us to vote for a candidate on a platform that the minority dictates and the majority has rejected! Suppose the minority should get their platform and candidate, and they should go before the country appealing to the Democratic masses to rally in their majesty around the Democratic organization, and support its nominations-a minority candidate forced on the majority, asking our votes, with notice, "if you vote for me I will grant no quarter, I will put you to the sword; there is not a man of you that is fit to be chairman of a committee, or a member of a Cabinet, or a collector of a port, a postmaster, a light-house keeper!" These are the terms of conciliation extended by a minority to the regular organization of the party. Grant no quarter! Big talk for seceders, after they have been overruled. What man would desire your nomination on such terms? Who would be mean enough to ask and expect the support of men that he had marked as victims of vengeance as soon as the knife was put in his hands by them? Who would degrade himself so low as to ask or accept votes on terms so disreputable? ļ On the contrary, sir, we, the Democratic party, speaking through its regular organization, and by authority of the party, say to you, erring men as you are, that we will grant quarter; we submit to no test, and make none; we are willing to fight the battle now on the same principles and the same terms that we have fought it on since 1848; on the same platform, and with the same fraternal feeling. If you differ from us, we recognize your right to differ without impairing your political standing, so long as you remain in the regular organization and support the nominees. I care not whether you agree or differ with me on.. the points of law that have divided us. If you should happen to be right, and I wrong, it would not prove that you were a better Democrat than I, but that you were a better lawyer than I am, so far as that one branch of law is concerned. I should not have much pride of opinion on the point of law but for the fact that you have got in the habit of calling me "Judge," [laughter;] having, among my youthful indiscretions, accepted that office and acquired the title; and I do claim that, with that title, I have a right to think as I please on a point of law until the court decides that I am wrong. Mr. President, I owe an apology to the Senate for detaining them so long. I present my profound acknowledgments for the courtesy and kindness that have been extended to me. I would not have claimed so much of your time but for the fact that I believe that the principle involved in this discussion involves the fate of the American Union. Whenever you, incorporate intervention by Congress into the Democratic creed, as it has become the cardinal principle of the Republican creed, you will make two sectional parties, hostile to each other, divided by the line that separates the free from the slaveholding States, and present a conflict that will be irrepressible, and will never cease until the one shall subdue the other, or they shall agree to divide, in order that they may live in peace. God grant that there small never be another sectional party in the United States!! Why cannot we live together in peace on the terms that have bound and held us together so long? Why cannot we agree on this, great principle of non-intervention by the Federal Government with the local and domestic affairs of the Territories, excluding slavery and all other irritating questions, and leaving the people to govern themselves, so far as the Constitution of the United States imposes no limitation to their authority? Upon that principle, there can be peace. Upon that principle you can have slavery in the South as long as you want it, and abolish, it whenever you are tired of it. On that principle we can have it or not, as our interests, our prost perity, our own sense of what is due to our selves, shall prescribe. On that principle, you on the Pacific coast can shape your own institutions so that they will be adapted to your own people. On that principle, there can be peace and harmony and fraternity between the North and the South, the East and the West, the Pacific and the Atlantic. Why cannot we now reaffirm that principle as we e did in 1852? Then, the Whig party adopted it as a cardinal article in their creed, and so did the Democracy. Let your Whigs, your Democrats-all conservative men who will not be abolitionized or sectional ized-rally under the good old banner of nonintervention, so that the Constitution may be maintained inviolate, and the Union last, forever, Intervention, North or South, means disunion; non-intervention promises peace, fraternity, and perpetuity to the Union, and to all our cherished institutions. Mr. DAVIS replied to Mr. DOUGLAS at great length on the same day and the following, when Mr. DOUGLAS rejoined as follows: Mr. DOUGLAS. Mr. President, I must ask the indulgence of the Senate for a few moments while I reply to some points presented by the Senator from Mississippi. I reciprocate every sentiment he has uttered in regard to the great importance of preserving the harmony, unity, and integrity of the Democratic party. I repeat now what I