great Britain which acknowledged our independence, was made on the part of Great Britain on the one side and the thirteen original slaveholding States on the other. Passing from that to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, you will find that instrument was framed, and adopted, and put into operation with the immortal Washington at the head, by twelve slaveholding States and one free State, or one State about to become free. In view of these facts, I submit to you whether any sane man can assert that the founders of our institutions intended to put the negro and the white man on an equality in the system of government which they adopted? If the signers of the Declaration had intended to declare the negro equal to the white man, would not they, on that very day, have abolished Slavery in every one of the States of the Union in order to have conformed to that Declaration? If any one of these States had thus understood the Declaration of Independence, would not that State then immediately have abolished Slavery, and put the negro on an equality with the white man in conformity with that Declaration? Did they do so? I have already shown you that no one of those States abolished Slavery during the whole period of the Revolutionary war. I have already stated, and I challenge contradiction, that to this day no one of them has put the negro on an equality with the white man in all the laws touching on the relations of life. And yet, if they honestly believed the Declaration of Independence meant negroes as well as white men, they were bound to advocate every law so as to carry out their principle. Their position on this subject would charge the signers of that Declaration with hypocrisy in making it to the world, and going on to fight battles on the principle thus asserted. But no vindication is needed from me of those immortal men who drafted, and signed, and proclaimed to the world the Declaration of Independence. They did what they professed. They had reference to the white man, and to him only, when they declared all men were created equal. They were in a struggle with Great Britain. The principle they were asserting was that a British subject, born on American soil was equal to a British subject born in Eng. land-that a British subject here was entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, under the British Constitution, that a British subject in England enjoyed; that their rights were inalienable, and hence that Parliament, whose power was omnipotent, had no power to

At that day the negro was looked upon as a being of an infer or race. All history had proved that in no part of the world, or of the world's history, had the negro ever shown himself capable of self-government, and it was not the intention of the founders of this Government to violate that great law of God, which made the distinction between the white and the black man. That distinction is plain and palpable, and it has been the rule of civilization and of Christianity the world over, that whenever any one man, or set of men, were incapable of taking care of themselves, they should consent to be governed by those who were capable of managing their affairs for them. It is on that principle that your courts of justice appoint guardians to take charge of the idiot, the lunatic, the insane, blind, dumb, the unfortunate, whatever may be his condition. And if history had proved that the negro race, as a race, were incapable of self-government, it was not only the right but the duty of those who were capable to provide for them. It did not necessarily follow that they were to be reduced to Slavery. The true principle is that the inferior race should be allowed to enjoy all their rights, which their nature is capable of exercising and enjoying, consistently with the good of society. I would not advocate that the negro should be treated harshly or unkindly. Far from it. I would extend and secure to him every right, privilege and immunity he was capable of enjoying consistent with the highest welfare of society. The Constitution is founded on that great principle, and leaves to each State, as the articles of confederation did to each colony, the right to determine for itself what these principles were, and the extent of them, in order that they might adopt their laws to their actual condition. Under that great provision, Illinois has chosen to say, that the negro shall not come here to reside-that a negro shal. not vote-shall not hold office-shall not serve in the jury-box-shall not marry white women-and I think that the Constitution of Illinois is wisely framed as to this provision. On the other hand, Kentucky goes further, and deprives the negro of his right over his person. Kentucky, under the Constitution, had a right to make that provision. We have no right to complain of her, nor can she complain of us. Each has the right to do as it pleases, and each must mind its own business and not interfere with its neighbor's concerns. (Applause.)

Our fathers, when they framed this Government, had witnessed the sad and melancholy results of the mixture of the races in Mexico, South America and Central America, where the Spanish, from motives of policy, had admitted the negro and other inferior races to citizenship and, consequently, to political and social amalgamation, The demoralization and degradation which prevailed in the Spanish and French colonies, where no distinctions on account of color or race were tolerated, operated as a warning to our revolutionary fathers to preserve the purity of the white race, and to establish their political, social and domestic institutions upon such a basis as would forever exclude the idea of negro citizenship and negro equality. (Applause.)

