Part 22

Testimony and eloquence have been accumulated against Slavery; but on this occasion I shall confine myself precisely to the argument for the ransom of slaves at the National Capital; although such is Slavery that it is impossible to consider it in any single aspect without confronting its whole many-sided wickedness, while the broad, diversified field of remedy is naturally open to review. At some other time the great question of emancipation in the States may be more fitly considered, together with those other questions where the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. DOOLITTLE] has allowed himself to take sides so earnestly,--whether there is an essential incompatibility between the two races, so that they cannot live together except as master and slave? and whether the freedmen shall be encouraged to exile themselves to other lands, or rather continue their labor here at home? Enough for the present to consider Slavery at the National Capital. And here we are met by two inquiries, so frankly addressed to the Senate by the clear-headed Senator from Kansas [Mr. POMEROY]: first, _Has Slavery any constitutional existence at the national capital?_ and, secondly, _Shall money be paid to secure its abolition?_ The answer to these two inquiries will make our duty clear. If Slavery has no constitutional existence here, then more than ever is Congress bound to interfere, even with money; for the scandal must be peremptorily stopped, without any postponement, or any consultation of the people on a point which is not within their power.

* * * * *

It may be said, that, whether Slavery be constitutional or not, nevertheless it exists, and therefore this inquiry is superfluous. True, it exists as a MONSTROUS FACT; but it is none the less important to consider its origin, that we may understand how, assuming the form of law, it was able to shelter itself beneath the protecting shield of the Constitution. When we see clearly that it is without any such just protection, that the law which declares it is baseless, and that in all its pretensions it is essentially and utterly brutal and unnatural, we shall have less consideration for the Slave Tyranny, which, in satisfied pride, has thus far--not without compunction at different moments--ruled the national capital, reducing all things here, public opinion, social life, and even the administration of justice, to its own degraded standard, so as to fulfil the curious words of an old English poet:--

“It serves, yet reigns as King; It lives, yet ’s death; it pleases, full of paine. Monster! ah, who, who can thy beeing faigne, Thou shapelesse shape, live death, paine pleasing, servile raigne?”[214]

It is true, there can be no such thing as property in man: and here I begin to answer the questions propounded by the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. DAVIS]. If this pretension is recognized anywhere, it is only another instance of custom, which is so powerful as to render the idolater insensible to the wickedness of idolatry, and the cannibal insensible to the brutality of cannibalism. To argue against such a pretension seems to be vain; for the pretension exists in open defiance of reason as well as of humanity. It will not yield to argument; nor will it yield to persuasion. It must be encountered by authority. It was not the planters in the British islands or in the French islands who organized emancipation, but the distant governments across the sea, far removed from local prejudice, which at last forbade the outrage. Had these planters been left to themselves, they would have clung to the pretension, as men among us still cling to it. In making this declaration against the idea of property in man, I say nothing new. An honored predecessor of the Senator from Maryland [Mr. KENNEDY], whose fame as a statesman was eclipsed, perhaps, by his more remarkable fame as a lawyer,--I mean William Pinkney, and it is among the recollections of my youth that I heard Chief Justice Marshall call him the undoubted head of the American bar,--in a speech before the Maryland House of Delegates, spoke as statesman and lawyer, when he said:--

“Sir, by the eternal principles of natural justice no master in the State has a right to hold his slave in bondage for a single hour.”[215]

And Henry Brougham spoke not only as statesman and lawyer, but as orator also, when, in the British Parliament, he uttered these memorable words:--

“Tell me not of rights, talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right, I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings, of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim. There is a law above all the enactments of human codes,--the same throughout the world, the same in all times: … it is the law written on the heart of man by the finger of his Maker; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud and loathe rapine and abhor blood, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man.”[216]

It has been sometimes said that the finest sentence of the English language is that famous description of Law with which Hooker closes the first book of his “Ecclesiastical Polity”; but I cannot doubt that this wonderful denunciation of an irrational and inhuman pretension will be remembered hereafter with higher praise; for it gathers into surpassing eloquence the waking and immitigable instincts of Universal Man.

