ders the
eighth section of the Missouri act inoperative and void.

Now, let me ask, will these Senators who have arraigned me, or any one
of them, have the assurance to rise in his place and declare that this
great principle was never thought of or advocated as applicable to
Territorial bills, in 1850; that from that session until the present,
nobody ever thought of incorporating this principle in all new
Territorial organizations; that the Committee on Territories did not
recommend it in their report; and that it required the amendment of the
Senator from Kentucky to bring us up to that point? Will any one of my
accusers dare to make this issue, and let it be tried by the record? I
will begin with the compromises of 1850, Any Senator who will take the
trouble to examine our journals, will find that on the 25th of March
of that year I reported from the Committee on Territories two bills
including the following measures; the admission of California, a
Territorial government for New Mexico, and the adjustment of the Texas
boundary. These bills proposed to leave the people of Utah and New
Mexico free to decide the slavery question for themselves, in the
precise language of the Nebraska bill now under discussion. A few weeks
afterward the committee of thirteen took those two bills and put a wafer
between them, and reported them back to the Senate as one bill,
with some slight amendments. One of these amendments was, that the
Territorial Legislatures should not legislate upon the subject of
African slavery. I objected to that provision upon the ground that it
subverted the great principle of self-government upon which the bill had
been originally framed by the Territorial Committee. On the first trial,
the Senate refused to strike it out, but subsequently did so, after full
debate, in order to establish that principle as the rule of action in
Territorial organizations. * * * But my accusers attempt to raise up a
false issue, and thereby divert public attention from the real one, by
the cry that the Missouri compromise is to be repealed or violated by
the passage of this bill. Well, if the eighth section of the Missouri
act, which attempted to fix the destinies of future generations in those
Territories for all time to come, in utter disregard of the rights and
wishes of the people when they should be received into the Union as
States, be inconsistent with the great principles of self-government
and the Constitution of the Un