433 .PJ32 REMOVAL OF JUDGE DOUGLAS BY THE SENATE AS CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON TERRITORIES, i*\*t*& __. ____'. s , ;. ^~t^^W.(f\ H 'brasKa'acft when it was under consideration in Congress in 1854, I should have voted against it." Why was it " the duty of Mr. Douglas to give his reasons to the Senate and to the country for the line of policy he had considered it his duty to adopt in the Senatorial canvass in Illinois ?" I had already given my " reasons " at Freeport, and at more than a hundred places during the can vass, and had been triumphantly sustained by the voice of the people and the vote of the Legislature against the combined forces of the Black Republicans and Federal office-holders and their allies and supporters in and out of the Senate. Why, I repeat, was it my duty to give my reasons to the Senate ? The Senate is not my constituency. I am not responsible to the Senate, nor did any Senator venture to demand reasons for the line of, policy which I had felt it my duty to pursue at home in a State canvass. But if it were my duty, as Mr. Gwin states, to give my " reasons to the Senate" for the course which I pursued in the canvass, it necessarily follows that it was the duty of the Senate to hear them before they proceeded, as he alleges, to condemn me by my removal, during my absence, from the Chair manship of the Committee on Territories which I had held for eleven years, and to which I was re-elected after my speech against the Lecompton Con stitution. The country is now informed for the first time that I was removed from the post of Chairman of the Committee on Territories because of the senti ments contained in my " Freeport speech." To use the language of Mr. Gwin, THE DOCTRINES HE HAD AVOWED IN HIS FREEPORT SPEECH HAD BEEN CON DEMNED IN THE SENATE BY HIS REMOVAL FROM THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE TERRITO RIAL COMMITTEE OF THAT BODY. The country will bear in mind this testimony, that I was not removed because of any personal unkindness or hostility; nor in consequence of my course on the Lecompton question, or in respect to the Administration; but that it was intended as a condemnation of the doctrines avowed in my "Freeport speech." The only position taken in my "Freeport speech," which I have ever seen cruised or controverted, may be stated in a single sentence, and was in reply to an interrogatory propounded by my competitor for the Senate: That " the Territorial Legislature could lawfully exclude slavery, either by non-action or unfriendly legislation." This opinion was not expressed by me at Freeport for the first time. I have expressed the same opinion often in the Senate, freely and frequently, in the presence of those Senators who, as Mr. Gwin testifies, removed me " from the Chairmanship of the Committee on Territories," ten years after they knew that I held the opinion, and would never surrender it. I could fill many columns of the NATIONAL with extracts of speeches made by me during the discussion of the compromise measures in 1850, and in defence of the principles imbodied in those measures in 1851 and 1852, in the discussion of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, and of the Kansas diffi culties, and the Topeka revolutionary movements in 1856, in all of which I expressed the same opinion and defended the same position which was as sumed in the " Freeport speech." I will not, however, burden your columns or weary your readers with extracts of all these speeches, but will refer you to each volume of the Congressional Globe for the last ten years, where you will find them fully reported. If you cannot conveniently procure the Con gressional Globe, I refer jou to an editorial article in the Washington Union of October 5, 1858, which, it was reported, received the sanction of the Presi dent of the United States previously to its publication, a few weeks after my " Freeport speech" had been delivered. The Union made copious extracts of my speeches in 1850 and 1854, to prove that at each of those periods I held the same opinions which I expressed at Freeport in 1858, and, conse quently, declared that I never was a good Democrat, much less sound on the slavery question when I advocated the compromise measures of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854. In the article referred to, the Washington Union said : "We propose to show that Judge Douglas' action in 1850 and 1854 was taken with jspecial reference to the announcement of doctrine and programme which was made at ?reeport. The declaration at Freeport was, that ' in his opinion the people can, by lawful weans, exclude slavery from a Territory before it comes in as a State ;' and he declared that ris competitor had 'heard him argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over Illinois in 1854, 1855, and 1856, and had no excuse to pretend to have any doubt on that subject ' " The Union summed up the evidence furnished by my speeches in the Sen ate .in 1850 and 1854, that the "Freeport speech" was consistent with my Dormer course, with this emphatic declaration: "THUS WE HAVE SHOWN THAT PRECISELY THE POSITION ASSUMED BY JUDGE DOUGLAS AT FREE- PORT HAD BEEN MAINTAINED BY HIM IN 1850, IN THE DEBATES AND VOTES ON THE UTAH AND NEW MEXICAN BILLS, AND IN 1854 ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL; AND HAVE SHOWN THAT IT WAS OWING TO HIS OPPOSITION THAT CLAUSES DEPRIVING TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURES OF THE POWER OF EXCLUDING SLAVERY FROM THEIR JURISDICTIONS WERE NOT EXPRESSLY INSERTED IN THOSE MEASURES." liberty, and