That I hold to now. Will any one suppose
that Congress then meant by non-intervention that Congress should
legislate in no regard in respect to property in slaves? Why, sir, the
very acts which they passed at the time refute it. There is the fugitive
slave law, and that abomination of laws which assumed to confiscate the
property of a citizen who should attempt to bring it into this District
with intent to remove it to sell it at some other time and at some other
place. Congress acted then upon the subject--acted beyond the limit of
its authority, as I believed, confidently believed; and, if ever that
act comes before the Supreme Court, I feel satisfied they will declare
it null and void. Are we to understand that those men, thus acting at
the very moment, intended by non-intervention to deny and repudiate the
laws they were then creating? The man who stood most prominently the
advocate of the measures of that year, who, great in many periods of our
history, perhaps shone then with the brightest light his genius ever
emitted--I refer to Henry Clay--has given his own view on this subject;
and I suppose he may be considered as the highest authority. On June 18,
1850, I had introduced an amendment to the compromise bill, providing:
"And that all laws, or parts of laws, usages, or customs, preexisting in
the Territories acquired by the United States from Mexico, and which in
said Territories restrict, abridge, or obstruct, the full enjoyment of
any right of person or property of a citizen of the United States, as
recognized or guaranteed by the Constitution or laws of the United
States, are hereby declared and shall be held as repealed.
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