treaty; and it was argued that there was no such power of annexation conferred by the Constitution. It was then decided, among a variety of topics, that the power to make war, which existed in the General Government, was of course a power to conquer; and a power of conquest included the power to hold territory if the treaty clusive that it is nothing more than a power to admit States which are within our jurisdiction. To say that a power can be exercised to legislate for a country not within our jurisdiction, in order to bring it within our jurisdiction, is an absurdity -a paradox. We learned some other lessons from the hisof peace made by the treaty-making power pro-tory of that transaction. It came then to be dis vided for it. Therefore, the court said, it is true as an incident of sovereignty that the treatymaking power includes the power by treaty to annex another country, or territory of that country to this. When the treaty-making power has been thus exercised, the legislative authority of the country spreads over it. It is brought within our jurisdiction by treaty, and being within the jurisdiction of the United States, the power of legislating for it necessarily follows: There is no power in this Government which can be exercised indifferently by any one of two or three of the departments of the Government. tinctly understood that the Democratic party could succeed only by the general united exertions of the South. The South claimed and insisted that it was important to them to acquire or exercise power to extend their institution of slavery into the Territories of the United States, or to acquire other Territories for its extension, in order that they might make new slave States, using this institution as an instrument, a source of political power in the Senate. This was understood to be a sine qua non with them; and he who would be President could only be so by agreeing to contribute to this purpose. The For instance, the President's power of appoint-election of Mr. Polk, and the terms upon which ment, whether he exercises or neglects it, can never be exercised by Congress. The power of the Supreme Court to decide causes, whether they decide them or not, can never be assumed by Congress. To have the same power left to be indifferently exercised by any one of two or three different departments, would necessarily produce an endless confusion in the Government. No such thing exists in our Government. Whatever power exists in one department, exists in that department alone, exclusively. The annexation of Texas, like the annexation of any other country, was attempted to be effected by the treaty-making power; but it failed. The attempt was a concession that the subject-matter was a proper one for the exercise of the treatymaking power, and therefore not a proper subjectmatter for the exercise of any other power in any other department of the Government. If the power which was attempted to be exercised-that of annexing the Territory of Texas-existed in that portion of our Government authorized to make treaties, it existed in no other department of this Government. But how was the object accomplished? After the proceeding at Baltimore to which I have alluded, and after the election of Mr. Polk, how was Texas annexed? By a joint resolution receiving the vote of only a majority of the House of Representatives, and a majority of the Senate. In despite of the treaty-making power, it was done by an act of legislation. We view that as a most gross, palpable, direct violation of the Constitution-an utter disregard of its provisions. The act has been done, however, and it has been confirmed and ratified by this nation. We have dominion over Texas. The act, being thus ratified, I for one submit to it, and I will exercise the same liberality in relation to that State as in reference to any other part of the country. I may not have liked the form of the bans; they may have been unlawful; but, the matrimony being consummated, we must make the best of it. Texas now belongs to our family, at all events; but the manner in which this has been done-the means taken to effect it-all the instrumentalities which were used, were such as to make us consider that it may be properly termed an aggression. I know it has been said that Congress admitted Texas under the power conferred by the Constitution to admit new States. The language of that clause of the Constitution, however, and the circumstances attending it, are con it was accomplished, with the attendant circumstances, fully disclosed and declared this. Political history since that time shows what course has been taken. This leads me to the next measure which we regard as an aggression-the repeal of the Missouri compromise. How did that come up? It was connected with the same thing; designed for the same purpose. What was it? The common expression of politicians is that it was a bid for the Presidency. When that transaction took place there was on the tapis the old standing bid of the venerable Senator from Michigan-the bid of squatter sovereignty. It was thought that would aid the South in effecting their purpose; but the difficulty was, they had once tried him as a candidate on that basis, and he did not take very well with the South. They were not very well satisfied. Some other bid must be gotten up. What was it? Under the administration of this Mr. President Pierce, it was said, "Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, and others who were concerned in the making of the Missouri compromise, are dead and gone, and those who are not in fact dead have departed from political life. Now, can we not offer to the southern people the repeal of the Missouri compromise line, thus opening up all the free Territories of the United States to their institution of slavery?" Mr. Pierce, in effect, did make that bid by bringing to bear the whole weight of his influence to procure the repeal of the Missouri compromise line. There were many who still stuck a little in conscience in relation to the contract and agreement about that line. They did not like to break it. There was, among others, Mr. Buchanan. He was then out of the country; but he learned, of course, that this bid, which had been made, was actually passed. The