COLLOQUY XV.

KEPLY OF MR. STEPHENS TO JUDGE BYNUM CONTINUED-MISSOURI COMPROMISE, SO-CALLED, CONSIDERED-MR. BUCHANAN'S STATEMENT IN REFERENCE TO, REVIEWED-MR. CLAY'S POSITION IN REFERENCE TO, STATED—

NEVER REGARDED AS A COMPACT BY THE CENTRALISTS-MISSOURI WAS NOT ADMITTED UNDER IT-THE PRINCIPLE ON WHICH IT WAS BASED UTTERLY REPUDIATED BY EVERY NORTHERN STATE-MANY INTERESTING FACTS CONNECTED WITH IT EXHIBITED.

MR. STEPHENS. We will now take up the Missouri Compromise, and see how far your position, on that subject, Judge, is sustained by the facts of the case: in other words, we will see whether there was any "breach of faith," or of "Compact," on the part of the South, in regard to that measure, or in regard to the Compromise Measures of 1850, which you spoke of in the same connection; and in regard to which you also alleged breach of faith on the part of the "Slave Power," so-called. I shall consider both these matters together; for the subjects are both intimately connected, and there can be no correct understanding of the latter, without a clear and full understanding of the former.

MAJOR HEISTER. These are points I am now particularly anxious to hear from you upon. For, to be candid with you, I must say that I have always thought that the South, for the first time, became the aggressor in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I agree entirely with what Mr. Buchanan says upon that subject. I mean what he says upon the subject in his work, entitled, "Buchanan's Administration." Have you seen this work?

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MR. STEPHENS. Yes; I have seen it, and have it in the library. Let me get it. Here it is; and I was very much struck, as well as greatly surprised, at what the Ex-President wrote upon both of these measures. I read, first, from page 24, where he speaks of the Compromise

of 1850:

"The Compromise of 1850 ought never to have been disturbed by Congress. After long years of agitation and alarm, the country, under its influence, had enjoyed a season of comparative repose, inspiring the people with bright hopes for the future.

"But how short-lived and delusive was this calm! The very Congress which had commenced so auspiciously, by repealing the Missouri Compromise before the end of its first session, re-opened the floodgates of sectional strife, which, it was fondly imagined, had been closed forever. This has ever since gone on increasing in violence and malignity, until it has involved the country in the greatest and most sanguinary civil war recorded in history."

Then after speaking of what he calls the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, which he maintains reopened the floodgates of sectional strife that had been closed by the Compromise of 1850, he uses this language on page 28:

"After a careful review of the history of the AntiSlavery Party, from its origin, the candid inquirer must admit that up till this period, [that is 1854,] it had acted on the aggressive against the South. From the beginning it had kept the citizens of the slaveholding States in constant irritation, as well as serious apprehension for their domestic peace and security. They were the assailed Party, and had been far more sinned against than sinning. It is true, they had denounced their assailants with extreme rancor and many threats; but had done nothing

more. In sustaining the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, however, the Senators and Representatives of the Southern States became the aggressors themselves, and thereby placed the country in an alarming and dangerous condition from which it has never since been rescued ?"

Upon the Missouri Compromise itself, he speaks thus on page 25:

"The Missouri Compromise finally passed Congress by large majorities. On a test question in the Senate on the 2d March, 1820, the vote in its favor was twentyseven against fifteen; and in the House, on the same day, it was one hundred and thirty-four against forty-two. Its wisdom and policy were recognized by Congress, a quarter of a century afterwards, in March, 1845, when Texas, being a Slave State, was annexed to the Union. Acting on the presumption that several new States might be formed out of her territory, one of the express conditions of her annexation was, that in such of these States as might lie north of the Missouri Compromise line, Slavery shall be prohibited.

"The Missouri Compromise had remained inviolate for more than thirty-four years before its repeal. It was a Covenant of peace between the free and the slaveholding States. Its authors were the wise and conservative statesmen of a former generation. Although it had not silenced Anti-Slavery discussion in other forms, yet it soon tranquillized the excitement which for some months previous to its passage had convulsed the country in regard to Slavery in the Territories. It is true that the power of a future Congress to repeal any of the Acts of its predecessors, under which no private rights had been vested, cannot be denied, still the Missouri Compromise, being in the nature of a Solemn Compact be

tween conflicting parties, whose object was to ward off great dangers from the Union, ought never to have been repealed by Congress.

"The question of its Constitutionality ought to have been left to the decision of the Supreme Court, without any legislative intervention. Had this been done, and the Court had decided it to be a violation of the Constitution, in a case arising before them in the regular course of judicial proceedings, the decision would have passed off in comparative silence, and produced no dangerous excitement among the people."

MAJOR HEISTER. Yes, these are the parts to which I refer.

JUDGE BYNUM. They are certainly very high Democratic authority to sustain me in all that I said upon these points. It also fully sustains all that Mr. Sumner, Mr. Chase, and Mr. Seward, and the whole class of Restrictionists said in 1854.

MR. STEPHENS. That is very true, but we shall soon see whether even this authority, however high, be it Democratic or of whatever character, can avail anything against the great indisputable facts of the case. The authority of names as well as theories, must yield to facts in history.

I have said I was surprised at what Mr. Buchanan wrote on the subject. I repeat, I am exceedingly surprised at it, not only because it is so utterly unsustained by the facts, but so directly inconsistent with what he affirmed in his letter, accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party, for the Presidency, in 1856. Here is that letter, dated June 16, 1856; and in it he used this language in reference to the action of Congress in 1854, which, as he says, repealed the Missouri Compromise, and opened afresh the agitation of the Slavery ques

tion, and in which the South was, for the first time, the aggressor. Hear what he said on this subject in 1856: "The agitation of the question of domestic Slavery has too long distracted and divided the people of this Union, and alienated their affections from each other. This agitation has assumed many forms since its commencement, but it now seems to be directed chiefly to the Territories; and judging from its present character, I think we may safely anticipate that it is rapidly approaching a 'finality.' The recent legislation of Congress respecting domestic Slavery, derived, as it has been, from the original and pure fountain of legitimate political power, the will of the majority, promises, ere long, to allay the dangerous excitement. This legislation is founded upon principles as ancient as free Government itself, and in accordance with them, has simply declared that the people of a Territory, like those of a State, shall decide for themselves, whether Slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits."

This was the truth of the case, as we shall see; and I cannot well see how he could have expressed himself, as he did in his book, in 1865, on the same subject, without a total forgetfulness, not only of the real facts of the case, but of what he had himself expressly stated, when he was before the people of the States, as a candidate for the Presidency. But let that pass.

I shall now first take up the Missouri Compromise, socalled, and then the Compromise of 1850; and show that if there was anything like a "Solemn Compact," or "covenant" of any sort, between the States, in either, that there was no breach of faith on the part of the Southern States, in relation to either.

The history of the first of these measures, so little understood, and so greatly misrepresented, briefly stated, is this: