10 sion of the highest crimes against American liberty that man can be guilty of. It was a Legislature elected in this manner, that took the initiatory steps towards the Convention which framed this Constitution. I say a body elected in such a manner could do no legal acts. They got together, however, and in hot haste passed all the laws of Missouri in a body, as the Senator from Michigan stated yesterday. They did not alter their titles, but they took a short road, by saying we will take the whole code, and wherever it says State it shall be construed to mean “ Territory.” I have looked through that code somewhat, and there I find the provisions for patrols to keep the slaves in order at night, as they have in Missouri. Those laws were transferred into the Territory of Kansas before there was, perhaps, a single slave there. Laws were passed ordering the people to patrol the districts, to see that the slaves kept in order. The fact is, that they swallowed the Missouri statute book whole, and did not know what was in it, and to them it made no difference what was in it. They went further, and passed laws which would have been disgraceful to any king or country, from Nero to Nicholas. You can find no such laws on any statute book. They were unconstitutional ; and even General Cass, on this floor, was compelled to say that they were infamous and disgraceful to the age; but yet the Senate of the United States would not repeal them. The Senator from Louisiana did not touch on this subject. He passed it by as easily and as lightly as he could. He dwelt on the beauties of old Judge Taney more than he did on the frauds and violence in Kansas. He talked about the Toombs bill, and said we would.not vote for it. He sa:d the people of the Terri tory sent here petitions, and wanted Congress to accept the Topeka Constitution, but the ma jority in this body would not do that, but were willing to pass an enabling act. There is a little curious history mixed up with that act, which has come out at this session. It is all of a piece with the candle-box frauds, and shows that that was intended as a snap judgment. The • Toombs bill was plausible upon its face, and really the great objection to it at the time was the state of the Territorv. It was-then in the hands of the Border Ruffians, the usurpers, and it was impossible to get officers there who would act with any fairness, or give any certainty that anything like justice would be done That was our real objection to it, for I was in my heart so convinced that the principle was universally acknowledged that a Constitution formed by a Convention ought to be submitted to the people, that I did not know but it was contaiped in that bill; I was off my guard. I could not believe any American citizen would endeavor to rob a people of this God given right of forming their own institutions, especially as you had said that the people of Kansas, above all others, should be perfectly free to ( make their own institutions in their own way. How was that ? I have learned during the I session, by what has come out at side-bar here, that this was a matter of deliberation at that day ; that the Committee on Territories, as I have understood the statement, were summoned to the house of their chief, .there to sit in judgment on this very clause, whether the people should or should not have this right; and I understand that there such a clause in the first bill was stricken out, and it was passed by this body without any such clause. Mr. HALE. For “ peculiar reasons.” Mr. WADE. Yes, sir, for peculiar reasons. It was a matter of premeditation. It did not happen by accident. You did not intend, at that period or at any other, that the people should have the right to sit in judgment on the Constitution by which they were to be governed, [A running discussion here took place in regard to the meeting of the committee and its deliberations, in which Mr. Bigler reaffirmed what he had previously said about the striking out of the clause for submitting the Constitution to the people. It was finally cut short by (he motion to adjourn. On the following Monday, Mr. WADE resumed.] THE LITTLE MYSTERIES OF POLITICS. Mr. President, when I alluded on Saturday to that enabling act which was called the Toombs bill, I had no idea that I was about to wake up so many reminiscences as I have, in almost every direction, in this Chamber. I called attention to it, not with any purpose whatever of raising any question over the manner in which a clause in that bill seemed to have been stricken out. I do not care who struck it out; I do not care what deliberations were had about it. The reason, and the only reason, why I alluded to it was, that I thought the Senator from Louisiana, [Mr. Benjamin,] in calling attention to it, had given it a consequence to which it was not entitled; and I had some observations that I thought proper to make on that point. But the Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Bigler,] always exceedingly jealous of any imputation as to,his differing with the President on any question, supposed that some one was about arraigning him for a departure from the Democratic faith on this subject. Now, sir, I should have been the last man in the world to suspect him of any such thing. I supposed he and the President were just as much alike as the Siamese twins. [Laughter.] I supposed what one thought the other thought; what befel one, always befel the other at the same time. I have no doubt that he is always orthodox. I hardly know, from his remarks, who was the great discoverer of this improved idea of popular sovereignty. The President, to be sure, tells us that, in regard to submitting Constitutions to the people, he formerly held that this Constitution must be submitted to the people of Kansas, to the whole people; and that they must have a fair opportunity to vote on it,
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