The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1859-09-22

Territory, and proposed by pretended
laws to punish any persian in the Terri
tory by cruel and unusual punishments,
who should deny the existence of slave
ry in the Territory. The people of the
Territory complained to the Federal
Government that their rights had been
forcibly '.usurped, and that they had
been subjugated. They were told that
they must submit to the usurpation.F
Being thus abandoned by the parent
government to the tender mercies of
the usurpers, and deluded by the stump
speech in the &c belly of the Kansas-Ne-,
braska act" they undertook to regulate
their domestic affairs in their own way
and were told by the Administration
and by Senator Douglas that they we're
guilty of treason in undertaking to.
manage their own affairs in their own
way-not because their own way was
opposite to the Constitution of the
United States, but because it was
against the Kansas Nebraska act. og
His next witness is Mr.. Jefferson's
plan for the government of the terrific
ry ceded, or to be ceded, to the United
States, which was adopted as articles
OF compact, &C., by the Continental
Congress in 1884. This plan did to
some extent recognize the doctrine Of
sluatter-sovereignty. BY it the set
tiers in the Territory were, upon their
petition, or on the order of Congress-
to establish temporary government,
by adopting the constitution and laws
of any one of the original States, So
that such laws, nevertheless, should be
subject to alteration by their ordinary
Legislature. If this plan had declared
that the settlers had this right inde-
pendent of Congress, then it would
have been pure and unadulterated
squatter-sovereignty; but it did no
such thing. The right was to be de.
rived from Congress, and consequently,
amounts to,nothing more than this
that Congress thought it expedient, in
the then condition of the country, to
grant them this request. At that time
there was no general government with,
power to make and enforce laws for,
the government of the territory. There
was only confederation Of States
represented by Congress with power
to make recommendations, but without
any power to enforce them-so that
MIR. Jefferson's plan, or something like
it, was the only one which they could
adopt for the government. But in
1887, simultaneously with the adoption
of the Constitution, the same congress
adopted the ordnance of 1887, which
repudiates the idea of squatter-sover-
eighty, and which has been the basis
of all subsequent territorial acts. So
that Mr.. Jefferson's plan, dilated upon
by Senator Douglas with such raptures,
was adopted as temporary expedient,
as the best thing that could be done
under the circumstances of the times,
remained on the statute book a dead,
letter (no government having been or
ganized under iD for the space of three
years, and was then abandoned forever.
And yet it was made in an essay writ
ten by a statesman aspiring to the
Presidency, to cut an important figure
while he ignores as unimportant all
the subsequent practiceof the Govern
ment upon the same subject.
His next witness is the Constitution
of the United States, the adoption of
which he considers recognition of
squatter-sovereignty. Speaking of the
conventions which adopted it he says:
Having thus divided the powers of
government into these appropriate de-
partments, with which they had always
been familiar, they proceeded to confer
upon the federal government substans,
TALLY the same powers which they as
colonies had been willing to concede
to the British Government, and to res
serve to the State and the people the
same rights and privileges which they
as colonies had denied to the British
Government during the entire struggle
which terminated in our independence,
and which they had claimed for them
selves and their posterity as the birth
right of all frceinen, inalienable when
organized into political communities,
and to be enjoyed and xercised'by
colonies, territories, and provinces as
fully and completely as by sovereign
States" 2r IN iTa Rflgs5.i
Let us take it in broken doses. This
is strange rhapsody even for Senator
Douglas. They " conferred upon the
federal government substantially the
same powers which they as colonies
had been willing to concede to the
British Government" Well, let us
see. They conferred upon tho federal