President of the United States, with the aid of Senators here-I do not wish to go into particulars -had effected that. It was announced, in substance, in his official organ, in order to effect it, that as to those members of Congress who should feel it their duty to vote for that measure, and who thereby should lose position at home, he would see that they were provided for and taken care of. That was the substance of the statement. I do not like to call things by harsh and rude names; but I am really very much reminded of what the boy, when his father whipped him for calling him a liar, told him when he got through. Said he: "Father, the next time you lie, what shall I y?" [Laughter.] What shall I call this? It was nothing, in my estimation, but taking the power of appointment put into the hands of the President for the public service, and using it for his own political purposes personally, and with this very means to reward the men who misrepresent their constituents. I do not say it was bribery. The repeal was effected, and the bid was made. I do not wonder that it somewhat startled other candidates for the Presidency, unless some who participated in the act and who might claim the virtue of it. But how did Mr. Buchanan act? Inasmuch as these southern people have been offered here all the territory of the United States to be opened to them, he perhaps thought, I must offer them something. What shall I do? I will offer them all the kingdoms of the earth. I will offer them all the territory out of the United States. I will make my bid, and to begin with take Cuba-buy it, if you can, peaceably; but take it forcibly if you must! I bid all the kingdoms of the earth, and all the rest of mankind, outside of the United States! We see what has affirm, and carry forward this experiment which had characterized the Government by the united voice of a common people for half a century. Is it at all wonderful that such a degree of success should have attended it? How old is it? We have been told here within twenty-four hours, that the Republican party had not an existence at the last session of Congress. It was organized last June, and organized upon this single principle; and in less than five months what do you see by the vote? You see it carrying eleven States of this Union, to say the least of them, as high in point of intellect, wealth, prosperity, and population, as any. This has been accomplished by (if you please to call it so) a newly-created party, not having any particular advantage from the prestige of its candidate. He was a man without political experience, young, having no influential family connections to push him forward, or who would do it. They rested simply upon this principle. If so much has been done in five months, how long will it take to obtain a majority of the whole? This success is to be accounted for not by attributing to us any narrow, been the result of this first opening of free Terri-sectional desire to interfere with the condition of tories. The South, with the Democracy, had got that passed. They had it already secured. Whatever advantage they could get out of it they had already secured. Of course, President Pierce, and those who made that bid, did not profit much by it. The South could not get any more out of them. Their deed was done; and who was nominated? Mr. Buchanan. But, sir, I return to the repeal of the Missouri compromise, its purpose and history. I simply say now, (for I do not wish to go over it with more particularity,) that we view that act as a breach of plighted faith-not that they had not the constitutional power to repeal it, but because they exercised that power. I am aware that the President cannot see any difference between it and any other statute; he cannot see why Congress had not a perfect right to repeal it because they had the power. I do not much wonder at that. I have heard of men in the community who never had any moral standard of right or wrong, except what the law defined. They knew that what the law permitted they could do; and that they could not do what the law forbade. The President seems to apply that reasoning to this case; but the obvious reason why there was a moral impropriety in the repeal of the Missouri compromise, is that there was a consideration for it, which consideration the South had and kept and enjoyed, and could not return. Having had it, there was an impropriety and an immorality to use such a power without right. the domestic institutions of the southern States. They have their own institutions, shaped by themselves, conducted by themselves; they can be repealed by themselves, or cherished and regulated as they please. The Republican party is based upon a principle, as I have said, old as our Government, old as the rights of man. This organization is nothing but an attempt to reassert and carry forward the experiment which our fathers set on foot, and prosecuted by a united effort and united voice for half a century. In short, it is an endeavor to head off and prevent, if you please, the extension of slavery into free Territories, as an element of power for the slaveholding States. I have endeavored to give my view of the origin and progress of this topic of difficulty. I shall not go at this time into particulars in relation to the manner in which the second act of aggression that I have mentioned, was accomplished. Time will not permit me to do so; but perhaps I ought, in justice, before I sit down, to pay attention to some of those little topics which I consider have been made rather by-play-attempts, as I think, to divert public attention from the true issue-to lead it off with political riddles and political catchwords for effect. The first is the topic of popular sovereignty. What is true popular sovereignty? I take it to be the exercise of power by the people, or the representatives of that people who own the country over which the sovereignty is exercised. It is popular sovereignty This was the second of the series of what for the people of Virginia to make their laws to we regard as acts of aggression. It was these regulate their institutions within their own State, measures, undertaken by the South, prosecuted through their representatives. Now, to whom by them, and