t is dangerous to the
nation's peace. All that is is done by the legislation of 1850 and 1854,
is to establish a governing principle in regard to slavery in the
territories, which is exactly the same as the principle which governs
slavery in the States under the Constitution. The laws of 1850 and 1854
plant slavery no where, nor do they extend it any where into the
national domain. They leave the national territory _free_.

What better authority can we have on this point than that of Henry Clay,
whose influence perhaps as much as that of any other man, helped to
carry the compromise of 1850? Did he mean in voting for that compromise,
by which the principle of non-intervention was adopted as to territory
both North and South of the Missouri compromise line of 36 deg. 30 min.,
to extend slavery into such territory? Hear what he said on the question
in the Senate of the United States. He said in answer to a demand of
Jefferson Davis for a positive provision for the admission of slavery
south of the Missouri compromise line:--"Coming as I do from a Slave
State, it is my solemn, deliberate and well-matured determination that
no power--no earthly power--shall compel me to vote for the positive
introduction of slavery either south or north of that line. Sir, while
you reproach, and justly too, our British ancestors for the introduction
of this institution upon the continent of America, I am, for one,
unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California
and New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach Great
Britain for doing to us. If the citizens of those territories choose to
establish slavery, I am for admitting them with such provisions in their
constitutions; but then it will be their own work and not ours, and
their posterity will have to reproach them and not us, for forming
constitutions allowing the institution of slavery to exist among them."
In the same paragraph, Mr. Clay further says, "I believe that slavery no
where exists within any portion of the territory acquired by us from
Mexico." So much for the testimony of Henry Clay! Now, who shall say
that the compromise of 1850 was a law to extend slavery over the free
territory covered by it? and if not, then for the same reason, the
Kansas and Nebraska act was not a law for extending slavery over the
free territory north of the Missouri line. What the law of 1850 did for
the territory acquired from Mexico, the same did the law of 1854