Presidential Candidates:

Mr. Bigler knew that as well as the senator, and should have said inhabitants.

Mr. Douglas resumed. In 1856, he took the same ground as now, and Mr. Buchanan, when he accepted the nomination, took the same ground. His letter of acceptance to the Cincinnati Convention shows he then understood that the people of the territories should decide whether slavery should or should not exist within their limits. When gentlemen called for Congressional intervention, they step off the Democratic platform. He (Mr. Douglas) asserted that the Democratic creed was non-intervention by Congress, and the right of the people to govern themselves. He would frankly tell gentlemen of the South, that no Democratic candidate can carry one State North but on the principles of the Cincinnati platform, as construed by Mr. Buchanan when he accepted his nomination, and which he (Mr. Douglas) stood here to-day to defend.

Mr. Davis replied to Mr. Douglas elaborately, denying that he (Douglas) rightly interpreted the obligations of the Democratic party.

Mr. Pugh said, Mr. Brown had asked if northern Democrats would vote for Congressional intervention to protect the people against local legislation. He would answer, Never. It is monstrous. It is against the plighted faith both of the South and North. Mr. Pugh discussed the question at length, and said he stood on the platform of his party with the interpretation which he explained.

Mr. Green was sorry that this subject of contention had been brought forward. It was to try and bring discord into the Democratic party, the only party able to override the Republican party. He hoped and believed there was no difference between the North and the South. A government is formed to protect persons and property; and when it ceases to do either, it ceases to perform its one great function. Mr. Hale's amendment had brought up the question, "What is property?" He (Green) maintained that, under the Constitution and by the decision of the Supreme Court, slaves are property; and he argued the subject in many aspects, concluding by calling on the Democratic party to stand united, and not permit a combination to make use of a mere figment to disorganize them. In the course of his remarks, he quoted from Mr. Douglas's Springfield speech, to show that he had therein proposed Congressional intervention in Utah. He could not see the consistency of the senator's course, then and now.

Mr. Douglas denied that he had proposed Congressional intervention to regulate the internal affairs of Utah. The intervention he proposed was alone on the ground of rebellion – not on account of their domestic affairs, but as aliens and rebels.

Mr. Green, in speaking of how territorial legislation could destroy the rights of slave property, said he had before him a copy of the bill passed by the Kansas Legislature to abolish slavery.

Mr. Douglas remarked that several speeches had been made very pointedly at him, making him out no better than an Abolitionist, for leaving the territories to carry out their own affairs. It does well to attack one man for his opinion; but when was the most aggravated act ever committed, that he did not say it was committed, in manumitting your slaves and confiscating your property? The gentleman who spoke thus, says: "It is not yet time." There is no better time than the present, to introduce a bill to repeal that act of the Kansas Legislature. Senators say that he (Douglas) may go out. No; he stands on the platform, and it is for those who jump off, to go out.

The chair called the Senate to order, threatening to clear the galleries, unless it was maintained.

Mr. Green said he had received information of the bill by telegraph; but could not legislate on such information.

Mr. Douglas would take it for granted that Mr. Green meant that he received authentic information, and would introduce a bill to repeal the act. The South, he said, had reluctantly acquiesced in the movement with the Democrats of the North to settle the question. He went at some length into a discussion and approval of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. He did not agree with Senator Douglas's views as to the power of the people of a territory, and did not believe that the Nebraska-Kansas bill gave them independent power. The senator from Virginia then gave his ideas as to the people of the territories, and the people of the States. The right of property is recognized in the former, but the inhabitants of a territory are unknown to the Constitution. Congress cannot divest itself of its power over the property of the territories, but it can grant them nothing. South of the Potomac River, to the confines of Mexico, there is not one dissentient voice. The South would be recreant to itself; if it would give one vote for its rights to be taken from the Constitution, and remitted to the pleasure of the people temporarily in the territories.

