"4. As 'not having sufficient evidence of its (the constitution) having the assent of a majority of the people for whom it was signed.' This is exactly what Wise, Walker, and Douglas are now saying about the admission of Kansas; and yet the Senators who set the example on California now purpose to read them out of the party for following the text too closely. Mr. Chairman, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is too dear to me, to forsake its just application here, to gratify those who dispense patronage. In speaking of it, De Tocqueville says: "Whenever the political laws of the United States are to be discussed, it is with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people that we must begin. In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is not either barren, or concealed; it is re is recognized by the customs, and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote consequen"From their origin the sovereignty of the people was the fundamental principle of the greater number of the British colonies ces. " * in America." * Montesquieu, in his "Spirit of the Laws," saye: "There is no great share of probity necessary to support a monarchical or despotic government. The force of laws in one, and the prince's arm in the other, are sufficient to direct and maintain the whole. But in a popular State one spring more is necessary, namely, virtue. When virtue is banished, ambition invades the hearts of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community. The desires now change their objects; what they were proud of before now becomes indifferent; they were free while under the restraint of law; they will now be free to act against law; and as eve ry citizen is like a slave escaped from his master's house, what was n maxim of equity they call rigor, what was a rule of action they call constraint, and to precaution they give the name of fear. Frugality, and not the thirst of gain, now passes for avarice. Formerly, the wealth of individuals constituted the public treasure; but now the public treasure has become the patrimony of private persous. The members of the commonwealth riot on the public spoits, and its trength is only the power of some citizens, and the licentiousness of the whole ommunity." I have thus quoted from the philosophical Montesquieu, because what he 30 ably wrote in the last century, is applicable to the present state of affairs in our Republic. Corruption stalks abroad throughout the land. It is to be discovered in the municipal, in the State, and in the Federal Governments, and few objects other than amassing fortunes, right or wrong, now actuate those who seek and obtain positions of power and patronage. The old fashioned Democratic party in the better days of the Republic viewed offices as a necessi ty to carry on the Government, and sought only integrity of purpose in those who were to occupy them, repudiating the thought that Federal officials were in any manner to interfere with, much less control, the people. But, alas, the times have changed and are now "sadly out of joint." An army of Federal officials has usurped where it could the polls, and the servants of the people have attempted to become their masters. The Administration has erected a test of Democratic orthodoxy by insisting that all who desire its smiles or favor must ignore the principle upon which it lives, and stultify and disgrace themselves, under penalty of being called "Republicans." It has erected, too, the standard of patronage against principle, and with revengeful hand strips of the former, all Democrats who have independence and character, in order to confer it upon more servile tools. I fear that this Administration is doomed to the fate of Dr. Guillotine, who fell by an instrument which he had invented to cut off the heads of others. Mr. Chairman, I really regret the position of the Administration in its Federal attempt to force Kansas into the Union under the usurped Lecompton constitu tion, thus creating a State out of a population of about fifty thousand people, not half so large, intelligent, or wealthy, as that of the congressional district I have the honor to represent; and thus forcing two Senators into the Senate of the United States, and one Representative in this House. This latter fact alone would induce me to hesitate before voting for her admission, if she were not, as she is under the Lecompton constitution, covered all over with damning frauds, Sir, the President may yet live to see his error in this matter; and, in considering the injustice done the northern Democracy, may have reason to exclaim, "had I served the North with half the zeal I served the South, they would not, at mine age, have left me naked to mine enemies." Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 12th, 1858. Mr. CHANDLER. Mr. President, it was not | power of reclaiming their fugitives from service intention originally to participate in the debate the Lecompton constitution. I had intended leave the subject to older and abler and more perienced colleagues; but the occasion seems me to be so great, and the consequences which y result from our decision so dangerous, that I not permit this bill to pass without, at least, tering my protest against it. I shall oppose 8 bill for the following reasons: First, because whole matter was conceived and executed in ud; second, because this constitution does not manate from the people of Kansas Territory, or press their will; third; because it is one of a ies of aggressions on the part of the slave wer, which, if permitted to be consummated, ast end in the subversion of the Constitution 1 the Union; and, fourth, because it strikes a ath blow at State sovereignty and popular rights. shall proceed as briefly as possible to give the sons upon which I base these objections. It is well known, sir, that, at the close of the volutionary war, and at the formation of this deral Government, all the States of the Union ere slave States, but all looked upon slavery as unmitigated evil; and all looked forward hopely to the day when it should no longer exist. man, then, was bold enough to advocate the mem or labor if they should escape. Those States that This was a finality upon the slavery question. It settled that question forever. No further agitation ever could take place upon the subject of slavery, it was supposed, under that compromise. The settlement was this: slavery was a creature of municipal law; it was left to the States in which it then existed to continue it or abolish it, whenever they might see fit; and in all the Territories of the United States it was forever prohibited. This was the finality of a finality. There never could be any further agitation of the question of slavery in the Union, under it. Under this settlement, the country remained in peace for more than thirty years. No agitation of the subject took place, and none could take place, for it was not in a position to be agitated. tension of slavery or even its long continuance, I say the country remained in peace for more than at all looked forward to an early period when it thirty years, and until the State of Missouri apould cease to exist. These views being pre-plied for admission into the Union as a slave lent throughout the land, one of the early acts State. During the intermediate time, the Louisithe Continental Congress was the adoption of ana territory had been purchased, and Louisiana e ordinance of 1787, forever prohibiting slavery had been admitted as a slave State, without obd involuntary servitude in all the then Territo- jection on the part of the North. It was quietly 8 of these United States. This was itself a assented to; scarcely a protest was entered against uthern measure to a considerable extent, al- it; but when Missouri applied for admission as a ough, at that time, there was no diversity of slave State, the North objected to the admission inion in regard to it. Some of the northern of any more slave States, and declared that it was ates, as was well known, intended to abolish not only distinctly understood, but agreed to, that very at a very early day, while some of the uthern States desired that it might be deferred a much later period. Those States which excted to be cursed, as they then termed it, with e institution for a longer period, desired the no more slave States should ever be admitted into this Union. The North claimed that that was the basis of the original compromise-the ordinance of 1787. Agitation ran high. The South then, as now, threatened a dissolution of the Union, unless all her imperious demands were assented to. The North then, as now, denied her right or her power to dissolve the Union for any such reason, or for any reason. During this excitement the hearts of brave men quailed in view of the danger to the Constitution and the Union, and finally a proposition of compromise was brought into Congress from the South, as a southern measure. The compromise was upon this basis: you of the North consent to the admission of Missouri as a slave State, with the tacit understanding that when Arkansas applies she shall likewise be admitted as a slave State; and we will guaranty to you forever that the ordinance of 1787 shall be spread over all the territory lying north of thirty sixth degrees and thirty minutes. So utterly objectionable was this compromise to the North, that not a single man who voted for it was ever heard of again, politically, at the North. Each northern man who voted for that compromise voted for his own deathwarrant, politically-not as has been asserted at the North, because they voted to prohibit slavery north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, but because they voted to admit the State of Missouri as a slave State into this Union. For that they were blamed, and not for assenting to the restrictive line. But, sir, the compromise was adopted, and peace again reigned throughout the land. The question was settled, and settled forever. Here was another finality, so far as agitation upon that subject was concerned. The South was to have the State of Missouri and the State of Arkansas by tacit consent, whenever she should apply for admission into the Union; the North, as an equivalent, was guarantied all of that territory lying north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, forever. The South received her equivalent in the States of Missouri and Arkansas; the North waited patiently for the day when she should receive hers. The compromise was acquiesced in, and again the country had peace, so far as agitation on the slavery question was concerned, and continued at peace, with some slight ripples here and there, until Texas applied for admission into the Union. Then again there was an agitation; then again the Union was threatened, and threatened from the South; then again another compromise was entered into; to wit, a renewal of the Missouri line. The