If I enter now into analysis of Slavery, and say familiar things, it is because such exposition is an essential link in the present inquiry. Looking carefully at Slavery as it is, we find that it is not merely a single gross pretension, utterly inadmissible, but an aggregation of gross pretensions, all and each utterly inadmissible. They are five in number: first, the pretension of property in man; secondly, the denial of the marriage relation,--for slaves are “coupled” only, and not married; thirdly, the denial of the paternal relation; fourthly, the denial of instruction; and, fifthly, the appropriation of all the labor of the slave and its fruits by the master. Such are the five essential elements which we find in Slavery; and this fivefold barbarism, so utterly indefensible in every point, is maintained for the single purpose of compelling labor without wages. Of course such a pretension is founded in force, and nothing else. It begins with the kidnapper in Guinea or Congo, traverses the sea with the pirate slave-trader in his crowded hold, and is continued here by virtue of laws representing and embodying the same brutal force that prevailed in the kidnapper and the pirate slave-trader. Slavery, wherever it exists, is the triumph of force, sometimes in the strong arm of an individual, and sometimes in the strong arm of law, but in principle always the same. Depending upon force, he is master who happens to be stronger,--so that, if the slave were stronger, he would be master, and the master would be slave. Beyond all doubt, according to reason and justice, every slave possesses the same right to enslave his master that his master possesses to enslave him. If this simple statement of unquestionable principles needed confirmation, it would be found in the solemn judgments of courts. Here, for instance, are the often quoted words of Mr. Justice McLean, of the Supreme Court of the United States: “Slavery is admitted by almost all who have examined the subject to be founded in wrong, in oppression, in _power_ against _right_.”[217] And here are the words of the Supreme Court of North Carolina: “Such services [of a slave] can only be expected from one who has no will of his own, who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another. Such obedience is the consequence only of _uncontrolled authority over the body_. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect.”[218] And the Supreme Court of the United States, by the lips of Chief Justice Marshall, has openly declared, in a famous case, read the other day by the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. DAVIS], that “Slavery has its origin in _force_.”[219] Thus does it appear by most authoritative words, that this monstrous Barbarism is derived not from reason, or nature, or justice, or goodness, but from _force_, and nothing else.

Here in the national capital, under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, the FORCE which now maintains this unnatural system is supplied by Congress. Without Congress the “uncontrolled authority” of the master would cease. Without Congress the master would not be master, nor would the slave be slave. Congress, then, in existing legislation, is the power behind, which enslaves our fellow-men. Therefore does it behoove Congress, by proper, instant action, to relieve itself of this painful responsibility.

The responsibility becomes more painful, when it is considered that Slavery exists at the national capital absolutely without support of any kind in the Constitution: and here again I answer the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. DAVIS]. Nor is this all. Situated within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, where State rights cannot prevail, it exists in open defiance of most cherished principles. Let the Constitution be rightly interpreted by a just tribunal, and Slavery must cease here at once. The decision of a court would be as potent as an Act of Congress. And now, as I confidently assert this conclusion, which bears so directly on the present question, pardon me, if I express the satisfaction with which I recur to an earlier period, shortly after I entered the Senate, when, vindicating the principle now accepted, but then disowned, that _Freedom and not Slavery is National_, I insisted upon its application to Slavery everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, and declared that Congress might as well undertake to make a king as to make a slave.[220] That argument has never been answered; it cannot be answered. Nor can I forget that this same conclusion, having such important bearings, was maintained by Mr. Chase, while a member of this body, in that masterly effort where he unfolded the relations of the National Government to Slavery,[221] and also by the late Horace Mann, in a most eloquent and exhaustive speech in the other House, where no point is left untouched to show that Slavery in the national capital is an _outlaw_.[222] Among all the speeches in the protracted discussion of Slavery, I know none more worthy of profound study than those two, so different in character and yet so harmonious in result. If authority could add to irresistible argument, it would be found in the well-known opinion of the late Mr. Justice McLean, in a published letter, declaring the constitutional impossibility of Slavery in the National Territories, because, in the absence of express power under the Constitution to establish or recognize Slavery, there was nothing for the breath of Slavery, as respiration could not exist where there was no atmosphere. The learned judge was right, and his illustration was felicitous. Although applied at the time only to the Territories, it is of equal force everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; for within such jurisdiction there is no atmosphere in which Slavery can live.

