THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

                         Its Origin and History

                                   BY

                               JOHN LOGAN






                              CHAPTER II.

                       PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

We have seen that the first Federal Congress met at New York in March,
1789.  It organized April 6th.  None knew better than its members that
the war of the Americana Revolution chiefly grew out of the efforts of
Great Britain to cripple and destroy our Colonial industries to the
benefit of the British trader, and that the Independence conquered, was
an Industrial as well as Political Independence; and none knew better
than they, that the failure of the subsequent political Confederation of
States was due mainly to its failure to encourage and protect the
budding domestic manufactures of those States.  Hence they hastened,
under the leadership of James Madison, to pass "An Act laying a duty on
goods, wares and merchandize imported into the United States," with a
preamble, declaring it to be "necessary" for the "discharge of the debt
of the United States and the encouragement and protection of
manufactures."  It was approved by President Washington July 4, 1789--a
date not without its significance--and levied imports both specific and
ad valorem.  It was not only our first Tariff Act, but, next to that
prescribing the oath used in organizing the Government, the first Act of
the first Federal Congress; and was passed in pursuance of the
declaration of President Washington in his first Message, that "The
safety and interest of the People" required it.  Under the inspiration
of Alexander Hamilton the Tariff of 1790 was enacted at the second
session of the same Congress, confirming the previous Act and increasing
some of the protective duties thereby imposed.

An analysis of the vote in the House of Representatives on this Tariff
Bill discloses the fact that of the 39 votes for it, 21 were from
Southern States, 13 from the Middle States, and 5 from New England
States; while of the 13 votes against it, 9 were from New England
States, 3 from Southern States, and 1 from Middle States.  In other
words, while the Southern States were for the Bill in the proportion of
21 to 3, and the Middle States by 13 to 1, New England was against it by
9 to 5; or again, while 10 of the 13 votes against it were from the New
England and Middle States, 21 (or more than half) of the 39 votes for it
were from Southern States.

It will thus be seen-singularly enough in view of subsequent events--
that we not only mainly owe our first steps in Protective Tariff
legislation to the almost solid Southern vote, but that it was thus
secured for us despite the opposition of New England.  Nor did our
indebtedness to Southern statesmen and Southern votes for the
institution of the now fully established American System of Protection
cease here, as we shall presently see.

That Jefferson, as well as Washington and Madison, agreed with the views
of Alexander Hamilton on Protection to our domestic manufactures as
against those of foreign Nations, is evident in his Annual Message of
December 14, 1806, wherein-discussing an anticipated surplus of Federal
revenue above the expenditures, and enumerating the purposes of
education and internal improvement to which he thinks the "whole surplus
of impost" should during times of peace be applied; by which application
of such surplus he prognosticates that "new channels of communication
will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will
disappear; their interests will be identified, and their Union cemented
by new and indissoluble ties"--he says: "Shall we suppress the impost
and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures.  On a few
articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due
season, will doubtless be right; but the great mass of the articles on
which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who
are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them."  But his embargo
and other retaliatory measures, put in force in 1807 and 1808, and the
War of 1812-15 with Great Britain, which closely followed, furnished
Protection in another manner, by shutting the door to foreign imports
and throwing our people upon their own resources, and contributed
greatly to the encouragement and increase of our home manufactures--
especially those of wool, cotton, and hemp.

At the close of that War the traders of Great Britain determined, even
at a temporary loss to themselves, to glut our market with their goods
and thus break down forever, as they hoped, our infant manufactures.
Their purpose and object were boldly announced in the House of Commons
by Mr. Brougham, when he said: "Is it worth while to incur a loss upon
the first importation, in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle
those rising manufactures in the United States which the War had forced
into existence contrary to the natural course of things."  Against this
threatened ruin, our manufacturers all over the United States--the sugar
planters of Louisiana among them--clamored for Protection, and Congress
at once responded with the Tariff Act of 1816.

This law greatly extended and increased specific duties on, and
diminished the application of the ad valorem principle to, foreign
imports; and it has been well described as "the practical foundation of
the American policy of encouragement of home manufactures--the practical
establishment of the great industrial system upon which rests our
present National wealth, and the power and the prosperity and happiness
of our whole people."  While Henry Clay of Kentucky, William Loundes of
South Carolina, and Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia supported the
Bill most effectively, no man labored harder and did more effective
service in securing its passage than John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.
The contention on their part was not for a mere "incidental protection"
--much less a "Tariff for revenue only"--but for "Protection" in its
broadest sense, and especially the protection of their cotton
manufactures.  Indeed Calhoun's defense of Protection, from the assaults
of those from New England and elsewhere who assailed it on the narrow
ground that it was inimical to commerce and navigation, was a notable
one.  He declared that:

"It (the encouragement of manufactures) produced a system strictly
American, as much so as agriculture, in which it had the decided
advantage of commerce and navigation.  The country will from this derive
much advantage.  Again it is calculated to bind together more closely
our wide-spread Republic.  It will greatly increase our mutual
dependence and intercourse, and will, as a necessary consequence, excite
an increased attention to internal improvements--a subject every way so
intimately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength
and the perfection of our political institutions."

He regarded the fact that it would make the parts adhere more closely;
that it would form a new and most powerful cement far outweighing any
political objections that might be urged against the system.  In his
opinion "the liberty and the union of the country were inseparably
united; that as the destruction of the latter would most certainly
involve the former, so its maintenance will with equal certainty
preserve it;" and he closed with an impressive warning to the Nation of
a "new and terrible danger" which threatened it, to wit: "disunion."
Nobly as he stood up then--during the last term of his service in the
House of Representatives--for the great principles of, the American
System of Protection to manufactures, for the perpetuity of the Union,
and for the increase of "National strength," it seems like the very
irony of fate that a few years later should find him battling against
Protection as "unconstitutional," upholding Nullification as a "reserved
right" of his State, and championing at the risk of his neck that very
"danger" to the "liberties" and life of his Country against which his
prophetic words had already given solemn warning.

Strange was it also, in view of the subsequent attitudes of the South
and New England, that this essentially Protective Tariff Act of 1816
should have been vigorously protested and voted against by New England,
while it was ably advocated and voted for by the South--the 25 votes of
the latter which secured its passage being more than sufficient to have
secured its defeat had they been so inclined.

The Tariff Acts of 1824 and 1828 followed the great American principle
of Protection laid down and supported by the South in the Act of 1816,
while widening, increasing, and strengthening it.  Under their
operation-especially under that of 1828, with its high duties on wool,
hemp, iron, lead, and other staples--great prosperity smiled upon the
land, and particularly upon the Free States.

In the cotton-growing belt of the South, however, where the prosperity
was relatively less, owing to the blight of Slavery, the very contrast
bred discontent; and, instead of attributing it to the real cause, the
advocates of Free Trade within that region insisted that the Protective
Tariff was responsible for the condition of things existing there.

A few restless and discontented spirits in the South had indeed agitated
the subject of Free Trade as against Protected manufactures as early as
1797, and, hand in hand with it, the doctrine of States Rights.  And
Jefferson himself, although, as we have already seen, attached to the
American System of Protection and believing in its Constitutionality,
unwittingly played into the hands of these Free Traders by drawing up
the famous Kentucky Resolutions of '98 touching States Rights, which
were closely followed by the Virginia Resolutions of 1799 in the same
vein by Madison, also an out-and-out Protectionist.  It was mainly in
condemnation of the Alien and Sedition Laws, then so unpopular
everywhere, that these resolutions were professedly fulminated, but they
gave to the agitating Free Traders a States-Rights-Secession-weapon of
which they quickly availed themselves.

Their drift may be gathered from the first of the Kentucky Resolutions
of '98, which was in these words: "Resolved, That the several States
composing the United States of America are not united on the principle
of unlimited submission to their General Government, but that, by a
compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United
States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government
for special purposes--delegated to that Government certain definite
powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to
their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government
assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of
no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and as an
integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party;
that the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive
or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since
that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the
measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among
powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge
for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of
redress."

The Resolutions, after enumerating the Alien and Sedition and certain
other laws as in point, conclude by calling upon the other States to
join Kentucky in her opposition to such Federal usurpations of power as
thus embodied, and express confidence: "That they will concur with this
Commonwealth in considering the said Acts as so palpably against the
Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that
compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General
Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States,
of all powers whatsoever; that they will view this as seizing the rights
of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General
Government, with the power assumed to bind the States (not merely as to
the cases made federal (casus foederis) but) in all cases whatsoever, by
laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent;
that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen,
and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from
our authority; and that the co-States, returning to their natural rights
in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these Acts void and
of no force, and will each take measures of its own in providing that
neither these Acts, nor any others of the General Government, not
plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be
exercised within their respective territories."

The doctrine of States Rights as formulated in these Resolutions,
including the assumed right of a State to nullify laws of the General
Government, naturally led up, as we shall see, not only to threats of
disunion, but ultimately to a dreadful sectional War waged in the effort
to secure it.  That Jefferson, when he penned them, foresaw the terrible
results to flow from these specious and pernicious doctrines, is not to
be supposed for an instant; but that his conscience troubled him may be
fairly inferred from the fact that he withheld from the World for twenty
years afterward the knowledge that he was their author.  It is probable
that in this case, as in others, he was a victim of that casuistry which
teaches that "the end justifies the means;" that he hoped and believed
that the assertion of these baleful doctrines would act solely as a
check upon any tendency to further centralization of power in the
General Government and insure that strict construction of the
Constitution.

Though afterward violated by himself at the same time that he for the
moment threw aside his scruples touching African slavery, when he added
to our domain the great French Slave Colony of Louisiana--was none the
less the great aim of his commanding intellect; and that he fortuitously
believed in the "saving common sense" of his race and country as capable
of correcting an existing evil when it shall have developed into ill
effects.

     [Mr. Jefferson takes this very ground, in almost the same words, in
     his letter, 1803, to Wilson C.  Nichols in the Louisiana Colony
     purchase case, when, after proving by his own strict construction
     of the Constitution that there was no power in that instrument to
     make such purchase, and confessing the importance in that very case
     of setting "an example against broad construction," he concludes:
     "If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I
     shall acquiesce with satisfaction; confiding that the good sense of
     the country will correct the evil of construction when it shall
     produce ill ejects."]

Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that the seeds thus sown by
the hands of Jefferson on the "sacred soil" of Virginia and Kentucky,
were dragon's teeth, destined in after years to spring up as legions of
armed men battling for the subversion of that Constitution and the
destruction of that Union which he so reverenced, and which he was so
largely instrumental in founding--and which even came back in his own
life to plague him and Madison during his embargo, and Madison's war of
1812-15, in the utterances and attitude of some of the New England
Federalists.

The few Free Traders of the South--the Giles's and John Taylor's and men
of that ilk--made up for their paucity in numbers by their unscrupulous
ingenuity and active zeal.  They put forth the idea that the American
Protective Policy was a policy of fostering combinations by Federal
laws, the effect of which was to transfer a considerable portion of the
profits of slave labor from the Slave States to other parts of the Union
where it was massed in the hands of a few individuals, and thus created
a moneyed interest which avariciously influenced the General Government
to the detriment of the entire community of people, who, made restive by
the exactions of this power working through the Federal Government, were
as a consequence driven to consider a possible dissolution of the Union,
and make "estimates of resources and means of defense."  As a means also
of inflaming both the poor whites and Southern slave-holders by arousing
the apprehensions of the latter concerning the "peculiar institution" of
Slavery, they craftily declared that "If the maxim advanced by the
advocates of the protecting duty system will justify Congress in
assuming, or rather in empowering a few capitalists to assume, the
direction of manufacturing labor, it also invests that body with a power
of legislating for the direction of every other species of labor and
assigning all occupations whatsoever to the care of the intelligence of
mercenary combinations"--and hence untold misery to labor.