said yesterday, that I believe it is the only remaining political organization supported by sufficient numbers to preserve the peace and safety of the Union. Entertaining these convictions in the fulness of my heart, I would make any sacrifice personal to myself that would contribute to its unity and to its success. The Senator, however, has told us the terms, and those alone, on which its unity can be maintained. They are that his fiag, a banner bearing as its inscription the sentiments that he has been advocating, must become the dag of the Democratic party. Sir, I prescribe no such terms and conditions to secure my co-operation. I do not ask you to insert any peculiar dogma or theories of mine upon the banner. That good old banner, that old Democratic flag that has waved over so many glorious triumphs, is to-day good enough for me. The Senator is afraid that we must part company-and why? Because he is not willing now to fight under the banner under which, we won the battle in 1856, 12, He has referred feelingly to the moderation | every article of the creed. When you descend that he exercised-and I give him full credit for to the details, to the minutiae, you find differences it-in the surrender of his individual opinions of opinion. and prejudices, in 1852, in acquiescing in the compromise measures of 1850, which he had opposed. Sir, I appreciate that moderation, that spirit of conciliation, of sacrifice of private opinion, which induced him to make that offering on the altar of his party and his country. Yes, sir; and Illinois appreciated that sacrifice on the part of that Senator by casting her vote for him for Vice-President in 1852, notwithstanding the differences of opinion that bad marked the representatives of the two States in the conflict of 1850. He now cites the mark of confidence which Illinois reposed in him by these votes, as evidence that Illinois endorsed his position on the points that had separated us. I tell him, sir, it is evidence of Illinois's magnanimity; not of her approval of the course that he pursued in opposition to her known sentiments. I am glad to find that Mississippi has returned the compliment, and shown that she, too, was not wanting in magnanimity. The record that has been presented shows, beyond dispute or cavil, that my opinions on these Territorial questions were as well known in 1850, 1852, 1854, and 1856, as they are to-day. With a full knowledge of those facts, Mississippi in the convention of 1856, after Mr. Pierce's name was withdrawn, for ballot after ballot, by a unanimous vote, recorded her suffrages for me in preference to Mr. Buchanan, who was the competing candidate. I do not claim that Mississippi by those votes endorsed all my peculiar opinions on territorial questions; nor that Alabama, nor that Georgia, nor that South Carolina, nor that Florida, nor that Texas, when each of them in succession recorded their votes for me, endorsed all my views. While it is not evidence that they concurred with me in these peculiar theories, it is conclusive evidence that they deemed it unjust, unfair, unmanly, to make that difference of opinion a test of Democracy to my exclusion. Each of those States showed the same magnanimity then that Illinois showed in 1852 in voting for the Senator and in 1856 in voting for General Quitman. We were willing to differ on a subject which had been declared to be a judicial and not a political question, and then to vote for a man as the standard-bearer, without reference to his opinions on that theory. It was for the same purpose and in that sense that I yesterday quoted the vote for Governor Richardson as Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1856. I do not claim that the vote of my friend from South Carolina, [Mr. KEITT,] in favor of Mr. Richardson was an endorsement of Mr. Richardson's views or of mine on the territorial question; but it was an evidence that he would not make a test on that question against a regular Democratic nominee. I repeat, I do not ask you to endorse any new inscription on the old Democratic flag as a condition of retaining me in its ranks. I do not ask you to concur with me in the views that I entertain. Probably there are no two members of this body who agree in every particular with regard to I have been told here to-day that I was out of the Democratic organization because I differed with the President on the Lecompton question. Sir, I have yet to learn that an Administration is the Democratic party. The members of the Administration are, or ought to be, members of the Democratic organization, as ought to bo every member of the Senate and House of Representatives who was elected by the Demo cratic party. We are individual members of the organization. I deny that either the President or the Cabinet, or Senators or Representatives, constitute the Democratic organization. The people, through their delegates in their national conventions, constitute the organization. But, sir, is it true that every man who differs with the Administration on one point is out of the party? If so, what becomes of my friend from Georgia, that I see walking away now [Mr. TOOMBS]? He fought the Administration on the tariff; he dissented