The Judge rather insinuated that I had found it convenient to forget the
Washington territorial law passed in 1853. This was a division of Oregon,
organizing the northern part as the Territory of Washington. He asserted
that by this act the Ordinance of '87, theretofore existing in Oregon,
was repealed; that nearly all the members of Congress voted for it,
beginning in the House of Representatives with Charles Allen of
Massachusetts, and ending with Richard Yates of Illinois; and that he
could not understand how those who now opposed the Nebraska Bill so voted
there, unless it was because it was then too soon after both the great
political parties had ratified the compromises of 1850, and the
ratification therefore was too fresh to be then repudiated.
Now I had seen the Washington act before, and I have carefully examined
it since; and I aver that there is no repeal of the Ordinance of '87, or
of any prohibition of slavery, in it. In express terms, there is
absolutely nothing in the whole law upon the subject--in fact, nothing to
lead a reader to think of the subject. To my judgment it is equally free
from everything from which repeal can be legally implied; but, however
this may be, are men now to be entrapped by a legal implication,
extracted from covert language, introduced perhaps for the very purpose
of entrapping them? I sincerely wish every man could read this law quite
through, carefully watching every sentence and every line for a repeal of
the Ordinance of '87, or anything equivalent to it.
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