Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/346

 314 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

filled with anxious apprehensions. A successful war had just terminated. Peace brought with it a vast augmentation of territory. Disturbing questions arose, bearing upon the domestic institutions of one portion of the Confederacy and involving the constitutional rights of the states. But notwithstanding differences of opinion and sentiment, which have existed in relation to details and specific provisions, the acquiescence of distinguished citizens, whose devo- tion to the Union can never be doubted, has given renewed vigor to our insti- tutions and restored a sense of repose and security to the public mind throughout the confederacy. That this repose is to suffer no shock during my official term, if I have power to avert it, those who placed me here may be assured."

Within a few days after the meeting of Congress, a bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska was submitted to the Senate and referred to the committee on territories. This committee reported a bill which was recom- mitted. It afterward reported a new bill dividing Nebraska into two territories, the one to be known as Nebraska and the other as Kansas. In the bill it was provided that," the eighth section of the Missouri Compromise act, being incon- sistent with the principles of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories, us recognized by the legislature of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void ; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof per- fectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States." The same provision regarding slavery when the territories should be admitted as states, was made as was provided in the acts for organizing the territories of Utah and New Mexico, in 1850.

The report of this bill to the Senate was the signal for a concerted and most desperate effort on the part of the Northern extremists to revive sectional agi- tation, and to recover the ground they had lost on the adoption of the compro- mise measures of 1850. They not only attacked the compromise of 1850, but claimed that if the principles of it were defensible, yet that they did not apply to this territory, as it was a part of the Louisiana purchase. They contended that the provisions of the Missouri Compromise act were binding, and that Congress had no authority to change them, although, in their recent conven- tion, they had denied that " any human law is d. finality and not subject to modification or repeal." But the Missouri Compromise act was not a law, but simply a declaration of policy liable to be superseded by any new line of pol- icy which in the future might be shown to be more beneficial. They further claimed that, if the Missouri Compromise was not binding in law, yet, that it was a solemn declaration of policy which was binding upon the consciences of the legislators. This claim was made by men pledged to no slavery in the terri- tories, who declared their consciences would not permit of their consenting to slavery on either side of the Missouri Compromise line, and who had opposed and voted against the principles of this compromise on the passage of the acts for the organization of the territory of Oregon in 1848 and for the admission of California as a state in 1850. The adoption of the new policy in 1850 was unequivocal. In the opinion of the statesmen of the time, the circumstances of the country demanded it, and it had received the emphatic indorsement of the people of the whole country in the elecdon which followed. And no subsequent Congress could be justified in superseding the principles of it, thus adopted and confirmed, except upon their failure to accomplish the end for which they were designed, or upon such a change in circumstances as would render expedient the adoption of another poUcy.

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