ished in the Senate Chamber, because the slave interest demanded that it should die.

I have thus attempted to attract attention to the Missouri compromise, as a sagacious measure long ago deliberated and ordained, and maintained since, as a sure means of preventing the agitation of this vexed and irritant subject of slavery in Kansas. I have alluded to the opposing interests and passions likely, in the absence of such a legal prohibition, to be drawn into conflict with each other to the breaking down of that barrier, as conducing inevitably to the civil disorders prevailing in that unhappy Territory, unequaled in enormity by any modern example of public crime to the almost illimitable public domain, of which Kansas and Nebraska are only a fraction, exposed by it to the introduction of slavery and the exhibition of this reign of riot and civil war to the protracted and desperate struggle it promises, as the field of strife shifts with the progress of our colonization, and now, at length, to the large and aristocratic influence of riches in slaves, that seeks to enter as the controlling element in the contest. Such is this modern war, to give it its true name, of the few against the many-of privilege and caste against poor, buť honest industry and numbers.

The present is imminent-the future is full of evil portents. No one now attempts, as was done a few months ago, to hide or deny the deplorable disorders in Kansas. Senator MASON calls it "an unfortunate state of things." Senator Doug LAS talks of "civil war in Kansas," and of "restoring peace.

tration. The medicine to the State diseased that is now needful is, to restore us to that condition, and the public health will be restored with it. In his message, dated August 14, 1848, approving the bill erecting the Territory of Oregon, Mr. Polk used the following language:

"In December, 1819, application was made to Congress, by the people of Missouri Territory, for admission into the Union as a State. The discussion upon the subject in Congress involved the question of slavery, and was prosecuted with such violence as to produce excitements alarming to every patriot in the Union. But the good genius of conciliation, which presided at the birth of our institutions, finally prevailed, and the Missouri compromise was adopted. The eighth section of the act of Congress of the 6th of March, 1820, 'to authorize the people of the Territory of Missouri to form a constitution and State government,' &c., provides:

""That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of 36° 30', north latitude, not ineluded within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service

as aforesaid.'

"This compromise had the effect of calming the troubled waves, and restoring peace and good will throughout the States of the Union. The Missouri question had excited intense agitation of the public mind, and threatened to divide the country into geographical parties, alienating the feelings of attachment which each portion of the Union should bear to every other. The compromise allayed the excitement, tranquillized the popular mind, and restored confidence and fraternal feelings. Its authors were hailed "Ought we now to disturb the Texas and Missouri compromises? Ought we, at this late day, in attempting to annul what has been so long established and acquiesced in, to excite sectional jealousies and divisions, to alienate the people of different portions of the Union from each other.

as public benefactors." Few attempt their pallia

tion. They stand confessed, and, behind them, is the mischievous cause, the repeal of the Missouri restriction. A whole people rouses itself indignantly at this wrong to liberty, justice, and public faith. The conspirators against the liberties of Kansas turn pale in the presence of an incensed nation, and at the energy of the passions they have roused and invoked, but which they are too infirm to master. Like the audacious fisherman of the Arabic story, they have raised a spirit gigantic, menacing, cruel, and that threatens to destroy them, and which they can neither soothe nor subdue.

What is the remedy for the evils of misgovernment and crime in Kansas? This is the practical question. It is, in other words, the alarmed and pointed interrogation of the gentleman from Tennessee, [Mr. SMITH.] "I believe, believe," he says, "citizens of both sections have acted imprudently

in reference to the difficulties which now exist in the Territory of Kansas. This is not the time to discuss the causes of these unfortunate difficulties, which are fast bringing into disrepute the fair fame of our Republic. They must be stopped, and the question is, how is it to be done?" I'an

and to endanger the existence of the Union itself?"

