६ thing. If we will only acquiesce in letting the seceders make a nomination, we can all fight together and be reunited! Sir, let the Democratic Senators attend to their official duties, and leave the national conventions to make their own platforms, and the party will be united. Where does this trouble come from? From our own caucus chambers, a caucus of Senators (dictating to the people what sort of platform they shall have. You have been told that no less than twelve southern Senators warned you in the caucus against the consequences of trying to force senatorial caucus platforms on the party. Sir, I do not know when the people ever put it. in a Senator's commission that he is to get up platforms for the national conventions, on the supposition that the delegates who go there have not sense enough to do it themselves. Although the action of the caucus was heralded to the world to be, as was generally understood, for the purpose of operating on the Charleston convention, it did not have its effect. The resolutions were not incorporated into the platform. When it was proposed to postpone them here in the Senate, before the Charleston convention, I voted against the postponement, I wanted to give a chance for a vote on them before the party acted. I did not believe the party then would agree to the dictation. I do not think they would obey the order at Baltimore. Sir, the Charleston convention scorned it, and ratified the old platform. Is it supposed now that this discussion, or the votes that may be given in the Senate, are going to frighten the Democratic party at Baltimore into an abandonment of its principles? What other object can there be in pressing these resolutions at this time but that? Why should the public business be postponed? Why are the overland mail routes thrown aside? Why is the Pacific railroad almost abandoned? Why are all the great measures for the public good made to give place to the emergency of passing some abstract resolutions on the subject of politics, to reverse the Democratic platform, under the supposition that the representatives of the people are men of weak nerve, who are going to be frightened by the thunders of the Senate Chamber? I think the country understands this whole thing. If the matter had been left to the people without any interference from this body, you would not have heard a word from me on the subject. I am assailed and arraigned. If I do not defend myself, I am taunted; and if I do, my defence is tortured into an attack upon others. I attacked nobody. The Senator from Mississippi will admit that I did not attack him. I conceded his consistency, and proved my own by it. Certainly that was no attack. I attacked no other man, not even the Presiding Officer, as intimated by the Senator from Mississippi. It was necessary for me, in my vindication, to prove that I stand now where I stood, and where the party stood, in 1856. To do that, it was necessary to quote the platform, and to quote the acceptances by the candidates on that platform. I quoted Mr. Buchanan, for that reason, and only for that reason. I quoted Major BRECKINRIDGE for that reason, and only for that. Is it an assault on him to quote truly what he said? That carries an implication against the Vice-President that I have never hinted. It can be no assault upon him to quote his speech, unless he has changed since, and I did not intimate that he had. But to treat it as an assault is an intimation by the Senator from Mississippi that the Vice-President's record of four years ago would not compare very well. with it now. I have made no such intimation. I have cast no such imputation. I said no word by which it could be inferred that he does not stand to-day where he did in 1856 and 1854 on this question. So with Mr. Buchanan. I quoted his letter of acceptance, written in language so plain that it could not be misunderstood; but to quote what he said then is an attack. Why? It is not, unless he has changed since. It is a compliment, if I quoted it truly and he still stands by it. If I should quote one of the Senator's speeches, and say, "Sir, I approve and endorse it," would that be an attack? Certainly he would think that I intended to do him justice by doing so, unless he had changed since, and was, therefore, a little tender about having his former opinions known. So it is with every person that I have alluded to. I quoted every one of them as authority, without an intimation that one of them had changed. If any of them has changed, he will have to look into the speech of the Senator from Mississippi, and not to mine, to find out the fact; and then let them determine who has assailed them, he or I. No, sir: I attack no one. I have no interest in other men's records, if they will let me alone; but I have proven, beyond all controversy, the Senate know it, and the world will understand it, that the Democratic party was pledged by its organiza tion and its platform for years to the same principles enunciated by the party at Charleston. The Senator, again, is anxious to get up a definition of squatter sovereignty, He wanted me to define it. It is his bantling; not mine. Mr. DAVIS. I asked the Senator from Illinois to define what he meant by non-intervention. Mr. DOUGLAS. I understood him distinctly to ask me to define squatter sovereignty. Mr. DAVIS. I said you treated non-intervention as synonymous with squatter sovereignty, and I asked you several times to define nonintervention. Mr. DOUGLAS. I treated them as synonym. ous, merely because the Senator had used them as convertible terms, and I replied in the samo sense,, and only in that. But, sir, in regard to this dogma of squatter sovereignty, that is a nickname that has been given in derision, not by its friends. As first christened, so far as I know the debates of this body, I should have no objection to it. When the people of Oregon found themselves without any governmentwhen this Government failed to extend its laws over the Territory-they, on the principle of self-defence, erected a government of their own, provisional, temporary in its character, and governed themselves for many years, wisely, justly, and well. Mr. Calhoun called that squatter sovereignty. He said those people reignty, of which President Pierce spoke in his message; that is, to allow the people of an organized Territory to exercise all the rights c self-government according to the Constitution and no more. That is what I am for: that they shall be held in subordination to the Constitution, exercise the right of self-government consistent with the Constitution; and if they violate it, their act shall be declared null in the same way that the acts of a State Legislature are-by the courts. Then the unconstitutional acts, being so declared, are void without any repeal, and you want no intervention at all in that case. were there without authority of law, without | am for the great principle of popular sove any title to the land, without any permission to go there; that they had set up a government without any authority from Congress under the Constitution. They went by squatter right, and held by squatter title, and enacted laws by squatter sovereignty. That was the origin of it. It was defended then only on the principle of self-defence, which principle the Senator to-day has recognized; and in the Oregon bill, to which he has referred, there was a provision, when we organized the territorial government, that the laws then in force in that Territory, by the authority of the provisional government formed by the people thereof, should remain in force for a certain time, unless altered or repealed by the Legislature. One of those laws was a prohibition of slavery In the Territory. There was the idea of a squatter government under squatter authority excluding slavery. It existed by the same authority as a provisional government now exists in Dakota; the same authority as one exists now at Pike's Peak; the same authority as one now exists in Nevada; and exercises unlimited squatter sovereignty over every thing because there are no courts there to appeal to by which their legislation can be annulled. If you are opposed to that squatter Sovereignty, why do you not bring in your bills to organize regular Territories, abolish these squatter governments, and institute regular governments in their places? You have not an excuse that the chairman of the Committee on Territories does not represent your views. If these squatter governments be such bad things, why do you not correct them? I called the attention of the Senate to it several weeks, if not months, ago. Every man in Pike's Peak is there in violation of law; every man of them has incurred the penalty of $1000 fine and six months' imprisonment for going in violation of the Indian-intercourse law, and seizing, without authority, upon land to which the Indian title is not extinguished. The Government looks on and sees the laws violated, these people taking possession in violation of treaty and law, establishing a squatter government, setting up a Legislature and a Governor of their own, passing laws for laying out towns, selling town lots, taxing property, and selling it for the non-payment of taxes, before the Indian title is extinguished. There you have got squatter sovereignty. Why do you not correct it? I have been calling your attention to it all the winter in the hope of getting it corrected, but cannot do it. Besides, the squatter government at Pike's Peak is there in actual rebellion against the regularly constituted territorial government of Kansas. A squatter government has been set up inside of the territorial limits of Kansas, in defiance of the authority of Congress. A Legislature has been sitting there in defiance of the Territorial Legislature, and the people there have superseded the authority of Governor Medary, whom you sent, by Governor Steele, whom they elected in his place. There is squatter sovereignty. I am against all that. I The Senator has referred to one of the compromise measures of 1850, which provided for the abolition of the slave trade in this District, and calls that intervention. Mr. DAVIS. Will you describe the act? Mr. DOUGLAS. I describe it according to my recollection, and I think I recollect it distinctly. The act makes it unlawful to bring any slave into this District, from any State, for sale; and the penalty for the violation of the act is the forfeiture of the title-the freedom of the slave. Mr. DAVIS. I suppose the Senator, of course, has forgotten the character of the act. That is not at all the thing, and Mr. DOUGLAS. I will hear the Senator's statement; and perhaps I shall accept his statement of it. Mr. DAVIS. If it will save any time, I have no objection at all to tell him that the act is to prohibit the introduction of a slave into the District with a view to his removal and sale at some other place and time--not in the same place. Mr. DOUGLAS. No matter. I accept it in that way. The act is that it shall be unlawful to bring a slave into this District with a view to remove him to some other place for sale. The Senator regards that as unconstitutional. He regards it as an abominable law. He told us so the other day. He expects the Supreme Court so to declare. Yet that act was one of the compromise measures of 1850; one of those measures endorsed by the Baltimore platform of 1852, when they said they endorsed and would carry out those compromise measures, the fugitive slave law included-showing that they alluded to all of them. I do not say that Senator is not a good Democrat because he denies the validity of one of the very compromise measures