They charged as a further means of firing the Southern heart, that this
moneyed power, born of Protection, "works upon the passion of the States
it has been able to delude by computations of their physical strength
and their naval superiority; and by boasting of an ability to use the
weakening circumstance of negro slavery to coerce the defrauded and
discontented States into submission."  And they declared as fundamental
truths upon which they rested that "The Federal is not a National
Government; it is a league between nations.  By this league, a limited
power only over persons and property was given to the representatives of
the united nations.  This power cannot be further extended, under the
pretext of national good, because the league does not create a national
government."

It was the passage of the Tariff of 1824 that gave these crafty Free
Traders their first great success in spreading their doctrine of Free
Trade by coupling it with questions of slave labor, States Rights, and
nullification, as laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions.
These arguments created great excitement throughout the South--
especially in South Carolina and Georgia--which was still further
increased by the passage of the Tariff of 1828, since declared by
eminent authority to have been "the highest and most protective ever
adopted in this country."

     [Mr. Greeley, in his "History of the American Conflict," 1864.]

Prior to the passage of this Tariff Act, excited assemblages met in some
of the Southern States, and protested against it as an outrage upon
their rights--arraying the South in seditious and treasonable attitude
against not only the North but the Union, with threats of Secession.  At
one of these meetings in South Carolina, in 1827, one of their leaders--
[Dr. Thomas Cooper, President of South Carolina College.]--declared that
"a drilled and managed majority" in the House of Representatives had
determined "at all hazards to support the claims of the Northern
manufacturers, and to offer up the planting interest on the altar of
monopoly."  He denounced the American system of Protection exemplified
in that Tariff measure as "a system by which the earnings of the South
are to be transferred to the North--by which the many are to be
sacrificed to the few--under which powers are usurped that were never
conceded--by which inequality of rights, inequality of burthens,
inequality of protection, unequal laws, and unequal taxes are to be
enacted and rendered permanent--that the planter and the farmer under
this system are to be considered as inferior beings to the spinner, the
bleacher, and the dyer--that we of the South hold our plantations under
this system, as the serfs and operatives of the North, subject to the
orders and laboring for the benefit of the master-minds of
Massachusetts, the lords of the spinning jenny and peers of the power-
loom, who have a right to tax our earnings for their emolument, and to
burthen our poverty and to swell their riches;" and after characterizing
Protection as "a system of fraud, robbery and usurpation," he continued
"I have said that we shall ere long be compelled to calculate the value
of our Union; and to enquire of what use to us is this most unequal
alliance, by which the South has always been the loser and the North
always the gainer.  Is it worth our while to continue this union of
States, where the North demands to be our masters and we are required to
be their tributaries? who with the most insulting mockery call the yoke
they put upon our necks the 'American system!'  The question, however,
is fast approaching the alternative of submission or separation."

Only a few days after this inflammatory speech at Columbus, S. C.,
inciting South Carolinians to resist the pending Protective Tariff even
to the lengths of Secession, during a grand banquet at Richmond, Va.,
William B. Giles--another Free Trade leader--proposed, and those present
drank a toast to the "Tariff Schemer" in which was embodied a
declaration that "The Southerners will not long pay tribute."  Despite
these turbulent and treasonable mutterings, however, the "Jacksonian
Congress" passed the Act--a majority of members from the Cotton and New
England States voting against, while the vote of the Middle and Western
Free States was almost solidly for, it.

At a meeting held soon after the enactment of the Tariff of 1828, at
Walterborough Court House, S. C., an address was adopted and issued
which, after reciting the steps that had been taken by South Carolina
during the previous year to oppose it, by memorials and otherwise, and
stating that, despite their "remonstrances and implorations," a Tariff
Bill had passed, not indeed, such as they apprehended, but "ten-fold
worse in all its oppressive features," proceeded thus:

"From the rapid step of usurpation, whether we now act or not, the day
of open opposition to the pretended powers of the Constitution cannot be
far off, and it is that it may not go down in blood that we now call
upon you to resist.  We feel ourselves standing underneath its mighty
protection, and declaring forth its free and recorded spirit, when we
say we must resist.  By all the great principles of liberty--by the
glorious achievements of our fathers in defending them--by their noble
blood poured forth like water in maintaining them--by their lives in
suffering, and their death in honor and in glory;--our countrymen! we
must resist.  Not secretly, as timid thieves or skulking smugglers--not
in companies and associations, like money chafferers or stock jobbers--
not separately and individually, as if this was ours and not our
country's cause--but openly, fairly, fearlessly, and unitedly, as
becomes a free, sovereign and independent people.  Does timidity ask
WHEN?  We answer NOW!"

These inflammatory utterances, in South Carolina especially, stirred the
Southern heart more or less throughout the whole cotton belt; and the
pernicious principles which they embodied found ardent advocates even in
the Halls of Congress.  In the Senate, Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, was
their chief and most vehement spokesman, and in 1830 occurred that
memorable debate between him and Daniel Webster, which forever put an
end to all reasonable justification of the doctrine of Nullification,
and which furnished the ground upon which President Jackson afterward
stood in denouncing and crushing it out with the strong arm of the
Government.

In that great debate Mr. Hayne's propositions were that the Constitution
is a "compact between the States," that "in case of a plain, palpable
violation of the Constitution by the General Government, a State may
interpose; and that this interposition is constitutional"--a proposition
with which Mr. Webster took direct issue, in these words: "I say, the
right of a State to annul a law of Congress cannot be maintained, but on
the ground of the inalienable right of man to resist oppression; that is
to say, upon the ground of revolution.  I admit that there is an
ultimate violent remedy, above the Constitution and in defiance of the
Constitution, which may be resorted to when a revolution is to be
justified.  But I do not admit that, under the Constitution, and in
conformity with it, there is any mode in which a State Government, as a
member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the general
movement by force of her own laws under any circumstances whatever."
Mr. Webster insisted that "one of two things is true: either the laws of
the Union are beyond the discretion and beyond the control of the
States, or else we have no Constitution of General Government, and are
thrust back again to the days of the Confederation;" and, in concluding
his powerful argument, he declared that "even supposing the Constitution
to be a compact between the States," Mr. Hayne's doctrine was "not
maintainable, because, first, the General Government is not a party to
the compact, but a Government established by it, and vested by it with
the powers of trying and deciding doubtful questions; and secondly,
because, if the Constitution be regarded as a compact, not one State
only, but all the States are parties to that compact, and one can have
no right to fix upon it her own peculiar construction."

While the comparatively miserable condition of the cotton-growing States
of the South was attributed by most of the Southern Free Traders solely
to the Protective Tariff of 1828, yet there were some Southerners
willing to concede--as did Mr. Hayne, in the Senate (1832)--that there
were "other causes besides the Tariff" underlying that condition, and to
admit that "Slaves are too improvident, too incapable of that minute,
constant, delicate attention, and that persevering industry which are
essential to manufacturing establishments," the existence of which would
have made those States prosperous.  But such admissions were unwilling
ones, and the Cotton-lords held only with the more tenacity to the view
that the Tariff was the chief cause of their condition.

The Tariff Act of 1832, essentially modifying that of 1828, was passed
with a view, in part, to quiet Southern clamor.  But the Southern Cotton
States refused to be mollified.  On the contrary, the Free Traders of
South Carolina proceeded to extreme measures, putting in action that
which they had before but threatened.  On November 19, 1832, the leading
men of South Carolina met in Convention, and a few days thereafter--
[November 24,1882]--unanimously passed an Ordinance of Nullification
which declared the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 "Unauthorized by the
Constitution," and "null, void, and no law, nor binding on this State,
its officers, or citizens."  The people of the State were forbidden by
it to pay, after the ensuing February 1st, the import-duties therein
imposed.  Under the provisions of the Ordinance, the State Legislature
was to pass an act nullifying these Tariff laws, and any appeal to the
United States Supreme Court against the validity of such nullifying act
was prohibited.  Furthermore, in the event of the Federal Government
attempting to enforce these Tariff laws, the people of South Carolina
would thenceforth consider themselves out of the Union, and will
"forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and do all other
acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do."

At the subsequent meeting of the Legislature, Mr. Hayne, who had been a
member of the Convention, having resigned his seat in the United States
Senate, was elected Governor of the State.  He declared in his message
that he recognized "No allegiance as paramount to that which the
citizens of South Carolina owe to the State of their birth or their
adoption"--that doctrine of "paramount allegiance to the State" which in
after-years gave so much trouble to the Union and to Union-loving
Southerners--and declared that he held himself "bound by the highest of
all obligations to carry into effect, not only the Ordinance of the
Convention, but every act of the Legislature, and every judgment of our
own Courts, the enforcement of which may devolve upon the Executive,"
and "if," continued he, "the sacred soil of Carolina should be polluted
by the footsteps of an invader, or be stained with the blood of her
citizens, shed in her defense, I trust in Almighty God * * * even should
she stand alone in this great struggle for constitutional liberty,
encompassed by her enemies, that there will not be found, in the wide
limits of the State, one recreant son who will not fly to the rescue,
and be ready to lay down his life in her defense."  In support of the
contemplated treason, he even went to the length of calling for an
enrolling of volunteer forces and of holding them ready for service.

But while South Carolina stood in this treasonable and defiant attitude,
arming for war against the Union, there happened to be in the
Presidential chair one of her own sons--General Jackson.  Foreseeing
what was coming, he had, prior to the meeting of the Convention that
framed the Nullification Ordinance, ordered General Scott to Charleston
to look after "the safety of the ports of the United States"
thereabouts, and had sent to the Collector of that port precise
instructions as to his duty to resist in all ways any and all attempts
made under such Ordinance to defeat the operation of the Tariff laws
aforesaid.  Having thus quietly prepared the arm of the General
Government for the exercise of its power, he issued in December a
Proclamation declaring his unalterable resolution to treat Nullification
as Treason--and to crush it.

In that famous document President Jackson said of Nullification: "If
this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would
have been dissolved in its infancy.  The Excise law in Pennsylvania, the
Embargo and Non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the Carriage-tax
in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in
their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but fortunately,
none of those States discovered that they had the right now claimed by
South Carolina.  * * * The discovery of this important feature in our
Constitution was reserved for the present day.  To the statesmen of
South Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that
State will unfortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice.  * *
* I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States,
assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union,
contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized
by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded
and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.  * * * To
say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that
the United States are not a Nation, because it would be a solecism to
contend that any part of a Nation might dissolve its connection with the
other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any, offense."

Farther on, in his moving appeal to the South Carolinians, he bids them
beware of their leaders: "Their object is disunion; be not deceived by
names.  Disunion, by armed force, is Treason."  And then, reminding them
of the deeds of their fathers in the Revolution, he proceeds: "I adjure
you, as you honor their memory, as you love the cause of freedom to
which they dedicated their lives, as you prize the peace of your
country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to
retrace your steps.  Snatch from the archives of your State the
disorganizing edict of its Convention--bid its members to reassemble and
promulgate the decided expression of your will to remain in the path
which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor--tell them
that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that
brings with it an accumulation of all--declare that you will never take
the field unless the Star-spangled banner of your country shall float
over you--that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and
scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the
Constitution of your country!  Its destroyers you cannot be."

After asserting his firm "determination to execute the laws-to preserve
the Union by all constitutional means"--he concludes with the prayer,
"May the great Ruler of Nations grant, that the signal blessings with
which He has favored, ours may not, by the madness of party, or personal
ambition be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring
those who have produced this crisis to see the folly before they feel
the misery, of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that
Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as
the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may
reasonably aspire."

The firm attitude of General Jackson, together with the wise
precautionary measures he had already taken, and the practical unanimity
with which his declaration to crush out the Treason was hailed in most
of the Southern as well as the Northern States, almost at once broke the
back of Nullification.


     [In this connection the following letter, written at that time by
     the great Chief Justice Marshall, to a cousin of his, on the
     subject of State Sovereignty, is of interest, as showing how
     clearly his penetrating intellect perceived the dangers to the
     Union hidden in the plausible doctrine of State Rights:

     RICHMOND, May 7, 1833.

