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
Mr. Douglas remarked that several speeches had been made very
pointedly at him, making him out no better than an Abolitionist, for
leaving the territories to carry out their own affairs. It does well
to attack one man for his opinion; but when was the most aggravated
act ever committed, that he did not say it was committed, in
manumitting your slaves and confiscating your property? The gentleman
who spoke thus, says: "It is not yet time." There is no better time
than the present, to introduce a bill to repeal that act of the Kansas
Legislature. Senators say that he (Douglas) may go out. No; he stands
on the platform, and it is for those who jump off, to go out.
The chair called the Senate to order, threatening to clear the
galleries, unless it was maintained.
Mr. Green said he had received information of the bill by telegraph;
but could not legislate on such information.
Mr. Douglas would take it for granted that Mr. Green meant that he
received authentic information, and would introduce a bill to repeal
the act. The South, he said, had reluctantly acquiesced in the
movement with the Democrats of the North to settle the question. He
went at some length into a discussion and approval of the decision of
the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. He did not agree with
Senator Douglas's views as to the power of the people of a territory,
and did not believe that the Nebraska-Kansas bill gave them
independent power. The senator from Virginia then gave his ideas as to
the people of the territories, and the people of the States. The right
of property is recognized in the former, but the inhabitants of a
territory are unknown to the Constitution. Congress cannot divest
itself of its power over the property of the territories, but it can
grant them nothing. South of the Potomac River, to the confines of
Mexico, there is not one dissentient voice. The South would be
recreant to itself; if it would give one vote for its rights to be
taken from the Constitution, and remitted to the pleasure of the
people temporarily in the territories.
Mr. Davis took an animated part in the debate against Mr. Douglas, who
in the Kansas-Nebraska act, had made a great error, and drawn the
Senate into a great error.
Mr. Douglas resumed, saying it won't do to read him out, because they
had fallen from the faith. There is no middle ground. It is either
intervention or non-intervention.
Mr. Gwin said, if the senator from Illinois had given the same
interpretation to the Kansas-Nebraska bill when it was before the
Senate, he (Gwin) would not have voted for it, and believed those
around him would not. When the senator proposed to speak for the
Democracy of the free States, he had no right to speak for California,
which thought otherwise.
Mr. Broderick contradicted Mr. Gwin's statement of the views of
California. He considered the views of his State were those expressed
by Mr. Douglas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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