5 under that name. In 1819, Missouri, which was then but thinly peopled, and had an inconsiderable number of slaves, applied for admission into the Union, and her application brought the question of extending the policy of the Ordinance of 1787 to that State, and to other new States in the region acquired from France, to a. direct issue. The House of Representatives insisted on a prohibition against1 the further introduction of slavery in the State; as a condition of her admission. The Senate disagreed with the House in that demand. The non-slaveholding States sustained the House, and the slaveholding States sustained the Senate.' The difference was radical, and tended towards revolution. One party maintained that the condition demanded was constitutional, the other that it was unconstitutional. The public mind became intensely excited, and-painful apprehensions of disunion and civil war began to prevail in the country. . In this crisis, a majority of both Houses agreed upon a plan for the adjustment of the controversy. By this plan, Maine, a rion- slaveholding State, was to be admitted; Missouri was to be admitted without submitting to the condition, before mentioned ; and in all that part of the Territory acquired *from France, which was north of the line of 36 deg. 30 min. of north latitude,’ slavery was to be forever prohibited. Louisiana, which was a part of that Territory, had been admitted as a slave State eight years before; and now, not only was Missouri to be admitted as a slave State, but Arkansas, which was south of that line, by strong implication, was also to be admitted as a slaveholding State. I need not indicate what were the equivalents which the respective parties were to receive in this arrangement, further than to say that the slaveholdin^ States practically were to receive slavehold initiates, the free States to receive a desert, a solitude, in which they might, if they could, plant the germs of future free States. This measure was adopted. It was a great national transaction—- | the first of a class of transactions which have since come to be thoroughly defined and well- understood, under the name of compromises. I My own opinions concerning them are well I known, and are not in question here. According to the general understanding, they are marked i by peculiar circumstances and features, viz: First, there is a division of opinion upon some vital national question between the two Houses of Congress, which division is irreconcilable, except by mutual concessions of interests and opinions, which the Houses deem constitutional and just. Secondly, they are rendered necessary by impending calamities, to result from the failure of legislation, and to be no otherwise averted than by such mutual concessions, or sacrifices. Thirdly, such concessions are mutual and equal, or fere accepted as such, and so become conditions of the mutual arrangement. Fourthly, by this mutual exchange of conditions, the transaction takes on the nature and character of a contract, compact, or treaty, between the parties represented; and so, according to well-settled principles of morality and public law, the statute which embodies it is understood, by those who uphold this system of legislation, to be irrevocable and irrepeala- ble, except by the mutual consent of both, or of all the parties concerned. Not, indeed, that it is absolutely irrepealable, but that it cannot be repealed without a violation of honor, justice, and good faith, which it is presumed will not be committed. Such was the Compromise of 1820. Missouri came into the Union immediately as a slaveholding State, and Arkansas came in as a slaveholding State, sixteen years afterward. Nebraska, the part of the Territory reserved exclusively for free Territories and free States, has remained a wilderness ever since. And now it is proposed here to abrogate, not, indeed,, the whole Compromise, but only that part of it which saved Nebraska as free terri tory, to be afterwards divided into non-slave holding States, which should be admitted in to the Union. And this is proposed, notwithstanding an universal acquiescence in the Compromise, by both parties, for thirty years, and its confirmation, over and over again, by many acts of successive Congresses, and notwithstanding that the slaveholding States have peaceably enjoyed, ever since it was made, all their equivalents, while, owing to circumstances which will hereafter appear, the non-slaveholding States have not practically enjoyed those guarantied to them. This is the question now before the Senate of the United States of America. . It is a question of transcendent importance. The proviso of 1820, to be abrogated in Nebraska, is the Ordinance of the Continental Congress of 1787, extended over a new part of the national domain, acquired under our present Constitution. It is rendered venerable by its antiquity, and sacred by the memory of that Congress, which, in surrendering its trust, after establishing the Ordinance, enjoined it upon posterity, always to remember that the cause of the United States was the cause of Humdn Nature. The question involves an issue of public faith, and national morality and honor. It will be a sad day for this Republic, when such •a question shall be deemed unworthy of grave discussion and shall fail to excite intense interest. Even if it were certain that the inhibition of slavery in the region concerned was unnecessary, and if the question was thus reduced to a mere abstraction, yet even that abstraction would involve the testimony of the^United States on the expediency^wisdom, morality, and justice, ot the system of human bondage, with which this and other portions of the world have been
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=