and an attempt was made in Congress to establish that doctrine by practical application.
In the last session of the twenty-ninth Congress, the House passed a bill giving Oregon a territorial government, with a provision excluding slavery, but the Senate laid the bill on the table. When in the succeeding session the subject reappeared, the exclusion of slavery was resisted by Southern Senators and Representatives with the utmost energy. Practically to establish slavery in Oregon, whose inhabitants, in giving themselves a provisional government, had already voted against its admission, might have seemed hopeless. But the assertion of the principle with regard to Oregon would facilitate its future application to California and New Mexico; or, perhaps, a final yielding as to Oregon might become a valuable consideration in a compromise touching the other more promising territories. It was then that Daniel S. Dickinson of New York addressed a long speech to the Senate, in which he endeavored to prove that it would be according to the principles of self-government and the spirit of the Constitution to leave the question, whether slavery should be admitted or excluded, to the territorial legislatures for decision. This was the principle of “squatter sovereignty,” which reappeared again six years later in a new application. Calhoun and his followers rejected it unhesitatingly, on the ground that, if Congress could not legislate on slavery in the territories, the territorial legislatures, which derived their authority