They understood that great natural law which declares that amalgamation between superior and inferior races brings their posterity down to the lower level of the inferior, but never elevates them to the high level of the su perior race. I appeal to each of those gallant young men before me, who won immortal glory on the bloody fields of Mexico, in vindication of their country's rig.t and honor, whether their information and observation.n that country does not fully sustain the truth of the proposition that amalgamation is degradation, de oraliz tion, disease and death? Is it true that the aegro is our

equal and our brother? The history of the times clearly | from office, and to fill their places with bold, able, and show that our fathers did not regard the African race as any kin to them, and determined so to lay the foundation of society and government that they should never be of kin to their posterity. (Immense applause.)

But, when you confer upon the African race the privileges of citizenship, and put them on an equality with white men at the polls, in the jury-box, on the bench, in the Executive chair, and in the councils of the nation, upon what principle will you deny their equality at the festive board and in the domestic circle?

The Supreme Court of the United States have decided that, under the Constitution, a negro is not and cannot be a citizen.

The Republican Abolition party pronounce that decision cruel, inhuman and infamous, and appeal to the American people to disregard and refuse to obey it. Let us join issue with them, and put ourselves upon the country for trial. (Cheers and applause.)

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS IN UTAH, AND THE
REMEDY.

Mr. President, I will now respond to the call which has been made upon me for my opinions of the condition of things in Utah, and the appropriate remedies for existing evils.

The Territory of Utah was organized under one of the acts known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, on the supposition that the inhabitants were American citizens, owing and acknowledging allegiance to the United States, and consequently entitled to the benefits of self-government while a Territory, and to admission in the Union on an equal footing with the original States, as soon as they should number the requisite population. It was conceded on all hands, and by all parties, that the peculiarities of their religious faith and ceremonies interposed no valid and constitutional objection to their reception into the Union, in conformity with the Federal Constitution, so long as they were in all other respects entitled to admission. Hence, the great political parties of the country indorsed and approved the Compromise Measures of 1850, including the act for the organization of the Territory of Utah, with the hope and in the confidence that the inhabitants would conform to the Constitution and laws, and prove themselves worthy, respectable and law-abiding citizens. If we are permitted to place credence in the rumors and reports from that country (and it must be admitted that they have increased and strengthened and assumed consistency and plausibility by each successive mail), seven years' experience has disclosed a state of facts entirely different from that which was supposed to exist when Utah was organized. These rumors and reports would seem to justify the belief that the following facts are susceptible of proof.

1. That nine-tenths of the inhabitants are aliens by birth, who have refused to become naturalized, or to take the oath of allegiance, or to do any other act recognizing the Government of the United States as the paramount authority in that Territory.

2. That all the inhabitants, whether native or alien born, known as Mormons, (and they constitute the whole people of the Territory), are bound by horrid oaths and terrible penalties, to recognize and maintain the authority of Brigham Young, and the government of which he is the head, as paramount to that of the United States, in civil as well as in religious affairs; and that they will, in due time, and under the direction of their leaders, use all means in their power to subvert the government of the United States, and resist its authority.

true men, and to cause a thorough and searching inves tigation into all the crimes and enormities which are alleged to be perpetrated daily in that Territory, under the direction of Brigham Young and his confederates and to use all the military force necessary to protect the officers in the discharge of their duties, and to enforce the laws of the land. (Applause.)

