-a right which she had without your saying so; and which she would still have, whether you said so or not. You do not, by this declaration, confer any right on Kansas. You simply recognise a right which already exists, and which, if she chose, I repeat again, she could have exercised without your consent, just as well as with it. When this debate first opened, the senator from Michigan [Mr. Stuart] employed this language on this point: "They," meaning the people of Kansas, "are arming; they are determined to resist an admission under this constitution, by any and every power with which God has clothed them; and yet we are to sit here and say, 'we admit you into the Union of the United States.' As well might you take a prisoner, under the sentence of a court of justice, handcuffed, with your officers surrounding him, by force to the prison, and say to him, 'there is no coercion; we admit you into the penitentiary.'

I thought then, sir, and so declared, that there was no power to force Kansas into the Union. If she proposes to come in, and you accept her upon the terms which she proposes, then she is in, and she cannot recede. But if she proposes to come in, and you alter her proposition, then it depends upon her to say whether she accepts or rejects the alteration. That right, I repeat again and again, she has, whether you admit it

or not.

To reduce it to a simple question of law, suppose you and I, Mr. President, have dealings in reference to an estate, and we agree upon the terms; I draw the bond or the deed, and attach to it a memorandum, or condition, or ordinance, explaining what I understand to be the meaning of the paper, how I expect to see it executed, and send it to you, and you sign it, but strike out the memorandum, or condition, or ordinance: I ask any lawyer whether the contract is binding on me until, either by silent acquiescence, as by proceeding to execute it, or by some positive declaration, I make it my own deed? Just so with Kansas. She sent you a constitution; she sent along with it her ordinance, the memorandum which explained the reasons why, and the terms upon which, she proposed to enter into the bargain, and become a member of the Union. You choose to strike the ordinance out; you choose to strike it from the constitution. Then I hold, as a simple legal proposition, she had a right to say, "you have changed the terms upon which I propose to come in; I will not come in; I choose entirely to recede from the proposition.' It does not depend on you, sir, as one of the contracting parties, to say whether she shall recede or not; the right exists independent of you. If you meant to bind Kansas absolutely, you should have accepted her proposition in totidem verbis. You could not strike out what you did not like, stand by what you did like, and still insist that Kansas was bound by her proposition.

But, Mr. President, how am I to understand senators? The senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], who has just closed his speech, opened the session with an argument in favor of submitting this constitution to the people of Kansas for their reception or rejection; yesterday, in a colloquy with the senator from Ohio [Mr. Pugh], he said no state ought to be admitted until she has the requisite population to entitle her to one representative, and he repeated the declaration, with some qualification, to-day. Now, what does the bill before us propose? According to the argument of the senator from Michigan [Mr. Stuart] yesterday;

according to the argument of the senator from Illinois to-day; according to the argument of nearly all the gentlemen on the other side, this bill proposes to send back the constitution, and give the people of Kansas an opportunity to accept it or reject it, as they choose. It is true, the honorable senator from Illinois says you put them under some sort of compulsion; but he does not pretend to deny that they will have the power to reject, under this submission, if they choose to do it. Then, if they do, what follows, according to this bill? That they shall not come into the Union until they have the ninety-three thousand four hundred and twenty population requisite to entitle them to one representative under the existing ratio. And yet, Mr. President, when both these propositions are before us, one to submit the constitution for rejection or submission, as gentlemen argue, and the other to reject the state entirely until she has the requisite population-they being, in plain English, the two propositions of the senator from Illinois himself, embodied in the same bill-he rejects them both. In the name of popular sovereignty, he rejects two of his own propositions, either of which he thinks would be just to the people.

Under this bill, as I have admitted, and as other senators have claimed in broader language than I have, the people of Kansas may, if they choose, accept or reject the Lecompton constitution. The senator thinks they ought to have a right to reject it or accept it; or, if that be denied them, that the people be authorized to form a state constitution only when they have the full ratio of representative population. Very well; this bill takes both horns of the dilemma; and yet the senator rejects it. For myself, I am free to say, I hope the people of Kansas will, if this bill passes, adhere to their ordinance, and insist on remaining out of the Union. If they come in they must come in under the Lecompton constitution; if they stay out they must stay until they have the population to entitle them to one representative in Congress. That suits me. I close in with that offer.