Is not the public mind again disturbed, in consequence of the repeal of the measure that then induced this haughty executive panegyric from your and my late political friend and patron? Are not our attachments curdling into estrangements, and affections and alienations shaping themselves to geographical boundaries? Then, this is the appointed time for that generous measure of sectional compromise and sacrifice to reëxist and do its pacific office. Inert and silent, though preg nant with power, it endured more than a third of a century, a pledge of public peace. Banished at an evil time, but restored and exalted, by common consent, at this season of disquietude and alarm, to its former place of just dignity among our statutes, it is now capable of being not only the gage, but the agent and executive of peace. The South is rescued from the shame of the inception of that measure. But it is obnoxious to the fault of having permitted it, when the whole North stirred in opposition to it, and it was known that some of its representatives were likely to be false to their own engagements, and the wishes of the North. That repeal could only be useful to the South, if quietly acquiesced in. Now that the struggle for supremacy has commenced, is it certain that the object of making Kansas a slave State will not fail, when firmly

swer, restore the Missouri compromise. By this easy means make slavery agitation impossible. Bring back that healing measure, and you bring back the public peace, and strengthen the bonds of union, and reestablish our family love. The old Latins, a sensible set of antique gentlemen, used to speak of the public welfare as the public health. We were hearty, cheerful, happy, at the peaceful sundown of Mr. Fillmore's adminis-opposed by equal energy, and endurance, and

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superiority of numbers? And, if the plan succeed, what then? It is something that the South will have lost much of the moral support of its northern sisters. But it is much more, that it shall have first given this flagrant lesson of the vanity of public faith; for, it need not be disguised, it will be met in that spirit. It will be left without assurance of that part of the Louisiana purchase yet unorganized, south of 360 30'. The third clause of the joint resolution of March 2, 1845, for the annexation of Texas, prohibited slavery north of the same line in Texas, and provided, in the same section, for the admission of four new States by her consent and the consent of Congress. The first part of the section is certainly repealed by the Nebraska bill, and the North will demand in justice, that if one half of the bargain is disclaimed and annulled, the other half shall go down with it. Such is the construction that will be put upon it. There will, then, be no subdivision of Texas. Will the South be content with this?

But this measure is more distasteful to the North. Guarded by this compromise, Kansas and Nebraska were long looked to as the appointed field and direction of its expansion. In the spirit of the letter of Charles Pinckney, written on the night of its passage, dated "Congress Hall, three o'clock at night," in which he said the slavehold ing States had gained great triumph, had added

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six or eight members to the Senate, and that the North would gain nothing "for a great length of time," the North has bided its time and its advantages long postponed, and rested in security on this act of national faith. This public infidelity now has disturbed its dream, and drawn its people from the places of peace and industry they love; like a guard called at midnight to stand on their defense, and prevent encroachments for the future.

But the South answers, while availing itself of this breach of faith, and attempting to obtrude slavery on Kansas, that its restoration is useless, because its moral power is gone. Is this so? Is the compromise of 1820 remembered with common scorn, as a thing of no obligation, and of questionable wisdom and patriotism? On the other hand, does not the whole Union pay homage to the benefactors who ordained it, and mourn the age of peace that expired with it? And if the act deserves shame and obloquy, do these extend to its authors? Are Calhoun, and Pinckney, and Clay, and Monroe, to be lost from the patrimony of national honor, and perish from the public love, or live only to be the ribald and familiar jests of fresh placemen, complaisant with consequence, who try to strut in extraordinary stature in their places? And the fathers of the Republic, who were present, and helped to lay its deep foundations, and often laid down, by line and plummet, the constitutional power and duty to exclude slavery from the Territories, -are they, too, to be comprehended in the catholic scorn this school of charlatans is visiting on the whole past?

The Missouri compromise is without legal efficacy, but is shorn of none of its moral power. It has its place in history and its hold on the public heart. It is felt not to be lost, but only banished.

It will be regarded the more because it has seemed to be in hazard. Its restoration will be hailed as the augury of permanent peace. It will kindle illuminations, and fill the land with gladness, and the whole nation will go forth to greet it, as old Athens at the crisis of her fate, when the barbaric host cast its shadow over all her seas and plains, poured out from all her gates to bring home the banished Aristides.

