Slavery and four years of war : $b a political history of slavery in the United States, together with a narrative of the campaigns and battles of the Civil War in which the author took part, 1861-1865. Vols. 1-2Keifer, Joseph Warren
History
Slavery and four years of war : $b a political history of slavery in the United States, together with a narrative of the campaigns and battles of the Civil War in which the author took part, 1861-1865. Vols. 1-2
Keifer, Joseph Warren
Slavery -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Campaigns
The first of these propositions, in another form, announced the
new doctrine of popular sovereignty, soon thereafter popularly
called "Squatter Sovereignty," in derision of the rights thus to
be vested in the territorial _squatter_, however temporary his stay
might be. It was opposed to the principle of Congressional right
(expressly granted by the Constitution (80)) to provide rules (laws)
and regulations for United States territory until it became clothed
with statehood.
The second proposition announced nothing new, as cases involving
titles to slaves, or questions of personal freedom, must necessarily
go for final determination to the courts, with a right of appeal.
The third proposition, like the second, was a mere platitude.
The bill accompanying the report, as first presented, required that
any part of Nebraska Territory admitted as a state (as provided in
the New Mexico and Utah Acts of 1850) "shall be received into the
Union with or without slavery, as its Constitution may prescribe
at the time of admission." This, too, was not new in any sense,
as new States had ever been thus received. The anti-slavery press
and societies, and all people opposed to further slavery aggression
and extension, at once took alarm and violently assailed the new
doctrines of the report; the South, too, at first viewed them with
surprise, denominating them "a snare set for the South," yet later
regarded them as favorable to the extension of slavery. Southern
statesmen, however, determined to force Douglas to amend them so
as to accomplish the ends of the South. Accordingly, Senator Dixon
of Kentucky, on January 16th, offered an amendment to the Nebraska
Bill providing for the absolute repeal of the Missouri Compromise
line. This amendment Douglas, apparently with reluctance,(81)
accepted, after a consultation with Jefferson Davis, then Secretary
of War, and President Pierce, both of whom promised it their
support.(82)
January 23, 1854, Douglas presented a substitute for his original
bill, wherein it was provided that the restriction of the Missouri
Compromise "was superseded by the principles of the legislation of
1850, and is hereby declared inoperative."
The new bill divided the Territory in two parts; the southern,
called Kansas, lay between 37 deg. and 40 deg. of latitude, extending west
to the Rocky Mountains, and the northern was still called Nebraska.
As early as 1853 a movement in Missouri was started, avowedly to
make Nebraska slave Territory, and this was well known to Douglas
and the supporters of his newly announced doctrines. Kansas, lying
farthest south, was climatically better suited for slavery than
the new Nebraska. Before the bill passed, plans were made to invade
Kansas from Missouri and Arkansas by slaveholders with their slaves.
January 24, 1854, the _Appeal of the Independent Democrats in
Congress to the People of the United States_ was published.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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