chapter 29.--Statute 1822, chapter 13._ From March 3, 1819, to March
30, 1822, the government vested solely in the President of the United States, and to be exercised by such officers as he should appoint.
After March 30, 1822, a governor and secretary, appointable and removable as above.
All legislative power vested in the governor, and in thirteen persons, called a legislative council, to be appointed annually by the President.
Yet, sir, notwithstanding all this legislation of Congress for the territories, on the subject of slavery itself; notwithstanding its legislation on a great class of subjects of which slavery is acknowledged to be one; notwithstanding its appointment, in some cases, of the legislative power of the territory,--making its own agent, the governor, removable at pleasure,--giving him a veto, in the first place, and reserving to itself a veto when he has approved; notwithstanding the exercise, in other cases, of full, absolute sovereignty over the inhabitants of the territories, and all their interests; and, notwithstanding such has been the practice of the government for sixty years, under Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and others, it is now denied that Congress has any right to legislate on the subject of slavery in the territories. Sir, with a class of politicians in this country, it has come to this, that slavery is the only sacred thing in existence. It is self-existent, like a god, and human power cannot prevent it. From year to year, it goes on conquering and to conquer, and human power cannot dethrone it.
Sir, I will present another argument on this subject, and I do not see how any jurist or statesman can invalidate it.
Government is one, but its functions are several. They are legislative, judicial, executive. These functions are coördinate; each supposes the other two. There must be a legislature to enact laws; there must be a judiciary to expound the laws enacted, and point out the individuals against whom they are to be enforced; there must be an executive arm to enforce the decisions of the courts. In every theory of government, where one of these exist, the others exist. Under our constitution they are divided into three parts, and apportioned among three coördinate bodies. Whoever denies one of these must deny them all.
If the government of the United States, therefore, has no right to _legislate_ for the territories, it has no right to _adjudicate_ for the territories; if it has no right to _adjudicate_, then it has no right to _enforce_ the decisions of the judicial tribunals. These rights must stand or fall together. He who takes from this government the law-making power, in regard to territories, strikes also the balances of justice from the hands of the judge, and the mace of authority from those of the executive. There is no escape from this conclusion. The constitution gives no more authority to adjudge suits in the territories, or to execute the decisions of the territorial courts, than it does to legislate. If Congress has no power over territory, only _as land_, then what does this land want of judges and marshals? Is it not obvious, then, that this new reading of the constitution sets aside the whole legislative, judicial, and executive administration of this government over territories, since the adoption of the constitution? It makes the whole of it invalid. The Presidents, all members of Congress, all judges upon the bench, have been in a dream for the last sixty years, and are now waked up and recalled to their senses by the charm of a newly-discovered reading of the constitution.
Hitherto, sir, I have not directed my remarks to the actual legislation by Congress on the subject of slavery in the North-western Territory, so called. That territory was consecrated to freedom by the ordinance of 1787. It has been said that the _Confederation_ had no power to pass such an ordinance. But whether this be so or not, is immaterial, for _Congress_ has ratified the ordinance again and again. The first Congress at its first session passed an act whose preamble is as follows: “Whereas, in order that the ordinance of the United States, in Congress assembled, for the government of the territory north-west of the river Ohio, may continue to have full effect,” &c. It then proceeds to modify some parts of the ordinance, and to adopt all the rest.[1]
In the second section of the act of 1800, chapter 41, establishing the Indiana Territory, it is expressly provided that its government shall be “in all respects similar to that provided by the ordinance of 1787.”
In the act of 1802, chapter 40, section 5, authorizing Ohio to form a constitution and state government, this ordinance of 1787 is three times referred to as a valid and existing engagement, and it has always been held to be so by the courts of Ohio.
So in the act of 1816, chapter 57, section 4, authorizing the erection of Indiana into a state, the ordinance is again recognized, and is made a part of the fundamental law of the state.
So in the act of 1818, chapter 67, section 4, authorizing Illinois to become a state.
So in the act of 1805, chapter 5, section 2, establishing the Territory of Michigan.
So of Wisconsin. See act of 1847, chapter 53, in connection with the constitution of Wisconsin.
But all this is tedious and superfluous. I have gone into this detail, because I understand the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. BAYLY] to have denied this adoption and these recognitions of the ordinance. I hazard nothing in saying that the ordinance of 1787 has been expressly referred to as valid, or expressly or impliedly reënacted, a dozen times, by the Congress of the United States; and, in the state courts of Ohio, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri, it has been adjudged to be constitutional. How, then, is it possible for any mind, amenable to legal rules for the decision of legal questions, to say that Congress cannot legislate, or has not legislated, (except once or twice inadvertently,) on the subject of slavery in the territories?
On this part of the argument, I have only a concluding remark to submit. The position I am contesting affirms generally that Congress cannot legislate upon the subject of slavery in the territories. The _inexpediency_ of so legislating is further advocated on the ground that it is repugnant to democratical principles to debar the inhabitants of the territories from governing themselves. Must the free men of the territories, it is asked, have laws made for them by others? No! It is anti-democratic, monarchical, intolerable. All men have the right of self-government; and this principle holds true with regard to the inhabitants of territories, as well as the inhabitants of states.
Now, if these declarations were a sincere and honest affirmation of human rights, I should respect them and honor their authors. Did this doctrine grow out of a jealousy for the rights of man, a fear of usurpation, an assertion of the principle of self-government, I should sympathize with it, while I denied its legality. But, sir, it is the most painful aspect of this whole case, that the very object and purpose of claiming these ample and sovereign rights for the inhabitants of the territories is, that they may deny _all_ rights to a portion of their fellow-beings within them. Enlarge, aggrandize, the rights of the territorial settlers! And why? Because, by so doing, you enable them to abolish all rights for a whole class of human beings. This claim, then, is not made for the purpose of making freemen more free, but for making slaves more enslaved. The reason for denying to Congress the power to legislate for the territories, is the fear that Congress will prevent slavery in them. The reason for claiming the supreme right of legislation for the territorial inhabitants, is the hope that they will establish slavery within their borders. Must not that democracy be false which begets slavery as its natural offspring?
* * * * *
If it has now been demonstrated that Congress has uniformly legislated, and can legislate, on the subject of slavery in the territories, I proceed to consider the next question. _Is it expedient to exclude slavery from them?_
Here, on the threshold, we are confronted with the claim that the gates shall be thrown wide open to the admission of slavery into the broad western world; because, otherwise, the southern or slave states would be debarred from enjoying their share of the common property of the Union.
I meet this claim with a counter-claim. If, on the one hand, the consecration of this soil to freedom will exclude the slaveholders of the south, it is just as true, on the other hand, that the desecration of it to slavery will exclude the freemen of the north. We, at the north, know too well the foundations of worldly prosperity and happiness; we know too well the sources of social and moral welfare, ever voluntarily to blend our fortunes with those of a community where slavery is tolerated. If our demand for free territory, then, excludes them, their demand for slave territory excludes us. Not one in five hundred of the freemen of the north could ever be induced to take his family and domicile himself in a territory where slavery exists. They know that the institution would impoverish their estate, demoralize their children, and harrow their own consciences with an ever-present sense of guilt, until those consciences, by force of habit and induration, should pass into that callous and more deplorable state, where continuous crime could be committed without the feeling of remorse.
Sir, let me read a passage from Dr. Channing, written in 1798,--fifty years ago,--when, at the early age of nineteen, he lived for some time in Richmond, Virginia, as a tutor in a private family. While there, he wrote a letter, of which the following is an extract:--
“There is one object here which always depresses me. It is _slavery_. This alone would prevent me from ever settling in Virginia. Language cannot express my detestation of it. Master and slave! Nature never made such a distinction, or established such a relation. Man, when forced to substitute the will of another for his own, ceases to be a moral agent; his title to the name of man is extinguished; he becomes a mere machine in the hands of his oppressor. No empire is so valuable as the empire of one’s self. No right is so inseparable from humanity, and so necessary to the improvement of our species, as the right of exerting the powers which nature has given us in the pursuit of any and of every good which we can obtain without doing injury to others. Should you desire it, I will give you some idea of the situation and character of the negroes in Virginia. It is a subject so degrading to humanity, that I cannot dwell on it with pleasure. I should be obliged to show you every vice, heightened by every meanness, and added to every misery. The influence of slavery on the whites is almost as fatal as on the blacks themselves.”
This was written fifty years ago, by a young man from New England, only nineteen years old. I know that, on all subjects of philanthropy and ethics, Dr. Channing was half a century in advance of his age. But the sentiments he expressed on this subject, at the close of the last century, are now the prevalent, deep-seated feelings of northern men, excepting, perhaps, a few cases where these feelings have been corrupted by interest.
I repeat, then, that the north cannot shut out the south from the new territories by a law for excluding slavery, more effectually than the south will shut out the north by the fact of introducing slavery. Even admitting, then, that the _law_ is equal for both north and south, I will show that all the _equity_ is on the side of the north.
Sir, from the establishment of our independence by the treaty of 1783 to the time of the adoption of the constitution, and for years afterwards, no trace is to be found of an intention to enlarge the bounds of our republic; and it is well known that the treaty of 1803, for acquiring Louisiana, was acknowledged by Mr. Jefferson, who made it, to be unconstitutional. In 1787, the Magna Charta of perpetual freedom was secured to the North-west Territory. But the article excluding slavery from it had an earlier date than 1787. On the 1st of March, 1784, Congress voted to accept a session from the state of Virginia of her claim to the territory north-west of the Ohio river. The subject of providing a government for this and other territory was referred to a committee consisting of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Chase of Maryland, and Mr. Howell of Rhode Island. On the 19th of April, 1784, their report was considered. That report contained the following ever-memorable clause:--
“That after the year 1800, of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states, [they were spoken of as states, because it was always contemplated to erect the territories into states,] otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to have been personally guilty.”
Sir, we hear much said in our day of the Wilmot proviso against slavery. In former years, great credit has been given to Mr. Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, for originating the sixth article, (against slavery), in the ordinance of 1787. Sir, it is a misnomer to call this restrictive clause the “Wilmot proviso.” It is the _Jefferson proviso_, and Mr. Jefferson should have the honor of it; and would to Heaven that our southern friends, who kneel so devoutly at his shrine, could be animated by that lofty spirit of freedom, that love for the rights of man, which alone can make their acts of devotion sacred.
But what is most material to be observed here is, that the plan of government reported by Mr. Jefferson, and acted upon by the Congress at that time, embraced all the “western territory.” It embraced all the “territory ceded, or _to be ceded_, by individual states to the United States.”--See _Journals of Congress, April 23, 1784_. If, then, we leave out Kentucky and Tennessee, as being parts of Virginia and North Carolina, all the residue of the territory north _or south_ of the Ohio river, within the treaty limits of the United States, was intended, by the “Jefferson proviso,” to be rescued from the doom of slavery. For that proviso there were sixteen votes, and only seven against it. Yet so singularly were these seven votes distributed, and so large a majority of the states did it require to pass an act, that it was lost. The whole of the representation from seven states voted for it unanimously. Only two states voted unanimously against it. Had but one of Mr. Jefferson’s colleagues voted with him, and had Mr. Spaight, of North Carolina, voted for it, the restrictive clause in the report would have stood. But a minority of seven from the slaveholding states controlled a majority of sixteen from the free states,--ominous even at that early day of a fate that has now relentlessly pursued us for sixty years.
That vote was certainly no more than a fair representation of the feeling of the country against slavery at that time. It was with such a feeling that the “compromises of the constitution,” as they are called, were entered into. Nobody dreaded or dreamed of the extension of slavery beyond its then existing limits. Yet, behold its aggressive march! Besides Kentucky and Tennessee, which I omit, for reasons before intimated, seven new slave states have been added to the Union,--Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas,--the last five out of territory not belonging to us at the adoption of the constitution; while only one free state, Iowa, has been added during all this time, out of such newly-acquired territory.[2]
But there is another fact, which shows that the slaveholders have already had their full share of territory, however wide the boundaries of this country may hereafter become.
I have seen the number of _actual slaveholders_ variously estimated; but the highest estimate I have ever seen is _three hundred thousand_. Allowing six persons to a family, this number would represent a white population of eighteen hundred thousand.
Mr. GAYLE, of Alabama, interrupted and said: If the gentleman from Massachusetts has been informed that the number of slaveholders is only 300,000, then I will tell him his information is utterly false.
Mr. MANN. Will the gentleman tell me how many there are?
Mr. GAYLE. Ten times as many.
Mr. MANN. Ten times as many! Ten times 300,000 is 3,000,000; and allowing six persons to each family, this would give a population of 18,000,000 directly connected with slaveholding; while the whole free population of the south, in 1840, was considerably less than five millions!
Mr. MEADE, of Virginia, here interposed and said, that where the father or mother owned slaves, they were considered the joint property of the family. I think, if you include the grown and the young, there are about three millions interested in slave property.
Mr. MANN resumed. My data lead me to believe that the number does not now exceed two millions; but, at the time of the adoption of the constitution, the number directly connected with slaveholding must have been less than one million. Yet this one million have already managed to acquire the broad States of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, beyond the limits of the treaty of 1783; when, at the time the “compromises of the constitution” were entered into, not one of the parties supposed that we should ever acquire territory beyond those limits. And this has been done for the benefit, (if it be a benefit,) of that one million of slaveholders, against what is now a free population of fifteen millions. And, in addition to this, it is to be considered that the non-slaveholding population of the slave states have as direct and deep an interest as any part of the country, adverse to the extension of slavery. If all our new territory be doomed to slavery, where can the non-slaveholders of the slaveholding states emigrate to? Are they not to be considered? Has one half the population of the slaveholding states rights, which are paramount, not only to the rights of the other half, but to the rights of all the free states besides? for such is the claim. No, sir. I say that, if slavery were no moral or political evil, yet, according to all principles of justice and equity, the slaveholders have already obtained their full share of territory, though all the residue of this continent were to be annexed to the Union, and we were to become, in the insane language of the day, “an ocean-bound republic.”
I now proceed to consider the nature and effects of slavery, as a reason why new-born communities should be exempted from it. First, let me treat of its economical or financial, and, secondly, of its moral aspects.
Though slaves are said to be property, they are the preventers, the wasters, the antagonists of property. So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both. It blasts worldly prosperity. Other things being equal, a free people will thrive and prosper, in a mere worldly sense, more than a people divided into masters and slaves. Were we so constituted as to care for nothing, to aspire to nothing, beyond mere temporal well being, this well being would counsel us to abolish slavery wherever it exists, and to repel its approach wherever it threatens.
Enslave a man, and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one’s condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring. The slave does not participate in the value of the wealth he creates. All he earns another seizes. A free man labors, not only to improve his own condition, but to better the condition of his children. The mighty impulse of parental affection repays for diligence, and makes exertion sweet. The slave’s heart never beats with this high emotion. However industrious and frugal he may be, he has nothing to bequeath to his children,--or nothing save the sad bonds he himself has worn. Fear may make him work, but hope--never. When he moves his tardy limbs, it is because of the suffering that goads him from behind, and not from the bright prospects that beckon him forward in the race.
What would a slave owner at the south think, should he come to Massachusetts, and there see a farmer seize upon his hired man, call in a surgeon, and cut off all the flexor muscles of his arms and legs? I do not ask what he would think of his humanity, but what would he think of his sanity? Yet the planter does more than this when he makes a man a slave. He cuts deeper than the muscles; he destroys the spirit that moves the muscles.
In all ages of the world, among all nations, wherever the earnings of the laborer have been stolen from him, his energies have gone with his earnings. Under the villeinage system of England, the villeins were a low, idle, spiritless race; dead to responsibility; grovelling in their desires; resistant of labor; without enterprise; without foresight. This principle is now exemplified in the landlord and tenant system of Ireland. If a tenant is to be no better off for the improvements he makes on an estate, he will not make the improvements. Look at the seigniories of New York,--the anti-rent districts as they are now called;--every man acquainted with the subject knows that both people and husbandry are half a century behind the condition of contiguous fee-simple proprietorships. All history illustrates the principle, that when property is insecure, it will not be earned. If a despot can seize and confiscate the property of his subject at pleasure, the subject will not acquire property, and thereby give to himself the conspicuousness that invites the plunder. And if this be so when property is merely insecure, what must be the effect when a man has no property whatever in his earnings? Who does not know that a slave, who can rationally hope to purchase his freedom, will do all the work he ever did before, and earn his freedom-money besides? Slavery, therefore, though claiming to be a kind of property, is the bane of property; and the more slaves there are found in the inventory of a nation’s wealth, the less in value will the aggregate of that inventory be.
This is _one_ of the reasons why slave labor is so much less efficient than free labor. The former can never compete with the latter; and while the greater service is performed with cheerfulness, the smaller is extorted by fear. Just as certain as that the locomotive can outrun the horse, and the lightning outspeed the locomotive, just so certain is it that he who is animated by the hopes and the rewards of freedom will outstrip the disheartened and fear-driven slave.
The intelligent freeman can afford to live well, dress decently, and occupy a comfortable tenement. A scanty subsistence, a squalid garb, a mean and dilapidated hovel, proclaim the degradation of the slave. The slave states gain millions of dollars every year from the privations, the mean food, clothing, and shelter to which the slaves are subjected; and yet they grow rich less rapidly than states where millions of dollars are annually expended for the comforts and conveniences of the laborer. More is lost in production than is gained by privation.
A universal concomitant of slavery is, that it makes white labor disreputable. Being disreputable, it is shunned. The pecuniary loss resulting from this is incalculable. Dry up the myriad headsprings of the Mississippi, and where would be the mighty volume of waters which now bear navies on their bosom, and lift the ocean itself above its level, by their outpouring flood? Abolish those sources of wealth, which consist in the personal industry of every man, and of each member of every man’s family, and that wide-spread thrift, and competence, and elegance, which are both the reward and the stimulus of labor, will be abolished with them. Forego the means, and you forfeit the end. You must use the instrument if you would have the product. Nothing but the feeling of independence, the conscious security of working for one’s self and one’s family, will, in the present state of the world, make labor profitable.
I know it has been recently said in this capital, and by high authority, that, with the exception of menial services, it is not disreputable at the south for a white man to labor. There are two ways, each independent of the other, to disprove this assertion. One of them consists in the testimony of a host of intelligent witnesses acquainted with the condition of things at the south. I might quote page after page from various sources; but, as the assertion comes from a gentleman belonging to South Carolina, [Mr. CALHOUN, of the Senate,] I will meet it with the statement of another gentleman belonging to the same state. I refer to Mr. William Gregg, of Charleston, a gentleman who is extensively acquainted with the social condition of men, both north and south.
In that state, according to the last census, there were about 150,000 free whites _over twelve years of age_. “Of this class,” says Mr. Gregg, “fifty thousand are non-producers.”[3] I suppose South Carolina to be as thrifty a slave state as there is, perhaps excepting Georgia; yet here is one third part of the population, old enough to work and able to work, who are idle, and of course vicious,--non-producers, but the worst kind of consumers.
Another answer to the above assertion is, that if white labor were reputable at the south, and white men were industrious, the whole country would be a garden,--a terrestrial paradise,--so far as neatness, abundance, and beauty are concerned. _Where are the_ RESULTS _of this respected and honored white labor_? In a country where few expenses are necessary to ward off the rigors of winter; where the richest staples of the world are produced; where cattle and flocks need but little shelter, and sometimes none; if man superadded his industry to the bounties of nature, want would be wholly unknown, competence would give place to opulence, and the highest decorations of art would mingle with the glowing beauties of nature.
But hear Mr. Gregg:--
“My recent visit to the northern states has fully satisfied me that the true secret of our difficulties lies in the want of energy on the part of our capitalists, and ignorance and laziness on the part of those who ought to labor. We need never look for thrift while we permit our immense timber forests, granite quarries, and mines to lie idle, and supply ourselves with hewn granite, pine boards, laths, shingles, &c., furnished by the _lazy_ dogs of the north. Ah! worse than this; we see our back-country farmers, many of whom are too lazy to mend a broken gate, or repair the fences to protect their crops from the neighboring stock, actually supplied with their axe, hoe, and broom handles, pitchforks, rakes, &c., by the _indolent_ mountaineers of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The time was, when every old woman had her gourd, from which the country gardens were supplied with seed. We now find it more convenient to permit this duty to devolve on our careful friends, the Yankees. Even our boat oars, and handspikes for rolling logs, are furnished, ready-made, to our hand,” &c. “Need I add, to further exemplify our excessive indolence, that the Charleston market is supplied with fish and wild game by northern men, who come out here as regularly as the winter comes, for this purpose, and from our own waters and forests often realize, in the course of one winter, a sufficiency to purchase a small farm in New England.”--_Essays_, page 8.
Again:--
“It is only necessary to travel over the sterile mountains of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, to learn the true secret of our difficulties,”--“to learn the difference between indolence and industry, extravagance and economy. We there see the scenery which would take the place of our unpainted mansions, dilapidated cabins, with mud chimneys, and no windows, broken-down rail fences, fields overgrown with weeds, and thrown away half exhausted, to be taken up by pine thickets; beef cattle unprotected from the inclemency of winter, and so poor as barely to preserve life.”--_Essays_, page 7.
And again:--
“Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, degraded white people among us, who, in this land of plenty, live in comparative nakedness and starvation? Many a one is reared in _proud_ South Carolina, from birth to manhood, who has never passed a month in which he has not, some part of the time, been stinted for meat. Many a mother is there who will tell you that her children are but scantily supplied with bread, and much more scantily with meat, and if they be clad with comfortable raiment, it is at the expense of these scanty allowances of food. These may be startling statements, but they are nevertheless true; and if not believed in Charleston, the members of our legislature, who have traversed the state in electioneering campaigns, can attest their truth.”--_Essays_, page 22.
After such statements as these; after the testimony of hundreds and hundreds of eye-witnesses; after the proofs furnished by the aggregates of products, published in our Patent Office Reports, it is drawing a little too heavily on our credulity to say that the white man at the south is industrious. Industry manifests itself by its results, as the sun manifests itself by shining.
But slavery is hostile to the pecuniary advancement of the community in another way. The slave must be kept in ignorance. He must not be educated, lest with education should come a knowledge of his natural rights, and the means of escape or the power of vengeance. To secure the abolition of his freedom, the growth of his mind must be abolished. His education, therefore, is prohibited by statute under terrible penalties.
Now, a man is weak in his muscles; he is strong only in his faculties. In physical strength how much superior is an ox or a horse to a man; in fleetness, the dromedary or the eagle. It is through mental strength only that man becomes the superior and governor of all animals.
It was not the design of Providence that the work of the world should be performed by muscular strength. God has filled the earth and imbued the elements with energies of greater power than that of all the inhabitants of a thousand planets like ours. Whence come our necessaries and our luxuries?--those comforts and appliances that make the difference between a houseless, wandering tribe of Indians in the far west, and a New England village. They do not come wholly or principally from the original, unassisted strength of the human arm, but from the employment, through intelligence and skill, of those great natural forces with which the bountiful Creator has filled every part of the material universe. Caloric, gravitation, expansibility, compressibility, electricity, chemical affinities and repulsions, spontaneous velocities,--these are the mighty agents which the intellect of man harnesses to the car of improvement. The application of water, and wind, and steam, to the propulsion of machinery, and to the transportation of men and merchandise from place to place, has added ten thousand fold to the actual products of human industry. How small the wheel which the stoutest laborer can turn, and how soon will he be weary! Compare this with a wheel driving a thousand spindles or looms, which a stream of water can turn, and never tire. A locomotive will take five hundred men, and bear them on their journey hundreds of miles in a day. Look at these same five hundred men, starting from the same point, and attempting the same distance, with all the pedestrian’s or the equestrian’s toil and tardiness. The cotton mills of Massachusetts will turn out more cloth, in one day, than could have been manufactured by all the inhabitants of the eastern continent during the tenth century. On an element which, in ancient times, was supposed to be exclusively within the control of the gods, and where it was deemed impious for human power to intrude, even there the gigantic forces of nature, which human science and skill have enlisted in their service, confront and overcome the raging of the elements,--breasting tempests and tides, escaping reefs and lee shores, and careering triumphant around the globe. The velocity of winds, the weight of waters, and the rage of steam, are powers, each one of which is infinitely stronger than all the strength of all the nations and races of mankind, were it all gathered into a single arm. And all these energies are given us on one condition,--the condition of intelligence, that is, of education.
Had God intended that the work of the world should be done by human bones and sinews, he would have given us an arm as solid and strong as the shaft of a steam engine; and enabled us to stand, day and night, and turn the crank of a steamship while sailing to Liverpool or Calcutta. Had God designed the human muscles to do the work of the world, then, instead of the ingredients of gunpowder or gun cotton, and the expansive force of heat, he would have given us hands which could take a granite quarry and break its solid acres into suitable and symmetrical blocks, as easily as we now open an orange. Had he intended us for bearing burdens, he would have given us Atlantean shoulders, by which we could carry the vast freights of rail-car and steamship, as a porter carries his pack. He would have given us lungs by which we could blow fleets before us, and wings to sweep over ocean wastes. But, instead of iron arms, and Atlantean shoulders, and the lungs of Boreas, he has given us a mind, a soul, a capacity of acquiring knowledge, and thus of appropriating all these energies of nature to our own use. Instead of a telescopic and microscopic eye, he has given us power to invent the telescope and the microscope. Instead of ten thousand fingers, he has given us genius inventive of the power loom and the printing press. Without a cultivated intellect, man is among the weakest of all the dynamical forces of nature; with a cultivated intellect, he commands them all.
And now, what does the slave maker do? He abolishes this mighty power of the intellect, and uses only the weak, degraded, and half-animated forces of the human limbs. A thousand slaves may stand by a river, and to them it is only an object of fear or of superstition. An educated man surpasses the ancient idea of a river god; he stands by the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Merrimack, or the Connecticut; he commands each of them to do more work than could be performed by a hundred thousand men,--to saw timber, to make cloth, to grind corn,--and they obey. Ignorant slaves stand upon a coal mine, and to them it is only a worthless part of the inanimate earth. An educated man uses the same mine to print a million of books. Slaves will seek to obtain the same crop from the same field, year after year, though the _pabulum_ of that crop is exhausted; the educated man, with his chemist’s eye, sees not only the minutest atoms of earth, but the imponderable gases that permeate it, and he is rewarded with an unbroken succession of luxuriant harvests.
Nor are these advantages confined to those departments of nature where her mightiest forces are brought into requisition. In accomplishing whatever requires delicacy and precision, nature is as much more perfect than man as she is more powerful in whatever requires strength. Whether in great or in small operations, all the improvements in the mechanical and the useful arts come as directly from intelligence as a bird comes out of a shell, or the beautiful colors of a flower out of sunshine. The slave worker is forever prying at the short end of Nature’s lever, and using the back instead of the edge of her finest instruments.
Sir, the most abundant proof exists, derived from all departments of human industry, that uneducated labor is comparatively unprofitable labor. I have before me the statements of a number of the most intelligent gentlemen of Massachusetts, affirming this fact as the result of an experience extending over many years. In Massachusetts we have no native-born child wholly without school instruction; but the degrees of attainment, of mental development, are various. Half a dozen years ago, the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education obtained statements from large numbers of our master manufacturers, authenticated from the books of their respective establishments, and covering a series of years, the result of which was, that increased wages were found in connection with increased intelligence, just as certainly as increased heat raises the mercury in the thermometer. Foreigners, and those coming from other states, who made their marks when they receipted their bills, earned the least; those who had a moderate or limited education occupied a middle ground on the pay-roll; while the intelligent young women who worked in the mills in winter, and taught schools in summer, crowned the list. The larger capital, in the form of intelligence, yielded the larger interest in the form of wages. This inquiry was not confined to manufactures, but was extended to other departments of business, where the results of labor could be made the subject of exact measurement.
This is universally so. The mechanic sees it, when he compares the work of a stupid with that of an awakened mind. The traveller sees it, when he passes from an educated into an uneducated nation. Sir, I have seen countries in Europe, lying side by side, where, without compass or chart, without bound or landmark, I could run the line of demarcation between the two, by the broad, legible characters which ignorance has written on roads, fields, houses, and the persons of men, women, and children, on one side, and which knowledge has inscribed on the other.
This difference is most striking in the mechanic arts, but it is clearly visible also in husbandry. Not the most fertile soil, not mines of silver and gold, can make a nation rich, without intelligence. Who ever had a more fertile soil than the Egyptians? Who have handled more silver and gold than the Spaniards? The universal cultivation of the mind and heart is the only true source of opulence;--the cultivation of the mind, by which to lay hold on the treasures of nature; the cultivation of the heart, by which to devote those treasures to beneficent uses. Where this cultivation exists, no matter how barren the soil or ungenial the clime, there comfort and competence will abound; for it is the intellectual and moral condition of the cultivator that impoverishes the soil or makes it teem with abundance. He who disobeys the law of God in regard to the culture of the intellectual and spiritual nature, may live in the valley of the Nile, but he can rear only the “lean kine” of Pharaoh; but he who obeys the highest law may dwell in the cold and inhospitable regions of Scotland or of New England, and “well-formed and fat-fleshed kine” shall feed on all his meadows. If Pharaoh will be a taskmaster, and will not let the bondmen go free, the corn in his field shall be the “seven thin ears blasted by the east wind;” but if he will obey the commandments of the Lord, then behold there shall be “seven ears of corn upon one stalk, all rank and good.” Sir, the sweat of a slave poisons the soil upon which it falls; his breath is mildew to every green thing; his tear withers the verdure it drops upon.