     "MY DEAR SIR:

     "I am much indebted to you for your pamphlet on Federal Relations,
     which I have read with much satisfaction.  No subject, as it seems
     to me, is more misunderstood or more perverted.  You have brought
     into view numerous important historical facts which, in my
     judgment, remove the foundation on which the Nullifiers and
     Seceders have erected that superstructure which overshadows our
     Union.  You have, I think, shown satisfactorily that we never have
     been perfectly distinct, independent societies, sovereign in the
     sense in which the Nullifiers use the term.  When colonies we
     certainly were not.  We were parts of the British empire, and
     although not directly connected with each other so far as respected
     government, we were connected in many respects, and were united to
     the same stock.  The steps we took to effect separation were, as
     you have fully shown, not only revolutionary in their nature, but
     they were taken conjointly.  Then, as now, we acted in many
     respects as one people.  The representatives of each colony acted
     for all.  Their resolutions proceeded from a common source, and
     operated on the whole mass.  The army was a continental army
     commanded by a continental general, and supported from a
     continental treasury.  The Declaration of Independence was made by
     a common government, and was made for all the States.

     "Everything has been mixed.  Treaties made by Congress have been
     considered as binding all the States.  Some powers have been
     exercised by Congress, some by the States separately.  The lines
     were not strictly drawn.  The inability of Congress to carry its
     legitimate powers into execution has gradually annulled those
     powers practically, but they always existed in theory.
     Independence was declared `in the name and by the authority of the
     good people of these colonies.' In fact we have always been united
     in some respects, separate in others.  We have acted as one people
     for some purposes, as distinct societies for others.  I think you
     have shown this clearly, and in so doing have demonstrated the
     fallacy of the principle on which either nullification or the right
     of peaceful, constitutional secession is asserted.

     "The time is arrived when these truths must be more generally
     spoken, or our Union is at an end.  The idea of complete
     sovereignty of the State converts our government into a league,
     and, if carried into practice, dissolves the Union.

     "I am, dear sir,

     "Yours affectionately,

     "J. MARSHALL.

     "HUMPHREY MARSHALL, ESQ.,

     "FRANKFORT, KY."]


The Nullifiers hailed with pretended satisfaction the report from the
House Committee on Ways and Means of a Bill making great reductions and
equalizations of Tariff duties, as a measure complying with their
demands, and postponed the execution of the Ordinance of Nullification
until the adjournment of Congress; and almost immediately afterward Mr.
Clay's Compromise Tariff Act of 1833 "whereby  one tenth of the excess
over twenty per cent. of each and every existing impost was to be taken
off at the close of that year; another tenth two years thereafter; so
proceeding until the 30th of June, 1842, when all duties should be
reduced to a maximum of twenty per cent."--[Says Mr. Greeley, in his
History aforesaid.]--agreed to by Calhoun and other Nullifiers, was
passed, became a law without the signature of President Jackson, and
South Carolina once more became to all appearances a contented, law-
abiding State of the Union.

But after-events proved conclusively that the enactment of this
Compromise Tariff was a terrible blunder, if not a crime.  Jackson had
fully intended to hang Calhoun and his nullifying coadjutors if they
persisted in their Treason.  He knew that they had only seized upon the
Tariff laws as a pretext with which to justify Disunion, and prophesied
that "the next will be the Slavery or Negro question."  Jackson's
forecast was correct.  Free Trade, Slavery and Secession were from that
time forward sworn allies; and the ruin wrought to our industries by the
disasters of 1840, plainly traceable to that Compromise Tariff measure
of 1833, was only to be supplemented by much greater ruin and disasters
caused by the Free Trade Tariff of 1846--and to be followed by the armed
Rebellion of the Free Trade and Pro-Slavery States of the South in 1861,
in a mad attempt to destroy the Union.




                              CHAPTER III.

                    GROWTH OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION.


It will be remembered that during the period of the Missouri Struggle,
1818-1820, the Territory of Arkansas was formed by an Act of Congress
out of that part of the Missouri Territory not included in the proposed
State of Missouri, and that the Act so creating the Territory of
Arkansas contained no provision restricting Slavery.  Early in 1836, the
people of Arkansas Territory met in Convention and formed a Constitution
under which, "and by virtue of the treaty of cession by France to the
United States, of the Province of Louisiana," they asked admission to
the Union as a State.  Among other provisions of that Constitution was a
section rendering the State Legislature powerless to pass laws for the
emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners, or to prevent
emigrants to that State from bringing with them slaves.  On June 15th of
the same year, Arkansas was, under that Constitution, admitted to the
Union as a Slave State, with the sole reservation, that nothing in the
Act of admission should be" construed as an assent by Congress to all or
any of the propositions contained" in the said Constitution.

Long ere this, all the Northern and Middle States had made provision for
the emancipation of such slaves as remained within their borders, and
only a few years previous (in 1829 and 1831-32) Virginia had made strong
but insufficient efforts toward the same end.  The failure to free
Virginia of Slavery--the effort to accomplish which had been made by
some of the greatest of her statesmen--only served to rivet the chains
of human bondage more securely throughout all the Slave States, and from
that time on, no serious agitation occurred in any one of them, looking
toward even the most gradual emancipation.  On the other hand, the
advocates of the extension of the Slave-Power by the expansion of Slave-
territory, were ever on the alert, they considered it of the last
importance to maintain the balance of power between the Slave States and
the Free States.  Hence, while they had secured in 1819 the cession from
Spain to the United States of the Slave-holding Floridas, and the
organization of the Slave Territory of Florida in 1822--which
subsequently came in as a Slave State under the same Act (1845) that
admitted the Free State of Iowa--their greedy eyes were now cast upon
the adjoining rich territories of Mexico.

Efforts had (in 1827-1829) been made to purchase from Mexico the domain
which was known as Texas.  They had failed.  But already a part of Texas
had been settled by adventurous Americans under Mexican grants and
otherwise; and General Sam Houston, an adherent of the Slave Power,
having become a leading spirit among them, fomented a revolution.  In
March, 1836, Texas, under his guidance, proclaimed herself a Republic
independent of Mexico.

The War that ensued between Texas and Mexico ended in the flight of the
Mexican Army and the capture of Santa Anna at San Jacinto, and a treaty
recognizing Texan independence.  In October, 1836, General Houston was
inaugurated President of the Republic of Texas.  Close upon this
followed (in August, 1837) a proposition to our Government from the
Texan envoy for the annexation of Texas to the United States.  President
Van Buren declined the offer.  The Northern friends of Freedom were as
much opposed to this annexation project as the advocates of Slavery were
anxious for it.  Even such conservative Northern Statesmen as Daniel
Webster strongly opposed the project.  In a speech delivered in New York
[1837], after showing that the chief aim of our Government in the
acquisition of the Territory of Louisiana was to gain command of the
mouths of the great rivers to the sea, and that in the acquisition of
the Floridas our policy was based on similar considerations, Mr. Webster
declared that "no such necessity, no such policy, requires the
annexation of Texas," and that we ought "for numerous and powerful
reasons to be content with our present boundaries.  He recognized that
Slavery already existed under the guarantees of the Constitution and
those guarantees must be fulfilled; that "Slavery, as it exists in the
States, is beyond the power of Congress.  It is a concern of the States
themselves," but "when we come to speak of admitting new States, the
subject assumes an entirely different aspect.  Our rights and our duties
are then both different.  The Free States, and all the States, are then
at liberty to accept or to reject;" and he added, "In my opinion the
people of the United States will not consent to bring into the Union a
new, vastly extensive and Slaveholding country, large enough for a half
a dozen or a dozen States.  In my opinion, they ought not to consent to
it."

Farther on, in the same speech--after alluding to the strong feeling in
the Northern States against the extension of Slavery, not only as a
question of politics, but of conscience and religious conviction as
well-he deems him a rash man indeed "who supposes that a feeling of this
kind is to be trifled with or despised."  Said he: "It will assuredly
cause itself to be respected.  It may be reasoned with; it may be made
willing--I believe it is entirely willing--to fulfill all existing
engagements and all existing duties--to uphold and defend the
Constitution as it is established, with whatever regrets about some
provisions which it does actually contain.  But to coerce it into
silence, to endeavor to restrain its free expression, to seek to
compress and confine it, warm as it is, and more heated as such
endeavors would inevitably render it,--should this be attempted, I know
nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would
not be endangered by the explosion which might follow."

In 1840, General Harrison, the Whig candidate, was elected to the
Presidency, but died within a few weeks after his inauguration in 1841,
and was succeeded by John Tyler.  The latter favored the Slave Power;
and on April 12th, 1844, John C.  Calhoun, his Secretary of State,
concluded with Texas a treaty of annexation--which was, however,
rejected by the Senate.  Meanwhile the public mind was greatly agitated
over the annexation and other, questions.

     [In the London Index, a journal established there by Jefferson
     Davis's agents to support the cause of the rebellious States, a
     communication appeared during the early part of the war, Dec.  4,
     1861, supposed to have been written by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in
     which he said: "To tell the Norths, the Butes, the Wedderburns of
     the present day, that previous to the year 1839 the sovereign
     States of the South had unalterably resolved on the specific ground
     of the violation of the Federal Constitution by the tariff of
     spoliation which the New England States had imposed upon them--to
     secede from the Union; to tell them that in that year the leader of
     the South, Calhoun, urged an English gentleman, to whom he had
     fully explained the position of the South, and the intolerable
     tyranny which the North inflicted upon it, to be the bearer of
     credentials from the chief persons of the South, in order to invite
     the attention of the British Government to the coming event; that
     on his death-bed (Washington, March 31, 1850), he called around him
     his political friends--one of whom is now in England--warned them
     that in no event could the Union survive the Presidential election
     of 1860, though it might possibly break up before that urged them
     to be prepared; leaving with his dying words the sacred cause of
     Southern secession a solemn legacy in their hands--to have told
     this to the Norths and Dartmouths of the present day, with more and
     even stronger evidence of the coming events of November, 1860,
     would have been like speaking to the stones of the street.  In
     November, 1860, they were thoroughly ignorant of all the momentous
     antecedents of secession--of their nature, their character, their
     bearing, import, and consequences."

     In the same correspondence the distinguished Rebel emissary
     substantially let out the fact that Calhoun was indirectly, through
     himself (Mason), in secret communication with the British
     Government as far back as 1841, with a view to securing its
     powerful aid in his aforesaid unalterable resolve to Secede from
     the Union; and then Mr. Mason pleads--but pleads in vain--for the
     armed intervention of England at this later day.  Said he:

     "In the year 1841 the late Sir William Napier sent in two plans for
     subduing the Union, to the War Office, in the first of which the
     South was to be treated as an enemy, in the second as a friend and
     ally.  I was much consulted by him as to the second plan and was
     referred to by name in it, as he showed by the acknowledgment of
     this in Lord Fitzroy Somerset's letter of reply.  This plan fully
     provided for the contingency of an invasion of Canada, and its
     application would, in eighteen or twenty months, have reduced the
     North to a much more impotent condition than it exhibits at
     present.  At this very moment the most difficult portion of that
     plan has been perfectly accomplished by the South itself; and the
     North, in accordance with Sir William Napier's expectations, now
     lies helpless before England, and at our absolute mercy.  Nor is
     there any doubt of this, and if Lord Palmerston is not aware of it
     Mr. Seward certainly is.  We have nothing remaining to do but to
     stretch out our arm in the way Sir William Napier proposed, and the
     Northern power--power as we ignorantly call it--must come to an
     end.  Sir William knew and well estimated the elements of which
     that quasi power consisted; and he knew how to apply the
     substantive power of England to dissolve it.  In the best interest
     of humanity, I venture to say that it is the duty of England to
     apply this power without further delay--its duty to itself, to its
     starving operatives, to France, to Europe, and to humanity.  And in
     the discharge of this great duty to the world at large there will
     not even be the dignity of sacrifice or danger."]

