title in the Territories above named. The resolution was debated at some length, but it was adopted; and the measures proposed have been faithfully carried out. Ample provision was made for treating the Indians with fairness and justice and while their rights have been respected, and their comforts secured, the vast regions which they occupied have been secured for all time to come for the abodes of civilized men; and for the spread of those great fundamental principles on which our national prosperity rests.

At the time that Mr. Douglas introduced his resolution, however, the emigrants to those Territories, and especially to those of Oregon and California, were annoyed and attacked to such an extent, by roving bands of Indians, that it was considered positively unsafe for emigrants to go any further west than the Missouri River. It was clearly the duty of the Government to afford protection to its citizens on its own soil; and accordingly, on the 31st of January, Mr. Douglas offered a resolution, instructing the committee on military affairs to inquire into the expediency of providing, on the usual emigrant line from the Missouri River to the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, a sufficient movable military force to protect all emigrants to Oregon and California.

To the legislation growing out of this resolution, many hundreds of families now living in comfort and even in affluence in the smiling villages of Oregon, California, and Minnesota, are indebted, not only for their safety, but their very lives. The instances of emigrant trains saved from the attack and spoliation of the savages, by our gallant troops on the frontier, from 1851 to 1857, are numerous and well authenticated. The settlers in those new countries owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Douglas which they will not soon forget.

Mr. Douglas supports the Compromise Measures of Henry Clay-Great Speech on the 13th and 14th of March-Speech in favor of the Omnibus Bill, June 3-The Nicholson Letter of General Cass-Mr. Douglas returns to Chicago-He is Denounced by the Local AuthoritiesHe beards the Lions in their Den-Speech to the Citizens of ChicagoIts Effect.

WHEN the Compromise measures of Mr. Clay were brought forward in 1850, Mr. Douglas supported them with zeal and vigor. On the 13th and 14th of March, he delivered a speech on the general territorial questions, which has scarcely been surpassed by any of his subsequent efforts. It was by far the ablest speech that had ever been delivered in the Senate by any western man. It was in this speech that Judge Douglas first enunciated the doctrine of which he has ever since been the most distinguished advocate, that it is the true Democratic principle in reference to the Territories, that each one shall be left to regulate its own local and domestic affairs in its own way.

In the beginning of this great speech, Senator Douglas showed that all the acts of the Tyler administration in refernce to the annexation of Texas (including the proposed treaty with Mexico for that object, and the correspondence between our secretary of state on the one part, and Mr. King, minister to France and Mr. Murphy, chargé d'affaires

in the republic of Texas, on the other part), had been indignantly and contemptuously rejected by the Senate; and that this had been done in order to repudiate and rebuke the administration of Mr Tyler, and in order that the Democratic party might come to the support of the annexation of Texas as they did come, and consummated the annexation upon broad, national grounds, elevated far above and totally disconnected from the question of slavery.

ORDINANCE OF 1787 HAD NO EFFECT ON SLAVERY.

A distinguished southern senator having said that the South had been deprived of its due share of the territories, Mr. Douglas responded, "What share had the South in the territories? or the North? I answer, none at all. The territories belong to the United States as one people, and are to be disposed of for the common benefit of all, according to the principles of the Constitution. No geographical section of the Union is entitled to any share of the territories. What becomes of the complaint of the senator, that the Ordinance of 1787 excluded the South entirely from that vast fertile region between the Ohio and the Mississippi? That ordinance was a dead letter. It did not make the country to which it applied, free from slavery. The States formed out of the territory northwest of the Ohio, did not become free by virtue of the Ordinance, nor in consequence of it. Those States became free by virtue of their own will, recorded in the fundamental laws of their own making. That is the source of their freedom. In all republican states, laws and ordinances are mere nullities, unless sustained by the hearts and intellects of the people for whom they are made, and by whom they are to be executed.

SLAVES IN ILLINC IS.

"The Ordinance of 1787 did the South no harm, and the North no good. Illinois, for instance, was a slave territory. Even in 1840, there were 331 slaves in Illinois. How came these slaves in Illinois? They were taken there under the Ordinance, and in defiance of it. The people of Illinois, while it was a territory, were mostly emigrants from the slaveholding States. But when their convention assembled at Kaskaskia in 1818, to form the constitution of the State of Illinois, although it was composed of slaveholders, yet they had become satisfied, from experience, that the climate and productions of Illinois were unfavorable to slave labor. They accordingly made provision for a gradual system of emancipation, by which the State should become eventually free. These facts show that the Ordinance had no practical effect upon slavery. Slavery existed under the Ordinance; and since the Ordinance has been suspended by the State governments, slavery has gradually disappeared under the operation of laws adopted and executed by the people themselves. A law passed by the national legislature to operate locally upon a people not represented, will always remain a dead letter, if it be in opposition to the wishes and interests of those who are to be affected by it.

"In regard to the effects of the Missouri Compromise on the question of slavery, I do not think that it had any practical effect on that question, one way or another: it neither curtailed nor extended slavery one inch."

A GLANCE AT THE FUTURE.

"We recognize the right of the South, in common with our right, to emigrate to the Territories with their property,

and there hold and enjoy it in subordination to the laws in force there. The senator from South Carolina desires such an amendment to the Constitution as shall stipulate that in all time to come, there shall be as many slaveholding States in the Union as there are States without slaves. The adoption and execution of such a provision would be an impossibility. We have a vast territory which is filling up with an industrious and enterprising population, large enough to form seventeen new States, one-half of which we may expect to see represented in this body during our day. Of these, four will be formed out of Oregon, five out of our late acquisition from Mexico, including the present State of California, and two out of Minnesota. Each of these will be free Territories and free States, whether Congress shall prohibit slavery in them or not. Where are you to find the slave territory with which to balance these seventeen free Territories? In Texas? If Texas should be divided into five States, at least three of them will in all probability be free."

ADMISSFON OF CALIFORNIA.

Mr. Douglas then proceeded to advocate, at great length, the immediate admission of the State of California under her constitution; and concluded his speech by declaring that "this nation owes to the venerable senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) a debt of gratitude for his services to the Union on this occasion. The purity of his motives cannot be doubted. He has set the ball in motion which is to restore peace and harmony to the Union.”

THE OMNIBUS BILL.

On the 3d of June, 1850, Mr. Douglas spoke in favor of the Omnibus Bill, and in the course of his remarks said: "In