pplied to the payment of the public debt, leaving in the treasury,
unexpended, about $7,000,000.00. The financial and political
condition of the United States was never more prosperous than when
this Congress met. The disturbance of this condition can be
attributed only to the passage of the act to organize the territories
of Nebraska and Kansas approved by President Franklin Pierce, May
30, 1854. The 32nd section of that act contained this provision:--

"That the constitution and all laws of the United States which are
locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within
the said Territory of Kansas as elsewhere within the United States,
except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission
of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred
and twenty, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-
intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories,
as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty,
commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared
inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this
act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to
exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly
free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own
way, subject only to the constitution of the United States:
_Provided_, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to
revive or put in force any law or regulation which may have existed
prior to the act of March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, either
protecting, establishing, prohibiting or abolishing slavery."

This act contained a similar clause relating to Nebraska.

To understand the effect of this provision it is necessary to review
the status of slavery in the United States under the constitution
and existing laws.

The articles of Confederation make no mention of slavery or slaves.
During and after the Revolution the general feeling was that slavery
would be gradually abolished by the several states. In the Ordinance
of 1787 for the government of the territories of the United States,
northwest of the Ohio River, it was expressly provided that:

"There shall be no slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said
territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the
parties shall have been duly convicted; provided, always, that any
person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawful