MR. DOUGLAS.-I think if the senator from Mississippi had carefully read my speech, he would have found no necessity for vindicating the President of the United States from any criticism that I had made upon his letter, or from any issue that I had made with the President growing out of that letter. Certainly, in my speech, there is no criticism upon the President, none upon his letter, no issue made with him; on the contrary, an express disclaimer of any such issue. I quoted the paragraph from the President's letter in reply to Gov. Wise, and I will quote it again:

"I am at a loss to discover any provision in the Constitution or laws of the United Statos which would authorize me to take steps for this purpose." [That is, preserving the peace between the States.]

My impression, from reading the President's letter, was that he was inclined to the belief that the Constitution conferred no power upon the Federal Government to interfere. But still, it might be that such was not the President's meaning, and that he only wished to be understood as saying that existing laws conferred no authority upon him to interfere. Hence, in order to make no issue with the President upon that subject, I stated, I shall not stop to inquire whether he meant to be understood as denying the power of Congress to confer authority, or denying that the authority was yet conferred. My simple object was to obtain suitable legislation to redress similar evils in the future; that if the present laws were not sufficient-I believe there are none on the subject-Congress ought to enact suitable laws to the extent that the Constitution authorized, to prevent these invasions. I quoted it for the purpose of showing the necessity of legislation by Congress. My argument was founded upon that supposed necessity. proceeded to demonstrate that the Constitution conferred the power on Congress to pass laws necessary and proper to protect the States, and I called upon Congress to exercise that power. I made no issue with the President.

But the senator intimates that the legislation of which I spoke would lead to an act of usurpation that would endanger the rights of the States, and yet goes on to prove that the President of the United States does not differ with me in regard to that constitutional power. If the President agrees with me on that point, I am glad of it. If he differs with me it would not change my opinions nor my action, but I respectfully submit, when I only propose such legislation as the Constitution authorizes and requires, it is hardly fair to say that that means an attack upon the sovereignty of the States.

The legislation that I propose on this point of combinations, was this: that it shall be lawful for the grand juries of the United States courts to indict all men who shall form conspiracies or combinations to invade a State or to disturb or molest citizens, property, or institutions; and that it shall be proper for the petit jury in the United States courts, under the judge, to try and convict the conspirators, and to punish them by confinement in the penitentiaries or prisons within the respective States where the conspiracies or combinations are formed. That was the power that I proposed should be con

ferred by law on the federal courts. I never proposed to intrust to the President an army to go and seek out conspiracies, to seek out combinations, and to punish them by military rule. My whole argument was that the federal courts should have jurisdiction over these conspiracies and combinations; that the conspirators should be indicted, and convicted according to law, and punished to the extent of their power. But in case of an organized body of men, or a military force in the act of invading, I would confer authority to use military force to the extent necessary to prevent that-not the conspiracy. The senator says he has got that power now. The President of the United States, I apprehend, thought not, for this reason: He said the only power he had got was the authority conferred by the two acts to which he alluded, to wit: to protect the United States against invasion from foreign powers and Indian tribes; and he stated that the invasion of one State from another State did not come within the specifications of the statute for protecting the United States against foreign powers and Indian tribes. If the senator thinks that that power is there, when we get the legislation before us it will be proper to make amendments which will reach each objection he may raise. The two propositions I maintained in my argument, and those provided for in my resolution, were these: first to protect each State against invasion-the case of actual invasion being then in process of execution; second, to make it criminal to form conspiracies and combinations in any State or Territory, or any place within the United States, against the institutions, property or government of any other State or Territory of this Union. Those were the propositions.

REPLY TO SENATOR SEWARD.

On the 29th of February, Mr. Seward made his great speech on the occasion of his presenting the Wyandott Constitution of Kansas. It was a speech of much ability, and no doubt, when he had concluded, Mr. Seward imagined that he had dealt a death-blow to the Democratic party. Mr. Douglas immediately replied to Mr. Seward, taking up seriatim the points of his speech, and scattering his sophistries to the winds. By general confession Mr. Douglas has rarely appeared to better advantage on the floor of the Senate thar in this triumphant extempore reply to Mr. Seward. In the language of the correspondent of the "Cleveland Plaindealer," "He decapitated the mighty Philistine with his own sword.

The beautiful structure which had cost Mr. Seward so much time, labor, and travel, was in one brief hour scattered in fragments at the feet of the Little Giant."

The reader will find the reply of Mr. Douglas in a subsequent part of this work, from which we give brief extracts:

EXTRACTS FROM REPLY.

