|
Squatter Sovereignty Abandoned By Its Father
National Era
16 July 1857
Senator Douglas has always been considered the embodiment of political effrontery. His facility in the employment of arguments which insult the judgment, and of facts which insult the memories of every common-sense man, have given him an unquestionable pre-eminence among the leaders of his party. But in the late exposition of his policy in reference to the Territory of Utah, he exceeds himself. Mr. Douglas was shrewd enough to see that the Mormon question, which has recently arisen, is one of a kind which absolutely defies his patent Territorial medicine of popular sovereignty; that the difficulty must be healed by a direct and palpable disregard of the Kansas-Nebraska bill policy, "the true interest and meaning whereof," to use his own language, "is to leave the people of a Territory perfectly free to form and regulate their own institutions." The ill success of this doctrine—the crude offspring of his political exigencies—in the disorder and violence which have reigned in Kansas, it has taxed all its expounder's ingenuity to gloss over and palliate, but he has till now nominally adhered to it.
The question as to the government of Utah, however, has fairly broken his constancy down. He has abandoned the last distinctive peculiarity of his much-vaunted theory. As a candidate for a Presidential nomination, finding that either his aspirations or his principles must be abandoned, he naturally preferred to surrender the latter. His only recourse has been to back out, with as graceful an unconsciousness of discomfiture as circumstances would permit, while at the same time he would appear to dictate the policy in reference to Utah, to which, in point of fact, the Administration is driven by the very necessity of the case.
He is determined to be the author both of Popular Sovereignty and Congressional Sovereignty—to supply both the bane and the anti-dote—and, as an aspirant for the nomination of 1860, to assert his patent right to the successful policy, whichever it may be.
Observe his exposition of evils in Utah, and his panacea for their removal. This Territory, says he, was organized by the act of 1850, "on the supposition that the inhabitants were American citizens, owing and acknowledging allegiance to the United States, and consequently entitled to the benefit of self-government while a Territory, and to admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, as soon as they should number the requisite population."
It turns out, however, says Mr. Douglas, if common rumor may be believed, that this supposition was not correct; that the people were unnaturalized aliens; that they do not acknowledge allegiance to our Constitution, and that they violently resist the laws and government of the United States, and therefore that they obtained a Territorial organization on false pretences.
Nevertheless, they are a Territory, and "Popular Sovereignty" requires us to leave them perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions, without interference by Congress. It is also the duty of the Federal Government to suppress Mormonism; but how can it do so consistently with the policy of non-interference? Here is the grand exploit of Douglas's ingenuity. We cannot interfere with the people of a Territory, but we can deprive them of their Territorial condition; we can repeal the law creating them a Territory, and then they lose their power of "self-government," and fall back under the direct authority of the Federal Government.
"The Territorial Government once abolished, the country would revert to its primitive condition prior to the act of 1850, 'under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States,' and should be placed under the operation of the act of Congress of the 30th of April, 1790, and the various acts supplemental thereto and amendatory thereof, 'providing for the punishment of crimes against the United States within any fort, arsenal, dockyard, magazine, or any other place or district of country, under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States."
It thus appears, from Mr. Douglas's own exposition, that this vaunted right of the people of the Territories to govern themselves is not what he used to call it, an "inherent right of self-government," but merely a privilege, that Congress may give or take away as it pleases. The people of the Territories, when, like the Mormons or the Border Ruffian settlers of Kansas, they persistently disregard the Federal authority and the rights of our citizens, are not to enjoy the precious boon of "popular sovereignty," and it is the duty of Congress to assume sovereignty over them.
According to this theory, the sovereignty does not lie with the people, but in the Territory; and even the sovereignty of the Territory is so precarious a possession, that Congress or the Executive from whom it is derived may resume it without ceremony.
Franklin used to insist that it was not the man, but the jackass, that voted under property qualification which gave a vote to the man with a jackass, but none to one without. He certainly was correct, according to Douglas's theory, that sovereignty lies in the Territory, and not in the people who inhabit it.
Congress cannot lay a finger upon Slavery or the "bestial practices" of polygamy in a Territory, says the Illinois Senator, but it can destroy the Territory, and then it can do what it pleases with the people it finds in it. This construction of Congressional power must have been borrowed from the primitive method of roasting pigs, facetiously described by Charles Lamb.
It is unnecessary to point the moral of Douglas's speech. He has found, at last, that the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty, which was employed to kill the Wilmot Proviso, was practically an absurdity, and, to get around it, he is obliged to claim for Congress far more extensive powers than were ever exercised or even contemplated before, If Congress can strip a Territory of its vaunted sovereignty, why not a State? for the sovereignty of the one is as inherent as the other; and if Congress can punish the inhabitants of a dismantled Territory for bestial practices, why not also the inhabitants of a State? And if it can, what security is left for Slavery—an institution as bestial as Polygamy, and to which a larger number are addicted. The fact is, Senator Douglas, in his search for a Presidential pou sto, has quite inconsiderately placed himself upon the platform of the extreme Abolitionists, who assert the power and duty of Congress to abolish Slavery everywhere within the United States.
We will leave him there for the present.
|