But slavery makes the general education of the whites impossible. You cannot have general education without Common Schools. Common Schools cannot exist where the population is sparse. Where slaves till the soil, or do the principal part of whatever work is done, the free population must be sparse. Slavery, then, by an inexorable law, denies general education to the whites. The providence of God is just and retributive. Create a serf caste, and debar them from education, and you necessarily debar a great portion of the privileged class from education also. It is impossible, in the present state of things, or in any state of things which can be foreseen, to have free and universal education in a slave state. The difficulty is insurmountable. For a well-organized system of Common Schools, there should be two hundred children, at least, living in such proximity to each other that the oldest of them can come together to a central school. It is not enough to gather from within a circle of half a dozen miles’ diameter fifty or sixty children for a single school. This brings all ages and all studies into the same room. A good system requires a separation of school children into four, or at least into three, classes, according to ages and attainments. Without this gradation, a school is bereft of more than half its efficiency. Now, this can never be done in an agricultural community where there are two classes of men--one to do all the work, and the other to seize all the profits. With New England habits of industry, and with that diversified labor which would be sure to spring from intelligence, the State of Virginia, which skirts us here on the south, would support all the population of the New England states, and fill them with abundance.
Mr. BAYLY. We have as great a population as New England now.
Mr. MANN. As great a population as New England!!
Mr. BAYLY. We send fifteen representatives.
[A voice. And how many of them represent slaves?]
Mr. MANN. Massachusetts alone sends ten representatives.
[A voice. And the rest of New England twenty-one more.]
Mr. MANN. I say, sir, the single State of Virginia could support in abundance the whole population of New England. With such a free population, the school children would be so numerous that public schools might be opened within three or four miles of each other all over its territory,--the light of each of which, blending with its neighboring lights, would illumine the whole land. They would be schools, too, in point of cheapness, within every man’s means. The degrading idea of pauper schools would be discarded forever. But what is the condition of Virginia now? One quarter part of all its adult free white population are unable to read or write, and were proclaimed to be so by a late governor, in his annual message, without producing any reform. Their remedy is to choose a governor who will not proclaim such a fact. When has Virginia, in any state or national election, given a majority equal to the number of its voters unable to read or write? A _republican_ government supported by the two pillars of Slavery and Ignorance!
In South Carolina there is also a fund for the support of pauper schools; but this had become so useless, and was so disdained by its objects, that a late governor of the state, in his annual message, recommended that it should be withdrawn from them altogether.
Yet in many of the slave states there are beautiful paper systems of Common Schools,--dead laws in the statute books,--and the census tells us how profitless they have been. In 1840, in the fifteen slave states and territories, there were only 201,085 scholars at the primary schools. In the same class of schools in the free states, there were 1,626,028,--eight times as many. New York alone had 502,367, or two and a half times as many. The scholars in the primary schools of Ohio alone, outnumbered all those in the fifteen slave states and territories by more than 17,000. In the slave states, almost one tenth part of the free white population over twenty years of age are unable to read and write. In the free states, less than one in one hundred and fifty; and at least four fifths of these are foreigners, who ought not to be included in the computation. Many of the slave states, too, have munificent school funds. Kentucky has one of more than a million of dollars; Tennessee, of two millions; yet, in 1837, Governor Clarke, of Kentucky, declared, in his message to the legislature, that “one third of the adult population were unable to write their names;” and in the State of Tennessee, according to the last census, there were 58,531 of the same description of persons. Surely it would take more than five of these to make three freemen; for the more a state has of them, the less of intelligent freedom will there be in it. And if the schools in the slave states are compared with the schools in the free states, the deficiency in quality will be found as great as the deficiency in number.
Sir, during the last ten years I have had a most extensive correspondence with the intelligent friends of education in the slave states. They yearn for progress, but they cannot obtain it. They procure laws to be passed, but there is no one to execute them. They set forth the benefits and the blessings of education; but they speak in a vacuum, and no one hears the appeal. If a parent wishes to educate his children, he must send them from home, and thus suffer a sort of bereavement, even while they live; or he must employ a tutor or governess in his family, which few are able to do. The rich may do it, but what becomes of the children of the poor? In cities the obstacles are less; but the number of persons resident in cities is relatively small. All this is the inevitable consequence of slavery; and it is as impossible for free, thorough, universal education to coëxist with slavery as for two bodies to occupy the same space at the same time. Slavery would abolish education, if it should invade a free state; education would abolish slavery, if it _could_ invade a slave state.
Destroying common education, slavery destroys the fruits of common education,--the inventive mind, practical talent, the power of adapting means to ends in the business of life. Whence have come all those mechanical and scientific improvements and inventions which have enriched the world with so many comforts, and adorned it with so many beauties; which to-day give enjoyments and luxuries to a common family in a New England village, that neither Queen Elizabeth of England nor any of her proud court ever dreamed of, but a little more than two centuries ago? Among whom have these improvements originated? All history and experience affirm that they have come, and must come, from people among whom education is most generous and unconfined. Increase the _constituency_, if I may so speak, of developed intellect, and you increase in an equal ratio the chances of inventive, creative genius. From what part of our own country has come the application of steam to the propulsion of boats for commercial purposes, or of wheels for manufacturing purposes? Where have the various and almost infinite improvements been made which have resulted in the present perfection of cotton and woollen machinery? Whence came the invention of the cotton-gin, and the great improvements in railroads? Where was born the mighty genius who invented the first lightning rod, which sends the electric fluid harmless into the earth; or that other genius, not less beneficent, who invented the second lightning rod, which sends the same fluid from city to city on messages of business or of affection? Sir, these are results which you can no more have without common education, without imbuing the public mind with the elements of knowledge, than you can have corn without planting, or harvests without sunshine.
Look into the Patent Office reports, and see in what sections of country mechanical improvements and the application of science to the useful arts have originated. Out of _five hundred and seventy-two_ patents issued in 1847, only _sixty-six_ went to the slave states. The patents annually issued, it is true, are a mingled heap of chaff and wheat, but some of it is wheat worthy of Olympus. I think the Patent Office reports show that at least six or eight times as many patents have been taken out for the north as for the south. What improvements will a slave ever make in agricultural implements; in the manufacture of metals; in preparing wool, cotton, silk, fur, or paper; in chemical processes; in the application of steam; in philosophical, nautical, or optical instruments; in civil engineering, architecture, the construction of roads, canals, wharves, bridges, docks, piers, &c.; in hydraulics or pneumatics; in the application of the mechanical powers; in household furniture, or wearing apparel; in printing, binding, engraving, &c., &c.? This question, when put in reference to slaves, appears ridiculous; and yet it is no more absurd, when asked in reference to an ignorant slave, than when asked in reference to an uneducated white man. The fact that the latter is a voter makes no difference, notwithstanding the common opinion, in certain latitudes, that it does. All such improvements come from minds which have had an early awakening, and been put on scientific trains of thought in their childhood and youth,--a thing utterly impossible for the people at large, without Common Schools.
These are causes; now look at effects. In the New England states, the iron manufacture is twenty times as much, according to the population, as it is in Virginia; and yet Virginia has far more of the ore than they. In cotton, we can hardly find a fraction low enough to express the difference. The ship-building in Maine and Massachusetts is thirty-five times as much as in Virginia. The north comes to the south, cuts their timber, carries it home, manufactures it, and then brings it back, wrought into a hundred different forms, to be sold to those who would see it rot before their eyes.
Can any man give a reason why Norfolk should not have grown like New York, other than the difference in the institutions of the people? Jamestown was settled before Plymouth, and had _natural_ advantages superior to it. Plymouth now has a population of between seven and eight thousand, is worth two millions of dollars, and taxed itself last year, for schools and schoolhouses, more than seven thousand dollars. I ought rather to say, that it invested more than seven thousand dollars in a kind of stock that yields a hundred per cent. income. How many bats there may be in the ruins of Jamestown, the last census does not inform us.
The books printed at the south I suppose not to be equal to _one fiftieth_ part of the number printed at the north. In maps, charts, engravings, and so forth, the elements of comparison exist only on one side.
Out of universal education come genius, skill, and enterprise, and the desire of bettering one’s condition. Industry and frugality are their concomitants. Diversified labor secures a home market. Diligence earns much, but the absence of the vices of indolence saves more. Hence comforts abound, while capital accumulates. After the home consumption is supplied, there is a surplus for export. The balance of trade is favorable. All the higher institutions of learning and religion can be liberally supported. These institutions impart an elevated and moral tone to society. Hence efforts for all kinds of social ameliorations. Temperance societies spring up. Societies for preventing crime; for saving from pauperism; for the reform of prisons and the reformation of prisoners; for peace; for sending missionaries to the heathen; for diffusing the gospel,--all these, where a sound education is given, grow up, in the order of Providence, as an oak grows out of an acorn.
In one thing the south has excelled,--in training statesmen. The primary and the ultimate effects of slavery upon this fact are so well set forth in a late sermon by Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, Connecticut, that I will read a passage from it:--
“And here, since this institution of slavery, entering into the fortunes of our history, complicates in so many ways the disorders we suffer, I must pause a few moments to sketch its characteristics. Slavery, it is not to be denied, is an essentially barbarous institution. It gives us, too, that sign which is the perpetual distinction of barbarism, that it has no law of progress. The highest level it reaches is the level at which it begins. Indeed, we need not scruple to allow that it has yielded us one considerable advantage, in virtue of the fact that it produces its best condition first. For while the northern people were generally delving in labor, for many generations, to create a condition of comfort, slavery set the masters at once on a footing of ease, gave them leisure for elegant intercourse, for unprofessional studies, and seasoned their character thus with that kind of cultivation which distinguishes men of society. A class of statesmen were thus raised up, who were prepared to figure as leaders in scenes of public life, where so much depends on manners and social address. But now the scale is changing. Free labor is rising, at length, into a state of wealth and comfort, to take the lead of American society. Meanwhile, the foster-sons of slavery,--the high families, the statesmen,--gradually receding in character, as they must under this vicious institution, are receding also in power and influence, and have been ever since the revolution. Slavery is a condition against nature; the curse of nature, therefore, is on it, and it bows to its doom by a law as irresistible as gravity. It produces a condition of ease which is not the reward of labor, and a state of degradation which is not the curse of idleness. Therefore, the ease it enjoys cannot but end in a curse, and the degradation it suffers cannot rise into a blessing. It nourishes imperious and violent passions. It makes the masters solitary sheiks on their estates, forbidding thus the possibility of public schools, and preventing also that condensed form of society which is necessary to the vigorous maintenance of churches. Education and religion thus displaced, the dinner table only remains, and on this hangs, in great part, the keeping of the social state. But however highly we may estimate the humanizing power of hospitality, it cannot be regarded as any sufficient spring of character. It is neither a school nor a gospel. And when it comes of self-indulgence, or only seeks relief for the tedium of an idle life, scarcely does it bring with it the blessings of a virtue. The accomplishments it yields are of a mock quality, rather than of a real, having about the same relation to a substantial and finished culture that honor has to character. This kind of currency will pass no longer; for, it is not expense without comfort, or splendor set in disorder, as diamonds in pewter; it is not air in place of elegance, or assurance substituted for ease; neither is it to be master of a fluent speech, or to garnish the same with stale quotations from the classics; much less is it to live in the Don Juan vein, accepting barbarism by poetic inspiration,--the same by which a late noble poet, drawing out of Turks and pirates, became the chosen laureate of slavery,--not any or all of these can make up such a style of man, or of life, as we in this age demand. We have come up now to a point where we look for true intellectual refinement, and a ripe state of personal culture. But how clearly is it seen to be a violation of its own laws, for slavery to produce a genuine scholar, or a man who, in any department of excellence, unless it be in politics, is not a full century behind his time? And if we ask for what is dearer and better still, for a pure Christian morality, the youth of slavery are trained in no such habits as are most congenial to virtue. The point of honor is the only principle many of them know. Violence and dissipation bring down every succeeding generation to a state continually lower; so that now, after a hundred and fifty years are passed, the slaveholding territory may be described as a vast missionary ground, and one so uncomfortable to the faithful ministry of Christ, by reason of its jealous tempers, and the known repugnance it has to many of the first maxims of the gospel, that scarcely a missionary can be found to enter it. Connected with this moral decay, the resources of nature also are exhausted, and her fertile territories changed to a desert, by the uncreating power of a spendthrift institution. And then, having made a waste where God had made a garden, slavery gathers up the relics of bankruptcy, and the baser relics still of virtue and all manly enterprise, and goes forth to renew, on a virgin soil, its dismal and forlorn history. Thus, at length, has been produced what may be called the bowie-knife style of civilization, and the new west of the south is overrun by it,--a spirit of blood which defies all laws of God and man;--honorable, but not honest; prompt to resent an injury, slack to discharge a debt; educated to ease, and readier, of course, when the means of living fail, to find them at the gambling table or the race-ground, than in any work of industry,--probably squandering the means of living there, to relieve the tedium of ease itself.”
The free schools of the north lead to the common diffusion of knowledge, and the equalization of society. The private schools of the south divide men into patricians and plebeians; so that, in the latter, a nuisance grows out of education itself. In the public schools of New York there are libraries now amounting to more than a million of volumes. In the schools of Massachusetts the number of volumes is relatively less; but the quality is greatly superior. In each of these states, within half an hour’s walk of the poorest farm-house or mechanic’s shop, there is a library, free and open to every child, containing works of history, biography, travels, ethics, natural science, &c., &c., which will supply him with the noblest capital of intelligence, wherewith to commence the business of making himself a useful and intelligent citizen. With the exception of New Orleans, (whose free schools were commenced and have been presided over by a Massachusetts man,) and three or four other cities, all the libraries in the public schools of the slave states could be carried in a schoolboy’s satchel. The libraries of all the universities and colleges of the south contain 223,416 volumes; those of the north, 593,897 volumes. The libraries of southern theological schools, 22,800; those of northern, 102,080.
Look into Silliman’s Journal, or the volumes of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and inquire whence the communications came. Where live the historians of the country, Sparks, Prescott, Bancroft; the poets, Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell; the jurists, Story, Kent, Wheaton; the classic models of writing, Charming, Everett, Irving; the female writers, Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Sigourney, and Mrs. Child? All this proceeds from no superiority of natural endowment on the one side, or inferiority on the other. The Southern States are all within what may be called “the latitudes of genius;” for there is a small belt around the globe, comprising but a few degrees of latitude, which has produced all the distinguished men who have ever lived. I say this difference results from no difference in natural endowment. The mental endowments at the south are equal to those in any part of the world. But it comes because, in one quarter, the common atmosphere is vivified with knowledge, electric with ideas, while slavery gathers its Bœotian fogs over the other. What West Point has been to our armies in Mexico, that, and more than that, good schools would be to the intelligence and industrial prosperity of our country.
It may seem a little out of place, but I cannot forbear here adverting to one point, which, as a lover of children and as a parent, touches me more deeply than any other. To whom are intrusted, at the south, the early care and nurture of children? It has been thought by many educators and metaphysicians, that children learn as much before the age of seven years as ever afterwards. Who, at the south, administers this early knowledge,--these ideas, these views, that have such sovereign efficacy in the formation of adult character? Who has the custody of children during this ductile, forming, receptive period of life,--a period when the mind absorbs whatever is brought into contact with it? Sir, the children of the south, more or less, and generally _more_, are tended and nurtured by slaves. Ignorance, superstition, vulgarity, passion, and perhaps impurity, are the breasts at which they nurse. Whatever afflictions God may see fit to bring upon me, whatever other mercies He may withhold, may He give me none but persons of intelligence, of refinement, and of moral excellence, to walk with my children during the imitative years of their existence, and to lead them in the paths of knowledge, and breathe into their hearts the breath of a moral and religious life.
Before considering the moral character of slavery, I wish to advert for a moment to the position which we occupy as one of the nations of the earth, in this advancing period of the world’s civilization. Nations, like individuals, have a character. The date of the latter is counted by years; that of the former, by centuries. No man can have any self-respect, who is not solicitous about his posthumous reputation. No man can be a patriot who feels neither joy nor shame at the idea of the honor or the infamy which his age and his country shall leave behind them. Nations, like individuals, have characteristic objects of ambition. Greece coveted the arts; Rome gloried in war; but liberty has been the goddess of our idolatry. Amid the storms of freedom were we cradled; in the struggles of freedom have our joints been knit; on the rich aliment of freedom have we grown to our present stature. With a somewhat too boastful spirit, perhaps, have we challenged the admiration of the world for our devotion to liberty; but an enthusiasm for the rights of man is so holy a passion, that even its excesses are not devoid of the beautiful. We have not only won freedom for ourselves, but we have taught its sacred lessons to others. The shout of “Death to tyrants, and freedom for man!” which pealed through this country seventy years ago, has at length reached across the Atlantic; and whoever has given an attentive ear to the sounds which have come back to us, within the last few months, from the European world, cannot have failed to perceive that they were only the far-travelled echoes of the American Declaration of Independence. But in the divine face of our liberty there has been one foul, demoniac feature. Whenever her votaries would approach her to worship, they have been fain to draw a veil over one part of her visage, to conceal its hideousness. Whence came this deformity on her otherwise fair and celestial countenance? Sad is the story, but it must be told. Her mother was a vampire. As the daughter lay helpless in her arms, the beldam tore open her living flesh, and feasted upon her lifeblood. Hence this unsightly wound, that affrights whoever beholds it. But, sir, I must leave dallying with these ambiguous metaphors. One wants the plain, sinewy, Saxon tongue to tell of deeds that should have shamed devils. Great Britain was the mother. Her American colonies were the daughter. The mother lusted for gold. To get it, she made partnership with robbery and death. Shackles, chains, and weapons for human butchery, were her outfit in trade. She made Africa her hunting-ground. She made its people her prey, and the unwilling colonies her market-place. She broke into the Ethiop’s home, as a wolf into a sheepfold at midnight. She set the continent a-flame, that she might seize the affrighted inhabitants as they ran shrieking from their blazing hamlets. The aged and the infant she left for the vultures; but the strong men and the strong women she drove, scourged and bleeding, to the shore. Packed and stowed like merchandise between unventilated decks, so close that the tempest without could not ruffle the pestilential air within, the voyage was begun. Once a day the hatches were opened, to receive food and to disgorge the dead. Thousands and thousands of corpses, which she plunged into the ocean from the decks of her slave ships, she counted only as the tare of commerce. The blue monsters of the deep became familiar with her pathway, and, not more remorseless than she, they shared her plunder. At length the accursed vessel reached the foreign shore. And there, monsters of the land, fiercer and feller than any that roam the watery plains, rewarded the robber by purchasing his spoils.
For more than a century did the madness of this traffic rage. During all those years, the clock of eternity never counted out a minute that did not witness the cruel death, by treachery or violence, of some son or daughter, some father or mother, of Africa. The three millions of slaves that now darken our southern horizon are the progeny of these progenitors,--a doomed race, fated and suffering from sire to son. But the enormities of the mother country did not pass without remonstrance. Many of the colonies expostulated against, and rebuked them. The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, presented to the throne the most humble and suppliant petitions, praying for the abolition of the trade. The colonial legislatures passed laws against it. But their petitions were spurned from the throne. Their laws were vetoed by the governors. In informal negotiations attempted with the ministers of the crown, the friends of the slave were made to understand that royalty turned an adder’s ear to their prayers. The profoundest feelings of lamentation and abhorrence were kindled in the bosoms of his western subjects by this flagitious conduct of the king. In that dark catalogue of crimes, which led our fathers to forswear allegiance to the British throne, its refusal to prohibit the slave trade to the colonies is made one of the most prominent of those political offences which are said to “define a tyrant.” In the original draught of the Declaration of Independence, as prepared by Mr. Jefferson, this crime of King George the Third is set forth in the following words:--
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain. Determined to keep a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.”
Now, if the King of Great Britain prostituted his negative that slavery might not be restricted, what, in after times, shall be said of those who prostitute their affirmative that it may be extended? Yet it is now proposed, in some of the state legislatures, and in this Capitol, to do precisely the same thing, in regard to the Territory of Oregon, which was done by Great Britain to her transatlantic possessions; not merely to legalize slavery there, but to prohibit its inhabitants from prohibiting _it_. Though three thousand miles west of Great Britain, she had certain constitutional rights over us, and could affect our destiny. Though the inhabitants of Oregon are three thousand miles west of us, yet we have certain constitutional rights over them, and can affect their destiny. Great Britain annulled our laws for prohibiting slavery; we propose to annul an existing law of Oregon prohibiting slavery. If the execrations of mankind are yet too feeble and too few to punish Great Britain for her wickedness, what scope, what fulness, what eternity of execration and anathema will be a sufficient retribution upon us, if we volunteer to copy her example? It was in the eighteenth century when the mother country thus made merchandise of human beings,--a time when liberty was a forbidden word in the languages of Europe. It is in the nineteenth century that we propose to reënact, and on an ampler scale, the same execrable villany,--a time when liberty is the rallying cry of all Christendom. So great has been the progress of liberal ideas within the last century, that what was venial at its beginning is unpardonable at its close. To drive coffles of slaves from here to Oregon, in the middle of the nineteenth century, is more infamous than it was to bring cargoes of slaves from Africa here, in the middle of the eighteenth. Yet such is the period that men would select to perpetuate and increase the horrors of this traffic.
Sir, how often, on this floor, have indignant remonstrances been addressed to the north, for agitating the subject of slavery? How often have we at the north been told that we were inciting insurrection, fomenting a servile war, putting the black man’s knife to the white man’s throat. The air of this hall has been filled, its walls have been, as it were, sculptured, by southern eloquence, with images of devastated towns, of murdered men and ravished women; and, as a defence against the iniquities of the institution, they have universally put in the plea that the calamity was entailed upon them by the mother country, that it made a part of the world they were born into, and therefore they could not help it. I have always been disposed to allow its full weight to this palliation. But if they now insist upon perpetrating against the whole western world, which happens at present to be under our control, the same wrongs which, in darker days, Great Britain perpetrated against them, they will forfeit every claim to sympathy. Sir, here is a test. Let not southern men, who would now force slavery upon new regions, ever deny that their slavery at home is a chosen, voluntary, beloved crime.
But let us look, sir, at the moral character of slavery. It is proposed not merely to continue this institution where it now exists, but to extend it to the Pacific Ocean,--to spread it over the vast slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Sir, the conduct of governments, like the conduct of individuals, is subject to the laws and the retributions of Providence. If, therefore, there is any ingredient of wrong in this institution, we ought not to adopt it, or to permit it, even though it should pour wealth in golden showers over the whole surface of the land. In speaking of the moral character of slavery, sir, I mean to utter no word for the purpose of wounding the feelings of any man. On the other hand, I mean not to wound the cause of truth by abstaining from the utterance of any word which I ought to speak.
The institution of slavery is against natural right. Jurists, from the time of Justinian; orators, from the time of Cicero; poets, from the time of Homer, declare it to be wrong. The writers on moral or ethical science,--the expounders of the law of nations and of God,--denounce slavery as an invasion of the rights of man. They find no warrant for it in the eternal principles of justice and equity; and in that great division which they set forth between right and wrong, they arrange slavery in the catalogue of crime. All the noblest instincts of human nature rebel against it. Whatever has been taught by sage, or sung by poet, in favor of freedom, is a virtual condemnation of slavery. Whenever we applaud the great champions of liberty, who, by the sacrifice of life in the cause of freedom, have won the homage of the world and an immortality of fame, we record the testimony of our hearts against slavery. Wherever patriotism and philanthropy have glowed brightest; wherever piety and a devout religious sentiment have burned most fervently, there has been the most decided recognition of the universal rights of man.
Sir, let us analyze this subject, and see if slavery be not the most compact, and concentrated, and condensed system of wrong which the depravity of man has ever invented. Slavery is said to have had its origin in war. It is claimed that the captor had a right to take the life of his captive; and that if he spared that life he made it his own, and thus acquired a right to control it. I deny the right of the captor to the life of his captive; and even if this right were conceded, I deny his right to the life of the captive’s offspring. But this relation between captor and captive precludes the idea of peace; for no peace can be made where there is no free agency. Peace being precluded, it follows inevitably that the state of war continues. Hence, the state of slavery is a state of war; and though active hostilities may have ceased, they are liable to break out, and may rightfully break out, at any moment. How long must our fellow-citizens, who were enslaved in Algiers, have continued in slavery, before they would have lost the right of escape or of resistance?
The gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. BOCOCK,] in his speech this morning, put the right of the slaveholder upon a somewhat different ground. He said a man might acquire property in a horse before the existence of civil society, by catching a wild one. And so, he added, one man might acquire property in another man, by subduing him to his will. The superior force gave the right, whether to the horse or to the man. Now, if this be so, and if at any time the superior force should change sides, then it follows inevitably that the relation of the parties might be rightfully changed by a new appeal to force.
The same gentleman claims Bible authority for slavery. He says, “I see slavery there tolerated, I had almost said inculcated. I see such language as this: ‘Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall you buy bondmen and bondmaids; and ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession,’” &c. Does not the gentleman know that, by the same authority, the Israelitish slaves were commanded to despoil their Egyptian masters, and to escape from bondage? Surely the latter is as good an authority as the former. If the gentleman’s argument is sound, he is bound to advocate a repeal of the act of 1793. If the gentleman’s argument is sound, the free states, instead of surrendering fugitive slaves to their masters, are bound to give those masters a Red Sea reception and embrace; and the escape of the children of Israel into Canaan is a direct precedent for the underground railroad to Canada.
Both the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. FRENCH,] yesterday, and the gentleman from Virginia, to-day, spoke repeatedly, and without the slightest discrimination, of “a slave and a horse,” “a slave and a mule,” &c. What should we think, sir, of a teacher for our children, or even of a tender of our cattle, who did not recognize the difference between men and mules,--between humanity and horse-flesh? What should we think, if, on opening a work, claiming to be a scientific treatise on zoölogy, we should find the author to be ignorant of the difference between biped and quadruped, or between men and birds, or men and fishes? Yet such errors would be trifling compared with those which have been made through all this debate. They would be simple errors in natural history, perhaps harmless; but these are errors,--fatal errors,--in humanity and Christian ethics. No, sir; all the legislation of the slave states proves that they do not treat, and cannot treat, a human being as an animal. I will show that they are ever trying to degrade him into an animal, although they can never succeed.
This conscious idea that the state of slavery is a state of war,--a state in which superior force keeps inferior force down,--develops and manifests itself perpetually. It exhibits itself in the statute books of the slave states, prohibiting the education of slaves, making it highly penal to teach them so much as the alphabet; dispersing and punishing all meetings where they come together in quest of knowledge. Look into the statute books of the free states, and you will find law after law, encouragement after encouragement, to secure the diffusion of knowledge. Look into the statute books of the slave states, and you find law after law, penalty after penalty, to secure the extinction of knowledge. Who has not read with delight those books which have been written, both in England and in this country, entitled “The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties,” giving the biographies of illustrious men, who, by an undaunted and indomitable spirit, had risen from poverty and obscurity to the heights of eminence, and blessed the world with their achievements in literature, in science, and in morals? Yet here, in what we call republican America, are fifteen great states, vying with each other to see which will bring the blackest and most impervious pall of ignorance over three millions of human beings; nay, which can do most to stretch this pall across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Is not knowledge a good? Is it not one of the most precious bounties which the all-bountiful Giver has bestowed upon the human race? Sir John Herschel, possessed of ample wealth, his capacious mind stored with the treasures of knowledge, surrounded by the most learned society in the most cultivated metropolis in the world, says, “If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead, under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading.” Yet it is now proposed to colonize the broad regions of the west with millions of our fellow-beings, who shall never be able to read a book, or write a word; to whom knowledge shall bring no delight in childhood, no relief in the weary hours of sickness or convalescence, no solace in the decrepitude of age; who shall perceive nothing of the beauties of art, who shall know nothing of the wonders of science, who shall never reach any lofty, intellectual conception of the attributes of their great Creator;--deaf to all the hosannas of praise which nature sings to her Maker; blind in this magnificent temple which God has builded.
Sir, it is one of the noblest attributes of man that he can derive knowledge from his predecessors. We possess the accumulated learning of ages. From ten thousand confluent streams, the river of truth, widened and deepened, has come down to us; and it is among our choicest delights, that if we can add to its volume, as it rolls on, it will bear a richer freight of blessings to our successors. But it is here proposed to annul this beneficent law of nature; to repel this proffered bounty of Heaven. It is proposed to create a race of men, to whom all the lights of experience shall be extinguished; whose hundredth generation shall be as ignorant and as barbarous as its first.
Sir, I hold all voluntary ignorance to be a crime; I hold all enforced ignorance to be a greater crime. Knowledge is essential to all rational enjoyment; it is essential to the full and adequate performance of every duty. Whoever intercepts knowledge, therefore, on its passage to a human soul; whoever strikes down the hand that is outstretched to grasp it, is guilty of one of the most heinous of offences. Add to your virtue knowledge, says the apostle; but here the command is, Be-cloud and be-little by ignorance whatever virtue you may possess.
