restriction. In the fourteenth section of the Nebraska-Kansas act they provided:

"That the Constitution and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States; except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the compromise measures, and is hereby declared inoperative."

We doubt whether in the history of legislation any one sentence in a proposed measure ever furnished the pretext for a political agitation equal to that which followed the report of the above.

The necessity for repealing the Missouri restriction, if it was intended to frame the Nebraska bill by the principles of the acts of 1850, had been seen as well by the extremists at the north as by those of the south; and, almost simultaneously with Mr. Dixon's proposition to extend slavery, another was presented by Mr. Sumner, of Massachusetts, that nothing contained in the bill "shall be construed to abrogate or in any way contravene the act of March 6, 1820," in which it was declared that slavery was prohibited in the Louisiana territory north of 36° 30'.

Here was the old contest of 1850 about to be renewed. The Dixon amendment, proposing to recognize an extension of slavery by Congressional enactment; the Sumner amendment proposing a Congressional prohibition of slavery. Both were opposed to and inconsistent with the right of the territorial legislature to regulate that as well as all other domestic relations; which right having been expressly conceded to the people of New Mexico and Utah by the acts of 1850, it was the aim and purpose of Mr. Douglas to secure to the people of Nebraska and Kansas. He rejected both propositions, and adhered to the principle and policy so emphatically sanctioned in 1850 by Congress and subsequently ratified by the people.

On Tuesday, January 24, the bill was taken up. Mr. Chase, of Ohio, urged that the Senate had not had an opportunity of examining the bill; he said, "only yesterday the committee changed the form of the bill altogether, and proposed to create two territories instead of one, and also changed materially the provisions upon other questions of very great public interest; and the bill thus having been changed in fact

into two bills, has been only laid on the tables of Senators this morning, and I presume no one has had an opportunity to read it. It involves very important matters, and I think that when we take it up it should be with a determination to proceed with it until it shall be disposed of." He then urged that it be postponed until the next week.

Mr. Sumner suggested that it be postponed until the 31st of January.

Mr. Douglas acquiesced in the request, and on his motion the bill was postponed to Monday, January 30th.

This request to postpone an important bill for one week may seem to the reader to have been a trivial matter for special notice here, but it subsequently became the subject of a protracted and exciting debate. The request was made on Tuesday, January 24th. On the Monday after, January 30th, the bill was again taken up, and the request of Mr. Chase, with its purposes and aims, were made historical in all their infamy.

As soon as the bill was taken up Mr. Douglas said:

"When I proposed, on Tuesday last, that the Senate should proceed to the consideration of the bill to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, it was my purpose only to occupy ten or fifteen minutes in explanation of its provisions. I desired to refer to two points-first, to those provisions relating to the Indians, and second, to those which might be supposed to bear upon the question of slavery.

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Upon the other point-that pertaining to the question of slavery in the territories-it was the intention of the committee to be equally explicit.. We took the principles established by the compromise acts of 1850 as our guide, and intended to make each and every provision of the bill accord with these principles. These measures are established and rest upon the great principles of self-government-that the people should be allowed to decide the questions of their domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to such limitations and restrictions as are imposed by the Constitution of the United States, instead of having them determined by an arbitrary or geographical line.

"The original bill reported by the committee as a substitute for the bill introduced by the senator from Iowa (Mr. Dodge), was believed to have accomplished this object. The amendment which was subsequently reported by us was only designed to render that clear and specific which seemed, in the minds of some, to admit of doubt and misconstruction. In some parts of the country the original substitute was deemed and construed to be an annulment or a repeal of what has been known as the Missouri Compromise, while in other parts it was otherwise construed. As the object of the committee was to conform to the principles established by the compromise measures of 1850, and to carry these principles into effect in the territories, we thought it was better to recite in the bill precisely what we understood to have been accomplished by those measures, viz., that the Missouri Compromise, having been superseded by the legislation of 1850, has become, and ought to be declared, inoperative; and hence we propose to leave the ques

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tion to the people of the states and the territories, subject only to the limita tions and provisions of the Constitution.

"Sir, this is all that I intended to say if the question had been taken up for consideration on Tuesday last, but since that time occurrences have transpired which compel me to go more fully into the discussion. It will be borne in mind that the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Chase), then objected to the consideration of the bill, and asked for its postponement until this day, on the ground that there had not been time to understand and consider its provisions; and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Sumner) suggested that the postponement should be for one week for that purpose. These suggestions seeming to

be reasonable in the opinion of senators around me I yielded to their request, and consented to the postponement of the bill until this day.

'Sir, little did I suppose, at the time that I granted that act of courtesy to those two senators, that they had drafted and published to the world a document, over their own signatures, in which they arraigned me as having been guilty of a criminal betrayal of my trust, as having been guilty of an act of bad faith, and as having been engaged in an atrocious plot against the cause of free government. Little did I suppose that those two senators had been guilty of such conduct, when they called upon me to grant that courtesy, to give them an opportunity of investigating the substitute reported by the committee. I have since discovered that on that very morning the National Era, the abolition organ in this city, contained an address, signed by certain aboli. tion confederates, to the people, in which the bill is grossly misrepresented, in which the action of the committee is grossly perverted, in which our motives are arraigned and our characters calumniated. And, sir, what is more, I find that there was a postscript added to the address, published that very morning, in which the principal amendment reported by the committee was set out, and then coarse epithets applied to me by name. Sir, had I known those facts at the time I granted that act of indulgence, I should have responded to the request of those senators in such terms as their conduct deserved, so far as the rules of the Senate and a respect for my own character would have permitted me to do. In order to show the character of this document, of which I shall have much to say in the course of my argument, I will read certain passages:

"We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region emigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own states, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.'