Mr. Davis took an animated part in the debate against Mr. Douglas, who in the Kansas-Nebraska act, had made a great error, and drawn the Senate into a great error.

Mr. Douglas resumed, saying it won't do to read him out, because they had fallen from the faith. There is no middle ground. It is either intervention or non-intervention.

Mr. Gwin said, if the senator from Illinois had given the same interpretation to the Kansas-Nebraska bill when it was before the Senate, he (Gwin) would not have voted for it, and believed those around him would not. When the senator proposed to speak for the Democracy of the free States, he had no right to speak for California, which thought otherwise.

Mr. Broderick contradicted Mr. Gwin's statement of the views of California. He considered the views of his State were those expressed by Mr. Douglas.

Mr. Gwin replied that he was sent here to do his duty in representing the Democracy of California, and he knew they indorse the action of the Administration, and do not at all indorse the interpretation given by the senator from Illinois.

Mr. Douglas (to Mr. Gwin.) I do say the records show a very general concurrence in the views I then expressed.

Mr. Iverson raised the question of order, that Mr. Douglas had spoken many times. He and Mr. Davis had occupied the floor four or five hours. The point of order was sustained.

Mr. Hunter said it was with reluctance that he occupied the time at the late period of the evening, but the turn the debate had taken rendered an explanation necessary, in justice to himself. He differed with the senator from Illinois, both in the history of the Kansas-Nebraska act, and what was intended by it. When the proposition was made to pass that, he maintained, as he has always done since he has had a place on that floor, that the South had a right to protection for their slave property in the territories.

Mr. Hunter read from his speech of that date, showing the views he then expressed. The case stood thus: southern men on one side maintained they had right, under the Constitution, to protection to their slave property; northern men thought the contrary, and there was no chance of agreement between them, as the act was very carefully framed, neither affirming nor disaffirming the power of the territory to abolish slavery, but reserving the question of right, and agreeing to refer to the judiciary any points arising out of it. It was in itself a compromise, in which neither party conceded their opinions or their rights. They were but placed in abeyance until a case affecting them might arise. No southern man with whom he acted ever considered he was conferring on the Territorial Legislature the absolute right to deal with this subject. They agreed to this settlement as a consequence, acting together upon points wherein they agreed, and expressing no opinion upon points where the differences were irreconcilable. By this they secured the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, upon which the Democrats were agreed, by confining the act to the general purpose to be accomplished. Justice to himself and the distinguished senator from South Carolina, now no more, with whom he had acted and consulted on the matter, required the explanation. Mr. Hunter then drew the attention of the Senate to the time consumed in the debate, and urged a vote upon the amendment.

Mr. Stuart, after some general remarks on the subject under discussion, asked, why should the Democratic party be racked and torn by the thought of the contingences which may not happen? If the Democratic party in a body, if its able and efficient members throughout the country, stand faithfully together, their flag will remain in the ascendant, and the party will rise out of all the difficulties which now beset it.

Mr. Bigler was opposed to Congress extending slavery in the territories, and against Congressional intervention with slavery, and would stand by the Baltimore and Cincinnati platforms of the Democratic party. He believed the best interests of the country were in the hope of the Democracy.

Mr. Douglas is a powerful debater, quick, ready at repartee, strong in his logic, and possessing that animal courage which is so necessary to the successful debater. Few men equal him in senatorial debate for rough power. There are many who surpass him in silvery eloquence, who excel him in winning, courteous debate, but no one in the present Senate who has quite his force and overwhelming courage. In the debate, which we have abbreviated, Mr. Douglas was for hours – from noon till nine o'clock in the evening – obliged to defend himself against a half-dozen able and eloquent senators. His manner, his voice, were at times like that of a wounded lion – deep, strong and melancholy; but he fought to the last without a moment's thought of quailing.