Sir, let me justify the earnestness of these expressions by describing the transition of feeling through which I have lately passed. I come from a community where knowledge ranks next to virtue in the classification of blessings. On the tenth day of April last, the day before I left home for this place, I attended the dedication of a schoolhouse in Boston which had cost $70,000. The mayor presided, and much of the intelligence and worth of the city was present on the occasion. I see by a paper which I have this day received, that another schoolhouse, in the same city, was dedicated on Monday of the present week. It was there stated by the mayor that the cost of the city schoolhouses which had been completed within the last three months was $200,000. On Tuesday of this week, a new high schoolhouse in the city of Cambridge was dedicated. Mr. Everett, the president of Harvard College, was present, and addressed the assembly in a long, and, I need not add, a most beautiful speech. That schoolhouse, with two others to be dedicated within a week, will have cost $25,000. Last week, in the neighboring city of Charlestown, a new high schoolhouse, of a most splendid and costly character, was dedicated by the mayor and city government, by clergy and laity. But it is not mayors of cities and presidents of colleges alone that engage in the work of consecrating temples of education to the service of the young. Since I have been here, the governor of the commonwealth, Mr. Briggs, went to Newburyport, a distance of forty miles, to attend the dedication of a schoolhouse which cost $25,000. On a late occasion, when the same excellent chief magistrate travelled forty miles to attend the dedication of a schoolhouse in the country, some speaker congratulated the audience because the governor of the commonwealth had come down from the executive chair to honor the occasion. “No,” said he, “I have come up to the occasion to be honored by it.” Within the last year, $200,000 have been given by individuals to Harvard College. Within a little longer time than this, the other two colleges in the state have received, together, a still larger endowment from individuals or the state.
These measures are part of a great system which we are carrying on for the elevation of the race. Last year, the voters of Massachusetts, in their respective towns, voluntarily taxed themselves about a million of dollars for the support of Common Schools. We have an old law on the statute book, requiring towns to tax themselves for the support of public schools; but the people have long since lost sight of this law in the munificence of their contributions. Massachusetts is now erecting a reform school for vagrant and exposed children,--so many of whom come to us from abroad,--which will cost the state more than a hundred thousand dollars. An unknown individual has given twenty thousand dollars towards it. We educate all our deaf and dumb and blind. An appropriation was made by the last legislature to establish a school for idiots, in imitation of those beautiful institutions in Paris, in Switzerland, and in Berlin, where the most revolting and malicious of this deplorable class are tamed into docility, made lovers of order and neatness, and capable of performing many valuable services. The future teacher of this school is now abroad, preparing himself for his work. A few years ago, Mr. Everett, the present president of Harvard College, then governor of the commonwealth, spoke the deep _convictions_ of Massachusetts people, when, in a public address on education, he exhorted the fathers and mothers of Massachusetts in the following words: “Save,” said he, “save, spare, scrape, stint, starve, do any thing but steal,” to educate your children. And Doctor Howe, the noble-hearted director of the Institution for the Blind, lately uttered the deepest _sentiments_ of our citizens, when, in speaking of our duties to the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the idiotic, he said, “The sight of any human being left to brutish ignorance is always demoralizing to the beholders. There floats not upon the stream of life a wreck of humanity so utterly shattered and crippled, but that its signals of distress should challenge attention and command assistance.”
Sir, it was all glowing and fervid with sentiments like these, that, a few weeks ago, I entered this House,--sentiments transfused into my soul from without, even if I had no vital spark of nobleness to kindle them within. Imagine, then, my strong revulsion of feeling, when the first set, elaborate speech which I heard, was that of the gentleman from Virginia, proposing to extend ignorance to the uttermost bounds of this republic,--to legalize it, to enforce it, to necessitate it, and make it eternal. Since him, many others have advocated the same abhorrent doctrine. Not satisfied with dooming a whole race of our fellow-beings to mental darkness, impervious and everlasting,--not satisfied with drawing this black curtain of ignorance between man and nature, between the human soul and its God, from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande, across half the continent,--they desire to increase this race ten, twenty millions more, and to unfold and spread out this black curtain across the other half of the continent. When, sir, in the halls of legislation, men advocate measures like this, it is no figure of speech to say that their words are the clankings of multitudinous fetters; each gesture of their arms tears human flesh with ten thousand whips; each exhalation of their breath spreads clouds of moral darkness from horizon to horizon.
Twenty years ago, a sharp sensation ran through the nerves of the civilized world, at the story of a young man named Caspar Hauser, found in the city of Nuremberg, in Bavaria. Though sixteen or seventeen years of age, he could not walk nor talk. He heard without understanding; he saw without perceiving; he moved without definite purpose. It was the soul of an infant in the body of an adult. After he had learned to speak, he related that, from his earliest recollection, he had always been kept in a hole so small, that he could not stretch out his limbs, where he saw no light, heard no sound, nor even witnessed the face of the attendant who brought him his scanty food. For many years conjecture was rife concerning his history, and all Germany was searched to discover his origin. After a long period of fruitless inquiry and speculation, public opinion settled down into the belief that he was the victim of some great unnatural crime; that he was the heir to some throne, and had been sequestered by ambition; or the inheritor of vast wealth, and had been hidden away by cupidity; or the offspring of criminal indulgence, and had been buried alive to avoid exposure and shame. A German, Von Feuerbach, published an account of Caspar, entitled “The Example of a Crime on the Life of the Soul.” But why go to Europe to be thrilled with the pathos of a human being shrouded from the light of nature, and cut off from a knowledge of duty and of God? To-day, in this boasted land of light and liberty, there are three million Caspar Hausers; and, as if this were not enough, it is proposed to multiply their number tenfold, and to fill up all the western world with these proofs of human avarice and guilt. It is proposed that we ourselves should create and should publish to the world, not one, but untold millions of “Examples of _a Crime on the Life of the Soul_.” It is proposed that the self-styled freemen, the self-styled Christians, of fifteen great states in this American Union, shall engage in the work of procreating, rearing, and _selling_ Caspar Hausers, often from their own loins; and if any further development of soul or of body is allowed to the American victims than was permitted to the Bavarian child, it is only because such development will increase their market value at the barracoons. It is not from any difference of motive, but only the better to insure that motive’s indulgence. The slave child must be allowed to use his limbs, or how could he drudge out his life in the service of his master? The slave infant must be taught to walk, or how, _under the shadow of this thrice-glorious Capitol_, could he join a coffle for New Orleans?
I know, sir, that it has been said, within a short time past, that Caspar Hauser was an impostor, and his story a fiction. Would to God that this could ever be said of his fellow-victims in America!
For another reason slavery is an unspeakable wrong. The slave is debarred from testifying against a white man. The courts will not hear him as a witness. By the principles of the common law, if any man suffers violence at the hands of another, he can prefer his complaint to magistrates, or to the grand juries of the courts, who are bound to give him redress. Hence the law is said to hold up its shield before every man for his protection. It surrounds him in the crowded street and in the solitary place. It guards his treasures with greater vigilance than locks or iron safes; and against meditated aggressions upon himself, his wife, or his children, it fastens his doors every night more securely than triple bolts of brass. But all these sacred protections are denied to the slave. While subjected to the law of force, he is shut out from the law of right. To suffer injury is his, but never to obtain redress. For personal cruelties, for stripes that shiver his flesh, and blows that break his bones, for robbery or for murder, neither he nor his friends can have preventive, remedy, or recompense. The father, who is a slave, may see son or daughter scored, mangled, mutilated, or ravished before his eyes, and he must be dumb as a sheep before its shearers. The wife may be dishonored in the presence of the husband, and, if he remonstrates or rebels, the miscreant who could burn with the lust will burn not less fiercely with a vengeance to be glutted upon his foiler.
Suppose, suddenly, by some disastrous change in the order of nature, an entire kingdom or community were to be enveloped in total darkness,--to have no day, no dawn, but midnight evermore! Into what infinite forms of violence and wrong would the depraved passions of the human heart spring up, when no longer restrained by the light of day, and the dangers of exposure! So far as legal rights against his oppressors are concerned, the slave lives in such a world of darkness. A hundred of his fellows may stand around him and witness the wrongs he suffers, but not one of them can appeal to jury, magistrate, or judge, for punishment or redress. The wickedest white man, in a company of slaves, bears a charmed life. There is not one of the fell passions that rages in his bosom which he cannot indulge with wantonness and to satiety, and the court has no ears to hear the complaint of the victim. How dearly does every honorable man prize character! The law denies the slave a character; for, however traduced, legal vindication is impossible.
And yet, infinitely flagrant as the anomaly is, the slave is amenable to the laws of the land for all offences which he may commit against others, though he is powerless to protect himself by the same law from offences which others may commit against him. He may suffer all wrong, and the courts will not hearken to his testimony; but for the first wrong he does, the same courts inflict their severest punishments upon him. This is the reciprocity of slave law.--to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection. Hear what is said by the highest judicial tribunal of South Carolina: “Although slaves are held to be the absolute property of their owners, yet they have the power of committing crimes.”--_2d Nott and McCord’s Rep._, p. 179. A negro is so far amenable to the common law, that he may be one of three to constitute the number necessary to make a riot.--_1st Bay’s Rep._, 358. By the laws of the same state, a negro may be himself stolen, and he has no redress; but if he steals a negro from another, he shall be hung.--_2d Nott and McCord’s Rep._, 179. [_An example of this penalty suffered by a slave._] This is the way that slave legislatures and slave judicatories construe the command of Christ, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also the same unto them.” Nay, by the laws of some of the slave states, where master and slave are engaged in a joint act, the slave is indictable, while the master is not.
What rights are more sacred or more dear to us than the conjugal and the parental? No savage nation, however far removed from the frontiers of civilization, has ever yet been discovered, where these rights were unknown or unhonored. The beasts of the forest feel and respect them. It is only in the land of slaves that they are blotted out and annihilated.
Slavery is an unspeakable wrong to the conscience. The word “conscience” conveys a complex idea. It includes conscientiousness; that is, the sentiment or instinct of right and wrong; and also intelligence, which is the guide of this sentiment. _Conscience_, then, implies both the desire or impulse to do right, and also a knowledge of what is right. Nature endows us with the sentiment, but the knowledge we must acquire. Hence we speak of an “enlightened conscience,” meaning thereby not only the moral sense, but that knowledge of circumstances, relations, tendencies and results, which is necessary in order to guide the moral sense to just conclusions. Each of these elements is equally necessary to enable a man to feel rightly and to act rightly. Mere knowledge, without the moral sense, can take no cognizance of the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong; and so the blind instinct, unguided by knowledge, will be forever at fault in its conclusions. The two were made to coëxist and operate together by Him who made the human soul. But the impious hand of man divorces these twin capacities, wherever it denies knowledge. If one of these coördinate powers in the mental realm be annulled by the legislature, it may be called _law_; but it is repugnant to every law and attribute of God.
But, not satisfied with having invaded the human soul, and annihilated one of its most sacred attributes, in the persons of three millions of our fellow-men; not satisfied with having killed the conscience, as far as it can be killed by human device, and human force, in an entire race; we are now invoked to multiply that race, to extend it over regions yet unscathed by its existence, and there to call into being other millions of men, upon whose souls, and upon the souls of whose posterity, the same unholy spoliation shall be committed forever.
Slavery is an unspeakable wrong to the religious nature of man. The dearest and most precious of all human rights is the right of private judgment in matters of religion. I am interested in nothing else so much as in the attributes of my Creator, and in the relations which he has established between me and himself, for time and for eternity. To investigate for myself these relations, and their momentous consequences; to “search the Scriptures;” to explore the works of God in the outward and visible universe; to ask counsel of the sages and divines of the ages gone by,--these are rights which it would be sacrilege in me to surrender; which it is a worse sacrilege in any human being or human government to usurp. Yet, by denying education to the slave, you destroy not merely the _right_, but the _power_, of personal examination in regard to all that most nearly concerns the soul’s interests. Who so base as not to reverence the mighty champions of religious freedom, in days when the dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were the arguments of a government theology? Who does not reverence, I say, Wickliffe, Huss, Luther, and the whole army of martyrs whose blood reddened the axe of English intolerance? Yet it was only for this right of private judgment, for this independence of another man’s control in religious concernments, that the godlike champions of religious liberty perilled themselves and perished. Yet it is this very religious despotism over millions of men which it is now proposed, not to destroy, but to create. It is proposed not to break old fetters and cast them away, but to forge new ones and rivet them on. Sir, on the continent of Europe, and in the Tower of London, I have seen the axes, the chains, and other horrid implements of death, by which the great defenders of freedom for the soul were brought to their final doom,--by which political and religious liberty was cloven down; but fairer and lovelier to the view were axe and chain, and all the ghastly implements of death ever invented by religious bigotry or civil despotism to wring and torture freedom out of the soul of man;--fairer and lovelier were they all than the parchment roll of this House on which shall be inscribed a law for profaning one additional foot of American soil with the curse of slavery.
After the above speech was delivered, I was referred to a Tract, written by a Virginian, on the subject of slavery; and, by the politeness of its author, I have since obtained a copy of it. It is entitled, “_Address to the People of West Virginia; showing that Slavery is injurious to the public welfare, and that it may be gradually abolished, without detriment to the rights and interests of Slaveholders._ BY A SLAVEHOLDER OF WEST VIRGINIA. Lexington: R. C. Noel. 1847.” This Address was written by the Rev. Henry Ruffner, D. D., president of Lexington College, Lexington, Va. Some of the passages of this Address are so striking; it is throughout so corroborative of one of the arguments contained in the speech; and coming, as it does, from a Virginian, an eye-witness of the effects of slavery, and a holder of slaves, that I have thought it would be useful to append them. The extracts, of course, are not, as here, consecutive.
Nowhere, since time began, have the two systems of slave labor and free labor been subjected to so fair and so decisive a trial of their effects on public prosperity as in these United States. Here the two systems have worked side by side for ages, under such equal circumstances, both political and physical, and with such ample time and opportunity for each to work out its proper effects, that all must admit the experiment to be now complete, and the result decisive. No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor. In the first settlement of a country, when labor is scarce and dear, slavery may give a temporary impulse to improvement; but even this is not the case, except in warm climates, and where free men are scarce and either sickly or lazy; and when we have said this, we have said all that experience in the United States warrants us to say, in favor of the policy of employing slave labor.
It is the common remark of all who have travelled through the United States, that the free states and the slave states exhibit a striking contrast in their appearance. In the older free states are seen all the tokens of prosperity;--a dense and increasing population; thriving villages, towns, and cities; a neat and productive agriculture, growing manufactures, and active commerce.
In the older parts of the slave states,--with a few local exceptions,--are seen, on the contrary, too evident signs of stagnation, or of positive decay;--a sparse population, a slovenly cultivation spread over vast fields that are wearing out, among others already worn out and desolate; villages and towns, “few and far between,” rarely growing, often decaying, sometimes mere remnants of what they were, sometimes deserted ruins, haunted only by owls; generally no manufactures, nor even trades, except the indispensable few; commerce and navigation abandoned, as far as possible, to the people of the free states; and generally, instead of the stir and bustle of industry, a dull and dreamy stillness, broken, if broke at all, only by the wordy brawl of politics.
New England and the middle states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania contained, in 1790, 1,968,000 inhabitants, and in 1840, 6,760,000; having gained, in this period, 243 per cent.
The four old slave states had, in 1790, a population of 1,473,000, and in 1840, of 3,279,000; having gained, in the same period, 122 per cent., just about half as much, in proportion, as the free states. They ought to have gained about twice as much; for they had at first only seven inhabitants to the square mile, when the free states not only had upwards of twelve, but, on the whole, much inferior advantages of soil and climate. Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave states.
About half the territory of these old slave states is new country, and has comparatively few slaves. On this part the increase of population has chiefly taken place. On the old slave-labored lowlands, a singular phenomena has appeared; there, within the bounds of these rapidly growing United States,--yes, there, population has been long at a stand; yes, over wide regions,--especially in Virginia,--it has declined, and a new wilderness is gaining upon the cultivated land! What has done this work of desolation? Not war, nor pestilence; not oppression of rulers, civil or ecclesiastical; but _slavery_, a curse more destructive in its effects than any of them. It were hard to find, in old king-ridden, priest-ridden, overtaxed Europe, so large a country, where, within twenty years past, such a growing poverty and desolation have appeared.
It is in the last period of ten years, from 1830 to 1840, that this consuming plague of slavery has shown its worst effects in the old Southern States. Including the increase in their newly-settled and western counties, they gained in population only 7¹⁄₂ per cent.; while cold, barren, thickly peopled New England gained 15, and the old Middle States 26 per cent. East Virginia actually fell off 26,000 in population; and, with the exception of Richmond and one or two other towns, her population continues to decline. Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction. Her lowland neighbors of Maryland and the Carolinas were not far behind at the _seeding_; nor are they far behind at the ingathering of desolation.
Let us take the rich and beautiful State of Kentucky, compared with her free neighbor Ohio. The slaves of Kentucky have composed less than a fourth part of her population. But mark their effect upon the comparative growth of the state. In the year 1800, Kentucky contained 221,000 inhabitants, and Ohio, 45,000. In forty years, the population of Kentucky had risen to 780,000; that of Ohio to 1,519,000. This wonderful difference could not be owing to any natural superiority of the Ohio country. Kentucky is nearly as large, nearly as fertile, and quite equal, in other gifts of nature. She had greatly the advantage, too, in the outset of this forty years’ race of population. She started with 5¹⁄₂ inhabitants to the square mile, and came out with 20: Ohio started with one inhabitant to the square mile, and came out with 38. Kentucky had full possession of her territory at the beginning. Much of Ohio was then, and for a long time afterwards, in possession of the Indians. Ohio is by this time considerably more than twice as thickly peopled as Kentucky; yet she still gains, both by natural increase and by the influx of emigrants; while Kentucky has for twenty years been receiving much fewer emigrants than Ohio, and multitudes of her citizens have been yearly moving off to newer and yet newer countries.
Compare this natural increase with the census returns, and it appears that, in the ten years from 1830 to 1840, Virginia lost by emigration no fewer than 375,000 of her people, of whom East Virginia lost 304,000, and West Virginia 71,000. At this rate Virginia supplies the west every ten years with a population equal in number to the population of the State of Mississippi in 1840!
Some Virginia politicians, proudly,--yes, _proudly_, fellow-citizens,--call our old commonwealth _The Mother of States_! These _enlightened_ patriots might pay her a still higher compliment, by calling her _The Grandmother_ of States. For our part, we are grieved and mortified to think of the lean and haggard condition of our venerable mother. Her black children have sucked her so dry, that now, for a long time past, she has not milk enough for her offspring, either black or white.
She has sent,--or we should rather say, she has driven,--from her soil at least one third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old states to the new. More than another third have gone from the other old slave states. Many of these multitudes, who have left the slave states, have shunned the regions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the west. These were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found, by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not the country for them. It is a truth, a certain truth, that _slavery drives free laborers,--farmers, mechanics, and all, and some of the best of them too,--out of the country, and fills their places with negroes_.
It is admitted on all hands, that slave labor is better adapted to agriculture than to any other branch of industry; and that, if not good for agriculture, it is really good for nothing.
Therefore, since in agriculture slave labor is proved to be far less productive than free labor, _slavery is demonstrated to be not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to the public prosperity_.
We do not mean that slave labor can never earn any thing for him that employs it. The question is between free labor and slave labor. He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
Agriculture in the slave states may be characterized in general by two epithets, _extensive_, _exhaustive_,--which in all agricultural countries forebode two things, _impoverishment_, _depopulation_. The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.
This ruinous system of large farms cultivated by slaves showed its effects in Italy, eighteen hundred years ago, when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur.
Pliny, a writer of that age, in his Natural History, (Book 18, c. 1-7,) tells us, that while the small farms of former times were cultivated by freemen, and even great commanders did not disdain to labor with their own hands, agriculture flourished, and provisions were abundant; but that afterwards, when the lands were engrossed by a few great proprietors, and cultivated by fettered and branded slaves, the country was ruined, and corn had to be imported. The same system was spreading ruin over the provinces, and thus the prosperity of the empire was undermined. Pliny denounces, as the worst of all, the system of having large estates in the country cultivated by slaves, or indeed, says he, “_to have any thing done by men who labor without hope of reward_.”
So Livy, the great Roman historian, observed, some years before Pliny, (Book 6, c. 12,) that “innumerable multitudes of men formerly inhabited those parts of Italy, where, in his time, none but slaves redeemed the country from desertion;”--that is, a dense population of free laborers had been succeeded by a sparse population of slaves.
Even the common mechanical trades do not flourish in a slave state. Some mechanical operations must, indeed, be performed in every civilized country; but the general rule in the south is, to import from abroad every fabricated thing that can be carried in ships, such as household furniture, boats, boards, laths, carts, ploughs, axes, and axehelves, besides innumerable other things, which free communities are accustomed to make for themselves. What is most wonderful is, that the forests and iron mines of the south supply, in great part, the materials out of which these things are made. The northern freemen come with their ships, carry home the timber and pig iron, work them up, supply their own wants with a part, and then sell the rest at a good profit in the southern markets. Now, although mechanics, by setting up their shops in the south, could save all these freights and profits, yet so it is, that northern mechanics will not settle in the south, and the southern mechanics are undersold by their northern competitors.
Now connect with these wonderful facts another fact, and the mystery is solved. The number of mechanics, in different parts of the south, is in the inverse ratio of the number of slaves; or in other words, where the slaves form the largest proportion of the inhabitants, there the mechanics and manufacturers form the least. In those parts only where the slaves are comparatively few, are many mechanics and artificers to be found; but even in these parts they do not flourish as the same useful class of men flourish in the free states. Even in our Valley of Virginia, remote from the sea, many of our mechanics can hardly stand against northern competition. This can be attributed only to slavery, which paralyzes our energies, disperses our population, and keeps us few and poor, in spite of the bountiful gifts of nature with which a benign Providence has endowed our country.
Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing as our own Virginia, both East and West. Only think of her vast forests of timber, her mountains of iron, her regions of stone coal, her valleys of limestone and marble, her fountains of salt, her immense sheep-walks for wool, her vicinity to the cotton fields, her innumerable waterfalls, her bays, harbors, and rivers for circulating products on every side;--in short, every material and every convenience necessary for manufacturing industry.
Above all, think of Richmond, nature’s chosen site for the greatest manufacturing city in America,--her beds of coal and iron, just at hand, her incomparable water power, her tide-water navigation, conducting sea vessels from the foot of her falls, and above them her fine canal to the mountains, through which lie the shortest routes from the eastern tides to the great rivers of the west and the south-west. Think, also, that this Richmond, in old Virginia, “the mother of states,” has enjoyed these unparalleled advantages ever since the United States became a nation;--and then think again, that this same Richmond, the metropolis of all Virginia, has fewer manufactures than a third-rate New England town;--fewer,--not than the new city of Lowell, which is beyond all comparison,--but fewer than the obscure place called Fall River, among the barren hills of Massachusetts;--and then, fellow-citizens, what will you think,--what _must_ you think,--of the cause of this strange phenomenon? Or, to enlarge the scope of the question: What must you think has caused Virginians in general to neglect their superlative advantages for manufacturing industry?--to disregard the evident suggestions of nature, pointing out to them this fruitful source of population, wealth, and comfort?
Say not that this state of things is chargeable to the _apathy_ of Virginians. That is nothing to the purpose, for it does not go to the bottom of the subject. What causes the apathy? That is the question.
The last census gave also the cost of constructing new buildings in each state, exclusive of the value of the materials. The amount of this is a good test of the increase of wealth in a country. To compare different states in this particular, we must divide the total cost of building by the number of inhabitants, and see what the average will be for each inhabitant. We find that it is in Massachusetts, $3·60; in Connecticut, $3·50; in New York, $3·00; in New Jersey, $2·70; in Pennsylvania, $3·10; in Maryland, $2·30; and in Virginia, $1·10.
No state has greater conveniences for ship navigation and ship building than Virginia. Yet on all her fine tide waters she has little shipping; and what she has is composed almost wholly of small bay craft and a few coasting schooners.
We do not blame our southern people for abstaining from all employments of this kind. What could they do? Set their negroes to building ships? Who ever imagined such an absurdity? But could they not hire white men to do such things? No; for, in the first place, southern white men have no skill in such matters; and, in the second place, northern workmen cannot be hired in the south, without receiving a heavy premium for working in a slave state.
The boast of our West Virginia is the good city of Wheeling. Would that she was six times as large, that she might equal Pittsburg, and that she grew five times as fast, that she might keep up with her!
We glory in Wheeling, because she only, in Virginia, deserves to be called a manufacturing town. For this her citizens deserve to be crowned,--not with laurel,--but with the solid gold of prosperity. But how came it that Wheeling, and next to her, Wellsburg,--of all the towns in Virginia,--should become manufacturing towns? Answer: They breathe the atmosphere of free states, almost touching them on both sides. But again; seeing that Wheeling, as a seat for manufactures, is equal to Pittsburg, and inferior to no town in America, except Richmond; and that, moreover, she has almost no slaves; why is Wheeling so far behind Pittsburg, and comparatively so slow in her growth? Answer: She is in a country in which slavery is established by law.
We shall explain, by examples, how a few slaves in a country may do its citizens more immediate injury than a large number.
When a white family own fifty or one hundred slaves, they can, so long as their land produces well, afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for though each yields only a small profit, yet each member of the family has ten or fifteen of these black work-animals to toil for his support. It is not until the fields grow old, and the crops grow short, and the negroes and the overseer take nearly all, that the day of ruin can be no longer postponed. If the family be not _very_ indolent and _very_ expensive, this inevitable day may not come before the third generation. But the ruin of small slaveholders is often accomplished in a single lifetime.
When a white family own five or ten slaves, they cannot afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for one black drudge cannot support one white gentleman or lady. Yet, because they are slaveholders, this family will feel some aspirations for a life of easy gentility; and because field work and kitchen work are negroes’ work, the young gentlemen will dislike to go with the negroes to dirty field work, and the young ladies will dislike to join the black sluts in any sort of household labor. Such unthrifty sentiments are the natural consequence of introducing slaves among the families of a country, especially negro slaves. They infallibly grow and spread, creating among the white families a distaste for all servile labor, and a desire to procure slaves who may take all drudgery off their hands. Thus general industry gives way by degrees to indolent relaxation, false notions of dignity and refinement, and a taste for fashionable luxuries. Then debts slyly accumulate. The result is, that many families are compelled by their embarrassments to sell off and leave the country. Many who are unable to buy slaves leave it also, because they feel degraded, and cannot prosper, where slavery exists. Citizens of the valley! is it not so? Is not this the chief reason why your beautiful country does not prosper like the northern valleys?
We have examined the census of counties for the last thirty or forty years, in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, with the view to discover the law of population in the northern slave states. The following are among the general results:--
When a county had at first comparatively few slaves, the slave population, except near the free borders, gained upon the whites, and most rapidly in the older parts of the country.
The population, as a whole, increased so long as the slaves were fewer than the whites, but more slowly as the numbers approached to equality. In our valley, a smaller proportion of slaves had the effect of a larger one in East Virginia, to retard the increase of population.
When the slaves became as numerous as the whites in the eastern and older parts of the country, population came to a stand; when they outnumbered the whites, it declined. Consequently, the slave population has tended to diffuse itself equally over the country, rising more rapidly as it was further below the white population, and going down when it had risen above them.
The price of cotton has regulated the price of negroes in Virginia; and so it must continue to do; because slave labor is unprofitable here, and nothing keeps up the price of slaves but their value as a marketable commodity in the south. Eastern negroes and western cattle are alike in this, that, if the market abroad go down or be closed, both sorts of animals, the horned and the woolly-headed, become a worthless drug at home. The fact is, that our eastern brethren must send off, on any terms, the increase of their slaves, because their impoverished country cannot sustain even its present stock of negroes. We join not the English and American abolition cry about “slave-breeding” in East Virginia, as if it were a chosen occupation, and therefore a reproachful one. It is no such thing, but a case of dire necessity, and many a heartache does it cost the good people there. But behold in the east the doleful consequences of letting slavery grow up to an oppressive and heart-sickening burden upon a community! Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
Good policy will require the Southern States, ere long, to close their markets against northern negroes. When the southern slave market is closed, or when, by the reduced profits of slave labor in the south, it becomes glutted,--then the stream of Virginia negroes, heretofore pouring down upon the south, will be thrown back upon the state, and, like a river dammed up, must spread itself over the whole territory of the commonwealth. The head spring in East Virginia cannot contain itself; it must find vent; it will shed its black streams through every gap of the Blue Ridge and pour over the Alleghany, till it is checked by abolitionism on the borders. But even abolitionism cannot finally stop it. Abolitionism itself will tolerate slavery, when slaveholders grow sick and tired of it.
In plain terms, fellow-citizens, eastern slaveholders will come with their multitudes of slaves to settle upon the fresh lands of West Virginia. Eastern slaves will be sent by thousands for a market in West Virginia. Every valley will echo with the cry, “Negroes! Negroes for sale! Dog cheap! Dog cheap!” And because they are dog cheap, many of our people will buy them. We have shown how slavery has prepared the people for this; how a little slavery makes way for more, and how the law of slave increase operates to fill up every part of the country to the same level with slaves.
