recommendations of President Buchanan is typical. The Constitution was to be so amended that it should be the duty of Congress to protect the rights of slavery in all the Territories.1 Others would have reached the same end by prohibiting Congress from making any regulation impairing the right of property in slaves in the Territories. Other amendments, like that introduced by Mr. Vallindigham, declared the equal right of any person from any section to migrate to the Territories, and forbade the impairment of the rights of either person or property in the Territories.2

(3) Senator Douglas brought forward his favorite principle of popular sovereignty in the proposition that Congress should make no law in respect to slavery in any Territory, but the status of each Territory in respect to servitude should remain unchanged until it reached a population of 50,000 whites.3 Other sections of this same resolution made applicable to the Territories the clause of the Constitution in regard to fugitives from justice, and also extended the jurisdiction of the United States judicial power over the same.

(4) The principle of the Dred Scott decision was represented in a proposition forbidding the Territorial legislature, as well as Congress, from making any law respecting slavery.

110. ADMISSION OF STATES.

Most of the articles to amend the Constitution contained a section which provided for the admission of the Territories into the Union, whether north or south of the dividing parallel, whenever they had fulfilled the conditions necessary for admission, with or without slavery, as their constitution should provide, or limitations were sometimes added as in the series of amendments introduced by Mr. Florence of Pennsylvania, December 18, 1860. He provided that no new State should be admitted without the consent of two-thirds of all the members of both branches of Congress, the yeas and nays being entered

5

App., No. 1003.

2 App., No. 906.

3 App., No. 836. Also similar provision in other proposition submitted by him. App., Nos. 869a, 869m. The latter declared that "all Territorial governments shall be formed on the model and in the terms of the organic acts, approved September 9, 1850, called the compromise measures.""

4 App., Nos. 790, 792, 851, 871.

5 App., Nos. 797, 800, 807, 823, 828, 852b, 858, 864, 869b, 874b, 877, 894b, 896, 912, 918, 923, 933, 942, 971. In 1864 Mr. Saulsbury presented the same in his substitute resolutions for the thirteenth amendment. App., No. 1005.

Like the Hartford convention amendment, ante, par. 93.

on the journals. If such bill should be vetoed by the President it should require a three-fourths vote of all the members to pass it.'

Later, Mr. Florence introduced a proposition simply providing for the admission of a State when it had fulfilled the conditions, with or without slavery, as its constitution should direct, and it further provided that if the President refused to admit such Territory as a State this article should not deprive Congress of the power to admit such State." As has been previously stated, the amendment introduced by Mr. Douglas provided that the status of each Territory in respect to servitude should remain unchanged until the Territory should have a population of 50,000 white inhabitants. When this number was secured, the white male citizens should proceed to form a constitutional government for themselves, and exercise all the rights of self government. And such new State should be entitled to one Delegate in the Senate, to be chosen by the legis lature, and one Delegate in the House, to be chosen by the people. When such new State should contain the requisite population for a member of Congress, it should be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, with or without slavery, as its constitution should provide at the time of its admission.3

111. ACQUIREMENT OF NEW TERRITORY.

Other sections of the article just previously mentioned, as introduced by Mr. Douglas, prohibited the acquirement by the United States of any more territory, except by treaty or by the concurrent vote of two-thirds of each House of Congress. The occurrence of a case like that of New Mexico was to be guarded against by the provision that in the event of the annexation of new territory. "The status thereof in respect to servitude shall remain the same as at the time of its acquisition, until it shall be formed into a new State." But the annexation of Cuba was distinctly intimated in the clause: "The area of all new States are to be as nearly uniform in size as practicable, and shall not be less than 60,000 nor more than 80,000 square miles, except in case of islands."4

3

App., No. 837.

No. 869b. similar to the latter provision, introduced by Mr. Douglas. App., Nos. 839, 840. An amendment similar to the first part of the foregoing was introduced by Mr. Etheridge of Tennessee shortly after this. App., No. 859.

Messrs. Cochrane and Kellogg also suggested an amendment restricting the acquisition of any more territory except by treaty ratified by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate.' February 27, 1861, the peace convention amendments were submitted to Congress. One section in the series stipulated that no territory should be acquired by the United States, except by discovery and for naval and commercial stations, without the concurrence of a majority of all the Senators from the slave States and free States, respectively; nor should territory be acquired by treaty unless the vote of a majority of Senators for each class of States be cast as a part of the two-thirds necessary.2 Subsequently the amendments proposed by the peace convention were reintroduced in the Senate at three different times.3 112. THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND PLACES UNDER FEDERAL

JURISDICTION.