This is needful for two reasons-in justice to. the injured North, to rebuke her betrayers, who, false to representative duty, and for purposes of personal aggrandizement, made commerce of the national honor and happiness; but, for the greater reason of reassuring good faith and generous compromise, as the only means of lasting har

mony.

Such is republicanism to-day. It hath this extent. It has no purpose to offend or assail the South, for it would then be sectional. It does not espouse any local or limited interest of the South, for that, too, would be sectional. But it has a national regard for the Union and the interest of all the States alike. It holds them by the exact limits established a third of a century ago by national men, and asks no more, and will take no less. It accedes to the very terms that the South, jealous of honor, made for itself. So determined, it will plead its cause at the forum of the people for its faith and justice, and allow excellence, in no quarter, for superior devotion to the Union.

If it was right and constitutional to pass this act in 1820, it is right and constitutional now. A modern philosopher, given to puzzling himself on all sorts of abstractions, finally reasoned himself into universal skepticism, and grew into the belief that nothing whatever existed, mind or matter, and wrote a book on the subject. Our constitutional expounders, in this age of searching analysis, have made almost as much progress, and reasoned away most of the constitutional powers, as well as the solid bottoms they were supposed to stand on. Among other things, they have explored the powers of Congress to govern its own territory, and especially on the subject of slavery there, and find it all unconstitutional. Mr. Jefferson thought the Constitution gave no power to acquire territory. They have no diffi culty in finding in the Constitution abundant power to acquire territory, and understand the whole subject much better than Mr. Jefferson. Jackson, Webster, Calhoun, Polk, Clay, were in favor of the principle of the Missouri compromise; believed that Congress had the power, after acquiring territory, to govern it, as a farmer has a right to use his farm as he pleases; exclude slavery or not; and acted on it. These expounders know better, and only pity them for living and dying in the delusion. I have nothing to say to these constitutional schoolmasters. I am content to stand by the faith and practice of the fathers and of the pure age of the Republic.

But there is a class which goes further, and challenges our public history as against the power. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. STEPHENS] lately made the following statement:

"I say that the fathers who made this Republic, from the beginning of it-from the date of the Constitution and up to 1820, never, in a single instance, exercised the power of excluding the emigration of slaves from any of the States of this Union to the common territory."

I venture to confront it, and, in no offensive manner, to contradict its historical accuracy. I deny it altogether. I aver, on the other hand, that in theory and practice, by reason, usage, and precedent, under the Confederation and under the Constitution, from the beginning of the Government to the passage of the Nebraska act, the power of Congress to legislate for the Territories on all subjects, including the particular subject above named, has been asserted and maintained. This is a broad proposition, but its truth is impregnable. And when government has been maintained through the Territorial Legislatures, or through officers of territorial creation, it has been by the express authority of Congress, and by the use of its own delegated power, which it could take away at pleasure. Congress has always used this power directly or by indirection. It is evinced in our legislation, where its instances are strewn all over its pages-it has been maintained in judicial decisions of all our courts, State and Federal, from the highest to the lowest. It has been maintained in the executive administration of our laws. It is the salient fact of the history of our Territories, standing out distinguished, like a promontory. And I challenge the proof of the gentleman's proposition by examples. At least, let history be spared from wrong for mere party objects.

I do not mean to go over the large range of

proofs that have been so often told and illustrated, but to allude only to the less familiar history of my own State.

Sir, that original Abolitionist, Thomas Jefferson, who, not content with stirring up rebellion against King George, and setting the country in a blaze, went abroad publishing what are now considered fanatical sentiments of human freedom and progress, for which, if he were in Kansas to-day, he might enjoy a prison, with an iron,

ball and chain fastened to him, and a Bible to improve his morals by, according to the second and fifth sections of chapter twenty-two of that amiable code of laws-Thomas Jefferson inaugurated legislation to exclude slavery from the public lands. Restriction and intervention began

with him. The gentleman from Georgia, while reading the Holmes letter, which I shall hereafter refer to, said he wanted from Jefferson no abstraction, but something practical. Here it is. On the 1st of March, 1784, Jefferson, as chairman of a committee to devise a scheme of government, in the language of the Journal, for "the transmontane half of the American Republic," comprehending the region beyond the mountains, from the north boundary of Florida to the lakes and the Mississippi, reported a bill to the Congress of the Confederation, subdividing it into seventeen States, and containing the following section:

"Eighth. That after the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in the punishment crimes of which the party shall have been duly convieted to have been personally guilty."

