Samuel Galloway to Abraham Lincoln, 1 September 18581
Columbus Sept 1. 1858My dear SirI have carefully read the entended report of your discussion with D at Ottawa and Freeport.2 You have sustained yourself & the cause nobly at both places, but with special triumph
at Freeport– Your replies to the interrogatories propounded by D. are full, explicit
and in my proficient correct. My anti-slavery sentiments have that entent and no more, and I am generally regarded as an orthodox republican. My special object in writing is to call your attention to one fact in the history
of the Nebraska bill, with which you are probably familiar– May 20th 1854. Mr Mace of Indiana moved to add to the first section of the bill the words "and the territorial Legislature
shall have power to admit or exclude Slavery at any time by law"
"Mr Mace said he offered the amendment in good faith for the purpose of testing the good faith of Western members, especially who are voting for the bill3
Mr English asked his colleague if he could vote for the bill thus amended
Mr Mace I will
Amendment negatived Yeas 76 Nays 94
"It has occurred to me that the action of the party on this amendment would be a good reply to Douglass' plan, that our reason why they could not vote for Chase's Amendment was that it was the alternative of prohibiting or admitting was not presented4
Amendment negatived Yeas 76 Nays 94
"It has occurred to me that the action of the party on this amendment would be a good reply to Douglass' plan, that our reason why they could not vote for Chase's Amendment was that it was the alternative of prohibiting or admitting was not presented4
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His friends had that opportunity in the House, but would not accept the amendment, thus showing their want of good faith in popular sovreignty– I have not the Journal and cannot give the names of those who voted– If you are already conversant with
this proceeding my suggestion is unnecessary; if not you may advantageously use the
fact–
You did our cause incalculable advantage by eliciting answers from Douglass, as to
the admission of Kansas, even if she did not have 93000— and as to the power of Territorial Legislature to
prohibit Slavery5
That you may be equally ^as^ successful in your Coming discussions as in your past, is my sincere wish.
Yrs[Yours]Saml Galloway<Page 4>
N B[Nota Bene] I will send [this?] to my friend Medill of Chicago to be forwarded to youS G<Page 5>
[Envelope]
CHICAGO Ill[Illinois]
SEP[September] 6 1858Honl Abrm LincolnCare of Hon. J. GillespieEdwardsvilleIllinois.
SEP[September] 6 1858Honl Abrm LincolnCare of Hon. J. GillespieEdwardsvilleIllinois.
2Galloway is referring to the first two Lincoln-Douglas Debates, held at Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, and Freeport, Illinois, on August
27, 1858. Lincoln was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate. He ran against, and lost to, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent. See 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election.
First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois ; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois ; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois ; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-85, 557.
3Daniel Mace moved to insert the above-noted phrase into the Kansas-Nebraska Act to “expose this contradiction in doctrine, this fraud in the bill, this duplicity
among its supporters,” referring to the power of territorial legislatures to protect
slaveholders entering their territory and yet their lack of power to exclude slavery
from their territory.
Following the passage of the act without Mace’s proposed phrase, he joined with several
other representatives and senators and formed an association in Washington named “The Kansas Aid Society.” Many of the members were opposed to slavery and subscribed
various amounts of money. The group used circulars, especially in the northern states,
to highlight the dangers of admitting the Kansas Territory as a slave state and to
urge anyone who was antislavery to move to Kansas and vote against the institution.
Evansville Daily Journal (IN), 30 May 1854, 2:1; U.S. House Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Troubles in Kansas 34th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington: Cornelius Wendell, 1856), 829.
4On March 2, 1854, Salmon P. Chase in the U.S. Senate moved to amend the Kansas-Nebaska bill to “expressly declare that
the people of the Territory should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw fit.”
Senators rejected this amendment by a vote of 10 ayes to 36 nays. Lincoln argued
in the Freeport debate that Douglas should have supported this amendment, as it reflected
the true intent and meaning of the law to allow territories to determine their own
status of free or slave. Douglas claimed that he did not support the amendment to
allow the territories to exclude slavery because the act already gave them the power
to both introduce and exclude slavery, and that the amendment was simply a political
move. Daniel Mace’s amendment expanded Chase’s to explicitly include the right of
territories to both admit or exclude slavery. It was voted down.
Mace’s and Chase’s proposed amendments ultimately became Republican dogma, as indicated
in the platform adopted at the 1856 Republican National Convention, which insisted that Congress, and by extension territorial legislatures, had the power to either allow or exclude
slavery in a territory before statehood. The U.S. Supreme Court in its decision in Scott vs Sandford expressly denied either Congress or territorial legislatures from excluding slavery
in a territory. Delegates at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention denied the “political
heresy” of the Dred Scott decision and reaffirmed the sovereign power of Congress
and territorial legislature to govern territories in all respects.
U.S. Senate Journal. 1854. 33rd Cong., 1st sess., 231; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Walter Ehrlich, “Dred Scott Case,” Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 2:370; Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860 and 1864 (Minneapolis, MN: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), 43; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 June 1858, 2:5.
5Galloway references one of the questions Lincoln directed to Douglas at the Freeport
Debate--this question concerning the particulars of the English Bill, introduced by
Representative William H. English in the U.S. House of Representatives in the spring of 1858. Designed to end the bloody conflict over slavery in the Kansas Territory, so-called English bill proposed sending the Lecompton Constitution back to the voters of the territory with a modification to the territory’s request
for a federal land grant—reduced to 4 million acres from the requested 23 million
acres. In essence, the bill offered Kansas voters statehood in exchange for accepting
slavery. If Kansas voters rejected the offer, the English bill stipulated that the
territory could not reapply for statehood until a census showed it possessed a population
of at least 90,000 people.
Douglas considered supporting the bill, but ultimately opposed it. The bill passed
both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives on April 30, and President
James Buchanan signed it into law. On August 2, Kansans overwhelmingly rejected this Lecompton Constitution-cum-land
grant by a vote of 11,300 to 1,788.
In the Freeport debate, Douglas reiterated his position on the English Bill, “I will
not make any exception of Kansas to the other States of this Union. I hold it to be
a sound rule of universal application to require Territories to contain the requisite
population for a member of Congress before they came into the Union.” Of Congress’s
attempt to make Kansas an exception to this rule, Douglas insisted, “Either Kansas
must come in the same as any other State, with whatever population she may have, or
the rule must be applied to all the other States alike.”
In the same debate, Douglas also responded to Lincoln’s query about the power of territories
that, “in my opinion the people of a Territory can by lawful means exclude slavery
before it comes in as a State.”
David M. Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 323-25; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois.
Autograph Letter Signed, 5 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).