country remained in peace until, in process of time, a new light broke upon the vision of the people of these United States; to wit, the light of popular sovereignty. It so happened that many of the slave States, during the fall of 1847, in solemn political conventions resolved that they would support no man for the Presidency who was not opposed to the principles of the Wilmot Proviso, so called. In December, 1847, my illustrious predecessor, for reasons best known to himself-although he had time and again expressed his regret that the Hon. John Davis, of Massachusetts, should have talked against time to the end of a session, thus depriving him of the power of recording his vote for the Wilmot Proviso-wrote the "Nicholson letter," in which he said: "But certain it is that the principle of inter *sary implication which produces it. It should be *ference should not be carried beyond the neces 'limited to the creation of proper governments Here, sir, permit me to say, you find the ban of the Democratic Cincinnati platform, which he been commented on time and again; here you f the basis of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; and, in he you find the basis of this very Lecompton cons tution in the Nicholson letter. This was the f time this doctrine was inaugurated at the Nor scarcely a man at the South ever uttered the sen ment. But I will read further: "Briefly, then, I am opposed to the exercised 'any jurisdiction by Congress over this mate 'and I am in favor of leaving to the people of any 'territory which may be hereafter acquired the 'right to regulate it for themselves, under the 'general principles of the Constitution." "Subject only to the Constitution," I believe, is the new version; but this is the original text. "Leave to the people who will be affected b 'this question, to adjust it upon their own respe 'sibility, and in their own manner, and we 'render another tribute to the principles of o 'Government, and furnish another guarantee fir 'its permanence and prosperity." There, sir, is the original of this great fraud the North, yclept "popular sovereignty," and "pe fect freedom for the people of a Territory to rege late their domestic institutions in their own way It is true, that when the doctrine of squatter ster eiguty was first introduced, some of the gentleman on the other side of the Chamber entered protest, but it was so faint that it never reached the ears of northern men; and when on the stum before the people of my State, I asserted that the doctrine which is now introduced here as the dec trine of the Constitution, was the doctrine of t Democratic party, I was told that that was not the doctrine of the Democratic party; that it we merely the opinion of some few southern fr eaters; that the great national Democratic par was firmly planted on the principles of equnter sovereignty, the right of the people of the Term tories to regulate their domestic institutions their own way, including the institution of slavery. Sir, up to the writing of the Nicholson letter the right of Congress to make all needful mies and regulations for the Territories of the United States was never called in question. No Exe tive of the United States ever doubted it; no Cou gress of the United States ever doubted their full power to legislate for the Territories as they saw fit; and up to that date the Supreme Court never doubted the power of Congress to legislate 0 slavery in the Territories. That was the inaug ration of a new principle; to wit, the principle of squatter sovereignty-not popular sovereignty, is here explained, but squatter sovereignty-e right of the people to introduce or prohibit si very in the Territories, while they were in a t ritorial condition. The South held the glittering fantasy of the northern aspirants for that honor, and at the presidential nomination be glittens eager e ame time exhibited the Nicholson letter, as the | not require a lawyer, in my estimation, to show highest bid yet made, and asked, "Who bids higher?" Mr. Fillmore followed with the fugitive lave law and the compromise measures of 1850. fr. Webster followed again, with his 7th of March peech; and last, though not least, came the reDeal of the Missouri compromise line. I do not propose to discuss the repeal of the Missouri compromise. If I should enter upon hat discussion, I should only weary the Senate, or I should not know where to leave off. I look 1pon it as the greatest fraud ever perpetrated before the eyes of this nation. The price had been paid, and the terms of the bargain were repudiated after one side had received the equivalent. It was a violation of a solemn compact. But I do not propose to go into the discussion of it at this time. But, sir, how did you pay those men who were bidding and overbidding, and outbidding each other for presidential nominations? First, to the writer of the Nicholson letter you gave the empty honor of a nomination for the Presidency, and then defeated him by southern votes; to the second, you refused even the poor compliment of a nomination in a national convention, when it was well known to everybody that under no circumstances could he have been elected if he had received the nomination. The third you consigned to the grave. He received but four southern votes in the convention to which I have just referred, and it broke his heart. The fourth you are now pursuing with all the powers of this Government; with the keen scent of the blood-hound; you