the Nebraska Bill in that Compromise? If anywhere,
in the two pieces of the Compromise organizing the
Territories of New Mexico and Utah. It was expressly
provided in these two acts that when they came to
be admitted into the Union they should be admitted
with or without slavery, as they should choose, by
their own constitutions. Nothing was said in
either of those acts as to what was to be done in
relation to slavery during the Territorial existence
of those Territories, while Henry Clay constantly
made the declaration (Judge Douglas recognizing him
as a leader) that, in his opinion, the old Mexican
laws would control that question during the Territorial
existence, and that these old Mexican laws excluded
slavery. How can that be used as a principle
for declaring that during the Territorial existence
as well as at the time of framing the constitution
the people, if you please, might have slaves if they
wanted them? I am not discussing the question
whether it is right or wrong; but how are the New Mexican
and Utah laws patterns for the Nebraska Bill?
I maintain that the organization of Utah and New Mexico
did not establish a general principle at all.
It had no feature of establishing a general principle.
The acts to which I have referred were a part of a
general system of Compromises. They did not lay
down what was proposed as a regular policy for the
Territories, only an agreement in this particular case
to do in that way, because other things were done
that were to be a compensation for it. They were
allowed to come in in that shape, because in another
way it was paid for, considering that as a part of
that system of measures called the Compromise of 1850,
which finally included half-a-dozen acts. It
included the admission of California as a free State,
which was kept out of the Union for half a year because
it had formed a free constitution. It included
the settlement of the boundary of Texas, which had
been undefined before, which was in itself a slavery
question; for if you pushed the line farther west,
you made Texas larger, and made more slave territory;
while, if you drew the line toward the east, you narrowed
the boundary and diminished the domain of slavery,
and by so much increased free territory. It included
the abolition of the slave trade in the District of
Columbia. It included the passage of a new Fugitive
Slave law. All these things were put together,
and, though passed in separate acts, were nevertheless,
in legislation (as the speeches at the time will show),
made to depend upon each other. Each got votes
with the understanding that the other measures were
to pass, and by this system of compromise, in that
series of measures, those two bills—the
New Mexico and Utah bills—were passed:
and I say for that reason they could not be taken
as models, framed upon their own intrinsic principle,
for all future Territories. And I have the evidence
of this in the fact that Judge Douglas, a year afterward,
or more than a year afterward, perhaps, when he first