American History Leaflets

COLONIAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL.

No. 17. SEPTEMBER, 1894.

DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT, 1854.

THE history of the Civil War may not unfairly be said to begin with the Kansas-Nebraska debates of 1854. Up to that time there had been for several years a kind of agreement that the slavery question should no longer be agitated in Congress. After the passage of the act there was no Congress without the most violent struggles over some phase or result of slavery, till the end of reconstruction in 1876.

The original bill for the creation of a Territory of Nebraska, came up because the overland route to California, opened after the discovery of gold in 1848, lay through a region in which there was neither State nor territorial government. This region was a part of the Louisiana cession of 1803, and in it, by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery had been "forever" prohibited, and there is no evidence that any one had seriously thought of disturbing this status till Douglas came forward with his report. Various reasons are assigned for his course: the almost irresistible explanation is that he wished to commend himself to the Southern wing of his party; perhaps he believed that the territory would be useless to them. In order to avoid the charge of opening up the slavery controversy, Douglas set up the ingenious theory that the Compromise of 1850 had by implication repealed the Compromise of 1820. In order to make his measure practically a division of the disputed territory, he altered his bill so that it provided for

two territories: Kansas lying west of Missouri, and therefore likely to be colonized by slaveholders; and Nebraska, west of Iowa.

Senator Dixon of Kentucky proposed that the new act should in terms repeal the act of 1820; this honest and direct course was not followed. Chase of Ohio proposed to state that the people of the new territory might prohibit as well as establish slavery. Douglas refused to define the meaning of that part of the bill. Seeing that the act was to be forced through as a party measure, a number of Democrats united in a solemn public statement, the Appeal of the Independent Democrats. This was

the first step in the foundation of the Republican party. In the territory of Kansas, organized under this act, a civil war broke out in 1855 over the question of establishing slavery. The contest did not end till, in 1861, Kansas was admitted into the Union as a free State.

Elaborate discussions of the bill and debate may be found in H. von Holst's Constitutional History of the United States, IV. 280-461; James F. Rhodes's History of the United States, I. 419-498; James Schouler's History of the United States, V. 280-288; Horace Greeley's American Conflict, I. 224-236; L. Spring's Kansas; Henry Wilson's Slave Power, II. 328-405.-Briefer accounts in Woodrow Wilson's Division and Reunion, 90 (see maps I and 3); Jefferson Davis's Confederate Government, I. 26-29; J. J. Lalor's Cyclopædia, II. 667–670.—Bibliography in Lalor, II. 670, and in W. E. Foster's References to Presidential Administrations, 39.

1854, JAN. 4.

DOUGLAS'S REPORT.

Mr. DOUGLAS made the following

REPORT.

[To accompany bill S. 22.]

The Committe on Territories, to which was referred a bill for an act to establish the Territory of Nebraska, have given the same that serious and deliberate consideration which its great importance demands, and beg leave to report it back to the Senate with various amendments, in the form of a substitute for the bill:

The principal amendments which your committee deem it their duty to commend to the favorable action of the Senate, in a special report, are those in which the principles estab

lished by the compromise measures of 1850, so far as they are applicable to territorial organizations, are proposed to be affirmed and carried into practical operation within the limits of the new Territory.

The wisdom of those measures is attested, not less by their salutary and beneficial effects, in allaying sectional agitation and restoring peace and harmony to an irritated and distracted people, than by the cordial and almost universal approbation with which they have been received and sanctioned by the whole country. In the judgment of your committee, those measures were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of the difficulties arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to establish certain great principles, which would not only furnish adequate remedies for existing evils, but, in all time to come, avoid the perils of a similar agitation, by withdrawing the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and committing it to the arbitrament of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for its consequences. With the view of conforming their action to what they regard the settled policy of the government, sanctioned by the approving voice of the American people, your committee have deemed it their duty to incorporate and perpetuate, in their territorial bill, the principles and spirit of those measures. any other consideration were necessary, to render the propriety of this course imperative upon the committee, they may be found in the fact, that the Nebraska country occupies the same relative position to the slavery question as did New Mexico and Utah, when those territories were organized.

If

It was a disputed point, whether slavery was prohibited by law in the country acquired from Mexico. On the one hand it was contended, as a legal proposition, that slavery having been prohibited by the enactments of Mexico, according to the laws of nations, we received the country with all its local laws and domestic institutions attached to the soil, so far as they did not conflict with the Constitution of the United States; and that a law, either protecting or prohibiting slavery, was not repugnant to that instrument, as was evidenced by the fact, that one-half of the States of the

Union tolerated, while the other half prohibited, the institution of slavery. On the other hand it was insisted that, by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, every citizen had a right to remove to any Territory of the Union, and carry his property with him under the protection of law, whether that property consisted in persons or things. The difficulties arising from this diversity of opinion were greatly aggravated by the fact, that there were many persons on both sides of the legal controversy who were unwilling to abide the decision of the courts on the legal matters in dispute; thus, among those who claimed that the Mexican laws were still in force, and consequently that slavery was already prohibited in those territories by valid enactment, there were many who insisted upon Congress making the matter certain, by enacting another prohibition. In like manner, some of those who argued that the Mexican laws had ceased to have any binding force, and that the Constitution tolerated and protected slave property in those territories, were unwilling to trust the decision of the courts upon that point, and insisted that Congress should, by direct enactment, remove all legal obstacles to the introduction of slaves into those territories.

Such being the character of the controversy, in respect to the territory acquired from Mexico, a similar question has arisen in regard to the right to hold slaves in the proposed territory of Nebraska when the Indian laws shall be withdrawn, and the country thrown open to emigration and settlement. By the 8th section of "an act to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to prohibit slavery in certain territories," approved March 6, 1820, it was provided: "That, in all that territory ceded by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibited: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed,

in any State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid."

Under this section, as in the case of the Mexican law in New Mexico and Utah, it is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by valid enactment. The decision of this question involves the constitutional power of Congress to pass laws prescribing and regulating the domestic institutions of the various territories of the Union. In the opinion of those eminent statesmen, who hold that Congress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the territories, the 8th section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void; while the prevailing sentiment in large portions of the Union sustains the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any of the territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of law. Your committee do not feel themselves called upon to enter into the discussion of these controverted questions. They involve the same grave issues which produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 1850. As Congress deemed it wise and prudent to refrain from deciding the matters in controversy then, either by affirming or repealing the Mexican laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of the Constitution and the extent of the protection afforded by it to slave property in the territories, so your committee are not prepared now to recommend a departure from the course pursued on that memorable occasion, either by affirming or repealing the 8th section of the Missouri act, or by any act declaratory of the meaning of the Constitution in respect to the legal points in dispute.

Your committee deem it fortunate for the peace of the country, and the security of the Union, that the controversy then resulted in the adoption of the compromise measures, which the two great political parties, with singular unanimity, have affirmed as a cardinal article of their faith, and proclaimed to the world, as a final settlement of the controversy and an end of the agitation. A due respect, therefore, for