On the day following the election of Pennington, Davis introduced
in the Senate a series of resolutions which were to serve as the
Southern ultimatum, and which demanded of Congress the protection
of slavery against territorial legislatures. This was but
carrying to its logical conclusion that Dred Scott decision which
Douglas and his followers proposed to accept. If Congress could
not restrict slavery in the territories, how could its creature,
a territorial legislature do so? And yet the Douglas men
attempted to take away the power from Congress and to retain it
for the territorial legislatures. Senator Pugh of Ohio had
already locked horns with Davis on this point, and had attempted
to show that a territorial Legislature was independent of
Congress. "Then I would ask the Senator further," retorted the
logical Davis, "why it is he makes an appropriation to pay
members of the territorial legislature; how it is that he invests
the Governor with veto power over their acts; and how it is that
he appoints judges to decide upon the validity of their acts."
In the Democratic convention which met at Charleston in April,
1860, the waning power of political evasion made its last real
stand against the rising power of political positivism.
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