And then, fellow-citizens, when you have suffered your country to be filled with negro slaves instead of white freemen; when its population shall be as motley as Joseph’s coat of many colors; as ring-streaked and speckled as father Jacob’s flock was in Padan Aram,--what will the white basis of representation avail you, if you obtain it? Whether you obtain it or not, East Virginia will have triumphed; or, rather, _slavery_ will have triumphed, and all Virginia will have become a land of darkness and of the shadow of death.
Then, by a forbearance which has no merit, and a supineness which has no excuse, you will have given to your children, for their inheritance, this lovely land blackened with a negro population,--the offscourings of Eastern Virginia, the fag-end of slavery, the loathsome dregs of that cup of abomination which has already sickened to death the eastern half of our commonwealth.
Delay, not, then, we beseech you, to raise a barrier against this Stygian inundation, to stand at the Blue Ridge, and with sovereign energy say to this Black Sea of misery, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. Madison thought the original ordinance to be clearly invalid. See Federalist, No. 38. It is just as clear that he thought the constitution gave validity to it. See Federalist, No. 43.
[2] Here Mr. HILLIARD, of Alabama, rose to ask if the south, by the Missouri compromise, had not surrendered its right to carry slavery north of the compromise line? His question was not understood. If it had been, it would have been replied, that the existence of slavery at New Orleans, and a few other places in Louisiana, at the time of the treaty with France, by no means established the right to carry it to the Pacific Ocean, if the treaty extended so far. Slavery being against natural right, can only exist by virtue of positive law, backed by force sufficient to protect it. It could not lawfully exist, therefore, in any part of Louisiana, which had not been laid out, organized, and subjected to the civil jurisdiction of the government. Such was not the case with any part of the territory north of the compromise line, and therefore nothing was surrendered. On the other hand, in the formation of the territorial governments of Orleans, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida, a vast extent of country was surrendered to slavery. And this is independent of the question whether Congress, by the constitution, has any more right to establish slavery _any where_ than it has to establish an inquisition, create an order of nobility, or anoint a king.
[3] Essays on Domestic Industry, or an Inquiry into the Expediency of establishing Cotton Manufactories in South Carolina, 1845.
SKETCH
OF THE OPENING ARGUMENT IN THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES _vs._ DANIEL DRAYTON, INDICTED, (IN FORTY-ONE SEVERAL BILLS OF INDICTMENT,) FOR STEALING AND CARRYING AWAY, IN THE SCHOONER PEARL, A CARGO OF SLAVES FROM WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ON THE NIGHT OF THE 15TH OF APRIL, 1848; TRIED BEFORE THOMAS H. CRAWFORD, JUDGE OF THE CRIMINAL COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. P. B. KEY, DISTRICT ATTORNEY; HORACE MANN AND JAMES M. CARLISLE, COUNSEL FOR THE PRISONER.
GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY;
I rise before you under circumstances rarely exceeded in embarrassment. I am an utter stranger to his honor, the judge, and to all of you, gentlemen, who compose the jury. Among all the eager faces in this crowded hall, there is not one with which I am familiar. I suppose there is not one man in this vast assembly who has any sympathy for my client or for me.
The case before us is acknowledged, on all sides, to be one of great moment. It directly affects human interests,--large pecuniary interests,--and these are among the most active and powerful of human impulses. It is a case which has given birth to great excitement. It has been narrated with formidable exaggerations in the public papers; it has been angrily discussed in both houses of Congress, and bruited over the land. From what has transpired in and about this court room, since the trial commenced, I perceive that each individual seems not only to be convinced that the prisoner at the bar has committed a great offence, but, like a light reflected from a multiplying glass, he sees that offence multiplied a thousand fold in the opinions and feelings of those around him. I cannot forbear to add, that it is a case, also, which, in some of its aspects, touches the deepest and tenderest sympathies of the human heart; for this prosecution not only deals with human beings as offenders, but with human beings and human rights, as the subject matters of the offence.
We have been called to trial, too, at an untimely hour. I have not had time for the preparation and investigation which so important a case demands. Added to this, my colleague, [Mr. CARLISLE,] was taken ill on the day he was retained, and, until the evening immediately preceding the commencement of the trial, I had no opportunity for a single interview with him, and then but for an hour, in his sick chamber. During all this time, too, as some of you may know, my attention has been called away by official duties elsewhere.
Gentlemen, let me come a little closer to my relations to this case and to yourselves. I stand here, on this side of the table; you sit there, on the other side. Our _persons_ are near to each other; but should I not greatly deceive myself, were I to suppose that our _opinions_ were as near together as our persons? We are within shaking-hands’ distance of each other; still, our convictions and sentiments on certain subjects may be wide asunder as the poles. On a subject of vast importance and gravity,--a subject reflected from every feature of this case,--I was born, and from my birth have been trained up, in one set of ideas; and I mean no discourtesy when I say that you have been born and trained in another set of ideas. Hence it is natural, yes, it is inevitable,--is it not?--that we should approach this subject with widely different views, and, as it were, from opposite points of the moral compass. I am admonished, then, in the outset, that your prepossessions are against me. The frame of your minds must be adverse to the reception of my views. We are in a position where the hearer, consciously or unconsciously, braces himself against the pressure of the speaker’s arguments. And of all difficult positions in which advocate or orator was ever placed, the most difficult is that of encountering the honest antipathies of his hearers. The heart, secure in its own convictions, closes itself against the argument that would overthrow them, as a fond parent bars his doors against the foe that would carry away his children.
But, gentlemen, amid all these adverse circumstances, and amid these conflicts of hostile and perhaps irreconcilable feelings, is there not some common ground on which you and I can stand together, and greet each other as brethren? Is there not one spot where we can stand side by side, as friends, sympathize with each other, and act together in harmony? Yes, gentlemen, there _is_ one such spot. _It is the ground of_ DUTY. In this case, I have certain duties to perform; you, too, have certain duties to perform; and the feeling of a common duty is always creative of the feeling of brotherhood. We are called to these duties as by the voice of God; we are to perform them as under the eye of the Omniscient. Here we are embarked in a common cause. From this moment, then, let all feelings of alienation or repugnance be banished from between us.
Gentlemen, this prisoner has requested me to be his counsel; and I, perhaps unwisely, have acceded to his request. I have taken an oath to be true to him. This has imposed certain responsibilities upon me, which, before Heaven, I may not escape. In this I find my strength. With the fierce excitement, which blazed forth in this District when the prisoners of the “Pearl” were first arrested, still hot around me; with the generally adverse feelings which I suppose you entertain towards the side of the cause which I have espoused, and therefore against its advocate; with these thronged spectators, who show, at every turn and incident of the trial, what their feelings are towards the prisoner and his defenders, I should not be able to stand here one moment, were it not for the supporting, uplifting sentiment, glowing through every fibre of my frame, that I am here in the performance of a high and holy duty. In all else I may be weak; in this I am strong.[4]
So you, gentlemen, sit there to perform a duty. Swearing upon the Holy Evangelists, you have invoked the vengeance of Heaven upon your souls, if, consciously and wittingly, you swerve a hair’s breadth from the line of rectitude; if you allow any partiality in favor of a cherished institution, or any prejudice against the prisoner, to close your eyes or blind your minds to any fact of evidence or rule of law which may be adduced in his behalf.
I might even add a consideration of a lighter nature leading to the same result. Your fortune and mine, for some days to come, I suppose to be settled. I know not how protracted this trial may be, but, gentlemen, we are in it, for longer or shorter, for better or worse; and while we are in it, we shall be obliged to come together from day to day, and live in each other’s presence and company. Now, I trust you have too much philosophy about you to make bad worse. And so of myself. Were we fellow-travellers in the same stage-coach or steamboat, and were doomed to be so for a week or a fortnight, it would be most unwise to add to our inevitable discomforts that of striving to annoy each other; so, when packed together in this room, which seems to have been constructed for creatures that do not breathe, and with the thermometer above ninety degrees, I trust any icy feelings we may have had towards each other will speedily melt away. In a word, I heartily concur, and I trust you will do the same, in the opinion of the old man who declared, according to the anecdote, that after the experience of a long life, he had found it best to submit to what he could not possibly help.
What, then, is the business before us? Daniel Drayton is set here at the bar charged with a grave offence, and you are impanelled to try him. And who is Daniel Drayton? We shall prove to you that he is a man of sober and industrious life, against whose character, as a just, upright, exemplary citizen, no charge was ever before preferred. Whatever may have been his errors in regard to the transaction which has brought him before you, he has, in consequence of it, passed through scenes which must move your sympathy. He has been torn from his family and immured in a loathsome cell. From feeling that sense of security from lawless violence, which every man, whether guilty or innocent, is entitled to feel, he has been in imminent danger of being torn in pieces by an infuriated mob. Yes, gentlemen, on Tuesday, the eighteenth day of April last, this man, this fellow-citizen of ours, in this capital of the nation, within sight of Congress, and of the President’s house, and within hearing of them, too, was pursued by a mob, from near the river’s side on the south of us to the very doors of the jail on the north,--a mob estimated to consist of from four to six thousand people,--many of them armed with deadly weapons; the thrusts of a dirk knife, which was drawn upon him, coming within an inch of his body; amid wrathful cries of “Hang him!” “Lynch him!” accompanied by all the profanities and abominations of speech which usually issue from the foul throat of that hideous monster--A MOB. Arrived at the jail, the mob besieged him there. When afterwards, and while under examination before magistrates of the city, a distinguished gentleman and member of Congress, [the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio,] appeared at his request and in his defence, the mob surrounded the gates of the jail, demanding the immediate expulsion of the counsel; and the jailer, to save bloodshed, insisted upon his departure. The storm swept beyond the prison and the prisoner. It assailed all who were supposed to sympathize with him. The office of a newspaper in this city, (the National Era,) was threatened with demolition. At a mob meeting, votes were passed,--without any great scrutiny, I presume, into the qualifications of the voters,--that the paper should be discontinued. Its editor was waited upon at night, or at midnight, by a mob-elected committee, and a peremptory demand was made upon him to remove his establishment beyond the District, or to abandon it.
But I will not dwell longer upon these details, so disgraceful to the capital of a republic that calls itself _free_, and so abhorrent to the feelings of every right-minded man. Were I to enumerate all the perils, the indignities, and the privations to which my client has been subjected, the day would be too short for the narration.
After Drayton’s examination, he was held to bail. And what, think you, was the amount of the bail demanded? Seventy-six thousand dollars! and seventy-six thousand dollars also for each of the other prisoners,--$228,000 for the seventy-six alleged slaves, when the common market value of such slaves in this neighborhood would not, I suppose, be more than three or four hundred dollars apiece;--and though all of them, too, had been returned, and were in possession of their claimants at the time. Has the fact never yet come to the knowledge of the magistrates of the District of Columbia, that the constitution of the United States declares that “excessive bail shall not be required”?
But, gentlemen, these are not the only hardships and oppressions to which my client has been subjected. How many, at the most, are the offences against the laws of this District which he has committed? He came here on the 13th of April, in the schooner Pearl. He departed on the 15th. On the 17th, he was arrested near the mouth of the Potomac, with a company of alleged slaves on board his vessel. Was not this all one transaction? Can it be divided and separated into a multitude of distinct offences? Can this one deed be made an offence against different laws? If not, then there is another clause in the constitution set at nought,--that clause which declares that no person shall be “subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”
And yet, gentlemen, what do we find on the records of this court? One hundred and fifteen indictments against this prisoner for this one act; and one hundred and fifteen indictments also against each of the other prisoners for engaging in the same. Three hundred and forty-five indictments! Reams of indictments for a single deed! Nor is this the only injustice. Each of the prisoners is indicted for having violated, by this one act, separate and distinct laws. There is an old law of Maryland against stealing slaves, and another law against transporting them out of the jurisdiction; and these laws are claimed, by virtue of an act of Congress, to be in force in this District. Now, if the prisoner stole the slaves, he is not guilty of the separate offence of transporting. If he is guilty of transporting, he is not guilty of stealing. That the two offences should have been committed by one and the same act, is a legal impossibility. If the grand jury first found the prisoner guilty of the offence of stealing the slaves, they thereby declared that he was not guilty of the different offence of transporting. Or, if they first found him guilty of the offence of transporting, they thereby declared that he was not guilty of the separate offence of stealing. To proceed, therefore, after a finding for one offence, to charge the prisoner with the other, was not only a legal absurdity, but a grievous injustice.
Besides, if these slaves were stolen, as is alleged, from forty-one different masters, the whole might have been charged in different counts in the same indictment, and the prisoner might be found guilty upon as many of the counts as law and evidence would warrant.
So there was but one act of transportation. Even, therefore, if it were just to charge the prisoner with the breach of two different laws for the same act, still, as the transportation of the whole was but one, it should have been charged only in one indictment.
See how fatal to any man must such a course of proceeding be. If the stealing were charged in one indictment, it would be tried by one jury; and the evidence being to a great degree the same, the whole trial might be brought within a limited period of time. But with forty-one indictments, there must be forty-one trials, before forty-one different juries; for neither government nor prisoner would consent that a jury, who had given an adverse verdict, should try another of the cases. Now, gentlemen, I care not for the enormous expense of such a proceeding,--ten dollars on each indictment, enuring to the benefit of the district attorney,--
Here Mr. KEY, the district attorney, interrupted and said: If Mr. Mann thinks I am to have ten dollars on each of these indictments, he is mistaken; and in my argument to the jury I shall deny it.
Mr. CARLISLE. Mr. Mann is not mistaken in the general statement, that the district attorney receives ten dollars on each indictment. He receives ten dollars on each, until the income of his office amounts to six thousand dollars a year. It is only when the emoluments of the office reach that sum that he ceases to draw his ten dollars on each indictment.
Mr. MANN. I was saying, gentlemen, that I care comparatively nothing for the amount of expense incurred in consequence of these three hundred and forty-five indictments. Far graver consequences than the mere expenditure of money are involved. Who can maintain or survive a contest against such a host of indictments, sustained by all the power and resources of the government? Were a man rich as Crœsus, it would exhaust his means. Were he brave as a martyr, it would outweary his endurance. Were he innocent as a child unborn, still, on the mere doctrine of chances, he might fail in some one case, out of such a multitude. Were he in the prime of life, its setting sun might go down in darkness and sorrow before the final verdict of acquittal could be pronounced in his favor. Under such a practice with regard to indictments, coupled with such a practice in regard to bail, an accusation would be as fatal as crime itself, however innocent the accused might be. The law provides a statute of limitations as to offences. Could it have foreseen such an abuse as this, it would have provided a statute of limitations against the number of prosecutions for a single offence; for the government might as well try a man, on a separate indictment, for each hair of a horse he had stolen, and hold him, on each of them, to separate bail. The English courts, gentlemen, have provided a remedy for the beginnings of this injustice. They have decided, again and again, that when even two indictments are found against a man for the same offence, they will compel the prosecutor to make his election between them,--to proceed upon one and abandon the other. 2 Leach’s Cr. Cas., 608, _Rex_ vs. _Doran_. 3 Carr. & P. 412, _Rex_ vs. _Smith_. Ib. _Rex_ vs. _Flower_, 413. 3 T. R. _Young_ vs. _The King_, (_in error_,) 106. See, also, in support of the same principle, New York Revised Statutes, vol. 2, part 4, ch. 2, § 42, where provision is made that “if there be at any time pending against the same defendant two or more indictments for the same offence, or two indictments for the same matter, although charged as different offences, the indictment first found shall be deemed to be superseded by such second indictment, and shall be quashed.”
But, gentlemen, there is another aspect of this case, which presents, in a manner still more glaring, the enormity of the proceeding to which we are subjected. Under each of the forty-one indictments against this prisoner for stealing, he is liable, if convicted, to be sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, which would make an aggregate imprisonment of more than eight hundred years. Methuselah himself must have been caught young, in order to survive such a sentence. The very shortest time which the court, in its discretion, could imprison, after a conviction on all these indictments, would be two hundred and eighty-seven years! Did the law ever contemplate so cruel and revengeful a proceeding? Did the law ever suppose that the court, after having sentenced a man to eight hundred years’ imprisonment, or even to two hundred and eighty years’ imprisonment, should go on, and sentence him to twenty years, or even to seven years more?--when the court must know that it would be imposing sentences to be executed centuries after the prisoner would be dead, and after he would have left his prison, not to return to this world, but to go to another.
But even this is not all. Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen. The penalty for each of these offences is a fine of two hundred dollars, with imprisonment till paid. The aggregate of these fines would be $14,800. But a penalty not inflicted by the statute, but superadded by this unwarrantable proceeding of the government, is the defence of seventy-four successive cases, under which the wealthiest, the strongest, and the most innocent man must break down, and be swept to ruin.
Corresponding with the oppressive character of all these preliminaries was the manner of the prosecutor, in his opening argument. He has seen fit to use language against the prisoner the most vehement and denunciatory. He has imputed to him every base motive that can actuate a depraved heart, and showered upon him the coarsest epithets that can describe a villain. Now if it shall turn out that my client is innocent, then all these criminations are unjust and cruel; and even should it be proved that he is guilty, it is no part of his punishment to be compelled to sit here in enforced silence, hour after hour, and hear himself denounced and vilified in language as unfitted to his character as to the sobriety of judicial proceedings.
Gentlemen, the representative of the government, like the government itself, should be dispassionate and calm. Majesty is one of the attributes of sovereignty, and serenity is inseparable from majesty. The government is not a being of wrath, of ferocity, of vindictiveness; and the exhibition of such passions is as unsuitable to the representative of the government as to the government itself. Though the image of justice may be represented as holding the sword of power in one hand, yet she is also represented as holding the balance of equity in the other; but when the government assumes the guilt of the prisoner, before it has been found, and denounces him in bitterest epithets as criminal, while as yet the law presumes him to be innocent,--the only proper emblem of such a government is an image which, a few years ago, might have been seen surmounting the dome of the court house in Taunton, in the county of Somersetshire, in England, to which the artist had originally given both the balance and the sword; but a storm, careering through the sky, had swept the balance away, so that nothing but the avenging sword was left; and there the hateful figure stood aloft, an image of wrath untempered by equity.
But, gentlemen, let me trust that the prisoner has at length escaped from the turbulent and perilous scenes which have hitherto destroyed his peace and threatened his life. Let me trust that the fell spirits which prompted the proposal, made by one of his captors while he was yet on board the steamboat, and previous to his return to this city, that he should be brought up and hung at the yard-arm,--as was testified to by the government’s witnesses,--is at length exorcised; let me trust that the demoniac cry of vengeance which was shouted by the mob, and the thirst for blood which their conduct betokened, while the prisoner, bound and defenceless, was conducted from the river to the jail, has found no welcoming response in your bosoms. Let me trust, also, that the violence of manner and the bitterness of language which have been so freely employed in the opening of this case, have not disturbed the balance of your minds, or so ruffled their serenity that the images of truth shall be distorted as they are reflected from them.
Gentlemen, the spot on which a jury are seated should be a place separate and apart from the rest of the world; sacred, and inaccessible to the passions and prejudices that move the community without. It should be a place consecrated to the inquiry, “What is truth?” and to the application of its conclusions to the conduct of men. When you took your seats in that place, you were severally asked by the court whether you had formed any opinion respecting the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, and you severally answered in the negative. The final opinion, then, which shall be expressed in your verdict, must be an opinion which you have formed _since_ that time, and from the law and testimony here introduced. Into that opinion, no other element must be allowed to enter. The prejudged guilt of the prisoner, as manifested by repeated attempts to take his life; the demand which may exist, and which I suppose does exist, out of doors, that he shall be convicted, innocent or guilty; the anticipation that you are to meet an angry community, if you acquit him;--all these considerations, if they obtrude upon your minds, must be sternly rebuked and banished. The record of your verdict will survive these temporary excitements. It should be a verdict, therefore, which you can look upon, at the close of life, with conscientious satisfaction. It must be one which your children can look at with a filial and honorable regard for their fathers’ uprightness. In a case which has excited so much attention, both here and throughout the country, you, too, must expect to be put on trial; your verdict will go into the great record of history, to be passed upon by your country and by posterity.
Once, gentlemen, in the state to which I belong, a case arose in which the deepest and holiest feelings of the community were intensely excited. One of the preludes to the great drama of the American revolution was the slaughtering, in the year 1770, of five American citizens, in the streets of Boston, by the British soldiery. The supposed offenders were brought to trial for the homicide. They were defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy,--illustrious names! The public breast throbbed with excitement. The sight of butchered countrymen made the blood seethe in the hearts of their fellow-citizens. If there ever could be a case where the law might be wrested to meet the popular outcry for redress; if there ever could be a case where the evidence might be strained and distorted to bring the facts within strained and distorted law, so as to visit a high outrage with a moral, if not a legal penalty, the “Boston Massacre” of 1770 supplied all its conditions. That cause was tried, and the prisoners were acquitted. The storm of popular disaffection soon cleared away, and now twelve purer and fairer names are not inscribed on the roll of fame than the names of those twelve jurymen, who dared to brave public opinion, and to perform an act of arduous, if not of perilous justice. Noble and illustrious bravery of the soul, which, when the yelling fiends of popular passion and prejudice beset the ascending pathway of virtue, can look to conscience, to posterity, and to God, and defy them all! Follow their example, gentlemen, and, whatever fierce sounds of public condemnation may be now rung in your ears, you will have the same glorious reward, and your children, and all the good men of your country, will honor your memories.
Gentlemen, in the vehement appeals which were made to you by the government’s counsel, for the condemnation of the prisoner, you were told that he had “invaded this District, and ruthlessly carried away more than a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of its property;” and you were warned that, if you let such a man escape, you might as well abandon at once all property in slaves. But it so happens, gentlemen, that you are sworn to try this prisoner for stealing John and Sam, two slaves of one Andrew Hoover, of the alleged value of fourteen hundred dollars only. Is each of these forty-one cases against the prisoner to be inflamed and exasperated by charging him with plundering the District to the amount of more than a hundred thousand dollars? A pretty strong effort of fancy, is it not? to work up the fourteen hundred dollars of the indictment into more than four millions in the argument! Is this to be another of the oppressive consequences of multiplying the one alleged offence of the prisoner into forty-one separate offences? Is the government’s counsel to botch up any sort of nefarious charge against the prisoner, and then call upon you to find him guilty on these strained and overwrought exaggerations of his conduct? No, gentlemen! This would be to suppose that you sit there to administer the worst kind of Lynch law,--a kind that has all its injustice, while screening itself from the odium of its violence. The object of civil society is to protect rights and to redress wrongs. For these great purposes laws are enacted, courts are established, juries are instituted, and rules of evidence are framed. Without civil society, each man would have a right to preserve his own rights and to redress his own wrongs. Civil society takes away something from a man’s rights, but it adds immensely to his powers; it makes him stronger than any individual oppressor, and, on the whole, it protects its members far better than they could protect themselves. But civil society, like every thing human, is imperfect. Once out of ten times, or once out of twenty times, it may fail to accomplish the end for which it was established. The very instruments it has framed may sometimes be the cause of its failure. What then? We do but fail in each tenth, or each twentieth case, when, without the social organization, failure might have been the general rule. And, therefore, even if a guilty person does sometimes escape, all we can say is that civil society has not done its work infallibly. It has done well, though it has not done all. But suppose this very civil society, wielding as it does the combined and terrible strength of the whole community, should turn its collected force against an innocent man, and crush him, then in what an utter and hopeless ruin is he overwhelmed! How much better for him had its powerful machinery never existed, than that he should be ground to powder beneath its wheels! Now, such might be the case with every prisoner, if juries were to act without strict obedience to law, and a strict observance of the forms of law. Any appeals, therefore, made to you, that because this prisoner may have committed _some_ offence against law, you are, therefore, to discard all scruples and find him guilty of _this_ offence, I regard as treason against justice, as a monstrous perversion of judicial proceedings; yes, as a thousand times worse than any guilt of the prisoner, even supposing the distorted features of the picture, drawn by the government’s counsel, to be genuine. It would be nothing less than Lynch law, perpetrated by twelve picked and sworn men, instead of a mob.
Gentlemen, the district attorney in his opening has not deigned to tell us on what law he proceeds. He has accused the prisoner of stealing often enough, but has read no statute, and referred to no decision, which creates or describes any such offence. Hence a task which clearly belonged to him is devolved upon me.
After the District of Columbia was ceded to the United States, Congress passed a general law, adopting the laws of Maryland, for that part of the District which had been ceded by Maryland. This trial, therefore, must proceed upon laws originally passed by Maryland. By the act of 1737, ch. 2, § 4, it is provided that any person “who shall steal any negro or other slave,” “or who shall counsel, hire, aid, abet, or command any person or persons” to do so, shall suffer death as a felon. The punishment has since been changed to imprisonment in the United States prison, for a term of not less than seven, nor more than twenty years. [Here comments were made at length on the preamble of the statute, and the class of cases to which the law was intended to apply.]
This act was designed to prevent slaves from being _stolen_. But a man might lose a slave without his being stolen. The slave might be enticed or persuaded to run away. Experience, doubtless, made the masters aware of this. Hence, fourteen years afterwards, by the act of 1751, ch. 14, § 10, it was provided that “if any person shall entice and persuade any slave within this province to run away, and who shall actually run away from the master,” &c., he shall be punished, &c.
But there was still another way of depriving a master of the service of his slave. Hence the act of 1796, ch. 67, § 19, made it a separate and distinct offence for any person to be guilty of “the transporting of any slave or person, held to service,” from the state.
Now, here, gentlemen, are four distinct legal provisions, all designed to protect slave property. By these provisions, four distinct legal offences are created. The law, by creating and defining these offences, has authoritatively declared that one of them is not either of the others of them. “Stealing” is one thing. “Counselling, hiring,” &c., a man to steal, is not stealing itself. “Enticing and persuading” a slave to run away from his master is not stealing. “Transporting” a slave out of the jurisdiction is not stealing. The inquiry for you, therefore, is whether the prisoner is guilty of any of these offences, and if of any, then, of which.
Now, gentlemen, let me take advantage of a map which is lying here accidentally before me, to illustrate this case. Four states,--Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, are here represented. The boundaries between them are distinctly marked. Pennsylvania is not Maryland, nor either of the others. Maryland is not Virginia, nor either of the others; and so of the rest. Just so it is with the offences created by these statutes. Any one of them is not either of the others. It is as plain that the offence of “transporting” a slave out of the jurisdiction is as different from the offence of stealing a slave, as this geographical shape of Maryland is different from this geographical shape of Pennsylvania. As, therefore, if the geographical metes and bounds of the State of Maryland were shown to you, you could not say, upon your oaths, that it was a description of the State of Pennsylvania; so, if the offence of “transporting” be proved to you, you cannot say, on your oaths, that it is the offence of stealing.
Or take an illustration from other things. The object of a sun-dial, a watch, a clock, and a chronometer is the same. All are made for the measurement of time, as all these laws were made for the protection of slave property. But could you, therefore, on your oaths, convict a man of stealing a chronometer, when he had only taken a clock or a watch? No, you could find him guilty only of the thing proved to have been done.
Or, again, suppose a law should be made to protect a man’s property in his books; and the stealing of books, generally, should be punishable by five years’ confinement in the penitentiary. Such a general law would include all books. Suppose a subsequent law should inflict a lighter penalty for stealing an octavo volume, and a still lighter one for a duodecimo. Then it would be necessary, in an indictment, to set out the kind of book stolen, and no man could be lawfully punished for the weightier offence who had only committed the lighter. So here, the first law punished “stealing,” the next “enticing,” and the next “transporting.”
Now, gentlemen, I maintain that, at most, nothing but the offence of “transporting” has been proved against this prisoner. But he is arraigned for _stealing_. What then, let us inquire, are the ingredients which constitute the offence of stealing,--which are indispensable to its perpetration? They are, 1. That the property shall be taken by the thief from the possession of the owner. 2. That it shall be taken into the possession of the thief,--that is, that the taker shall exercise some act of control or ownership over it. And, 3. That this taking by the thief, from the possession of the owner, and into his own possession, shall be for the felonious purpose of converting the said property to his own use.
Now, I think it is not too much to say, that neither one of these three indispensable ingredients of larceny has been proved in this case.
