Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/116

82 fought each other before. What does the Constitution mean in regard to slavery? That question remains to be settled. What does the Nebraska bill mean? This question depends upon the settlement of the former.

Of all men, Mr. Douglas ought to be the first to know what the true intent and meaning of the Nebraska bill and the principle of popular sovereignty are. He is said to be a statesman, and it is to be presumed that his measure rests upon a positive idea; for all true statesmanship is founded upon positive ideas.

In order to find out Mr. Douglas's own definition of his own “great principle,” we are obliged to pick up the most lucid of his statements, as we find them scattered about in numerous speeches and manifestoes. After multifarious cruisings upon the sea of platforms and arguments, Mr. Douglas has at last landed at the following point: “A slave,” says he, in his famous Harper's Magazine article, “a slave, within the meaning of the Constitution, is a person held to service or labor in one State ‘under the laws thereof’——not under the Constitution of the United States, or under the laws thereof, nor by virtue of any federal authority whatever, but under the laws of the particular State where such service or labor may be due.” This is clear, and with his eyes firmly fixed upon the people of the North, he goes on:

If, as Mr. Buchanan asserts, slavery exists in the territories by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, then it becomes the imperative duty of Congress, to the performance of which every member is bound by his conscience and his oath, and from which no consideration of policy or expediency can release him, to provide by law such adequate and complete protection as is essential to the enjoyment of an important right secured by the Constitution; in one word, to enact a general slave-code for the territories.

But Mr. Douglas is not satisfied with this. In order