That is practical. It applied to every inch of the public lands from the lakes to Florida. It did not stand, in the language of the gentlemarr from Georgia," on the principle of a division of the Territory." It gave all to freedom, for that was the impulse and the end-the beginning and the final cause of the revolutionary struggle. It went further, and organized them as States, and said slavery should not exist there, when organized into States.

This section failed, from the accidental absence of one New Jersey member, seven States being necessary to pass it. On what trifles great events depend! If it had passed, the Alleghanies would have been the western wall of slavery.

The government of Territories was then a new business; and the ordinance of 1784, passed on the very day of the Virginia grant, and when it was supposed it would include Kentucky, was too clumsy to work well. This led afterwards to the celebrated ordinance of July 13, 1787, the corner-stone of the prosperity and happiness of the Northwest. It differed from the former, in making the expulsion of slavery immediate, and in being limited to the country between the Ohio and Mississippi. It was reported by a committee, consisting of Carrington and Richard H. Lee of Virginia; Nathan Dane of Massachusetts; Smith of New York; and Keen of South Carolina, names familiar to us as household words. It was reported in the language of the former act of Jefferson. It was passed by the vote of all the States, and of all the delegates from all the States but one from New York. It

again prohibited slavery forever from what was then the whole national domain and not only while the Northwest remained a Territory, but after it should be organized into States. It did more. The prohibition entered into territory where slavery was then lawful, and where it in fact existed, and expelled it violently from the territory. It disdained the existing property in human suffering and human life. It was ignorant of that new equality of the States, by which a small class of patriarchs, whether from Utah or South Carolina, shall occupy the public lands, filled with natural gifts fit for freemen, to the inconvenience and expulsion of everybody else, This kind of republicanism was then national. Every State was for it. Can the gentleman from Georgia tell the time when it became sectional, or how it became so, or who made it so? This first child of freedom was born just as it was, wholly free from the common will of the whole

Union.

But it will be answered, that this ordinance was passed by the Congress ress of the Confederation, and before the Constitution. Grant it. This makes the case much stronger. The Congress of the Confederation, like the present Congress under the Constitution, could only use powers expressly granted. This Congress can do nothing not permitted hitted by the Constitution. That Congress could do nothing not permitted by the Articles of Confederation. But, by the Articles of Confederation, no power of any kind, in express words, was granted to acquire or to gov ern territory. It was attempted to derive it in the power to collect revenue, and in the power to regulate intercourse with the Indian tribes. But this was abandoned, and the right was rested, where the Supreme Court of the United States now rests it, under the Constitution, on the better principle, that the owner of the territory, of course, has the right to govern it for all purposes.

If, therefore, the Congress of the Confederation, when the power to govern the Territories was, in terms, so doubtful, could, under that instrument, enter that Territory, expel slavery and substitute freedom, much more can it be done under the Constitution of the United States, which conveys express power to Congress to make all needful rules and regulations for the Territories and other property of the United States.

It deserves, too, to be remembered, that the Congress that passed this ordinance, and the convention that framed the Constitution, sat at the same time, and that many of the members belonged to both, and knew very well, nobody better, what powers the Articles of Confederation lacked, and what powers it was necessary that the Constitution should have.

But this doubt was very soon put to rest. The * first Congress under the Constitution, composed in part of the men who had framed that instrument, met, and, on the 7th of August, 1789, reenacted the ordinance of 1787, without a division. Washington, who had been the president of the convention that framed the Constitution, approved the act. Who knew better the significancy of that instrument than those who made it? than he I expressitall when I speak the name of Washington-who, in presiding at the work of its creation, gave the Union hopes of a duration more lasting than brass or marble? Washington, by this act, gave the consent of his judgment that it was constitutional and right, and consistent with the genius of American government, to expel the political wanton, slavery, from the national territory.