1. It is not proved that the prisoner took the two slaves mentioned in the indictment _from the possession_ of Andrew Hoover. Could not some other person besides the prisoner have put it into the heads of these slaves to leave their master? There are white men in this city hostile to the institution of slavery, and desiring the freedom of all slaves. Could they not have said to Hoover’s slaves, “Here is a schooner at the wharf; it is to sail at such a time; be there, and you may escape to a free state”? Here, too, are thousands of free negroes, or colored persons, in this District, with whom the slaves are in daily and open communication. Could they not have infused into the mind of these slaves the idea of liberty? Is it not a thousand times more probable that it was done by some citizen in the District, or by some colored acquaintance or friend of theirs, enjoying the means of constant communication with them, than that it was done by an entire stranger to them, as the prisoner was? Can aught be conceived more absurd or preposterous than that the prisoner should go round the streets of Washington, picking up a slave here and there, to complete his cargo, as the driver of a stage-coach goes round picking up passengers? Should he accost a colored man in the streets, and ask him if he were a slave, the chances are three to one that the person addressed would turn out to be a freeman; for I suppose the proportion, in this District, of the free colored persons to the slaves to be as great as this. If the fourth man or woman he might meet should prove to be a slave, how could he know but what he might be addressing one so attached to the place, to his home and relatives, and to his master, that even the sweets of freedom would not tempt him to leave; and that the consequence would be an immediate reporting of the interview, and sudden detection and punishment? But a person on the spot would know who were slaves, and what slaves were discontented with their condition; he could select the occasion when a slave had been punished by his master, when his body was smarting, and his mind was fired with indignation against him, and then sow the seeds of discontent and the hopes of escape in a fruitful soil. If, then, the slaves were, in fact, instigated to leave their master’s possession, the probabilities are a thousand to one that they were so instigated by some other person or persons resident here, and not by the prisoner. If this were so, and they came on board the prisoner’s schooner, after having absconded from their master, then he did not take them from Hoover’s possession, and so is not guilty of the first ingredient in the crime of larceny.
But is there not still another way in which slaves may be induced to leave the possession of their master? Though we may call men slaves, yet are they not human beings?--degraded from the natural dignity of manhood, it is true, and dwarfed in their mental stature, but still human beings; subject to the passions of our common nature, animated by its hopes, inflamed by its resentments, and shrinking and flying through fear from the uplifted rod. As human beings, could not the desire of escape from their master’s possession have originated with themselves?--prompted by the inward and instinctive longings for liberty, which spring perennial in the human breast.
The attorney for the government, in his opening, dwelt long and earnestly on the value of this species of property. He described it as the most valuable kind of property known in the District, and therefore most vigilantly to be guarded. Doubtless it has a certain pecuniary value; and, as it increases in intelligence, activity, and skill, its value is greatly enhanced. But with this enhanced value comes a _per contra_. With increased intelligence and mental development, the desires natural to manhood spring up;--the longing for liberty, and for the possession of free agency; the desire of selecting one’s own field of labor, and means of enjoyment; the desire of commanding the rewards of one’s own toil. So that, as the value of a slave increases, the strength of the tenure by which he is held becomes less secure. It is a weight of gold suspended by a cord. The master wishes to increase the mass. He adds little by little, until the weight snaps the cord, and he loses the whole.
Hoover says he had been offered $1400 for the two slaves mentioned in the indictment, and had refused the offer. Their services were probably worth to him a dollar a day each. One of them was employed in driving a cart about the city. As he saw a handful of money paid to his master every week, or every month, for his own earnings, think you he never asked himself, why that money could not be his? When three out of every four colored men whom he met, from day to day, were receiving their own earnings, and making those earnings minister to their comforts and their pleasures, might not Hoover’s slaves have said, “Why are not our earnings our own? and, if we cannot possess them here, why should we not go to a country where the laborer is deemed, in the language of Scripture, to be worthy of his hire?” and so have fled of their own accord? for, though we are prone to apply the precepts of the gospel to others rather than to ourselves, yet this is a passage which they would be likely to take home.
But this is not all, gentlemen. In this capital of a nation so boastful of its freedom, the common air is vocal with the accents of liberty. Many of the colored people can read. Who knows but some of them have read the Declaration of American Independence; and, _in their blindness and simplicity of mind_, applied its immortal truths to themselves? “All men are created equal!” and among their “inalienable rights” “are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness!” Who knows but that they may have seen these doctrines, with a constellation of names subscribed to them as glorious as any that ever shone in history’s firmament? If such ideas once got possession of a man’s mind, do you think that fire or water could ever burn them or drown them out? Those who cannot read, can hear; and if you are to keep from them the perpetually recurring sights and sounds which must awaken the quick instincts of liberty, you must extinguish their eyes, and seal up their ears in everlasting silence. The last spring was one of peculiar “refreshing” to the ardent lovers of liberty. The recent events of Europe were the theme of every tongue. Not only in the market-place, in the street, and in after-dinner conversations, was the emancipation of Europe the subject of discussion, but stormy eloquence rushed forth from the capital of the nation, like winds from the cave of Æolus, and roared and raved till all but the dead must have heard it. Nay, more, gentlemen, one of the witnesses identified the day when the defendant’s schooner, the Pearl, came to anchor in the waters of this city, because he remembered it as the day of the “torchlight procession.” And what was the “torchlight procession”? You all know;--drums beating, music playing, bonfires blazing, the house of the President and of high official dignitaries illuminated, the trees of the avenue fancifully lighted up with many-colored lanterns; men, women, children, and slaves, all out, and all agog to see and to hear of the wonderful things which “liberty” had done, or had _not_ done, on the other side of the Atlantic. There, too, moved in long procession men who were elected for the occasion, from among the nation’s elect,--heads of departments, senators, and representatives,--men distended almost to bursting with eloquence for regenerated Europe, who must speak or die! They marched to an open space on Pennsylvania Avenue, where, on an extempore rostrum, they eased themselves of their repletion of patriotism; while people of all kinds, conditions, and colors stood below, empty and agape, to receive what the upper divinities might send down. And now let me read to you, gentlemen of the jury, some of the precious things that were said on that memorable evening,--only two nights before the escape of the slaves in the schooner Pearl,--and see, after you have tasted of the yeast, if you can wonder at the fermentation:--
“----Events which hold out _to the whole family of man_ so bright a promise of _the universal establishment of_ CIVIL _and religious liberty_, and the general destruction of monarchical power throughout the world.”
“New and endearing ties”--“between the people of liberated France, and _the twenty millions of freemen_ who dwell, in all the plenitude of social and political happiness, between the great seas which water the eastern and western shores of this vast continent.”
“I feel authorized to declare that there is _not one_ in this vast multitude whose sympathies are not deeply enkindled in behalf of France and Frenchmen.”
“----Such has been the extraordinary course of events in France, and in Europe, within the last two months, that the more deliberately we survey the scene which has been spread out before us, and the more rigidly we scrutinize the conduct of its actors, the more confident does our conviction become that the _glorious work_ which has been so well begun cannot possibly fail of complete accomplishment; that the age of TYRANTS AND SLAVERY is rapidly drawing to a close; and that the happy period to be signalized by the _universal emancipation of man_ from the _fetters of civil oppression_, and the recognition _in all countries_ of the great principles of _popular sovereignty, equality, and_ BROTHERHOOD, is, at this moment, visibly commencing.”
[Here Judge CRAWFORD broke in, with great sharpness, and said, “Mr. MANN, such inflammatory language cannot be allowed in this court. We have institutions that may be endangered by it. The court thinks it its duty to interfere. The counsel cannot be allowed to proceed with such inflammatory language.”
Mr. CARLISLE here rose, and, for the space of ten or fifteen minutes, with the crowded audience hushed to a grave-like silence, he interspersed resistless logic with noble sentiments, in a strain of eloquence rarely, if ever, surpassed. He vindicated every word his colleague had said, both as to matter and manner, and obtested Heaven to preserve American tribunals of justice from following the examples of the worst times of English judicial tyranny, when the basest minions of the crown were elevated to the bench, that they might overawe and abash counsel in their defence of prisoners whom the king had foredoomed to punishment.
Judge CRAWFORD. (Trembling with emotion.) Mr. MANN’S course of argument was perfectly legitimate. It was the inflammatory language that I objected to. It was the language, and not the argument, that was objectionable.]
Mr. MANN. Gentlemen of the jury, as the interdict against the line of argument I was pursuing,--now acknowledged to be just and proper,--has been withdrawn, I take it up where I left it, and proceed.
Mr. KEY, district attorney. I demand to know from what paper the gentleman reads.
Mr. MANN. (Holding up the paper and pointing to its heading.) From Mr. Ritchie’s Washington Union, of April 20th. Isn’t that good authority on this subject?
Mr. KEY. From whose speech does the gentleman read?
Mr. MANN. From the speech of the Hon. Henry S. Foote, a senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi.
Mr. KEY. The gentleman cannot read a paper to the jury, unless he expects to prove it.
Mr. MANN. I deny that as a principle; but, if required, will call Mr. Foote to swear to his speech.
Judge CRAWFORD. Mr. Mann knows Mr. Foote did not mean his language for _our_ slaves. (A suppressed laugh around the bar.)
Mr. MANN. May it please your honor, while nothing, on the one hand, will ever deter me from doing my duty to a client, yet, on the other hand, I am moved to say that I have been trained from my youth to such respect for a court of justice, that I would say nothing to it or before it which should not be fitting and appropriate, as apples of gold in pictures of silver. Let me then restate my argument, that we may see whether, and by whom, this rule has been departed from. I reiterate, then, if slaves are property, they are a peculiar kind of property. They are instinct with the common desires of humanity, and among them one of the deepest and strongest is the love of liberty. And just in proportion as their value is increased by intelligence and development, just in that proportion is the bond weakened by which they are held. In all places slaves hear something, but in this place they hear much, of what is said in behalf of human liberty and of human rights. If they hear this, and are above the condition of brutes, they will apply it to themselves. Every Fourth of July oration, if understood, is a torch to light up another St. Domingo. If they hear the word “_slave_” used in reference to those who have been deprived of their natural rights in other countries, they will apply that word to their own condition in this. If they hear the word “_tyrants_” used in reference to one who deprives others of their rights, for “_tyrants_” they will read “_masters_;” and no mortal power, or law, or art, can help it, but by blotting out all that is human within them. The slaves in this city are constantly hearing what must remind them that they are slaves; and therefore they are constantly incited to escape from their bondage. The torchlight procession, with its speeches and parade, was _one_ among ten thousand of these incitements. The slaves, therefore, who went on board the Pearl, might have obtained the idea of escape from some other person than from the prisoner,--from some orator who lays down rules for the meridian of Europe, which do not quite suit the meridian of America. Hence they might have gone and applied to the prisoner for a passage. To this he might have assented. And if so, then his offence can be nothing beyond the offence of “transporting,” and is not the offence of _stealing_, as charged in this indictment.
And, as to the inflammatory language which the court charges me with having used: every word which was uttered by me, and which the court characterizes and denounces as “inflammatory,” and thinks not proper to be spoken in this court room, because it may endanger the institutions of this city, was the exact language of the Hon. Mr. Foote, senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi, uttered by him from the rostrum, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the most public place in this city, on the evening of the 13th of April last, to thousands of people there assembled, men, women, children, negroes and all.
I had marked, may it please the court, several other passages,--for this purpose most pungent and piercing,--in the speeches of that evening, to be read on this occasion; but as I think both court and jury are already pretty well apprised of the pertinency and force of my argument under this head, I shall content myself with reading one passage more. It is from the speech of the Hon. Frederick P. Staunton, representative in Congress from Tennessee, delivered on the same occasion, and printed in the same paper:--
“It has been truly said here this evening, that our example has been of essential service to France. Who can doubt it? How different would have been the struggle for liberty to be secured by republicanism, if there had been no example of a stable republican government to which the patriot could point, for the encouragement of his people! It is said we are propagandists. We do not, indeed, propagate our principles with the sword of power; but there is one sense in which we are propagandists. We cannot help being so. Our example is contagious. In the section of this great country where I live, on the banks of the mighty Mississippi river, we have the true emblem of the tree of liberty. There you may see the giant cottonwood spreading his branches widely to the winds of heaven. Sometimes the current lays bare his roots, and you behold them extending far around and penetrating to an immense depth in the soil. When the season of maturity comes, the air is filled with a cotton-like substance, which floats in every direction, bearing, on its light wings, the living seeds of the mighty tree. They lodge upon every bank of sand which emerges from the bosom of the receding tide, and soon a young forest is seen to lift its head from the surface of the barren waste. Thus the seeds of freedom have emanated from the tree of our liberties. They fill the air. They are wafted to every part of the habitable globe. And even in the barren sands of tyranny they are destined to take root. The tree of liberty will spring up every where, and nations shall recline in its shade.”
And thus, gentlemen of the jury, I say that while some of the seeds of liberty which we scatter are wafted to a foreign realm, and fall upon a foreign soil, others will drop upon the hearts of bondmen and bondwomen at home, and will there fructify and mature into _their_ appropriate harvest.
Such, gentlemen, are the considerations that lead me to believe that the slaves found on board the schooner Pearl left the possession of their masters of their own accord, or at the private suggestion of some friend, and not at that of the prisoner; or because they were publicly incited thereto by that boastful spirit amongst us which is forever shouting the praises of liberty, while restricting the application of its principles. I therefore infer that the prisoner has not committed the act which forms the first ingredient in the offence of larceny,--the taking of property from the possession of the owner.
2. To constitute the offence of larceny, the prisoner must have taken the slaves into his own possession. Now, of this there is not a particle of evidence. For aught that appears, the slaves might have been passengers, on board his schooner, for a fare. They themselves might have paid this fare, or others might have paid it for them. In either case, they were no more in possession of the prisoner than you or I are in possession of a railroad corporation, when we travel in its cars.
3. The third question is, whether, even if the prisoner did take the slaves named in this indictment from the possession of Andrew Hoover, and into his own possession, he did so for the felonious purpose of converting them to his own use.
The act of stealing, gentlemen, springs from the impulse to acquire property, as a means of gratification. This impulse or desire to obtain the means of enjoyment is universal. The law denounces its penalties against stealing, in order to repress the excesses of this propensity, and to confine it to honest acquisitions. Hence one man may interfere with the property of another in a thousand ways, without being guilty of stealing. It is not the mere taking of another man’s property, therefore, which constitutes stealing, but the taking of it _in order to convert it to the use of the taker_, and so to save himself the labor of earning it. Hence I may take a man’s plough from his field, or his wagon from his barn, and use them temporarily; but if I return them again to the owner, it is not stealing, but only a trespass. So, according to the books, I may take a man’s horse from his stable, ride him thirty miles, in order to flee from justice, and then, if I abandon the horse, it is not stealing. It is only a trespass.
The doctrine, gentlemen, which I wish to enforce upon your minds, is, that every act of taking another man’s property is not stealing. When a wag, riding with a clergyman to church, took his sermon from his pocket, for the purpose of enjoying his embarrassment when he should get into the pulpit, and find himself in the presence of the enemy without any ammunition, such taking was not stealing; for doubtless the rogue had no intention of appropriating either the sermon or its morals to his own use.
So it is related of Sir Walter Scott, that, when he was a boy at school, he got within one of the head of his class. But the boy at the head never made a mistake, and so he stood there, as perseveringly as the letter A stands at the head of the alphabet. But Sir Walter observed that, when his classmate was reciting, his fingers always fumbled with a button on his jacket, and, watching his opportunity at their next romping on the playground, he cut off the button from his rival’s jacket; and, at the very next lesson, the boy, being disconcerted at not finding the button, missed his answer, and Sir Walter rose to the head. But surely this was not stealing.
The reason why, in each of these cases, one would not be guilty of stealing, is, that he does not mean to make the article taken his own. He gets a temporary advantage from it, but does no act that proves a design of permanent or unlimited ownership. Hence there is the broadest and most striking difference between stealing and malicious mischief. If one man takes the property of another, merely to destroy or annihilate it, out of ill will or revenge towards the owner, this is malicious mischief only, and not stealing. It is not punished as stealing. Morally, it may be as wrong,--perhaps worse than stealing itself. But this impulse which prompts to the _destruction_ of another man’s property is vastly weaker than that which leads to its _appropriation_. The latter is gratified a thousand times where the former is once, and therefore the law visits the former with the milder penalty. If taking property from its owner from revenge, and for the malicious purpose of destroying it, be not stealing, but only malicious mischief, then surely taking the property for the benevolent purpose of doing a kindness to the property itself,--as to a slave,--is not stealing.
Take an illustration. Wild animals are the property of no one. The undomesticated hares that run over my fields, the pigeons that fly over my house, or the fishes that swim in my streams, are not my property so that they can be the subjects of larceny. If a man takes them, he is liable in trespass for entering my grounds, and that is all. But if I confine hares in a warren, or pigeons in a cote, or fishes in a seine, then they are my property, and are the subjects of larceny, because I have reduced them to possession. Under such circumstances, if a man shoots or catches them for his table.--that is, to convert them to his own use,--he steals them; but if a man merely releases them from their confinement, breaks open their enclosures to let them go free, he is at most only guilty of malicious mischief. The English nobility send to France for foxes. These are caught in the Pyrenees or other mountains, brought across the English channel, and placed in the parks of noblemen preparatory to the barbarous amusement of a fox-hunt. Now, if one lord should take a fox from the park of another lord, for the pleasure of hunting him down, on his own premises, this would be stealing; but if he should only assist a fox to escape out of the park, for the benevolent purpose of restoring him to his natural liberty, this would not be stealing, but only a trespass. In such a case, the man who enlarges the fox does not do it in order to save himself the labor or expense of catching a fox; that is, he does not convert the fox to his own use.
Let me give you another illustration, which I select for the beauty of the language in which it is conveyed, and for the nobleness of the sentiments that accompany it. In the “Sentimental Journey” of Sterne, the following incident is related:--
“I was interrupted, in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained, it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.
“In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a starling, hung in a little cage. ‘I can’t get out, I can’t get out,’ said the starling.
“I stood looking at the bird, and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side which they approached, with the same lamentation of its captivity,--‘I can’t get out,’ said the starling. God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get at the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.
“The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and, thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient. I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. ‘No,’ said the starling, ‘I can’t get out. I can’t get out,’ said the starling.
“I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened.”
And then he bursts out into that apostrophe to Slavery, which has thrilled the hearts of all his readers in times past, and will continue to thrill the heart of every reader in all time to come:--
“Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, still thou art a bitter draught! and, though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. ’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, LIBERTY, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so till Nature herself shall change. No _tint_ of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron. With thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.”
Had Sterne released that bird, and sent it abroad to rejoice in its native fields of air, would his myriads of readers, who have been delighted at the story, have convicted him of _stealing_?
Now for the application. These slaves, by the law of nature, were as free as you or I. By the law and force of man, they have been subjected to bondage. If the prisoner took them, and took them either to sell them or to use them himself, then he took them, in the language of the law, for the felonious purpose of converting them to his own use; and such taking would be larceny according to the law. But if he took them for the purpose of carrying them to a free state, and of thus restoring them to their natural liberty, then he did not intend to convert them to his own use, and is not guilty of stealing.
There is another view of this case. The harshest doctrines in favor of slavery only claim, that a master has a right to the _services_ of his slave. He has not a right to his flesh and bones, so that he can cut up the former for dog’s meat, and grind the latter for compost. To constitute larceny, then, of this kind of property, the prisoner must have deprived the master of the _services_ of his slaves, with the intent, with the felonious intent, to use _those services_ himself, or to sell them to another, which would be the most effective act of use. But no evidence of any such intent has been adduced in this case. I therefore maintain, that neither of the three ingredients necessary to constitute the offence of larceny has been proved by the government.
And now, gentlemen, in closing, I will narrate to you the worst of the prisoner’s case. I will make confession for him of the length and breadth of his offence. There resides in this city a man named Daniel Bell, who was once held as a slave, but who purchased his own freedom. He had a family, consisting of his wife and eight or ten children. These were manumitted by their master, when he was brought to that most searching of all earthly tribunals,--the death bed. After the master’s decease, his heirs attempted to reclaim the property; for the living and the dying have very different views on the subject of slavery. Their ground of claim was, that the master was not of sound and disposing mind when he made the deed of manumission. But the magistrate who prepared the deed, and before whom it was executed and acknowledged, set that pretence aside by his own knowledge of the grantor’s sanity; and so the family of Bell passed as free, and were treated as free, for years. At length this magistrate died, and immediately the attempt to reduce the family to bondage was renewed. A trial was had, and through default of the now deceased magistrate’s testimony, a verdict against them was obtained. But new evidence was discovered, and one of the most respectable counsellors of this court, Joseph H. Bradley, Esq., made oath as to his belief in the sufficiency of that evidence, and moved for a new trial. It was while these proceedings were pending, in behalf of the wife and children, that they became alarmed lest they should be clandestinely sent to the south, and there be plunged into irredeemable slavery. Believing themselves free, and fearing bondage, they did send to Philadelphia for assistance, (I tell you the worst of it,) in being rescued from such a fate. This defendant, Drayton, being led also to believe that they were free, did come to assist them. Drayton might have said to himself, “Men go to assist Poles and Hungarians, and even Texans, and get glory for it; and why should I not assist free women and children in imminent danger of bondage?” He arrived here on Thursday evening, the 13th of April, and, having no other special business, prepared to sail from here, and did so sail, on Saturday evening, the 15th. Bell’s family knew the place where the defendant’s vessel was anchored, and the time fixed for its departure. Drayton, expecting to meet them there at the time appointed, was not at his vessel during the whole evening. But one thing happened which he did not expect, and had not provided against. Bell’s family had a few friends whom they thought they could take with them. They did not propose any spoiling of the Egyptians, but thought the escape of a few Israelites lawful. But these friends had _their_ friends, and they still another circle; and so, while the defendant was absent from his vessel on Saturday evening, and without his knowledge or consent, they flocked down and stowed themselves in the hold; so that,--and I say now, gentlemen, what I religiously believe to be true,--when these slaves were ordered to come on deck after the capture, the prisoner was as much astonished as any body at the number of fishes that had got into his net.
These, gentlemen, are the facts, and, as I believe, all the important facts pertaining to this case; and on these facts we claim that you must acquit the prisoner of the offence of larceny.
NOTE. This case and one or two others were tried, and, in consequence of a series of most extraordinary rulings by the court, a verdict of “_guilty_” was rendered.
Every lawyer knows that in the course of a trial, when counsel can have no time for examination or reflection, they take exceptions, wherever an objection to the decision of the judge seems probably, or even plausibly good. A clew, therefore, will be given to the course which the court pursued throughout these trials, when the fact is stated, that, on appeal to the Superior Court, _seventeen_ out of _twenty-four_ of the rulings of the judge to which exception had been taken were set aside.
The cases for larceny were remanded to be tried anew, when a verdict of “not guilty” was rendered in them all.
Drayton, the captain, and Sayres, his mate, were afterwards convicted of “transporting” the slaves, and were fined.
English, the “boy,” though indicted in one hundred and fifteen indictments, was discharged without a trial.
Part of Bell’s free family were ransomed; the rest were sold and sent to the South.
Although the facts pertaining to the mob, the repeated attempts upon Drayton’s life, the besieging of the jail, and the expulsion of Drayton’s counsel from it when engaged in his defence, all came out before the grand jury that found these scores and hundreds of indictments, and though it was notorious who some of the ringleaders of the mob were, yet no bill of indictment was ever found against any of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] In attendance upon the trial, and stationing themselves as near as practicable to the counsel for the defence, were men who cocked pistols and drew dirks upon Drayton, in the mob that pursued him.
LETTER
TO THE WHIG CONVENTION, (AND ALSO TO THE FREE SOIL CONVENTION, _mutatis mutandis_,) ACCEPTING THEIR RESPECTIVE NOMINATIONS FOR THE THIRTY-FIRST CONGRESS.
[_One paragraph of this Letter is omitted, as referring to a subject unconnected with the object of the present volume._]
WEST NEWTON, Sept. 23, 1848.
GENTLEMEN;
I have received with lively emotions of gratitude a copy of the resolutions passed at a district convention, held at Dedham, on the -- inst.; from one of which it appears that I was unanimously nominated by the convention, as their candidate for the Thirty-first Congress of the United States.
* * * * *
The convention you have the honor to represent was pleased to refer to my views respecting the institution of slavery. Some of these views were partly expressed in the remarks made by me in the House of Representatives, on the 30th of June last; in the letter to my constituents before referred to; and in my arguments before the _Criminal_ Court of the District of Columbia, in the “Pearl” cases. These, and kindred views, I shall improve all fitting opportunities that I may ever enjoy to enlarge upon and enforce; and had I the tongue of an angel, or the pen of inspiration, I believe I could use them on no holier theme than in kindling abhorrence at the wrongs suffered by the slave, and in melting the universal heart of humanity into pity for his lot; for I hold it to be impossible for the soul of a slave,--benighted, strangled, and buried alive as it is,--ever fully to know and feel the joys of that spiritual liberty wherewith Christ maketh his disciples free.
Be pleased, gentlemen, to accept my thanks for the very kind manner in which you have made known to me the decision of the convention you represent, and believe me,
Very truly and sincerely, yours, &c., &c., HORACE MANN.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 23, 1849, ON SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
MR. CHAIRMAN;
There is a bill upon the speaker’s table which provides for abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia. For three successive days we have tried in vain to reach it, in the order of business. Its opponents have baffled our efforts. Our difficulty is not in carrying the bill, but in reaching it. I am not without apprehension that the last sands of this Congress will run out, without any action upon the subject. Even should the bill be taken up, it is probable that all debate upon it will be suppressed by that sovereign silencer,--the previous question. Hence I avail myself of the present opportunity, as it is probably the only one I shall have, during the present session, to submit my views upon it.
I frankly avow, in the outset, that the bill provides for one part only of an evil, whose remedy, as it seems to me, is not only the object of a reasonable desire, but of a righteous and legal demand. The bill proposes the abolition, not of slavery, but only of the slave trade, in the District of Columbia. My argument will go to show, that, within the limits of this District, slavery ought not to exist in fact, and does not exist in law.
Sir, in the first place, let us inquire what is the state of things in this District on this subject. The gentleman from Indiana, [Mr. R. W. THOMPSON,] who addressed us a few days since, used the following language:--
“What is the slave trade in the District of Columbia? I have heard a great deal said about ‘slave pens,’--about slaves sold at auction,--and about stripping the mother from the child, and the husband from the wife. These things may exist here, but I do not know of them. Since I have been in the habit of visiting the District,--which is from my boyhood,--I have never seen a negro sold here,--I have never seen a band of negroes taken off by the slave trader. I do not remember that I have ever seen the slave trader himself. I know nothing of the ‘slave pen’ that is so much talked about. It may be here, however, and these things may happen every day before the eyes of gentlemen who choose to hunt them up; but for myself, I have no taste for such things.”
Now, sir, if the gentleman means to say that he has no personal knowledge of “slave pens” and of the slave traffic in this District, that is one thing; but if he means to deny or call in question the existence of the traffic itself, or of the dens where its concentrated iniquities make up the daily employment of men, that is quite another thing. Sir, from the western front of this Capitol, from the piazza that opens out from your congressional library, as you cast your eye along the horizon and over the conspicuous objects of the landscape,--the President’s Mansion, the Smithsonian Institution, and the site of the Washington Monument, you cannot fail to see the horrid and black receptacles where human beings are penned like cattle, and kept like cattle, that they may be sold like cattle,--as strictly and literally so as oxen and swine are kept and sold at the Smithfield shambles in London, or at the cattle fair in Brighton. In a communication made during the last session, by the mayor of this city, to an honorable member of this House, _he_ acknowledges the existence of slave pens here. Up and down the beautiful river that sweeps along the western margin of the District, slavers come and go, bearing their freight of human souls to be vended in this market-place; and after they have changed hands, according to the forms of commerce, they are retransported,--the father of a family to go, perhaps, to the rice fields of South Carolina, the mother to the cotton fields of Alabama, and the children to be scattered over the sugar plantations of Louisiana or Texas.
Sir, it is notorious that the slave traders of this District advertise for slaves in the newspapers of the neighboring counties of Maryland, to be delivered in any numbers at their slave pens in this city; and that they have agents, in the city and out of it, who are engaged in supplying victims for their shambles. Since the gentleman from Indiana was elected to this Congress, and, I believe, since he took his seat in this Congress, one coffle of about sixty slaves came, chained and driven, into this city; and at about the same time another coffle of a hundred. Here they were lodged for a short period, were then sold, and went on their returnless way to the ingulfing south.
Sir, all this is done here under our own eyes, and within hearing of our own ears. All this is done now, and it has been done for fifty years,--ever since the seat of the national government was established in this place, and ever since Congress, in accordance with the constitution, has exercised “_exclusive_ legislation” over it. But the gentleman from Indiana, though accustomed to visit this District from his boyhood, has “never seen a negro sold here;”--he has “never seen a band of negroes taken off by the slave trader;” he does not remember “to have seen the slave trader himself;” he knows “nothing of the ‘slave pen’ that is so much talked about.” Sir, the eye sees, not less from the inner than from the outer light. The eye sees what the mind is disposed to recognize. The image upon the retina is nothing, if there be not an inward sense to discern it. The artist sees beauty; the philosopher sees relations of cause and effect; the benevolent man catches the slightest tone of sorrow; but the insensate heart can wade through tears and see no weeping, and can live amidst groans of anguish, and the air will be a non-conductor of the sound. I know a true anecdote of an American gentleman who walked through the streets of London with a British nobleman; and being beset at every step of the way by squalid mendicants, the American, at the end of the excursion, adverted to their having run a gantlet between beggars. “What beggars?” said his lordship; “_I have seen none_.”