that formed the basis of the party in 1852, and the endorsement of which was reaffirmed at Cincinnati, and the party pledged to stand by them. This shows that the Democratic party have not sympathized in the opinions of the Senator from Mississippi on these questions. The Democratic party does not hold that you can pass a law to divest title in slaves in this District. It does not hold that you can confiscate any property anywhere. Divesting title is one thing, and the police power of regulation is a different thing. It seems these measures were deemed constitutional by the great men who passed them, and the small men added. I do not pre tend to say whether they are or not; I am not | Southern League explains Yancey's whole plan going to argue that. I do not care what your that our motto shall be, A southern confedeopinion is, or what is the opinion of any other racy. Mr. Yancey's plan was to remain in the Senator. You may have an opinion one way, organization of the Democratic party; form the and I another. If the courts shall decide in Southern League, bound by secrecy for a southyour favor, it will only prove that you are a ern confederacy-involving disunion, of course, better lawyer than I am; not that you are a wait in the Democratic party until the proper better Democrat. It is a difference on a point moment came; and then, by a sudden moveof law, not a difference in politics. I am for ment, disrupt the party and plunge the cotton leaving all these questions to the courts, where States into revolution. The proof is here clear the platform of the party has left them. that disunion was Mr. Yancey's object. A separate southern confederacy was his whole end," He believed the South could not find safety anywhere else. His plan was to keep in the Democratic party until the proper moment came for revolution; then plunge the cotton States into it, break up the party, and with the party the Confederacy. Sir, I cannot doubt but that this was Mr. Yancey's plan. I submit to the Senate and the country whether "the proper momeut" selected by him was not the Charleston convention; and whether the secession of these same States at Charleston was not in obedience to that plan. I do not mean to say, nor do I believe, that all the men who approved or defended that secession were disunionists; but I do believe that disunion was the prompting motive that broke up that convention. disunion movement, and intervention is a disunion platform. Congressional intervention South for slavery, congressional intervention North against slavery, brings the two sections into hostile array, renders a conflict inevitable, and forces them either to a collision or a separation; for neither party can back out with honor. This action has been taken, by some at least, solemnly,, deliberately, seeking to make this new test a sine qua non at the risk of disrupting or destroying the only political party in exist ence that can save the Union. Mr. President, I have but a few words more to say in reply to the Senator from Mississippi. I have not attempted to follow him in all the points he has made, but merely to touch on those salient points that I thought required allusion to. The Senator from Mississippi was under the impression that I had done injustice to Mr. Yancey, by referring to a private letter which had improperly got into the newspapers, and then quoting it upon him. I will say to that Senator, that no man living has more disgust for such a mean act as using a private letter for any political purpose. If that were the state of the fact, I should not have used it. When I used Mr. Yancey's letter to Mr. Slaughter, I stated these facts, which I am sure the Senator from Mississippi did not understand, or did not hear: that Mr. Yancey had written that letter to Slaughter as a private letter, in haste, in the freedom of private confidence and friendship; that he never expected to see it published; but that, after its publication, a criticism was made upon it by Mr. Pryor, of the Richmond South; and Mr. Yancey replied to Mr. Pryor, wrote to the public a communication, avowing the letter and explaining it; and I read from his explanation. Mr. DAVIS. I did the Senator injustice in that, then. Mr. DOUGLAS. Í knew the Senator did not understand me, or he would not have made that comment. Sir, I would not have used the private letter, although I found it in the newspapers, if it had not been avowed by Mr. Yancey, and a construction given to it by himself, nor without accompanying it with that construction. It will be recollected that, in that letter of Mr. Yancey, in which he spoke of waiting and biding the time to precipitate the cotton States into revolution, he spoke of societies being formed called the Southern League, and he looked upon those societies to remedy all the evils of which the South complained. In his explanation to Mr. Pryor, he also refers to these societies, and says they form a well-matured plan for, at the proper time, carrying out a southern policy. I have a newspaper here the Nashville Patriot of 1858-in which I find the constitution of the Southern League, which Mr. Yancey endorses as the plan he was carrying out. I will ask my friend from Ohio to read the first article of the League. Mr. PUGH read, as follows: "First. The members of this organization shall be known as "The League of the South,' and our motto shall be, 'A Southern Republic is our only safety.'" Mr. DOUGLAS. That first article of the It is a I submit, then, whether this new change of platform does not carry with it not only a dissolution of the party, but a disruption of all those ties which bind the country together. I fear that it does. I believe that my friend from Mississippi is himself following a mere phantom in trying to get a recognition of the right of Congress to