Secession Era Editorials Project

The Clayton Amendment to the Nebraska Bill.--

New Orleans, Louisiana, Bee [Whig]

(1 June 1854)

This important amendment, which was omitted by the House of Representatives, reads as follows:

"Provided, The right of suffrage and of holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the United States."

This omission is very objectionable, and is calculated to lower the value of the prerogative of suffrage, already considered low enough among the best men in the country. It places emigrants, just from Europe, without having had opportunity or time to study and become acquainted with the workings of our institutions, on a political par with those who have lived here all their lives! There is neither safety, justice or policy, in this; and we do not think any intelligent and honest foreign-born citizen can be found who will say that there is. However, the right of suffrage is not regarded as half as valuable as it was twenty years ago. What the next twenty years will bring forth the future must develop. Good fruits, we fervently hope.

As the matter now stands every actual resident of the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, white and twenty-one years of age, is entitled to vote and is eligible to office, at the first election leading to the formation of a new government! This is carrying out the principle of "Squatter Sovereignty" with a vengeance. This will be a happy country when it comes under the administration of such sovereigns.

The clause of the bill which caused nearly all the strife and contention is included in the 14th section, and reads in this wise:

That the constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the paid Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere in the United States; except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the compromise measures, and is hereby declared inoperative.

According to our telegraphic dispatches, published yesterday morning, the Nebraska bill, as amended by the House, passed the Senate on the 26th by a vote of 35 to 13. It, of course, immediately received the signature of the President. Well, who cares? If there's a Southerner, South of Mason [amp;] Dixon's line, disconnected with politics and partisanship, who has cared one straw about the termination of the struggle, we have yet to learn his name. In the South all has been indifference and apathy. In the North, fanaticism and ferocity. Which section in the gainer? Either? We think not.