"
"I submit," said he, "that these two great facts--these startling,
tremendous facts--that they have abandoned their aggressive policy in
the Territories, and are willing to give guarantees in the States, ought
to be accepted as an evidence of a salutary change in Public Opinion at
the North. All I would ask now of the Republican Party is, that they
would insert in the Constitution the same principle that they have
carried out practically in the Territorial Bills for Colorado, Dakota,
and Nevada, by depriving Congress of the power hereafter to do what
there cannot be a man of them found willing to do this year; but we
cannot ask them to back down too much. I think they have done quite as
much within one year, within three months after they have elected a
President, as could be expected."
That Douglas and his followers were also patriotically willing to
sacrifice a favorite theory in the face of a National peril, was brought
out, at the same time, by Mr. Baker, when he said to Mr. Douglas: "I
desire to suggest (and being a little of a Popular Sovereignty man, it
comes gracefully from me) that others of us have backed down too, from
the idea that Congress has not the power to prohibit Slavery in the
Territories; and we are proposing some of us in the Crittenden
proposition, and some in the Amendment now before the Senate--to
prohibit Slavery by the Constitution itself, in the Territories;"--and
by Mr.
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