Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/295

Rh art, and all the improvements of the age. Fanaticism, even If we have it as a free State, will waste itself upon abstractions and idealities about something thousands of miles away; while with slavery there will come a fanaticism like the Promethean vulture, to prey upon our very vitals. Slavery here, in the nature of things, must be a weak institution. Fanaticism from the North would therefore assail it, and from the South rush into its defense. Torn and distracted in this way, our happiness and prosperity would be sacrificed to a miserable strife about negroes.

Some argue that Oregon should become a slave State so as to make the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States equal in the Senate. Admitted now as a slave State, we might make the States nominally equal in that body, but how soon would Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska or some other Territory come in and destroy it? We might set to work to balance the Union, but have we any assurance that other territories will concur in the movement? Territories ought and will consult their own best interests upon this subject, and Congress has no right to regulate the admission of States so as to preserve the balance of power between different sections of the Confederacy. I will quote upon this point from a speech made last winter by Mr. Douglas, in the Senate: "Is it (says he) to be a struggle, to keep up an equilibrium between non-slaveholding and slave-holding States? Sir, I deny the power of this government, to maintain any equilibrium upon the subject; it is contrary to the principles of the Nebraska bill; it is contrary to the principles of the Democratic party; it is contrary to the principles of State equality and self-government to keep an equilibrium between slave-holding and non-slave-holding States in order that they may balance each other." I add to this, that it would tend to create a geographical division which all true friends of the Union should try to break down and prevent. This theory looks very much like Calhoun's stillborn project of a dual executive in the government.

I might go further in this discussion, but perhaps I have