from the President on the neutrality laws; he arraigned the Adminis tration on the Pacific railroad. I hardly know on what he did agree with them, [laughter;] and yet he is in good standing and perfect fellowship. I have yet to learn that the Senator from Mississippi endorses the President on specific duties; and inasmuch as he tells us that the President is the head of the party, and a difference on a great question puts a man outside of it, I have got pretty good company outside of the party. I am very glad to have the Senator from Mississippi call me his friend; and I call him mine, inasmuch as, by his process of reasoning, he has put us both out into the cold together. But, sir, test any Senator on this floor by the rule prescribed, and every man of you is out of the party; there is not one of you left. What one on this floor endorses the President in all his recommendations? I never saw any one. I believe even the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BIGLER] does not. And yet difference of opinion with the President is a test of Democratic orthodoxy! Will the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON] come to the rescue of the President on the Pacific railroad? He has always failed to do it yet. Search the records, and you will find that I have sustained President Buchanan on more questions than any one of you. The test has not been made against anybody but me. Is it not a curious rule? The President, it is said, is the head of the party, and a difference with him on a recommendation of his puts you outside of the party. By that rule, I am outside, and so is every one of you with me. We ought to be together, then, by this time. This all shows the folly of attempting to erect any one man as an idol to be worshipped, whose nod is to be authority to Senators and Repre sentatives. It shows the folly of allowing the President and Cabinet to tell us what our duty is. I concede to the executive branch of the Government freedom of thought and action in the performance of all the functions vested in him by the Constitution; but when it comes to voting on a measure, I am as independent of him as he is of me. He has no more right to tell me how I shall vote, than I have to tell him what he shall recommend, or whether he shall sign or veto a bill. Sir, whenever I shall recognize a President, be he who he may, of what party he may, as the head of my party, to tell me how I shall vote in this chamber, I shall disgrace as well as betray the sovereignty of the State that sent me here. No, sir; republics are a sham unless the representatives of the people and the representatives of the States are as independent of the Executive as he is of them. I do not plead guilty, therefore, to the impeachment that I am outside of the Democratic organization, or ever was. I appealed from this test of a presidential edict as the rule of action of the party to the grand council of the party itself the national | convention, assembled once in four years to make creeds and nominate candidates. Judged by their test, I am inside; and every man that is willing to fight under the old Democratic flag of 1852 and 1856 is inside. Every man that demands no new test is inside of the organization in good standing, and only those are seceders and bolters who reject the platform and try to break up the organization, because the party will not now abandon its time-honored principles, and take up those that it has uniformly rejected for so many years. will look again at the proceedings of that Alabama convention in 1856, will find that the con. vention first proceeded to give their views on their rights as a State platform, and then proceeded to say that the "following resolutions" should constitute articles which her delegates were instructed to insist upon at Cincinnati ; and if they were not adopted by the convention before a nomination was made, the delegates were to retire; making a wide distinction between their own opinions of what they were entitled to, and that which they would demand as an ultimatum from the national convention. Now, sir, I reject that which she did not insist on. I said yesterday that I should read the ultimatum that she was content with. I read that, and the whole of it. The Cincinnati convention took it in 1856. I am willing to accept it now. Is Alabama going out of the Union now, merely because we insist upon adhering to her own ultimatum of 1856? Did not the glorious State of Alabama know what her rights were in 1856? Did not she preserve her honor when she adopted that ultimatum? and is she not bound by her faith to adhere to her own ultimatum, after it has been accepted by us and vindicated before the country? Sir, do not consider me as doubting Alabama, or any one of those States whose delegates have seceded. I have faith in their devotion to principle, their devotion to the Union, their devotion to the Democratic party. I do not believe that the people of any one of those States approve of the action of some of their delegates in trying to break up the Democratic organization. I do not admit that those seceding delegates are the States. They were the agents; whose acts, in my opinion, will be disavowed. I