territorial laws.[478]

Douglas was irritated by these aspersions on his cherished principle.
He declared again, in defiant tones, that the right of the people to
permit or exclude was clearly included in the wording of the measure.
He was not willing to be lectured about indirectness. He had heard
cavil enough about his amendments.[479]

In the course of a debate on March 2d, another unforeseen difficulty
loomed up in the distance. If the Missouri Compromise were repealed,
would not the original laws of Louisiana, which legalized slavery, be
revived? How then could the people of the Territories be free to
legislate against slavery? It was a knotty question, testing the best
legal minds in the Senate; and it was dispatched only by an amendment
which stated that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise should not
revive any antecedent law respecting slavery.[480]

The objection raised by Clayton still remained: how was it possible to
reconcile congressional non-intervention with the right of Congress to
revise territorial laws? Now Douglas had never contended that the
right of the people to self-government in the Territories was complete
as against the power of Congress. He had never sought to confer upon
them more than a relative degree of self-government--"the power to
regulate their domestic institutions." He could not, and he did not,
deny the truth and awkwardness of Clayton's contention. Where, then,
demanded his critics, was the guarantee that the Kansas-Nebraska bill
would banish the slavery controversies from Congress? This challenge
could not go unanswered. Without other explanation, Douglas moved to
strike out the provision requiring all territorial laws to be
submitted to Congress.[481] But did this divest Congress of the power