property of morals and education to determine the relation of husband and wife, of parent and child I am not aware that it requires any higher degree of civilization to regu late the affairs of master and servant. These things are all confided by the Constitution to each State to decide for itself, and I know of no reason why the sa:ne principle should not be extended to the Territories." This speech was laid on the desk of every member of the Senate, at the opening of the 2d session of the 31st Congress, in December, 1850, when, with a full knowledge of my opinions on the territorial question, I was unanimously nominated in the Democratic caucus and re-elected by the Sen ate Chairman of the Committee on Territories. From that time to this I have spoken the same sentiments and vindicated the same positions in debate in the Senate, and have been re-elected Chairman of the Committee on Ter ritories at each session of Congress, until last December, by the unanimous voice of the Democratic party in caucus and in the Senate, with my opinions on this territorial question well known to and well understood by every Senator. Yet Mr. Gwin testifies that I was condemned and deposed by the Senate for the utterance of opinions in 1858, which were put on record year after year so plainly and so unequivocally as to leave neither the Senate nor the coun try in doubt. Thus does Mr. Gwin, in his eagerness to be my public accuser, speak his own condemnation, for he voted for me session after session, with my opinions, the same that I spoke at Freeport, staring him in the face. On the 4th of January, 1854, 1 reported the Nebraska Bill, and, as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, accompanied it with a special report, in which I stated distinctly "that all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new /Stales to be formed therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the people residing therein, by their appropriate representatives to be chosen by them for that purpose." And that the bill proposed "to carry these propositions and principles into practical operation in the precise language of the Com promise Measures of 1850." The Kansas-Nebraska act, as it stands on the statute book, does define the power of the Territorial Legislature "in the precise language of the Compromise Measures of 1850." It gives the Legis lature power over all rightful subjects of legislation not inconsistent with the Constitution, without excepting African slavery. During the discussion of the measure it was suggested that it was necessary to repeal the 8th section of the Act of the 6th of March, 1850, called the Missouri Compromise, in order to permit the people to control the slavery question while they remained in a territorial condition, and before they became a State of the Union. That was the object and only purpose for which the Missouri Compromise was repealed. On the night of the 3d of March, 1854, in my closing speech on the Kansas- Nebraska Bill, a few hours before it passed the Senate, I said: "Ii is ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF CARRYING OUT THIS GREAT FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SELF- GOVERNMENT THAT THE BlLL RENDERS THE 8TH SECTION OF THE MISSOURI ACT INOPE RATIVE AND VOID." The article of the Washington Union of October 5, 1858, to which I have referred, quotes this and other passages of my speech on that occasion, to prove that the author of the Nebraska Bill framed it with express reference to conferring on the Territorial Legislature power to con trol the slavery question. And further, that I boldly avowed the purpose at the time in the presence of all the friends of the Bill, and urged its passage upon that ground. I have never understood that Mr. Gwin, or any other Senator who heard that speech and voted for the Bill the same night, ex pressed any dissent or disapprobation of the doctrines it announced. That was the time for dissent and disapprobation; that was the time to condemn, if there were cause to condemn, and not four or five years later. The record furnishes no such evidence of dissent or disapprobation; nor does the history of those times show that the Democratic Party, in the North or in the South, or in any portion of the country, repudiated the fundamental principle upon which the Kansas-Nebraska Act is founded, and proscribed its advocates arid defenders. If Mr. Gwin did not understand the Kansas-Nebraska Bill when it was under consideration, according- to its plain meaning as explained and defended by its authors and supporters, it is not the fault of those who did understand it precisely as I interpreted it at Freeport, and as the country understood it in the Presidential canvass of 1856. Mr. Buchanan, and leading members of his Cabinet, at all events, understood the Kansas-Nebraska Act in the same sense in which it was understood and defended at the time of its passage. Mr. Buchanan, jn his letter accepting the Cincinnati nomination, affirmed that "this legislation is founded upon principles as ancient as free government itself, and, in accordance with them, has simply declared that the people of a Territory, LIKE THOSE OF A STATE, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits." General Cass, now Secretary of State, has always maintained, from the day he penned the "Nicholson Letter" to this, that the people of the Territories have a right to decide the slavery question for themselves whenever they please. In 1856, on the 2d day of July, referring to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he said: "/ believe the original act gave the Territorial Legislature of Kansas FULL POWER to exclude or allow slavery." Mr. Toucey, the Secretary of the Navy, interpreted that act in the same way, and, on the same occasion in the Senate, said: " The original act recognizes in the Territoiial Legislature all the power which they can have, subject to the Constitution, and subject to the organic law of the Territory." Mr. Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, in a speech at West Chester* Pennsylvania, on the 19th of September, 1856, advocating Mr. Buchanan's election to the Presidency, said: " The Government of the United States should not force the institution of slavery upon the people either of the Territories or of the States, against the will of the people, though my voice could bring about that result. I stand upon the principle the people of my State decide it for themselves, you for yourselves, the people of Kansas for themselves. That is the Constitution, and I stand by the Constitution " And again, in the same speech, he said: "Whether they" (the people of a Territory) "decide it by prohibiting it, according to the one doctrine, OR BY REFUSING TO PASS LAWS TO PROTECT IT, as contended for by the other party, is immaterial. The majority of the people, BY THE ACTION OF THE TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE, will decide the question ; and all must abide the decision when made." Here we find the doctrines of the Freeport speech, including " non-action" and " unfriendly legislation" as a lawful and proper mode for the exclusion of slavery from a Territory clearly defined by Mr. Cobb, and the election of Mr. Buchanan advocated on those identical doctrines. Mr. Cobb made simi lar speeches during the Presidential canvass in other sections of Pennsylvania, in Maine, Indiana, and most of the Northern States, and was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Buchanan as a mark of gratitude for the efficient services which had been thus rendered. Will any Senator who voted to remove me from the chairmanship of the Territorial Committee for expressing opinions for which Mr. Cobb, Mr. Toucey, and Gen. Cass were rewarded, pretend that he did not know that they or either of them had ever uttered such opinions when their nominations were before the Senate ? I am sure that no Senator will make so humiliating a confession. Why, then, were those distinguished gentlemen appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate as Cabinet Ministers if they were not good Democrats sound on the slavery question, and faithful exponents of the principles and creed of the party ? Is it not a significant fact that the President and the most distinguished and honored of his Cabinet should have been solemnly and irrevocably pledged to this monstrous heresy of " popular sovereignty," for asserting which the Senate, by Mr. Gwin's frank avowal, condemned me to the extent of their power ? It must be borne in mind, however, that the President and members of the Cabinet are not the only persons high in authority who are committed to the principle of self-government in the Territories. The Hon. John C. Breckinridge, the Vice President of the United States, was a member of the 6 House of Representatives when the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed, and in a speech delivered March 23, 1854, said: " Among the many misrepresentations sent to the country by some of the enemies of this bill, perhaps none is more flagrant than the charge that it proposes to legislate slavery into Kansas- and Nebraska. Sir, if the bill contained such a feature it would not receive my vote. The right to establish involves the correlative right to prohibit, and denying both I would vote for neither." o .* 9 o o o o o o o " The effect of the repeal, (of the Missouri compromise.) therefore, is neither to establish nor to exclude, but to leave the future condition of the Territories dependent wholly upon the action of the inhabitants, subject only to such limitations as the Federal Constitution may impose." * * " It will be observed that the right of the people to regulate in their own way ALL THEIR DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS is left wholly untouched, except that whatever is clone must be done in accordance with the Constitution the supreme law for us all." Again, at Lexington, Kentucky, on the 9th of June, 1856, in response to the congratu lations of his neighbors on his nomination for the Vice Presidency, Mr. Breckinridge said: "The whole power of the Democratic organization is pledged to the following proposi tions: That Congress shall not interpose upon this subject (slavery) in the States, in the Territories, or in the District of Columbia ; that the people of each Territory shall determine the question for themselves, and be admitted into the Union upon a footing of perfect equality with the original States, without discrimination on account of the allowance or prohibition of slavery. ' ' Touching the power of the Territorial Legislature over the subject of slavery, the Hon. James L. Orr, late Speaker of the House of Representatives, on the llth of December, 1856, said: " Now, the legislative authority of a Territory is invested with a discretion to vote for or against the laws. We think they ought to pass laws in every Territory, when the Territory is open to settlement and slaveholders go there, to protect slave property. But if they decline to pass such law, what is the remedy ? None, sir, if the majority of the people are opposed to the institution; and if they do not desire it in grafted upon their