7 fully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid.’ “ Under this section, as in the cash of the Mexican law in New Mexico and Utah, it is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by valid enactment. The decision of this question involves the constitutional power of Congress to pass laws prescribing and regulating the domestic institutions of the various Territories of the Union, In the opin.on of those eminent statesmen who hold that Congress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the Territories, the 8th section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void; while the prevailing sentment in large portions of the Union sustains the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any of the Territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of law. Your Committee do not feel themselves called upon to enter into the discussion of these controverted questions. They involve the same grave issues which produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 1850. As Congress deemed it wise and prudent to refrain from deciding the matters in controversy then, either by affirming or repealing the Mexican laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of the Con- stitut on, and the extent of the protection afforded by it to slave property in the Territories, to your Committee are not prepared now to recommend a departure from the course pursued on that memorable occasion, either by affirming or repealing the 8th section of the Missouri act, or by any-act declaratory of. the meaning of the Constitution in respect to the legal points in dispute.” This report gives us the deliberate judgment of the Committee on two important points. First, that the Compromise of 1850 diej not, by its letter or by its spirit, repeal, or render necessary, or even propose, the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise ; and, secondly, that the Missouri Compromise ought not now to be abrogated. And now, sir, what do we next hear from this Committee ? First, two similar and kindred bills, actually abrogating the Missouri Compromise, which, in their report, they had told us ought not to be abrogated at all. Secondly, these bills declare on their face, in substance, that that Compromise was already abrogated by the spirit of that very Compromise of 1850, which, in their report they had just shown us, left the Compromise of 1820 absolutely unaffected and unimpaired. Thirdly, the' Committee favor us, by their chairman, with an oral explanation, that the amended bills abrogating the Missouri Compromise are identical with their previous bill, which did not abrogate it, and are only made to differ in phraseology, to the end that the provisions contained in their previous, and now discarded, bill, shall be absolutely clear and certain. I entertain great respect for the Committee itself, but I must take leave to say that the inconsistencies and self-contradictions contained in the papers it has given us, have destroyed; all claims, on the part of those documents, to. respect, here or elsewhere. The recital of the effect of the Compromise of 1850 upon the Compromise of 1820, as finally revised, corrected, and amended, here in the them now the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the very sources of the Mississippi, what territory will be secure, what territory can be secured hereafter, for the creation and organization of free States, within our ocean-bound domain 1 What territories on this continent will remain unappropriated and unoccupied, for us to annex'? What territories^ even if we are. able to buy or conquer them from Great Britain or Russia, will the slaveholding States suffer, much less aid, us to annex, to restore the equilibrium which .by this unnecessary measure we shall have so unwisely, sb hurriedly, so suicidally subverted? Nor aw I to be told that only a few slaves will enter into this vast region. One slaveholder in a new Territory, with access to the Executive ear at Washington, exercises more political influence than five hundred freemen. It is not necessary that all or a majority of the citizens of a State shall be slaveholders, to constitute a slaveholding State. Delaware has only 2,000 slaves, against 91,000 freemen ; and yet Delaware is a slaveholding State. The proportion is not substantially different in Maryland and in Missouri; and yet they are slaveholding States. These, sir, are the stakes in this legislative game, in which I lament to see, that while the representatives of the slaveholding States are unanimously and earnestly playing to win, so many of the representatives of the ' non-sIaveholding'States are with even greater zeal and diligence playing to lose. Mr. President, the Committee who have recommended these twin bills for the organization of the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas hold the affirmative in the argument upon their passage. What is the case they present to the Senate I and the country ? ■They have submitted a report; but that report, brought in before they had introduced or I even conceived this bold and daring measure of abrogating the Missouri Compromise, directs all1 its arguments against it. The Committee say, in their report: “ Such being the character of the controversy, in respect to the territory acquired from Mexico, a similar question has arisen in regard to the right to hold slaves in the proposed Territory of Nebraska., when the Indian laws shall be withdrawn, and the country thrown open to emigration and settlement. By the Sth section of ‘ an act to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a Constitution-and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to prohibit Slavery in certain Territories,’approved March 6, 1820, it was provided: ‘ That in all that Territory ceded by France to the United States underthe name of Louisiana, which lies north ofthir- •ty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude,' otherwise than in ths punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibitedProvided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Terri- | tory of the Ux.it.d States, such fugitive may be law
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