Secession Era Editorials Project

The Nebraska and Kansas Bill.--

New Orleans, Louisiana, Bee [Whig]

(16 May 1854)

Our Congressional news of to-day, although it occupies but little space owing to the rule of condensation that invariably prevails in this office, will be found extremely interesting and important. On the 8th inst., very shortly after the House convened, Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, moved that the House go into Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, boldly avowing his purpose, in case he was sustained by a majority of the Committee, to lay aside all business in order, until the bills providing for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska were reached. After a call of the House to which, finally, one hundred and ninety-seven members answered to their names -- thirty four members were absent -- the motion to go into Committee was put and decided in the affirmative, by a vote of one hundred and nine ayes to eighty-eight nays. Mr. Richardson then successively moved that the bills on the calendar, fifteen in number, be laid aside. In an hour or two the calendar was cleared, and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill reached and taken up. Thereupon Mr. Richardson, stating that he did not desire or intend to discuss the bill on its merits at that time, proposed a substitute, which, with one material exception, was the same as the Senate bill; only that it omits the Clayton proviso, which prohibited unnaturalized foreigners from being allowed to take the public lands of those territories without price, or even probationary residence.

The session of the House was quite long, reaching until four o'clock, during most of which time the intensest of excitement prevailed. The friends of the bill think they can carry it through the House at an early day, by having recourse to the severest of parliamentary tactics. Its enemies have hopes of defeating it, although we cannot see how they can succeed, judging from the decided majority that voted to take it up out of its regular order. It is said, although with what truth we know not at present, that the omission of the Clayton amendment has alienated from the bill several of its strongest supporters. We shouldn't wonder. A great many of the Representatives are said to be opposed to the unrestricted giving away of the public domain even to citizens, much less to those who have not acquired any rights of citizenship under our constitution and laws.

For ourselves we do not care one straw, as we have before intimated on several occasions, how the struggle terminates. The bill was got up by Senator Douglas to advance his own individual aggrandisement and ambition, and, in his first leading speech after the introduction of the bill in the Senate, he admitted that it only reaffirmed an existing fact -- only re-instated that the Compromise measures of 1850 were Constitutional and must be carried out! We, of the South, want no such re-affirmations. They are all arrant humbugs. They can do us no good in any contingency that is likely to arise in the future political history of the United States. If Greenland belonged to the United States, some Senator or Representative might get up and move that slavery be permitted in Greenland, and then turn round and call upon us to support him for the Presidency, on account of the great services he had rendered us! There is just as much likelihood of slavery being carried to Greenland as to Nebraska; and the gratitude of the Southern people should be so gauged as to meet both contingencies, for there is no telling what may not be done in these days of wild and indiscriminate annexation. And, besides the principle being entirely right in the abstract, although it is practically worthless, we may be called upon, in case of the annexation of Greenland, to fight, bleed, die, or dissolve the Union, if our Northern brethren refuse to allow us to transport our slaves to that lovely hyperborean region of snow, ice, frosts, "and nothing else," save Esquimaux and seals.

From telegraphic dispatches we infer that the debates on the days following the calling up of the bill must have been unusually engrossing, if not stormy and violent. On the night of the 11th inst. the House did not adjourn at all, and members took their breakfasts in their seats! Remarkable powers of endurance. It is inferable from this desperate procedure that the friends of the measure have determined upon wearing out, if possible, its enemies. We hope all will have "a good time of it." So far as we are concerned, we feel somewhat like the Arkansas woman did when her husband and a bear were engaged in a terrible bear fight. All she wanted was fair play. She didn't care a brass farthing which whipped.