423I FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE I9TH CENTURY 1 25 



its provisions for the protection of slave property as well as 

 property of other kinds." In 1857 the United States Su- 

 preme Court, in the Dred Scott case, " decided against 

 Douglas and popular sovereignty, and for the full vigor of 

 the Calhoun theory." It was through its hold upon the 

 South that the Calhoun doctrine furnished "the connecting 

 link between the theory of state sovereignty and its prac- 

 tical enforcement by secession.'^"^ 



The recent purchase of the Danish West Indies by the 

 United States was preceded by several earlier attempts to 

 consummate such a transaction. After Secretary of State 

 Seward had broached the subject to the Danish minister at 

 Washington in 1865, Denmark offered, two years later, to 

 sell to the United States the two islands of St. Thomas and 

 St. John for the sum of $5,000,000 each and indicated her 

 willingness to cede St. Croix for a like price. -An agree- 

 ment was reached for the sale of the former two for 

 ^7,SOO,ooo. Both Houses of the Danish Diet gave their 

 approval."* " Seward gave his unofficial consent to the 

 holding of an election on the islands to ascertain the will 

 of the inhabitants."^ The plebiscite on the. islands " carried 

 in favor of annexation by the nearly unanimous vote of 

 1,244 to 22." The project, however, was frustrated by the 

 opposition of the United States Senate, or rather, that of 

 the Foreign Relations Committee under Senator Charles 

 Sumner, the " implacable enemy of President Johnson.""" 



^"8 The foregoing quotations are from Alex. Johnston's article on 

 Popular Sovereignty, in Lalor's Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Po- 

 litical Economy and of the Political History of the United States. 



1"* W. F. Johnson, The Story of the Danish Islands, in The North 

 American Review, Sept., 1916, vol. cciv, pp. 379-384. 



i*"^ Seward had at first positively refused to consider any plebiscite 

 but finally gave his unofficial consent in deference to Denmark's 

 insistence on a popular sanction of the transfer (ibid., p. 384). The 

 Danish insistence on the plebiscite was due to Denmark's interest in 

 the employment of the plebiscite in international affairs in view of 

 her hope of regaining the Northern part of Schleswig on the basis 

 of Art. V of the Treaty of Prague of 1866. which had prescribed a 

 plebiscite in that section. On this point see also Wambaugh, pp. 

 149-150. 



i"* Johnson, pp. 385-386. 