believe that Alabama to-day is willing to remain in harmony and concert of action with the northern Democracy on the same terms and conditions to which we heretofore agreed, and upon which we are willing now to act. That is all we ask of Mis sissippi-all we ask of any other State. Stand by the platform; maintain the same old flag; do not strike out a stripe, nor blot out a star. Stand by it as it is, and we will fight a battle that will strike terror and annihilation into the ranks of the Republicans, who are looking on at this fight among ourselves with joy, in the hope that the Democratic party, like all that have gone before it, is now to be dissolved. Their hope of success consists only in our dissensions. The Senator says he loves his party, but he loves to have the party agree with him, and then he will fight for them. I wish him to bear in mind that the party never did endorse this new article of faith which he is now threatening to use for the disruption of the party unless it can be admitted. The party rejected it in 1848, scouted it in 1852, denounced it in 1856, and again in 1860. The party stands under its old flag; under its old organization; proclaiming its timehonored creed; making no variation whatever. Is that sufficient cause to disrupt the only party that can save the Union? I think we all profess to believe that the Democratic party is the only political organization now adequate to the preservation of the Union. He who attempts to break up that organization looks with complacency to the only alternative which we are told is to follow, to wit, disunion. The simple question then is, whether it is better to have a Democratic administration on the same platform that brought Mr. Buchanan into power, or dissolve the Union. If this platform was so fearfully Now, sir, are these differences a sufficient bad, so vicious, so fatal to southern interests, cause for the disruption of the party? What has and destructive of southern rights, how happened been done? What new question has arisen since it that every man of you endorsed it in 1856? 1856 that makes the platform then adopted unDid you not know what your rights were then? worthy of the support of patriotic men now? Were you not as much devoted to the interests We are told that the Supreme Court have made and honor of your States then as now? How a decision in the Dred Scott case, and that is happened it that every delegate from every State the cause of the difficulty. Is that decision hosof the Union voted for it then, if it is sufficient tile to the southern States? Is there anybody cause for disruption now? in the Democratic party that does not propose to abide by it, and carry it out in good faith? No; but you want us to declare, first, what that decision means, and then that we will carry it outs according to that construction. We do not believe that that decision reaches the question of the power of a Territorial Legislature, for *** In this connection, I may be permitted to allude to an error of the Senator from Mississippi, when he supposed that I had omitted a part of, and thereby misled the Senate in the quotation of, the Alabama platform, He read a resolution which he said I omitted. The Senator, if he 3 these reasons: first, there was no Territorial Legislature in the record, nor any allusion to one; second, there was no territorial enactment before the court; third, there was no one fact in the case alluding to or connected with territorial legislation; and next, the counsel in the case never dreamed that there was any such question involved in it, and never argued it. Is it not a curious fact that a great question, concerning the fate of a great party, and in which the whole country were interested, should have been involved in the case, when the lawyers on neither side ever imagined it was there? Would not Reverdy Johnson have been able to find it out if it had been in the case? He tells you that it was not there; that nobody thought it was. It never was argued never, alluded to. Nor do the court allude to it in their opinion; and yet that opinion is cited as a decision of the question. The question referred to the court, in the Kan sas-Nebraska bill, was the extent of the limita tions imposed by the Constitution on a Territorial Legislature. That was the question referred to the court, as stated by the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Hunter.] Stand by that one point, and you will never have an occasion for intervention. But the Senator said that within the last four years a new question has arisen. He did not tell us what it was. Certainly it was not, this question of the extent of the power of the Territorial Legislature, for the debates all show that it was discussed in 1850 and 1854. What new question, then, has arisen since, to furnish even a pretext for this new article in the creed? ་་] The Senator from Mississippi has got one idea into his brain, and he has magnified it so much that it is expanding till, I am afraid, it will drive out almost all other ideas. It is that protection is the end of government. That is true, subject to certain limitations. By the "end" he means the object of all government. It is subject to