Threats and counter-threats of Disunion were made on either hand by the
opponents and advocates of Slavery-extension through annexation; nor was
it less agitated on the subject of a Protective Tariff.

The Compromise Tariff of 1833, together with President Jackson's
upheaval of our financial system, produced, as has already been hinted,
terrible commercial disasters. "In 1840," says competent authority, "all
prices had ruinously fallen; production had greatly diminished, and in
many departments of industry had practically ceased; thousands of
working men were idle, with no hope of employment, and their families
suffering from want.  Our farmers were without markets, their products
rotted in their barns, and their lands, teeming with rich harvests, were
sold by the sheriff for debts and taxes.  The Tariff, which robbed our
industries of Protection failed to supply Government with its necessary
revenues.  The National Treasury in consequence was bankrupt, and the
credit of the Nation had sunk very low."

Mr. Clay himself stated "the average depression in the value of property
under that state of things which existed before the Tariff of 1842 came
to the rescue of the country, at fifty per cent."  And hence it was that
Protection was made the chief issue of the Presidential campaign of
1840, which eventuated in the election of Harrison and Tyler, and in the
Tariff Act of August 30, 1842, which revived our trade and industries,
and brought back to the land a full measure of prosperity.  With those
disasters fresh in the minds of the people, Protection continued to be a
leading issue in the succeeding Presidential campaign of 1844--but
coupled with the Texas-annexation issue.  In that campaign Henry Clay
was the candidate of the Whig party and James K. Polk of the Democratic
party.  Polk was an ardent believer in the annexation policy and stood
upon a platform declaring for the "re-occupation of Oregon and the re-
annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable moment"--as if the
prefix "re" legitimatized the claim in either case; Clay, on the other
hand, held that we had "fairly alienated our title to Texas by solemn
National compacts, to the fulfilment of which we stand bound by good
faith and National honor;" that "Annexation and War with Mexico are
identical," and that he was "not willing to involve this country in a
foreign War for the object of acquiring Texas."

     [In his letter of April 17, 1844, published in the National
     Intelligencer.]

As to the Tariff issue also, Clay was the acknowledged champion of the
American system of Protection, while Polk was opposed to it, and was
supported by the entire Free-trade sentiment, whether North or South.

As the campaign progressed, it became evident that Clay would be
elected.  Then occurred some of those fatalities which have more than
once, in the history of Presidential campaigns, overturned the most
reasonable expectations and defeated the popular will.  Mr. Clay
committed a blunder and Mr. Polk an equivocation--to use the mildest
possible term.  Mr. Clay was induced by Southern friends to write a
letter--[Published in the North Alabamian, Aug.  16, 1844.]--in which,
after stating that "far from having any personal objection to the
annexation of Texas, I should be glad to see it--without dishonor,
without War, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and
fair terms," he added: "I do not think that the subject of Slavery ought
to affect the question, one way or the other."  Mr. Polk, on the other
hand, wrote a letter in which he declared it to be "the duty of the
Government to extend, as far as it may be practicable to do so, by its
revenue laws and all other means within its power, fair and just
Protection to all the great interests of the whole Union, embracing
Agriculture, Manufactures, the Mechanic Arts, Commerce and Navigation."
This was supplemented by a letter (August 8, 1844) from Judge Wilson
McCandless of Pennsylvania, strongly upholding the Protective principle,
claiming that Clay in his Compromise Tariff Bill had abandoned it, and
that Polk and Dallas had "at heart the true interests of Pennsylvania."
Clay, thus betrayed by the treachery of Southern friends, was greatly
weakened, while Polk, by his beguiling letter, backed by the false
interpretation put upon it by powerful friends in the North, made the
North believe him a better Protectionist than Clay.

Polk was elected, and rewarded the misplaced confidence by making Robert
J.  Walker his Secretary of the Treasury, and, largely through that
great Free Trader's exertions, secured a repeal by Congress of the
Protective Tariff of 1842 and the enactment of the ruinous Free Trade
Tariff of 1846.  Had Clay carried New York, his election was secure.  As
it happened, Polk had a plurality in New York of but 5,106 in an immense
vote, and that slim plurality was given to him by the Abolitionists
throwing away some 15,000 on Birney.  And thus also it curiously
happened that it was the Abolition vote which secured the election of
the candidate who favored immediate annexation and the extension of the
Slave Power!

Emboldened and apparently sustained by the result of the election, the
Slave Power could not await the inauguration of Mr. Polk, but proceeded
at once, under whip and spur, to drive the Texas annexation scheme
through Congress; and two days before the 4th of March, 1845, an Act
consenting to the admission of the Republic of Texas as a State of the
Union was approved by President Tyler.

In that Act it was provided that "New States of convenient size, not
exceeding four in number, in addition to the said State of Texas, and
having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said
State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled
to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution; and such
States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying
south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly
known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union
with or without Slavery, as the people of each State asking admission
may desire.  And in such State or States as shall be formed out of said
territory north of said Missouri Compromise line, Slavery or involuntary
servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited."  As has been lucidly
stated by another,--[Greeley's History]--"while seeming to curtail and
circumscribe Slavery north of the above parallel (that of 36  30' north
latitude), this measure really extended it northward to that parallel,
which it had not yet approached, under the flag of Texas, within
hundreds of miles.  But the chief end of this sham Compromise was the
involving of Congress in an indirect indorsement of the claim of Texas
to the entire left bank of the Rio Grande, from its mouth to its source;
and this was effected."

Texas quickly consented to the Act of annexation, and in December, 1845,
a Joint Resolution formally admitting her as a State of the Union,
reported by Stephen A.  Douglas, was duly passed.

In May, 1846, the American forces under General Taylor, which had been
dispatched to protect Texas from threatened assault, were attacked by
the Mexican army, which at Palo Alto was badly defeated and at Resaca de
la Palma driven back across the Rio Grande.

Congress immediately declared that by this invasion a state of War
existed between Mexico and the United States.  Thus commenced the War
with Mexico--destined to end in the triumph of the American Army, and
the acquisition of large areas of territory to the United States.  In
anticipation of such triumph, President Polk lost little time in asking
an appropriation of over two million dollars by Congress to facilitate
negotiations for peace with, and territorial cession from, Mexico.  And
a Bill making such appropriation was quickly passed by the House of
Representatives--but with the following significant proviso attached,
which had been offered by Mr. Wilmot: "Provided.  That as an express and
fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the
Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of any treaty that
may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Executive of the
moneys herein appropriated, neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude
shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime,
whereof the party shall first be duly convicted."

The debate in the Senate upon the Wilmot proviso, which immediately
ensued, was cut short by the expiration of the Session of Congress--and
the Bill accordingly failed of passage.

In February, 1848, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was made between
Mexico and the United States, and Peace reigned once more.  About the
same time a Bill was passed by the Senate providing Territorial
Governments for Oregon, California and New Mexico, which provided for
the reference of all questions touching Slavery in such Territories to
the United States Supreme Court, for arbitration.  The Bill, however,
failed in the House.  The ensuing Presidential campaign resulted in the
election of General Taylor, the Whig candidate, who was succeeded upon
his death, July 10, 1850, by Fillmore.  Meanwhile, on the Oregon
Territory Bill, in 1848, a strong effort had been made by Mr. Douglas
and others to incorporate a provision extending to the Pacific Ocean the
Missouri Compromise line of 36  30' of north latitude and extending to
all future organizations of Territories of the United States the
principles of said Compromise.  This provision was adopted by the
Senate, but the House struck it from the Bill; the Senate receded, and
Oregon was admitted as a Free Territory.  But the conflict in Congress
between those who would extend and those who would restrict Slavery
still continued, and indeed gathered vehemence with time.  In 1850,
California was clamoring for admission as a Free State to the Union, and
New Mexico and Utah sought to be organized under Territorial
Governments.

In the heated discussions upon questions growing out of bills for these
purposes, and to rectify the boundaries of Texas, it was no easy matter
to reach an agreement of any sort.  Finally, however, the Compromise of
1850, offered by Mr. Clay, was practically agreed to and carried out,
and under it: California was admitted as a Free State; New Mexico and
Utah were admitted to Territorial organization without a word pro or con
on the subject of Slavery; the State of Texas was awarded a pecuniary
compensation for the rectification of her boundaries; the Slave Trade in
the District of Columbia was abolished; and a more effectual Fugitive
Slave Act passed.

By both North and South, this Compromise of 1850, and the measures
growing out of it, were very generally acquiesced in, and for a while it
seemed as though a permanent settlement of the Slavery question had been
reached.  But in the Fugitive Slave law, thus hastily enacted, lay
embedded the seed for further differences and excitements, speedily to
germinate.  In its operation it proved not only unnecessarily cruel and
harsh, in the manner of the return to bondage of escaped slaves, but
also afforded a shield and support to the kidnapping of Free Negroes
from Northern States.  The frequency of arrests in the Northern States,
and the accompanying circumstances of cruelty and brutality in the
execution of the law, soon made it especially odious throughout the
North, and created an active feeling of commiseration for the unhappy
victims of the Slave Power, which greatly intensified and increased the
growing Anti-Slavery sentiment in the Free States.

In 1852-53, an attempt was made in Congress to organize into the
Territory of Nebraska, the region of country lying west of Iowa and
Missouri.  Owing to the opposition of the South the Bill was defeated.
In 1853-4 a similar Bill was reported to the Senate by Mr. Douglas, but
afterward at his own instance recommitted to the Committee on
Territories, and reported back by him again in such shape as to create,
instead of one, two Territories, that portion directly west of Missouri
to be called Kansas, and the balance to be known as Nebraska--one of the
sections of the Bill enacting:

"That in order to avoid all misconstruction it is hereby declared to be
the true intent and meaning of this Act, so far as the question of
Slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following
propositions and principles, established by the Compromise measures of
1850, to wit:

"First, That all questions pertaining to Slavery in the Territories, and
the new States to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of
the people residing therein through their appropriate representatives.

"Second, That 'all cases involving title to slaves,' and 'questions of
personal freedom,' are referred to the adjudication of the local
tribunals with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United
States.

"Third, That the provisions of the Constitution and laws of the United
States, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into
faithful execution in all the `organized Territories,' the same as in
the States."

The sections authorizing Kansas and Nebraska to elect and send delegates
to Congress also prescribed:

"That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not
locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the
said Territory, as elsewhere in the United States, except the section of
the Act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union,
approved March 6th, 1820, which was superseded by the principles of the
Legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is
declared inoperative."

And when "explaining this Kansas-Nebraska Bill" Mr. Douglas announced
that, in reporting it, "The object of the Committee was neither to
legislate Slavery in or out of the Territories; neither to introduce nor
exclude it; but to remove whatever obstacle Congress had put there, and
apply the doctrine of Congressional Non-intervention in accordance with
the principles of the Compromise Measures of 1850, and allow the people
to do as they pleased upon this as well as all other matters affecting
their interests."

A vigorous and able debate ensued.  A motion by Mr. Chase to strike out
the words "which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of
1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures," was defeated decisively.
Subsequently Mr. Douglas moved to strike out the same words and insert
in place of them, these: "which being inconsistent with the principles
of Non-intervention by Congress with Slavery in the States and
Territories, as recognized by the legislation 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 perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the
United States"--and the motion was agreed to by a vote of 35 yeas to 10
nays.  Mr. Chase immediately moved to add to the amendment just adopted
these words: "Under which, the people of the Territory, through their
appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the
existence of Slavery therein;" but this motion was voted down by 36 nays
to 10 yeas.  This developed the rat in the meal-tub.  The people were to
be "perfectly free" to act either way on the subject of Slavery, so long
as they did not prohibit Slavery!  In this shape the Bill passed the
Senate.

