He reminded them that the Missouri Compromise was a Southern measure, approved by a Southern President, on the advice of a Southern Cabinet. While in form a law, it had all the moral obligation of a solemn contract. The considerations for the perpetual exclusion of slavery in the Territories north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes were the admission of Missouri with slavery, the permission of slavery in the Territories south of 36 degrees and 30 minutes, and the admission of new States south of that line with slavery if their constitution should so provide. The North had honorably performed its contract by the admission of Missouri and prompt consent to the admission of all other slave States that had sought it. The South had yielded nothing to the North under the contract, except the admission of Iowa and the organization of Minnesota. The slave States, having received all the contemplated benefits under the contract and yielded none, proposed to declare it ended without the consent of the free States. He closed with an appeal to the honor of the South, earnestly imploring the Senators to reject the bill as a violation of the plighted faith and solemn compact which their fathers had made and which they were bound by every sacred obligation faithfully to maintain.
Seward, speaking on the 17th cautioned them that the repeal of the Compromise would be the destruction of the equilibrium between the North and the South so long maintained, the loss of which would be the wreck of the Union. He warned the North that if this territory was surrendered to slavery the South would be vested with permanent control of the Government; for every branch of it would be securely within its power. Already it had absolute sway. One slave-holder in a new Territory, with access to the Executive ear at Washington, exercised more political influence than five hundred free men.
The recital of an old repeal was made for the demagogic purpose of confusing the people, but was false in fact and false in law.
The Missouri Compromise was a purely local act. That of 1850 was likewise local. They affected entirely different localities. Hence the later law could not by implication repeal the former. It was an ingenious device to attain the desired end by declaring that done by a former Congress which no one then thought of doing, and which the present Congress dared not boldly do. The doctrine of popular sovereignty meant that the Federal Government should abandon its constitutional duty and abdicate its power over he Territory in favor of the first band of squatters who settled within it. It meant that the interested cupidity of the first chance settlers was more fit to guide the destinies of the infant Territory than the collective wisdom of the American people.
Sumner, speaking a week later, declared that they were about to determine forever the character of a new empire. An effort was made on false assumptions of fact, in violation of solemn covenants and the principles of the fathers, to open this immense region to slavery. The measures of 1850 could not by any effort of interpretation, by any wand of power, by an perverse alchemy, be transmuted into a repeal of that prohibition of slavery. The pending proposition was to abolish freedom. When the conscience of mankind was at last aroused, they were about to open a new market to the traffickers in flesh who haunted the shambles of the South. They had as much right to repudiate the purchase of Louisiana as this compact.
Despite the temporary success of their political maneuvers, let them not forget that the permanent and irresistible forces were all arrayed against them. The plough, the steam engine, the railroad, the telegraph, the book, were all waging war on slavery. Its opponents could bide the storm of vituperation and calmly await the judgment of the future.
There was at no time the slightest doubt that the bill would pass, and the arguments against it were in the nature of protests against a wrong that could not be averted and appeals to the future to redress it.
From the beginning it had a well organized majority. But, assailed by the invectives of Chase, Seward and Sumner, it could not stand before the world undefended. There was but one man enlisted in its support at all fit to measure swords with any of these great leaders; but he was undoubtedly more than a match for them all.
At midnight on March 3rd Douglas rose to close the debate. The great arguments were delivered; a safe majority was assured. While numerous Senators still wanted to be heard in support of the bill, all conceded his right to close and yielded him the floor. The scenes of that wild night, while he charged upon his foes and stood for hours at bay like a gladiator, repelling their savage assaults, are among the most memorable in our congressional history.
He laughed at the charge that his bill had reopened the slavery question against the will of both political parties, as expressed in their platforms, and had disturbed the country at a time of profound tranquility. These men, he declared, who where singing paeans of praise over the legislation of 1850, were the same men who had most bitterly opposed it and predicted dire results from it, just as they were prophesying evil from the pending measure which simply carried to its legitimate conclusion the beneficent principle of the former law. The substance of all the opposition speeches was contained in their manifesto published in January.
Chase in his speech had exhausted the entire argument. The others merely followed in his tracks.
