o enforce the cardinal article
of their political creed, quietly and unanimously abandoned it.
And the abandoned it without a word of explanation. Mr. Sumner
and Mr. Wade and Mr. Chandler, the most radical men in the Senate
on the Republican side, sat still and allowed the bill to be passed
precisely as reported by James S. Green of Missouri, who had been
the ablest defender of the Breckinridge Democracy in that body.
In the House, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Owen Lovejoy, the Washburns,
and all the other radical Republicans vouchsafed no word explanatory
of this extraordinary change of position.

COLORADO, DAKOTA, AND NEVADA.

If it be said in defense of this course that all the Territories
lay north of 36 deg. 30', and were therefore in no danger of slavery,
it only introduces fresh embarrassment by discrediting the action
of the Republican party in regard to Kansas, and discrediting the
earnest and persistent action of the anti-slavery Whigs and Free-
Soilers, who in 1848 successfully insisted upon embodying the Wilmot
Proviso in the Act organizing the Territory of Oregon. Surely, if
an anti-slavery restriction were needed for Oregon, it was needed
for Dakota which lay in the same latitude. Beyond doubt, if the
Territory of Kansas required a prohibition against slavery, the
Territory of Colorado and the Territory of Nevada, which lay as
far south, needed it also. To allege that they could secure the
President's approval of the bills in the form in which they were
passed, and that Mr. Buchanan would veto each and every one of them
if an anti-slavery proviso were embodied, is to give but a poor
excuse, for, five days after the bills received the Executive
signature, Mr. Buchanan went out of office, and Abraham Lincoln
was installed as President.

If, indeed, it be fairly and frankly admitted, as was the fact,
that receding from the anti-slavery position was part of the
conciliation policy of the hour, and that the Republicans did it
the more readily because they had full faith that slavery never
could secure a foothold in any of the Territories named, it must
be likewise admitted that the Republican party took precisely the
same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850, and acted from precisely
the same motives that inspired the 7th of March speech. Mr. Webster
maintained for New Mexico only what Mr. Sumner now admitted for
Colorado and Nevada. Mr. Webster acted from the