limitations Protection to the extent and in the way prescribed in the Constitution, is the object of the government. I will give you protection to slave property, and every other species of property, to the fullest extent the Constitution authorizes and requires me. If the Senator does not want to carry his protection further than the Constitution goes, there is no difference be tween us. If he does, I cannot go with him beyond that point. The Senator complains that in what is known as the Harper article, I placed him in a false position by the quotation I made on that point. I can only say to him that I never dreamed of placing him in a false position, and did not intend it. When he published his note afterwards, I did not reply to it, because then I did not comprehend what he meant; but his explanation to day shows that probably one extract, which I used for one purpose, may have put him in a false position on another point, which did not occur to my mind at the time. I am glad he has corrected it, for I never imagined that I had done so, and I would at any moment have cor rected it; for, sir, never will I do injustice to any gentleman, without seizi earliest opportus nity, after I discover + ke reparation The Senator from Mississippi says that he has great aversion to speaking of political conventions, and regrets that these things are dragged into the debates of the Senate, but that he is compelled to reply to me on that point. I desire the Senator to remember that he introduced that subject himself; he reviewed the action of the Charleston convention, and defended the seceders. He condemned the action of the majority, and supported that of the minority, if I am not mistaken. In reply to him I was compelled to defend the regular organization, which he had condemned, by defending the regulars against what he had said in defence, and justification of the seceders. But for that I should never have brought that particular subject into debate. I had no desire to refer to the action of that convention. What I said was in self-defence. What I have now to say on the point is also in selfdefence. The Senator has told us that the seventeen Democratic States were for the report which was rejected, and that the minority of sixteen other States did not contain a certain democratie State among them. Let us look at these Demo cratic States that he speaks of. Do you call Maryland one of them ? Mr. DAVIS. She ought to be. Mr. DOUGLAS. Is she so? Mr. DAVIS. I hope she will be so. Mr. DOUGLAS. Hope is one thing, and cortainty is another: Mr. Buchanan hoped to have Maryland in 1856; but did he get her vote? Mr. DAVIS. No; nor Illinois either, by majority. 3 und der Mr. DOUGLAS. You said you were talking of electoral votes; and we got the Illinois elec toral vote. Mr. DAVIS. By a division of the Opposition." Mr. DOUGLAS. No matter. We got it over all enemies. Furthermore, you arraigned IHnois as not being a Democratic State, when she never failed to give her electoral vote for the Democratic nominee. Can you say as much of Mississippi? atiend (Mr. DAVIS Pretty much. -ig telt 97 Mr. DOUGLAS. Can you quite as much? Mr. DAVIS. If the Senator will allow me, I will put him straight there. Mississippi has once given a vote not for the Democratic candidate; but Illinois would have done so the last time, but for the fact of there being three tickets in the field, as was shown by the vote. Wriggle out of that, if you can, Mr. DOUGLAS. I do not wish to wriggle out of any thing. I take the records and the facts. In 1856 we gave the electoral vote of Illinois to James Buchanan by nine thousand majority over Fremont. Whether or not Fillmore's running hurt us or helped us is a disputed question; but the opinion of Governor Richardson," who was the standard-bearer at the time, was that Fillmore's running injured Buchanan and defeated him for Governor. My own opinion, at the opening of the canvass, was that Fillmore would help us; but I was convinced, before the election, that his running was an injury to us; and think every Democratic candidate in the field' came to that conclusion Illinois has never failed the Democracy heretofore in any Presi ▾ der tial struggle. It is rather hard to taunt her with not being a Democratic State, and then to come in and claim Kentucky as a certain Democratic State. How many times has she voted Democratic in your lifetime and mine? She is glorious State, and has produced as many eminent orators and statesmen as any other in the Union; the State of Henry Clay, who was the pride of the whole country; but still, when did she give her vote for the Democratic party, except at the last election and once for General Jackson? She has been pretty uniformly against the Democratic party. very nearly balanced. New York was lost to the Democratic party except for the same cause. Pennsylvania has suffered in the same way. Ohio has always been carried, except when this question was bearing us down. We carried it even for Cass. Indiana has never failed us,' I believe, since 1840. Every northern State has failed us at times except Illinois, and yet she is to be disfranchised and overruled because she is not "certain !" 