are after his scalp; and yet, sir, this Administration owes to him, more than to any other man, its present possession of power. There are three men in this nation to whom the present Administration owe their present position more than to any other that the instrument is not what they are attempting to make it, and what the framers of it abhorred, a pro-slavery instrument. I claim that slaves are not recognized as property in that instrument anywhere. ere. They lay great stress upon that clause of the Constitution which protects the slave trade for twenty years. I consider that fully, fairly, and forever answered by the honorable Senator from Maine, [Mr. FESSENDEN.] If property in slaves, he said, is based upon that clause of the Constitution allowing the slave trade for twenty years, of course, at the end of those twenty years, that property ceases to receive the protection of that clause of the Constitution; it extends protection to it only for twenty years. But I shall say no more upon that point. There is, however, one other clause upon which the court dwells yet more fully, and that is the fugitive-slave clause, so called. "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, 'shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, 'but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party 'to whom such service or labor may be due." three thousand men in the United States. Those ❘tion upon that point, I should say that that proved I will men it is needless for me to name, although I Mr. President, while all these aggressions of the slave power were made their cry was, "stand by the Constitution and the Union." I have heard it from every stump in Michigan: it was the rallying cry while they were undermining the Constitution and sapping the foundation of this Union. Although I am not a lawyer, I wish to refer to two or three clauses of the Constitution of the United States; for I claim that it is so plain in language and its intent so transparent, "that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." Not giving a lawyer's opinion, but the opinion of a man of common sense, if you please, I should say that if that clause proved anything at all, it proved the direct reverse of what the Supreme Court endeavored to make it prove. It is necessary to introduce into the Constitution a clause protecting property already protected by the very instrument into which that clause is introduced. If slaves were property under the Constitution, were they not property everywhere? If they were protected as property, were they not so protected everywhere? The proposition is an absurdity; and, if there were no other clause in the Constituconclusively that they were not recognized as property under the general clauses of the Constitution. What would have been thought of a clause like this: "that horses, sheep, cattle, mules, &c., escaping from one State into another, shall be given up on proof of ownership to the person to whom such property belongs?" and yet such a clause would be just as appropriate as that on the subject of fugitive slaves, if they were recognized as property under the Constitution. There was no such right claimed as property in man at that day; and, as was remarked by the honorable Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. HALE] the other day, even the word "servitude," which was in the first draft of that clause of the Constitution, was stricken out on the motion of a distinguished Virginia gentleman, and the word "service" introduced, because servitude might be construed to mean slaves, and service could not. The whole of the debates upon the adoption of the Constitution, show that its framers never meant that it should recognize slaves as property. If they had intended it, is it not a I do not believe that it requires any hair-splitting | little singular that nowhere throughout the entire instrument can the word "slave" be found, or anything that can be tortured, or ever has been tortured, heretofore, into a recognition of slaves as property, under the Constitution? of lawyers to comprehend that immortal instrument, the Constitution of the United States. It is true that the Supreme Court has endeavored to mystify two or three of its plainest provisions in its late opinion, or late speeches, delivered on a But again, sir, so far from recognizing slaves as question that was not before it; but, sir, it does | property, they spread the common law over that Constitution; they adopted the common law as part and parcel of the Constitution; and it is well known, and settled in numerous cases, that the common law does not, and never has claimed to, recognize property in slaves. Here is a decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia, in 1851: "I now consider the decision of the English 'courts, upon the subject of slavery, and I think 'it will be seen that slavery has never been recog'nized to exist there under the common law. On 'the contrary, it is well settled that the moment a 'slave, whether African, Indian, Jew, or Gentile, 'sets his foot upon British soil he is a freeman, and 'entitled to the protection of the laws as such."Neal vs. Farmer, 9 Georgia Reports, p. 568. Lord Mansfield, in his opinion in the Sommersett case, declared: "So high an act of dominion must be recognized 'by the law of the country where it is used. The 'power of a master over his slave has been ex'tremely different in different countries. The 'state of slavery is of such a nature that it is in'capable of being introduced on any reasons, 'moral or political, but only by positive law, which 'preserves its force long after the reasons, occa'sion, and time itself from whence it was created, fare erased from memory."