The structure, too, of the Nebraska Bill is very peculiar. The people are
to decide the question of slavery for themselves; but when they are to
decide, or how they are to decide, or whether, when the question is once
decided, it is to remain so or is to be subject to an indefinite
succession of new trials, the law does not say. Is it to be decided by
the first dozen settlers who arrive there, or is it to await the arrival
of a hundred? Is it to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of
the Legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort? To these questions
the law gives no answer. There is a mystery about this; for when a member
proposed to give the Legislature express authority to exclude slavery, it
was hooted down by the friends of the bill. This fact is worth
remembering. Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska
to exclude slavery from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the
question to be decided by voting in some way or other. But the
Missourians are awake, too. They are within a stone's-throw of the
contested ground. They hold meetings and pass resolutions, in which not
the slightest allusion to voting is made. They resolve that slavery
already exists in the Territory; that more shall go there; that they,
remaining in Missouri, will protect it, and that abolitionists shall be
hung or driven away.
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