MR. PRESIDENT: I trust I shall be pardoned for a few remarks upon so much of the senator's speech as consists in an assault on the Democratic party, and especially with regard to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, of which I was the responsible author. It has become fashionable now-a-days for each gentleman making a speech against the Democratic party to refer to the Kansas-Nebraska act as a cause of all the disturbances that have since ensued. They talk about the repeal of a sacred compact that had been undisturbed for more than a quarter of a century, as if those who complained of violated faith had been faithful to the provisions of the Missouri Compromise. Sir, wherein consisted the necessity for the repeal or abrogation of that act, except it was that the majority in the northern States refused to carry out the Missouri Compromise in good faith? I stood willing to extend it to the Pacific Ocean, and abide by it forever, and the entire South, without one exception in this body, was willing thus to abide by it; but the freesoil element of the northern States was so strong as to defeat that measure, and thus open the slavery question anew. The men who now complain of the abrogation of that act were the very men who denounced it, and denounced all of us who were willing to abide by it so long as it stood upon the statutebook. Sir, it was the defeat, in the House of Representatives, of the enactment of the bill to extend the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific Ocean, after it had passed the Senate on my own motion, that opened the controversy of 1850, which was terminated by the adoption of the measures of that year.

We carried those Compromise measures over the head of the sena tor of New York and his present associates. We, in those measures established a great principle, rebuking his doctrine of intervention by the Congress of the United States to prohibit slavery in the Territories. Both parties, in 1852, pledged themselves to abide by that principle and thus stood pledged not to prohibit slavery in the Territories by act of Congress. The Whig party affirmed that pledge, and so did the Democracy. In 1854 we only carried out, in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the same principle that had been affirmed in the Compromise measures of 1850. I repeat that their resistance to carrying out in good faith the settlement of 1820, their defeat of the bill for extending it to the Pacific Ocean, was the sole cause of the agitation of 1850, and gave rise to the necessity of establishing the

principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the Terri. tories.

But, sir, the whole argument of that senator goes far beyond the question of slavery, even in the Territories. His entire argument rests on the assumption that the negro and the white man were equal by Divine law, and hence that all laws and constitutions and governments in violation of the principle of negro equality are in violation of the law of God. That is the basis upon which his speech rests.

He quotes the Declaration of Independence to show that the fathers of the Revolution understood that the negro was placed on an equality with the white man, by quoting the clause, "we hold these truths to be self-evident that, all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Sir, the doctrine of that senator and of his party is-and I have had to meet it for eight years-that the Declaration of Independence intended to recognize the negro and the white man as equal under the Divine law, and hence that all the provisions of the Constitution of the United States which recognize slavery are in violation of the Divine law. In other words, it is an argument against the Constitution of the United States upon the ground that it is contrary to the law of God. The senator from New York has long held that doctrine. The senator

from New York has often proclaimed to the world that the Constitution of the United States was in violation of the Divine law, and that senator will not contradict the statement. I have an extract from one of his speeches now before me, in which that proposition is distinctly put forth. In a speech made in the State of Ohio, in 1848, he said:

"Slavery is the sin of not some of the States only, but of them all; of not one nationality, but of all nations. It perverted and corrupted the moral sense of mankind deeply and universally, and this perversion became a universal habit. Habits of thought become fixed principles. No American State has yet delivered itself entirely from these habits. We, in New York, are guilty of slavery still by withholding the right of suffrage from the race we have emancipated. You, in Ohio, are guilty in the same way by a system of black laws still more aristocratic and odious. It is written in the Constitution of the United States that five slaves shall count equal to three freemen as a basis of representation; and it is written, also, IN VIOLATION OF DIVINE LAW, that we shall surrender the fugitive slave who takes refuge at our firesides from his relentless pursuer."

Conventions of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan; also of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and New York-Claims of the North-west-Conclusion.

CONVENTIONS IN THE NORTHWEST.

THE northwestern States began to hold their State Conventions, and to elect delegates to the National Democratic Convention at Charleston, early in 1860.

Illinois was first in the field. She held her Convention at Springfield, on the 4th of January, 1860, and unanimously adopted, among others, the following resolutions:

Resolved, That the Democracy of Illinois do reassert and affirm the Cincinnati platform, in the words, spirit and meaning with which the same was adopted, understood and ratified by the people in 1856, and do reject and utterly repudiate all such new issues and tests as the revival of the African slave-trade, or a congressional slave code for the Territories, or the doctrine that slavery is a federal institution, deriving its validity in the several States and Territories in which it exists from the Constitution of the United States, instead of being a mere municipal institution, existing in such States and Territories "under the laws thereof."

Resolved, That the Democratic party of the Union is pledged in faith and honor, by the Cincinnati Platform and its indorsement of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, to the following propositions:

1. That all questions pertaining to African slavery in the Territories shall be forever banished from the halls of Congress.

2. That the people of the Territories respectively shall be left perfectly free to make such laws and regulations in respect to slavery and all other matters of local concern as they may determine for themselves, subject to no other limitations or restrictions than those imposed by the Constitution of the United States.