effected for the obvious purposes do the Territories of the United States belong? already stated, procured by such means, and Here I do not wish to be entangled with the catch advanced for such purposes, that created the upon the word "territory," as used in the Conoccasion for the Republican party. It was an stitution. I am sensible that "territory" has a attempt upon their side to reverse the whole order general and a political meaning. "The territory of proceeding which had commenced with our of the United States" really means all that counGovernment, and had been continued from that try belonging to and within the jurisdiction of time forward until the annexation of Texas. the United States Government that does not fall The practice of our fathers was, that the free within the jurisdiction of a particular State. All Territories of the United States, in which slavery that is out of the jurisdiction of particular States was not already existing, should be and remain is within the jurisdiction of the General Governforever sequestered for a free white intelligent ment, if it belongs bel to the country. It belongs to population. When the Republican party was the whole country. It is not true that any State as a State, has anything to do with it, nor that formed, it was formed simply to restore, to re any citizen of the United States has any rights there, more or less, because he belongs to one or another State. The people of the United States own the territory, and its whole jurisdiction is in Congress. It is SO by the very terms of the cession. It is so by the very nature of things. If they had not jurisdiction of it, there would be no jurisdiction over it. Some gen gentlemen tell us that in the clause of the Constitution giving Congress power to make all needful rules and regulations concerning territory or other property belonging to the United States, the word "territory" means land, and therefore, they say, it means nothing else. That argument will not do. It is true, the United States own the land, and this provision of the Constitution covers the use and disposal of the lands; but it is not true that therefore it covers nothing else. The Territories which the United States own, they have the jurisdiction of, and eminent domain over. They have always exercised this power. Another signification is that "Territory" means an organized municipal corporation, created by an act of Congress, just as a State creates corporation for a a municipal ever so viewed until 1854; and the experiment now on foot in Kansas is a 'sad commentary on this new doctrine and new experiment of the new definition of popular sovereignty. There is another topic of remark on this subject. It is said that if you prohibit slavery in the Territories of the United States, the inhabitants of the slaveholding States cannot go there, will not go there, and that they have the same right to go there that anybody else has. It is said they ought to have the right to carry their property there. Every man, it is said, has the right (for there is entire freedom of commerce in the United States) to carry his property from one State to another. Put that proposition to the people of the United States, and every man of them would tell you, "Yes, it is true; and no law can be made to prevent it." Under what elatise of the Constitution is that right claimed? It is that which provides that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." What rights are those? A citizen of one State when in another State has the same right to the use and exercise of his power there that the people living there have. What right the people living there have, is regulated by the sovereignty of the country. Just so it is in relation to the Territories. You say you have a right to go there. We grant it. Then, you say, you have a right to take your property there. That depends upon the action of the sovereignty of the country. They have a a right to make their own municipal laws. They have a right to make laws in relation to its police. Now, if any State, or if the sovereignty of Con gress over the Territories, makes laws which for bid the carrying any particular kind of property there, it cannot be taken there. I will not repeat an argument on that point; it has been argued so many times that such a task is unnecessary. ! city, town, or borough. You talk of the Territory of Minnesota, the Territory of Kansas-what is it? It is but part and parcel of the United States territory, and the creation which it has, as a distinctidentity and individuality different from the rest, is altogether the creature of an act of Congress, entirely subject to their control, to be changed, modified, or repealed, whenever they please. The manner in which the novereignty of the United States is to be exercised over the Territories of the United States was altogether a matter of their own discretion. They might never create any territorial government for any part of it, but might make laws for it themselves. When they did create these corporations, the notion that there was any inherent right in the woods, (for most of it was mere for-will only say, that in this respect I agree with est inhabited by savages,) or anybody who might go there, is perfectly ideal. The exercise of true popular sovereignty over a Territory is the exercise of sovereign power by Congress for the people of the United States who own the Territory. That is the popular sovereignty which they not only had, but exercised for fifty years. During that period the idea did not gain a foothold that sovereignty should be granted to the people who might go to a Territory, how many, or how few, or at what time. If they have any rights, why do you not let them elect or appoint their own Governor and judges? Why do you not let them direct all their institutions? If there is a right there, by what authority did Congress create a government, such as I have already described, for Louisiana, without the intervention of any act of its people at all? And yet it was an inhabited country; there was a very large body of inhabitants there; but Congress created for it a government in which that people had not the least possible participation. Such is popular sovereignty in its true sense, and