But the gentleman from Indiana says, “But for myself, I have no taste for such things.” His taste explains his vision. Suppose Wilberforce and Clarkson to have had no “taste” for quelling the horrors of the African slave trade. Suppose Howard and Mrs. Fry to have had no “taste” for laying open the abominations of the prison-house, and for giving relief to the prisoner. Suppose Miss Dix to have had no “taste” for carrying solace and comfort and restoration to the insane. Suppose the Abbé L’Epée to have had no “taste” for teaching deaf mutes; or the Abbé Hauy for educating the blind; or M. Seguin and others for training idiots, and for educing docility and decency, and a love of order from those almost imperceptible germs of reason and sense, that barely distinguish them from the brutes! Suppose these things, and in what a different condition would the charities and the sufferings of the world have been! Herod had no “taste” for sparing the lives of the children of Bethlehem, and of all the coasts thereof; and doubtless he could have said, with entire truth, that he never heard the voice, in Rama, of lamentation and weeping and great mourning; nor saw, among all the mothers of Syria, any Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they were not. But, sir, just in proportion as the light of civilization and Christianity dawns upon the world, will men be found who have a “taste” for succoring the afflicted and for righting the wronged. It was the clearest proof of the Great Teacher’s mission, that he had “a taste” for going about doing good.
During the last fifty years, and especially during the last half of these fifty years, the world has made great advances in the principles of liberty. Human rights have been recognized, and their practical enjoyment, to some extent, secured. There is not a government in Europe, even the most iron and despotical of them all, that has not participated in the ameliorations which characterize the present age. A noble catalogue of rights has been wrested by the British commons from the British nobility. France and Italy have been revolutionized. Even the Pope of Rome, whose power seemed as eternal as the hills on which he was seated, has sunk under the shock. Prussia, and all the Germanic powers, with the exception of Austria, have been half revolutionized; and even the icy despotisms of Austria and Russia are forced to relent under those central fires of liberty which burn forever in the human heart, as the central fires of the earth burn forever at its core. Great Britain has abolished African slavery throughout all her realms. France has declared that any one who shall voluntarily become the owner of a slave, or shall voluntarily continue to be the owner of a slave cast upon him by bequest or inheritance, shall cease to be a citizen of France. Denmark has abolished slavery wherever it existed in her possessions. The Bey of Tunis, acting under the light of the Mahometan religion, has abolished it. The priests of Persia declare the sentiment to have come by tradition from Mahomet himself, “that the worst of men is the seller of men.” Not only all civilized nations, but the half civilized, the semi-barbarous, are acting under the guidance of the clearer light and the higher motives of our day. But there is one conspicuous exception; there is one government which closes its eyes to this increasing light; which resists the persuasion of these ennobling motives; which, on the grand subject of human liberty and human rights, is stationary and even retrogrades, while the whole world around is advancing; sleeps while all others are awaking; loves its darkness while all others are aspiring and ascending to a purer air and a brighter sky. This government, too, is the one which is most boastful and vain-glorious of its freedom; and if the humiliating truth must be spoken, this government is our own. In regard to slavery and the slave trade in this District, where we possess the power of exclusive legislation, we stand where we stood fifty years ago. Not a single ameliorating law has been passed. In practice, we are where we were then; in spirit, there are proofs that we have gone backward.
There are now on the surface of the globe two conspicuous places,--places which are attracting the gaze of the whole civilized world,--whither men and women are brought from great distances to be sold, and whence they are carried to great distances to suffer the heaviest wrongs that human nature can bear. One of these places is the coast of Africa, which is among the most pagan and benighted regions of the earth; the other is the District of Columbia, the capital and seat of government of the United States.
As far back as 1808, Congress did what it could to abolish the slave trade on the coast of Africa. In 1820 it declared the foreign slave trade to be piracy; but on the 31st of January, 1849, a bill was introduced into this House to abolish the domestic slave trade in this District,--here, in the centre and heart of the nation,--and seventy-two representatives voted against it,--voted to lay it on the table, where, as we all know, it would sleep a dreamless sleep. This was in the House of Representatives. It is well known that the Senate is still more resistant of progress than the House; and it is the opinion of many that, even if a bill should pass both House and Senate, it would receive the Executive veto. By authority of Congress, the city of Washington is the Congo of America.
But, still more degrading than this, there is another contrast which we present to the whole civilized world. The very slaves upon whom we have trodden have risen above us, and their moral superiority makes our conduct ignominious. Not Europeans only, not only Arabians and Turks, are emerging from the inhumanity and the enormities of the slave traffic; but even our own slaves, transplanted to the land of their fathers, are raising barriers against the spread of this execrable commerce. On the shores of Africa, a republic is springing up, whose inhabitants were transplanted from this Egypt of bondage. And now, look at the government which these slaves and descendants of slaves have established, and contrast it with our own. They discard the institution of slavery, while we cherish it. A far greater proportion of their children than of the white children of the slave states of this Union are at school. In the metropolis of their nation, their flag does not protect the slave traffic, nor wave over the slave mart. Would to God that the very opposite of this were not true of our own! Their laws punish the merchandise of human beings; our laws sanction and encourage it. They have erected, and are erecting, fortifications and military posts along the shores of the Atlantic, for seven hundred miles, to prevent pirates from invading the domain of their neighbors, and kidnapping people who, to them, are foreign nations. We open market-places here, at the centre of the nation, where, from seven hundred miles of coast, the sellers may come to sell, and where buyers may come to buy, and whence slaves are carried almost as far from their birthplace as Africa is from America. The governor of Liberia has lately made a voyage to England and France, and entered into treaties of amity and commerce with them; and he has obtained naval forces from them, to abolish this traffic in human beings. At the same time, we are affording guaranties to the same traffic. Virginia and Maryland are to the slave trade what the interior of Africa once was. The Potomac and the Chesapeake are the American Niger and Bight of Benin; while this District is the great government barracoon, whence coffles are driven across the country to Alabama or Texas, as slave ships once bore their dreadful cargoes of agony and woe across the Atlantic. The very race, then, which were first stolen, brought to this country, despoiled of all the rights which God had given them, and kept in bondage for generations, at last, after redeeming themselves, or being restored to their natural liberty in some other way, have crossed the ocean, established a government for themselves, and are now setting us an example which should cause our cheeks to blister with shame.
Sir, there is an idea often introduced here and elsewhere, and made to bear against any restriction of slavery, or any amelioration of the condition of the slave, which I wish to consider. It was brought odiously and prominently forward the other day, by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. CHARLES BROWN.] The idea is, that the slaves are in a better condition in this country than they would have been at home. It is affirmed that they are brought under some degree of civilizing and humanizing influences amongst us, which they would not have felt in the land of their fathers.
Let us look, first, at the philosophy of this notion, and then at its morality. All those who use this argument as a defence or a mitigation of the evils of slavery, or as a _final cause_ for its existence, _assume_ that if the present three million slaves, who now darken our southern horizon, and fill the air with their groans, had not been here in their present state of bondage, they would have been in Africa, in a state of paganism. Now, the slightest reflection shows that this assumption has no basis of truth. Not one of them all would now have been in existence, if their ancestors had not been brought to this country. And, according to the laws of population operative among barbarous nations, there are now just as many inhabitants,--pagans, cannibals, or what you please,--in Africa, as there would have been if the spoiler had never entered their home, and ravished and borne them into bondage. Among savage nations, or nomadic tribes, the population equals the means of subsistence. Take away two, three, or four per cent. of the consumers, and the vacuum is immediately filled. The population keeps up to the level of the production. Among such people, there is always a tendency to increase faster than the means of living increase. Take away a part of them, and this tendency to increase takes effect by its own vigor,--it executes itself. It is like a bow that unbends, or a spring that uncoils, as soon as an external pressure is removed. Dam up a fountain, and the weight of the accumulating strata will eventually check the outflow from the spring. So it is of a savage population. Of them, the Malthusian theory is true.
And how infinitely absurd and ridiculous is the plea that the slaves are better off here “_than_ THEY _would have been in Africa_”! Go out into the streets of this city, and take the first one you meet,--perhaps he is a mulatto. But for being here, he would have been a mulatto in the middle of Africa, would he? Take them all,--mulatto, mestizo, zambo, and all “the vast variety of man,” so far as color is concerned,--and if they had not their existence here, they would have had it in Africa! This is the doctrine. Would they have had the same American names also? Would they have spoken the same language, and worn cotton grown on the same fields? The last is just as certain as the first. It is all more silly than the repinings of the silly girls who grieved because their mother had not married a certain rich suitor, whose addresses in early life she had rejected; for then, said they, how rich _we_ should have been! No, not one of these three millions of men, women, and children, would have been in existence in Africa. All the crime of their kidnapping; all the horrors of the middle passage; all their sufferings for two centuries, or six generations; and all the calamities that are yet to grow out of their condition,--all these crimes and agonies are gratuitous crimes and agonies. There is no recompense or palliation for them. They have been added unnecessarily and remorselessly to the amount of human guilt and suffering for which the white race must answer in the day of account. The idea, then, of sending the slaves back to _their_ country is an egregious fallacy. If they were to be sent _back_ whence they came, it would not be to Africa, but to nonentity.
If the ancestors of the present three millions of slaves had never been brought here,--if their descendants had never been propagated here, for the supposed value of their services, their places would have been supplied by white laborers,--by men of the Caucasian race,--by freemen. Instead of the three million slaves, of all colors, we should doubtless now have at least three million white, freeborn citizens, adding to the real prosperity of the country, and to the power of the Republic. If the south had not had slaves to do their work for them, they would have become ingenious and inventive like the north, and would have enlisted the vast forces of nature in their service,--wind, and fire, and water, and steam, and lightning, the mighty energies of gravitation and the subtle forces of chemistry. The country might not have had so gaudy and ostentatious a civilization as at present, but it would have had one infinitely more pure and sound.
But admit the alleged statement, absurd and false as it is; admit that these three millions of slaves would have belonged to Africa if they had not belonged to America,--that they would have been born of the same fathers and mothers there as here, so that those of them who are American mulattoes would have been Ethiopian mulattoes; and admit, further, that their present condition is better than the alternative condition alleged,--and what then? Is your duty done? Is it enough if you have made the condition of a man or of a race a little better, or any better, if you have not made it as much better as you can? What standard of morals do gentlemen propose to themselves? If a fellow-being is suffering under a hundred diseases, and we can relieve him from them all, what kind of benevolence is that which boasts of relieving him from one, and permits him to suffer under the other ninety and nine? By the law of nature and of God, the slave, like every other man, is entitled “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” he is entitled to his earnings,--to the enjoyment of his social affections,--to the development of his intellectual and moral faculties,--to that cultivation of his religious nature which shall fit him, not merely to feel, but reason of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come;--he is entitled to all these rights, of which he has been cruelly despoiled; and when he catches some feeble glimmering of some of them, we withhold the rest, and defend ourselves and pride ourselves that he is better off than he would have been in some other country or in some other condition. Suppose the Samaritan had bound up a single wound, or relieved a single pang of the bleeding wayfarer who had fallen among thieves, and then had gone to the next inn and boasted of his benevolence. He would only have shown the difference between a “good Samaritan” and a “bigot Samaritan.” The thieves themselves might have done as much.
But there is another inquiry which the champions of slavery have got to answer before the world and before Heaven. If American slaves are better off than native Africans, who is to be thanked for it? Has their improved condition resulted from any purposed plan, any well-digested, systematized measure, carefully thought out, and reasoned out, and intended for their benefit? Not at all. In all the southern statute books, and legislative records, there is no trace of any such scheme. Laws, judicial decisions, the writing of political economists,--all treat the slave as a thing to make money with. Agricultural societies give rewards for the best crops. Horse-jockey societies improve the fleetness of the breed for the sports of the turf. Even the dogs have professional trainers. But not one thing is done to bring out the qualities of manhood that lie buried in a slave. Look through the southern statute books, and see what Draconian penalties are inflicted for teaching a slave to read,--see how he is lashed for attending a meeting to hear the Word of God. On every highroad patrols lie in wait to scourge him back if he attempts to visit father, mother, wife, child, or friend, on a neighboring plantation. By day and by night, at all times and every where, he is the victim of an energetic and comprehensive system of measures, which blot out his senses, paralyze his mind, degrade and brutify his nature, and suppress the instinctive workings of truth, generosity, and manhood in his breast. All the good that reaches him, reaches him in defiance of these privations and disabilities. If any light penetrates to his soul, it is because human art cannot weave a cloud dense and dark enough to be wholly impervious to it. There are some blessings which the goodness of God will bestow in spite of human efforts to intercept them. It is these only which reach the slave. And after having built up all barriers to forbid the access of improvement; after having sealed his senses by ignorance, and more than half obliterated his faculties by neglect and perversion, the oppressor turns round, and because there are some scanty, incidental benefits growing out of the very deplorableness of his condition, he justifies himself before the world, and claims the approval of Heaven, because the slave is better off here than _he_ would be in Africa. Sir, such an argument as this is an offence to Heaven. I consider it to be as much worse than atheism as Christianity is better. And when such an argument comes from a gentleman belonging to a free state; when it comes from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BROWN,] from a representative of the city of William Penn; when he, without motive, without inducement, offers such a gratuity to the devil, I can account for it only on the principle of the man who, having a keen relish for the flesh of swine, said he wished he were a Jew, that he might have the pleasure of eating pork and committing a sin at the same time.
But the subject presents a still more painful aspect. How are slaves made better, and from what motives are they made better, in this country? It is no secret that I am about to tell. There are certain virtues and sanctities which increase the pecuniary value of certain slaves; and there are certain vices and debasements which increase the market price of others. If a master wishes to repose personal confidence in his slave, he desires to have him honest and faithful to truth. But if he desires to make use of him to deceive and cajole and defraud, then he wishes to make him cunning and tricky and false. If the master trains the slave to take care of his own children, or of his favorite animals, then he wishes to have him kind; but if he trains him for a tasker or a field overseer, then he wishes to have him severe. Now, it is in this way that some of the Christian attributes of character, being directly convertible into money or money’s worth, enhance the value of a slave. Hence, it is said in advertisements that a slave is pious, and, at the auction block, the hardened and heartless seller dwells upon the Christian graces and religious character of some slaves with the unction of an apostle. The purchaser sympathizes, and only desires to know whether the article be a real or a sham Christian. If mere bones and muscles compacted into human shape be worth five hundred dollars, then, if the auctioneer can warrant the subject to have the meekness of Moses and the patience of Job, the same article may be worth seven hundred. If the slave will forgive injuries, not merely seventy times seven, but injuries inflicted all his life long, then an additional hundred may be bid for him. If he possesses all the attributes of religion and piety, the endurance of a hero, the constancy of a saint, the firmness of a martyr, the trustingness of a disciple,--all except those which go to make him feel like a man, and believe himself a man,--then that which as mere bone and muscle was worth five hundred dollars, is now worth a thousand. Sir, is not this selling the Holy Spirit? Is not this making merchandise of the Savior? Is not this the case of Judas selling his Master over again, with the important exception of the remorse that made the original culprit go and hang himself? But suppose the case to be that of a woman; suppose her ability to work and capacity for production to be worth five hundred dollars; suppose, in addition to this, she is young and sprightly and voluptuous; suppose the repeated infusion of Saxon blood has almost washed the darkness from her skin; and suppose she is not unwilling to submit herself to the libertine’s embrace; then, too, that which before was worth but five hundred dollars, will now bring two thousand. And thus infernal as well as celestial qualities are coined into money, according to the demands of the market and the uses of the purchaser.
Now, it is only in some such incidental way, and with regard to some individuals, that it can be said, that their condition is better here than it would be in Africa. And this improvement, where it exists, is not the result of any system of measures designed for their benefit, but is the product of selfish motives, turning godliness into gain; and where more gain or more gratification can be obtained by the debasement, the irreligion, the pollution of the slave, there the instincts of chastity, the sanctity of the marriage relation, the holiness of maternal love are all profaned to give security and zest to the guilty pleasures of the sensualist and debauchee. There are individual exceptions to what I have said,--exceptions which, amid surrounding iniquity, shine “like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,” but they are exceptions. Laws, institutions, and the prevailing public sentiment are as I have described.
I regard the argument, therefore, of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BROWN,] not only as utterly unsound and false in its premises, but as blasphemous in its conclusions. Common blasphemy seldom reaches beyond exclamation. It is some fiery outburst of impious passion, that flashes and expires. But the gentleman reasons it out coolly. His is argumentative blasphemy, borrowing the forms of logic that it may appear to have its force, and transferring it from the passions to the intellect, to give it permanency.
But the gentleman from Pennsylvania retorts upon Massachusetts, and refers to certain things in her history which he regards as disreputable to her. In this he has been followed by the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. BEDINGER,] who has poured out a torrent of abuse upon my native state, and who has attempted to fortify his own intemperate accusations from a pro-slavery pamphlet which has been profusely scattered about this House within a few days past, and which is not merely full of falsehoods, but is composed of falsehoods; so that if one were to take the false assertions and the false arguments out of it, there would be nothing but the covers left.[5] Sir, I am very far from arrogating for Massachusetts all the merits and the virtues which she ought to possess. I mourn over her errors, and would die to reform, rather than spend one breath to defend them. The recital of her offences can fall more sadly upon no ear than upon my own. But it is as true of a state as of an individual, that repentance is the first step towards reformation. Massachusetts has committed errors; but when they were seen to be errors, she discarded them. She once held slaves; but when she saw that slavery was contrary to the rights of man and the law of God, she emancipated them. She was the first government in the civilized world,--in the whole world, ancient or modern,--to abolish slavery, wherever she had power to do so. This is an honor that no rival can ever snatch from her brow. Once,--I say it with humiliation,--she was engaged in the slave trade. But all the gold that could be earned by the accursed traffic, though spent in the splendors of luxury and the seductions of hospitality, could not save the trader himself from infamy and scorn; and I am sure I am right in saying that the slave trade ceased to be conducted by Massachusetts merchants, and to be carried on in Massachusetts ships, from Massachusetts ports, before it was abandoned by the merchants and discontinued in the ships and from the ports of any other commercial state or nation in the world. This, too, is an honor, which it will be hers, through all the immortality of the ages, alone to wear. But Massachusetts, it is still said, has her idolaters of Mammon in other forms. It is charged upon her that many of her children still wallow in the sty of intemperance; that her spiritualism runs wild in religious vagaries; and that something of the old leaven of persecution still clings to her heart. In vindicating what is right, I will not defend what is wrong. I cannot deny,--would to God that I could,--that we still have vices and vicious men amongst us. There are those there, as elsewhere, who, if they were to hear for the first time of the River of Life flowing fast by the throne of God, would instinctively ask whether there were any good mill sites on it. There are those there, as elsewhere, whose highest aspirations for heaven and for happiness, whether for this life or for another, are a distillery and a sugar-house, with steam machinery to mix the products. There, as elsewhere, there are religionists who are quick to imitate the Savior when he strikes, but despise his example when he heals.
But, sir, let me say this for Massachusetts, that whatever sins she may have committed in former times,--whatever dissenters she may have persecuted, or witches she may have hanged, or Africans she may have stolen and sold,--she has long since abandoned these offences, and is bringing forth fruits meet for repentance. And is a state to have no benefit from a statute of limitations? Is a crime committed by ancestors to be forever imputed to their posterity? This is worse than non-forgiveness; it is making punishment hereditary. Sir, of these offences, Massachusetts has repented and reformed; and she is giving that noblest of atonements or expiations, which consists in repairing the wrong that has been done; and where the victim of the wrong has himself passed away, and is beyond relief, then in paying, with large interest, the debt to humanity which the special creditor is no longer present to receive, by seeking out the objects of want and suffering wherever they may be found. Sir, our accusers unconsciously do us the highest honor, when, in their zeal to malign us, they seek for historical reproaches. If they could find present offences wherewith to upbraid us, they would not exhume the past. But they condemn themselves, for they show that even the resuscitation of the errors of the dead gives them more pleasure than a contemplation of the virtues of the living. One thing is certain: the moment the other states shall imitate our present example, they will cease to condemn us for our past offences. The sympathy of a common desire for improvement will destroy the pleasure of crimination.
And where, I ask, on the surface of the earth, is there a population of only eight hundred thousand, who are striving so earnestly, and doing so much, to advance the cause of humanity and civilization, as is doing by the people of Massachusetts? Where else, where universal suffrage is allowed, is a million of dollars voted every year, by the very men who have to pay it, for the public, free education of every child in the state?
Where else, by such a limited population, is another million of dollars voluntarily voted and paid each year for the salaries of clergymen alone? Where else, where the population is so small, and natural resources so few and scanty, is still another million of dollars annually given in charity?--the greater portion of which is sent beyond their own borders, flows into every state in the Union, and leaves not a nation on the globe, nor an island in the sea, unwatered by its fertilizing streams. Look into the statute book of Massachusetts, for the last twenty years, and you will see how the whole current of her legislation has set in the direction of human improvement,--for succoring disease or restoration from it, for supplying the privations of nature, for reclaiming the vicious, for elevating all,--a comprehensiveness of scope that takes in every human being, and an energy of action that follows every individual with a blessing to his home. When others will abandon their offences, then let the remembrance of them be blotted out.
But, sir, I think it proper to advert to the fact that I have had other proofs, during the present session of Congress, of the same spirit of crimination and obloquy which was so fully developed in the speeches of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BROWN,] and the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. BEDINGER.] Through the post-office of the House of Representatives, I have been in the regular receipt of anonymous letters, made up mainly of small slips cut from newspapers printed at the north, describing some case of murder, suicide, robbery, or other offence. These have been arranged under the heads of different states,--Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, &c., and accompanied, in the margin, with rude drawings of a school-book or a school house, and all referred to Common Schools, as to their source. Two only, of the whole number thus collected, originated in Massachusetts, and one of these was a case of suicide committed by a man who had become insane from the loss of his wife. Which of these events, in the opinion of my anonymous correspondent, constituted the crime,--whether the bereavement that caused the insanity, or the suicide committed in one of its paroxysms,--I am unable to say. Now, what satisfaction even a bad man could have in referring offences against law and morality to the institution of public schools, when he must have known that the very existence of the offences only proves that education has not yet done its perfect work, I cannot conceive. And what spite, either against an educational office which I once held, or against an institution which is worthy of all honor, could be so mean and paltry as to derive gratification from referring me to long lists of offences, only one of which was committed in my native state, I must leave for others to conjecture. Surely the author of these letters must have known little of Common Schools, and profited by them as little as he has known. Had he referred to any considerable number of crimes perpetrated in Massachusetts, I would take his letters home and carry them into our public schools, and make them the text for a sermon, in which I would warn the children to beware of all crimes, and especially of the meanness and the wickedness which feels a complacency in the crimes of others, or can give a false paternity to them. And, sir, I should be sure of a response; for out of those schools there is going forth a nobler band of young men and women than ever before conferred intelligence, virtue, refinement, and renown upon any people or community on the face of the globe.
But whatever may be said in mitigation or in condemnation of slavery elsewhere, there are special reasons why it should be discontinued in this District. This District is the common property of the nation. Having power of exclusive legislation over it, we are all responsible for the institutions in it. While slaves exist in it, therefore, it can be charged upon the north that they uphold slavery. This is unjust to us, because it places us before the world in the attitude of sustaining what we condemn. It wounds our moral and religious sensibilities, because we believe the institution to be cruel towards men, and sinful in the sight of Heaven; and yet we are made apparently to sanction it. It is like that species of injustice where a man is compelled by a tax to support a religion which he disbelieves, and to pay a hierarchy whom his conscience compels him to denounce. But the existence of slavery here is not necessary to the faith or the practice of our southern brethren. If they believe it to be a useful and justifiable institution, then they evince the sincerity of that belief by sustaining and perpetuating it at home. For this purpose, there is no necessity of a crusade to propagate it, or sustain it elsewhere.
Look at the relation which we bear to it, in another respect. I have been taught from my earliest childhood that “all men are created equal.” This has become in me not merely a conviction of the understanding, but a sentiment of the heart. This maxim is my principle of action, whenever I am called upon to act; and it rises spontaneously to my contemplations when I speculate upon human duty. It is the plainest corollary from the doctrine of the natural equality of man, that when I see a man, or a class of men, who are not equal to myself in opportunities, in gifts, in means of improvement, or in motives and incitements to an elevated character and an exemplary life,--I say, it is the plainest corollary that I should desire to elevate those men to an equality with myself. However far my own life may fall below the standard of Christianity and gentlemanliness, yet I hold it to be clear, that no man is a Christian or a gentleman, who does not carry about an habitual frame of mind which prompts him, as far as he has the means to do it, to instruct all the ignorance, to relieve all the privations, to minister to all the pains, and to supply all the deficiencies of those with whom he meets in the daily walks of life; and, so far as he is a man who wields influence, possesses authority, or exercises legislative power, he is bound to exert his gifts and his prerogatives for the amelioration and the improvement of his fellow-men. This is the lowest standard of duty that any one who aspires to be a Christian or a gentleman can set up for his guidance. Now take the case of a man from the north, who has incorporated these views, or any similitude of these views, into his character, and who has occasion to visit this District. Suppose him to be elected and sent here as a member of Congress, or to be appointed to a post in some of the departments, or to visit this city on public business, or to come here from motives of curiosity; what is the sight which is inflicted upon him when he first sets his foot within this common property of the nation,--when he first enters this household, where the head of the nation resides and directs? Sir, when he first alights from the cars that bring him within your limits and your jurisdiction, he beholds a degraded caste,--a race of men whom God endowed with the faculties of intelligence, but whom man has despoiled of the power of improving those faculties, squalid in their garb, betraying ignorance in every word they utter, uncultivated in their manners and their tastes, fawning for a favor, instead of standing erect like men who are conscious of rights; or, if they have outgrown servile and sycophantic habits, then erring on the side of impudence and insolence as much as they erred before on that of cringing and servility. He repairs to his lodgings, and there, too, all his moral sensibilities are shocked and outraged, by seeing a class of men and women hopelessly degraded, cut off by law and custom from all opportunity of emerging from their debasement; whom no talent, taste, or virtue can ever redeem to the pleasures and the rights of social intercourse. He sees men and women who are not degraded on account of the services they perform,--for “honor and shame from no condition rise,”--but degraded by the motive and spirit from which the services are performed; men and women who have no inducements to industry and frugality, for their earnings will all be seized by another; who have no incentives to self-respect, for they can never emerge from their menial condition; who are bereaved of all the wonders and glories of knowledge, lest under its expansions their natures should burst the thraldom that enslaves them; and all whose manly qualities, all whose higher faculties, therefore, are irredeemably and hopelessly crushed, extinguished, obliterated, so that nothing but the animal, which the master can use for his selfish purposes, remains.
Mr. BRODHEAD, [of Pennsylvania.] Would you advance the slaves to an equal social and political condition with the white race?
Mr. MANN. I would give to every human being the best opportunity I could to develop and cultivate the faculties which God has bestowed upon him, and which, therefore, he holds under a divine charter. I would take from his neck the heel that has trodden him down; I would dispel from his mind the cloud that has shrouded him in moral night; I would remove the obstructions that have forbidden his soul to aspire; and having done this, I would leave him, as I would leave every other man, to find his level,--to occupy the position to which he should be entitled by his intelligence and his virtues. I entertain no fears on the much dreaded subject of amalgamation. Legal amalgamation between the races will never take place, unless, in the changed condition of society, reasons shall exist to warrant and sanction it; and, in that case, it will carry its own justification with it. But one thing I could never understand,--why those who are so horror-stricken at the idea of _theoretic_ amalgamation, should exhibit to the world, in all their cities, on all their plantations, and in all their households, such numberless proofs of _practical_ amalgamation. I never could see why those who arraign and condemn us at the north so vehemently, because, as they say, we obtrude our prying eyes into what they call a “domestic” or “fireside” institution, should have no hesitation in exhibiting to the world, through all their borders, ten thousand, and ten times ten thousand, living witnesses, that they make it a bedside institution. Multitudes of the slaves of the south bear about upon their persons a brand as indelible as that of Cain; but the mark has been fastened upon them, not for their own crimes, but for the crimes of their fathers. In the complexion of the slave, we read the horrid history of the guilt of the enslavers. They demonstrate that the one race has been to the other, not the object of benevolence, but the victim of licentiousness.
But to resume. When the visitor to this city from the north leaves his lodgings, and goes into the public streets, half the people whom he meets there are of the same degraded class. Their tattered dress and unseemly manners denote congenital debasement. Their language proclaims their ignorance. If you have occasion to send them on an errand, they cannot read the direction of a note, or a sign on a shopboard. Their ideas are limited within the narrowest range. They speak the natural language of servility, and they wear the livery of an inferior condition. The conviction of their deplorable state is perpetually forced upon the mind. You do not need their color to remind you of their degradation. Color, sir! They are oftentimes almost as white as ourselves. Sir, there is not a member of Congress who has not frequently seen some of his fellow-members, in the spring of the year, with a jaundiced skin more sallow and more yellow than that of many a slave who is bought and sold and owned in this city. I have seen members of this House to whom I have been disposed to give a friendly caution to keep their “free papers” about their persons, lest suddenly, on the presumption from color, they should be seized and sold for runaway slaves. A yellow complexion here is so common a badge of slavery, that one whose skin is colored by disease is by no means out of danger. To enjoy security, a man must do more than take care of his life; he must take care of his health. It is not enough to take heed to the meditations of his heart; he must see also to the secretions of his liver.