Territory, alt they have to do is simply to decline to pass laws in the Territorial Legis lature for its protection, and then it is as well excluded as if the power was invested in the Territorial Legis lature to prohibit it. ' ' Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, in a speech in the House of Representatives on the 17th of February, 1854, said : ' ' The whole question of slavery was to be left to the people of the Territories, whether north or south of 36 30', or any other line * * ' ' It was based upon the truly republican and national policy of taking this disturbing element out of Congress and leaving the whole question of slavery in the Territories to the people there to settle it for themselves. And it is in vindication of that new principle then established for the first time in the history of our government in the year 1850, the middle of the nineteenth, contury, that we, the friends of the Nebraska bill, whether from the North or South, now call upon this House and the country to carry out in good faitfy, and give effect to the spirit and intent of those important measures of territorial legislation.'' Again, on the 17th of January, 1856, he said : " / am willing that the Territorial Legislature may act upon the subject when and how they may think proper." Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, in a speech in the Senate on the 25th of May, 1854, on the Nebraska bill, said : " We find, then, that this principle of the independence and self-government of thf people in the distant Territories of the confederacy harmonizes all these conflicting opinions, and enables us to banish from the halls of Congress another fertile source of discontent and excitement. ' ' On February 15, 1854, Mr. Badger, of North Carolina, said of the Kansas-Nebraska bill : '"It submits the whole authority to the Territory to determine for itself. That, in my judgement, is the place where it ought to be put. If the people of the Territories choose to exclude slavery, so far from considering it as a wrong done to me or to my constituents, I shall not complain of it. It is their business. ' ' Again, on March 2, 1854, one day before the passage of the bill through the Senate, Mr. Badger said : ii But with regard to that question we have agreed some of us because ice thought it the only right mode, and some because we think it a right mode, and under existing circumstances the preferable mode to confer this power upon the people of the Territories. ' ' On the same day Mr Butler, of South.,Carolina, said : "Now, I believe that under the provisions of this bill, and of the Utah and New Mexico bills, there wiU be a perfect carte blanche given to the Territorial Legislature to legislate as they may think proper. ' ' & & * <* " / am willing to trust them. I have been willing to trust them in Utah and New Mexico, where the Mexican law prevailed, and 1 am willing to trust them in Nebraska and Kansas, where the French law, according to the idea of the gentleman, may possibly be revived." Iii the House of Representatives, June 25, 1856, Mr. Samuel A. Smith, of Tennessee, said: "For twenty years this question had agitated Congress and the country without a single beneficial result. They resolved that it should be transferred from these halls, that all unconstitu tional restrictions should be removed, and that the people should determine for themselves the character of their local and domestic institutions under which they were to live, with precisely the same rights, but no greater than those which were enjoyed by the old thirteen States." And further: "la 1854, the same question was presented, when the necessity arose for the organization of the Terri tories of Kansas and Nebraska, and the identical principle was applied for its solution." In the Senate, on the 25th of February, 1854, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, (now Democratic candidate for governor of that State,) said: "Arid, sir, honesty and consistency with our course in 1850 demand that those of us who sup ported the Compromise measures should zealously support this bill, because it is a return to the sound principle of leaving to the people of the Territories the right of determining for themselves their domestic institutions. And in the House of Representatives, December 28, 1855, Mr. George W. Jones, of Tennessee, said: " Then, sir, you may call it by what name you please non-intervention, squatter sovereignty, or popular sovereignty. It is, sir, the power of the people to govern themselves, and they, and they alone, should exercise it, in my opinion, as well while in a territorial condition as in the position of a State" And again, in the same speech, he said: ' ' / believe that the great principle the right of the people in the Territories, as well as in the Slates, to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way is clearly and unequivocally imbodied in the Kansas- Nebraska act, and if it is not, it should have been. Believing that it was the living, vital principle of the act, 1 voted for it. These are my views, honestly entertained, and will be defended." I could fill your columns with extracts of speeches of Senators and Repre sentatives from the North and the South who voted for the Kansas-Nebraska bill and supported Mr. Buchanan for the Presidency on that distinct issue; thus showing conclusively that it was the general understanding at the time that the people of the Territories, while they remained in a territorial con dition, were left perfectly free, under the Kansas-Nebraska act, to form and regulate all their domestic