When the authentic evidence shall arrive, if it shall establish the facts which are believed to ex.st, it will become the duty of Congress to apply the knife and ut out this loathsome, disgusting ulcer. (Applause.) No temporizing policy-no halfway measures will then an; swer. It has been supposed by those who have not thought deeply upon the subject, that an act of Congress prohibiting murder, robbery, polygamy, and other crimes, with appropriate penalties for those offences, would afford adequate reinedies for all the enormities complained of. Suppose such a law to be on the sta tute book, and I believe they have a criminal code, providing the usual punishment for the entire catalogue of crimes, according to the usages of all civilized and Christian countries, with the exception of polygamy, which is practised under the sanction of the Mormon Church, but is neither prohibited nor authorized by the laws of the Territory.

to

Suppose, I repeat, that Congress should pass a law prescribing a criminal code, and punishing polygamy among other offences, what other effect would it havewhat good would it do? Would you call on twenty-three grand jurymen, with twenty-three wives each, to find a bill of indictment against a poor miserable wretch for having two wives? (Cheers and laughter.) Would you call upon twelve petit jurors, with twelve wives each, to convict the same loathsome wretch for having two wives? (Continued applause.) Would you expect a grand jury composed of twenty-three "Danites find a bill of indictment against a brother "Danite" for having murdered a Gentile, as they call all American citizens, under their direction? Much less would you expect a jury of twelve "destroying angels" to find another "destroying angel" guilty of the crime of murder, and cause him to be hanged for no other offence than taking the life of a Gentile? No! If there is any truth in the reports we receive from Utah, Congress may pass whatever laws it chooses; but you can never rely upon the local tribunals and juries to punish crimes committed by Mormons in that Territory. Some other and more effectual remedy must be devised and applied. In my opinion, the first step should be the absolute and unconditional repeal of the organic act-blotting the Territorial Government out of existence upon the ground that they are outlaws, denying their allegiance and defying the authorities of the United States. (Immense applause.)

The Territorial Government once abolished, the country would revert to its primitive condition prior to the act of 1850, "under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States," and should be placed under the operation of the act of Congress of the 30th of April, 1790, and the various acts supplemental thereto and amendatory thereof, "providing for the punishment of crimes against the United States within any fort, arsenal dockyard, magazine, OR ANY OTHER PLACE OR DISTRICT or COUNTRY, UNDER THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE jurisdic tion of the United States." All offenses against the provisions of these acts are required by law to be tried and punished by the United States Courts in the States or Territories where the offenders shall be "FIRST APPREHENDED OR BROUGHT FOR TRIAL." Thus it will be seen that under the plan proposed, BRIGHAM YOUNG and his confederates could be apprehended and brought for trial," to Iowa or Missouri, California or Oregon, or to any other adjacent State or Territory, where a fair tria! could be had, and justice administered impartiallywhere the witnesses could be protected and the judg ment of the court could be carried into execution, withduce any new principles into our jurisprudence, nor to change the modes of proceeding or the rules of practice If, upon a full investigation, these representations in our Courts. I only propose to place the district of shall prove true, they will establish the fact that the country embraced within the Territory of Utah under Mormon inhabitants of Utah, as a community, are out- the operation of the same laws and rules of proceeding, laws and alien enemies, unfit to exercise the right of that Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and our other Terriself-government under the organic act, and unworthy to tories were placed before they became organized Terribe admitted into the Union as a State, when their only tories. The whole country embraced within these Terriobject in seeking admission is to interpose the sov-tories was under the operation of that same system of ereignty of the State, as an invincible shield to protect them in their treason and crime, debauchery and infamy. (Applause.)

8. That the Mormon government, with Brigham Young at its bead, is now forming alliance with Indian tribes in Utah and adjoining territories-stimulating the Indians to acts of hostility-and organizing bands of his own followers under the name of "Danites, or Destroying Angels," to prosecute a system of robbery and murders upon American citizens, who support the authority of the United States, and denounce the in-out violence or intimidation. I do not propose to introfamous and disgusting practices and institutions of the Mormon Government.

