This is enough-sufficiently explicit-to affirm the sovereign right of government in the owner of these Territories. But a member of the present Court, (Mr. Justice M'Lean,) differed from Chief Justice Taney in his estimate of this decision. He deemed it sufficiently clear in itself, and authorized by the point raised for the Court's decision. He says, (in his dissenting opinion :)

"I can see no want of precision in the language of the Chief Justice; his meaning cannot be mistaken. He states, first, the third section as giving power to Congress to govern the Territories, and two other grounds from which the power may also be implied. The objection seems to be, that the Chief Justice did not say which of the grounds stated he considered the source of the power. He did not specifically state this, but he did say, 'whichever may be the source whence the power is derived, the possession of it is unquestioned.' No opinion of the Court could have been expressed with a stronger emphasis; "the power in Congress is unquestioned." But those who have undertaken to criticise the opinion, consider it without authority, because the Chief Justice did not designate specially the power. This is a singular objection. If the power be unquestioned, it can be a matter of no importance on which ground it is exercised. The opinion clearly was not obiter dicta. The turning point in the case was, whether Congress had power to authorize the territorial Legislature of Florida to pass the law under which the territorial court was established, whose decree was brought before this Court for revision. The power of Congress, therefore, was the point in issue."

I think Mr. Justice M'Lean entirely right in his understanding of the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Marshall; and I think that opinion clear in referring a right of governing a Territory to the right of acquiring it. And in this it corresponds with the action of Congress, and the declaration of eminent members at the time-namely, by Mr. Randolph, that the right of government was the right of sovereignty; and by Dr. Eustis," that the government of the Territory was imperiously commanded by its acquisition.

Strong as was the course of Congress in the act taking possession of Louisiana, and continuing therein the Spanish government under American officers, it was repeated, in all its extent, sixteen years afterwards, on the acquisition of Florida. The Louisiana act of October, 1803, was copied for Florida in

March, 1819. All the powers exercised there by the King's officers were to be exercised, until the end of the session of the next Congress, by such persons as the President should direct.* And thus, two different administrations, and two different Congresses, at the distance of sixteen years apart, governed two acquisitions of new territory exactly alike, and as incompatibly with our Constitution as a Spanish regal despotism is incompatible with our free Republican government. That act was approved by Mr. Monroe, and no dissenting voice was ever heard from his cabinet-able, vigilant, and strongly Southern as that cabinet was.

Following, step by step, the course pursued in the Louisiana case, a territorial government was afterwards provided there, but after an interval of four years-during all which time the Spanish government was continued over the people-General Jackson, the governor, took care that power should be no "barren sceptre" in his hands. This territorial government, established in March, 1823, took the ordinance of '87 for its basis, but with the modifications which assimilated it to the act for the government of the Orleans Territory. It was nearly a transcript from that act, so far as government was concerned; and we have seen what that was a total abnegation of the Constitution of the United States in all its provisions, letter and spirit. So that, in these two first instances of the acquisition of foreign territory-Florida and Louisiana-two different administrations, and three different Congresses-those of 1803 -'4, of 1818-19, and of 1822-'3—at intervals of sixteen years. and twenty years apart, acted in the same way, governing the Territories independently of the Constitution, and incompatibly

*The following was the act:

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That, until the end of the first session of the next Congress, unless provision for the temporary government of said territories be sooner made by Congress, all the military, civil, and judicial powers, exercised by the officers of the existing government of the same territories, shall be vested in such person and persons, and shall be exercised in such manner, as the President of the United States shall direct, for the maintaining the inhabitants of said territories in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and religion; and the laws of the United States, relative to the collection of revenue, and the importation of persons of color, shall be extended to the said territories.

Up to this time no one thought of extending the Constitution to a Territory: laws only were so extended, and only the few deemed applicable.

with it. Both these acts for the government of Florida passed under the administration of Mr. Monroe-Mr. John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State; Mr. Wm. H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. John C. Calhoun, Secretary at War; Mr. Smith Thompson, Secretary of the Navy; Mr. Return Jonathan Meigs, Post-Master General; Mr. Wirt, Attorney General a President and cabinet inferior to none that ever appeared in this Union, and who saw no want of power in Congress to pass, or in themselves to approve, these forms of territorial government in which the whole spirit of our Constitution is ignored, and its written provisions either disregarded or flatly contradicted. And what were the two Houses of Congress at that time? Perhaps if the period of our legislative history was to be picked out when the national legislature appeared to the greatest advantage, it would be in that middle period of Mr. Monroe's administration, when the surviving great men of the first generation were still upon the stage, and the gigantic progeny of the second were mounting upon it. I came into Congress at that period, and such was the awe and reverence with which the Senate inspired me, that I sat there six years without opening my mouth on any subject outside of my own State. O si sic semper! And yet this assemblage of the illustrious old, and not less illustrious young, are now, after almost forty years, to be considered as ignorant of the Constitution which they had helped to make, and were sworn to observe, and doing things which require to be repudiated.

