Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/444

 436 Southern Historical Society Papers.

well versed in the issues involved. Many also committed themselves by informal expressions in ordinary conversation, and by neatly written political letters, as the records of the times now appear. Among the number who are said to have approved the Wilmot pro- viso in ordinary conversation was General Lewis Cass, at that time in public liie, and journeying in a railroad car from Washington to his Michigan home. He was among the number, however, who wrote upon that subject, and in his letter dated December 24th, 1847, and addresssed to General A. O. P. Nicholson, took that middle ground afterwards espoused by Senator Douglas, and known in history as the doctrine of ''popular sovereignty.'* In the course of this letter he says :

"The theory of our government presupposes that its various members have reserved to themselves the regulation of all subjects relating to what may be termed their internal police. They are sovereign within their boundaries, except in those cases where they have surrendered to the general government a portion of their rights in order to give effect to the objects of the Union, whether these concern foreign nations, if I may so speak, whether they have refer- ence to slavery or to any other relations, domestic or public, are left to local authority, either original or derivative. Congress has no right to say that there shall be slavery in New York, or there shall be no slavery in Georgia ; nor is there any other human power but the people of those States, respectively, ^hich can change the rela- tions existing therein, and they can say, if they will, * we will have slavery in the former and we will abolish it in the latter.'

' ' In various respects the Territories differ from the States. Some of' their rights are inchoate, and they do not possess the attributes of sovereignty. Their relation to the general government is very im- perfectly defined by the Constitution, and it will be found upon ex- amination that that instrument, the only grant of power concerning them, is conveyed in the phrase, ' Congress shall have the power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations, respecting the territory and other property belonging to the United States.*

" The question as will, therefore, be seen on examination, does not regard the exclusion of slavery free from a region where it now ex- ists, but a prohibition against its introduction where it does not exist, and where, from the feelings of the inhabitants and the laws of nature it is morally impossible, * * * that it can ever re-estab- lish itself**