consummation
and complete recognition of the principle that no portion of the United
States shall undertake through assumption of the powers of the General
Government to dictate the social institutions of any other portion.

The scope and effect of the language of repeal were not left in doubt.
It was declared in terms to be "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."

The measure could not be withstood upon its merits alone. It was
attacked with violence on the false or delusive pretext that it
constituted a breach of faith. Never was objection more utterly
destitute of substantial justification. When before was it imagined by
sensible men that a regulative or declarative statute, whether enacted
ten or forty years ago, is irrepealable; that an act of Congress is
above the Constitution? If, indeed, there were in the facts any cause to
impute bad faith, it would attach to those only who have never ceased,
from the time of the enactment of the restrictive provision to the
present day, to denounce and condemn it; who have constantly refused
to complete it by needful supplementary legislation; who have spared no
exertion to deprive it of moral force; who have themselves again and
again attempted its repeal by the enactment of incompatible provisions,
and who, by the inevitable reactionary effect of their own violence
on the subject, awakened the country to perception of the true
constitutional principle of leaving the matter involved to the
discretion of the people of the respective existing or incipient States.

It is not pretended that this principle or any other precludes the
possibility of evils in practice, disturbed, as political action is
liable to be, by human passions. No form of government is exempt from
inconveniences; but in this case they are the result of the abuse, and
not of the legitimate exercise, of the powers reserved or conferred in
the organization of a Territory. They are not to be charged to the great
principle of popular sovereignty. On the contrary, they disappear before
the intelligence and patriotism of the people, exerting through the
ballot box their peaceful and silent but irresistible power.

If the friends of the Constitution are to have anot