t the South.
It appeared too probable that not only the people to inhabit all the
territory north of 36 deg. 30', but also much territory south of it, would,
like the people of Kansas, reject slavery, if left to regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way. What, then, were Southern
politicians to do? Invoke the ancient and long exercised, but now denied
and derided power of Congress over the Territories? This might prove a
dangerous weapon in the hands of possible future Northern majorities. It
was obviously necessary to withdraw slavery alike from the control of
Congress and of the people of a Territory. Some ingenuity was required
for this. The doctrine that the Constitution extends to the Territories
(a doctrine broached before by Mr. Calhoun, but always defeated on the
ground that the Constitution, by its language and the practice under it,
was made for States only, and that the Territories were subject to the
supreme control of Congress,--a control frequently exercised, not only
independently of the Constitution, but in a manner incompatible with it)
was introduced, with other innovations, into the Kansas and Nebraska
Bill. The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court followed, by which
the Constitution recognizes slavery as a national institution. It
recognizes slaves as mere property, differing in no respect from other
merchandise. The Territories belong to the nation. Every citizen has
equal rights to them and in them. Why, therefore, may not a Southern
man, as well as a Northern man, go into them with his _property_? What
right has Congress to place the South under an ignominious bar of
restriction? The Constitution declares that slaves are property; that
all the States and the people have equal rights. The Territories belong
to all. Therefore, under the Constitution, they should be enjoyed by
all.

"By this ingenious logic the Kansas and Nebraska Bill is made to
contradict itself. It first declares that the Constitution extends to
the Territories; in other words, slavery exists there by force of the
Constitution, without reference to the will of the people. It then says
that the people of the Territories shall be 'perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way.'

"The contradictions, duplicity, and absurdity of the law are obvious at
once. The first sentence announces a change in the settled principles
and policy of the Government; else why declare that the Constitu