institutions, slavery not excepted, in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. This is the doctrine of which Mr. Gwin spoke when he said: " To contend for the power and a sovereign power it is of a Territorial Legislature to exclude by non-action or hostile legislation is pregnant with the mischiefe of never-ending agitation, of civil discord, and bloody wars. oo^^s>oc ' It is an absurd, monstrous, and dangerous theory, which demands denunciation from every patriot in the land ; and a profound sense of my duty to you would not permit me to do less than to offer this brief statement of my views upon a question so vital to the welfare of our common country. ' ' Why did not the same "profound sense of duty" to the people of California require Mr. Gwin to denounce this "absurd, monstrous, and dangerous theory" when pronounced and enforced by General Cass, in support of the Compro mise Measures of 1850, and thence repeated by that eminent statesman at each session of Congress until 1857, when Mr. Gwin voted for his confirma tion as Secretary of State ? Why did not Mr. Gwin obey the same sense of duty by denouncing James Buchanan as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, when he declared in 1856 that "the people of a Territory, like those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits?" Why did he not perform this imperative duty by voting against Mr. Cobb, who made Northern votes for Mr. Buchanan by advocating this same "absurd, monstrous, and dangerous theory of 'non- action ' and ' unfriendly legislation ' " when he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury ? And, in short, why did he not prove his fidelity to a high sense of duty by protesting against my selection as Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Territories in the Democratic caucus by a unanimous vote, at every session that he has been a Senator, from 1850 to 1858, with a full knowledge of my opinions? The inference is, that Mr. G-win, from his remarks on the "Dred Scott Decision," is prepared to offer it as an excuse for the disregard for so many years of that profound sense of duty which he owed to the people of California. It may be that before the decision his mind was not clear as to the sense of duty which now moves him. Of that decision he said : "In March, 1857, the Supreme Court decided this question, in aU its various relations, in the case of Dred Scott. That decision declares that neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature possess the power either to establish or exclude slavery from the Territory, and that it was a power which exclusively, belonged to the States; that the people of a Terri tory can exercise this power for the first time when they form a Constitution; that the right of the people of any State to carry their slaves into a common Territory of the United States, and hold them there during its existence as such, was guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States; that it was a right which could neither be subverted nor evaded, either by non-action, by direct or indirect Congressional legislation, or by any law passed by a Territorial Legislature." Surely Mr. Gwin had never read the opinion of the Court in the case of " Dred Scott," except as it has been perverted for partisan purposes by newspapers, when he undertook to expound it to the good people of California. It so happens that the Court did not decide any one of the propositions so boldly and emphatically stated in the " Grass Valley" speech! The Court did not declare that " neither Congress nor a Territorial Legis lature possessed the power either to establish or exclude slavery from a Ter ritory, and that it was a power which exclusively belonged to the States." The Court did not declare " that the people of a Territory can exercise this power for the first time when they come to form a Constitution." The Court did not declare " that the right of the people of any State to carry their slaves into a common Territory of the United States, and hold them there during its existence as such, was guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. " The Court did NOT declare "that it was a right which could neither be sub verted nor evaded, either by non-action, by direct or indirect Congressional legislation, or by any law passed by a Territorial Legislature." Neither the decision nor the opinion of the Court affirms any one of these propositions, either in express terms or by fair legal intrenchment. This version of the "Dred Scot Decision" had its origin in the unfortunate Lecompton controversy, and is one of the many political heresies to which it gave birth. There are other portions of Mr. G win's speech which are equally open to just criticism, and unwarranted by the facts to which they relate; but I refrain from commenting upon them, as I prefer to confine myself to those points upon which my political action, in common with that of a large ma jority of the Democratic party, has been unjustly assailed before the people of California. In faithful compliance with the pledges, creed, and platform of the Demo cratic party, I stand now as I did in 1850, in 1854, and in 1856, by the great cardinal principle that, under our political system, every distinct political community loyal to the Constitution and the Union is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of self-government, in respect to their internal polity and domestic institutions, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. Kespectfully, your obedient servant, S. A. DOUGLAS. WASHINGTON, August 16, 1859.