UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE ACT, With an Appendix, CONTAINING: I. THE DEBATES IN THE SENATE IN MARCH, 1849, BETWEEN MR. WEBSTER AND MR. CALHOUN, II. THE INSIDE VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN SENTIMENT, IN RELATION TO THE WILMOT PROVISO, III. REVIEW OF PRESIDENT PIERCE'S ANNUAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS OF DECEMBER, 1856, BY THE AUTHOR OF THE "THIRTY YEARS' VIEW." [Benton, Thos. Hart] NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 346 & 348 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 1857. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by D. APPLETON & COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 93926 NOTIFICATION TO THE READER. The writer of this "Examination" was breaking down under the approaches of a terrible attack, while he was still engaged in writing it, and was prostrate before it was finished, leaving some heads untouched, and the outline of others only sketched. Among these last was the head which related to the temporary government in Florida, and the transactions under it; General Jackson being Governor, and commissioned (according to the act under which he was appointed) with the powers of CaptainGeneral and Intendant of Cuba, the Floridas having been a dependency of that Captain-Generalship. The "Examination' states (and all whose memory or home reading goes back twenty-five years, well know the fact), that the power of CaptainGeneral and Intendant was no barren sceptre in Jackson's hand; that he found occasion to use the power, and did so with the energy which belonged to his nature, and was sustained by Mr. Monroe's Administration. But the history of the transactions was not gone into, and the general assertion remained without the justification which this history would give it. That history is now supplied, and will be found in the Abridged Debates of Congress, text and notes (volume vii., now about ready for the press); and is surely of a character and of an authority to put an end to the "Opinion " which nullifies the Missouri Compromise Act, and self-extends the Constitution to territories. Without going further into that history in this brief post scriptum notification, and confining himself to the precise point in issue, the |