Download or read book Speech of Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, on the Oregon Bill written by Jefferson Davis and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-27 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Speech of Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, on the Oregon Bill: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, July 12, 1848 If the right to migrate with their property to territory belonging to the United States attaches equally to all their citizens; and if, as I have been credibly informed, citizens have migrated with their slaves into Oregon; to pass the bill before us without amendment would be abolition of slavery by the Federal Government. Entertaining this opinion I submitted an amendment to meet the case distinctly and singly. Now, for the first time in our history, has Congress, without the color of compact or compromise, claimed to discriminate in the settlement of Territories against the citizens of one portion of the Union and in favor of another. This, taken in connection with all which is passing around us, must excite the attention of Senators to the fact, and forces on my mind the conclusion that her-in is sought to be established a precedent for future use. Here upon the threshhold we must resist, or forever abandon, the claim to equality of right, and consent to be a marked caste, doomed, in the progress of national growth, to be dwarfed into helplessness and political dependence. As equals the States came into the Union, and, by the articles of confederation, equal rights, privileges, and immunities were secured to the citizens of each; yet, for asserting in this case that the Federal Government shall not authorize the destruction of such equality, we have been accused of wishing to claim for the citizens of the Southern States unusual rights under the Constitution. This accusation comes badly from those who insist on provisions for exclusion; and cannot find its application to a demand that nothing shall be done to affect the constitutional relations of citizens or the constitutional rights of property. We do not ask of the Federal Government to sign new privileges, but to forbear from interfering with existing rights; rights which existed anterior to the formation of the Constitution, -which were recognized in that instrument, and which it is made the duty of the Federal Government, as the agent of our Union, to protect and defend. Such obligations as belong to other species of property, nor more nor less, we claim as due to our property in slaves. Nor can this claim be denied without denying the property-right to which it attaches. This, it has been contended, is the creation of local law, and does not extend beyond the limits for which such laws were made, and, with an air of concession, we are told that it is not proposed to interfere with slavery as it exists in the States, because the Constitution secures it there. Sir, slavery is sustained but was not created by the local law of the States in which it exists; nor did those States ask of the Federal Government to secure or maintain it within their borders; beyond their own jurisdiction, and there only, could the protection of federal laws be required. Before the formation of our confederacy slavery existed in the colonies, now the States of the Union; and but for the Union of the States, would have no legal recognition beyond the limits of the territory of each. But when the fathers of the Republic had achieved its independence, they sought to draw closer the bonds of union, and to remove all cause for discord and contention. For this holy purpose, they met in council, and formed the Constitution under which we live. This compact of union changed the relation of the States to each other in many important particulars, and gave to property and intercourse a national character. Property in persons held to service was recognized; in various and distinct forms it became property under the Constitution of the United States, was made co extensive with the supremacy of the federal laws, its existence subject only to the legislation of sovereign States possessing powers not drawn from, hut above, the Constitution. Thus provision was m.