The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-01-12
NEBRAsKA-rHE QUESTION.

| OF every reader. We are to understand that
it presents the views of the Administration,
and that the bill it recommends is to be urged
as an Administration measure
The report attempts to run parallel be-
tween the condition of the Territories acquired
from Mexico in 1S4S, and that of the Terri
tory of Nebraska now, assimilat;ng them with
a view of enforcing the propriety of similar
legislation in regard to them. 1t assumes too
that the Compromise Measures of 1850 were
intended to embrace in their provisions all the
territory of the United States
The whole of this part of the report is mis-
chievously deceptive. The Compromise of 1850
embraced the admission of California as a
State, the settlement of the Texas Boundary
! Question, the organization of the Territorial
! Governments of Utah and New Mexico, the
abolition of Slave Importation into the District
of Columbia, the Fugitive Slave Act and a
declaration, that theneeforth State applying
for adms sion into the Union should be admit
ted with or without Slavery, as its Constitution
might prescribe. The only Territorial provi-I
sions of the Compromise related to New Mex
leo and Utah. No measures were proposed,
no principles affirmed in relation to any other
Territories. Oregon had received Govern
! ment in IS4S the condition of the territory
/ North of SO deg. 80 min, east of the Rocky
| Mountains, had been settled by the act ad-
hitting Missouri into the Union in 1920. No
/ body dreamed that the Compromise had any
thing to do with either it is notorious that
it had nothing to do with either. The report
drags them within its scope simply to secure
pretext for re affirming in the Nebraska bill,
the Pro-Slavery declaration of the Compro-
mise.
| Nor is it less deceptous when it undertakes
to assimilate the condition Of newly acquired
Mexican Territories in 1850, with that of Ne
braska in 1853 American Law had not been
extended over those Territories. The law ex-
GLIDING Slavery had been enacted while they
were a portion of Mexico. The questions
arose-Did this law continue in force after
their annexation? Was it abrogated by their
separation from the Sovereign Power that had
enacted it Was it abrogated by tho Consti-
tuition of the United States? These questions
were debated with great vehemence; and so
nearly equal was the division of opinion, that
the Anti-Slavery party, which for time was
in fact in the ascendant, insisted that, to pre-
vent all danger, and settle the condition of the
Territories once for all, it was the duty of
Congress to provide by positive enactment
against the existence Of Slavery therein.
But, no such questions have arisen, or could
arise in relation to Nebraska. 1t is part
of the Territory acquired from France, and its
tied, by American Law, for an entire genera
ton. There were dreamers, at times, who ques-
toned theoretically the validity of that L NV
nobody ever made practical question onIthis
point. 1t has been the universal understanding
that the condition of this Territory is fixed. In
no respect, then, can the circumstances Of Ne
braska now be compared with those of New
Mexico and Utah in 1850, so that the inference
that the bill to organize the former should be
framed like those under which the latter were
organized is clearly illogical and impairment.
For the first time in the legislation Of this
country for thirty-three years, the validity of
this act of 1920 is brought into question. The
report mischievously and groundessly assumes
that there are similar radical and widespread
differences of opinion in relation to its consti-
nationality, that prevailed in relation to the
validity of the Mexican Law excluding Slavery
from New Mexico, and that therefore the same
Compromise is necessary'in relation to Nebras-
ka, that was adopted in 1850. Hence the bill
is framed after the model of the Utah Terrific
rial bill, with its provisions for determining be-
fore the courts the question of Personal Lib
erty
Is the reader now prepared to understand
why we are indignant at this incorporation
into the bill of the declaration of the Compro-
mise of 1850, in regard to the future admission
of States aith ough it does not formally and in
terms touch the relations of the Territory to
Slavery SO long as it is a Territory? 1t is be-
cause the doctrines and assumptions of the Re-
port, accompanying the Bill, and the fact that
the Bill itself is framed after the model of the
Utah Bill, which leaves that Territory without
any safeguard against Slavery, constrain us
to believe that, whatever may have been the
intentions of Mr.. Douglas, the Shareholders
propose through this Legislative demonstration,
should it secure the assent of Congress, to re-
gard the Missouri Compromise Proviso as vir
tually repealed, and the whole of the Territory
north of SO deg 80 min. thrown open to Slave
ry! We would not admit that the deceptive
bill, even if it pass--which God in his infinite
mercy forbid had repealed that Compromise
or subverted Freedom in the Territory-but
the minions of the Slave Power would take
different view-and for one, not TO the Supreme
Court would we trust the adjudication of the
question of Personal Liberty arising under such
bill. We mean no disrespect to the members
of this Tribunal, but in its decisions in relation
to Questions of Slavery, we are constrained to
assert that its action has almost uniformly been
repug ant to the spirit of Freedom. Law is
uncc in its technicalities open wide field
for construction, in which large discretion is
left to Judges, who cannot plead exemption
from Prejudice, Prepossession, the influences of
Education, OR the insidious workings of Self
Interest. SO far as We know, the rule with the
Supreme Court, in cases growing out of negro
Slavery has been, to give to Slavery rather
| than to Liberty the benefit of doubt. In the
case Of DR.. Eels, a citizen Of Illinois, arraigned
| and convicted under State Law on the sub
ject Of Fugitives from Service or Labor, the
Court held the Law to be valid, although ip
the famous Prigg case it expressly declared
that all State laws on the subject, in aid or in
derogation of the owners right of reclamation,
were null and void We say, plainly, then,