If this question were less important, I should not occupy time with its discussion. But we may learn to detest Slavery still more, when we see how completely it instals itself here in utter disregard of the Constitution, compelling Congress ignobly to do its bidding. The bare existence of such a barbarous injustice in the metropolis of a Republic gloriously declaring that “all men are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” is a mockery which may excite surprise; but when we bring it to the touchstone of the Constitution, and consider the action of Congress, surprise is deepened into indignation.

* * * * *

How, Sir, was this foothold secured? When and by what process did the National Government, solemnly pledged to Freedom, undertake to maintain the Slave-Master here in the exercise of that _force_, or “unrestrained power” which swings the lash, fastens the chain, robs the wages, sells the child, and tears the wife from the husband? A brief inquiry will show historically how it occurred: and here again I answer the Senator from Kentucky.

The sessions of the Revolutionary Congress were held, according to the exigencies of war or the convenience of members, at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York. An insult at Philadelphia from a band of mutineers caused an adjournment to Princeton, in 1783, which was followed by the discussion, from time to time, of the question of a permanent seat of government. On the 7th of October, 1783, a motion was made by Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, “That buildings for the use of Congress be erected on the banks of the Delaware, near Trenton, or of the Potomac, near Georgetown, provided a suitable district can be procured on one of the rivers as aforesaid for a federal town, and that the right of soil, and an exclusive or such other jurisdiction as Congress may direct, shall be vested in the United States.”[223] Thus did the first proposition of a national capital within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress proceed from a representative of Massachusetts. The subject of Slavery at that time attracted little attention; but at a later day, in the Constitutional Convention, this same honored representative showed the nature of the jurisdiction which he would claim, according to the following record: “Mr. Gerry thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of the States as to slaves, _but ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it_.”[224] In these words will be found our own cherished principle, _Freedom National, Slavery Sectional_, expressed with homely and sententious simplicity. There is something grateful and most suggestive in the language employed, “we ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it.” In the first Congress under the Constitution, the same representative, during the debate on the Slave-Trade, gave further expression to this same conviction, when he said that “he highly commended the part the Society of Friends had taken; it was the cause of humanity they had interested themselves in.”[225]

The proposition of Mr. Gerry in reference to a national capital, after assuming various forms, subsided. But in 1785 three commissioners were appointed “to lay out a district of not less than two nor exceeding three miles square, on the banks of either side of the Delaware, not more than eight miles above or below the lower falls thereof, for a federal town.”[226] At the Congress which met at New York two years later, unsuccessful efforts were made to substitute the Potomac for the Delaware. The commissioners, though appointed, never entered upon their business. At last, by the adoption of the Constitution, the subject was presented in a new form, under the following clause: “The Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over such district, not exceeding ten miles square, as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of government of the United States.” From the records of the Convention it does not appear that this clause occasioned debate. But it broke out in the earliest Congress. Virginia and Maryland, each, by acts of their respective Legislatures, tendered the ten miles square, while similar propositions were made by citizens of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. After long and animated discussion, Germantown, in Pennsylvania, was on the point of being adopted, when the subject was postponed till the next session. Havre de Grace and Wright’s Ferry, both on the Susquehanna, Baltimore, on the Patapsco, and Connogocheague, on the Potomac, divided opinions. In the course of the debate, Mr. Gerry, who had first proposed the Potomac, now opposed it. He pronounced it highly unreasonable to fix the seat of government where nine States out of the thirteen would be to the northward, and adverted to the sacrifice the Northern States were ready to make in going as far south as Baltimore. An agreement seemed impossible, when the South suddenly achieved one of those political triumphs by which its predominance in the National Government was established.

Pending at this time was the great and trying proposition to assume the State debts, which, being at first defeated through Southern votes, was at last carried by a “compromise,” according to which the seat of government was placed on the Potomac, thus settling the much vexed question. Mr. Jefferson, in a familiar account, thus sketches the “compromise.”

“It was observed that this pill [the assumption of the State debts] would be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, _and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them_. There had before been propositions to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia or at Georgetown on the Potomac, and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive) agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton undertook to carry the other point.”[227]

Such was one of the earliest victories of Slavery in the name of “Compromise.” It is difficult to estimate the evil consequences thus entailed upon the country.

