The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1859-09-23
A Response to Judge Douglas Essay on
Popular Sovereignty.

The Washington Constitution of the 10th
published a reply to Senator DOUGLAS
views on Popular Sovereignty,-flling six
columns Of that paper, and understood to be
from the pen of the Attorney General,
Judge BLACK. The position presented in
this article as that of the Democratic party,
is that slaves are recognized by the Federal
Constitution as property in States where
the local law so treats them that they
remain property when taken into any State
of which the local law does not forbid their
being so regarded that Congress has no
right to deprive their owners of this prop
erty, in the territories or other places under
its jurisdiction and that, as it cannot del
egate power which it does not possess,
neither the Legislature nor the people of a
Territory have any authority to prohibit
Slavery within its borders. It comedies,
however, that when they come to form a
State Constitution, they may establish or
prohibit Slavery as they see fit. Until then
they have no power whatever over the SUBJ
ject.
The Washington correspondent of the
Philadelphia Press, commenting upon the
article in the Constitution, says that its doc
trine when briefly expressed amounts to
this -
"That inasmuch as the Constitution per-
mits slavery in the Territories, the common
law affords sufficient protection for it, and
therefore that its existence is secured until
the people at the time of the forming a
State Constitution, acquire a right to ex-
clude it.
But this doctrine is contrary to the expe-
rience of every slaveholding community, for
they all possess and absolutely require a va
riety of local statutes for the protection of
slave property; even the history of Kansas
affords proof of this, for one of the first
acts of the Legislature, when it was under
the control of the pro-slavery party, was to
pass a series of laws for the protection of
slavery.
Now, since the Free State party has be-
come dominant there, these laws have been
repealed, and although Kansas has not yet
been admitted into the Union, the contest
as to her future character is decided, and no
STAKEHOLDER has the slightest disposition to
remove there with his slaves. Notwith-
standing the violence which has at all times
disgraced the history of Kansas, and the
great miseries which have been inflicted up
on her people from peculiar combination
of causes, which in all human probability
will never operate upon another Territory,
the great fact remains that the people of
Kansas during the continuance of her Ter
ritorial condition have virtually decided that
she should be non-slaveholding political
community.
The people of Nebraska have done the
same thing. The people of New Mexico
have chosen to declare, by the action of their
Territorial legislature, that local laws for
the protection of slave property should
exist among them, and if pro-slavery SEN
timent continues to prevail, she will, doubt
less, eventually become slave State.
Thus the practical illustration furnished
by our history since the passage of the
Kansas Nebraska act, clearly indicates not
only tnaI tne Interpretation put upon 1t Dy
its distinguished author, is the correct one,
but that the people of our territories are
carrying it out precisely as he contemplated,
and making territories free or slaveholding
according to their own good will and plea
sure.
No close observer of events can doubt
that similar privilege will be exercised by
the people of all our territories in future,
and that, too, without waiting for the
moment when State Constitutions are
adopted. The people of the territories will
be acting as their interests seem to require,
and those who clamor for Congressional
slave codes or Wilmot Provisos, will find
themselves served like the lawyer, who,
while arguing motion for new trial for a
rogue who had been convicted of larceny,
accidentally discovered that his client was
at the very moment being whipped in the
Jail yard as punishment for the offense.