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 LESTER BURRELL SHIPPEE

264

This provision, said Douglas, was in harmony with the terms of the provisional constitution which the people of Ore-

gon had adopted. Stevens

Adams

of Mississippi, a Democrat,

when

this article

was under consideration, proposed as a proviso: "That nothing in relation to slavery in this

act shall be construed as an intention to interfere with the provisions or spirit of the Missouri Compromise; but the same is hereby

recognized as extending to all territory which may hereafter be acquired by the United States." Objection was made to this because it applied to territory other than that under consideration in the lin of

bill.

Hannibal

Ham-

Maine objected

to the introduction of the question of while discussing the Oregon bill. He contended

slavery at all that the Missouri

Compromise had nothing whatever to do with Oregon; when the matter of slavery had come up with the annexation of Texas Congress had been told that the law of heaven prevented slavery in part of that State, yet when it came into the Union slavery existed in every part of it. "It was time now," he that the resolution

more

said, "that it should be fully understood; had been taken, that there should be no

slave territory admitted into the

Union or suffered

to

exist there."

Adams withdrew

his amendment but Burt, of South Caroat the place where there was reference to insert lina, proposed to the slavery provision of the Northwest Ordinance the words

"inasmuch as the whole of the said territory lies north of 36 30' north latitude, known as the line of the Missouri Compromise." He supported his amendment with an examination of the whole question of the Northwest Ordinance which he said was in violation of the terms of the Virginia cession, the Missouri Compromise, and the rights of the South under the Constitution to which the Compromise added nothing. Some of his southern friends, he said, doubted the wisdom of submitting the amendment at that moment, but if the South failed to raise her voice at that time it would never again have an opportunity and another precedent to her disadvan-