Mr. Douglas has no sympathy with the anti-slavery sentiment of the free States, but plants himself upon his principle, and puts slavery and freedom upon the same footing. If the people want slavery, let them have it. If they want freedom – no interference in favor of slavery. This we understand to be his position, though some of his southern friends claim that he admits that the Supreme Court is bound to give slavery an existence in all the territories. In his New Orleans speech of last winter, Mr. Douglas is reported to have said:

"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."

Mr. Chase's political history is thus summed up in the same article:

"Mr. Chase's sentiments of hostility to the nationalization of slavery were expressed by his position in the political movements of the country, as well as his efforts at the bar. Prior to 1841 he had taken little part in politics. He had voted sometimes with the Democrats, but more commonly with the Whigs, who, in the North, seemed to him more favorable to anti-slavery views than their opponents. He supported Gen. Harrison in 1840, but the tone of his inaugural address, and still more the course of the Tyler administration, convinced him that no effective resistance to the encroachments of slavery was to be expected from any party with a slaveholding and pro-slavery wing, modifying if not controlling its action; and in 1841 he united in a call for a convention of the opponents of slavery and slavery extension, which assembled in Columbus in December of that year. This convention organized the liberty party of Ohio, nominated a candidate for governor, and issued an address to the people defining its principles and purposes. – This address, written and reported by Mr. Chase, and unanimously adopted by the convention, deserves attention as one of the earliest expositions of the political movements against slavery. In 1843, a national liberty convention assembled at Buffalo. Mr. Chase was an active member of the committee on resolutions, to which was referred, under a rule of the convention, a resolution proposing 'to regard and treat the third clause of the Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void, and consequently as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States, whenever we are called upon or sworn to support it.' Mr. Chase opposed the resolution, and the committee refused to report it. It was, however, afterward moved in the convention by its author, and adopted. Having been charged in the U.S. Senate with the authorship and advocacy of this resolution, by Mr. Butler of South Carolina, who denounced the doctrine of mental reservation apparently sanctioned by it, Mr. Chase replied: 'I have only to say I never proposed the resolution; I never would propose or vote for such a resolution. I hold no doctrine of mental reservation. Every man, in my judgment, should speak just as he thinks, keeping nothing back, here or elsewhere.' In 1843 it became Mr. Chase's duty to prepare an address on behalf of the friends of liberty, Ireland, and repeal in Cincinnati, to the loyal national repeal association in Ireland, in reply to a letter from Daniel O'Connell.

"In this address Mr. Chase reviewed the relations of the federal government to slavery at the period of its organization, set forth its original anti-slavery policy, and the subsequent growth of the political power of slavery, vindicated the action of the liberal party, and repelled the aspersions cast by a repeal association in Cincinnati upon anti-slavery men. In 1845 Mr. Chase projected a southern and western liberty convention, designed to embrace 'all who, believing that whatever is worth preserving in republicanism can be maintained only by uncompromising war against the usurpations of the slave power, and are therefore resolved to use all constitutional and honorable means to effect the extinction of slavery in their respective States, and its reduction to its constitutional limits in the United States.' The convention was held in Cincinnati in June, 1845, and was attended by 4,000 persons; delegates were present to the number of 2,000. Mr. Chase, as chairman of the committee, prepared the address, giving a history of slavery in the United States, showing the position of the Whig and Democratic parties, and arguing the necessity of a political organization unequivocally committed to the denationalization of slavery and the overthrow of the slave power, and exhibiting what he regarded as the necessary hostility of the slaveholding interest to democracy and all liberal measures. This address was widely circulated.

