ADMINISTRATION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE. 315
Systematic and strenuous efforts were made to influence Congress. The legislatures of the northern states were invoked to pass resolves against the passage of the act ; inflammatory appeals and the grossest misrepresentations were made to the people. The agitation was largely increased by the clergy, and, in March, 1854, a petition, signed by 3,050 ministers of New England, of the different denominations, against the passage of the bill, was presented in the Senate, in which they protested, "in the name of Almighty God, and in his presence," against the passage of the bill, and described it as a measure " ex- posing us to the righteous judgment of the Almighty." The bill passed the Senate March 3, by a vote of yeas 37, nays 14. The bill was not taken up in the House until May 8. A violent struggle was made against it. It was dis- cussed until May 24, when it passed by a vote of 113 yeas, 100 nays. In the discussion of the bill much more acrimony was exhibited than in any previous discussion of the subject. The power of the Northt-rn extremists in the House was largely increased. The two great statesmen, Messrs. Clay and Webster, who had been influential in the passage of the compromise acts in 1850, were both dead. Mr. Calhoun died pending the discussion of the meas- ures. The charge of defending and applying the principles of this great measure of conciliation was left to other able and distinguished statesmen of the time, but the loss of the commanding personal influence throughout the country of these leading statesmen was severely felt.
President Pierce, in his annual message in December, 1855, made a brief statement of the facts in regard to the legislation of 1850, and added :
" When, more recently, it became requisite to organize the territories of Kan- sas and Nebraska, it was natural and legitimate, if not the inevitable conse- quence of previous events and legislation, that the same great and sound principles which had already been applied to Utah and New Mexico should be applied to them ; that they should stand exempt from the restrictions pro- posed in the act relative to the state of Missouri. These restrictions were in the estimation of many thoughtful men null from the beginning, unauthorized by the constitution, contrary to the treaty stipulations for the cession of Louis- iana, and inconsistent with the equality of these states. They had been strip- ped of all moral authority by persistent efforts to secure their indirect repeal through contradictory enactments. They had been practically abrogated by the legislation attending the organization of Utah and New Mexico and Wash- ington. If any vitality remained in them it would have been taken away, in effect, by the new territorial acts, in the form originally proposed to the Senate at the first session of the last Congress. It was manly and ingenuous, as well as patriotic and just, to do this directly and plainly, and thus relieve the statute book of an act which might be of possible future injury, but of no pos- sible future benefit ; and the measure of the repeal was the final 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. * * * xhe measure could not be withstood on 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 imag- ined 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 had never ceased, from the time of the en- actment of the restrictive provision to the present day, to denounce and con- demn it ; who have constantly refused to complete it by needful supplementary egislation; who have spared no exertion to deprive it of moral force; who
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