Under this view of the subject, I think it is the duty of the President, as I have no doubt it is his fixed purpose to remove Brigham Young and all his followers

laws, and all the offenses committed within the same were punished in the manner now proposed, so long as the country remained "under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States;" but the moment the country was organized into Territorial Governments with legislative, executive and judicial departments,

It ceased to be under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction | money; or, if purchased for a post-office, it must be of the United States, within the meaning of the act of Congress, for the reason that it had passed under another and a different jurisdiction. Hence, if we abolish the Territorial Government of Utah, preserving all existing rights, and place the country under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, offenders can be apprehended and brought into the adjacent States or Ter-object for which it was acquired and the purpose for ritories for punishment, in the same manner and under the same rules and regulations which obtained and have been uniformly practiced under like circumstances since 1790.

INVASION OF STATES--SEDITION LAW PROPOSED.

SPEECH OF MR.

On the 16th of January, 1860, Mr. Douglas submitted to the United States Senate the following Resolution :

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report a bill for the protection of each State and Territory of the Union, against invasion by the authorities or inhabitants of any other State or Territory; and for the suppression and punishment of conspiracies or combinations in any State or Territory with intent to invade, assail, or molest the government, inhabitants, property, or institutions of any other State or Territory

protection, by the Federal Government, of each | England against the lives of the princes of France. I State against invasion from any and all sources, States. I predicate my argument upon the Constitution shall not argue the question of comity between foreign

and continued:

The question then remaining is, what legislation is, necessary and proper to render this guaranty of the Constitution effectual? I presume there will be very little difference of opinion that it will be necessary to place the whole military power of the Government at the disposal of the President, under proper guards and restrictions against abuse, to repel and suppress invasion when the hostle force shall be actually in the field. But, sir, that is not sufficient. Such legislation would not be a full compliance with this guaranty of the Constitution. The framers of that instrument meant more when they gave the guaranty. Mark the difference in language between the provision for protecting the United States against invasion and that for protecting the States. When it provided for protecting the United States, it said Congress shall have power to repel invasion." When it came to make this guaranty to the States, it changed the language, and said the United States shall "protect" each of the States against invasion. In the one instance, the duty of the Government is to repel; in the other, the guaranty is that they will protect. In other words, the United States are not permitted to wait until the enemy shall be upon your borders; until the invading army shall have been organized and drilled and placed in march with a view to the invasion; but they must pass all laws necessary and proper to insure protection and domestic tranquillity to each State and Territory of this Union against invasion or hostilities from other States and Territories.

by which we are governed, and which we have sworn to obey, and demand that the Constitution be executed in good faith so as to punish and suppress every combina tion, every conspiracy, either to invade a State or to molest its inhabitants, or to disturb its property, or to subvert its institutions and its government. I believe this can be effectually done by authorizing the United States courts in the several States to take jurisdiction of the offense, and punish the violation of the law with appropriate punishments.

It cannot be said that the time has not yet arrived for such legislation. It cannot be said with truth that the Harper's Ferry case will not be repeated, or is not in danger of repetition. It is only necessary to inquire into the causes which produced the Harper's Ferry outrage, and ascertain whether those causes are yet in active operation, and then you can determine whether there is any ground for apprehension that that invasion will be repeated. Sir, what were the causes which produced the Harper's Ferry outrage? Without stopping to adduce evidence in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction that the Harper's Ferry doctrines and teachings of the Republican party, as crime was the natural, logical, inevitable result of the explained and enforced in their platform, their par tisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and espe cially in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress. (Applause in the galleries.)

And, sir, inasmuch as the Constitution of the United States confers upon Congress the power coupled with the duty of protecting each State against external aggression, and inasmuch as that includes the power of suppressing and punishing conspiracies in one State against the institutions, property, people, or government of every other State, I desire to carry out that power vigorously. Sir, give us such a law as the Constitution contemplates and authorizes, and I will show the Senator from New York that there is a constitutional mode of repressing the "irrepressible conflict." I will open the prison doors to allow conspirators against the peace of the Republic and the domestic tranquillity of our States to select their cells wherein to drag out a miserable life as a punishment for their crimes against the peace of society.

