WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1856
379
conduct us safely out of the difficulty in which we are now placed. I most devoutly hope for such a consummation. The condition of Kansas at this time seems to be the exciting cause of our difficulty. That Territory, to say the least, is most unfortunate, because it has led to a most calamitous state of things in that devoted Territory. This would not have been so, if my counsel had been followed. When the Territory was organ- ized, it was nothing but a wilderness, without an inhabitant. You talked then of transferring sovereignty to the people of that barren and wilderness region when there were no people there. You said that, if they went there, they necessarily inherited sover- eignty, and that it was legitimate for them to exercise it. Could sovereignty be given to that people by Congress unless Congress had the sovereign power themselves? If Congress have the in- herent power to legislate in regard to the Territories on all sub- jects, slavery included, they have the power to control it. I have always contended that Congress has nothing to do with the ques- tion of slavery-that it is a creature of the State sovereignty, subject to the State jurisdiction, and that Congress had no control over it. If the people of the Territory are sovereign, by what means did they become so? Congress created them into a community, and granted to them certain powers. Congress could not grant those powers if it did not possess them itself. They have no organic law-they have none of the attributes of sovereignty which are not conferred by Congress. Congress must have had all the power which it delegated to them, or the act was nullity. They have no law which is not in subordination to the act of Congress. When it was proposed to repeal the Missouri Compromise, by passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, I took the position that Congress had no power to confer upon the people of the Territories any authority which it did not itself constitutionally possess; and that the powers granted were subject to resumption by Congress; and that upon the subject of slavery, or any other subject on which they might pass laws, the question would necessarily revert to the Congress of the United States, and would produce the very state of things which we now perceive. The object was declared to be to divest Congress of all the trouble of governing the Terri- tories-to allay the agitation on the subject of slavery, so that it should never again present itself in these Halls, but be quietly settled by the people of the Territories. I said then that this hope would prove to be delusive, because Congress had control over the Territories, and could revise their laws, and the subject would
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