The Senator from Illinois assumes that the congressional acts of 1850 meant no legislation in relation to slave property; while, in the face of that declaration, stand the laws enacted in that year, and the promise of another, which has not been enacted--laws directed to the question of slavery and slave property; one even declaring, in certain contingencies, as a penalty on the owner, the emancipation of his slave in the District of Columbia. If no action upon the question was the prevailing opinion, what does the legislation mean? Was it non-action in the District of Columbia? Be it remembered, the resolution of the Cincinnati platform says, "Non-interference, by Congress, with slavery in State and Territory, or in the District of Columbia." They are all upon the same footing. Again, he said that the Badger amendment was a declaration of no protection to slave property. The Badger amendment declares that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise shall not revive the laws or usages which preëxisted that compromise; and the history of the times, so far as I understand it, is, that it intended to assure those gentlemen who feared that the laws of France would be revived in the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, by the repeal of the act of 1820, and that they would be held responsible for having, by congressional act, established slavery. The Southern men did not desire Congress to establish slavery. It has been our uniform declaration that we denied the power of the Federal Government either to establish or prohibit it; that we claimed for it protection as property recognized by the Constitution, and we claimed the right for it, as property, to go, and to receive federal protection wherever the jurisdiction of the United States is exclusive. We claim that the Constitution of the United States, in recognizing this property, making it the basis of representation, put it, not upon the footing which it holds between foreign nations, but upon the basis of the compact or union of the States; that, under the delegated grant to regulate commerce between the States, it did not belong to a State; therefore, without breach of contract, they can not, by any regulation, prohibit transit, and the compact provided that they should not change the character of master and slave in the case of a fugitive. Could Congress surrender, for the States and their citizens, the claim and protection for those or other constitutional rights, against invasion by a State? If not, surely it can not be done in the case of a Territory, a possession of the States. The word "protecting," in that amendment, referred to laws which preëxisted--laws which it was not designed, by the Democrats, to revive when they declared the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and, therefore, I think, did not affect the question of constitutional right and of federal power and duty.