The bill establishing the seat of government, having already passed the Senate, was adopted by the House of Representatives, after vehement debate and many calls of the yeas and nays, by a vote of thirty-two to twenty-nine, on the 9th of July, 1790. A district of territory, not exceeding ten miles square, on the river Potomac, was accepted for the permanent seat of the Government of the United States: “_Provided, nevertheless_, that the operation of the laws of the State within such district shall not be affected by this acceptance, until the time fixed for the removal of the Government thereto, _and until Congress shall otherwise by law provide_.”[228] Here, it will be seen, was a positive saving of the laws of the States for a limited period, so far as Congress had power to save them, within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution; but there was also complete recognition of the power of Congress to change these laws, and an implied promise to assume the “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” contemplated by the Constitution.

In response to this Act of Congress, Maryland, by formal act, ceded the territory now constituting the District of Columbia “in full and absolute right, and exclusive jurisdiction, as well of soil as of persons residing or to reside thereon,”--provided that the jurisdiction of Maryland “shall not cease or determine, _until Congress shall by law provide for the government thereof_.”[229]

In pursuance of this contract between the United States of the one part and Maryland of the other part, expressed in solemn statutes, the present seat of government was occupied in November, 1800, when Congress proceeded to assume that complete jurisdiction conferred in the Constitution, by enacting, on the 27th of February, 1801, “that the laws of the State of Maryland, _as they now exist_, shall be and continue in force in that part of the said District which was ceded by that State to the United States, and by them accepted for the permanent seat of government.”[230] Thus at one stroke all existing laws of Maryland were adopted by Congress in gross, and from that time forward became the laws of the United States at the national capital. Although known historically as laws of Maryland, they ceased at once to be laws of that State, for they draw their vitality from Congress alone, under the Constitution of the United States, as completely as if every statute had been solemnly reënacted. And now we see precisely how Slavery obtained its foothold.

Among the statutes of Maryland thus solemnly reënacted in gross was the following, originally passed as early as 1715, in colonial days.

“All negroes and other slaves already imported or hereafter to be imported into this province, and all children now born or hereafter to be born of such negroes and slaves, shall be slaves during their natural lives.”[231]

Slavery cannot exist without barbarous laws in its support. Maryland, accordingly, in the spirit of Slavery, added other provisions, also reënacted by Congress in the same general bundle, of which the following is an example.

“_No negro or mulatto slave_, free negro or mulatto born of a white woman, during his time of servitude by law, … _shall be admitted and received as good and valid evidence in law, in any matter_ or thing whatsoever depending before any court of record or before any magistrate within this province, _wherein any Christian white person is concerned_.”[232]

At a later day the following kindred provision was added, in season to be reënacted by Congress in the same code.

“No slave manumitted agreeably to the laws of this State … shall be entitled … to give evidence against any white person, or shall be recorded as competent evidence to manumit any slave petitioning for freedom.”[233]

And such is the law for Slavery at the national capital.

It will be observed that the original statute which undertakes to create Slavery in Maryland does not attaint the blood beyond two generations. It is confined to “all negroes and other slaves,” and their “children,” “during their natural lives.” These are slaves, but none others, unless a familiar rule of interpretation is reversed, and such words are extended rather than restrained. And yet it is by virtue of this colonial statute, with all its ancillary barbarism, adopted by Congress, that slaves are still held at the national capital. It is true that at the time of its adoption there were few slaves here to whom it was applicable. For ten years previous, the present area of Washington, according to received tradition, contained hardly five hundred inhabitants, all told, and these were for the most part laborers distributed in houses merely for temporary accommodation. But all these musty, antediluvian, wicked statutes, of which you have seen a specimen, took their place at once in the national legislation, and under their supposed authority slaves multiplied, and Slavery became a national institution. And it now continues only by virtue of this Slave Code borrowed from early colonial days, which, though flagrantly inconsistent with the Constitution, has never yet been repudiated by Court or Congress.

I have said that this Slave Code, even assuming it applicable to slaves beyond the “natural lives” of two generations, is flagrantly inconsistent with the Constitution. On this point the argument is so plain that it may be shown like a diagram.