Des Arc citizen., 1860-03-28
The Charleston Convention-Its Duty.

There is an evident desire among certain politicians to simply e-adopt the Cincinnati platform at Charleston without any effort to relieve it of it's ambiguity; to go into the great canvass that is just ahead of us upon s'the great principle of the Nebraska Bill 1" without any limitation of the meaning of that very indefinite term. So far as we are concerned we endorse both the Cincinnati platform and '' the great principle of the Nebraska Bill,v and it would be very easy to show that the common sense, literal meaning of both these documents, indirectly, but none the less emphatcally condemn the popular or squatter sovereignty doctrine. But the news papers and popular orators of the North give construction to the documents in question so uniform and precise, as to leave no doubt that the entire northern mind, with the ex- ception of few northern Democrats of the Pierce and Buchanan school, is thoroughly imbued with the notion that both the Kansas Nebraska bill and the Cincinnati platform re- fer the whole question of slavery from the beginning to the people of the Territories to dispose of as they may think proper. This is the popular and almost universal concep- tion of popular sovereignty as at the North. Towards this construction it is needless to say that the whole South, with the isolated exception of such men as Col Rust and oth- CTS who are engaged in a miserable intrigue to draggoon the South into the support of Mr. Douglas, occupies position of irreconcilabls hostility. If the Democratic party intends tr Ioa f,; b,,o oa .e.J eracy, it is but reasonable that the people should require of them that they offer limi- tation and deGaition to tAe vefT--iHdeGnite terms G 'Dred Scott decisien," s' Cincinnati platform " and < Popular Sovereignty" The only objection made by southern democrats to making this explicit exaction of the Charles ton Convention is on the score of party expe- diency. To this plea it would be sufficient to reply that, at all times and under all circum- stances party policy and party expediency must be subordinated to principle; that the Democratic party was organized not for the purpose of winning victories and appropriat- ing to it's members the spells of office, but for the purpose of perpetuating great principles and that no considerations of policy or expe- diency can justify it in making the slightest departure from principle for the purpose of gaining temporary party triumph.
 But we propose to view this question in another light. Leaving out of view the legal absurity and contradiction of doctrine that assumes powers on the part of handful of adventurers in the Federal dependencies to do what sovereign States and the General Gov ernment may not; as, let us look at the sub ject in the broad glare of party expediency, and see what hope or prospect there is of carrying northern States on this issue of popu- lar sovereignty. It is now about six years since the Kansas-Nebraska bill containing the great principle of popular sovereignty, was passed. The politicians and party presses i'm mediately called upon the North and South to "go in and win" as those who obtained exclude slavery, as they desired. The South had an advantage in the proximity of tcrrito- ry-the North in the ready and available con- tributions of capital, which, when emigra- tion was once organized by the genius of Thayer, more than counterbalanced the former.
  they believed that an anti-slavery State on their western frontier would be pregnant with mischief and possible danger, and therefore sought to make Kansas pro-slavery State. The Northern and Eastern men were equally determined to make Kansas an abolition or free-state. With these conflicting views among the settlers, collision would naturally follow and especially when vast multitudes in the States were impelling them in opposite directions. Hence, broils. civil war, murder and death spread over Kansas, the first and only instances of civil commotion in our his- tory; and all these unhappy results were the legitimate, AND UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES the unavoidable consequences of popular sov- ereignty. The President and Congress were finally compelled to interfere to save the peace of the country, for the excitement in the border States threatened to involve the whole Union in the civil wars of Kansas. Then, says leading northern Journal, began a movement such as had never before been wit messed in the history of parties. The Presi- dent was forced by the exigencies of the case not only to abandon the northern theory of popular sovereignty, but to propose its direct violation, and with the exception of Judge Douglas and about half a score of members of Congress, the whole Democratic party in the northern States turned square about and adopted the Presidential policy. The charges of Judge Douglas that Mir. Buchanan was faithless to the pledges of '56 are untenabe, for the truth is the President never endorsed the Territorial policy of the Senator from Illi- nois, and he was no more responsible for the construction put upon his acceptance of the Cincinnati nomination than MT. Polk was for the construction that the friends of protec- ton put upon the celebrated Kane letter. In the meanwhile the Kansas question has set tied itself as all other questions in our rapidly growing country tend to; but the real issue before the country, THE ACTUAL TERRITORIAL QUESTION is as far from being settled as in 1856. The South demands equal rights in the Territories. She demands that the grand fundamental principle lying at the base of our institutions shall be applied to all cleo tions and all classes of American citizens.