of a house, or any other indication of civilized life. What a contrast now ! The proposed road built, known even in Europe as one of the most prosperous in America; other railroads crossing it in all directions; the reserved alternate sections of land nearly all sold, at prices ranging from two dollars and a half to seven and a quarter per acre, thus yielding to the government a much larger sum for one half than was before asked for the whole; the whole of the soil of Illinois, acknowledged to be the richest in the world, redeemed from its primitive wildness, blooming and blossoming like a garden, and teeming with abundant harvests; a market brought to every farmer's door; and this prosperity owing its origin and material progress to the exertions or Mr. Douglas in securing the passage of this bill.

It is but an act of simple justice to those illustrious states men to add, that John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Danie Webster, Thomas H. Benton, and Lewis Cass, seconded the efforts of Mr. Douglas by able and eloquent speeches in favor of this great measure.

MISSOURI COMPROMISE REPUDIATED.

In August, 1848, Mr. Douglas offered an amendment to the Oregon Bill, extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, in the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was originally adopted in 1820, and extended through Texas in 1845. The amendment was adopted in the Senate, but was rejected in the House of Representatives by northern votes.

It is important to mark well this fact. The first time that the principles of the Missouri Compromise were even abandoned, the first time they were ever rejected by Congress, was by the defeat of that provision in the House of Representatives, in 1848. That defeat was effected by northern

votes with Freesoil proclivities. It was that defeat which reopened the slavery agitation in all its fury, and caused the tremendous struggle of 1850. It was that defeat which created the necessity for making a new compromise in 1850. Who caused that defeat? Who was faithless to the principles of the compromise of 1820 ? It was the very men who in 1854, insisted that the Missouri Compromise was a solemn compact that ought never to be violated. The very men who, in 1854, arraigned Mr. Douglas for a departure from the Missouri Compromise, were the men who successfully violated it, repudiated it, and caused it to be superseded.

CALIFORNIA, INDIAN TITLES, ETC.

By the time the next session of Congress assembled, California had been settled by an enterprising people, whose numbers entitled them to admission into the Union as a State. A bill "for the admission of California as a State into the Union," was introduced by Mr. Douglas on the 29th of January, 1849; but was not acted on till long afterward.

On the 18th of December, 1849, Mr. Douglas was reëlected chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, by 33 out of 40 votes; a position to which he was constantly thereafter reëlected, until December, 1858.

The tribes of Indians which had, until a few years before, occupied the lands in Minnesota, Oregon, California, and New Mexico, had never been fully divested of their title to the same; and their constant presence there, and their depreda tions on the settlers, were very annoying; so much so that the settlement of those new Territories was much impeded. In order to remove the cause of all the trouble at once, Mr. Douglas, on the 7th of January, 1850, offered a resolution providing for the complete extinguishment of the Indian

title in the Territories above named. The resolution was debated at some length, but it was adopted; and the measures proposed have been faithfully carried out. Ample provision was made for treating the Indians with fairness and justice and while their rights have been respected, and their comforts secured, the vast regions which they occupied have been secured for all time to come for the abodes of civilized men; and for the spread of those great fundamental principles on which our national prosperity rests.

At the time that Mr. Douglas introduced his resolution, however, the emigrants to those Territories, and especially to those of Oregon and California, were annoyed and attacked to such an extent, by roving bands of Indians, that it was considered positively unsafe for emigrants to go any further west than the Missouri River. It was clearly the duty of the Government to afford protection to its citizens on its own soil; and accordingly, on the 31st of January, Mr. Douglas offered a resolution, instructing the committee on military affairs to inquire into the expediency of providing, on the usual emigrant line from the Missouri River to the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, a sufficient movable military force to protect all emigrants to Oregon and California.

To the legislation growing out of this resolution, many hundreds of families now living in comfort and even in affluence in the smiling villages of Oregon, California, and Minnesota, are indebted, not only for their safety, but their very lives. The instances of emigrant trains saved from the attack and spoliation of the savages, by our gallant troops on the frontier, from 1851 to 1857, are numerous and well authenticated. The settlers in those new countries owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Douglas which they will not soon forget.

Mr. Douglas supports the Compromise Measures of Henry Clay-Great Speech on the 13th and 14th of March-Speech in favor of the Omnibus Bill, June 3-The Nicholson Letter of General Cass-Mr. Douglas returns to Chicago-He is Denounced by the Local Authorities— He beards the Lions in their Den-Speech to the Citizens of ChicagoIts Effect.

WHEN the Compromise measures of Mr. Clay were brought forward in 1850, Mr. Douglas supported them with zeal and vigor. On the 13th and 14th of March, he delivered a speech on the general territorial questions, which has scarcely been surpassed by any of his subsequent efforts. It was by far the ablest speech that had ever been delivered in the Senate by any western man. It was in this speech that Judge Douglas first enunciated the doctrine of which he has ever since been the most distinguished advocate, that it is the true Democratic principle in reference to the Territories, that each one shall be left to regulate its own local and domestic affairs in its own way.

In the beginning of this great speech, Senator Douglas showed that all the acts of the Tyler administration in refernce to the annexation of Texas (including the proposed treaty with Mexico for that object, and the correspondence between our secretary of state on the one part, and Mr. King, minister to France and Mr. Murphy, chargé d'affaires

in the republic of Texas, on the other part), had been indignantly and contemptuously rejected by the Senate; and that this had been done in order to repudiate and rebuke the administration of Mr Tyler, and in order that the Democratic party might come to the support of the annexation of Texas as they did come, and consummated the annexation upon broad, national grounds, elevated far above and totally disconnected from the question of slavery.

ORDINANCE OF 1787 HAD NO EFFECT ON SLAVERY.

A distinguished southern senator having said that the South had been deprived of its due share of the territories, Mr. Douglas responded, "What share had the South in the territories? or the North? I answer, none at all. The territories belong to the United States as one people, and are to be disposed of for the common benefit of all, according to the principles of the Constitution. No geographical section of the Union is entitled to any share of the territories. What becomes of the complaint of the senator, that the Ordinance of 1787 excluded the South entirely from that vast fertile region between the Ohio and the Mississippi? That ordinance was a dead letter. It did not make the country to which it applied, free from slavery. The States formed out of the territory northwest of the Ohio, did not become free by virtue of the Ordinance, nor in consequence of it. Those States became free by virtue of their own will, recorded in the fundamental laws of their own making. That is the source of their freedom. In all republican states, laws and ordinances are mere nullities, unless sustained by the hearts and intellects of the people for whom they are made, and by whom they are to be executed.