accept what in that line was offered to them by the dominant party.

His speech in the Senate, March 25, 1861, was a remarkable effort in
that respect. Mr. Breckinridge had previously spoken, and had declared
that: "Whatever settlement may be made of other questions, this must be
settled upon terms that will give them [the Southern States] either a
right, in common with others, to emigrate into all the territory, or
will secure to them their rights on a principle of equitable division."

Mr. Douglas replied: "Now, under the laws as they stand, in every
Territory of the United States, without any exception, a Southern man
can go with his Slave-property on equal terms with all other property.
* * * Every man, either from the North or South, may go into the
Territories with his property on terms of exact equality, subject to the
local law; and Slave-property stands on an equal footing with all other
kinds of property in the Territories of the United States. It now
stands on an equal footing in all the Territories for the first time.

"I have shown you that, up to 1859, little more than a year ago, it was
prohibited in part of the Territories. It is not prohibited anywhere
now. For the first time, under Republican rule, the Southern States
have secured that equality of rights in the Territories for their
Slave-property which they have been demanding so long."

He held that the doctrine of Congressional prohibition in all the
Territories, as incorporated in the Wilmot proviso, had now been
repudiated by the Republicans of both Houses of Congress, who had "all
come over to Non-intervention and Popular Sovereignty;" that the "Wilmot
proviso is given up; that Congressional prohibition is given up; that
the aggressive policy is repudiated; and hereafter the Southern man and