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stitutes, were recommitted to the Committee on Territories. On the 30th of June, Mr. Douglas, from the committee, reported a bill (the Toombs Bill, of which so much was said in Illinois during the election of 1858) in lieu of all the propositions referred to the committee.

In the report accompanying this bill, Mr. Douglas referred to and described the injustice of the several propositions referred to the committee, and closed a comment on the bill to admit Kansas under the Topeka Constitution in the following words -words which he faithfully adhered to subsequently in the Lecompton controversy:

"The question now arises whether a Constitution, made by a political party without the authority of law, and under circumstances which afford no safeguards against fraud, and no guarantee of fairness, and raises no presumptions that it embodies the wishes and sentiments of a majority of the inhabitants, shall be forced, by an act of Congress, upon a whole people as their fundamental law, unalterable for nine years.

"In the opinion of your committee, whenever a Constitution shall be formed in any Territory, preparatory to its admission into the Union as a state, justice, the genius of our institutions, the whole theory of our republican system, imperatively demand that the voice of the people shall be fairly expressed, and their will embodied in that fundamental law, without fraud, or violence, or intimidation, or any other improper or unlawful influence, and subject to no other restrictions than those imposed by the Constitution of the United States."

The debate was renewed on the new bill, and at eight o'clock on the morning of the 3d of July, after a continuous session of twenty hours, the bill was passed-yeas 33, nays 12, as follows:

Yeas-Allen of Rhode Island, Bayard of Delaware, Bell of Tennessee, Benjamin of Louisiana, Biggs of North Carolina, Bigler of Pennsylvania, Bright of Indiana, Brodhead of Pennsylvania, Brown of Mississippi, Cass of Michigan, Clay of Alabama, Crittenden of Kentucky, Douglas of Illinois, Evans of South Carolina, Fitzpatrick of Alabama, Geyer of Missouri, Hunter of Virginia, Iverson of Georgia, Johnson of Arkansas, Jones of Iowa, Mallory of Florida, Pratt of Maryland, Pugh of Ohio, Reid of North Carolina, Sebastian of Arkansas, Slidell of Louisiana, Stuart of Michigan, Thompson of Kentucky, Toombs of Georgia, Toucey of Connecticut, Weller of California, Wright of New Jersey, Yulee of Florida.

Nays-Bell of New Hampshire, Collamer of Vermont, Dodge of Wisconsin, Durkee of Wisconsin, Fessenden of Maine, Foot of Vermont, Foster of Connecticut, Hale of New Hampshire, Seward of New York, Trumbull of Illinois, Wade of Ohio, Wilson of Massachusetts.

Pending this bill, Mr. Seward moved as a substitute for it a proposition to admit Kansas as a state under the Topeka Constitution, and the amendment received 11 votes.

Happy for the peace and tranquillity of Kansas, and of the country, would it have been had this bill passed Congress.

But the fell spirit of fanaticism would not permit a settlement of the question, particularly on the eve of a presidential election, when agitation and excitement was the sole available capital and stock in trade of the party having a majority in the House of Representatives.

While the bill was pending in the Senate, a bill for the admission of Kansas was before the House of Representatives. On the 1st of July the House was brought to a direct vote upon it, and it was rejected—yeas 106, nays 107. A motion to reconsider this vote was made by Mr. Barclay, of Pennsylvania, and on the 3d the motion to reconsider prevailed-yeas 101, nays 93; and on the same day, Thursday, July 3d, the bill passed the House-yeas 99, nays 97.

Both houses adjourned until Monday, the 7th. In the Senate the House bill was referred to the Committee on Territories; in the House the Senate bill was suffered to lie on the speaker's table. On the 8th of July Mr. Douglas reported back the House bill for the admission of Kansas as a state with an amendment-that is, striking out all after the enacting clause, and inserting in lieu of it the provisions of the bill passed by the Senate on the 3d instant. After some debate the amendment was agreed to, and the bill, as amended, passedyeas 30, nays 13. The Senate bill was therefore before the House in two forms, first as a Senate bill, and, secondly, as an amendment to a House bill.