But, says the senator from Illinois, this land grant is a bounty held out to the people of Kansas to accept this constitution-a bribe, as it has been elsewhere termed. How, sir? It reduces the amount of the grant claimed in the ordinance by more than twelve million acres. The senator from Michigan, in a carefully prepared table, which he introduced into his speech delivered on December 23d last, shows that the whole grant was upwards of sixteen million acres; that the railroad grant alone was upwards of seven millions. I understand from the senator from Missouri [Mr. Green], who brought forward this bill, that he has had a calculation made, and that the grant proposed for all purposes is about four million acres. And yet when you reduce the grant from sixteen millions to four millions, the senator from Illinois comes forward, and says that is a bribe held out to these people to accept the constitution. It is a queer way of bribing them to offer twelve million acres of land less than they claimed in their ordinance.

Mr. President, so far as I am concerned, I am willing to deal fairly with this young state. I have dealt, so far as my vote went, fairly with other states in reference to these grants; but I never saw the moment, from the first introduction of this constitution down to the present time, when I would have conceded to Kansas all that the ordinance attached to her constitution claimed for her. She had no right to set up any

such claim. And if it be called compulsion, as the senator has intimated, to refuse admission to this state unless she will yield her exorbitant demands, I deny it. If it be said that in one sense this is a bribe, and in another sense it is an attempt to coerce Kansas, I deny as much the one as the other. It is no bribe, for the reason I have shown you. It is no compulsion, because Kansas has no more right than other states have had to make these exorbitant demands. Why, sir, if she can claim sixteen million acres, and say she will not come into the Union unless she gets it, why cannot she with the same propriety claim sixty or one hundred million acres of your lands, or claim them all? She may justly claim to the outer verge all that has been granted to the other young states, but she can claim nothing more. Whatever she gets beyond that must be by the grace of Congress, and not because she has a right to demand it. I simply protest that it is no compulsion to say to Kansas, we refuse your demands; if you are not willing to come in as other states have come, then stay out."

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I shall be glad, Mr. President, to see this question settled on the terms proposed in the present bill, although, as I said, I do not like the terms. I suppose no southern senator does; very few northern men do; but I have been so accustomed to vote for things that I do not precisely like, that I have no great trouble in bringing my mind to the conclusion that I ought to vote for this. If I voted for nothing except that which I think precisely right, which commended itself in all respects to my judgment, I should be found on the negative side of most of your propositions. I believe that this measure will have a tendency to heal pending difficulties; that it will bring peace and quiet, to some extent, to the country; that it will open the way for a permanent and lasting peace between the sections; and, if it have that effect, objectionable as it may be to me in many of its features, I shall feel justified in voting for it. If it fail in all this, I shall justify myself to my own conscience and the country on the ground that I so meant it-that it was so designed. If it fail of its objects, that will not be my fault. It is as good a proposition as the original Senate bill. Nothing so good can now be obtained. It will do for all sections of the country-for the South as well as for the North; and it is not decidedly bad for either.

The features of this bill have, in many respects, been changed from the original Senate bill; but I have not seen that they have been changed for the worse; Í rather think they have been improved. We have certainly got clear of some objectionable points, and we have brought into bolder relief others that are bad, but which a close observer would have found in the original. On the whole, for the reasons I have given, and for others, which the time and place and surrounding circumstances forbid me to give, I shall vote for the bill; and I send up my devoutest prayers that it may pass.

ADMISSION OF OREGON.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE, MAY 6, 1858, ON THE ADMISSION OF OREGON INTO THE UNION.

I RATHER think, sir, that I shall vote against the admission of this state, because, if our Republican friends desire to exclude a free state from the Union, it does not seem to me that I, representing a different interest politically, should interest myself particularly to get in such a state. If they asked for the admission of Oregon as a free state, I probably should waive minor points, and go for the bill. If they put it distinctly on the ground that Kansas had been admitted as a slave state, and that now justice and propriety require Oregon, under similar circumstances, to come in as a free state, I could waive all minor considerations, and take her in; but if they resist it, I rather think I shall go with them. It is no business of mine to be multiplying free states; they are against my interest, and against the section of country from which I

come.

