The Grand Haven news. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1858-18??, 1860-07-25

cared Tor the llowls OIL Tories! There arr
those yet who curse the struggle for tho
right rs an evil; but let them howl.
When Mexico dared rear the crest o.
the serpent in the talons Of her eagle,
against the thunderbolts in the talons o.
ours; when coward traders shrunk from
q possible injury TO commerce; when Tom
Corwin said that his gang could com,
mand the nations purse, and that the wal
should go on without powder or provisions
and prayed that the Mexicans would wei
come the soldier children of his country
with bloody hands and hospitablc
grmos"--the great orator who stood side
by side with James X. Polk, the cham
pion of the Administration, the co-laborel
in that cause TO which old Harry, Of Ken
lucky, offered up son at Beuna Vista
was Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois,
His great speech of May l3, lS46, decid'
ed the appropriations.
When the Oregon question arose he
stood firnest by Cass in tho demand fol
'the whole of Oregon or none" He do,
clarcd in the House of Representatives,
that not one inch of Oregon should be
yielded to England or any of foreign
power, and proposed n military position
which should sweep the last vestigc Of
British power from the continent.
As early as 1S46, Mr.. Douglas took
the same ground of non-intcrvention by
Congress with slavery in the Territories,
which he holds to-day. In lS47 he took
his seat in the Senate of the United
States.
On the 3Oth of January, ls4s, he
made his famed speech on the "Ten Reg
iment Bill" the purpose of tho new troops
being to hold the States of California,
New Mexico, chihuahua, New Leon and
Tamnulipas, with the cities We had taken,
and to take other States, until VIC had
" conquered a peace" He proved that
the war was not one of conquest, and the
first blood shed was "American blood
on American SOIL"
When the famed Wilmot proviso came
up, Mr.. Douglas was its steady, uneom-
promising and determinet opponent--ii
mattered not what shape the odious meas
ure assumed, he stood side by side with
the South, its unrelenting foe. 7om
Mr.. Douglas had endeayored TO perfect
the Missouri compromise upon the Texas
resolutions, and in August ls4S, he Of
fered an amendment to the Oregon bill
extending the compromise line to the Pa
cific ocean, in the same sense and with
the samo understanding with which il
had been adopted in 1920, and then ex-
tended through Texas in 1S45. "The
amendment was adopted in the Senate
but was lost in the House by Northern
votes" 400 ves e e6H,1l
Mark well the fact that he who ha:
been denounced by the Abolitionist;
North, and The Opposition South, fol
having stricken from the statutc books o
the nation the Missouri Compromise-hC
stood the earnest advocate of abiding by
it in good faith, he proposed to let its
airy form extend rs covenant of peace
from the surf-beaten Atlantic TO the gold
en- shores of the Pacific; he labored fol
quiet in The cause of truth, and only whel
the votes of the Abolition North repudi
ated the compromise of 1920, when Free
soil influence virtually denied the contract
did Mr.. Douglas enter the tremendous
struggle of 1850, and side by side will
Clay, Webster and Calhoun, sustain til,
fury of the slavery agitation in that year
Douglas and Clay did not make tn,
war, for it was made by the Freesoil gang
who, in 1854, held that Tho Missouri linz
was sacred covenant, and who had re
pudiated it in 1s4S, and forced tho ne
cessity of new compact in 1850.
Hero let us pause moment, to thinl
Of the consistency of those Wings whc
now dcnouncc Mr.. Douglas as a worse 70,
of the South than Wilmotl aud as the
cause of the troubles since 1854, and VIII,
forget that Henry Clay, the god they
worship, was all his life the earnest advo
cate Of the abolition of slavery, by grad
ual emancipation las Breckenridge is sale
to be now), and that Pandora's box wa
opened by Clay and Webster in 1850!
On the 18th and 14th Of March, 1850
Mr.. Douglas delivered that splendid ar
gument on the compromise measure o
Henry Clay, the ablest speech that eve
fell from the lips of western orator.
lie proved the power of popular sovereign
ty by the fact that slaves remained in II
linois in spite Of, and long after the ordi
nance of 1881.
He said: awe recognize the right c
the South, in common with our right, L
emigrate TO the territories with their prop
erty, and their hold and enjoy it, in sui
ordination of the laws in force there"
Tho only objection which we had I
his course then, was that he favored th
admission of California, as did the Au
gusta Chronicle, and that was the near
est "squatter sovereignty" that he eve
arrived TO.
Upon the passage of the compromis
measures, he returned to his home j
Chicago, then, rs now, den of Abol
tionisn, and a station on the undergroun
railroad.