No action was had in the House on these bills until the 29th of July, when Mr. Dunn, of Indiana, called up a motion he had made in February to reconsider a vote committing a bill to annul certain acts of the Legislative Assembly of Kansas. The House having reconsidered the motion to commit, the bill was before it for action, thereupon Mr. Dunn moved to strike out all after the enacting clause, and insert what is known in legislative history as the "Dunn Bill." He moved the previous question, and under its operation his amendment was agreed to, and the bill, as amended, passed-yeas 88, nays 74. The title was then changed to read, " An Act to reorganize the Territory of Kansas, and for other purposes." The bill, when received in the Senate, was referred to the Committee on Territories.

This last bill received the almost unanimous vote of the Republicans in the House. It was an extraordinary effort at

legislation. It abolished treaties; invaded New Mexico; reenacted the Missouri restriction against slavery; re-enacted the Fugitive Slave Law; legalized slavery in Kansas, New Mexico, and Nebraska; and declared that any slave who might have become entitled to freedom by reason of having been carried into the Territories, should be remanded to slavery if removed from the Territory within a given period; and ratified and approved all the laws of the "Border Ruffian" Legislature of Kansas upon the subject of slavery. Such an extraordinary act never before received the approval of either house of Congress, and in voting for it the Republicans voted in direct opposition to their entire code of political professions. Mr. Douglas, on the 11th of August, reported this bill back, with a recommendation that it be laid on the table. Mr. Douglas made a written report, in which he dissects the bill, and exposes with master-hand the absurdities, and, it might almost be said, the stultifications of those Republicans who had voted for it. The report says:

The first section of the bill provides, "That all that part of the territory of the United States which lies between the parallels of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes and forty degrees of north latitude, and which is east of the eastern boundary of the Territory of Utah to the southeast corner thereof, and east of a line thence due south to the said parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and is bounded on the east by the western boundary of the State of Missouri, shall constitute one Territory, and shall be, and hereby is, constituted and organized into a temporary government by the name of the Territory of Kansas."

By reference to the map, it will be perceived that, in addition to all the country embraced within the limits of the present Territory of Kansas, it is proposed to include in the new Territory all the country between the southern boundary of the Territory, as now defined by law, and the parallel of 36° 30', extending from the western boundary of the State of Missouri across more than twelve and a half degrees of longitude, and being about thirty-five miles in width at the eastern, and one hundred and five at the western extremity. The eastern portion of this strip of country, which it is now proposed to incorporate within, and render subject to the jurisdiction of, the Territory of Kansas, was ceded, with other territory, to the Cherokee Indians by the treaties of the 6th of May, 1828, April 12th, 1833, and May 23, 1836, for "a permanent home, and which shall, under the most solemn guarantee of the United States, be and remain theirs forever-A HOME THAT SHALL NEVER, IN ALL FUTURE TIME, BE EMBARRASSED BY HAVING EXTENDED AROUND IT THE LINES, OR PLACED OVER IT THE JURISDICTION OF A TERRITORY OR STATE, nor be pressed upon by the extension in any way of any of the limits of any existing Territory or state."

In view of this "most solemn guaranty of the United States" to the Cherokees, your committee can not refrain from the expression of the hope and belief that the House of Representatives, in passing a bill to extend around this Indian country the lines of Kansas, and render it subject to the jurisdiction of that Territory, acted without due consideration, and probably without

a full knowledge of these treaty stipulations. When the organic act of Kansas was passed in 1854, the parallel of thirty-seven was fixed upon as the southern boundary of the Territory instead of the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, with the view to the preservation of faith on the part of the United States toward these Indians; and, lest injustice might be done to other Indian tribes who held their lands under treaties with the United States, it was expressly provided "that nothing in this act contained shall be construed to impair the rights of persons or property now pertaining to the Indians in said Territory, so long as such rights shall remain unextinguished by treaty between the United States and such Indians, or to include any territory which, by treaty with any Indian tribe, is not, without the consent of said tribe, to be included within the territorial limits or jurisdiction of any state or territory; but all such territory shall be excepted out of the boundaries, and constitute no part of the Territory of Kansas." In these considerations your committee find insuperable objections to that portion of the bill from the House of Representatives which proposes to include within the limits, and render subject to the jurisdiction of the Territory of Kansas, any part of the country which is thus secured to the Indians by solemn treaty stipulations.

