In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say, that this pamphlet was written as an answer to the article by the Hon. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, which originally appeared in Harpers' Magazine, entitled "The Dividing Line between Federal and Local Authority; Popular Sovereignty in the Territories;" and which has since been republished in a separate form. Private engagements and other circumstances have delayed the publication of my Essay longer than I had originally intended; but I believe that the subject is not likely to lose its interest. The impersonal style in which it is written is to be accounted for by the fact that it was designed for publication in some periodical work, and it was not convenient to make any change in this respect after I determined to publish it in a pamphlet. I should add, that I have seen no other of Mr. Douglas's writings on this subject than the article to which this pamphlet undertakes to reply; nor have I read the papers written by the Attorney-General, Mr. Black.

BOSTON, Nov. 5, 1859.

BOSTON:

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,

22, SCHOOL STREET.

G. T. C.

THE

JUST SUPREMACY OF CONGRESS

OVER THE TERRITORIES.

THE appearance, in a popular magazine, of an article on a con

stitutional question, written by a prominent candidate for the Presidency, with his name prefixed to it, is something new. We do not know that there can be any reasonable objection to this mode of promulgating or defending political opinions. It has one advantage over electioneering speeches, inasmuch as what is written is likely to be more deliberate than what is spoken; and if our public men would employ the pen a little more, and the tongue a little less, we think that they and the country would be gainers. On the other hand, what is thus carefully prepared in an elaborate article, as the doctrine on which a statesman means to challenge the suffrages of his countrymen for the highest office in their gift, brings him in a peculiarly responsible attitude before the tribunals of contemporary criticism and public judgment. What he says and maintains in such a form is not like a Congressional speech, which may be thrown off in the heat of debate or while defending or attacking a particular measure, and which is liable, even if not likely, to be forgotten when the interest in the occasion has passed. Mr. Douglas steps forward boldly and frankly, as becomes him, and puts on record, in a journal of a very wide circulation, his opinions upon a grave constitutional question, which enters largely into the politics of the day; and the doctrine which he thus promulgates is notoriously relied upon by his friends, as the great topic, the championship of which is to carry him into the White House. He certainly will not

be disposed to complain if his opinions thus put forth are subjected to examination in the same form of discussion.

We shall begin what we have to say upon this subject with the free admission, that there are a good many elements of popularity both in Mr. Douglas's character and in his present position. The public man who presents himself as an advocate for the right of self-government for any people, however they are situated, will always command popular sympathy in this country. But we are not now concerned with Mr. Douglas's chances or means of political success, but with the soundness and correctness of his constitutional opinions. Whether he is or is not of that order of men who "would rather be right than be President," we do not presume to decide; but we are sure for ourselves, that, having no personal interest in the matter, we would rather be right than be able to prevent him or any other man from reaching the Presidency, if we had the power of all the nominating conventions or of all the voters in the land.

It is the purpose of Mr. Douglas's article to maintain, that the people of a Territory have the right to decide, independently of the will of Congress, whether the institution of slavery shall or shall not exist among them while they are in the Territorial condition. On a cursory reading of his paper, we were a little at a loss to determine whether he meant to be understood that this power belongs to the people of a Territory because the organic act bestows upon them general legislative power, or, as in the case of Kansas, declares that they shall be free to form their own institutions in their own way; or whether he holds that the people of a Territory are originally free to establish or prohibit slavery without any Congressional declaration or grant of such a power, or even against a Congressional prohibition. But, on a more careful perusal, we find that his argument goes the entire length of maintaining, that, in reference to what he calls their local concerns and internal polity, the people of a Territory are absolutely sovereign in the same sense in which the people of a State are sovereign. In order to establish what he calls "popular sovereignty in the Territories," Mr. Douglas undertakes to define the dividing line between federal and local authority; and he places it, in respect to the Territories, substantially where it is in respect to the States. He sums up the whole discussion in the following "principle," "that every distinct political