If I am wrong, the Senator will correct me.

Did the Senator from Iowa, then, entertain the idea that the Missouri
prohibition had been superseded? No, sir, neither he nor any other man
here, so far as could be judged from any discussion, or statement, or
remark, had received this notion.

Well, on the 4th day of January, the Committee on Territories, through
their chairman, the Senator from Illinois, made a report on the
territorial organization of Nebraska; and that report was accompanied by
a bill. Now, sir, on that 4th day of January, just thirty days ago, did
the Committee on Territories entertain the opinion that the compromise
acts of 1850 superseded the Missouri prohibition? If they did, they were
very careful to keep it to themselves. We will judge the committee by
their own report. What do they say in that? In the first place they
describe the character of the controversy, in respect to the Territories
acquired from Mexico. They say that some believed that a Mexican law
prohibiting slavery was in force there, while others claimed that the
Mexican law became inoperative at the moment of acquisition, and that
slave-holders could take their slaves into the Territory and hold
them there under the provisions of the Constitution. The Territorial
Compromise acts, as the committee tell us, steered clear of these
questions. They simply provided that the States organized out of these
Territories might come in with or without slavery, as they should elect,
but did not affect the question whether slaves could or could not be
introduced before the organization of State governments. That question
was left entirely to judicial decision.

Well, sir, what did the committee propose to do with the Nebraska
Territory? In respect to that, as in respect to the Mexican Territory,