proper application, according to the meaning which has been given to it by the cotemporaneous construction of the men who had it, and the people who exercised it, for half a century. It is further to be observed that this matter of slavery is a matter of great national interest and concern, entirely improper to be made a topic of the argument of the Senator from Michigan, [Mr. CASS]-I believe he has never varied his opinion on this subject and the Senator from Illinois, [Mr. DOUGLAS,] who was so large a participator in the repeal of the Missouri compromise. It has been said that the people of the slave States will not go into free territory if they cannot carry slaves with them, and therefore that a prohibition deprives them of the privilege of settling it. That is not so, because they have all the rights of others. But, further, I deny altogether, and deny it from history, that they will not go there. I say they will go there. It will be remembered, from the quotations I have made from the debates of the Virginia House of Delegates, that those gentlemen say their free white population, who are degraded by labor in a slaveholding country, are fleeing to other communities more congenial to their taste, and where they will not lose position by caste. That is not all. I have more authority than that. I had the curiosity, in relation to our good old "mother of States," Virginia-the finest specimen, probably, or as good as any of the slaveholding part of the United States to see what has been the effect in point of fact. I have taken from the census tables some minutes which I wish to present upon this point. I find that at the taking of the census of 1850 there were residing in the several States of disturbance and controversy in the several Terri-the Union certain numbers of people who came tories which may be formed, and decided in dif- from Virginia, and were natives of Virginia; and ferent ways by mere local legislation. This was I wish to ascertain how many of those people who have gone out from Virginia and settled in other States, have settled in the free States, and how many in the slave States. That will test the fact. can I grant that it is not right to include the State of Kentucky, because the Virginians there hardly be called emigrants. Kentucky was made from Virginia, It was a part of Virginia, and, therefore, what went out from one into the other should not be counted. That would be treating as born in Virginia and residing in Kentucky, those who, in fact, had never emigrated. That would be an improper statement of the case. Leaving out Kentucky, as being originally a part of Virginia, I have made a table of the rest of the United States, and I find that Virginia has residing in the different States of this Union, three hundred and thirty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty-two of her own children. She has, perhaps, the largest number of her children of any State in the Union residing out of her limits. She has furnished more emigrants than any other one State, as native-born citizens. Now, let us see how many of these have gone from her into the new slave States, then Territories, and now States; and how many have gone into those Territories and States where the institution of slavery was forbidden. If it be true that people from the slave States cannot and will not go to the free States because slavery is not allowed there, we shall find a large majority of her children who have emigrated to slave States and Territories. A mere majority either way would not prove much. If it were so, it would prove they were as much inclined to go one way as another; but if there were a large majority it would show that almost all would go to slave States only. for it. I do not know whether the fact be so, the institution. The people of the slaveholding A still more conclusive answer to the question Now, how is the fact? Of these three hun- In this connection I will read an extract from ing, according to the census, in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, one hundred and eighty thousand six hundred and fifty-four. Thirty thousand more of the children of Virginia have settled in the free States, than in the slave States, leaving out Kentucky. Mr. ADAMS. I desire to ask my friend a question, By the census of 1850, it appears that there were, at that time, residing in the slaveholding States, over seven hundred thousand persons born in the non-slaveholding States; while there were residing in the non-slaveholding States only about two hundred thousand persons born in the slaveholding States. I have not the figures before me, but I recollect them pretty nearly. In 1860, nearly half a million more persons were residing in the slaveholding States who were born in the non-slaveholding States, than there were of persons born in the latter residing in the former. How does the Senator account for that? Mo COLLAMER. I can very readily account feels that she is the sword and buckier at the South; that to the slave power; never rash or indiscreet, the waves of holds the North to her purpose." We hear much, Mr. President, in some quarters, in relation to the equality of the States; and southern gentlemen tell us that they will remain in the Union only so long as they can remain in it on terms of equality. Like "popular sovereignty," this phrase, " equality of States," is a taking catch-word. It is desirable that we should understand the true meaning and application of the term. What is meant by this claim of the equality of the States? What are we to understand by it? If gentlemen mean that every State 1 has a right to regulate its own internal affairs in its own way, undoubtedly there is an equality of the States in that respect. But is there actual equality among the States? While I am standing here, the State of South Carolina, with a free population forty thousand less than my little State of Vermont, has six Representatives in the other House; Vermont but three. Is that the equality of the States of which gentlemen speak? I grant it is such equality of the States as they are respectively entitled to under the Constitution, and we will abide by it; but it is very far from an actual equality. we Under the old Articles of Confederation every