166 I should like to know how many States will be certain," if you repudiate the Cincinnati platform, strike away the flag-staff, pull down the Tennessee, too, is claimed as a certain Demo-old Democratic banner, and run up this new cratic State. How did she vote in 1852, when one; this Yancey flag of intervention by Con* President Pierce was elected, and in 1844, when gress for slavery in the Territories in all cases Polk was elected? It strikes me that she and where the people do not want it. How many do -Kentucky both voted for Scott, against Pierce, you think you will ge get? You tell us, too, that and for Clay, against Polk. It strikes me, too, the South cannot be carried on the Charleston that Tennessee, now, out of ten members of Con- platform; at any rate, we are told so by others. gress, has seven against the Democratic party, If they cannot, then are those States not cerand only three for it. She is one of the "Demo-tainly Democratic. You want to ollange the cratic States!" One of the "certain States!" platform from what it was, because the South Kentucky, I believe, has exactly the same num- cannot be carried on the same issues upon which ber of Opposition and Democratic members of we triumphed in 1856! Then they are not Congress, provided one contested case should be certainly Democratic States." If Mississippi decided right; and if not, I suppose the Oppo-will not go for a candidate on the same platform sition will have a majority of her delegation. now that she did in 1856, I reckon that MissisNorth Carolina is another "certain Democratic sippi is either not Democratic now, or she was State;" and how stand her Congressmen? How not then. Alabama voted for Buchanan, in 1856, will her vote be cast if the election goes into the on the Cincinnati platform. All we ask is the House of Representatives? I believe that cer- same platform, and a candidate holding the tainly one-half of them are the opponents of the same opinions. Will not Alabama stand by him Democratic party. The Maryland delegation is now? She was a Democratie State in 1856; and also equally divided. In certain contingencies, if Democracy has not changed, she ought to be the election may possibly go to the House of now. If she will not stand by the organization, Representatives, and there you will fail to get by what right do you call her a Democratic the vote of Maryland, North Carolina, Tennes- State? So with Georgia; so with South Carosee, and Kentucky, these certain Democratic lina; so with every one of these States whose States," that ought to overrule the others on the delegates seceded because we did not change the platform. I cannot admit that all these States platform and repudiate our time-honored prinsare certain for the Democratic party, nor can I ciples. Sir, I do not believe those people®Kavu admit that the others are certain against us. changed. I believe the people of every one of How was it in 1852, when General Pierce was those States are now as much attached to the old elected? He got every northern State but two, principles of the party and its organization as -Massachusetts and Vermont casting eighteen they ever were. I believe they will repudiate votes against him, and every southern State the action of those men 'who are willing to but Kentucky and Tennessee, casting, I believe, divide and destroy the party merely because -twenty-six votes against him. The South gave they cannot carry out their peculiar views. more electoral votes against Pierce than the -North did. os Mr. DAVIS. What has that to do with it? - Mr. DOUGLAS. It has this much to do with it: that when we had a non-intervention platform, with no disturbing element leading to abuses such as there were in Kansas, the North "was Democratic. That is what it has to do with it, and it is not fair to try to disfranchise or deny the equal rights to those northern States who were uniformly Democratie until they were 'borne down fighting your battles, to save you from an enemy. Ta The Senator has said that I got but eleven votes in the convention from the certain Democratie States. He did not tell where I got them. I think I got that number in Hlinois. She has never failed yet to be Democratic, and she ought to be considered certain until she has failed once; especially she ought not to be impeached by a State which acknowledges that she has swerved from the true path once at least. I think there were some votes given in some other States scattered around, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland. These States What converted New Hamp-were all claimed as certainly Democratic when shire, Pierce's own State, which had been so the committee men were voting on the platform. uniformly Democratic, iuto an abolition State, But I will not discuss such a matter. except the battles which we fought against abo- enough for me that the convention decided that litionism and in defence of the principle of non- these new tests were anti-Democratic, and ought intervention? Maine has been swept by the not to be adopted board in the same way; and Rhode Island and "Connecticut, although now these two States are It is But the Senator hopes still that the party is going to be reunited. He says it is a very easy |