Lxviii.
The offensive provision in the bill is in its form a legislative anomaly, utterly wanting the natural directness and simplicity of an honest transaction. It does not undertake openly to repeal the old Prohibition of Slavery, but seems to mince the matter, as if conscious of the swindle. It says that this Prohibition, ‘being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with Slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void.’ Thus, with insidious ostentation, is it pretended that an act violating the greatest compromise of our legislative history, and loosening the foundations of all compromise, is derived out of a compromise. Then follows in the bill the further declaration, entirely without precedent, which has been aptly called ‘a stump speech in its belly,’ namely, ‘it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.’ Here are smooth words, such as belong to a cunning tongue enlisted in a bad cause. But whatever may have been their various hidden meanings, this at least is evident, that, by their effect, the Congressional prohibition of Slavery, which had always been regarded as a seven-fold shield, covering the whole Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30′, is now removed, while a principle is declared which renders the supplementary [272] prohibition of Slavery in Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington ‘inoperative and void,’ and thus opens to Slavery all these vast regions, now the rude cradles of mighty States. Here you see the magnitude of the mischief contemplated. But my purpose is with the Crime against Kansas, and I shall not stop to expose the conspiracy beyond. Mr. President, men are wisely presumed to intend the natural consequences of their conduct, and to seek what their acts seem to promote. Now the Nebraska Bill, on its very face, openly clears the way for Slavery, and it is not wrong to presume that its originators intended the natural consequences of such an act, and sought in this way to extend Slavery. Of course they did. And this is the first stage in the Crime against Kansas.
