ited States. it ought to be abrogated.
The legislation of 1850 abrogated the Missouri compromise, so far as the
country embraced within the limits of Utah and New Mexico was covered
by the slavery restriction. It is true, that those acts did not in
terms and by name repeal the act of 1820, as originally adopted, or as
extended by the resolutions annexing Texas in 1845, any more than the
report of the Committee on Territories proposed to repeal the same acts
this session. But the acts of 1850 did authorize the people of those
Territories to exercise "all rightful powers of legislation consistent
with the Constitution," not excepting the question of slavery; and did
provide that, when those Territories should be admitted into the Union,
they should be received with or without slavery as the people thereof
might determine at the date of their admission. These provisions were
in direct conflict with a clause in the former enactment, declaring that
slavery should be forever prohibited in any portion of said Territories,
and hence rendered such clause inoperative and void to the extent of
such conflict. This was an inevitable consequence, resulting from the
provisions in those acts, which gave the people the right to decide the
slavery question for themselves, in conformity with the Constitution.
It was not necessary to go further and declare that certain previous
enactments, which were incompatible with the exercise of the powers
conferred in the bills, are hereby repealed. The very act of
granting those powers and rights has the legal effect of removing all
obstructions to the exercise of them by the people, as prescribed
in those Territorial bills. Following that example, the Committee on
Territories did not consider it necessary to declare the eighth section
of the Missouri act repealed. We were content to organize Nebraska in
the precise language of the Utah and New Mexico bills. Our object was
to leave the people entirely free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions and internal concerns in their own way, under the
Constitution; and we deemed it wise to accomplish that object in the
exact terms in which the same thing had been done in Utah and New Mexico
by the acts of 1850. This was the principle upon which the committee
voted; and our bill was supposed, and is now believed, to have been in
accordance with it. When doubts were raised whether the bill did fully
carry out the principle laid down in the report, ame