Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/334

296 thrust through its vitals, seeing nothing good coming to itself out of Kansas, but everything important, in view of the national and constitutional principles involved.

The Southern idea of Statehood raised the political character of the State far above that which could be law fully assumed by the people of a territory. It was clear to Southern men that any State constitution legally adopted could authoritatively prohibit or abolish slavery. The people of any State whose laws provided for the existence and protection of ownership in the labor of the negro could at any time abolish the institution through a constitutional convention. There was a vast difference, however, between territorial government and State government. Territorial government was the creature of Congress merely a servant of the congressional servants belonging to the brotherhood of States ; but State governments were ordained by the people in whom reposed the last analysis of sovereignty, viz. , the makers of the Union and the masters of its Congress. No powers under the Constitution were reserved to the territories, but to the States respectively. No sovereign powers were reserved to the people of territories as such, but to the people of the United States. The Southerner felt that he was a defender of the State against the usurpations of the settlers in a territory, when he objected to a final decision as to the greatest of property rights recognized by the Constitution being made absolute by a territorial legislature. Upon these and similar principles. Southern statesmen and jurists generally held that the time when the allowance or disallowance of slave labor should be determined, was at the making of a State constitution by the bona fide resident voters of a territory through their legally elected representatives, assembled lawfully in a convention, called for that purpose, under the authority of the United States. The compromise measures of 1850 in their opinion contained that doctrine, and with them many Northern statesmen and jurists agreed.