principle, as established by the legislation of 1850, was the neutrality of Congress in the question, and the right of the residents in each Territory to settle the question for themselves; and that this new principle had superseded the old principle and rendered all legislation under the old principle inoperative. [Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment to the bill.] [Sidenote: The Southern Whigs aroused by Mr. Wade's accusations.] [Sidenote: The Douglas doctrine convincing to many.] [Sidenote: Mr. Chase's amendment lost.] Such jurisprudence in respect to the effect upon each other of statutes relating to different and distinct Territories had never been heard before, and it was easy to show it to be a tissue of sophistries from beginning to end. It was entirely evident that Mr. Douglas and his committee shrank from proposing a bare and bald repeal of the slavery prohibition in the Act of 1820, and sought to avoid the responsibility of doing so under the convenient claim that it had already been repealed. But {391} Mr. Chase was determined to make them take this responsibility, and to expose their fallacies in their attempts to escape it. On February 3rd, Mr. Chase moved to remove from the bill the words referring to the Measures of 1850, and their effect upon the Act of 1820, and make the bill simply repeal the slavery prohibition of the Act of 1820, in so far as it applied to the Territories to be organized by the bill. Mr. Chase supported his amendment in a powerful speech, in which he demonstrated most clearly the fallacy and the duplicity of the doctrine which held that the legislation of 1850 in regard to Utah and New Mexico had repealed the legislation of 1820 in regard to the Louisiana territory north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. Both he and his colleague, Mr. Wade, went, however, too far in denouncing the subterfuge as a conspiracy between the Southerners and the friends of Douglas to extend slavery. It was especially imprudent, to say the least, in Mr. Wade to do so. The Southern Whigs were highly incensed at the charge of conspiring with Northern Democrats, made by one of their own party, and they repudiated the accusation with great earnestness. Besides this, the Douglas idea of "popular sovereignty," or, as we now call it, home rule, in the Territories, had won many adherents. There is no question that a great many men, in both the North and the South, now began to feel that Mr. Douglas had discovered the true principle in regard to slavery in the Territories. Mr. Chase's amendment was lost by a vote of thirty to thirteen. The thirteen voting in favor of the amendment were all from the North. Of those voting against it, ten were from the North, and twenty from the South. Nineteen Senators, ten of whom were from the South, did not vote at all. The {392} vote meant that the large majority of those voting held that, in some way or other, the legislation of 1850 had repealed the slavery prohibition in