194 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



"Let me be pardoned, Mr. President, for de- 

 taining the Senate with a further remark. The 

 circumstance that the State of Florida 'was 

 formed upon territory acquired by the United 

 States, and the paucity of her numbers, has 

 been occasionally remarked upon. Owing to 

 causes she could not control, her settlement has 

 been, until recently, comparatively slow. But 

 her population exceeds that of seven of the 

 sixteen States that composed the Union when 

 the census of 1790 was taken under the new 

 Constitution ; and six of the thirteen original 

 States had fewer numbers when they formed 

 the Constitution. Bights of sovereignty and 

 liberty depend not upon numbers. 



" It is quite true that her limits comprehend a 

 part of the territory to which the title was ac- 

 quired by the United States from Spain. But 



it is also true that a part of the consideration 

 for the cession was a reservation to the inhab- 

 itants of the right to admission into the Federal 

 Union upon terms of equality ; and it was in 

 view of this right that most of the inhabitants 

 remained there. If their number has been 

 increased by subsequent immigration, it was 

 mostly of citizens from others of the United 

 States, who were lineal inheritors of the glories 

 and fruits of the American Revolution. 



" In pursuance of this stipulation, and of the 

 established policy of the country, they were 

 admitted into the Union ; and, in the act of 

 admission, Florida was expressly recognized 

 and 'declared to be a State,' and 'admitted 

 into the Union on an equal footing with the 

 original States in all respects whatever.' 



"In the exercise of her equal right in the 



Hunter on the 14th of August, 1850, with a motion for leave 

 t have it spread upon the journal of the Senate : 



We, the undersigned Senators, deeply impressed with the 

 importance of the occasion, and with a solemn sense of the 

 responsibility under which we are acting, respectfully sub- 

 mit the following protest against the bill admitting Califor- 

 nia as a State into this Union, and request that it may be 

 entered upon the journal of the Senate. We feel that it is 

 not enough to have resisted in debate alone a bill so fraught 

 with mischief to the Union and the States which we repre- 

 sent, with all the resources of argument which we possessed, 

 but that it is also due to ourselves, the people whose inter- 

 ests have been intrusted to our care, and to posterity, which, 

 even in its most distant generations, may feel its conse- 

 quences, to leave, in whatever form may be most solemn 

 and enduring, a memorial of the opposition which we have 

 made to this measure, and of the reasons by which we have 

 been governed. Upon the pages of a journal which the 

 Constitution requires to be kept so long as the Senate may- 

 have an existence, we desire to place the reasons upon which 

 we are willing to be judged by generations living and yet to 

 come, for our opposition to a bill whose consequences may 

 be so durable and portentous as to make it an object of deep 

 interest to all who may come after us. 



We have dissented from this bill because it gives the sanc- 

 tion of law, and thus imparts validity to the unauthorized 

 action of a portion of the inhabitants of California, by which 

 an odious discrimination is made against the property of the 

 fifteen slaveholding States of the Union, who are thus de- 

 prived of that position of equality which the Constitution 

 so manifestly designs, and wnich constitutes the only sure 

 and stable foundation upon which this Union can repose. 