Another phase of the "irrepressible conflict" over territory was brought out in the numerous amendments introduced at this time relative to slavery in the District of Columbia and other places under Federal jurisdiction situated within the States. The larger number of these amendments provided that Congress should have no power to abolish slavery in the District so long as it should exist in Virginia and Maryland, nor even then without the consent of the inhabitants, nor without making just compensation to the owners of slaves. It was usually further stipulated that Congress should not prohibit officers of the Federal Government or members of Congress whose duties required them to be in the District from bringing their slaves within said District, and holding them as such during the time these duties required them to remain there, and afterwards taking them from the District. Such amendments were proposed by Crittenden, Douglas, Florence, and Clemens. One of the amendments offered by Senator Saulsbury, in 1864, forbade slavery in the District of Columbia, but permitted persons to sojourn there with slaves. Others forbade Congress to interfere with slavery without the consent of Maryland. Another proposed that the exclusive power to regulate or abolish the right to labor or service for life in the

1 App., Nos. 874a, 916.

2 App., No. 917.

3 App., Nos. 934, 956, 969.

4 App., Nos. 799, 806, 819, 830, 846, 852d, 855, 866, 869d, 874f, 880, 894, 917, 925, 935, 944, 957, 969,

App., No. 917.

District of Columbia should be ceded to the State of Maryland, to be exercised in common with such rights in that State, subject, nevertheless, to the judicial jurisdiction of the District.'

The amendments of the peace convention further declared "that the bringing into the District of Columbia of such persons for sale, or placing them in depots to be afterwards transferred to other places for sale as merchandise, is prohibited." 2

Another considerable class of amendments, besides prohibiting the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, further forbade Congress to prohibit slavery from existing in the arsenals, navy-yards, dockyards, forts, or other places under its exclusive jurisdiction within the limits of States that permit the holding of slaves.3 Such a provision was included in the peace convention amendments, as well as in those of Crittenden, Johnson, Douglas, Florence, and others. Mr. Hindman of Arkansas would have changed the prohibition into a requirement that the Federal Government should protect property in slaves wherever the Federal jurisdiction extends.*

113. RIGHT OF TRANSIT WITH SLAVES.

Troublesome questions had arisen out of the fact that slaves brought by their masters into free States or in transit through free territory were often liberated. To meet the case, four amendments were introduced guaranteeing the rights of masters or owners to their slaves while sojourning in or in transit through any State or Territory of the United States. 5

Three of these amendments were presented December 12, 1860. The remaining one was introduced by Mr. Florence, in January, 1861. At the same time he offered an amendment which declared that citizens of any State sojourning in another State should not be subject to violence or punishment, nor be injured in their persons or property without trial by jury and due process of law. In the series of amendments offered by Mr. Saulsbury, in 1864, as a substitute for the thirteenth amendment, was a proposition to allow the right of transit with slaves south of 36° 30', but not north of said line."

Mr. Florence, January 28, 1861, App., No. 880.

2 App., No. 917.

3 App., Nos. 799, 806, 818, 829, 845, 852d, 865, 869d, 874f, 894, 917, 924, 936, 943, 958, 969, 971c. 4 App., No. 806.

114. SLAVE INSURRECTIONS AND CONSPIRACIES.

Another of the series which Mr. Florence proposed declared that all acts of any inhabitant of the United States tending to incite slaves to insurrection or action of domestic violence, or to abscond, should be considered contrary to law and as penal offenses. Near the close of the session a somewhat different amendment was included in the series of propositions presented by Senator. Pugh of Ohio and Senator Powell of Kentucky. It declared that "Congress shall pass efficient laws for the punishment of all persons in any of the States who shall in any manner aid and abet invasion or insurrection in any other State." In 1864 Mr. Saulsbury included in the resolution offered as a substitute for the thirteenth amendment this identical proposition coupled with another which declared that all conspiracies in any State to interfere with lawful rights in any other State or against the United States should be suppressed. These measures were naturally suggested by the insurrection at Harpers Ferry under John Brown, in October, 1859.

115. COLONIZATION OF FREE NEGROES.

The project of mitigating the evil of slavery and eventually of its abolition through the colonization of negroes had been a favorite scheme ever since the early years of the century, when "colonization societies" were established. This plan was especially urged by those philanthropists who were opposed to extreme measures. The Southern men likewise were not as a rule averse to the movement, for the presence of free negroes among them was undesirable. It is not surprising, therefore, that during the discussion of the question of the constitutionality of Congress granting aid to the colonization movement, in the Twenty-second Congress, the proposal was twice made that the Constitution should be amended so as to give Congress the express power to assist the colonization of negroes."

The first of these resolutions, introduced by Mr. Archer of Virginia, proposed the expediency of amending the Constitution so as to empower Congress "to appropriate the revenue

'App., No. 885.

App., Nos. 948, 968.

3App., Nos. 1014, 1015.

4 Von Holst, U. S. Hist., I, pp. 329-333; Rhodes, Hist. of U. S., I, pp. 381-382.

5 Georgia and some of the Gulf States passed resolutions against Congress aiding colonization societies. See Niles' Register, XXXVII, p. 428. Between 1823-1825 Ohio and seven other States passed resolutions in favor of colonization or gradual emancipation. Jours. of house and senate of Penn. (1823-1826), in passim.