The Supreme Court, in its elaborate opinion, has put itself to great labor to prove the territorial legislation of Congress to be incompatible with the Constitution :—most superfluous labor, as I conceive, there being no pretension on the part of Congress to be acting under the Constitution, and continued declarations, (as well as acts,) to the contrary-members continually supporting measures in Territories which they repulsed in States-as, for local objects of internal improvement, for banks, corporations. It can be said, and without allowing a single exception, that there has not been a member of either House, from the formation of the Government to the present day, who has not voted for these objects in Territories who would not vote for them in States, upon the avowed ground that the Constitution did not extend to Territories. I have seen all parties so vote-

the very strictest of the State Rights party. The proceedings of Congress are full of such votes, and of the remark, "It is a Territory: the Constitution does not extend to it." And this finishes the second stage of this Historical and Legal Examination, comprising the governmental legislation of Congress upon these two new Territories-Louisiana and Florida-and showing that they were governed without limitations, and in the plenitude of sovereign right, qualified only by the conditions on which they were ceded.

THIRD STAGE OF THE EXAMINATION,

EMBRAC

ING THE LEGISLATION ON THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE ACT.

III. It was at the session of 1818-'19 that the Missouri Territory, having been trained through the three grades of territorial government prescribed by the ordinance of '87, and being then in the third grade, and with a competent population, applied through her Territorial Legislature for an Act of Congress to enable her to hold a convention for the formation of a State Constitution, preparatory to the formal application for admission into the Union. The bill had been perfected, its details adjusted, and was upon its last reading, when a motion was made by Mr. James Tallmadge, of New York, to impose a restriction on the State in relation to slavery, to restrain her from the future admission of slavery within her borders. The motion gave rise to a vehement debate, which soon divided the House geographically, set the members on fire, and soon attained a height which threatened the Union with dissolution. As a sample, take a specimen of what passed between some members from the Free and the Slave States-thus:

Mr. Scott, delegate from Missouri: "He would trouble the House no longer; he thanked them for the attention and indulgence already extended to him. But he desired to apprise gentlemen, before he sat down, that they were sowing the seeds of discord in this Union, by attempting to institute States with unequal privileges and unequal rights -that they were signing, sealing, and delivering their own death warrant that the weapon they were so unjustly wielding against the people

of Missouri was a two-edged sword. From the cumulative nature of power, the day might come when the General Government might, in turn, undertake to dictate to them on questions of internal policy. Missouri, now young and feeble, whose fate and murmurs would excite but little alarm or sensibility, might become an easy victim to motives of policy, party zeal, or mistaken ideas of power; but other times and other men would succeed a future Congress might come, who, under the sanctified forms of Constitutional power, would dictate to them odious conditions--nay, inflict on their internal independence a wound more deep and dreadful than even this on Missouri. The House had seen the force of the precedent, in the mistaken application of the conditions imposed on the people of Louisiana anterior to their admission into the Union. And, whatever might be the ultimate determination of the House, he considered this question big with the fate of Cæsar and of Rome."

To this Mr. Tallmadge replied:

"The honorable gentleman from Missouri, who has just resumed his seat, has told us of the Ides of March, and cautioned us to beware of the fate of Cæsar and of Rome. Another gentleman, Mr. Cobb, from Georgia,* in addition to other expressions of great warmth, has said, that if we persist, the Union will be dissolved; and, with a look fixed on me, has told us that we have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, and seas of blood can alone extinguish. Sir, language of this sort has no effect on me. My purpose is fixed; it is interwoven with my existence; its durability is limited with my life; it is a great and glorious cause, setting boundaries to a slavery the most cruel and debasing the world ever witnessed. It is the freedom of man -it is the cause of unredeemed and unregenerated human beings. Sir, if a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come! My hold on life is probably as frail as that of any man who now hears me; but, while that hold lasts, it shall be devoted to the service of my conntry-to the freedom of man. If blood is necessary to extinguish any fire which I have assisted to kindle, I can assure gentlemen, while I regret the necessity, I shall not forbear to contribute my mite."

And this was the character of the debate on the second day after it opened !—so rapid was the conflagration of the passions,

*Thomas W. Cobb. His speech on this occasion is merely noted, not reported among the debates, as, in fact, but a small part of the speeches were at that day.