Hence it was, that in the article in reply to Mr. Douglas, I made this statement: "But now under the new political dispensation, these thirty million can have no opinion concerning the admission of States which may have established Catholicism, Mohammadanism, Polygamy or even Slavery."
I interrupt the course of my remarks to say that already in the
Philippines we are tolerating and supporting slavery and polygamy,
and preparing the way for the organization of Catholic and Mohammedan
States, and their admission into the American Union.
It was in 1859, and in the article now under debate, that I used this language as a fair exposition of Mr. Douglas' plans:
"The people of a Territory have all the rights of the people of a State; and therefore there are no Territories belonging to the American Union, but all are by the silent negative operations of the Constitution of the United States, converted into independent sovereign members of the North American Confederacy. We commend this system to the advocates of popular sovereignty. It offers many advantages. It will not be possible for the people or the Congress of the United States to resist the admission of new States, inasmuch as their consent will not be asked. It avoids all unpleasant issues. It provides for new slave States; it disposes of Utah; it settles, in anticipation, all questions that may grow out of the annexation of the Catholic Mexican States; and it permits the immigrants from the Celestial Empire to re-establish their institutions, and take their places as members of this Imperial Republic." This statement of Mr. Douglas' policy in the interest of slavery is not a far-away prophecy of the doings under President McKinley's administration.
I have reached a point in this discussion when this remark may be justified: No impartial reader of my article of 1859 can fail to discover that the discussion did not involve the question now raised. The issue was this: Are the Territories bound by the Constitution to become States in the American Union against the judgment of the people, and are the existing States bound to accept a new State and that without regard to its institutions? This was the theory of Mr. Douglas, and it was a theory designed to provide a certain way for the increase of slave States. My argument was aimed at that policy.
At the end of my article there is a summary by propositions which contains declarations that were outside of the controversy with Mr. Douglas.
One of these has been quoted, and quoted in error as evidence of my inconsistency. I read the proposition: "The Constitution of the United States may be extended over a Territory by the treaty of annexation, or by a law of Congress, in which case it has only the authority of the law; but the Constitution by the force of its own provisions is limited to the people and the States of the American Union."
In this general proposition there are several minor and distinct propositions.
1. The Constitution may be extended over a territory by a treaty of annexation. This is now my distinct claim in regard to Porto Rico and the Philippines, a position that I have uniformly maintained.
2. The Constitution may be extended to a territory by law, in which case it has only the authority of law.