Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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“ [44] part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws,” pledged itself and its supporters “to maintain, protect, and defend, separately and unitedly, those great principles of public liberty and national safety against all enemies at home and abroad.” Its nominees were John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, both of whom had long been distinguished members of the Whig party.

The people of the United States now had four rival tickets presented to them by as many contending parties, whose respective position and principles on the great and absorbing question at issue may be briefly recapitulated as follows:

1. The Constitutional-Union party, as it was now termed, led by Bell and Everett, which ignored the territorial controversy altogether, and contented itself, as above stated, with a simple declaration of adherence to “the Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement of the laws.”

2. The party of “popular sovereignty,” headed by Douglas and Johnson, who affirmed the right of the people of the territories, in their territorial condition, to determine their own organic institutions, independently of the control of Congress; denying the power or duty of Congress to protect the persons or property of individuals or minorities in such territories against the action of majorities.

3. The State-Rights party, supporting Breckinridge and Lane, who held that the territories were open to citizens of all the states, with their property, without any inequality or discrimination, and that it was the duty of the general government to protect both persons and property from aggression in the territories subject to its control. At the same time they admitted and asserted the right of the people of a territory, on emerging from their territorial condition to that of a state, to determine what should then be their domestic institutions, as well as all other questions of personal or proprietary right, without interference by Congress, and subject only to the limitations and restrictions prescribed by the Constitution of the United States.

4. The so-called Republicans, presenting the names of Lincoln and Hamlin, who held, in the language of one of their leaders,¹ that “slavery can exist only by virtue of municipal law”; and there was “no law for it in the Territories, and no power to enact one”; and that Congress was “bound to prohibit it in or exclude it from any and every Federal Territory.”