"A Senator. By whom is the address signed?

"Mr. Douglas. It is signed 'S. P. Chase, senator from Ohio, Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, J. R. Giddings and Edward Wade, representatives from Ohio, Gerrit Smith, representative from New York, Alexander De Witt, representative from Massachusetts;' including, as I understand, all the abolition party in Congress.

"Then, speaking of the Committee on Territories, these confederates use this language:

"The pretences, therefore, that the territory, covered by the positive prohibition of 1820, sustains a similar relation to slavery with that acquired from Mexico, covered by no prohibition except that of disputed constitutional or Mexican law, and that the Compromises of 1850 require the incorporation of the pro-slavery clause of the Utah and New Mexico bill in the Nebraska act, are mere inventions, designed to cover up from public reprehension meditated bad faith'

"Mere inventions to cover up bad faith.' Again:

"Servile demagogues may tell you that the Union can be maintained only by submitting to the demands of slavery.'

"Then there is a postscript added, equally offensive to myself, in which I am mentioned by name. The address goes on to make an appeal to the Legisla tures of the different states, to public meetings, and to ministers of the gospel in their pulpits, to interpose and arrest the vile proceeding which is about to be consummated by the senators who are thus denounced. That address, sir, bears date Sunday, January 22, 1854. Thus it appears that on the holy Sabbath, while other senators were engaged in divine worship, these abolition confederates were assembled in secret conclave, plotting by what means they should deceive the people of the United States, and prostrate the character of brother senators. This was done on the Sabbath day, and by a set of politicians, to advance their own political and ambitious purposes, in the name of our holy religion.

"But this is not all. It was understood from the newspapers that resolutions were pending before the Legislature of Ohio proposing to express their opinions upon this subject. It was necessary for these confederates to get up some exposition of the question by which they might facilitate the passage of the resolutions through that Legislature. Hence you find that on the same morning that this document appears over the names of these confederates in the abolition organs in this city, the same document appears in the New York papers-certainly in the Tribune, Times, and Evening Post-in which it stated, on authority, that it is 'signed by the senators and a majority of the representatives from the State of Ohio'-a statement which I have every reason to believe was utterly false, and known to be so at the time that these confederates appended it to the address. It was necessary in order to carry out this work of deception, and to hasten the action of the Ohio Legislature, under a misapprehension of the real facts, to state that it was signed, not only by the abolition confederates, but by the whole Whig representation, and a portion of the Democratic representation in the other House from the State of Ohio. "Mr. Chase. Mr. President

"Mr. Douglas. Mr. President, I do not yield the floor. A senator who has violated all the rules of courtesy and propriety, who showed a consciousness of the character of the act he was doing by concealing from me all knowledge of the fact-who came to me with a smiling face, and the appearance of friendship, even after that document had been uttered-who could get up in the Senate and appeal to my courtesy in order to get time to give the document a wider circulation before its infamy could be exposed-such a senator has no right to my courtesy upon this floor."

Mr. Douglas then, in an argument extended over two hours, discussed the general history of the legislation by Congress upon the subject of slavery in Congress, and in defense of his position that the principle established in the acts of 1850 was inconsistent with a congressional prohibition of slavery, such as was contained in the eighth section of the Missouri Act.

Mr. Chase followed in a lame apology. He ignored the fact that on the 24th he had suggested that no senator had read the bill. He admitted that the address had been published in one New York paper on the 23d, and said that the date prefixed to the document as printed was a typographical error

The representation made that the address bore the signatures of a majority of the Ohio delegates was made under an impression that they would sign it; but as alterations in the document were demanded, which could not be conceded, the address had been sent out in the original form by those whose names had been attached to it. He produced a copy of the address bearing date January 19th, yet even in that copy there was set forth a correct copy of the fourteenth section of the bill as reported by the Committee on Territories on Monday, January 23d. How a copy of that section had been obtained, so as to incorporate it in an address bearing date the 19th, was not explained.

Mr. Sumner declined any explanation. He fell back upon his dignity, and assumed all the responsibility for what he had done. The trick, so far as it was designed to create a false impression of the character of the bill, and to produce a violent hostility to it, founded upon that false impression, was more successful, perhaps, than any like disreputable act had ever been. The Legislatures of most of the states were then in session : this address reached the members; no explanation of the bill had been made in Congress; its terms and provisions had not been published in the newspapers of the day. The address was sent all over the North. It found its way by hundreds into every village in the Northern states. Petitions and remonstrances were printed and sent abroad for signatures. In the absence of all explanations or counter statements, the language of the address was well calculated to produce alarm and excitement. Its appeals were earnest, and its authors had not hesitated to assert untruths whenever such would serve to make their appeal more forcible or their pathos more sensational.

Here is an extract:

"Take your maps, fellow-citizens, we entreat you, and see what country it is which this bill, gratuitously and recklessly, proposes to open to slavery.”

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"This immense region, occupying the very heart of the North American continent, and larger by thirty-three thousand square miles than all the existing free states, excluding California,-this immense region, well watered and fertile, through which the middle and northern routes, from the Atlantic to the Pacific must pass,—this immense region, embracing all the unorganized territory of the nation, except the comparatively insignificant district of Indian Territory north of Red River, and between Arkansas and Texas, and now for more than thirty years regarded by the common consent of the