At the time of the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, it certainly was understood that the constitutional rights to take slaves into any territory of the United States should thenceforth be regarded as a judicial question; and therefore special provision was made to facilitate the bringing of such questions before the Supreme Court of the United States.  After the decision to which reference has just been made, the prominent advocate of the bill at the time of its enactment should have been estopped from recurring to his “squatter sovereignty” heresies, though the decision should have been different from his anticipation or desire.  And as much interest has been felt in relation to his position, and some inquiry has been made as to my view of it, I will here say, that I consider him as having recanted the better opinions announced by him in 1854, and that I cannot be compelled to choose between men, one of whom asserts the power of Congress to deprive us of a constitutional right, and the other only denies the power of Congress, in order to transfer it to the territorial legislature.  Neither the one nor the other has any authority to sit in judgment on our rights under the Constitution.

Between such positions, Mississippi cannot have a preference, because she cannot recognize anything tolerable in either of them.

Having called your attention to the speech made at Portland, to show that other parts of it disprove the construction put upon the paragraph, which was taken from it, and reported to be a part of the speech delivered at Bangor, it may be as well on this occasion to state the circumstances under which the speech was made at Portland.  Immediately preceding the State election, I was invited, by the democracy of that city, to address them, and my attention was especially called to a delusion practiced on the people of Maine, by which many were led to believe that there was a purpose on the part of the South, through the government of the United States, to force slavery not only into the territories, but also into the non-slaveholding States of the Union.  It was represented to me that in the last Presidential canvass that one of the Senators of Maine had convinced many of the voters that if Mr. Buchanan should be elected, slavery would be forced upon Maine, and that the other Senator was arguing that the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court had given authority to introduce and hold slaves in that State.  To counteract such impressions, injurious to the South and her friends, the remarks which have been extracted were made.

On that, as on other occasions, it was deemed a duty to correct misrepresentation and seek to vindicate our purposes from the prejudice which ignorance and agitation had created against us.  If it was in my power in any degree to allay sectional excitement, to cultivate sounder opinions and a more fraternal feeling, it was a task most acceptable to me, and one for the performance of which I could not doubt