Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/312

 304 W. C. WOODWARD In 1857 and 1858 the differences between the Oregon Demo- crats had been largely local and factional. But by this time, while the personal element was not altogether obliterated, the schism in the party was a logical one; it was based on a prin- ciple and was national. On the one hand were the Douglas Democrats, led by Bush, stoutly maintaining the doctrine of popular sovereignty. On the qther, the Administration Demo- crats, led by Lane, who held that slavery was protected in the Territories by the Constitution. The strife, occasioned by their differences, tended to increase the distance between them, and to lead each side to emphasize and exaggerate its own tenets. The result was that the Douglas men were becoming more conservative in their interpretation of the Dred Scott decision, approaching that held by the Republicans. The Administra- tion Democrats had, on the other hand, taken a further step in the opposite direction and had now practically become in- terventionists of the Southern hue. In an editorial in April on "New Doctrine," Bush showed that, despite the fact that it was the settled law of the civilized world that human slavery was the creation of municipal law, by positive, enactment, dur- ing the Buchanan administration, the doctrine had been ad- vanced in the United States, stealthily, step by step, that slavery was a federal instead of a local institution. "It is as- sumed," he said, "that it had been so decided by the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Decision. That that court may not so decide, when such question comes before it, no one is authorized to say. But it has not yet so decided. The only decision made by the Court was that a Negro could not bring a suit in a United States Court. The several opin- ions in addition comprised certain dicta, not possessed of the binding force of law." 1 One is inclined to question his eyes in reading from this source such a statement of the case which would have been considered adequate in any Republican news- paper in 1857. But nothing like this appeared in the States- man in 1857 or 1858. It indicated the widening breach be- i Statesman, April 10.