the territory acquired since the passage of that ordinance.[1] From their point of view the people of the southern states were defrauded of their inheritance in the vast possessions of the federal Union by the exclusion of slavery from any part of the common territory of the United States. They claimed the right to go whither they pleased, and to carry their human chattels with them, fiercely combating the opposition of the northern men that negroes were not property, in the usual acceptation of the term.
It had been agreed that congress should adjourn on Monday the 14th, and the policy of the opposition was to defeat the Oregon bill by preventing the ayes and noes from being taken. Almost the whole of Saturday was consumed in debate, in which Calhoun Butler of South Carolina, Houston, Yulee, Davis, and other eminent southerners, argued the question over the same familiar ground with no other object than the consumption of time. Benton only had replied at any length.
In the evening session, after a speech by Webster, the debate was continued till after midnight, when a motion was made to adjourn, which was defeated Butler then moved to go into executive session, when an altercation arose as to the object of the motion at that time,[2] and the motion being ruled out of order,
- ↑ Mason of Virginia said: 'The ordinance of 1787 was a compact formed between the United states government and the people of the north-west territory before the constitution was formed. The history of that ordinance is shrouded in secrecy, as the journals were not made public. But it is well known that there was much conflict. The item concerning slavery was the result of compromise Some states came into the measure with difficulty and some with a protest. Virginia would never have been a party to that compact, never would have made the cession she did, had she supposed her right to extend her population whither she would, would have been denied. . .There are now 3,000,000 of slaves penned up in the slave states, and they are an increasing population, increasing faster than the whites. And are the slaves to be always confined within what may be deemed their prison states?' Cong. Globe, 1847–8, 903.
- ↑ Thornton, in his History of the Provisional Government, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1874, 91, gives some particulars. He says Butler made the motion to go into executive session for the purpose of inquiring into the conduct of Benton, who he had alleged communicated to the reporter of the New York Herald some proceedings done in secret session; that Butler called Benton's act dishonorable; and that Benton sprang toward him in a rage, with clinched
