constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, he refrained from passing judgment upon it himself, and no where intimated that the legislation of 1850 had rendered it inoperative. The seat of government was located at Fort Leavenworth, and “all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories and new States formed therefrom,” it suggested that agreeable with the legislation of 1850, should be left to the decision of the people residing therein, through their appropriate representatives. The bill, with the report and amendments, was ordered to be printed.
Mr. Dixon gave notice[1] that when the bill should come up for consideration he would offer an amendment to the following effect:
“That as much of the 8th section of ‘An act approved March 6, 1820, entitled ‘An act to authorize the people of Missouri Territory to form a constitution and a State government and for the admission of such a State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to prohibit slavery in certain Territories’ as declares in all that territory ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, slavery and involuntary servitude otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, is forever prohibited,’ shall not be so construed as to apply to the territory contemplated by this act, or to any Territory of the United States, but that the citizens of the several States and Territories shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories of the United States, or of the States to be formed therefrom, as if the said act, entitled as aforesaid and approved as aforesaid, had never been passed.”
This first stroke at the sacred Compromise which had quieted the storm of 1820, and which had been regarded for thirty-four years as lasting as time, fell like a thunder bolt upon the Senate and the nation. The blast of strife was thus sounded by the expiring breath of Plighted Faith. Slavery
- ↑ January 16, 1855.
