Presidential Candidates:. David W. Bartlett
man for his opinion; but when was the most aggravated act ever committed, that he did not say it was committed, in manumitting your slaves and confiscating your property? The gentleman who spoke thus, says: "It is not yet time." There is no better time than the present, to introduce a bill to repeal that act of the Kansas Legislature. Senators say that he (Douglas) may go out. No; he stands on the platform, and it is for those who jump off, to go out.
The chair called the Senate to order, threatening to clear the galleries, unless it was maintained.
Mr. Green said he had received information of the bill by telegraph; but could not legislate on such information.
Mr. Douglas would take it for granted that Mr. Green meant that he received authentic information, and would introduce a bill to repeal the act. The South, he said, had reluctantly acquiesced in the movement with the Democrats of the North to settle the question. He went at some length into a discussion and approval of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. He did not agree with Senator Douglas's views as to the power of the people of a territory, and did not believe that the Nebraska-Kansas bill gave them independent power. The senator from Virginia then gave his ideas as to the people of the territories, and the people of the States. The right of property is recognized in the former, but the inhabitants of a territory are unknown to the Constitution. Congress cannot divest itself of its power over the property of the territories, but it can grant them nothing. South of the Potomac River, to the confines of Mexico, there is not one dissentient voice. The South would be recreant to itself; if it would give one vote for its rights to be taken from the Constitution, and remitted to the pleasure of the people temporarily in the territories.
Mr. Davis took an animated part in the debate against Mr. Douglas, who in the Kansas-Nebraska act, had made a great error, and drawn the Senate into a great error.
Mr. Douglas resumed, saying it won't do to read him out, because they had fallen from the faith. There is no middle ground. It is either intervention or non-intervention.
Mr. Gwin said, if the senator from Illinois had given the same interpretation to the Kansas-Nebraska bill when it was before the Senate, he (Gwin) would not have voted for it, and believed those around him would not. When the senator proposed to speak for the Democracy of the free States, he had no right to speak for California, which thought otherwise.
Mr. Broderick contradicted Mr. Gwin's statement of the views of California. He considered the views of his State were those expressed by Mr. Douglas.
Mr. Gwin replied that he was sent here to do his duty in representing the Democracy of California, and he knew they indorse the action of the Administration, and do not at all indorse the interpretation given by the senator from Illinois.
Mr. Douglas (to Mr. Gwin.) I do say the records show a very general concurrence in the views I then expressed.
Mr. Iverson raised the question of order, that Mr. Douglas had spoken many times. He and Mr. Davis had occupied the floor four or five hours. The point of order was sustained.
Mr. Hunter said it was with reluctance that he occupied the time at the late period of the evening, but the turn the debate had taken rendered an explanation necessary, in justice to himself. He differed with the senator from Illinois, both in the history of the Kansas-Nebraska act, and what was intended by it. When the proposition was made to pass that, he maintained, as he has always done since he has had a place on that floor, that the South had a right to protection for their slave property in the territories.
Mr. Hunter read from his speech of that date, showing the views he then expressed. The case stood thus: southern men on one side maintained they had right, under the Constitution, to protection to their slave property; northern men thought the contrary, and there was no chance of agreement between them, as the act was very carefully framed, neither affirming nor disaffirming the power of the territory to abolish slavery, but reserving the question of right, and agreeing to refer to the judiciary any points arising out of it. It was in itself a compromise, in which neither party conceded their opinions or their rights. They were but placed in abeyance until a case affecting them might arise. No southern man with whom he acted ever considered he was conferring on the Territorial Legislature the absolute right to deal with this subject. They agreed to this settlement as a consequence, acting together upon points wherein they agreed, and expressing no opinion upon points where the differences were irreconcilable. By this they secured the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, upon which the Democrats were agreed, by confining the act to the general purpose to be accomplished. Justice to himself and the distinguished senator from South Carolina, now no more, with whom he had acted and consulted on the matter, required the explanation. Mr. Hunter then drew the attention of the Senate to the time consumed in the debate, and urged a vote upon the amendment.
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