But, sir, there is a point in this debate that I do not exactly understand. Senators on the other side seem to be quite satisfied that Oregon has excluded slavery, but they go a step further, and object that she has excluded free negroes. It looks to me as if gentlemen from the free states are getting exceedingly anxious to multiply their free negro population. I thought there was some opposition in most of the free states to an increase of this kind of population. If there is a change of policy in that respect, I meet it half way. We have a large number of free negroes in my state of which we should be very glad to get clear, and if it be really true that gentlemen from northern states want them quartered off on the free states of the Union, upon the young ones, and, of course, upon the old ones, then I shall urge a proposition to send all ours to Massachusetts and New York. [Laughter.] We have some four thousand or five thousand, perhaps as many as eight thousand in Mississippi. We will divide them between New York and Massachusetts, and my good-natured friend before me [Mr. Wilson] can take charge of his part, and the senator from New York [Mr. Seward] can take charge of his part. Heretofore I have always understood that gentlemen from the Northern States were opposed to receiving this class of population. I have always known that they were anxious to make negroes free, and when they were free, I have understood they were very anxious to get clear of them. [Laughter.] I have known that a northern man would rise late at night and burn his last candle-I do not mean the whole northern people, but a large portion of them-to make a light by which he could see his way clear to pilfer somebody's negro; but if you send him one perfectly free, born so, he would turn him loose, and have nothing to do with him. An old gentleman in my state, a member of our legislature, suggested a good idea when they were talking of getting clear of our negro population. He said: "I will tell you exactly how it can be done; take them two and two, handcuff them, take them up to the Kentucky shore above Louisville, advertise them for sale, and the

Abolitionists from Ohio will come and steal them; but if you send them over without shackles they will not have them on any account." [Laughter.]

What a mockery is all this sympathy with the negro, with his hard estate, with having him a free man equal to the white man, and yet northern gentlemen will no more allow him to go into their states than they would allow a pestilence to come in if they could prevent it! They are willing to force them off on somebody else to force Oregon to take them. I appeal to the senator from Massachusetts, now, are you willing to have the free negroes of the South quartered off on Massachusetts? I may ask that question of the senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale], who is about to speak. I see it working in him, and he will get it out directly. [Laughter.] I ask him whether he would be willing to see all the free negroes of Mississippi and Louisiana quartered off on New Hampshire? I dare say he will answer, with his usual frankness, that he would not. Where, then, are they to stay? You insist on sending them to Oregon, forcing them on another people against their will, but you are not willing to take them yourselves. We are willing to keep our part of them until they choose to go somewhere else voluntarily, and when they go, we insist that they shall have the right to go.

1 say again, I rather think I shall vote against the bill; but if gentlemen on the other side will say that they are willing to take Oregon as a free state, and make no opposition to it, I do not know but that I may get over my little scruples, and vote for it; but I am not going to force on myself another free state. I am not going to beg you to take another free state. If you ask it, and ask it genteelly and cleverly, I think we shall let you have it; but we will not beg you to take it.

INCREASE OF THE NAVY.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JUNE 7, 1858, ON THE INCREASE OF THE NAVY.

I THINK, sir, the Senate will bear me witness that I do not belong to the category to which the senator from Tennessee has alluded-the warmaking portion of the Senate. Since this English difficulty has existed, I have not said one word about it. I have purposely abstained from doing so; and therefore no part of the remarks on that point, of the senator from Tennessee, has the slightest reference to me. I shall vote for this amendment with great pleasure. I should vote for it with more pleasure if it proposed to build twenty instead of ten ships. As to the size of the ships, I am unable to say, now, whether they are a proper size or not, and should be just as little able to say it the next year or the year following. The capacity of ships must necessarily be determined upon by those who have the command of them, and those under whose supervision they are to be placed. It is impossible that I can ever understand what sized ships are best for naval purposes. I assume, necessarily, that the naval committee, charged with the settlement of that question, the Secretary of the Navy, and officers of the navy, who