banner

Secession Era Editorials Project

Furman University Department of History

banner
 

Michigan and the Nebraska Question.

Detroit, Michigan, Free Press [Democratic]

(3 February 1854)

Let our democratic representatives in Congress dare to misrepresent the freemen of Michigan upon this question, and they will sink their party and themselves into an abyss deeper and blacker than the pit of Acheron itself. -- Detroit Advertiser.

We have no apprehension that any of our members of Congress will "misrepresent the freemen of Michigan upon this question." Not one of them, we trow, is so made up as to become affrighted at the raven's croaking. They are all democrats, and stand upon the democratic platform. Gen. Cass will vindicate those principles which he has long held. A private letter from him, received three days since, refers to Mr. Douglass' bill, and declares, "I shall march up to my principles, and meet the question boldly. * * * * I repeat, I shall meet the question, for I believe that Congress has not the slightest power over slavery either in State or a Territory."

The principles to which Gen. Cass refers have been through the ordeal in Michigan, and Gen. Cass along with them; and they and he came out bright and triumphant. The public sentiment is settled in respect to them, and no effort at agitation, either on the part of abolition, whig or "independent" papers, can move that sentiment from the firm base on which it stands.

[<<Previous Editorial][Next Editorial>>]