do him the least injustice, speaking as I do from such notes as
I could take while he progressed, I will thank him to correct
me.]

"But this letter entered into the canvass; there was a doubt
about its construction: there were men who asserted that they
had positive authority for saying that it meant that the people
of a Territory could only exclude slavery when the Territory
should form a Constitution and be admitted as a State. This
doubt continued to hang over the construction, and it was that
doubt alone which secured Mr. Cass the vote of Mississippi. If
the true construction had been certainly known, he would have
had no chance to get it."

Whatever meaning the generally discreet and conservative statesman, Mr.
Cass, may have intended to convey, it is not at all probable that he
foresaw the extent to which the suggestions would be carried and the
consequences that would result from it.

In the organization of a government for California in 1850, the theory
was more distinctly advanced, but it was not until after the passage of
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, in 1854, that it was fully developed under the
plastic and constructive genius of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, of
Illinois. The leading part which that distinguished Senator had borne in
the authorship and advocacy of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which affirmed
the right of the people of the Territories "to form and regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution
of the United States," had aroused against him a violent storm of
denunciation in the State which he represented and other Northern
States. He met it very manfully in some respects, defended his action
resolutely, but in so doing was led to make such concessions of
principle and to attach such an interpretation to the bill as would have
rendered it practically nugatory--a thing to keep the promise of peace
to the ear and break it to the hope.

The Constitution expressly confers upon Congress the power to admit new
States into the Union, and also to "dispose of and make all needful
rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property
belonging to the United States." Under these grants of power, the
uniform practice of the Government had been for Congress to lay off and
divide the common territory by convenient boundaries for the formation
of future States; to provide executive, legislative, and judicial
dep