Public sentiment in the North was greatly stirred by this direct attempt
to repeal the Missouri Compromise.  But by the superior parliamentary
tactics of Southern Representatives in the House, whereby the radical
friends of Freedom were shut out from the opportunity of amendment, a
House Bill essentially the same as the Senate Bill was subsequently
passed by the House, under the previous question, and afterward rapidly
passed the Senate, and was approved by the President.  At once commenced
that long and terrible struggle between the friends of Free-Soil and the
friends of Slavery, for the possession of Kansas, which convulsed the
whole Country for years, and moistened the soil of that Territory with
streams of blood, shed in numerous "border-ruffian" conflicts.

The Territorial Government of Kansas was organized late in 1854, and an
"election" for Delegate held, at which the Pro-Slavery candidate
(Whitfield) was fraudulently elected.  On March 30, 1855, a Territorial
Legislature was similarly chosen by Pro-Slavery voters "colonized" from
Missouri.  That Legislature, upon its meeting, proceeded at once to
enact most outrageous Pro-Slavery laws, which being vetoed by the Free-
Soil Governor (Reeder), were passed over the veto, and the Free-Soil
Governor had to give place to one who favored Slavery in Kansas.  But
the Free-Soil settlers of Kansas, in Mass Convention at Big Springs,
utterly repudiated the bogus Legislature and all its acts, to which they
refused submission.

In consequence of these radical differences, two separate elections for
Delegate in Congress were held by the opposing factions, at one of which
was elected the Pro-Slavery Whitfield, and at the other the Free-Soiler
Reeder.  Furthermore, under a call issued by the Big Springs Convention,
a Free-State Constitutional Convention was held in October, 1855, at
Topeka, which framed a Free-State Constitution, and asked admission
under it to the Union.

In 1856, the House of Representatives--which, after a protracted
struggle, had elected N. P. Banks Speaker--passed a Bill, by a bare
majority, admitting Kansas under her Topeka Constitution; but the Senate
defeated it.  July 4, 1856, by order of President Pierce, the Free-State
Legislature, chosen under the Topeka Constitution to meet at Topeka, was
dispersed by United States Troops.  Yet, despite all oppositions,
discouragements, and outrages, the Free-State population of
Kansas continued to increase from immigration.

In 1857, the Pro-Slavery Legislature elected by the Pro-Slavery voters
at their own special election--the Free-State voters declining to
participate--called a Constitutional Convention at Lecompton, which
formed a Pro-Slavery Constitution.  This was submitted to the people in
such dexterous manner that they could only vote "For the Constitution
with Slavery" or "For the Constitution without Slavery"--and, as the
Constitution prescribed that "the rights of property in Slaves now in
the Territory, shall in no manner be interfered with," to vote "for the
Constitution Without Slavery" was an absurdity only paralleled by the
course of the United States Senate in refusing to permit the people of
Kansas "to prohibit Slavery" while at the same time declaring them
"perfectly free to act" as they chose in the matter.

The Constitution, with Slavery, was thus adopted by a vote of over
6,000.  But in the meanwhile, at another general election held for the
purpose, and despite all the frauds perpetrated by the Pro-Slavery men,
a Free-State Legislature, and Free-State Delegate to Congress had been
elected; and this Legislature submitted the Lecompton Pro-Slavery
Constitution to the people, January 4, 1858, so that they could vote:
"For the Lecompton Constitution with Slavery," "For the Lecompton
Constitution without Slavery," or "Against the Lecompton Constitution."
The consequence was that the Lecompton Constitution was defeated by a
majority of over 10,000 votes--the Missouri Pro-Slavery colonists
declining to recognize the validity of any further election on the
subject.

Meanwhile, in part upon the issues growing out of this Kansas conflict,
the political parties of the Nation had passed through another
Presidential campaign (1856), in which the Democratic candidate Buchanan
had been elected over Fremont the "Republican," and Fillmore the
"American," candidates.  Both Houses of Congress being now Democratic,
Mr. Buchanan recommended them to accept and ratify the Lecompton Pro-
Slavery Constitution.

In March, 1858, the Senate passed a Bill--against the efforts of Stephen
A.  Douglas--accepting it.  In the House, however, a substitute offered
by Mr. Montgomery (Douglas Democrat) known as the Crittenden-Montgomery
Compromise, was adopted.  The Senate refused to concur, and the report
of a Committee of Conference--providing for submitting to the Kansas
people a proposition placing limitations upon certain public land
advantages stipulated for in the Lecompton Constitution, and in case
they rejected the proposition that another Constitutional Convention
should be held--was adopted by both Houses; and the proposition being
rejected by the people of Kansas, the Pro-Slavery Lecompton Constitution
fell with it.

In 1859 a Convention, called by the Territorial Legislature for the
purpose, met at Wyandot, and framed a Free State Constitution which was
adopted by the people in October of that year, and at the ensuing State
election in December the State went Republican.  In April, 1860, the
House of Representatives passed a Bill admitting Kansas as a State under
that Constitution, but the Democratic Senate adjourned without action on
the Bill; and it was not until early in 1861 that Kansas was at last
admitted.

In the meantime, the Free Trade Tariff of 1846 had produced the train of
business and financial disasters that its opponents predicted.  Instead
of prosperity everywhere in the land, there was misery and ruin.  Even
the discovery and working of the rich placer mines of California and the
consequent flow, in enormous volume, of her golden treasure into the
Eastern States, could not stay-the wide-spread flood of disaster.
President Fillmore, who had succeeded General Taylor on the latter's
death, frequently called the attention of Congress to the evils produced
by this Free Trade, and to the necessity of protecting our manufactures
"from ruinous competition from abroad."  So also with his successor,
President Buchanan, who, in his Message of 1857, declared that "In the
midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the productions and in all the
elements of national wealth, we find our manufactures suspended, our
public works retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds
abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers thrown out of employment and
reduced to want."  Further than this, the financial credit of the Nation
was at zero.  It was financially bankrupt before the close of Buchanan's
Presidential term.




                              CHAPTER IV.

                          POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.

But now occurred the great Presidential struggle of 1860 --which
involved not alone the principles of Protection, but those of human
Freedom, and the preservation of the Union itself-between Abraham
Lincoln of Illinois, the candidate of the Republican party, as against
Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the National or Douglas-Democratic
candidate, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the Administration or
Breckinridge-Democratic candidate, and John Bell of Tennessee, the
candidate of the Bell-Union party.  The great preliminary struggle which
largely influenced the determination of the Presidential political
conflict of 1860, had, however, taken place in the State of Illinois,
two years previously.  To that preliminary political contest of 1858,
therefore, we will now turn our eyes--and, in order to fully understand
it, it may be well to glance back over a few years.  In 1851 the
Legislature of Illinois had adopted--[The vote in the House being 65
yeas to 4 nays.]--the following resolution: "Resolved, That our Liberty
and Independence are based upon the right of the people to form for
themselves such a government as they may choose; that this great
principle, the birthright of freemen, the gift of Heaven, secured to us
by the blood of our ancestors, ought to be secured to future
generations, and no limitation ought to be applied to this power in the
organization of any Territory of the United States, of either
Territorial Government or State Constitution, provided the government so
established shall be Republican and in conformity with the Constitution
of the United States."  This resolution was a practical endorsement of
the course of Stephen A. Douglas in supporting the Compromise measures
of 1850, which he had defended as being "all founded upon the great
principle that every people ought to possess the right to form and
regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way," and that
"the same principle" should be "extended to all of the Territories of
the United States."

In accordance with his views and the resolution aforesaid, Mr. Douglas
in 1854, as we have already seen, incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill a clause declaring it to be "the true intent and meaning of the Act
not to legislate Slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to
the Constitution of the United States."

His position, as stated by himself, was, substantially that the
Lecompton Pro-Slavery Constitution was a fraud upon the people of
Kansas, in that it did not embody the will of that people; and he denied
the right of Congress to force a Constitution upon an unwilling people--
without regard, on his part, to whether that Constitution allowed or
prohibited Slavery or any other thing, whether good or bad.  He held
that the people themselves were the sole judges of whether it is good or
bad, and whether desirable or not.

The Supreme Court of the United States had in the meantime made a
decision in a case afterward known as the "Dred Scott case," which was
held back until after the Presidential election of 1856 had taken place,
and added fuel to the political fire already raging.  Dred Scott was a
Negro Slave.  His owner voluntarily took him first into a Free State,
and afterward into a Territory which came within the Congressional
prohibitive legislation aforesaid.  That decision in brief was
substantially that no Negro Slave imported from Africa, nor his
descendant, can be a citizen of any State within the meaning of the
Constitution; that neither the Congress nor any Territorial Legislature
has under the Constitution of the United States, the power to exclude
Slavery from any Territory of the United States; and that it is for the
State Courts of the Slave State, into which the negro has been conveyed
by his master, and not for the United States Courts, to decide whether
that Negro, having been held to actual Slavery in a Free State, has, by
virtue of residence in such State, himself become Free.

Now it was, that the meaning of the words, "subject only to the
Constitution," as used in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, began to be
discerned.  For if the people of a Territory were to be "perfectly
free," to deal with Slavery as they chose, "subject only to the
Constitution" they were by this Judicial interpretation of that
instrument "perfectly free" to deal with Slavery in any way so long as
they did not attempt "to exclude" it!  The thing was all one-sided.  Mr.
Douglas's attitude in inventing the peculiar phraseology in the Kansas-
Nebraska Act--which to some seemed as if expressly "made to order" for
the Dred Scott decision--was criticized with asperity; the popularity,
however, of his courageous stand against President Buchanan on the
Lecompton fraud, seemed to make it certain that, his term in the United
States Senate being about to expire, he would be overwhelmingly re-
elected to that body.

But at this juncture occurred something, which for a long time held the
result in doubt, and drew the excited attention of the whole Nation to
Illinois as the great battle-ground.  In 1858 a Republican State
Convention was held at Springfield, Ill., which nominated Abraham
Lincoln as the Republican candidate for United States Senator to succeed
Senator Douglas in the National Legislature.  On June 16th--after such
nomination--Mr. Lincoln made to the Convention a speech--in which, with
great and incisive power, he assailed Mr. Douglas's position as well as
that of the whole Democratic Pro-Slavery Party, and announced in compact
and cogent phrase, from his own point of view, the attitude, upon the
Slavery question, of the Republican Party.

In that remarkable speech--which at once attracted the attention of the
Country--Mr. Lincoln said: "We are now far into the fifth year, since a
policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of
putting an end to Slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that
policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented.  In my opinion it will not cease, until a crisis shall have
been reached and passed.  'A House divided against itself cannot stand.'
I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half
Free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the
House to fall--but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will
become all one thing, or all the other.  Either the opponents of Slavery
will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become
alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as
South."

     [Governor Seward's announcement of an "irrepressible conflict" was
     made four months later.]

He then proceeded to lay bare and closely analyze the history of all
that had been done, during the four years preceding, to produce the
prevailing condition of things touching human Slavery; describing it as
resulting from that, "now almost complete legal combination-piece of
machinery, so to speak--compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred
Scott decision."  After stating the several points of that decision, and
that the doctrine of the "Sacred right of self-government" had been
perverted by the Nebraska "Squatter Sovereignty," argument to mean that,
"if any one man chose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed
to object," he proceeded to show the grounds upon which he charged "pre-
concert" among the builders of that machinery.  Said he: "The people
were to be left perfectly free, 'subject only to the Constitution.'
What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not see.
Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott
decision to afterward come in and declare the perfect freedom of the
people to be just no freedom at all.  Why was the amendment, expressly
declaring the right of the people, voted down?  Plainly enough now, the
adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.
Why was the Court decision held up?  Why even a Senator's individual
opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election?  Plainly enough
now: the speaking out then would have damaged the 'perfectly free'
argument upon which the election was to be carried.  Why the outgoing
President's felicitation on the indorsement?  Why the delay of a re-
argument?  Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of
the decision?  These things look like the cautious patting and petting
of a spirited horse, preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded
that he may give the rider a fall.  And why the hasty after-indorsement
of the decision, by the President and others?  We cannot absolutely know
that all these exact adaptations are the result of pre-concert.  But
when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know
have been gotten out at different times and places and by different
workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James--[Douglas, Pierce, Taney
and Buchanan.]--for instance--and when we see these timbers joined
together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all
the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and
proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective
places, and not a piece too many or too few--not omitting even the
scaffolding, or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the
frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in--in such a
case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and
Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was
struck."

