7

to, the range of territorial laws;” and thus he. coincides. with Giddings.and SuMNER.
Cobb, in his very learned treatise on slavery, by irrefragable proofs, demonstrates that:the
dictum. of Judge Story was not at all necessary to the decision of ‘the case, and is wholly
unsustained by adjudications; yet it is greedily adopted, and made. the substratum of a
theory which upsets a recent decision of the same court, and effectually excludes, if car-
ried into practice, the South from the occupancy of the common territory. With bold
assertion and ingenious sophistry, the Dred Scott decision is evaded, in part, and mystified ;
while an assertion of a_judge in another case is laid hold on, to bolster a theory contrary
to the practice of the Government since. its organization, and utterly destructive of the
rights of a minority section of the Confederacy. Whatever may been Judge Story’s legal
erudition—and it was cyclopedian—he has never been regarded as an authoritative ex-
ponent of Democratic sentiment or constitutional law. It may gratify some of the special
political admirers of the preat expounder of squatter sovereignty, to know.that the son
and biographer of Judge Story records, in his Life, that the Judge repeatedly and ear-
neetly spoke to his family and intimate friends of this decision, from which Judge DoucrLas
quotes so approvingly and complacently, as being ¢ a triumph of freedom.” The biog-
rapher argues that it wasa judgment adverse to slavery, and ¢ a triumph of freedom,”
because-it-localized slavery, made it a municipal institution of the States, and not recog-
nized by law.

Slavery exists in the State where the owner dwells, exists out of the State, exists in the

Territories, exists everywhere, until it comes within the limits of a sovereignty which pro-
hibits it. The Constitution, as that profound lawyer and statesman, Judge Berrien,
argued, recognizes slavery in a free State; speaks of it, in such free State, as an actually
subsisting debt of service or labor, and prohibits the discharge of the slave. If the Consti-
tution recognizes slaveryin Alabama, and guoad hoc in a sovereign State  forbidding
slavery, does it deny my title to a slave in territory which is common property ?
.. The treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States, signed at Paris, on the 3d of September,
1783, on the part of the United States by three northern men—Adgdms, Franklin, and Jay—and which treaty
was subsequently, by the Constitution, made the Supreme law of the land, recognized ¢ property in negroes.”
The Constitution of the United States discriminates specially in favor of slave property; provides for its in-
crease, for its permanency, for is security, and for its representation in this body. It recognizes property inm
slayes; and the Supreme Court has affirmed our right to emigrate to, and occupy with slaves, the common
territory ; and from this recogntion and guarantee, protection is an inevitable sequitur. From the premises,
the sequence cannot be resisted that the powers of the Government are due to its security. I donotadmit the
right of Congress to establish orta abolish slavery—to emancipate or to enslave. The affirmative power to
establish is not delegated, and thete are no inherent powers in this Government. The power to abolish-or ex-
clude is not given, and the property character of slaves includes them within one of the positive prohibitions
of the Constitution. All the power this Government has, is to recognize as property in the Territories what-
ever is recognized as such in the States; and, if need be—but not officiously and impertinently—to adopt such
regulations for its security and protection as the nature of the case may require. Congress cannot abdicate
its authority. If so, the executive and judiciary can do likewise. The Federal Government, through some or
all its departments, must recognize and protect what the States ascertain and determine to be property. Wars
and treaties are made to defend, and are, in many instances, dependent upon what the States decide to be prop-
erty. An American citizen whose slave property is invaded on the high seas can demand protection of his
Goyernment; a fortior:, when that property is endangered on territory belonging to the United States. In
the language of a resolution adopted by the Alabama Democratic convention in 1856, and reaffirmed in 1860—
the sentiment of which was taken from the speech of a northern Democratin this House—the South is entitied
to the protection of its property in tle States, in the Territories, and in 'the wilderness, where territorial
governments are as yet unorganized. 7o refuse it is to deny her equality in the Republic, and to fail to fulfill
the great purpose for which governments are ordained.

It may not be amiss to sustain this ciaim to protection by high authority. The President, crowning a long
life ofgusefulness, patriotism, and dzvotion to the Constitution, congratulates the country upon the just settle-
ment of the question of slavery inthe Territories by the Supreme Court, and asserts the right of every citizen
to take his property of any kind, including slaves, into the common Territories, and to have it protected there
under the Federal Constitution.. The Vice President; so justly popular with the American people, vindicates
the rame right. One of the most eminent Jawyers of this.or any other country, now an honored member of
our highest court, in 1850 said that “ the doctrine that the Government, holding the power of peace and war,
of making compacts and alliances, of acquiring Territories and forming governments, owing no duties to the
property of fitfteen States or those Territories, is a proposition addressed to the credulity of the South, and
which nothing but credulity can tolerate.” Mr. Calhoun, who stood—

“ Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eyed him,”

in his letter to Colonel Benton, writing of the character and object of the Government, 8ays:

“TIts power and authority having for their object the more perfect protection and promotion of the rights and
safety of each and all, it is bound to protect, by their united power, the safety, the rights, the property, and the
interests of the citizens of all, wherever its authority extends. That was the object for conferring whatever
power and authority it has; and ifit fails to fulfill that, it fails to perform the duty for which it was created. It
is enough for it to know that it is the right, interest, or property, ofa citizen of one of the States, to make it its
duty to protect it, whether in the Territories or on the high seas, or anywhere else. Its power and authority
were conferred on it, not to establish or abolish property or right of any description, but to protect them.”

The resolutions of the Senate caucus, which were called for by the exigencies of the times, and which are sus-
tained by every Democratic Senator but two, concede the same right of protection.

It is objected by some to this claim for Federal protection, that it mecessarily involves or concedes the right
of congressional prohibition. Nothing can be more illogical than to confound protection with destruction—the
power, by legislation, of facilitating the enjoyment of a right and of throwing obstructions in the way of the
exercise of such a right. Numerous icstances will readily occur to any thoughtful mind, where Congress has
the power of affirmative without the power of negative legislation. Congress ¢an make no law abridging the