Nor are the objections less formidable to incorporating within the limits of Kansas that portion of the Territory of New Mexico which lies north of the line of 36° 30', and east of the Rio Grande, and subjecting it to the operation of the other provisions of the bill. That part of New Mexico, containing about 15,000 square miles, was purchased from Texas by one of the acts known as the compromise measures of 1850, and formed a part of the territory for which the United States paid the State of Texas ten millions of dollars. The second section of the act of Congress which contains the terms and conditions of the compact between the United States and Texas for the purchase of that Territory, incorporates the same in the Territory of New Mexico, with the following guarantee: "And provided further, that when admitted us a state, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their Constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission."

After asserting this great principle of state equality as applicable to every portion of New Mexico under the Constitution, and as guaranteed in the compact with Texas by fair intendment, so far as the country was acquired from that state, the seventh section of the same act provides "that the legislative power of the said Territory shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act"-thus leaving the people perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution. It is now proposed in the bill under consideration to repudiate these guarantees and violate these great fundamental principles by annexing to Kansas all that portion of the country acquired from Texas which lies north of 36° 30', and imposing upon it a prohibition of slavery forever, from and after the first day of January, 1858, regardless of the rights and wishes of the people who may inhabit the Territory.

The twenty-fourth section of the bill is in the following words:

"Sec. 24. And be it further enacted, That so much of the fourteenth section, and also so much of the thirty-second section, of the act passed at the first session of the thirty-third Congress, commonly known as the KansasNebraska Act, and reads as follows, to wit: 'Except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which, being inconsistent with the principles of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this

act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to revive or put in force any law or regulation which may have existed prior to the act of the 6th of March, 1820, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting, or abolishing slavery,' be and the same is hereby repealed; and the said eighth section of said act of the 6th of March, 1820, is hereby revived and declared to be in full force and effect within the said Territories of Kansas and Nebraska: Provided, however, That any person lawfully held to service in either of said Territories shall not be discharged from such service by reason of such repeal and revival of said eighth section, if such person shall be permanently removed from such Territory or Territories prior to the 1st day of January, 1858; and any child or children born in either of said Territories, of any female lawfully held to service, if in like manner removed without said Territories before the expiration of that date, shall not be, by reason of any thing in this act, emancipated from any service it might have owed had this act never been passed: And provided further, That any person lawfully held to service in any other state or Territory of the United States, and escaping into either the Territory of Kansas or Nebraska, may be reclaimed and removed to the person or place where such service is due, under any law of the United States which shall be in force upon the subject."

In the opinion of your committee there are various grave and serious objections to this section of the bill. In the first place, it expressly repudiates and condemns the great fundamental principles of self-government and state equality which it was the paramount object of the Kansas-Nebraska Act to maintain and perpetuate, as affirmed in the following provision: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

Not content with repealing this wise and just provision, and condemning the sound constitutional principles asserted in it, the bill proceeds to legalize and establish, for a limited time, hereditary slavery, not only in the Territory of Kansas (where there is no other local or affirmative law protecting it than the enactments of the Kansas Territorial Legislature, which have been alleged to be illegal and void, and which the House of Representatives, by amendments to the appropriation bills, have instructed the President not to enforce), but also in all that part of New Mexico which it is proposed to incorporate in the Territory of Kansas, and where slavery was prohibited by the Mexican law, and it is not pretended that there is any territorial enactment recognizing or establishing it. Having thus asserted and exercised the power of introducing and establishing slavery in the Territories by act of Congress, and declaring children hereafter born therein to be slaves for life and their posterity after them, provided they shall be removed therefrom within a special period, the bill proceeds to affirm and exercise the power of prohibiting slavery in the same Territories forever from and after January 1, 1858, by enacting and putting in force the following provision, being the 8th section of the act passed March 6, 1820, to wit:

"Sec. 8. And be it further enacted, That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the state contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same from whom labor or

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