The preamble of that act is worthy of notice: "Whereas, in order that the ordinance of the United States, in Congress assembled, for the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, may continue to have full effect, it is requisite that certain provisions should be made, so as to adapt the same to the present Constitution of the United States. Be it enacted," &c.

to have effect; and the object of the law was that it might continue to have full effect. Sir, Washington and the first Congress of the Constitution believed that it was a constitutional right and duty to expel slavery from the Territories, and maintain it so forever. This is what republicanism claims. Washington baptized our creed, and made it national. The gentleman from Georgia can see something practical in this, and will not attempt to wrestle with this high authority.

Ohio being about to be admitted into the Union, Congress, on the 7th of May, 1800, erected Indiana Territory. It provided for it "a territorial government, in all respects similar to that provided by the ordinance of Congress, passed on the 13th of July, 1787, for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio." Thus Congress again asserted its power to legislate to every extent on this vexed question for her Territories. President Adams approved the act, and Jefferson executed it.

It was in April, 1802, that Congress passed an act authorizing the people of Ohio to form a State constitution. The convention met at Chillicothe in November. Governor St. Clair addressed it. Here squatter sovereignty began, and first lifted up its head. What became of the head will be seen in the sequel. Mr. Douglas and Mr. Dickinson may end their rivalry for this patent. Governor St. Clair was the inventor and discoverer, and the time for it to be of profit to any one is run out. He then said:

"The people of the Territory require no act of Congress to authorize them to call a convention and form a constitu

tion, and the act of Congress is a nullity. For all internal affairs we have a complete Legislature of our own, and in them we are no more bound by an act of Congress than we would be bound by an edict of the First Consul of France.

The five thousand persons that were let off to the Indiana Territory have been divested of their rights. We have the means in our hands to bring Congress to reason, if we should be forced to use them."

In consequence of being ignorant of what is known to Mr. Pierce, and every one who takes political communion with him, to be the sovereign rights of the people of the Territories, Mr. Jefferson simply crossed his legs, as he was in the habit of doing when he took a decided resolution, and directed Mr. Madison, his Secretary of State, to write the following letter:

"SIR: The President, observing in an address lately delivered by you to the convention held at Chillicothe, an intemperance and indecorum of language towards the Legislature of the United States, and a disorganizing spirit and tendency of very evil example, and grossly violating the rules of conduct enjoined by your public station, determines that your commission of Governor of the Northwestern Territory shall cease on the receipt of this letter.

"I am, &c.,

JAMES MADISON.

"ARTHUR ST. CLAIR, Esq., Chillicothe."

The act then provides that the Governor of the Northwest Territory shall communicate to the Congress of the United States the information required under the ordinance of 1787, and that then the President shall appoint officers, &c. Mr. Pierce, in his late message, says that this ordinance was repealed on the adoption of the Constitution. This is worthy of the President's ability at constitutional construction. If the ordinance was repealed, and the government dissolved, what Governor was there to report any thing? What was he Governor of? If the ordinance was repealed, and this law did not reënact it, by what law was the Northwest Territory governed, until the establishment of Ohio as a State on the 30th of April, 1802, for there was Illinois Territory was created by act of Conno other law? This modern executive opinion is gress, February 3, 1809. The fourth section too weak for controversy. The very preamble applied to it the ordinance of 1787. This was of this law states the ordinance to be continuing | approved by Madison. The same had been done

a

The putting the Federal head of Arthur St. Clair in charger-the Federal head out of which squatter sovereignty was born, and where it died -was a piece of somewhat practical conduct in Madison and Jefferson.

for Michigan by the act of January 11, 1805, that country where they can be permitted to enjoy their approved by Jefferson. The same was after-property. wards done for Wisconsin by the twelfth section of the act of April 20, 1836, approved by Jack