Author: Edward Everett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Kansas-Nebraska Act (United States)
Languages : en
Pages : 24
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Book Description
Author: Everett Everett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781331075301
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 20
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Book Description
Excerpt from Speech of Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, Feb 8, 1854, Nebraska and Kansas Territorial Bill Mr. Everett said: Mr. President, I intimated yesterday that if time had been allowed, I should have been glad to submit to the Senate my views at some length in relation to some of the grave constitutional and political principles and questions involved in the measure before us. Even for questions of a lower order, those of a merely historical character, the time which has elapsed since this bill, in its present form, was brought into the Senate, which I think is but a fortnight ago yesterday, has hardly been sufficient, for one not previously possessed of the information, to acquaint myself fully with the details belonging to the subject before us, even to these which relate to subordinate parts of it, such as our Indian relations. Who will undertake to say how they will be affected by the measure now before the Senate, either under the provisions of the bill in that respect as it stood yesterday, or as it will stand now that all the sections relative to the Indians have been stricken out? And then, sir, with respect to that other and greater subject, the question of slavery as connected with our recent territorial acquisitions, it would take a person more than a fortnight to even read through the voluminous debates since 1848, the knowledge of which is necessary for a thorough comprehension of this important and delicate subject. For these reasons, sir, I shall not undertake at this time to discuss any of these larger questions. I rise for a much more limited purposeto speak for myself, and without authority to speak for anybody else, as a friend and supporter of the compromises of 1850, and to inquire whether it is my duty, and how far it is the duty of others who agree with me in that respect, out of fidelity to those compromises, to support the bill which is now on your table, awaiting the action of the Senate. This, I feel, is a narrow question; but this is the question which I propose, at no very great length, to consider at the present time. I will, however, before I enter upon this subject, say, that the main question involved in the passage of a bill of this kind is well calculated to exalt and expand the mind. We are about to take a first step in laying the foundations of two new States, of two sister independent Republics, hereafter to enter into the Union, which already embraces thirty-one of these sovereign States, and which, no doubt, in the, course of the present century, will include a much larger number. I think Lord Bacon gives the second place among the great of the earth to the founders of States - Conditores imperiorum. And though it may seem to us that we are now legislating for a remote part of the unsubdued wilderness, yet the time will come, and that not a very long time, when these scarcely existing territories, when these almost empty wastes, will be the abode of hundreds and thousands of kindred, civilized fellow-men and fellow-citizens. Yes, sir, the time is not far distant, probably, when Kansas and Nebraska, now unfamiliar names to us all, will sound to the ears of their inhabitants as Virginia, and Massachusetts, and Kentucky, and Ohio, and the names of the other old States, do to their children. Sir, these infant Territories, if they may even at present be called by that name, occupy a most important position in the geography of this continent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
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