Prolonged discussion made certain points of agreement clear to all. It
was found that no one questioned the right of a State, with sufficient
population and a republican constitution, to enter the Union with or
without slavery as it chose. All agreed that it was best that slavery
should not be discussed in Congress. All agreed that, whether or no
Congress had the power to exclude slavery in the Territories, it ought
not to exercise it. All agreed that if Congress had such power, it
ought to delegate it to the people. Here agreement ceased. Did
Congress have such power? Clearly the law of the Constitution could
alone determine. Then why not delegate the power to control their
domestic institutions to the people of the Territories, subject to the
provisions of the Constitution? "And then," said one of the
participants later, "in order to provide a means by which the
Constitution could govern ... we of the South, conscious that we were
right, the North asserting the same confidence in its own doctrines,
agreed that every question touching human slavery or human freedom
should be appealable to the Supreme Court of the United States for its
decision."[470]

While this compromise was being reached in caucus, the bill was under
constant fire on the floor of the Senate. The _Appeal of the
Independent Democrats_ had bitterly arraigned the declaratory part of
the Kansas-Nebraska bill, where the Missouri Compromise was said to
have been superseded and therefore inoperative. Even staunch Democrats
like Cass had taken exception to this phraseology, preferring to
declare the Missouri Compromise null and void in unequivocal terms. To
Douglas there was nothing ambiguous or misleading in the wording of
the clause. What was meant was this: the acts of 1850 rendered the
Missouri Compromise _inoperative_ in Utah and New Mexico; but so far
as the Missouri Compromise applied to territory not embraced in those