day with what it was one year ago, at the meeting of Congress, we have much reason for gratitude to that Almighty Providence which has never failed to interpose for our relief at the most critical periods of our history. One year ago the sectional strife between the North and the South on the dangerous subject of slavery had again become so intense as to threaten the peace and perpetuity of the confederacy. The application for the admission of Kansas as a State into the Union fostered this unhappy agitation, and brought the whole subject once more before Congress. It was the desire of every patriot that such measures of legislation might be adopted as would remove the excitement from the States and confine it to the Territory where it legitimately belonged. Much has been done, I am happy to say, towards the accomplishment of this object during the last session of Congress.

"The Supreme Court of the United States had previously decided that all American citizens have an equal right to take into the Territories whatever is held as property under the laws of any of the States, and to hold such property there under the guardianship of the Federal Constitution, so long as the territorial condition shall remain. This is now a well-established position, and the proceedings of the last session were alone wanting to give it practical effect.

"The principle has been recognized, in some form or other, by an almost unanimous vote of both Houses of Congress, that a Territory has a right to come into the Union either as a free or a slave State, according to the will of a majority of its people. The just equality of all the States has thus been vindicated, and a fruitful source of dangerous dissension among them has been removed.

"While such has been the beneficial tendency of your legislative proceedings outside of Kansas, their influence has nowhere been so happy as within that Territory itself. Left to manage and control its own affairs in its own way, without the pressure of external influence, the revolutionary Topeka organization, and all resistance to the territorial government established by Congress, have been finally abandoned. As a natural consequence, that fine Territory now appears to be tranquil and pros

perous, and is attracting increasing thousands of immigrants to make it their happy home.

"The past unfortunate experience of Kansas has enforced the lesson, so often already taught, that resistance to lawful authority, under our form of government, cannot fail in the end to prove disastrous to its authors."

It is unnecessary to pursue this subject further than to state that Kansas was finally admitted into the Union on the 29th January, 1861.

The series of events already enumerated had greatly strengthened and extended the Anti-Slavery party. It soon drew within its vortex all other political organizations in the free States, except that of the old Democratic party, and consolidated them under the name of the Republican party. This thenceforward became purely sectional, and was confined to the States north of Mason and Dixon's line.

The Kansas and Nebraska Act had referred all constitutional questions respecting slavery in the Territories, to the Supreme Court of the United States. It accordingly furnished the necessary facilities for bringing cases "involving title to slaves," or the "question of personal freedom," before that tribunal.

At the period of Mr. Buchanan's inauguration a case was pending before that Court (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 Howard's Reports, p. 393) involving all the contested questions in regard to slavery. This, at the time, presented to him a cheerful but delusive prospect. He confidently expected that the decision of the Court would settle all these questions and eventually restore harmony among the States. Accordingly, in his Inaugural Address, he had declared that to this decision, whatever it might be, he should, in common with all good citizens, cheerfully submit. This was his imperative duty. Our free form of government must soon be destroyed, should the Executive set up his judgment against that of the coördinate judicial branch, on a question clearly within its constitutional jurisdiction.

Two days after the inauguration, on the 6th March, 1857, the Supreme Court pronounced its judgment. This was delivered by Chief Justice Taney, and embraced all the points in controvers. It establishes the following propositions:

1. Congress has power to acquire territory, "to be held by the United States until it is in a suitable condition to become a State upon an equal footing with the other States."

2. This territory is "acquired by the General Government, as the representative and trustee of the people of the United States, and it must therefore be held in that character for their common and equal benefit; for it was the people of the several States, acting through their agent and representative, the Federal Government, who in fact acquired the territory in question, and the Government holds it for their common use, until it shall be associated with the other States as a member of the confederacy."

3. Until that time should arrive, it was the duty of Congress to establish a government over the Territory, "best suited for the protection and security of the citizens of the United States, and other inhabitants who might be authorized to take up their abode there."

4. But "the territory being a part of the United States, the Government and the citizen both enter it under the authority of the Constitution, with their respective rights defined and marked out; and the Federal Government can exercise no power over his person or property beyond what that instrument confers, nor lawfully deny any right which it has reserved."

5. The Federal Government possesses no power to violate the rights of property within such Territory, because these “ are united with the rights of persons, and placed on the same ground by the fifth amendment to the Constitution, which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." "And the powers over persons and property of which we speak, are not only not granted to Congress, but are in express terms denied, and they are forbidden to exercise them. And this prohibition is not confined to the States, but the words are general, and extend to the whole Territory over which the Constitution gives it. power to legislate, including those portions of it remaining under Territorial Government, as well as that covered by States. It is a total absence of power everywhere within the dominion of the United States, and places the citizens of a Territory, as far as these rights are concerned,

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on the same footing with citizens of the States, and guards them as firmly and plainly against any inroads which the General Government might attempt, under the plea of implied or incidental powers. And if Congress itself cannot do this--if it is beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government-it will be admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize a territorial Government to exercise them. It could confer no power on any local Government, established by its authority, to violate the provisions of the Constitution."

6. "It seems, however, to be supposed, that there is a difference between property in a slave and other property, and that different rules may be applied to it in expounding the Constitution of the United States." "Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion, on a different point, the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the citizens of the United States, in every State that might desire it, for twenty years. And the Government in express terms is pledged to protect it in all future time, if the slave escapes from his owner. This is done in plain words-too plain to be misunderstood. And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights."

"Upon these considerations it is the opinion of the Court that the Act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned [the Missouri Compromise line], is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void."

This decision, so full and explicit, established the right of the master to take his slaves into the Territories and hold them there in despite of all conflicting Congressional or Territorial legislation, until the Territories should be prepared to assume the position of States.

It might have been expected that this decision would have superseded all opposing political platforms, and ended the controversy in regard to slavery in the Territories. This expectation, notwithstanding, soon proved to be a delusion. Instead of yielding it obedience, its correctness and binding effect were instantly resisted by the Republican party. They denounced and repudiated it in every possible form from the first moment, and continued to maintain, in opposition to its express terms, that it was not only the right but the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in all the Territories. This became a cardinal principle in the Chicago platform on which Mr. Lincoln was nominated and elected, and to which his Inaugural proves he had determined to adhere. The agitation continued for years, just as though the Supreme Court had never decided the question, until at length Congress passed an Act, on the 19th June, 1862,* declaring that from and after its passage, "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the Territories of the United States now existing, or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

This Act stands upon the Statute Book in direct conflict with the Constitution as expounded by the Supreme Coördinate Judicial Tribunal, and is therefore, according to the theory of our Government, a mere nullity.

On the other hand, a large and respectable portion of the old Democratic party of the North, best known as the Douglas Democracy, equally disregarded the decision of the Supreme Court. For some years before it was pronounced, this party, whilst admitting that the Constitution authorizes the migration of slaves from the States into the Territories, had maintained that after their arrival it was competent for the Territorial Legislature to impair or destroy the rights of the master. They claimed this power by virtue of a supposed inherent attribute of popular sovereignty alleged to belong to the first settlers of a Territory, just as it exists in the people of one of the States. This doctrine

* Pamph. Laws, 1861-262, p. 432.