Presidential Candidates:. David W. Bartlett
settlement of this Oregon question involves all these interests. And in order to maintain these interests, and secure all the benefits resulting from them, we must not only go to 54° 40', but we have got to exclude Great Britain from the coast in toto."
In the course of the debate in committee of the House upon resolutions giving notice to Great Britain of the abrogation of the treaty between this country and Great Britain, Mr. Ramsey moved to strike out all after the word resolved (in one of the resolutions) and insert, "That the Oregon question is no longer a subject of negotiation or compromise." We quote from the record:
"Tellers were ordered and ten members passed between them, amid shouts of laughter, cries of 54° 40' forever, clapping of hands and stamping of feet, which the chairman was some time in suppressing; and the negative vote was then taken and stood 146. So the amendment was rejected."
The names of the ten "fifty-four forties," were as follows:
Archibald Bell, of Arkansas.
Alexander Ramsey, of Pennsylvania.
William Sawyer, of Ohio.
T. B. Hoge, of Illinois.
Robert Smith, of Illinois.
Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois.
John A. McCleeland, "
John Wentworth, "
Cornelius Darrah, of Pennsylvania.
Felix S. McConnel, of Alabama.
It will be noticed, that then, as now, Mr. Douglas had the faculty of carrying his State delegation with him.
Mr. Douglas has, while in Congress, favored the appropriation by the general government of money for internal improvements upon the Jackson plan of strictly confining such appropriations to objects of national and general, not of State or local importance.
He has frequently voted for river and harbor bills – voted for the Independent Treasury bill, and has, in and out of Congress, utterly denied the power of Congress over the franchise in the States. Mr. Douglas was an early supporter of the Mexican war. "He opposed the incorporation of the Wilmot proviso into the two or three million bills. He believed the people's time had not come for any action on that subject. Slavery was now prohibited in Mexico. If any portion of that country should be annexed to the United States without any stipulation being made on that point, the existing laws would remain in force. …If the question was pressed for immediate decision, he could perceive no other mode of harmonizing conflicting sentiments, but by the adoption of the Missouri Compromise Line."
Mr. Douglas voted to bring up the Homestead bill which was before the last Congress and which passed the House, showing that he is in favor of that important measure.
We now come to the history of Mr. Douglas in connection with the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
The battle which he waged with his political opponents and won upon that bill is so fresh in the memory of all our readers that it will not be safe, or necessary, to go into a minute history of the struggle. In the winter of 1852-3, Mr. Douglas reported a Nebraska bill from the Territorial Committee of which he was chairman, which contained no repeal of the Missouri Compromise or enumeration of his peculiar Popular Sovereignty doctrines. In the great debate over the compromise measures in 1850, no one ever called in question the Missouri Compromise. In the winter of 1852-3, Senator Atchison, of Missouri, declared in his seat in the Senate that the Missouri prohibition could never be repealed.
The Kansas-Nebraska bill as reported from the Committee appeared first without any repeal of the Missouri restriction – on the 7th day of January it was first presented. On the 16th, Mr. Dixon, a Whig senator from Kentucky, proposed an amendment to the bill reported from the committee which repealed the aforesaid compromise. This movement was at first opposed by leading Democrats and their organ the Union, but in a very few days Mr. Douglas, either because he saw the justice of the repeal of the restriction or thought it would advance his political interests, acquiesced in the amendment and made it a part of his bill. We make a few brief extracts from Mr. Douglas's argument in the Senate, Jan. 30, 1854, in support of his bill:
"Sir, I wish you to bear in mind, too, that this geographical line, established by the founders of the Republic between free territories and slave territories, extended as far westward as our territory then reached; the object being to avoid all agitation upon the slavery question by settling that question forever, as far as our territory extended, which was then to the Mississippi River.
"When, in 1803, we acquired from France the territory known as Louisiana, it became necessary to legislate for the protection of the inhabitants residing therein. It will be seen by looking into the bill establishing the territorial government in 1805 for the territory of New Orleans, embracing the same country now known as the State of Louisiana, that the ordinance of 1787 was expressly extended to that territory, excepting the sixth section, which prohibited slavery. Then that act implied that the Territory of New Orleans was to be a slaveholding territory, by making that exception in the law. But, sir, when they came to form what was then called the Territory of Louisiana, subsequently known as the Territory of Missouri, north of the thirty-third parallel, they used different language. They did not extend the ordinance of 1787 to it at all. They first provided that it should be governed by laws made by the governor and the judges, and when, in 1812, Congress gave to that territory, under the name of the Territory of Missouri, a territorial government, the people were allowed to do as they pleased upon the subject of slavery, subject only to the limitations of the Constitution of the United States. Now, what is the inference from that legislation? That slavery was, by implication, recognized south of the thirty-third parallel; and north of that, the people were left to exercise their own judgment and do as they pleased upon the subject, without any implication for or against the existence of the institution.
"This continued to be the condition of the country in the Missouri territory up to 1820, when the celebrated act which is now called the Missouri Compromise act was passed. Slavery did not exist in, nor was it excluded from the country now known as Nebraska. There was no code of laws upon the subject of slavery either way: First, for the reason that slavery had never been introduced into Louisiana and established by positive enactment. It had grown up there by a sort of common law, and been supported and protected. When a common law grows up, when an institution becomes established under a usage, it carries it so far as that usage actually goes, and no further. If it had been established by direct enactment, it might have carried it so far as the political jurisdiction extended; but, be that as it may, by the act of 1812, creating the territory of Missouri, that territory was allowed to legislate upon the subject of slavery as it saw proper, subject only to the limitations which I have stated; and the country not inhabited or thrown open to settlement was set apart as Indian country and rendered subject to Indian laws. Hence, the local legislation of the State of Missouri did not reach into that Indian country, but was excluded from it by the Indian code and Indian laws. The municipal regulations of Missouri could not go there until the Indian title had been extinguished and the country thrown open to settlement. Such being the case, the only legislation in existence in Nebraska territory at the time that the Missouri act passed, namely, the 6th of March, 1820, was a provision, in effect, that the people should be allowed to do as they pleased upon the subject of slavery.
"The territory of Missouri having been left in that legal condition, positive opposition was made to the bill to organize a state government, with a view to its admission into the Union; and a senator from my State, Mr. Jesse B. Thomas, introduced an amendment, known as the eighth section of the bill, in which it was provided that slavery should be prohibited north of 36° 30' north latitude, in all that country which we had acquired from France. What was the object of the enactment of that eighth section? Was it not to go back to the original policy of prescribing boundaries to the limitation of free institutions, and of slave institutions, by a geographical line, in order to avoid all controversy in Congress upon the subject? Hence, they extended that geographical line through all the territory purchased from France, which was as far as our possessions then reached. It was not simply to settle the question on that piece of country, but it was to carry out a great principle, by extending that dividing line as far west as our territory went, and running it onward on each new acquisition of territory. True, the express enactment of the eighth section