"Whenever a territory has a climate, soil and production, making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will pass a slave code, and give it encouragement. Whenever the climate, soil and production preclude the possibility of slavery being profitable, they will not permit it. You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents. I do not care where the migration in the southern country comes from; if old Joshua R. Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio, and settle down in Louisiana, he would be the strongest advocate for slavery in the whole South; he would find, when he got there, his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile.
"He would say that, between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of the negro. But, between the negro and the white man, he would go for the white man. The Almighty has drawn the line on this continent, on one side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor; on the other, by white labor. That line did not run on thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, for thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes runs over mountains and through valleys. But this slave line meanders in the sugar-fields and plantations of the South—[the remainder of the sentence was lost by the confusion around the reporter.] And the people living in their different localities and in the territories must determine for themselves whether their 'middle bed' is best adapted to slavery or free labor.
"Hence, under the Constitution, there is no power to prevent a southern man going there with his slaves, more than a northern man."
Mr. Douglas is a man of very short stature, but of large body, and a frame and constitution capable of great endurance. He lives in Washington half the year, where he has a handsome residence, and the other half in Illinois among his constituents, where he has a country mansion. The mother of Mr. Douglas, who was so faithful to him and whom he has never ceased to love and reverence, still lives, and has witnessed his rise from the cabinet-maker's shop to the senatorial chair.
SALMON P. CHASE.
Salmon Porland Chase was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, Jan. 13th, 1808. He was seven years old when his father removed to the town of Keene, where he attended the village school. In 1817 his father died, and two years later the boy, then only twelve years old, went to Worthington, Ohio. His uncle, Philander Chase, was then Bishop of Ohio, and he superintended the education of his nephew. Shortly after this, he entered Cincinnati College, of which institution his uncle became president. He soon was promoted to the sophomore class. After a year's residence in Cincinnati, he returned to New Hampshire and his mother's house; and, in 1824, entered the junior class of Dartmouth College. He graduated in 1826. The following winter Mr. Chase went to the city of Washington, and opened a classical school for boys. Among his pupils were the sons of Henry Clay, William Niel, and other distinguished men. Many of the citizens of Washington at this day well remember Mr. Chase's efforts as a teacher among them, and at that time learned to esteem and respect the man who has since risen to so high a position as a politician and statesman. He closed his school in 1829, and soon was admitted to the bar, having studied law under Mr. Niel while teaching his school, manifesting by his industry and courage that he was possessed of the qualities which must certainly in the end bring him position and reputation.
In 1830, Mr. Chase left Washington for Cincinnati, where he has always since resided, save when serving his State in an official capacity, and pursued his profession. He was poor, unknown, and before he could hope to attract the attention of the public, must earn his bread and endure months, if not years, of serious toil and drudgery. During these early years in his professional career, he prepared an edition of Statutes of Ohio, and a preliminary sketch of the history the State. The work made three large volumes, and at once became an authority in the courts. The authorship of this volume was a happy idea, for it not only brought him a moderate pecuniary reward directly, but it also gave him the ear of the people, and practice at once flowed in upon him.
In 1834, Mr. Chase became solicitor of the Bank of the United States in Cincinnati, and other corporations. In 1837, he first gave public utterance to his views upon the slavery question in its legal aspects. The article in Appleton's Encylopædia upon Mr. Chase, which on many points is our authority in this sketch, gives the subjoined history of Mr. Chase's early legal arguments in reference to slavery:
"In 1837, Mr. Chase acted as counsel for a colored woman claimed as a fugitive slave and in an elaborate argument, afterward published, controverted the authority of Congress to impose any duties or confer any powers in fugitive slave cases on state magistrates, a position in which he has since been sustained by the U.S. Supreme Court; and maintained that the law of 1793, relative to fugitives from service, was void, because unwarranted by the Constitution of the United States. The same year, in an argument before the Supreme Court of Ohio, in defence of James G. Birney, prosecuted under a State law for harboring a negro slave, Mr. Chase asserted the doctrine that slavery is local, and independent on state law for existence and continuance, and insisted that the person alleged to have been harbored, having been brought within the territorial limits of Ohio by the individual claiming her as master, was thenceforth, in fact and by right, free. In 1838, in a newspaper review of a report of the judiciary committee of the senate of Ohio against the granting of trial by jury to alleged slaves, Mr. Chase took the same ground as in his legal arguments. In 1846, he was associated with the Hon. W. H. Seward as defendant's counsel in the case of Van Zandt, before the Supreme Court of the United States. The case excited much interest, and in a speech which attracted marked attention, Mr. Chase argued more elaborately the principles which he advanced in former cases, maintaining that under the ordinance of 1787 no fugitives from service could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless there had been an escape from one of the original States; that it was the clear understanding of the framers of the Constitution, and of the people who adopted it, that slavery was to be left exclusively to the disposal of the several States, without sanction or support from the National Government; and that the clause of the Constitution relative to persons held to service was one of compact between the States, and conferred no power of legislation on Congress, having been transferred from the ordinance of 1787, in which it conferred no power on the Confederation, and was never understood to confer any. He was subsequently engaged for the defence in the case of Driskell vs. Parish, before the U.S. Circuit Court at Columbus, and re-argued the same positions."