"In 1847, Mr. Chase was a member of the Second National Liberty Convention, and opposed the making of any national nomination at that time, urging that a more general movement against slavery extension and denomination, was likely to grow out of the agitation of the Wilmot Proviso, and the action of Congress and political parties in reference to slavery. In 1848, anticipating that the conventions of the Whig and Democratic parties would probably refuse to take grounds against the extensions of slavery, he prepared a call for a free territory state convention at Columbus, which was signed by more than 3,000 voters of all political parties. The convention thus called was largely attended, and invited a national convention to meet at Buffalo in August. The influence of Mr. Chase was conspicuous in the state convention, and no less so in the national convention, which assembled upon its invitation, and nominated Mr. Van Buren for President. An immense mass meeting was held at Buffalo at the same time. Mr. Chase was president of the national convention, and also a member of its committee on resolutions. The platform was substantially his work. On February 22d, 1849, Mr. Chase was chosen a senator of the United States from Ohio, receiving the entire vote of the Democratic members of the Legislature, and of those freesoil members who favored Democratic views. The Democratic party of Ohio, by the resolutions of its state convention, had already declared slavery an evil; and practically, through its press and the declarations of its leading men, had committed itself to the denationalization of slavery. Mr. Chase, therefore, coinciding with the Democrats in their general views of the state policy, supported their state nominees, distinctly announcing his intention, in the event of the party's desertion of its anti-slavery position, in state or national conventions, to end at once his connection with it. When the nomination of Mr. Pierce by the Baltimore convention of 1852, with a platform approving the compromise acts of 1850, and denouncing the further discussion of the slavery question, was sanctioned by the Democratic party in Ohio, Mr. Chase, true to his word, withdrew from it, and addressed to the Hon. B. F. Butler, of New York, his associate in the Buffalo convention, a letter in vindication of an independent Democratic party. He prepared a platform, which was substantially adopted by the convention of the independent Democracy at Pittsburg in 1852. Having thus gone into a minority rather than compromise his principles, Mr. Chase gave a cordial and energetic support to the nominees and measures of the independent Democracy, until the Nebraska bill gave rise to a new and powerful party, based substantially upon the ideas he had so long maintained. As a senator of the United States, Mr. Chase delivered on March 26 and 27, 1850, a speech against Mr. Clay's compromise bill, reviewing thoroughly all the questions presented in it. He moved an amendment providing against the introduction of slavery in the territories to which the bill applied, but it failed by a vote of 25 to 30. He proposed also, though without success, an amendment to the fugitive slave bill, securing trial by jury to alleged slaves, and another conforming its provisions to the terms of the Constitution, by excluding from its operation persons escaping from State or territories, and vice versâ. In 1854, when the bill for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, commonly called the Nebraska Kansas bill, was introduced, he drafted an appeal to the people against the measure, which was signed by the senators and representatives in Congress, concurring in his political opinions; and in a speech on February 3, attempted the first elaborate exposure of the features of that bill, as viewed by its opponents. In the general opposition to the Nebraska bill he took a leading part, and the rejection of three of his proposed amendments, was thought to be of such significance as bearing on the slavery question, that it may be well to state them. The first proposed to add after the words, 'subject only to the Constitution of the United States,' in section 14, the following clause: 'Under which the people of the territory, through their appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein.' This was rejected, yeas 10, nays 36. The second proposed to give practical effect to the principle of popular sovereignty by providing for the election by the people of the territory of their own governor, judges, and secretary, instead of leaving, as in the bill, their appointment to the Federal Executive. This was defeated, yeas 10, nays 30. He then proposed an amendment of the boundary, so as to have but one territory, named Nebraska, instead of two entitled respectively Nebraska and Kansas. This was rejected, yeas 8, nays 34. His opposition to the bill was ended by a final and earnest protest against it on the night of its passage. While thus vigilant in maintaining his principles on the slavery question, Mr. Chase was constant in the discharge of the general duties of his position. To divorce the Federal Government from all connection with slavery; to confine its action strictly within Constitutional limits; to uphold the rights of individuals and of States; to foster with equal care all the great interests of the country, and to secure an economical administration of the national finances, were the general aims, which he endeavored, both by his votes and his speeches, to promote. On the interests of the West, he always kept a watchful eye, claiming that the Federal treasury should defray the expenses of providing for the safety of navigation on our great inland seas, as well as on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and advocating liberal aid by the Federal Government to the construction of a railroad to the Pacific by the best, shortest, and cheapest route.