This is confounding the whole theory
and the history of our Government. The States were the grantors; they
made the compact; they gave the Federal agent its powers; they inhibited
themselves from doing certain things, and all else they retained to
themselves. This Federal agent got just so much as the States chose to
give--no more. It could do nothing save by warrant of the authority of
the grant made by the States. Therefore its powers are not comparable to
the powers of the State Legislature, because one is the creature of
grant, and the other the exponent of sovereign power. The Supreme Court
have covered the whole ground of the relation of the Congress to the
Territorial Legislatures--the agent of the States and the agent of the
Congress--and the restrictions put upon the one are those put upon the
other, in language so clear as to render it needless further to labor
the subject.
In 1850, following the promulgation of this notion of squatter
sovereignty, we had the idea of non-intervention introduced into the
Senate of the United States, and it is strange to me how that idea has
expanded. It seems to have been more malleable than gold; to have been
hammered out to an extent that covers boundless regions undiscovered by
those who proclaimed the doctrine. Non-intervention then meant, as the
debates show, that Congress should neither prohibit nor establish
slavery in the Territories.
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