But, sir, the stranger from the north visits the courts of justice in this city; he goes into halls set apart and consecrated, even in the dark and half-heathenish periods of English history, to the investigation of truth and the administration of justice; but if he sees any specimens of the colored race there, he sees them only as menials. They cannot go there as witnesses. However atrocious the wrongs they may suffer in their own person and character, or in the person and character of wife or children, they cannot appeal to the courts to avenge or redress them. If introduced there at all, it is as a bale of goods is introduced, or as an ox or a horse is brought within their purlieus, for the purpose of trying some disputed question of identity or ownership. They go not as suitors, but as sacrifices. In the courts of law; in the temples with which all our ideas of justice, of right between man and man, are associated; where truth goes to be vindicated, where innocence flies to be avenged,--in these courts, an entire portion of the human race are known, not as men, but as chattels, as cattle. Where, for them, is the Magna Charta that the old barons wrested from King John? Is a whole race to be forever doomed to this outlawry? Are they forever to wear a “wolf’s head,” which every white man may cut off when he pleases? Sir, it cannot be that this state of things will last forever. If all the rights of the black race are thus withheld from them, it is just as certain as the progress of time that they, too, will have their Runnymede, their Declaration of Independence, their Bunker Hill, and their Yorktown.
Such, sir, are the sights that molest us when we come here from the north,--that molest us in the hotels, that molest us in the streets, that molest us in the courts, that molest us every where. But the week passes away, and the Sabbath comes,--the day of rest from worldly toils, the day set apart for social worship, when men come together, and, by their mutual presence and assistance, lift up the hearts of each other in gratitude to God. But where now are the colored population, that seemed to be so numerous every where else? Have they no God? Have they no interest in the Savior’s example and precepts? Have they no need of consolation, of faith in the Unseen, to help them bear up under the burdens and anxieties of life? Is their futurity so uncertain or so worthless that they need no guide to a better country, or that they can be turned off with a guide as ignorant and blind as themselves?
We go from the courts and the churches to the schools. But no child in whose skin there is a shadow of a shade of African complexion is to be found there. The channels are so cut that all the sacred and healing waters of knowledge flow, not to him, but by him. Sir, of all the remorseless and wanton cruelties ever committed in this world of wickedness and woe, I hold that to be the most remorseless and wanton which shuts out from all the means of instruction a being whom God has endued with the capacities of knowledge, and inspired with the divine desire _to know_. Strike blossom and beauty from the vernal season of the year, and leave it sombre and cheerless; annihilate the harmonies with which the birds of spring make vocal the field and the forest, and let exulting Nature become silent and desolate; dry up even those fountains of joy and gladsomeness that flow unbidden from the heart of childhood, and let the radiant countenance of youth become dull and stony like that of age;--do all this, if you will, but withhold your profane hand from those creative sources of knowledge which shall give ever-renewing and ever-increasing delight through all the cycles of immortality, and which have the power to assimilate the finite creature more and more nearly to the infinite Creator. Sir, he who denies to children the acquisition of knowledge works devilish miracles. If a man destroys my power of hearing, it is precisely the same to me as though, leaving my faculty of hearing untouched, he had annihilated all the melodies and harmonies of the universe. If a man obliterates my power of vision, it is precisely the same to me as though he had blotted out the light of the sun, and flung a pall of darkness over all the beauties of the earth and the glories of the firmament. So, if a usurper of human rights takes away from a child the faculties of knowledge, or the means and opportunities to know, it is precisely the same to that child as though all the beauties and the wonders, all the magnificence and the glory, of the universe itself had been destroyed. To one who is permitted to know nothing of the charms and sublimities of science, all science is non-existent. To one who is permitted to know nothing of the historical past, all the past generations of men are a nonentity. To one whose mind is not made capacious of the future, and opened to receive it, all the great interests of futurity have less of reality than a dream. I say, therefore, in strict, literal, philosophical truth, that whoever denies knowledge to children works devilish miracles. Just so far as he disables and incapacitates them from knowing, he annihilates the objects of knowledge; he obliterates history; he destroys the countless materials in the natural world that might, through the medium of the useful arts, be converted into human comforts and blessings; he suspends the sublime order and progression of Nature, and blots out those wonderful relations of cause and effect that belong to her unchangeable laws. Nay, there is a sense in which such an impious destroyer of knowledge may be said to annihilate the attributes of the Creator himself, for he does annihilate the capacity of forming a conception of that Creator, and thus prevents a soul that was created in the image of God from ever receiving the image it was created to reflect. Such a destroyer of knowledge dims the highest moral splendor of the universe. God is more to me than a grand and solitary Being, though refulgent with infinite perfections. Contemplated as enthroned in the midst of his works, his spiritual offspring in all the grand circuit of the worlds he has formed become a multiplying glass, reflecting back the Original in the profusion and countlessness of infinity. But when the wickedness of man cuts off entire generations and whole races from the capacity of reflecting back this radiant image of the Creator, then all that part of the universe where they dwell becomes black and revolting, and all that portion of the Mirror of Souls which was designed to reproduce and rekindle the glories of the Eternal absorbs and quenches the rays which it should have caught and flamed with anew, and multiplied and returned. And still further, sir, I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also. He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up all the vacuities of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. Superstition is the mathematical complement of religious truth; and just so much less as the life of a human being is reclaimed to good, just so much more is it delivered over to evil. The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet of ours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown, and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless reign. Sir, the laws recorded in the statute books of the free states, providing the means of education, and wooing the children to receive the blessedness of true knowledge, are worthy to be inscribed as emblems and hieroglyphics upon the golden gates of heaven; but those laws which deform the statute books of the slave states of this Union, making it a penal offence to educate human beings, and dooming immortal souls to perpetual ignorance, would make the most appropriate adornment wherewith to embellish with inscription and bas-relief the pillars of the council hall of Pandemonium.
Sir, if there is any thing for which I would go back to childhood, and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting, transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold their earliest communion with knowledge. When the panting and thirsting soul first drinks the delicious waters of truth; when the moral and intellectual tastes and desires first seize the fragrant fruits that flourish in the garden of knowledge; then does the child catch a glimpse and foretaste of heaven. He regales himself upon the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. Late in life, this zest is rarely if ever felt so keenly as at the beginning. Such ought not to be the fact; but our bodies are so systematically abused by transgressions of the laws of health and diet, that the sympathizing soul loses the keenness of its early relish. Even then, however, age has its compensations. The old may experience the delights of learning, anew, in the reflex pleasure of seeing children learn. But these lofty and enduring satisfactions,--this pleasure,--it is no extravagance to say, this bliss of knowledge, both for parent and child, is withheld, cruelly, remorselessly withheld, from the slave. We know all this; we see its imbruting consequences; and we are compelled to see them, because the government will uphold slavery here.
Such, sir, is the spectacle which is presented to all northern men, whenever for duty, for business, or for pleasure, they visit this metropolis. Wherever we go, wherever we are, the odious, abhorred concomitants of this institution are forced upon our observation, and become a perpetual bitterness in the cup of life. The whole system, with all its adjuncts, is irreconcilably repugnant to our ideas of justice. We believe it to be a denial of the rights of man; we believe it to be contrary to the law of God. Whether these feelings wear away by the lapse of time, and the indurating power of custom, I know not; but, for one, I hope never to become hardened and callous to the sight; for it is a case where I could experience no mitigation of my pains, without a corresponding debasement of my nature.
Now, in all sincerity, and in all kindness, I ask our southern brethren what there is to them so valuable and desirable in retaining slavery here, as to be a compensation for all the pain and evil which its existence inflicts upon the north? Surely its abandonment here would be a small thing to them, while its continuance is a great thing to us. It is a great thing to us, because we are held responsible for it by the whole civilized world. This District is the common possession of the nation. Congress has power of exclusive legislation over it. Congress, therefore, is responsible for its institutions, as a man is responsible for the condition of his house, and the customs of his family. The general government is not responsible for the local institutions of Massachusetts or of Mississippi. Each of them has supreme control over its own domestic concerns. They may honorably discharge their debts or repudiate them; they may build up institutions of charity, of learning, and of religion; or they may suffer inhumanity and violence, ignorance and paganism, to prevail; and we, here, cannot help it, and therefore are not responsible for it. But it is wholly otherwise with regard to the institutions that prevail in this District; their honor, or their infamy, attaches to us. We are judged by them the world round. We of the Northern States feel it at home; we are made to feel it still more deeply abroad. Throughout every nation in Europe, it is the common language and the common sentiment, that an institution which exists in one half of the states of this Union is in flagrant contrast and contradiction to the theory of our government. When we are reminded of this,--whether in a kindly and expostulatory manner by our friends, or in an offensive and taunting one by our enemies,--we of the north can say, at least, that we are not responsible for it. We can explain why we are no more amenable for the local laws of Arkansas or Missouri than we are for the Catholic religion in Mexico, or for the revolutions in the South American republics. This is our answer. But they still retort upon us, and say, There is one spot for which you are responsible,--the District of Columbia. You could abolish slavery there if you would; you do not; and therefore the sin of its continuance is yours, as much as if it existed in New York or Massachusetts. Now I ask southern gentlemen how it is consistent with magnanimity and honor, with a fraternal feeling towards the north, for them to force the odium of this inconsistency upon us? Surely they gain no credit, no character by it; we lose both credit and character. The existence of slavery here is no benefit to them; it is of unspeakable injury to us. They would lose nothing by surrendering it; we suffer every thing by its continuance. A change would work them no injury; it would be invaluable to us. I ask them, on principles of common fairness and good neighborhood, that they should courteously and voluntarily yield us this point, which would allay so much bitterness and heart-burning at the north, and which, according to their view of the matter, would fill the south with the sweet savor of a generous deed.
I know, sir, that some southern gentleman profess to see a principle in such a course that debars them from adopting it. They say that if slavery in this District should be surrendered, it would only be giving the adversary a vantage ground, on which he could plant himself to attack slavery in the states. I dissent from this view entirely. Has not the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. GIDDINGS,] who is supposed to represent the extreme anti-slavery views which exist in this House,--has he not declared here, a hundred times over, that he disclaims all right, that he renounces all legal authority and pretext, under the constitution, to lay the hands of this government, for the purpose of freeing him, on a single slave in the slave states? But clearly the principle is different in regard to slaves in this District, where we possess the power of “exclusive legislation.” But if gentlemen at the south see a principle which debars them from surrendering slavery in this District, we at the north see a principle which prompts us, and will prompt us, until the work is accomplished, to renewed exertions. On the same ground on which slavery in this District has been defended for the last fifty years, it can be defended for the next fifty, or the next five hundred years; it can be defended forever. This idea of perpetual slavery in the very household of a republic of freemen is not to be tolerated, and cannot be tolerated. But I will not dwell on this topic further. I close this branch of my argument with a proposition which seems to me but fair and equitable. The south has held this metropolis as a slave capital for fifty years. Let it now be held as a free capital for fifty years; and if, at the end of this period, adequate reasons can be shown, before any nation, civilized or uncivilized, upon the face of the earth, for restoring it to slavery again, I, for one, should have no fears of entering into an engagement upon such a condition, that it should again become “a land of Egypt and a house of bondage.”
* * * * *
Notwithstanding I have dwelt so long upon the social and moral aspects of this subject, I am still tempted not to forego that which was my principal object in rising, namely, to submit an argument on the question of the legality or constitutionality of slavery in this District. I have bestowed much careful attention upon this subject, with the sincerest desire of arriving at true, legal, and constitutional results. I submit my views with deference, because I know they are in conflict with the views of others, for whose knowledge and abilities I have a profound respect.
The legality of slavery in the District of Columbia has been assumed, and practically acquiesced in, for fifty years. Had the question of its validity been raised, and argued on the principles of the constitution, immediately after the creation of the District, I believe this territory would have been declared free soil. In my conscientious opinion, slavery exists in this District only by original usurpation and subsequent acquiescence. If so, Congress cannot be too speedily invoked to abdicate the power it has usurped.
1. The first position I take is this: _That slavery has no legal existence any where, unless by force of positive law._
If any man claims authority over the body, mind, and soul of one of his fellow-men, and claims this authority not only for the whole life of his victim, but a like authority over all his descendants, there is no part of the civilized world where he will not be required to show some positive law, authorizing the power and the bondage. If the claimant says, “I am stronger, or I am wiser than he;” or, “I have an Anglo-Saxon brain, while he has only an African brain;” or, “my skin is white, and his skin is not white;” or, “I descended from Shem, and he from Ham; and, therefore, he is my slave,”--there is not a court in Christendom, which, though it may admit the fact, will ratify the inference. If the claimant affirms that it is _morally_ right for him to seize his fellow-man and reduce him to slavery; if he brings the Bible into court as his law book, and cites Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob and Paul, as his authorities; still, I say, there is not a court in Christendom that will not deny the validity of the title, and rebuke the arrogance of the demand.[6] Positive law, then, is the only foundation of slavery. The authorities are numerous, if not numberless, to establish this position. I shall not encumber this argument by citing many of them. The few which I shall cite will contain a reference to the rest.
The grand reason against slavery given by Lord Mansfield, in Somerset’s case, was, “that it is so intrinsically wrong that it is incapable of being introduced into any country, on any reasons moral or political, and can only stand on positive law.” 20 State Trials, 1.
Chief Justice Marshall says, “That it [slavery] is contrary to the law of nature, will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor, is generally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate them against his will, seems to be the necessary result of this admission.” Antelope, 10 Wheat., 120.
“The first objection,” says Mr. Justice Best, in the case of Forbes and Cochrane, “which occurs to me, in this case, is that it does not appear, in the special case, that the right to slaves exists in East Florida. _That right is not a general but a local right_; it ought, therefore, to have been shown that it existed in Florida, and that the defendants knew of its existence. Assuming, however, that those facts did appear, still, under the circumstances of this case, this action could not be maintained.
“The question is, Were these persons slaves at the time when Sir G. Cockburn refused to do the act which he was desired to do? I am decidedly of opinion that they were no longer slaves. The moment they put their feet on board of a _British_ man-of-war, not lying within the waters of East Florida, (where undoubtedly the laws of that country would prevail,) those persons who had before been slaves were free.... Slavery is a local law, and, therefore, if a man wishes to preserve his slaves, let him attach them to him by affection, or make fast the bars of their prison, or rivet well their chains; _for the instant they get beyond the limits where slavery is recognized by the local law, they have broken their chains, they have escaped from their prison, and are free_.” 2 Barn. & Cres. 466-7; _Forbes_ vs. _Cochrane_, S. C., 3 Dowl. & Ryland, 679.
“I am of opinion,” says Holroyd, J., in the same case, “that according to the principles of the English law the right to slaves, even in a country where such rights are recognized by law, must be considered as founded, not upon the law of nature, but upon the particular law of that country.”
“The law of slavery is a law _in invitum_; _and when a party gets out of the territory where it prevails_, and out of the power of his master, and gets under the protection of another power, without any wrongful act done by the party giving that protection, the right of the master, _which is founded on the municipal law of the particular place only_, does not continue, and there is no right of action against a party who merely receives the slave in that country, without doing any wrongful act.”
The definition of slavery given by the Roman law implies that it is local: _Servitus est constitutio juris gentium, qua quis dominio alieno_, CONTRA NATURAM, _subjicitur_. _Commonwealth_ vs. _Aves_, 18 Pick. Rep., 193; _Lunsford_ vs. _Coquillon_, 14 Martin’s Rep. 402. “The relation of owner and slave is a creation of the municipal law.” _Rankin_ vs. _Lydia_, 3 Marshall, 470, Ky.; _Butler_ vs. _Hopper_, 1 Wash. C. C. Rep. 499; _Ex parte Simmons_, 4 Wash. C. C. 296; _Marie Louise_ vs. _Marot et al._, 9 Curry’s Louisiana Rep. 473.
This point may be presented in another light. By the law of nature all men are free. But in some governments the law of the state, upheld by the power of the state, overrides the law of nature, and enslaves a portion of the people. The law of nature recedes before this legalized violence; but it recedes no farther than the legalized violence drives it back. Within the jurisdictional limits of such states, then, slavery is made _legal_, though it is not made _right_. But if a slave passes out of the jurisdiction where violence overpowers right, into a jurisdiction where right is superior to violence, he is then free; not because there is any change in the man, but because there is a change in the laws to which the man is subject.
There may, however, be some further positive law which, though it does not authorize the buying or selling of a slave, still does provide that an escaped or escaping slave may be recaptured and redelivered into bondage. Such is the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of the constitution of the United States. Such, too, is the act of Congress of February 12, 1793, providing for the recapture of fugitive slaves. This, however, would not be without positive law.
The debates in all the conventions for adopting the constitution of the United States, proceed upon the ground that slavery depends upon positive law for its existence. If it did not,--if a man who has a legal right to a slave in Virginia, has a legal right to him anywhere,--then the provision in the constitution, and the act of 1793 for recapturing fugitive slaves, would have been unnecessary.
On the south side of a boundary line, then, slavery may exist by force of positive law; while, on the north side, in the absence of any such law, slavery is unlawful. A slave passing out of a jurisdiction where slavery is legalized, into a jurisdiction where it is not, becomes free. It is as though a man should migrate from one of those South Sea islands, where cannibalism is legalized, and where the public authorities, according to the reports of travellers, not only condemn and execute a criminal, _but dine on him, after he is executed_,--it is, I say, as though the subject of such a government should migrate into one where cannibalism is not lawful, and where, therefore, though he should be condemned and executed for crime, it would be no part of the sentence or the ceremony that he should be eaten by his judges. He is out of cannibal jurisdiction.
The right of freedom is a natural right. It is a positive existence. It is a moral entity. Like the right to life, it pertains, by the law of nature and of God, to every human being. This moral right continues to exist until it is abolished. Some act abolishing this freedom, then, must be proved; it must be proved affirmatively, or else the fact of freedom remains. This is the solid and indestructible ground of the maxim, that slavery can exist only by positive law; that it is a _local_ institution; that the right of freedom must first be abolished before slavery can exist.
2. My second position is this: _That a man’s legal condition may be changed by a change in the government over him, while he remains in the same place, just as effectually as it can be changed by his removal to another place, and putting himself under another government._ The inhabitants of the North American colonies did not change their place of residence when they passed from under the government of Great Britain, and came under the government of the confederation. The Mexicans, inhabiting the then states of California and New Mexico, did not change their place of residence, when, on the thirtieth day of May last, they ceased to be citizens of the Mexican republic, and became citizens, or _quasi_ citizens of the United States. Their political relations were changed, not by their removal from under the canopy of one government and placing themselves under the canopy of another government, but by the withdrawal of one government from over them, and by the extension to them of certain _political_ rights and capacities under another government. Before this thirtieth day of May, they could have committed treason against Mexico, but not after it. Before it, they could not commit treason against the United States; but when they shall be citizens of the Union, they can. These vital changes in their relations are without any change in their residence. Within my recollection, an old gentleman died in Massachusetts, who had lived in five different towns, but still remained where he was born, like one of the old oak trees on the homestead. The part of the original town where he was born had been set off and incorporated into a new town; and that part of the second town where he lived, into a third; and so on, until he died in the fifth town without any change of domicile. Now, this man lived under the jurisdiction and by-laws of five towns, as they were successively incorporated over him, just as much as though he had struck his tent five times, and placed himself, by successive migrations, under five different municipal jurisdictions.
A similar thing must have happened to thousands of our fellow-citizens of the Union. Some of them at first lived under a foreign government; then under one territorial government; then under another; and at last have become citizens of a state, without any change of domicile. Indeed, it would seem that nothing can be clearer than the proposition, whether regarded as a legal or a political one, that the laws and the jurisdiction may be changed over a man who continues to reside in the same place, just as effectually and as completely as a man may change the laws and jurisdiction over himself by removing to a different place. In many cases, the former works a more thorough change than the latter. The laws of Great Britain do not acknowledge the right of self-expatriation; while, at the same time, it is held, that the inhabitants of a foreign province, incorporated into the kingdom, change their allegiance without changing their residence.
3. My third proposition is this: _That the jurisdiction under which the inhabitants of what is now the District of Columbia lived, prior to the cession of the District by Maryland to the United States, was utterly and totally changed, at the moment of the cession,--at the moment when, according to the provisions of the constitution, they ceased to be citizens of the state of Maryland, and became citizens of the District of Columbia._
By the 17th paragraph, (Hickey’s Constitution,) of the 8th section of the 1st article, it is provided that 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 the government of the United States.”
Congress, then, has the power of sole and exclusive legislation, “in all cases whatsoever,” in regard to the District of Columbia. What is the meaning of the word “exclusive” in this connection? It cannot mean _absolute_ and _uncontrolled_; for, if it did, it would make Congress as sovereign as the Russian autocrat. It means that no other government, no other body of men whatever, shall have concurrent power of legislation over the District; nor, indeed, any subordinate power, except what may be derived from Congress. Over every man who is a citizen of one of the United States, there are two jurisdictions,--the jurisdiction of the general government, and the jurisdiction of the state government. There are two governments that have the power to legislate for him; but there is only one power,--the Congress of the United States,--that can legislate for a citizen of the District of Columbia.
In _Kendall_ vs. _The United States_, 12 Peters, 524, it is said, “There is in the District of Columbia no division of powers between the general and state governments. Congress has the entire control over the District, for every purpose of government.”
So it has been held that a justice of the peace in the District of Columbia is an officer of the government of the United States, and is therefore exempt from militia duty. _Wise_ vs. _Withers_, 3 Cranch, 331; 1 Cond. Rep. 552.
A citizen of the District of Columbia is not a citizen of any one of the United States. _Hepburn et al._ vs. _Ellery_, 2 Cranch, 445; _Westcott’s Lessee_ vs. _Inhabitants ----_, Peters, C. C. R. 45.
Up to the time of the cession, the inhabitants of this District were under two jurisdictions--that of Maryland and that of Congress; but after the cession, under that of Congress alone. Now, when the inhabitants of this District passed out of the jurisdiction of Maryland, and came under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, let us see what was the effect of such change of jurisdiction upon them.
In the act of Congress of 1790, c. 28, sect. 1, which was an act for establishing the seat of government of the United States, there is the following clause: “_Provided, nevertheless_, That the operation of the laws of the state [of Maryland] 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_.”
Here, then, Congress _expressly_ provided and contracted with the state of Maryland, that the laws of Maryland in this District should not be interfered with until the removal of the seat of government to this place; and Congress likewise _impliedly_ provided and contracted, that when the seat of government should be removed to this place, it would discharge the duty imposed upon it by the constitution of the United States, and would assume and exercise the “exclusive legislation” provided for in that instrument. This act of Congress was approved on the 16th of July, 1790.
By the Maryland laws of 1791, c. 45, sect. 2, that state ceded to the United States the territory which now constitutes the District of Columbia, and the words of the cession are these: “In full and absolute right, as well of soil as of person, residing or to reside thereon,” &c. ... provided that the jurisdiction of the laws of Maryland “shall not cease or determine _until Congress shall by law provide for the government thereof_.”
The state of the case, then, was simply this: 1. The constitution gave Congress power of “exclusive legislation” over such district as might be ceded for the seat of government. 2. Congress, by the act of 1790, above referred to, proposed to the state of Maryland to accept a portion of her territory for this purpose, but engaged not to interfere with her laws until after it had taken actual possession of the ceded territory. 3. Maryland accepted the proposition, rehearsing the condition in these words; namely, that “the laws of Maryland shall not cease or determine until Congress shall by law provide for the government thereof.”
By the 6th section of the act of 1790, c. 28, Congress provided that it would remove to this District, and make this the seat of government, on the first Monday of December, 1800. It did so; and now its express duty under the constitution, and its implied promise to the state of Maryland, were to be fulfilled, by exercising “exclusive legislation” over this District.
In fulfilment of this duty and promise, Congress, on the 27th of February, 1801, by the act of 1801, c. 15, proceeded to legislate for the District of Columbia; and, in the first section of that act, it provided as follows:--
“_Be it enacted, &c._, That the laws of the state of Virginia, as they now exist, shall be and continue in force in that part of the District of Columbia which was ceded by the said state to the United States, and by them accepted for the permanent seat of government; and 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, as aforesaid.”
By this act, then, Congress assumed to exercise, and did exercise, that exclusive legislation over the District of Columbia which had been provided for by the constitution.
That portion of the District which was ceded to Congress by Virginia, having been receded to that state by the act of Congress of July 9, 1846, (stat. 1846, c. 35,) all that relates to it may, for the purposes of this argument, be laid out of the question.
On the 27th day of February, 1801, then, the laws of Maryland, _as such_, were abrogated in this District. The legislative power of Congress was _de facto_ exclusive. All legislative power previously possessed by Maryland over it, then ceased. The connection of Maryland with this District, as a part of its former territory, and occupied by its former citizens, was dissolved. It had no longer any more legislative power over the District than Maine or Georgia had. Historically, we may talk about the laws of Maryland, as they once existed here; but practically, and as a matter of strict law and fact, her laws were no longer known within the District. The laws which governed the people of this District after the 27th day of February, 1801, were the laws of Congress, and not the laws of Maryland.
To show that this part of the District passed out from under the government of Maryland, and came under the government of the United States, I refer to _Reilly, appellant_, vs. _Lamar et al._, 2 Cranch, 344; 1 Cond. Rep. 322, where it is said, “By the separation of the District of Columbia from the State of Maryland, the residents in that part of Maryland which became a part of the District, ceased to be citizens of the state.” It was held, in that case, that a citizen of the District of Columbia could not be discharged by the insolvent law of Maryland.
A citizen of the District of Columbia cannot maintain an action in the circuit court of the United States out of the District, he not being a citizen of the state within the meaning of the provision of the law of the United States regulating the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States. _Hepburn et al._ vs. _Ellzey_, 2 Cranch, 445; 1 Cond. Rep. 444. See also _Loughborough_ vs. _Blake_, 5 Wheat. 317, and _Levy Court of Washington_ vs. _Ringgold_, 5 Peters, 451.
4. The next point of inquiry is, _What is the legal force and effect, upon the subject of slavery, of the act of Congress of 1801, before cited?_ Its words are, “That the laws of the state of Maryland, as they now exist, shall be continued in force in that part of said District which was ceded by that state to the United States,” &c. And here, I acknowledge that the operation of this clause is precisely the same as though Congress had transcribed all the Maryland laws, word for word, and letter for letter, into its own statute book, with the clause prefixed, “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,” and the President of the United States had affixed his signature thereto. I acknowledge further, that the laws of Maryland had legalized slavery within the state of Maryland, and had defined what classes of persons might be held as slaves therein.
But it by no means follows, because Congress proposed to reënact, in terms, for this District, all the laws of Maryland, that, therefore, it did reënact them. It does not follow, that because two legislatures use the same words, that the words must necessarily have the same effect. It makes all the difference in the world, whether words are used by one possessed of power, or by one devoid of power. Congress might pass a law in precisely the same words as those used by the Parliament of Great Britain, and yet the law of Congress be invalid and inoperative, while the act of Parliament would be valid and binding. We have a written constitution; Great Britain has no written constitution. The British Parliament, on many subjects, has an ampler jurisdiction than the American Congress. The law of Congress might be unconstitutional and void, while that of the British Parliament, framed in precisely the same language, might be constitutional and binding.
So the law of Maryland might be valid under the constitution of Maryland, and, therefore, binding upon the citizens of Maryland; while the law of Congress, though framed in precisely the same words, would be repugnant to the constitution of the United States, and therefore have no validity.
Now this is precisely the case before us. Congress, in attempting to reënact the Maryland laws, to uphold slavery in this District, transcended the limits of its constitutional power. It acted unconstitutionally. It acted in plain contravention of some of the plainest and most obvious principles consecrated by the constitution. If so, no one will dispute that its act is void. I do not deny, then, that Congress used words of sufficient amplitude to cover slavery; but what I deny is, that it had any power to give legal force to those words.
5. My next proposition, therefore, is this: _That as Congress can do nothing excepting what it is empowered to do by the constitution, and as the constitution does not empower it to establish slavery here, it cannot establish slavery here, nor continue it._
Where is there any _express_ power given to Congress by the constitution to establish slavery? Where is the article, section, or clause? I demand to have the title shown. Thousands of human beings are not to be robbed of all their dearest rights, and they and their children, forever, by strained constitutions, or apocryphal authority, doomed to bondage. Will those who say that Congress cannot establish a banking institution by construction, nor aid internal improvements, nor enact a tariff,--will they say that Congress can make a man a slave, and all his posterity slaves, by construction?
Nor can any power to establish slavery be deduced from the 18th clause of the 8th section of the 1st article of the constitution, which gives Congress power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the powers that are granted.
What power is granted to Congress, for the exercise of which the establishment of slavery in this District is a necessary means or a preliminary? Congress has power to lay and collect taxes; to borrow money; to regulate commerce; to establish uniform rules of naturalization; to coin money; to punish counterfeiters; to establish post offices and post roads; to promote the progress of science and the arts; to establish courts; to define and punish piracies on the high seas; to declare war; to raise and support armies; to provide and maintain a navy; to organize and maintain a militia; and so forth, and so forth. But to what one of all these powers is the power to establish slavery in the District of Columbia a necessary incident? If slavery in the District of Columbia were to cease to-day, could not the government continue to exercise every function which it has heretofore exercised? If so, then the existence of slavery in this District is not “necessary” to the exercise of any of the expressly granted powers. I call upon any gentleman to name any one power of this government which cannot be exercised, which must necessarily cease, if slavery should cease to be, in this District of Columbia? “I pause for a reply.”
