Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/815

764 diately. At the close of the day's proceedings the Oregon bill had not advanced a step toward its passage.

On the following day the consideration of the bill was resumed, when Hale of New Hampshire offered an amendment which was only another fagot to the name of southern opposition to free territory, embodying as it did the conditions of the ordinance of 1787, as well as confirming the laws already in force in Oregon not incompatible with the remainder of. the act, subject to alteration or modification by the governor and legislative assembly; and extending the laws of the United States over that territory. This was objected to as a firebrand, and Hale offered to withdraw his amendment for the present, to be renewed if he deemed it best on seeing the course taken by the bill.

Calhoun of South Carolina replied to a proposition of Bright to strike out the obnoxious 12th section, to which Hale objected, that the removal of that section would not be a removal of the difficulty. "There are three questions involved," said Calhoun: "first, the power of congress to interfere with persons emigrating with their (slave) property into the state; second, the power of the territorial government to do so; and third, the power of congress to vest such a power in the territory;" and recommended either Westcott's amendment by substitution, or the passage of the military section as a separate bill.

Miller of New Jersey expressed surprise that the people of Oregon had not the right to prohibit slavery. Whence, then, had they derived the right to sanction slavery? To pour oil on the billows, Dickinson of New York suggested leaving out the 12th section, and permitting the people of Oregon to settle for themselves the question of free territory. To this proposal Bagby of Georgia gave, by implication, his consent, by saying that congress had no more right over the territory than over any other property of