He drew attention also to the fact that by the Nebraska Bill the people
of a State, as well as a Territory, were to be left "perfectly free,"
"subject only to the Constitution," and that the object of lugging a
"State" into this merely Territorial law was to enable the United States
Supreme Court in some subsequent decision to declare, when the public
mind had been sufficiently imbued with Judge Douglas's notion of not
caring "whether Slavery be voted up or voted down," that "the
Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude
Slavery from its limits"--which would make Slavery "alike lawful in all
the States."  That, he declared to be Judge Douglas's present mission:--
"His avowed mission is impressing the 'public heart' to care nothing
about it."  Hence Mr. Lincoln urged Republicans to stand by their cause,
which must be placed in the hands of its friends, "Whose hands are free,
whose hearts are in the work--who do care for the result;" for he held
that "a living dog is better than a dead lion."

On the evening of July 9, 1858, at Chicago, Mr. Douglas (Mr. Lincoln
being present) spoke to an enthusiastic assemblage, which he fitly
described as a "vast sea of human faces," and, after stating that he
regarded "the Lecompton battle as having been fought and the victory
won, because the arrogant demand for the admission of Kansas under the
Lecompton Constitution unconditionally, whether her people wanted it or
not, has been abandoned, and the principle which recognizes the right of
the people to decide for themselves has been submitted in its place," he
proceeded to vindicate his position throughout; declared that he opposed
"the Lecompton monstrosity solely on the ground than it was a violation
of the fundamental principles of free government; on the ground that it
was not the act and deed of the people of Kansas; that it did not embody
their will; that they were averse to it;" and hence he "denied the right
of Congress to force it upon them, either as a Free State or a Slave
State."

Said he: "I deny the right of Congress to force a Slaveholding State
upon an unwilling people.  I deny their right to force a Free State upon
an unwilling people.  I deny their right to force a good thing upon a
people who are unwilling to receive it.  The great principle is the
right of every community to judge and decide for itself, whether a thing
is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil for them to adopt
it; and the right of free action, the right of free thought, the right
of free judgment upon the question is dearer to every true American than
any other under a free Government.  * * *  It is no answer to this
argument to say that Slavery is an evil, and hence should not be
tolerated.  You must allow the people to decide for themselves whether
it is good or evil."  He then adverted to the arraignment of himself by
Mr. Lincoln, and took direct issue with that gentleman on his
proposition that, as to Freedom and Slavery, "the Union will become all
one thing or all the other;" and maintained on the contrary, that "it is
neither desirable nor possible that there should be uniformity in the
local institutions and domestic regulations of the different States of
this Union."

Upon the further proposition of Mr. Lincoln, which Mr. Douglas described
as "a crusade against the Supreme Court of the United States on account
of the Dred Scott decision," and as "an appeal from the decision" of
that Court "upon this high Constitutional question to a Republican
caucus sitting in the country," he also took "direct and distinct issue
with him."  To "the reason assigned by Mr. Lincoln for resisting the
decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case * * * because it
deprives the Negro of the privileges, immunities and rights of
citizenship which pertain, according to that decision, only to the White
man," Mr. Douglas also took exception thus: "I am free to say to you
that in my opinion this Government of ours is founded on the White
basis.  It was made by the White man for the benefit of the White man,
to be administered by White men, in such manner as they should
determine.  It is also true that a Negro, an Indian, or any other man of
inferior race to a White man, should be permitted to enjoy, and humanity
requires that he should have, all the rights, privileges, and immunities
which he is capable of exercising consistent with the safety of society.
* * *  But you may ask me what are these rights and these privileges?
My answer is, that each State must decide for itself the nature and
extent of these rights. * * *  Without indorsing the wisdom of that
decision, I assert that Virginia has the same power by virtue of her
sovereignty to protect Slavery within her limits, as Illinois has to
banish it forever from our own borders.  I assert the right of each
State to decide for itself on all these questions, and I do not
subscribe to the doctrine of my friend, Mr. Lincoln, that uniformity is
either desirable or possible.  I do not acknowledge that the States must
all be Free or must all be Slave.  I do not acknowledge that the Negro
must have civil and political rights everywhere or nowhere.  * * *  I do
not acknowledge any of these doctrines of uniformity in the local and
domestic regulations in the different States.  * * *  Mr. Lincoln goes
for a warfare upon the Supreme Court of the United States because of
their judicial decision in the Dred Scott case.  I yield obedience to
the decisions in that Court--to the final determination of the highest
judicial tribunal known to our Constitution.  He objects to the Dred
Scott decision because it does not put the Negro in the possession of
the rights of citizenship on an equality with the White man.  I am
opposed to Negro equality.  * * *  I would extend to the Negro, and the
Indian, and to all dependent races every right, every privilege, and
every immunity consistent with the safety and welfare of the White
races; but equality they never should have, either political or social,
or in any other respect whatever. * * *  My friends, you see that the
issues are distinctly drawn."

On the following evening (July 10th) at Chicago, Mr. Lincoln addressed
another enthusiastic assemblage, in reply to Mr. Douglas; and, after
protesting against a charge that had been made the previous night by the
latter, of an "unnatural and unholy" alliance between Administration
Democrats and Republicans to defeat him, as being beyond his own
knowledge and belief, proceeded: "Popular Sovereignty!  Everlasting
Popular Sovereignty!  Let us for a moment inquire into this vast matter
of Popular Sovereignty.  What is Popular Sovereignty?  We recollect at
an early period in the history of this struggle there was another name
for the same thing--Squatter Sovereignty.  It was not exactly Popular
Sovereignty, but Squatter Sovereignty.  What do those terms mean?  What
do those terms mean when used now?  And vast credit is taken by our
friend, the Judge, in regard to his support of it, when he declares the
last years of his life have been, and all the future years of his life
shall be, devoted to this matter of Popular Sovereignty.  What is it?
Why it is the Sovereignty of the People!  What was Squatter Sovereignty?
I suppose if it had any significance at all, it was the right of the
people to govern themselves, to be sovereign in their own affairs while
they were squatted down in a country not their own--while they had
squatted on a territory that did not belong to them in the sense that a
State belongs to the people who inhabit it--when it belonged to the
Nation--such right to govern themselves was called 'Squatter
Sovereignty.'

"Now I wish you to mark.  What has become of that Squatter Sovereignty?
What has become of it?  Can you get anybody to tell you now that the
people of a Territory have any authority to govern themselves, in regard
to this mooted question of Slavery, before they form a State
Constitution?  No such thing at all, although there is a general running
fire and although there has been a hurrah made in every speech on that
side, assuming that that policy had given the people of a Territory the
right to govern themselves upon this question; yet the point is dodged.
To-day it has been decided--no more than a year ago it was decided by
the Supreme Court of the United States, and is insisted upon to-day,
that the people of a Territory have no right to exclude Slavery from a
Territory, that if any one man chooses to take Slaves into a Territory,
all the rest of the people have no right to keep them out.  This being
so, and this decision being made one of the points that the Judge
(Douglas) approved, * * *  he says he is in favor of it, and sticks to
it, and expects to win his battle on that decision, which says there is
no such thing as Squatter Sovereignty; but that any man may take Slaves
into a Territory and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed
to it, and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit it;
when that is so, how much is left of this vast matter of Squatter
Sovereignty, I should like to know?  Again, when we get to the question
of the right of the people to form a State Constitution as they please,
to form it with Slavery or without Slavery--if that is anything new, I
confess I don't know it * * *.

"We do not remember that, in that old Declaration of Independence, it is
said that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'
There, is the origin of Popular Sovereignty.  Who, then, shall come in
at this day and claim that he invented it?  The Lecompton Constitution
connects itself with this question, for it is in this matter of the
Lecompton Constitution that our friend, Judge Douglas, claims such vast
credit.  I agree that in opposing the Lecompton Constitution, so far as
I can perceive, he was right.  * * *  All the Republicans in the Nation
opposed it, and they would have opposed it just as much without Judge
Douglas's aid as with it.  They had all taken ground against it long
before he did.  Why, the reason that he urges against that Constitution,
I urged against him a year before.  I have the printed speech in my hand
now.  The argument that he makes, why that Constitution should not be
adopted, that the people were not fairly represented nor allowed to
vote, I pointed out in a speech a year ago which I hold in my hand now,
that no fair chance was to be given to the people.  * * *  The Lecompton
Constitution, as the Judge tells us, was defeated.  The defeat of it was
a good thing or it was not.  He thinks the defeat of it was a good
thing, and so do I, and we agree in that.  Who defeated it?  [A voice--
'Judge Douglas.']  Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he
controlled the other Democrats that went with him, he furnished three
votes, while the Republicans furnished twenty.  That is what he did to
defeat it.  In the House of Representatives he and his friends furnished
some twenty votes, and the Republicans furnished ninety odd.  Now, who
was it that did the work?  * * *  Ground was taken against it by the
Republicans long before Douglas did it.  The proportion of opposition to
that measure is about five to one."

Mr. Lincoln then proceeded to take up the issues which Mr. Douglas had
joined with him the previous evening.  He denied that he had said, or
that it could be fairly inferred from what he had said, in his
Springfield speech, that he was in favor of making War by the North upon
the South for the extinction of Slavery, "or, in favor of inviting the
South to a War upon the North, for the purpose of nationalizing
Slavery."  Said he: "I did not even say that I desired that Slavery
should be put in course of ultimate extinction.  I do say so now,
however; so there need be no longer any difficulty about that.  * * *  I
am tolerably well acquainted with the history of the Country and I know
that it has endured eighty-two years half Slave and half Free.  I
believe--and that is what I meant to allude to there--I believe it has
endured, because during all that time, until the introduction of the
Nebraska Bill, the public mind did rest all the, time in the belief that
Slavery was in course of ultimate extinction.  That was what gave us the
rest that we had through that period of eighty-two years; at least, so I
believe.

"I have always hated Slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist--I
have been an Old Line Whig--I have always hated it, but I have always
been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the
Nebraska Bill began.  I always believed that everybody was against it,
and that it was in course of ultimate extinction.  * * *  The great mass
of the Nation have rested in the belief that Slavery was in course of
ultimate extinction.  They had reason so to believe.  The adoption of
the Constitution and its attendant history led the People to believe so,
and that such was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself.
Why did those old men about the time of the adoption of the Constitution
decree that Slavery should not go into the new territory, where it had
not already gone?  Why declare that within twenty years the African
Slave Trade, by which Slaves are supplied, might be cut off by Congress?
Why were all these acts?  I might enumerate more of these acts--but
enough.  What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the
Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that
institution?

"And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge Douglas has
quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of Slavery will
resist the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind
shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,
I only mean to say, that they will place it where the founders of this
Government originally placed it.  I have said a hundred times, and I
have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no
right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the Free States,
to enter into the Slave States, and interfere with the question of
Slavery at all.  I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say
it--if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred times;
and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with Slavery where
it exists, I know that it is unwarranted by anything I have ever
intended, and as I believe, by anything I have ever said.  If, by any
means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so construe (as,
however, I believe I never have) I now correct it.  So much, then, for
the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in favor of setting
the Sections at War with one another.

"Now in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general
consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States * * *
I have said, very many times in Judge Douglas's hearing, that no man
believed more than I in the principle of self-government from beginning
to end.  I have denied that his use of that term applies properly.  But
for the thing itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in
his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency
in advocating it.  I think that I have said it in your hearing--that I
believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with
himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes
with any other man's rights--that each community, as a State, has a
right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that
State that interfere with the rights of no other State, and that the
General Government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with
anything other than that general class of things that does concern the
whole.  I have said that at all times.