Then, sir, I hold that it is not only necessary to use the military power when the actual case of invasion shall occur, but to authorize the judicial department of the Government to suppress all conspiracies and combinations in the several States with intent to invade a State, or molest or disturb its government, its peace, its citizens, Its property or its institutions. You must punish the conspiracy, the combination with intent to do the act, and then you will suppress it in advance. There is no principle more familiar to the legal profession than that wherever it is proper to declare an act to be a crime, it is proper to punish a conspiracy or combination with intent to perpetrate the act. Look upon your statute-books, and I presume you will find an enactment to punish the counterfeiting of the coin of the United States; and then Mr. President, the mode of preserving peace is plain. another section to punish a man for having counterfeit This system of sectional warfare must cease. The Concoin in his possession with intent to pass it; and another stitution has given the power, and all we ask of Congress section to punish him for having the molds or dies or in- is to give the means, and we, by indictments and construments for counterfeiting, with intent to use them.victions in the Federal courts of our several States, will This is a familiar principle in legislative and judicial pro- make such examples of the leaders of these conspiracies ceedings. If the act of invasion is criminal, the conspiracy to invade should also be made criminal. If it be there will be an end of this crusade. Sir, you must as will strike terror into the hearts of the others, and unlawful and illegal to invade a State, and run off fugi- check it by crushing out the conspiracy, the combinative slaves, why not make it unlawful to form conspiracies and combinations in the several States with intent to do tion, and then there can be safety.

the act? We have been told that a notorious man who has recently suffered death for his crimes upon the gallows, boasted in Cleveland, Ohio, in a public lecture, a year ago, that he had then a body of men employed in running away horses from the slaveholders of Missouri, and pointed to a livery stable in Cleveland which was full of the stolen horses at that time.

I think it is within our competency, and consequently our duty, to pass a law making every conspiracy or combination in any State or Territory of this Union to invade another with intent to steal or run away property of any kind, whether it be negroes, or horses, or property of any other description, into another State, a crime, and punish the conspirators by indictment in the United States courts and confinement in the prisons and penitentiaries of the State or Territory where the conspiracy may be formed and quelled. Sir, I would carry these provisions of law as far as our constitutional powers will reach. I would make it a crime to form conspiracies with a view of invading States or Territories to control elections, whether they be under the garb of Emigrant Aid Societies of New England or Blue Lodges of Missouri. (Applause in the galleries.) In other words, this provision of the Constitutions means more than the mere repelling of an invasion when the invading army shall reach the border of a State. The language is, it shall protect the State against invasion; the meaning of which is, to use the language of the preamble to the Constitution, to insure to each State domestic tranquillity against external violence. There can be no peace, there can be no prosperity, there can be no safety in any community, unless it is secured against violence from abroad. Why, sir, it has been a question seriously mooted in Europe, whether it was not the duty of England, a power foreign to France, to pass laws to punish conspiracies in

[A special committee of the Senate, of which Mr. Mason, of Va., was chairman, appointed to investigate the Harper's Ferry affair, ascertain the cause of the raid, and report what laws, if any, were necessary to prevent a repetition, reported near the close of the session, that the committee' were unable to discover that any persons were either directly or indirectly engaged in the invasion, other than John Brown and those who accompanied him to Harper's Ferry.]

WHAT POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY HAS DONE. From Mr. Douglas' Speech in the Senate, May 16, 1860.

But, we are told that the necessary result of this doctrine of non-intervention, which, gentlemen, by way of throwing ridicule upon it, call squatter sovereignty, is to deprive the South of all participation in what they call the common Territories of the United States. That was the ground on which the Senator from Misissippi (Mr. Davis), predicated his opposition to the Compromise Measures of 1850. He regarded a refusal to repeal the Mexican law as equivalent to the Wilmot Proviso; a refusal to recognize by an act of Congress the right to carry a slave there as equivalent to the Wilmot Proviso; a refusal to deny to a Territorial Legislature the right to exclude Slavery as equivalent to an exclusion. He be lieved at that time that this doctrine did amount to a denial of southern rights; and he told the people of