-Howell's State Trials, vol. 20, p. 82. Innumerable cases might be cited to prove that the common law does not, and never did, recognize property in slaves; and yet the framers of the Constitution spread that law all over the Constitution, instead of saying that slaves were property. What was the object of the Supreme Court, in traveling out of the record to show that the Constitution did, or would, if the case were brought before them, recognize property in slaves? I look upon this as one of the most dangerous aggressions which has ever been attempted upon the Constitution of the United States. Their object was covered up; it was not announced; you may hear it in private conversation, but it has never been announced publicly. The object was insidiously, first, to recognize slaves under the Constitution; secondly, to make out, by construction of the property clause, that the Constitution itself carried slaves everywhere. They declared in that decision that the Constitution carried slaves into a Territory. Well, sir, if the Constitution carries slaves anywhere outside of the limits of the municipal law creating slavery, it carries them every where. If slaves are property under the Constitution, Michigan is as much a slave State to-day as South Carolina, if any man or set of men see fit to take slaves there. They are protected under this property clause, if they are property under nor shall private property be taken for public u without just compensation." That is the clause which they mean to rende effective; under which they are endeavoring strengthen slavery by their illegal decision, regard it. That is not the last aggression. After having established the property clause, and carried slo very all over these United States, there is some thing left to be done. The intention is then-it ha ceased to be problematical to open the Afri slave trade. Why not give us the whole dose once-property clause, African slave trade, and all Why, sir, you southern men are more cruel tha the heathen gods. They were satisfied with the sacrifice of hecatombs of human victims; but y take one hecatomb after another. You sacrif one in adopting the Missouri compromise Line another in repealing it; and now you sacrifte another in passing the Lecompton constitution anon you will sacrifice another in spreading thi property clause; and afterwards you will sacrifes another hecatomb in opening the African sing trade. Why not take all your victims at one swallow them en masse, and let future genemis live? You do not appreciate your northern tools; you are afraid to crowd them too far; you are afraid to give them the whole dose at once; burl tell you, sir, that you cannot give them a dose that they will not swallow. You need not give it to them in homeopathic portions. Give them the slave trade, the property clause, and the whole series at once; for so long as your Federal patrol age holds out, so long you can rely on your north ern allies. You see they will swallow Lecompton it does not require an effort with all its frauda They would take the property clause, and resolve to-morrow that every State in the Union is a te State, and it would not require an effort for them to get down that doctrine. Then you might in troduce the African slave trade, and they wond take that with the same facility that they take all the rest. Do not fear to crowd them, sir. Th are few, and growing beautifully less, rapidly, but they are reliable just as long as you have the Gor ernment with its patronage. the Constitution; but we deny that they are. bers of the Legislative Council, there was a large We deny the authority of the Supreme Court to insert any new provision into the Constitution making them property. Here is the clause which it is said carries slavery now into any Territory, if it is carried there; and the same clause will carry it into any State, by the same rule. They dare not attempt, at this time, to break down State sovereignty; they dare not assert their whole meaning; but they take it piece-meal. The clause in which they pretend to find this power is that which declares that no citizen shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; I come now, sir, to the first organization of the Territory of Kansas under the bill of 1854. The first election under that act was for a Delegate to Congress. At that election there was no very great violence attempted, but there was fraud. Some nineteen hundred Missourians, I think, actualy passed over into the Territory, voted in Genera Whitfield, and then went home. That termin ated that campaign; but between the election of General Whitfield and the election of the ment influx of population from the North. It was deemed important then to strike a final blow fie the institution of slavery in Kansas; then the forces were organized and drilled; they were or ganized in companies and regiments, with mo kets and cannon, with bowie knives and revolvers, with baggage wagons, tents, and whiskey. Onder banners inscribed "for Kansas and slavery," ther marched over and took possession of the lan They went to every voting precinct in the whoe Territory of Kansas except one, and they drove from the polls the honest settlers of that Terr |