"I have said, as illustrations, that I do not believe in the right of
Illinois to interfere with the cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster
laws of Virginia, or the liquor laws of Maine.  I have said these things
over and over again, and I repeat them here as my sentiments.  * *   *
What can authorize him to draw any such inference?  I suppose there
might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw such an inference
that would not be true with me or many others, that is, because he looks
upon all this matter of Slavery as an exceedingly little thing--this
matter of keeping one-sixth of the population of the whole Nation in a
state of oppression and tyranny unequaled in the World.

"He looks upon it as being an exceedingly little thing only equal to the
cranberry laws of Indiana--as something having no moral question in it--
as something on a par with the question of whether a man shall pasture
his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco--so little and so small a
thing, that he concludes, if I could desire that anything should be done
to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little thing, I must be
in favor of bringing about an amalgamation of all the other little
things in the Union.

"Now it so happens--and there, I presume, is the foundation of this
mistake--that the Judge thinks thus; and it so happens that there is a
vast portion of the American People that do not look upon that matter as
being this very little thing.  They look upon it as a vast moral evil;
they can prove it as such by the writings of those who gave us the
blessings of Liberty which we enjoy, and that they so looked upon it,
and not as an evil merely confining itself to the States where it is
situated; while we agree that, by the Constitution we assented to, in
the States where it exists we have no right to interfere with it,
because it is in the Constitution; and we are by both duty and
inclination to stick by that Constitution in all its letter and spirit,
from beginning to end.  * * *  The Judge can have no issue with me on a
question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations of the
States.  * * *

"Another of the issues he says that is to be made with me, is upon his
devotion to the Dred Scott decision, and my opposition to it.  I have
expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the Dred Scott
decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of that
opposition.  * * *  What is fairly implied by the term Judge Douglas has
used, 'resistance to the decision?'  I do not resist it.  If I wanted to
take Dred Scott from his master, I would be interfering with property
and that terrible difficulty that Judge Douglas speaks of, of
interfering with property, would arise.  But I am doing no such thing as
that, but all that I am doing is refusing to obey it, as a political
rule.  If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question
whether Slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory, in spite of the
Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.  That is what I would
do.

"Judge Douglas said last night, that before the decision he might
advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the decision when it
was made; but after it was made, he would abide by it until it was
reversed.  Just so!  We let this property abide by the decision, but we
will try to reverse that decision.  We will try to put it where Judge
Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it is
reversed.  Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and
we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.

"What are the uses of decisions of Courts?  They have two uses.  As
rules of property they have two uses.  First, they decide upon the
question before the Court.  They decide in this case that Dred Scott is
a Slave.  Nobody resists that.  Not only that, but they say to everybody
else, that persons standing just as Dred Scott stands, are as he is.
That is, they say that when a question comes up upon another person, it
will be so decided again, unless the Court decides in another way--
unless the Court overrules its decision.--Well, we mean to do what we
can to have the Court decide the other way.  That is one thing we mean
to try to do.

"The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a
degree of sacredness that has never before been thrown around any other
decision.  I have never heard of such a thing.  Why, decisions
apparently contrary to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were
contrary to that decision, have been made by that very Court before.  It
is the first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history.  It is a
new wonder of the world.  It is based upon falsehood in the main as to
the facts--allegations of facts upon which it stands are not facts at
all in many instances; and no decision made on any question--the first
instance of a decision made under so many unfavorable circumstances--
thus placed, has ever been held by the profession as law, and it has
always needed confirmation before the lawyers regarded it as settled
law.  But Judge Douglas will have it that all hands must take this
extraordinary decision, made under these extraordinary circumstances,
and give their vote in Congress in accordance with it, yield to it and
obey it in every possible sense.

"Circumstances alter cases.  Do not gentlemen remember the case of that
same Supreme Court, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, deciding that
a National Bank was Constitutional?  * * *  The Bank charter ran out,
and a recharter was granted by Congress.  That re-charter was laid
before General Jackson.  It was urged upon him, when he denied the
Constitutionality of the Bank, that the Supreme Court had decided that
it was Constitutional; and General Jackson then said that the Supreme
Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern a co-ordinate branch of
the Government, the members of which had sworn to support the
Constitution--that each member had sworn to support that Constitution as
he understood it.  I will venture here to say, that I have heard Judge
Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act.  What has
now become of all his tirade about 'resistance to the Supreme Court?'"

After adverting to Judge Douglas's warfare on "the leaders" of the
Republican party, and his desire to have "it understood that the mass of
the Republican party are really his friends," Mr. Lincoln said: "If you
indorse him, you tell him you do not care whether Slavery be voted up or
down, and he will close, or try to close, your mouths with his
declaration repeated by the day, the week, the month, and the year.  Is
that what you mean?  * * *  Now I could ask the Republican party, after
all the hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by, all his
repeated charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes--all
his declarations of Black Republicanism--by the way, we are improving,
the black has got rubbed off--but with all that, if he be indorsed by
Republican votes, where do you stand?  Plainly, you stand ready saddled,
bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the Slavery-
extension camp of the Nation--just ready to be driven over, tied
together in a lot--to be driven over, every man with a rope around his
neck, that halter being held by Judge Douglas.  That is the question.
If Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think
that they has better not do it.  * * *

"We were often--more than once at least--in the course of Judge
Douglas's speech last night, reminded that this Government was made for
White men--that he believed it was made for White men.  Well, that is
putting it in a shape in which no one wants to deny it; but the Judge
then goes into his passion for drawing inferences that are not
warranted.  I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic
which presumes that because I do not want a Negro woman for a Slave I do
necessarily want her for a wife.  My understanding is that I need not
have her for either; but, as God has made us separate, we can leave one
another alone, and do one another much good thereby.  There are White
men enough to marry all the White women, and enough Black men to marry
all the Black women, and in God's name let them be so married.  The
Judge regales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the
mixture of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down.  Why,
Judge, if we do not let them get together in the Territories, they won't
mix there.

" * * * Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be
treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as
much is to be done for them as their condition will allow--what are
these arguments?  They are the arguments that Kings have made for
enslaving the People in all ages of the World.  You will find that all
the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always
bestrode the necks of the People, not that they wanted to do it, but
because the People were better off for being ridden!  That is their
argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old Serpent that
says: you work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of it.

"Turn it whatever way you will--whether it come from the mouth of a
King, an excuse for enslaving the People of his Country, or from the
mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another
race, it is all the same old Serpent; and I hold, if that course of
argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind
that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop
with the Negro.

"I should like to know, taking this old Declaration of Independence,
which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making
exceptions to it, where will it stop?  If one man says it does not mean
a Negro, why not say it does not mean some other man?  If that
Declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute Book, in which we
find it, and tear it out!  Who is so bold as to do it?  If it is not
true, let us tear it out!"  [Cries of "No, no."]  "Let us stick to it
then; let us stand firmly by it, then.  * * *

" * * * The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature
could be perfect as the Father in Heaven; but He said, 'As your Father
in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.'  He set that up as a
standard, and he who did most toward reaching that standard, attained
the highest degree of moral perfection.  So I say, in relation to the
principle that all men are created equal--let it be as nearly reached as
we can.  If we cannot give Freedom to every creature, let us do nothing
that will impose Slavery upon any other creature.  Let us then turn this
Government back into the channel in which the framers of the
Constitution originally placed it.  Let us stand firmly by each other.
* * *  Let us discard all this quibbling * * *  and unite as one People
throughout this Land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that
all men are created equal."

At Bloomington, July 16th (Mr. Lincoln being present), Judge Douglas
made another great speech of vindication and attack.  After sketching
the history of the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, from the introduction by
himself of the Nebraska Bill in the United States Senate, in 1854, down
to the passage of the "English" Bill--which prescribed substantially
that if the people of Kansas would come in as a Slave-holding State,
they should be admitted with but 35,000 inhabitants; but if they would
come in as a Free State, they must have 93,420 inhabitants; which unfair
restriction was opposed by Judge Douglas, but to which after it became
law he "bowed in deference," because whatever decision the people of
Kansas might make on the coming third of August would be "final and
conclusive of the whole question"--he proceeded to compliment the
Republicans in Congress, for supporting the Crittenden-Montgomery Bill--
for coming "to the Douglas platform, abandoning their own, believing (in
the language of the New York Tribune), that under the peculiar
circumstances they would in that mode best subserve the interests of the
Country;" and then again attacked Mr. Lincoln for his "unholy and
unnatural alliance" with the Lecompton-Democrats to defeat him, because
of which, said he: "You will find he does not say a word against the
Lecompton Constitution or its supporters.  He is as silent as the grave
upon that subject.  Behold Mr. Lincoln courting Lecompton votes, in
order that he may go to the Senate as the representative of Republican
principles!  You know that the alliance exists.  I think you will find
that it will ooze out before the contest is over."  Then with many
handsome compliments to the personal character of Mr. Lincoln, and
declaring that the question for decision was "whether his principles are
more in accordance with the genius of our free institutions, the peace
and harmony of the Republic" than those advocated by himself, Judge
Douglas proceeded to discuss what he described as "the two points at
issue between Mr. Lincoln and myself."

Said he: "Although the Republic has existed from 1789 to this day,
divided into Free States and Slave States, yet we are told that in the
future it cannot endure unless they shall become all Free or all Slave.
* * *  He wishes to go to the Senate of the United States in order to
carry out that line of public policy which will compel all the States in
the South to become Free.  How is he going to do it?  Has Congress any
power over the subject of Slavery in Kentucky or Virginia or any other
State of this Union?  How, then, is Mr. Lincoln going to carry out that
principle which he says is essential to the existence of this Union, to
wit: That Slavery must be abolished in all the States of the Union or
must be established in them all?  You convince the South that they must
either establish Slavery in Illinois and in every other Free State, or
submit to its abolition in every Southern State and you invite them to
make a warfare upon the Northern States in order to establish Slavery
for the sake of perpetuating it at home.  Thus, Mr. Lincoln invites, by
his proposition, a War of Sections, a War between Illinois and Kentucky,
a War between the Free States and the Slave States, a War between the
North and South, for the purpose of either exterminating Slavery in
every Southern State or planting it in every Northern State.  He tells
you that the safety of the Republic, that the existence of this Union,
depends upon that warfare being carried on until one Section or the
other shall be entirely subdued.  The States must all be Free or Slave,
for a house divided against itself cannot stand.  That is Mr. Lincoln's
argument upon that question.  My friends, is it possible to preserve
Peace between the North and the South if such a doctrine shall prevail
in either Section of the Union?

"Will you ever submit to a warfare waged by the Southern States to
establish Slavery in Illinois?  What man in Illinois would not lose the
last drop of his heart's blood before lie would submit to the
institution of Slavery being forced upon us by the other States against
our will?  And if that be true of us, what Southern man would not shed
the last drop of his heart's blood to prevent Illinois, or any other
Northern State, from interfering to abolish Slavery in his State?  Each
of these States is sovereign under the Constitution; and if we wish to
preserve our liberties, the reserved rights and sovereignty of each and
every State must be maintained.  * * *  The difference between Mr.
Lincoln and myself upon this point is, that he goes for a combination of
the Northern States, or the organization of a sectional political party
in the Free States, to make War on the domestic institutions of the
Southern States, and to prosecute that War until they all shall be
subdued, and made to conform to such rules as the North shall dictate to
them.

