Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
He has frequently voted for river and harbor bills--voted for the
Independent Treasury bill, and has, in and out of Congress, utterly
denied the power of Congress over the franchise in the States. Mr.
Douglas was an early supporter of the Mexican war. "He opposed the
incorporation of the Wilmot proviso into the two or three million
bills. He believed the people's time had not come for any action on
that subject. Slavery was now prohibited in Mexico. If any portion of
that country should be annexed to the United States without any
stipulation being made on that point, the existing laws would remain
in force. ....If the question was pressed for immediate decision, he
could perceive no other mode of harmonizing conflicting sentiments,
but by the adoption of the Missouri Compromise Line."
Mr. Douglas voted to bring up the Homestead bill which was before the
last Congress and which passed the House, showing that he is in favor
of that important measure.
We now come to the history of Mr. Douglas in connection with the
Kansas-Nebraska bill.
The battle which he waged with his political opponents and won upon
that bill is so fresh in the memory of all our readers that it will
not be safe, or necessary, to go into a minute history of the
struggle. In the winter of 1852-3, Mr. Douglas reported a Nebraska
bill from the Territorial Committee of which he was chairman, which
contained no repeal of the Missouri Compromise or enumeration of his
peculiar Popular Sovereignty doctrines. In the great debate over the
compromise measures in 1850, no one ever called in question the
Missouri Compromise. In the winter of 1852-3, Senator Atchison, of
Missouri, declared in his seat in the Senate that the Missouri
prohibition could never be repealed.
The Kansas-Nebraska bill as reported from the Committee appeared first
without any repeal of the Missouri restriction--on the 7th day of
January it was first presented. On the 16th, Mr. Dixon, a Whig senator
from Kentucky, proposed an amendment to the bill reported from the
committee which repealed the aforesaid compromise. This movement was
at first opposed by leading Democrats and their organ the _Union_, but
in a very few days Mr. Douglas, either because he saw the justice of
the repeal of the restriction or thought it would advance his
political interests, acquiesced in the amendment and made it a part of
his bill. We make a few brief extracts from Mr. Douglas's argument in
the Senate, Jan. 30, 1854, in support of his bill:
"Sir, I wish you to bear in mind, too, that this geographical
line, established by the founders of the Republic between free
territories and slave territories, extended as far westward as our
territory then reached; the object being to avoid all agitation
upon the slavery question by settling that question forever, as
far as our territory extended, which was then to the Mississippi
River.
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