The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

In the same line of errors was the confusion which resulted in his assuming that the evils I described as growing out of his doctrine on the plains of Kansas, were a denunciation, on my part, of the bill called the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the time that bill passed, I did not foresee all the evils which have resulted from the doctrine based upon it, but which I do not think the bill sustains. I am not willing now to turn on those who were in a position which compelled them to act, made them responsible, and to divest myself of any responsibility which belongs to any opinion I entertained. I will not seek to judge after the fact and hold the measure up against those who had to judge before. Therefore I will frankly avow that I should have sustained that bill if I had been in the Senate; but I did not foresee or apprehend such evils as immediately grew up on the plains of Kansas. I looked then, as our fathers had looked before, to the settlement of the question of what institutions should exist there, as one to be determined by soil and climate, and by the pleasure of those who should voluntarily go into the country. Such, however, was not the case. The form of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill invited to a controversy—not foreseen. I was not charging the Senator with any responsibility for it, but the variation of its terms invited contending parties to meet on the plains of Kansas, and had well-nigh eventuated in civil war. The great respect which even the most lawless of those adventurers in Kansas had for the name and the laws of the United States, served, by the timely interposition of the Federal force and laws, to restrain the excited masses and prevented violence from assuming larger proportions than combats between squads of adventurers.

This brings me in the line of rejoinder, to the meaning of the phrase, “the people of a Territory, like those of a State, should decide for themselves,” etc., the language quoted against the President in the remarks of the Senator. This, it was announced, was squatter sovereignty in its broadest sense; and it was added, that the present Executive was elected to the high office he holds on that construction of the platform. Now, I do not know how it is that the Senator has the power to decide why the people voted for a candidate. I rather suppose, among the many millions who did vote, there must have been a variety of reasons, and that it is not in the power of any one man to declare what determined the result. But waiving that, is it squatter sovereignty in its broadest sense? Is it a declaration that the inhabitants of a Territory can exercise all the powers of a State? It says that, “like the people of a State,” they may decide for themselves. Then how do the people of a State decide the question of what shall be property within the State? Every one knows that it is by calling a convention, and that the people, represented in convention, and forming a constitution their fundamental law, do this. Every one knows that, under the constitutions and bills of rights which prevail in the republican States of this Union, no legislature is invested with that power. If this be the mode which is prescribed in the States—the modes which the States must pursue—I ask you, in the name of common sense, can the language of the President be construed to mean that a territorial legislature may do what it is admitted the legislature of a State can not; or that the inhabitants of a Territory can assemble a convention, and form a fundamental law overriding the organic act, to which the Senator has already acknowledged they stand subject until they be admitted as a State?

We of the South, I know, are arraigned, and many believe justly, for starting a new question which distracts the Democratic party. I have endeavored, therefore, to show that it is not new. I have also asserted, what I think is clear, that if it were new, but yet a constitutional right, it is not only our province, but our duty to assert it—to assert it whenever or wherever that right is controverted. It is asserted now with more force than at a former period, for the simple reason that it is now denied, to an extent which has never been known before. We do not seek, in the cant language of the day, to force slavery on an unwilling people. We know full well there is no power to do it; and our limited observation has not yet made us acquainted with the man who was likely to have a slave forced upon him, or who could get one without paying a very high price for him. He must first have the will, and, secondly, he must put money in his purse to enable him to get one. They are too valuable among those by whom they are now owned, to be forced upon any body. Not admitting the correctness of the doctrine which the Senator promulgated in his magazine article in relation to a local character of slave property, I recognise the laws of nature, and that immigration will follow in the lines where any species of labor may be most profitably employed; all, therefore, we have asked—fulfillment of the original compact of our fathers—was that there should be no discrimination; that all property should be equally protected; that we should be permitted to go into every portion of the United States save where some sovereign power has said slaves shall not be held, and to take with us our slave property in like manner as we would take any other; no more than that. For that, our Government has contended on the high seas against foreign powers. That has entered into our negotiations, and has been recognized by every government against whom a claim has been asserted. Where our property was captured on the land during the period of an invasion, Great Britain, by treaty, restored it, or paid for it. Wherever it has suffered loss on the high seas, down to a very recent period, we have received indemnity; and where we have not, it was only because the power and duty of the Federal Government was sacrificed to this miserable strife in relation to property, with the existence of which, those making the interference had no municipal connection, or moral responsibility.

I do not admit that sovereignty necessarily exists in the Federal Government or in a territorial government. I deny the Senator’s proposition, which is broadly laid down, of the necessity which must exist for it in the one place or the other. I hold that sovereignty exists only in a State, or in the United States in their associated capacity, to whom sovereignty may be transferred, but that their agent is incapable of receiving it, and, still more, of transferring it to territorial inhabitants.

I was sorry for some of the remarks which he thought it necessary to make, as to the position of the South on this question, and for his assertion that the resolutions of the convention of 1848 put the pro-slavery men and the Abolitionists on the same ground. I think it was altogether unjust. I did not think it quite belonged to him to make it. I was aware that his opponent, in that canvass to which I referred, had made a prophecy that he was, sooner or later, to land in the ranks of the Republicans. Even if I had believed it, I would not have chosen—and it is due to candor to say I do not believe——....

Mr. Davis. Well, it is unimportant. I feel myself constrained, because I promised to do it, to refer to some portion of the joint record of the Senator and myself in 1850, or, as I have consumed so much time, I would avoid it. In that same magazine article, to which I have referred, the Senator took occasion to refer to some part which I had taken in the legislation of 1850; and I must say he presented me unfairly. He put me in the attitude of one who was seeking to discriminate, and left himself in the position of one who was willing to give equal protection to all kinds of property. In that magazine article the Senator represents Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, as having endeavored to discriminate in favor of slave property, and Mr. Chase, of Ohio, as having made a like attempt against it; and he leaves himself, by his argument, in the attitude of one who concurred with Mr. Clay in opposition to both propositions.

I offered an amendment to the compromise bill of 1850, which was to strike out the words “in respect to,” and insert “and introduce or exclude,” and after the word “slavery” to insert the following:

“Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to prevent said territorial legislature passing such laws as may be necessary for the protection of the rights of property of any kind which may have been or may be hereafter, conformably to the Constitution and laws of the United States, held in, or introduced into, said Territory.”

Mr. Chase’s amendment is in these words:

“Provided further, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as authorizing or permitting the introduction of slavery, or the holding of persons as property within said Territory.”