On August 6th, 1846, Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, chairman of the committee on Territories, asked the House {341} of Representatives to consider a bill prepared by that committee for the organization of Oregon as a Territory. The House consented, and immediately upon the second reading of the bill, Mr. Thompson, of Pennsylvania, a Democrat and friend of the Administration, moved to amend the bill by the provision "that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in said Territory, except for crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The amendment was adopted by a very large majority, and the bill, as thus amended, was passed. On the following day, the bill was presented in the Senate, and referred by that body to its Judiciary committee, which committee did not report the bill during the session. [Sidenote: The second bill.] At the beginning of the next session, Mr. Douglas introduced a new bill for the same purpose. This bill virtually contained the Thompson amendment in the proviso that all the restrictions in the Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwest Territory, should apply to Oregon. [Sidenote: Thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific.] On January 12th, 1847, Mr. Burt, of South Carolina, moved to insert before this proviso the words, "inasmuch as the whole of the said Territory lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, known as the line of the Missouri Compromise." The purpose of this was, of course, to commit Congress and the North to that line to the Pacific. This was so evident that the Northern members voted the amendment down. We can, however, hardly charge the invention of this idea to the South Carolinian. On August 8th preceding, Mr. Wick, of Indiana, had moved to amend the Wilmot proviso, so as to make it read, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should exist, in any territory {342} acquired from Mexico _north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes_. [Sidenote: Mr. Rhett on the rights of the South in the Territories.] It was during the debate on this bill, just after Mr. Burt's amendment had been rejected, that Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina, made his noted speech, in which the new view, which the South was now beginning to take upon the rights of the two sections in the Territories, was first pronounced. That view was, briefly expressed, that the "States" were joint owners of the Territories, and "co-Sovereigns" in them; that the general Government was only the agent of the "States" therein, and had only the power "to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory, or other property of the United States," from which power, the power to determine in what property should consist within the Territories could not be derived; and that the "ingress of the citizen" of any "State" into any Territory, "is the ingress of his Sovereign," his "State," who is bound to protect him in his settlement.