Because the right of the slaveholding States to a common 

 and equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union has been 

 defeated by a system of measures which, without the au- 

 thority of precedent, of law, or of the Constitution, were 

 manifestly contrived for that purpose, and which Congress 

 must sanction and adopt, should this bill become a law. In 

 santioning this system of measures, this Government will 

 admit that the inhabitants of its territories, whether per- 

 manent or transient, and whether lawfully or unlawfully 

 occupying the same, may form a State without the previous 

 authority of law ; without even the partial security of a ter- 

 ritorial organization formed by Congress ; without any legal 

 oensus or other sufficient evidence of their possessing the 

 number of citizens necessary to authorize the representation 

 which they may claim ; and without any of those safeguards 

 about the ballot-box which can only be provided by law, 

 and which are necessary to ascertain the true sense of a 

 people. It will admit, too, that Congress, having refused to 

 provide a government except upon the condition of exclud- 

 ing slavery by law, the executive branch of this Govern- 

 ment may, at its own discretion, invite such inhabitants to 

 meet in convention under such rules as it or its agents may 

 prescribe, and to form a constitution affecting not only their 

 own rights, but those also of fifteen States of the Confeder- 

 acy, by including territory with the purpose of excluding 

 those Htates from its enjoyment, and without regard to the 

 natural fitness of boundary, or any of the considerations 

 which should properly determine the limits of a State. It 

 will also admit that the convention thus called into exist- 

 ence by the Executive may be paid by him out of the funds 

 of the United States without the sanction of Congress, in 

 violation not only of the plain provisions of the Constitution, 

 but of those principles of obvious propriety which would 

 forbid any act calculated to make that convention dependent 



upon it ; and last, but not least, in the series of measures 

 which this Government must adopt and sanction in passing 

 this bill, is the release of the authority of the United States 

 by the Executive alone to a government thus formed, and 

 not presenting even sufficient evidence of its having the as- 

 sent of a majority of the people for whom it was designed. 

 With a Tiew of all these considerations, the undersigned are 

 constrained to believe that this Government could never be 

 brought to admit a State presenting itself under such cir- 

 cumstances, if it were not for the purpose of excluding the 

 people of the slaveholding States from all opportunity of 

 settling with their property in that territory. 



Because, to vote for a bill passed under such circum- 

 stances, would be to agree to a principle which may exclude 

 forever hereafter, as it does now, the States which we rep- 

 resent, from all enjoyment of the common territory of the 

 Union a principle which destroys the equal rights of their 

 constituents, the equality of their States in the Confederacy, 

 the equal dignity of those whom they represent as men and 

 as citizens in the eye of the law, and their equal title to the 

 protection of the Government and the Constitution. 



Because the admission of California as a State into the 

 Union without any previous reservation assented to by her 

 of the public domain, might involve an actual surrender of 

 that domain to, or at all events places its future disposal at 

 the mercy of that State, as no reservation in the bill can be 

 binding upon her until she assents to it, and as her dissent 

 "hereafter" would in no manner affect or impair the act of 

 her admission. 



Because all the propositions have been rejected which 

 have been made to obtain either a recognition of the right 

 of the slaveholding States to a common enjoyment of all the 

 territory of the United States, or to a fair division of that 

 territory between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding 

 States of the Union ; every effort having failed which has 

 been made to obtain a fair division of the territory proposed 

 to be brought in as the State of California. 



But lastly, we dissent from this bill, and solemnly protest 

 against its passage, because, in sanctioning measures so con- 

 trary to former precedent, to obvious policy, to the spirit 

 and intent of the Constitution of the United States, for the 

 purpose of excluding the slaveholding States from the terri- 

 tory thus to be erected into a State, this Government in 

 effect declares that the exclusion of slavery from the terri- 

 tory of the United States is an object so high and important 

 as to justify a disregard, not only of all the principles of 

 sound policy, but also of the Constitution itself. Against 

 this conclusion we must now and forever protest, as it is 

 destructive of the safety and liberties of those whose rights 

 have been committed to our care, fatal to the peace and 

 equality of the States which we represent, and must lead, 

 if persisted in, to the dissolution of that Confederacy in 

 which the slaveholding States have never sought more than 

 equality, and in which they will not be content to remain 



WithleSS - J.M. MASON, \ Yirainia 



R. M. T. HUNTER, f ytr O mt 



IAENWELL, fA-aO"*** 



II. L. TURNEY, Tennessee. 

 PIERRE SOULE, Louisiana. A 

 JEFFERSON DAVIS, Mississippi. 

 DAVID R. ATCHISON, Missouri. 

 JACKSON MORTON, \ 

 D. L. YULEE, f 



SENATE CHAMBER, August 13, 1650. 