intervene for the protection of slavery in the Territories when the people do not want it. He, in effect, confesses that it is a mere phantom, an abstract theory, without results, without fruits; and why? He says that he admits that slavery cannot be forced on a hostile people. He says he has always regarded it as a question of soil and climate and political economy. I so regard it. Mr. DAVIS. I say we have a constitutional right to try it. Mr. DOUGLAS. He says they have a constitutional right to try it, just such a right as he says the soldier had when he was going to Concord, who declared he had a right to go, and he was going because he had the right. Statesmen do not always act on the principle that they will do whatever they have a right to do. A man has a right to do a great many silly things; a statesman has a right to perpetuate acts of consummate folly; but I do not know that it is man's duty to do all that he may have a right to do. Let me put the case to you again. When this compromise was made of taking non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the Territories, the object was to defeat the Wilmot proviso. A majority of the North and a good many of the South believed that the Wilmot proviso was constitutional. Some southern men said they believed it was; but whether it was or not, they would not submit to it anyhow, because it was morally wrong. The Senator from Georgia [Mr. TooMBS] would not stop to inquire whether it was constitutional or not; he said it was so offensive he would not submit to it. Other southern men said, "not only is the Wilmot proviso unconstitutional, but we demand intervention for the protection of slavery." There were three classes of opinions. Mr. Stephens tells us, the Senator from Georgia has also said in speeches here, that he was one of those who at first thought he Mr. DOUGLAS. I ask leave to say a word or two more. 1 concur most heartily in all the. Senator from Mississippi has said in regard to the abuses and dangers that arise from Executive patronage. No man in America has had more cause to feel the weight and to witness the abuse of Federal patronage than 1. For three years no friend of mine has been permitted to hold a cross-roads post-office, or even to circulate the public documents under my frank, as a intervention for protection, bas entitled to general thing, in my own State. The Senator South would not stand up to it, the Democratic party would not stand up to that test, and they were forced to give it up and come in and agree to nonintervention. The Senator from Georgia, when he agreed to non-intervention, did not agree to acknowledge that he had no right to intervention; but he agreed that he would not demand the right. A northern man like Mr. Stuart, of Michigan, who believed the Wilmot proviso constitutional, when he agreed to non-intervention did not agree that the proviso was unconstitutional, but he agreed that he would not vote for it or demand it, whether it was constitutional or not. One side agreed that they would never urge the proviso; the other side agreed they would never urge intervention for slavery.' states that I have made an assault upon the Democratic party because I said the Federal, office-holders in that State did not belong to the party. Sir, I am not the only one that has said it. The Senator said he supposed the party in Illinois was divided. They did pretend to be, and the Federal office-holders got up delegates to Charleston; but when they went before that convention, that body, by a unanimous vote, expelled these office-holders. It was the Charleston convention that decided that the Federal office-holders in Illinois did not belong to the Democratic organization; and I did not find that Mississippi dissented, nor did Alabama, nor did South Carolina. No man from any one State would degrade himself so much as to recognize, that bogus delegation from Illinois, representing Now, suppose the Supreme Court should decide the Federal office-holders, as belonging to the hereafter that the Wilmot proviso was constitu- Democratic organization. I think the action of tional; would that justify me, after my compact the convention, its unanimous action, and that, with you to abide by Vention, in going too, before Mississippi had retired, was pretty for the proviso merely good evidence on that point. O TA Mr. DAVIS. Evidence of who were the delegates? the court had decided that Congress had a right to pass it? Would not you say that I was faithless to the compact? Would you not say that, while the court had settled the question of power in my favor, it had not released my conscience from that bound me as an honest and Mr. DOUGLAS. Yes; and the question of who the delegates were depended on whether they were sent by the party or not. There could be but one Democratic party, and the convention the obligation ever to go for it? If that would decided who that party was; and it is well known that those who were rejected had acted with the Republicans and Abolitionists for the last three years at all their elections, and do now. A man is not permitted to hold office in Illinois, under the present Federal administration, who votes the Democratic ticket. honorable man have been true in the event of the decision having been the other way, what moral right have you to go for intervention, even if the court decides that you may? It is one thing to have the right: it is another thing to exercise it. We came together, a portion believing in the right, a portion not believing in it, a portion taking a The Senator tells us that he has declining disthird view; we shook hands, all pledging our trust of all platforms; that he begins to think honors that we would abandon all our claims on they are not of much account; that we should either side to intervention, and go for