At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of
the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of _fact_ whether the Lecompton
constitution was, or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of
Kansas; and in that quarrel, the latter declares that all he wants is a
fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted
_down_ or _voted up_. I do not understand his declaration that he cares
not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him
other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the
public mind,--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so
much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that
principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That
principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine.
Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of
existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at
the foundry, it served through one blast, and fell back into loose
sand,--helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds.
His late joint struggle with the Republicans against the Lecompton
constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That
struggle was made on a point--the right of the people to make their own
constitution--upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.
The several points of the Dred Scott decision in connection with Senator
Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its
present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The
working points of that machinery are:
_First._ That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no
descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the
sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.
This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible
event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States
Constitution which declares that "citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States."
_Secondly._ That "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from
any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual
men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing
them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the
institution through all the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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