State, great or small, had an equal vote. When they came to form the Constitution of the United States, that was the great point of trouble. I know it has been the fashion to represent that the difficulty at which they stuck, the trouble under which they labored when the Convention came very near breaking up, arose out of something connected with slavery. In fact, that had nothing to do with it. The trouble was this: the smaller States insisted on retaining in the new formation of the Government their equality in voting as they had had it before. They said, "We come together as equals; sovereignties in the view of the world are always equal; ought to remain equal." The larger States, headed by Virginia and Massachusetts, insisted that it should not be so; that the destinies of the country, and its public affairs, should not be equally controlled by a small State like Delaware and a large State like Virginia. There was the point upon which the Convention almost broke up. It was settled, as we all know, by a compromise, giving to the people of the several States their relative weight by representation in one House, and to the States as corporations their equal weight in the other House. That was the compromise, and when it was made, two out of the three delegates of the State of New Yorknow a very great State, the Empire State, which then called herself one of the small States, and was very much afraid of being overslaughed by the larger ones-Mr. Yates and Mr. Lansing went out, and never returned. I think Mr. Luther Martin, of Maryland, also retired, and did not come back. That was an attempt to assert the equality of the States. It failed. Now what is meant by it? What is really intended to be claimed? I do not wish to disguise the truth; I understand it to mean this: that there shall be in this body as many Senators from the slave States as from the free States. The President says this election has settled the equality of the different States and sections. Now, the moment we make sections. of this country, independent of the sections made by the States, and demand that each of those sections shall be entitled to their different rights, there is no end to our subdivisions. The northern and eastern States, a manufacturing, fishing, commercial people, make one section. On this principle, they have a right to demand that they shall have an equal representation with every other section in this body. The slaveholding section claim an equality with all the rest. The northwestern States may, on the same principle, claim that they shall have as much representation here as all the rest of the United States. Again, if we once establish a principle of this kind, we must of course forbid anything and everything that is inconsistent with it. Now, suppose we take the whole Territory of the United States; set it off into States; shape the destiny of each by providing for slavery going into one Territory and not into another, and we all know that Territories will form themselves into States as their character is formed when Territories; it has been always so, and always will be so. If slavery is admitted into a Territory it will become a slave State; if slavery is prohibited and kept out, it will become a free State. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" This is as true of States as of individuals. History shows it to be so. Suppose we should divide off our Territories so as to have an equal number of slave and free States, and say this is the condition of things to be preserved. Then Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Maryland, never could abolish slavery. Their doing so must be prohibited, for it would destroy this equilibrium. The principle is one incapable of execution, inconsistent with our whole institutions, and with the theory of our Government. Again, is there any propriety in our according in any one of the departments of the Government, the same power to six millions of free people as to thirteen millions? Is it to be expected that the thirteen millions should submit, and be asked to submit to go down, like the fable of gathering the trees of the forest together to select a king, and their saying to the bramble, "Come, thou, and rule over us?"-not that I mean anything offensive; but the fact is, their numbers do not entitle them to any such claim. I wish I were able to argue a little more at large as to the exercise of the power of sovereignty. Until within a very recent period, the principle on which our Government has always gone in relation to the Territories is this: Where slavery existed when we obtained territory, where it was already established, we have not forbidden it, but have taken measures to prevent its increase; but in relation to all that territory where it did not exist to any appreciable extent, we have forbidden it. I say that is the practical construction of the intention of the Constitution. I should desire to be able to argue a little more at large, to show that this must necessarily be our policy. Such is the view of the Supreme Court in the Florida or Canter case, to which I have adverted. In that case the court decided that the legislative power of the United States Government, when a treaty had once annexed a country, extended over it; and that, in legislating for the territory, Congress exercised both the powers of the General Government and of a State government within its jurisdiction. A question is made as to the right to carry property from one jurisdiction into another. Why, sir, every State of this Union where the question has arisen-in Missouri and Louisiana, (I have before me the citations)-has decided repeatedly that slavery was not a natural right; that no such thing existed by the law of nature, and that it never could exist and never could be asserted unless there was some law of the place where it was attempted to be asserted, to justify it; that it was entirely the creature of local legislation. Now, how can you carry your slaves into a Territory any more than into a State, when there is no local legislation which makes them property or protects them as such. The Supreme Court decided this very fully in the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. Not only the Supreme Court, |