non-inter- get along just about as well without them as vention. I ask you now to stand by the com-with them; that he depends a great deal more pact of non-intervention. I care not how the court decide as to the power. I may have the right to make a speech here of two hours every day, but I do not think I am bound to inflict it on the Senate merely because I have a constitutional right to do it. We have the right to do a great many foolish things, a great many silly things; but I hold that the path of duty and wisdom is to stard by the doctrine of non-inter on the man than on the platform; that he thinks he would trust a good man without any platform at all. If that is the case, why is he not content with the platform as it is, and then go for a good man? Why break up the party on the platform, if you do not think that is of any consequence? Remember, the bolters seceded at Charleston, not on the candidate, but on the platform. Were they afraid that they could not get a good man? | convention, for what purpose are they pressed I have no doubt the friends of each candidate thought their man the best. Nearly every southern State had one; and, so far as I know, most of them were very good men. Several of them it would give me great pleasure to go for, if nominated. Why, then, did they not content themselves with the platform, and only quarrel about the men? If the platform is not a matter of much consequence, why press that question to the disruption of the party? Why did you not tell us in the beginning of this debate that the whole fight was against the man, and not upon the platform? Mr. DAVIS. I could not tell you so. Mr. DOUGLAS. You tell us now that the form is not of much account. to the exclusion of the public business? The Senator does not contend that there is any pressing necessity for them; he does not pretend that there is any great evil to be redressed; for, when asked by his colleague why he does not bring in a bill to carry out the right of protection, he says there is no necessity for it. There is no necessity for legislation; no grievances to be remedied; no evil to be avoided; no action is necessary; and yet the peace of the country, the integrity of the Democratic party, is to be threatened by abstract resolutions, when there is confessedly no necessity for action. The people will ask what all this is for; what it plat-means; why it is so important to have a vote on an abstract resolution when it is admitted there is no necessity for action; no danger to the Republic; no evil to be redressed. And yet all public business must be postponed to give priority to it. Why? There must be some purpose. Why? Because it will not do to have a ricketty platform unless you get your man. Mr. DAVIS. No, I did not say that, though I said to the Senator what my opinion was, and how it affected me. I was not speaking for others. I am only a small man. Mr. DOUGLAS. So am I. We are both very modest in our pretensions. I am not speaking for others either; but I want to understand this thing. Do you mean that the platform is of no consequence, provided you get the right man, and that if there is no prospect of getting a good man you will, make a fight on the platform and break things, swear by the platform, say that southern honor, southern rights, southern dignity are all at stake; that you care not about men; and at the same time say to yourselves, "We do not care about the platform, provided we get our man; if we can get him we will take him on any platform; but no platform, on which anybody else can be elected, will suit us, unless we get our man"? Is that the position? Why, then, are these resolutions here now? If they are not intended to operate on the Baltimore Mr. President, I think I shall drop this subject here. I am sorry to have been forced to occupy so much of the time of the Senate; but the Senate will bear me witness that I have not spoken, in the last two years, on any of these topics, except when assailed, and then only in self-defence. You will never find the discussion renewed here again by me, except in self-defence. I have studiously avoided attacking any man, because I did not mean to give a pretext for renewing the assault on me; and the world shall understand that if my name is brought into this debate again, it will be done aggressively, as an assault on me; and if I occupy any more time, it will be only in self-defence. LIST OF SPEECHES, &c., Printed and Published by MURPHY & Co. Non-Interference by Congress with Slavery in the Territories. SPEECH of HON. S. A. DOUGLAS, of Illinois, in the Senate, May 15th and 16th, 1860. $2 50 per 100. It will be supplied to clubs, and others, in lots of 5,000 and upwards at a time, at $20 per 1,000. POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY in the TERRITORIES. The DEMOCRATIC RECORD. The purpose of this Publication, is to exhibit the Democratic Record, as it was made by the Representative men of the Party, on the Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty in the Territories........................................24 pages, $1 50 per 100, $12 50 per 1,000 SPEECH of HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, of Maryland, delivered before the Political friends of HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, at a Meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 7th, 1860. To which is added the Letter of Hon. Reverdy Johnson, to the Chairman of the Douglas Meeting in New York, May 22d, 1860..16 pages-$10 per 1,000 REMARKS on POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY, as Maintained and Denied, respectively, by JUDGE DOUGLAS, and ATTORNEY GENERAL BLACK. BY A SOUTHERN CITIZEN........40 pages, $2 50 per 100-$20 per 1,000 Address orders to: MURPHY & CO., PRINTERS & PUBLISHERS, 182 Baltimore street, Baltimore, Md. 4 |