"I am aware that Mr. Lincoln, on Saturday night last, made a speech at
Chicago for the purpose, as he said, of explaining his position on this
question.  * * *  His answer to this point which I have been arguing,
is, that he never did mean, and that I ought to know that he never
intended to convey the idea, that he wished the people of
the Free States to enter into the Southern States and interfere with
Slavery.  Well, I never did suppose that he ever dreamed of entering
into Kentucky, to make War upon her institutions, nor will any
Abolitionist ever enter into Kentucky to wage such War.  Their mode of
making War is not to enter into those States where Slavery exists, and
there interfere, and render themselves responsible for the consequences.
Oh, no!  They stand on this side of the Ohio River and shoot across.
They stand in Bloomington and shake their fists at the people of
Lexington; they threaten South Carolina from Chicago.  And they call
that bravery!  But they are very particular, as Mr. Lincoln says, not to
enter into those States for the purpose of interfering with the
institution of Slavery there.  I am not only opposed to entering into
the Slave States, for the purpose of interfering with their
institutions, but I am opposed to a sectional agitation to control the
institutions of other States.  I am opposed to organizing a sectional
party, which appeals to Northern pride, and Northern passion and
prejudice, against Southern institutions, thus stirring up ill feeling
and hot blood between brethren of the same Republic.  I am opposed to
that whole system of sectional agitation, which can produce nothing but
strife, but discord, but hostility, and finally disunion.  * * *

"I ask Mr. Lincoln how it is that he purposes ultimately to bring about
this uniformity in each and all the States of the Union?  There is but
one possible mode which I can see, and perhaps Mr. Lincoln intends to
pursue it; that is, to introduce a proposition into the Senate to change
the Constitution of the United States in order that all the State
Legislatures may be abolished, State Sovereignty blotted out, and the
power conferred upon Congress to make local laws and establish the
domestic institutions and police regulations uniformly throughout the
United States.

"Are you prepared for such a change in the institutions of your country?
Whenever you shall have blotted out the State Sovereignties, abolished
the State Legislatures, and consolidated all the power in the Federal
Government, you will have established a Consolidated Empire as
destructive to the Liberties of the People and the Rights of the Citizen
as that of Austria, or Russia, or any other despotism that rests upon
the neck of the People.  * * *  There is but one possible way in which
Slavery can be abolished, and that is by leaving a State, according to
the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, perfectly free to form and
regulate its institutions in its own way.  That was the principle upon
which this Republic was founded, and it is under the operation of that
principle that we have been able to preserve the Union thus far under
its operation.  Slavery disappeared from New Hampshire, from Rhode
Island, from Connecticut, from New York, from New Jersey, from
Pennsylvania, from six of the twelve original Slave-holding States; and
this gradual system of emancipation went on quietly, peacefully, and
steadily, so long as we in the Free States minded our own business, and
left our neighbors alone.

"But the moment the Abolition Societies were organized throughout the
North, preaching a violent crusade against Slavery in the Southern
States, this combination necessarily caused a counter-combination in the
South, and a sectional line was drawn which was a barrier to any further
emancipation.  Bear in mind that emancipation has not taken place in any
one State since the Free Soil Party was organized as a political party
in this country.  Emancipation went on gradually, in State after State,
so long as the Free States were content with managing their own affairs
and leaving the South perfectly free to do as they pleased; but the
moment the North said we are powerful enough to control you of the
South, the moment the North proclaimed itself the determined master of
the South, that moment the South combined to resist the attack, and thus
sectional parties were formed and gradual emancipation ceased in all the
Slave-holding States.

"And yet Mr. Lincoln, in view of these historical facts, proposes to
keep up this sectional agitation, band all the Northern States together
in one political Party, elect a President by Northern votes alone, and
then, of course, make a Cabinet composed of Northern men, and administer
the Government by Northern men only, denying all the Southern States of
this Union any participation in the administration of affairs
whatsoever.  I submit to you, my fellow-citizens, whether such a line of
policy is consistent with the peace and harmony of the Country?  Can the
Union endure under such a system of policy?  He has taken his position
in favor of sectional agitation and sectional warfare.  I have taken
mine in favor of securing peace, harmony, and good-will among all the
States, by permitting each to mind its own business, and
discountenancing any attempt at interference on the part of one State
with the domestic concerns of the others.  * * *

"Mr. Lincoln tells you that he is opposed to the decision of the Supreme
Court in the Dred Scott case.  Well, suppose he is; what is he going to
do about it?  * * * Why, he says he is going to appeal to Congress.  Let
us see how he will appeal to Congress.  He tells us that on the 8th of
March, 1820, Congress passed a law called the Missouri Compromise,
prohibiting Slavery forever in all the territory west of the Mississippi
and north of the Missouri line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes;
that Dred Scott, a slave in Missouri, was taken by his master to Fort
Snelling, in the present State of Minnesota, situated on the west branch
of the Mississippi River, and consequently in the Territory where
Slavery was prohibited by the Act of 1820; and that when Dred Scott
appealed for his Freedom in consequence of having been taken into that
Territory, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Dred
Scott did not become Free by being taken into that Territory, but that
having been carried back to Missouri, was yet a Slave.

"Mr. Lincoln is going to appeal from that decision and reverse it.  He
does not intend to reverse it as to Dred Scott.  Oh, no!  But he will
reverse it so that it shall not stand as a rule in the future.  How will
he do it?  He says that if he is elected to the Senate he will introduce
and pass a law just like the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting Slavery
again in all the Territories.  Suppose he does re-enact the same law
which the Court has pronounced unconstitutional, will that make it
Constitutional?  * * *  Will it be any more valid?  Will he be able to
convince the Court that the second Act is valid, when the first is
invalid and void?  What good does it do to pass a second Act?  Why, it
will have the effect to arraign the Supreme Court before the People, and
to bring them into all the political discussions of the Country.  Will
that do any good?  * * *

"The functions of Congress are to enact the Statutes, the province of
the Court is to pronounce upon their validity, and the duty of the
Executive is to carry the decision into effect when rendered by the
Court.  And yet, notwithstanding the Constitution makes the decision of
the Court final in regard to the validity of an Act of Congress, Mr.
Lincoln is going to reverse that decision by passing another Act of
Congress.  When he has become convinced of the Folly of the proposition,
perhaps he will resort to the same subterfuge that I have found others
of his Party resort to, which is to agitate and agitate until he can
change the Supreme Court and put other men in the places of the present
incumbents."

After ridiculing this proposition at some length, he proceeded:

"Mr. Lincoln is alarmed for fear that, under the Dred Scott decision,
Slavery will go into all the Territories of the United States.  All I
have to say is that, with or without this decision, Slavery will go just
where the People want it, and not an inch further.  * * *  Hence, if the
People of a Territory want Slavery, they will encourage it by passing
affirmatory laws, and the necessary police regulations, patrol laws and
Slave Code; if they do not want it, they will withhold that legislation,
and, by withholding it, Slavery is as dead as if it was prohibited by a
Constitutional prohibition, especially if, in addition, their
legislation is unfriendly, as it would be if they were opposed to it."

Then, taking up what he said was "Mr. Lincoln's main objection to the
Dred Scott decision," to wit: "that that decision deprives the Negro of
the benefits of that clause of the Constitution of the United States
which entitles the citizens of each State to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the several States," and admitting that such
would be its effect, Mr. Douglas contended at some length that this
Government was "founded on the White basis" for the benefit of the
Whites and their posterity.  He did "not believe that it was the design
or intention of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the
frames of the Constitution to include Negroes, Indians, or other
inferior races, with White men as citizens;" nor that the former "had
any reference to Negroes, when they used the expression that all men
were created equal," nor to "any other inferior race."  He held that,
"They were speaking only of the White race, and never dreamed that their
language would be construed to apply to the Negro;" and after ridiculing
the contrary view, insisted that, "The history of the Country shows that
neither the signers of the Declaration, nor the Framers of the
Constitution, ever supposed it possible that their language would be
used in an attempt to make this Nation a mixed Nation of Indians,
Negroes, Whites, and Mongrels."

The "Fathers proceeded on the White basis, making the White people the
governing race, but conceding to the Indian and Negro, and all inferior
races, all the rights and all the privileges they could enjoy consistent
with the safety of the society in which they lived.  That," said he, "is
my opinion now.  I told you that humanity, philanthropy, justice, and
sound policy required that we should give the Negro every right, every
privilege, every immunity consistent with the safety and welfare of the
State.  The question, then, naturally arises, what are those rights and
privileges, and what is the nature and extent of them?  My answer is,
that that is a question which each State and each Territory must decide
for itself.  * * *  I am content with that position.  My friend Lincoln
is not.  * * *  He thinks that the Almighty made the Negro his equal and
his brother.  For my part I do not consider the Negro any kin to me, nor
to any other White man; but I would still carry my humanity and my
philanthropy to the extent of giving him every privilege and every
immunity that he could enjoy, consistent with our own good."

After again referring to the principles connected with non-interference
in the domestic institutions of the States and Territories, and to the
devotion of all his energies to them "since 1850, when," said he, "I
acted side by side with the immortal Clay and the god-like Webster, in
that memorable struggle in which Whigs and Democrats united upon a
common platform of patriotism and the Constitution, throwing aside
partisan feelings in order to restore peace and harmony to a distracted
Country"--he alluded to the death-bed of Clay, and the pledges made by
himself to both Clay and Webster to devote his own life to the
vindication of the principles of that Compromise of 1850 as a means of
preserving the Union; and concluded with this appeal: "This Union can
only be preserved by maintaining the fraternal feeling between the North
and the South, the East and the West.  If that good feeling can be
preserved, the Union will be as perpetual as the fame of its great
founders.  It can be maintained by preserving the sovereignty of the
States, the right of each State and each Territory to settle its
domestic concerns for itself, and the duty of each to refrain from
interfering with the other in any of its local or domestic institutions.
Let that be done, and the Union will be perpetual; let that be done, and
this Republic, which began with thirteen States and which now numbers
thirty-two, which when it began, only extended from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi, but now reaches to the Pacific, may yet expand, North and
South, until it covers the whole Continent, and becomes one vast ocean-
bound Confederacy.  Then, my friends, the path of duty, of honor, of
patriotism, is plain.  There are a few simple principles to be
preserved.  Bear in mind the dividing line between State rights and
Federal authority; let us maintain the great principles of Popular
Sovereignty, of State rights and of the Federal Union as the
Constitution has made it, and this Republic will endure forever."

On the next evening, July 17th, at Springfield, both Douglas and Lincoln
addressed separate meetings.

After covering much the same ground with regard to the history of the
Kansas-Nebraska struggle and his own attitude upon it, as he did in his
previous speech, Mr. Douglas declined to comment upon Mr. Lincoln's
intimation of a Conspiracy between Douglas, Pierce, Buchanan, and Taney
for the passage of the Nebraska Bill, the rendition of the Dred Scott
decision, and the extension of Slavery, but proceeded to dilate on the
"uniformity" issue between himself and Mr. Lincoln, in much the same
strain as before, tersely summing up with the statement that "there is a
distinct issue of principles--principles irreconcilable--between Mr.
Lincoln and myself.  He goes for consolidation and uniformity in our
Government.  I go for maintaining the Confederation of the Sovereign
States under the Constitution, as our fathers made it, leaving each
State at liberty to manage its own affairs and own internal
institutions."

He then ridiculed, at considerable length, Mr. Lincoln's proposed
methods of securing a reversal by the United States Supreme Court of the
Dred Scott decision--especially that of an "appeal to the People to
elect a President who will appoint judges who will reverse the Dred
Scott decision," which he characterized as "a proposition to make that
Court the corrupt, unscrupulous tool of a political party," and asked,
"when we refuse to abide by Judicial decisions, what protection is there
left for life and property?  To whom shall you appeal?  To mob law, to
partisan caucuses, to town meetings, to revolution?  Where is the remedy
when you refuse obedience to the constituted authorities?"  In other
respects the speech was largely a repetition of his Bloomington speech.

Mr. Lincoln in his speech, the same night, at Springfield, opened by
contrasting the disadvantages under which, by reason of an unfair
apportionment of State Legislative representation and otherwise, the
Republicans of Illinois labored in this fight.  Among other
disadvantages--whereby he said the Republicans were forced "to fight
this battle upon principle and upon principle alone"--were those which
he said arose "out of the relative positions of the two persons who
stand before the State as candidates for th