Year: 1859

AUTHORIZED PUBLISHERS LAWS UNITED


Judge Douglas--Popular Sovereignty.


Harpers Magazine for September contains the
last and most authoritative exposition of Senator
Douglas views on slavery in the Territories. We
would be pleased to lay the entire article which ap
pears under the Senator's name before our readers,
as they would no doubt like to read and Judge of it
for themselves but precluded for the pre-
sent from doing this, inasmuch as the article is
published under copyright which is understood
to include this, well all other original essays
published in that Magazine. Judge Douglas no
doubt had good reason for appearing before the
public through the medium of this periodical; but
he owes it to himself and to his friends to remove
at once this obstacle to the unrestricted publication
of his essay. hNh


We have read this essay with care, andwith every
disposition to do justice to its author 1--WE have
been forced to the conclusion that Judge Douglas
is the advocate of Territorial so-called squatter
sovereignty 1t is hardly necessary to add that this
doctrine is not to be found in the Cincinnati plat
form; and that it never meet the approval Of
the national Democracy, much less of the Democracy
Of the slaveholding States.b


Judge Douglas holds that every "dstinct polit-
cal community. loyal to the Constitution and the
Union is entitled to all the rights, privileges and
immunities of self-government in respect to their
local concerns and internal polty subject only to
the Constitution of the United States that under
the Kansas Nebraska act, the people of Kansas
possess every right privilege, and immunity, in re-
spect to their internal poty and domestic relations
which the people of Pennsylvania can exercise under
their Constitution and laws, and that the CON-
promise measures of 1850 were intended to secure,
and did secure to the people Of the Territories, the
right to decide the slavery question for themselves
through the action of their Territorial Legisla-
turesr He refers to the ante-revolutionary history
of Virginia. North Carolina, and other States and
argues to show that the great principle on which
the revolution was achieved was the right of the
colonies to manage their domestic concerns in their
own way; he relies upon the first draft of Terri
toral government by Mr.. Jefferson in 1884, to show
that Territories regarded States capable of
legslatng for themselves and he argues that the
clause in the Constitution, providing that "new
States may be admitted by Congress into this
Union," confers upon Congress no power over the
Territories which did not belong to the government
of the Confederation He holds in fine, to give his
own language on the subject that the Constitution
of the United States neither establishes nor prohib
its slavery in the States or Territories beyond the
power of the people legally to control i"-that the
decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott
case binds the general government to protect the
institution only when the slave escapes from his
wner,"-that in the language of the Court, no
word can be found in the Constitution which gives
Congress greater power over slave property, or
which entities property of that kind to less protec-
rion than property of any other description. "
Slavery, he maintains is the creature of the local
law; and though under the Constitution, slaves
may be carried to the Territories they occupy the
same ground with other property, and if the Terri
torial Legislature refuses to pass laws to protect
them, there is no remedy for the owner. He dis
tnctly declares that the Courts of the Territories
"can afford protection to persons and property no
further than the Legislature SHALL by law confer the
jurisdiction, and prescribe the remedies, penalties,
AND modes of proceeding" NJ


We understand him, therefore, to deny to Con-
gress the right either to establish prohibit slavery
in the Territories and to claim this right for the in
habitants of the Territory while in Territorial
condition. Sovereign power over the subject, he
maintains, rests somewhere; and not finding it in
Congress- he comes to the conclusion that it resides
in the Territories This it to us, is radical
mistake. We hold, and we believe the great body
of the national Democracy hold, that sovereignty
resides with the States; that Territory is not a
State in any sense Of the word; that no State can
be formed without the consent of Congress, the
agent Of the sovereign coStates that the Terrtori
es are the common property of the States; that
every citizen Of every State has right 20 go to the
common Territories, taking with him such property
as is known to the common law and the common
Constitution, and to hold it. and be protected in its
use; that Territory, not being sovereign, has only
right to regulate, and not to abolish or destroy
property and that this right and this duty to
regulate is merged in the right to establish abolish
only when the people of the Territory assemble In
Convention to frame State Consttutioy This is
What we call popular sovereignty, and THE is the
uoctrne which the Cincinnati platform recognizes


and maintains. Judge Douglas admits that all pro.


perty, slaves not excepted occupy the same ground


Ill the Territories He also insists that the question


" Slavery in the Territories is question of soil


"aa Climate. II slaves then, stand on the same