should have
awakened a spirit of resistance in the South that shook the Union to
its very center. Whatever might be the opinion of Northern men as to the
power of Congress over slavery in the territories, or as to the
expediency of prohibiting it, it was too late to apply their doctrine to
Missouri. She was ripe for admission to the Union as a State, with
domestic institutions formed to suit her people, and formed, too, under
the eye and sanction of Congress, and Congress had no right to make her
State sovereignty dependent on the carrying out _as to other territory_,
of the Northern idea of prohibiting slavery. The case of Missouri should
have been decided on its own merits.

In view of all the facts, and of its proposed restraint upon the
constitutional power of new States besides Missouri, I fully believe the
Supreme Court of the United States correctly laid down the law in the
Dred Scott decision, declaring the 8th section of the act of 6th March,
1820, being the prohibition of slavery, to be unconstitutional and void,
for the simple reason that it was the right _of the people_ of those new
States to make a constitution or laws for or against slavery as they saw
fit, and not the right of the Congress, which has no power under its own
Constitution to make State Constitutions.

The principle of compromise embraced in the Missouri line, whether legal
or not, calmed the agitation of the question of slavery, which had,
during the Missouri struggle, assumed a dangerous form. It shut out
slavery in the vast region north of 36 deg. 30 min., not adapted to
slave labor, and permitted it south of that line where slavery had taken
or was likely to take root. Therefore when Arkansas applied in 1836 for
admission as a Slave State, she came in without serious controversy,
though northern opposition in Congress was not even then silent.

Between the establishment of Texan independence in 1836 and her
annexation to the United States in 1845, in view of the latter event,
the question of slavery extension became one of absorbing interest to
the nation. The Democratic party recognized it in the 7th article of
their platform in their National Convention of 1840, taking the true
ground of non-intervention by Congress. In 1843 the Liberty party, so
called, organized upon the distinct ground of opposition to slavery. In
1844 the Democratic party reaffirmed their platform of 1840, and
declared in favor of annexing Texas, and its candidat