After we shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba far beyond its present value, and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question, Does Cuba, in the possession of Spain, seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union? Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain, if we possess the power; and this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home. ... We should be recreant to our duty, be unworthy of our gallant forefathers, and commit base treason against our posterity, should we permit Cuba to be Africanized and become a second San Domingo, with all its attendant horrors to the white race, and suffer the flames to extend to our neighboring shores, seriously to endanger or actually to consume the fair fabric of our Union. . . . Our recommendations, now submitted, are dictated by the firm belief that the cession of Cuba to the United States, with stipulations as beneficial to Spain as those suggested, is the only effective mode of settling all past differences and of securing the two countries against future collisions. We have already witnessed the happy result for both countries which followed a similar arrangement in regard to Florida. Yours, very respectfully Hon. Wm. Marcy, Secretary of State James Buchanan PART VI. THE CRISIS OF DISUNION CHAPTER XIV APPROACHING THE CRISIS THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE AND THE squatter December 24, The cession of vast regions to the United States by 83. The Mexico in 1848 gave rise to a most absorbing problem in origin of our political history, namely, the competency of Congress sovereignty," or the general government to control slavery in the ter- 1847 ritories. Between the extreme free-soil doctrine of the Wilmot Proviso1 and the extreme Southern rights doctrine of the Calhoun-Rhett-Davis school,2 the compromise principle of "squatter sovereignty" was reached. It was 1 Moved by Wilmot of Pennsylvania, in the House, August 8, 1846, as an amendment to a bill to appropriate $2,000,000 to the President's use in purchasing a peace from Mexico: "Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico... neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory.” — Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, Ist session, p. 1217. 2 Briefly this doctrine was that the territories were the property of the states and not of the general government. The states had not relinquished their co-sovereignty over the territories by allowing Congress to make "needful rules and regulations" for them (Constitution, Art. IV, Sect. III, par. 2); and in taking their slaves into the territories the Southerners were but "exercising a common right over a common property." Otherwise sovereignty over all the territories would be vested in only a part of the states, namely, the majority in Congress. See, for Calhoun's resolutions and Rhett's speech, Congressional Globe, 29th Congress, 2d session, p. 455, and Appendix, pp. 244-246. [380] the principle applied in 1850 to Utah and New Mexico, and extended by Douglas in 1854 to Kansas and Nebraska; it was the issue on which the Republican party was formed in 1854; it was the topic of the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, and of innumerable other controversies in the press and the pulpit, in the halls of legislation, and in the market place, " until debate was silenced by the more eloquent bombardment of Sumter." The following letter from Lewis Cass, a prominent aspirant for presidential honors in 1848, to Mr. A. O. P. Nicholson of Tennessee, is the first clear announcement of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty.1 The theory of our government presupposes that its various members have reserved to themselves the regulation of all subjects relating to what may be termed their internal police. They are sovereign within their boundaries, except in those cases where they have surrendered to the General Government a portion of their rights, in order to give effect to the objects of the Union. [See the Preamble to the Constitution.] . . . Local institutions, if I may so speak, whether they have reference to slavery or to any other relations, domestic or private, are left to local authority. . . . Congress has no right to say there shall be slavery in New York, or that there shall be no slavery in Georgia; nor is there any human power, but the people of those States respectively, which can change the relation existing therein; and they can say, if they will, "We will have slavery in the former, and we will abolish it in the latter." In various respects, the Territories differ from the States. Some of their rights are inchoate, and they do not possess the peculiar attributes of sovereignty. Their relation to the General 1 The principle had already been recognized in the joint resolution for the admission of Texas, March 1, 1845: "And such states as may be formed out of that portion of said territory [Texas] lying south of 36° 30' north latitude . . . shall be admitted to the Union with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may desire." - United States Statutes at Large, Vol. V, p. 798. |