June 9, 1856, the two Senators drifted into debate on the Kansas question again, and Trumbull put to Douglas the question which Lincoln put to him with such momentous consequences in the Freeport debate two years later: whether the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution. Trumbull said that the Democratic party was not harmonious on this point. He had heard Brown, of Mississippi, argue on the floor of the Senate that slavery could not be excluded from the territories, while in the formative condition, by the territorial legislature, and he had heard Cass, of Michigan, maintain exactly the opposite doctrine. He would like to know what his colleague's views were upon that point:
My colleague [he said] has no sort of difficulty in deciding the constitutional question as to the right of the people of a territory, when they form their constitution, to establish or prohibit slavery. Now will he tell me whether they have the right before they form a state constitution?[27]
Douglas did not answer this interrogatory. He insisted that it was purely a judicial question, and that he and all good Democrats were in harmony and would sustain the decision of the highest tribunal when it should be rendered. The Dred Scott case was pending in the Supreme Court, but that fact was not mentioned in the debate. The right of the people of a territory to exclude slavery before arriving at statehood was already the crux of the political situation, but its significance was not generally perceived at that time. That Trumbull had grasped the fact was shown by his concluding remarks in this debate, to wit:
My colleague says that the persons with whom he is acting are perfectly agreed on the questions at issue. Why, sir, all of them in the South say that they have a right to take their slaves into a territory and to hold them there as such, while all in the North deny it. If that is an agreement, then I do not know what Bedlam would be.
Bedlam came at Charleston four years later. It is worthy of remark that in this debate Douglas held that a negro could bring an action for personal freedom in a territory and have it presented to the Supreme Court of the United States for decision. In the Dred Scott case, subsequently decided, the court held that a negro could not bring an action in a court of the United States.
The Senate debate on Kansas affairs in the first session of the Thirty-fourth Congress was participated in by nearly all the members of the body. The best speech on the Republican side was made by Seward. This was a carefully prepared, farseeing philosophical oration, in which the South was warned that the stars in their courses were fighting against slavery and that the institution took a step toward perdition when it appealed to lawless violence. Sumner's speech, which in its consequences became more celebrated, was sophomorical and vituperative and was not calculated to help the cause that its author espoused; but the assault made upon him by Preston S. Brooks maddened the North and drew attention away from its defects of taste and judgment. Collamer, of Vermont, made a notable speech in addition to his notable minority report from the Committee on Territories. Wilson, of Massachusetts, and Hale, of New Hampshire, received well-earned plaudits for the thoroughness with which they exposed the frauds and violence of the Border Ruffians, and commented on the vacillation and stammering of President Pierce. That Trumbull had the advantage of his wily antagonist must be the conclusion of impartial readers at the present day.
If a newcomer in the Senate to-day should plunge in medias res and deliver a three-hours' speech as soon as he could get the floor, he would probably be made aware of the opinion of his elders that he had been over-hasty. It was not so in the exciting times of the decade before the Civil War. All help was eagerly welcomed. Moreover, Trumbull's constituents would not have tolerated any delay on his part in getting into the thickest of the fight. Any signs of hanging back would have been construed as timidity. The anti-Nebraska Democrats of Illinois required early proof that their Senator was not afraid of the Little Giant, but was his match at cut-and-thrust debate as well as his superior in dignity and moral power. The North rang with the praises of Trumbull, and some persons, whose admiration of Lincoln was unbounded and unchangeable, were heard to say that perhaps Providence had selected the right man for Senator from Illinois. Although Lincoln's personality was more magnetic, Trumbull's intellect was more alert, his diction the more incisive, and his temper was the more combative of the two.
From a mass of letters and newspapers commending Mr. Trumbull on his first appearance on the floor of the Senate, a few are selected for notice.
The New York Tribune, March 15, 1856, Washington letter signed "H. G.," p. 4, col. 5: