If it is difficult to distribute the credit—­or discredit—­of having passed the compromise measures, it verges on the impossible to fix the responsibility on any individual.  Clay fathered the scheme of adjustment; but he did not work out the details, and it was just this matter of details which aggravated the situation.  Clay no longer coveted glory.  His dominant feeling was one of thankfulness.  “It was rather a triumph for the Union, for harmony and concord.”  Douglas agreed with him:  “No man and no party has acquired a triumph, except the party friendly to the Union.”  But the younger man did covet honor, and he could not refrain from reminding the Senate that he had played “an humble part in the enactment of all these great measures."[366] Oddly enough, Jefferson Davis condescended to tickle the vanity of Douglas by testifying, “If any man has a right to be proud of the success of these measures, it is the Senator from Illinois."[367]

Both Douglas and Toombs told their constituents that Congress had agreed upon a great, fundamental principle in dealing with the Territories.  Both spoke with some degree of authority, for the two territorial bills had passed in the identical form upon which they had agreed in conference.  But what was this principle?  Toombs called it the principle which the South had unwisely compromised away in 1820—­the principle of non-interference with slavery by Congress, the right of the people to hold slaves in the common Territories.  Douglas called the great principle, “the right of the people to form and regulate their own internal concerns and domestic institutions in their own way."[368] So stated the principle seems direct and simple.  But was Toombs willing to concede that the people of a Territory might exclude slavery?  He never said so; while Douglas conceded both the positive power to exclude, and the negative power to permit, slavery.  Here was a discrepancy.[369] And it was probably because they could not agree on this point, that a provision was added to the territorial bills, providing that cases involving title to slaves might be appealed to the Supreme Court.  Whether the people of Utah and New Mexico might exclude slaves, was to be left to the judiciary.  In any case Congress was not to interfere with slavery in the Territories.

One other question was raised subsequently.  Was it intended that Congress should act on this principle in organizing future Territories?  In other words, was the principle, newly recovered, to be applied retroactively?  There was no answer to the question in 1850, for the simple reason that no one thought to ask it.

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FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 327:  See the chapter on “State Policy” in Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois.]

[Footnote 328:  Davidson and Stuve, History of Illinois, pp. 573-574; Ackerman, Early Illinois Railroads, in Fergus Historical Series, p. 32.]