Well, then, if a power to establish slavery in this District is not among the granted powers, and if it is not necessary for the exercise of any one of the granted powers, then it is--no where;--it does not exist at all. No power of Congress, then, exists, either for the creation or for the continuance of slavery in this District; and all the legislation of Congress upon this subject is beyond or against the constitution.
Let me illustrate this in another way. Suppose there had been a religious establishment in Maryland at the time of the cession; suppose, under the auspices of Lord Baltimore, the Catholic religion had been established as the religion of the state; and that, in order to punish heresy and secure conformity to the religion of the state, an inquisition had been founded, and that the seat of that inquisition had been within the limits of the District of Columbia, at the time of the cession; could Congress, in the absence of all express or implied authority on the subject of establishing a state religion, have upheld the Catholic religion here, and appointed the officers of the inquisition to administer it? The idea is abhorrent to the whole spirit of the constitution. But Congress had as much power to establish a national religion here, in the absence of all express or implied authority to do so, as to establish slavery here.
Congress, then, does not and cannot legalize slavery in this District. It found slavery in existence in the states; and it does not abolish it, or interfere with it, because it has no power of “exclusive legislation” in them. But Congress has as much right to go into any state and abolish slavery there, as any state, even Virginia or Maryland, has to come into this District with its laws and establish slavery here. I suppose that no jurist will contend that Congress could have passed the act of 1793, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, had it not been for the third clause in the second section of the fourth article of the constitution, which provides for the redelivery of a fugitive slave, on the claim of his master. By this article in the constitution, the case of _fugitive_ slaves only is provided for. If a master voluntarily carries his slave into a free state, and the slave departs from his possession, he cannot reclaim him. Why not? Why cannot Congress pass a law, that if a man takes a dozen slaves to Boston, and they there see fit to strike for wages, and to leave his possession because their terms are not complied with,--why is it, I ask, that Congress cannot pass a law authorizing their seizure and delivery into the master’s hands? The reason is, that the constitution has conferred upon Congress no such express power, nor is any such power implied as being necessary to the exercise of any power that is expressed. And if Congress cannot so much as restore a slave to a master, who has voluntarily carried him into a free state, how can it continue slavery in this District, after Maryland has ceded it to this government, whose fundamental, organic law gives it no power to create or continue slavery here?
Suppose Maryland had ceded her share of the District to Massachusetts, would not every slave in it have been instantaneously free by the constitution of Massachusetts? They would have been transferred to a free jurisdiction,--just as much as an individual owner of a slave transfers him to a free jurisdiction, when he voluntarily takes him to the north. The legal existence of slavery was annulled in this District when Congress exercised its “exclusive” power over it, just as much as the debtor’s right to be discharged under the Maryland bankrupt law was annulled.
But I go further than this; and I say that the constitution not only does not empower Congress to establish or continue slavery in this District, but again and again, by the strongest implications possible, it prohibits the exercise of such a power.
In regard to this whole matter of slavery, the constitution touches the subject with an averted face. The abhorred word “_slave_” is nowhere mentioned in it. The constitution is ashamed to utter such a name. The country, coming fresh from that baptism of fire,--the American Revolution,--would not profane its lips with this unhallowed word. Hence, circumlocution is resorted to. It seeks to escape a guilty confession. Like a culprit, in whom some love of character still survives, it speaks of its offence without calling it by name. It uses the reputable and honorable word “persons,” instead of the accursed word “slaves.” As the Tyrian queen, about to perpetrate a deed which would consign her character to infamy, called it by the sacred name of “marriage,” and committed it,--
“_Hoc prætexit nomine culpam_;”
so the constitution, about to recognize the most guilty and cruel of all relations between man and man, sought to avert its eyes from the act, and to pacify the remonstrances of conscience against every participation in the crime, by hiding the deed under a reputable word.
But let us look to the prohibitions of the constitution; for I maintain that there is not only no power, express or implied, in the constitution authorizing Congress to create or continue slavery in this District, but that it is debarred and prohibited from doing so, again and again.
I suppose no one will deny that the positive prohibitions, against the exercise of certain enumerated powers, apply to Congress, when legislating for this District, just as much as when legislating for the union at large. This doctrine has recently been strongly asserted by Mr. Calhoun in the Senate of the United States; and, as I would gladly produce conviction in southern minds, I make use of this southern authority. He affirms that Congress, in legislating for the territories, “is subject to many and important restrictions and conditions, of which some are expressed and others implied. Among the former may be classed all the general and absolute prohibitions of the constitution; that is, all those which prohibit the exercise of certain powers under any circumstances. In this class is included the prohibition of granting titles of nobility; passing _ex post facto_ laws and bills of attainder; the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_, except in certain cases; making laws respecting the establishment of religion, or its free exercise, and every other of like description.”
Will any man say that Congress can pass an _ex post facto_ law for this District, and defend itself by referring to its power of “exclusive legislation” over it? Can Congress pass a bill of attainder corrupting the blood of an inhabitant of this District, or repeal or suspend at any time his right to a writ of _habeas corpus_, or establish a religion here, or interdict the free exercise thereof? No jurist, no statesman, will pretend it.
But there is another prohibition in the constitution every whit as full and explicit as any of these. The fifth article of amendment declares that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Here the constitution uses the word “person,”--the most comprehensive word it could find. “No PERSON shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Now, what does this word “person” mean? Or who, under the constitution, is such a “person” as cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property, by virtue of an act of Congress, _without due process of law_? Let us take our definition of the word “_person_” from the constitution itself. “No _person_ shall be a representative, who shall not have attained the age of twenty-five years,” &c., (see 2d clause of the 2d section of the 1st article.) “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free _persons_, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other _persons_.” (3d clause of the same section.) “No _person_ shall be a senator who shall not have attained the age of thirty years,” &c. (1st art., 3d section, 3d clause.) “No _person_ shall be convicted [of an impeachable offence, by the Senate] without the concurrence of two thirds.” (1st art., 3d section, 6th clause.) “No _person_ holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House, during his continuance in office.” (1st art., 6th section, 2d clause.) “The migration or importation of such _persons_ as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited,”--“but a tax, or duty, may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each _person_,” &c. (1st art., 9th section, 1st clause.) “No _person_ holding any office of profit or trust,” “shall accept any present,” &c. (1st art., 9th section, 8th clause.) “No _person_ holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.” (2d art., 1st section, 2d clause.) “The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for two _persons_,” &c. “The _person_ having the greatest number of votes shall be the President,” &c. “If no _person_ have a majority,” &c. “In every case, after the choice of the President, the _person_ having the greatest number of votes of the electors, shall be Vice President.” (2d art., 1st section, 2d clause.[7]) “No _person_ except a natural born citizen,” &c., “shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any _person_ be eligible to that office, who shall not have attained the age of thirty-five years,” &c. “No _person_ shall be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses,” &c. (3d art., 3d sect., 3d clause.) “A _person_ charged in any state with treason,” &c. (4th art., 2d section, 2d clause.) “No _person_ held to service or labor,” &c. (4th art., 2d section, 3d clause.)
Now, it will be seen from all this, that the word “_person_” is used in the constitution in the most comprehensive sense. It embraces Indians, if taxed; it embraces natives of Africa; it embraces apprentices and slaves, or those held to service or labor; and it embraces every citizen, from the humblest to the highest, from the most true to the most treasonable. It embraces all, from the slave to the President of the United States. And after having used the word to embrace all these classes and descriptions of men, it proceeds to say, in an amendment, that “_no_ PERSON _shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law_.” (_Amendment, Article 5._)
The law of Maryland ceded this District to Congress, “in full and absolute right, as well of soil as of person, residing, or to reside therein.”
Now Congress, in attempting to legalize slavery in the District of Columbia, has provided in terms, by its adoption of the Maryland laws, that one man may hold another man in bondage in this District, “WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW,” and indeed without any process of law; may hold him in bondage from his birth; may beget him, and still hold him and his posterity in bondage. “Process of law” means legal proceedings and a jury trial. It is a phrase that does not pertain to the legislature, but to the courts. It means the institution of a suit in civil matters; the finding of an indictment, or an information in criminal ones; the issuing of subpœnas for witnesses, &c., in both. (See _Art. 6 of Amendments to the Constitution_.)
Now, a slave is a _person_ deprived of his liberty and property, without any process of law. There has been no “due” process of law to reduce him to this miserable condition; there has been no process of law at all. A slave, therefore, in this District, is deprived of his liberty and property, in pursuance of the laws of Congress, without _any_ legal process whatever, and therefore in flagrant contradiction of the fifth article of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Hence, the act of Congress, purporting to continue the Maryland laws respecting slavery in this District, was, and is, and forever must be, until the constitution is altered, null and void.
There is a striking historical fact in regard to the phraseology of this fifth article of amendment. Its substance was proposed by several states. Virginia proposed it in the following words: “No _freeman_ ought to be taken, imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold liberties, privileges, or franchises, or outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the law of the land.” (See _3 Elliot’s Debates, 593--Proceedings of June 27, 1788_. _Also, 4 Elliot’s Debates, 216, for the same amendment, as proposed by the State of New York_.)
The Virginia amendment used the word “freeman.” It proposed that no “freeman” should be deprived, &c. The New York amendment used the word “_person_.” And the amendment was adopted and ratified, almost in the words of the New York phraseology. The word _person_ was chosen, and therefore Congress has no constitutional power to deprive of life, liberty, or property, _without due process of law_, any being embraced in the definition of that word. By its own selection of words it is debarred not merely from depriving a “_freeman_,” but from depriving a “_person_” of this right.
When Congress attempted to legalize and perpetuate slavery in this District, it violated the fourth article of the Amendments, which declares “the right of the people to be _secure_ in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” If Congress cannot authorize domiciliary searches and seizures against a single individual, can it degrade a whole race of men to the condition of slaves, and then say that _because they are slaves_, they shall not be “secure;” but shall be at the mercy of any alleged master, in regard to their persons,--to be commanded and restrained, to be bought and sold? If Congress cannot authorize searches and seizures of houses, papers, and effects, can it get round the constitution, by saying we will create a class of persons who shall have no power of owning any houses, papers, or effects, to be searched or seized?
Again; Congress shall pass “no bill of attainder.” What is a bill of attainder? It is a bill that works corruption of blood. It disfranchises its object. It takes away from him the common privileges of a citizen. It makes a man incapable of acquiring, inheriting, or transmitting property; incapable of holding office, or acting as attorney for others; and it shuts the door of the courts against him. These disabling consequences may descend to a man’s children after him, though this is not necessary. Now, to pass such a bill is a thing which Congress cannot do. But when Congress undertook to legalize slavery in this District, it undertook to do all this, and worse than all this. It attainted, not individuals merely, but a whole race. A slave is an outlaw; that is, he cannot make a contract; he cannot prosecute and defend in court; property cannot be acquired by him, or devised to him, or transmitted through him. A white man may give his testimony against him, but he cannot give his testimony against a white man. He is despoiled of his _liberam legem_,--his birthright. He cannot own the food or clothes he has earned. What is his, is his master’s. And this corruption of blood, which the law of slavery works, does not stop with the first, nor with the second generation,--not with the tenth nor the ten thousandth; but by the theory of the law, goes on forever. Bills of attainder, during the history of the worst periods of the world, have applied to individuals only, or at most to a family. But here, Congress, in defiance of the constitution, has undertaken to establish a degraded caste in society, and to perpetuate it through all generations. Now, can any reasonable man for a moment suppose that the constitution meant to debar Congress from passing acts of attainder against individuals, but to permit it to pass wholesale, sweeping laws, working disfranchisement of an entire race, and entailing degradation forever?
Let us look at another general prohibition of the constitution: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.” (art. 1, § 9, clause 8.) “The distinction of rank and honors,” says Blackstone, “is necessary in every well-governed state, in order to reward such as are eminent for their services to the public.” But the framers of the constitution did not think so; the people of the United States did not think so; and therefore they incorporated a provision into their organic law that “no title of nobility should be granted.” But it matters not whether the favored individual is called “Marquess” or “Master.” If he is invested by the government with a monopoly of rights and privileges, in virtue of his title and its legal incidents, without any corresponding civil duties, he belongs to an order of nobility,--he is a nobleman. Mr. McDuffie defends the institution of slavery, on the ground that it establishes the highest of all ranks and the broadest of all distinctions between men. He says no nation has yet existed which has not in some form created the distinction of classes,--such as patrician and plebeian, or citizen and helot, or lord and commoner,--and that the institution of slavery stands here instead of these orders, and supersedes them all, by being equivalent to them all. Now, is it not inconceivable that the constitution should interdict the bestowment of special favors to distinguished individuals for meritorious services, and yet should authorize Congress to confer the highest of all earthly prerogatives,--the prerogative over property, liberty, and volition itself, upon one class of men over another class of men? Yet if Congress can create or legalize slavery, it can establish the worst order of nobility that ever existed. It can give to one class of men the power to own and to control, to punish and to despoil another class; to sell father, mother, wife, and children, into bondage. To prohibit Congress from doing one of these things, and to permit it to do the other, is straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel,--a whole caravan of camels!
But the same clause in the constitution which gives Congress the power of exclusive legislation over this District, also empowers it “to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state, in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.” If, then, Congress has any constitutional power to legalize slavery in this District, it has the same power to legalize it, (that is, to create it,) in all places in the state of Massachusetts, or New York, or any other, where it may have obtained territory from a state for a fort, magazine, arsenal, dock-yard, or other needful building. Where it has obtained land in the middle of a city,--Philadelphia, New York, Boston, or Chicago,--for a custom-house, it may create slavery there. The power to do this is conferred in precisely the same words as the power by which it has been held that slavery can be established in the District of Columbia.
And now I will occupy the few minutes that are left me, in considering what seems to me the only plausible argument that can be urged in favor of the constitutionality of slavery in this District.
It may be said, that when a territory is obtained by one nation from another, whether by conquest or by treaty, the laws which governed the inhabitants at the time of the conquest or cession, remain in force until they are abrogated by the laws of the conquering or purchasing power. For this principle, the authority of Lord Mansfield, in the case of _Campbell_ v. _Hall_, 1 Cowper, 208, may be cited. The decision of our own courts are to the same effect. (See _United States, appellant_, vs. _Juan Percheman_, 2 Gallison’s Reports, 501; _Johnson_ vs. _McIntosh_, 7 Peters, 51; 8 Wheat. 543.) I do not dispute the authority of this case. But it does not touch the question I am arguing; or, so far as it bears upon it at all, it confirms the views I would enforce. The principle is, that the existing laws remain in force _until_ they are abrogated. I agree to this. But in the case of the District of Columbia, there was a special agreement between Maryland and the United States, that as soon as the United States should legislate for the District, the laws of Maryland, _as such_, should cease to be operative here. On the 27th day of February, 1801, therefore, all the rights which the citizens of this District possessed, they possessed under the law of Congress, and not under the law of Maryland. On the day preceding, a citizen could have voted for governor or other state officers of Maryland; but on the day following, he could no longer vote for any such officer. On the day preceding, he could have voted for electors of President and Vice President of the United States; but on the day following, he was bereft of all such right of the elective franchise, and must accept such officers and legislators as the rest of the country might choose to elect for him. On the day preceding, he might, in the character of an insolvent debtor, have been discharged under the insolvent laws of Maryland; but on the day following, he could no longer be so discharged. On the day preceding, he might have been required, though a justice of the peace of the State of Maryland, to perform militia duty; but on the day following, if commissioned as a justice of the peace of the District of Columbia, he could not be compelled to perform militia duty, because he would, in such case, be an officer of the United States. On the day preceding, he might have sued in the circuit court of the United States, as being a citizen of Maryland; but, on the day following, he could not so sue, because he had ceased to be a citizen of a state. Thus the change of jurisdiction over him deprived him of some privileges, and relieved him from some burdens. It deprived him of these privileges, and relieved him from these burdens, notwithstanding the act of Congress had said, in unambiguous words, “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.” But the most momentous change which was wrought by the transfer of the citizen from the jurisdiction of Maryland to the jurisdiction of the United States, was that which made it impossible for him any longer to hold a slave. Under the laws of Maryland, he might have held his slave, for her statutes had legalized slavery; but under the constitution of the United States, he could not hold a slave; for that constitution had given Congress no power to legalize slavery in this District, and had gone so far as to make prohibitions against it. His right to hold slaves then expired, or fell, like his right to vote for United States’ officers, or for state officers, or his right to be discharged under the Maryland insolvent law, or his right to sue in certain courts, &c., &c.
One point more, sir, and I have done. Why, says my opponent, did not the right to hold slaves continue after the change of jurisdiction, as well as the right to hold horses? For the plainest of all reasons, I answer: for the reason that a horse is _property_ by the universal consent of mankind, by the recognition of every civilized court in Christendom, without any positive law declaring it to be the subject of ownership. But a _man_ is not property, without positive law; without a law declaring him to be the subject of ownership. There was such a positive law in Maryland; but Congress, for want of constitutional authority, could not enact, revive, or continue it. And such I verily believe would have been the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, had the question been carried before them immediately subsequent to the act of 1801. But now, as slavery has existed practically in this District for half a century, it is proper to pass a law abolishing it. It is better, under the present circumstances, that slavery should be abolished here by a law of Congress, than by the decision of a court; because Congress can provide an indemnity for the owners, and let the slaves go free. But should it be abolished by a legal adjudication, every slave would be hurried away to the south, and sold, he and his descendants, into perpetual bondage.
In justice, then, to the north, which ought not to bear the opprobrium of slavery in this capital of the nation; in justice to the slaves who are here held in bondage against legal, as well as natural right; and, in more than justice to the masters, whose alleged claims I am willing, under all the circumstances, to satisfy, let a law be forthwith passed for ascertaining and paying the market value of the slaves, and for repealing all laws which uphold slavery in this District.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Lecture on the North and South. Delivered in College Hall, January 16, 1849, before the Young Men’s Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati. By Ellwood Fisher.
[6] An anecdote, which I have on the best authority, is not inappropriate. A few years ago, a citizen of the State of Connecticut absconded, leaving a wife behind him. He went to the State of Mississippi, where he took a colored woman as his concubine, had children by her, acquired property, and died. The wife and heirs in Connecticut claimed the property acquired in Mississippi. The claim was contested. The honorable HENRY S. FOOTE, now a senator from that state, conducted the defence. He denied the title of the wife in Connecticut, affirmed that of the concubine and her children in Mississippi, and cited the case of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, to prove the legality and the propriety of the concubinage, and the divine authority for it. And surely, if the Bible argument in favor of slavery is sound, Mr. FOOTE’S argument in favor of concubinage is equally so.
[7] This clause in the constitution is annulled; but for all purposes of determining the true interpretation of words, it is as good as ever.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. FEBRUARY 15, 1850, ON THE SUBJECT OF SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES, AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF A DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION.
MR. CHAIRMAN;
Ever since the organization of this House,--before its organization, and even in a preliminary caucus that preceded the commencement of the session, southern gentlemen have pressed the cause, not only of human slavery, but of slavery extension, upon us. From motives of forbearance, and not from any question as to our rights, we of the north have maintained an unbroken silence. The time has surely come when the voice of freedom should find an utterance. Would to God that on the present occasion it might find an abler defender than myself, although if my ability to defend it were equal to the love I bear it, it could ask no stronger champion.
I wish to premise a few words respecting the propriety and true significance of some of the epithets by which the parties to this discussion are characterized. The term “Free Soiler” is perpetually used upon this floor as a term of ignominy and reproach; yet I maintain that in its original and legitimate sense, as denoting an advocate of the doctrine that all our territorial possessions should be consecrated to freedom, there is no language that can supply a more honorable appellation. It expresses a determination on the part of its disciples to keep free the territory that is now free; to stand upon its frontiers as the cherubim stood at the gates of Paradise, with a flaming sword to turn every way, to keep the sin of slavery from crossing its borders. If, in any instance, the original advocates of Free Soil have abandoned their integrity, and have courted allies who had no sympathy with their principles, but were only eager to join them in a struggle for mere political ascendency, then, in my judgment, they have lost infinitely more in moral power than they have gained in numbers. They have ceased to be genuine and single-hearted Free Soilers, whom I love, and have become partisans, whom I condemn. For myself, I will engage in any honorable measure most likely to secure freedom to the new territories. I will resist any and every measure that proposes to abandon them to slavery. The epithet “Free Soiler,” therefore, when rightly understood and correctly applied, implies both political and moral worth; and I covet the honor of its application to myself. But what does its opposite mean? What does the term “Slave Soiler” signify? It signifies one who desires and designs that all soil should be made to bear slaves. Its dreadful significancy is, that, after Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, in Great Britain, and after the Declaration of Independence, in this country, we should cast aside with scorn, not only the teachings of Christianity, but the clearest principles of natural religion and of natural law, and should retrograde from our boasted civilization, into the Dark Ages,--ay, into periods that the dark ages might have called dark. It means that this _Republic_, as we call it, formed to establish freedom, should enlist in a crusade against freedom.
And again; those of us at the north who resist slavery extension, who mean to withstand its spread beyond the limits where it now exists, are denounced as Abolitionists. This epithet is applied to us as a term of reproach and obloquy; as a brand and stigma upon our characters and principles. No distinction is made between those few individuals among us who desire to abolish the constitution of the United States, and that great body of the people, who, while their allegiance to this constitution is unshaken, mean also to maintain their allegiance to truth and to duty, in withstanding the hitherto onward march of slavery. Among the latter class, Mr. Collamer, the postmaster-general, is called an Abolitionist. Mr. John Quincy Adams was denounced as an arch-Abolitionist. Every man who advocates the Jefferson proviso, against the spread of slavery, is so called; and if an unspeakable abhorrence of this institution, and the belief that it is the second greatest enormity which the oppressor, in his power, ever committed against the oppressed, in his weakness,--being inferior only to that ecclesiastical domination which has trampled upon the religious freedom of man,--I say, if this abhorrence of slavery, and this belief in its criminality, entitle a man to be denominated an Abolitionist, then I rejoice in my unquestionable right to the name.
In my apprehension, sir, before we can decide upon the honor or the infamy of the term “Abolitionist,” we must know what things they are which he proposes to abolish. We of the north, you say, are Abolitionists; but abolitionists of what? Are we abolitionists of the inalienable, indefeasible, indestructible rights of man? Are we abolitionists of knowledge, abolitionists of virtue, of education, and of human culture? Do we seek to abolish the glorious moral and intellectual attributes which God has given to his children, and thus, as far as it lies in our power, make the facts of slavery conform to the law of slavery, by obliterating the distinction between a man and a beast?
Do our laws and our institutions seek to blot out and abolish the image of God in the human soul? Do we abolish the marriage covenant; and instead of saying, with the apostle, that wives shall submit themselves to their husbands, command them to submit themselves to any body, and to their master as husband over all? Do we ruthlessly tear asunder the sacred ties of affection by which God has bound the parent to the child and the child to the parent? Do we seek to abolish all those noble instincts of the human soul, by which it yearns for improvement and progress; and do we quench its sublime aspirations after knowledge and virtue? A stranger would suppose, from hearing the epithets of contumely that are heaped upon us, that we were abolitionists of all truth, purity, knowledge, improvement, civilization, happiness, and holiness. On this subject, perversion of language and of idea has been reduced to a system, and the falsehoods of our calumniators exclude truth with the exactness of a science.
But if the word “Abolitionist” is to be used in a reproachful and contumelious sense, does it not more properly belong to those who would extend a system which in its very nature abolishes freedom, justice, equity, and a sense of human brotherhood? Does it not belong to those who would abolish not only all social and political, but all natural rights; who would abolish “liberty and the pursuit of happiness;” who would close up all the avenues to knowledge; who would render freedom of thought and liberty of conscience impossible, by crushing out the faculties by which alone we can think and decide; who would rob a fellow-man of his parental rights, and innocent children of the tenderness and joys of a filial love; who would introduce a foul concubinage in place of the institution of marriage, and who would remorselessly trample upon all the tenderest and holiest affections which the human soul is capable of feeling? After Mr. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, had enumerated a few oppressive deeds of the British king towards his American colonists, he denominated him “a prince whose character was marked by every act that could define a tyrant.” There are now as many slaves in this country as there were colonists in 1776. Compare the condition of these three million slaves with the condition of the three million colonists. The conduct of that sovereign who was denounced before earth and heaven as having committed all the atrocities that could “define a tyrant,” was mercy and loving-kindness compared with the wrongs and privations of three millions of our fellow-beings, now existing among us. If the word “Abolitionist,” then, is to be used in a reproachful sense, let it be applied to those who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in defiance of all the lights of the age, would extend the horrors of an institution which, by one all-comprehending crime towards a helpless race, makes it impossible to commit any new crime against them,--unless it be to enlarge the area of their bondage, and to multiply the number of their victims.
If we are abolitionists, then, we are abolitionists of human bondage; while those who oppose us are abolitionists of human liberty. We would prevent the extension of one of the greatest wrongs that man ever suffered upon earth; they would carry bodily chains and mental chains,--chains in a literal and chains in a figurative sense,--into realms where even the half-civilized descendants of the Spaniard and the Indian have silenced their clanking. We would avert the impending night of ignorance and superstition; they would abolish the glorious liberty wherewith God maketh his children free. In using this word, therefore, to calumniate us, they put darkness for light, and light for darkness; good for evil, and evil for good.
The constitutional right of Congress to legislate for the territories is still debated. Having presented my views on this subject before, I shall now treat it with brevity. In a speech, by General Cass, which has lately been published, that distinguished senator, in order to prove that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject of slavery in the territories, has attempted to prove that it has no right to legislate for the territories at all. I refer to the senator from Michigan, because he now stands before the country in the twofold character of being the head of the Democratic party, which goes for the “_largest liberty_,” and also of the extreme pro-slavery party, which goes for the _largest bondage_. He would sever all diplomatic relations between this country and Austria, because she has robbed the Hungarians of _a part_ of their liberties, while he is drawing closer the political ties which bind him to the south, which has despoiled three millions of the African race of _all_ their liberties, and is now intent on propagating other millions for new despoliations. He claims, as the great bequest of the barons of Runnymede, that the inhabitants of the territories, under all circumstances of infancy, or poverty, or weakness, shall have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, when the practical result of this doctrine, so nicely timed, would be, that one part of those inhabitants would be crowned with power like so many King Johns, to lord it over their vassals. Under the name of liberty, he enters a path that terminates in bondage. Southern gentlemen had all admitted the power of Congress to legislate for the territories, though they denied the special inference, deducible from the general power, that they could legislate to prohibit slavery in them. But, seeing that the right to legislate on the subject of slavery flows irresistibly from the right to legislate on all other subjects, because no rule of interpretation, which concedes the power to make laws respecting political franchises, courts, crimes, officers, and the militia, can stop short at the subject of slavery;--seeing all this, General Cass denies both inference and premises, _and places the general government in the relation of a foreign power to the territories which it owns_, and of which it possesses the acknowledged sovereignty. He reminds one of the man who denied the existence of future punishment, and, when pressed with arguments drawn from the deserts of men, and from the justice of God, he suddenly arrested his antagonist by denying the existence of a God!
When some immensely long speech made in the British House of Commons, was spoken of before Sheridan as being _luminous_, he expressed both a negative and an affirmative opinion respecting it, in a single word, by replying that it was _vo_-luminous. General Cass, in a speech that fills more than nineteen columns in the Washington _Union_, has reviewed the decisions of all the judges of the Supreme Court who have ever expressed any opinion on the subject of congressional power over territorial legislation; he has commented upon the views of all the jurists who have written upon it, and of most of the speakers in both Houses of Congress who have discussed it; he has surveyed the course of administration of all the Presidents we have ever had; and has come to the clear conclusion that all of them,--judges, jurists, legislators, and presidents,--have systematically violated the constitution of the United States, or commended its violation, on every practicable occasion for the last sixty years.
Omitting the hundred ways in which the absurdity of this conclusion can be exposed, let me subject it to one practical test. We have acquired territory from Mexico. General Cass voted to ratify the treaty of cession. Measures have been instituted for the formation of three separate governments in this Territory,--those of California, Deseret, [Utah,] and New Mexico. The boundaries marked out by California and Deseret overlay each other to the amount of thousands of square miles. If they have the exclusive right of self-government, as General Cass declares, and Congress none, then they must settle this question of boundary themselves. They may declare war against each other, make alliances with foreign powers, equip armies, build fleets; while Congress can do nothing within their limits but--sell land.
But what renders the argument of General Cass still more extraordinary is the fact, that, according to his own doctrine, he has spent the greater part of his political life in violating the constitution, while constantly repeating his oath to support it. As marshal of Ohio, as governor of Michigan, as Indian agent, he has appointed officers and magistrates, and executed laws, when, according to his own showing, he was a mere interloper and usurper; he has met territorial legislatures, which had no more right to assemble than a mob; he has doubtless imprisoned, if not executed many alleged offenders, who had as good a legal right to execute or to imprison him; and he has received salaries for more than twenty years, to which the khan of Tartary was as much entitled as he. Now, if he will refund the salaries he has unconstitutionally received; make reparation for the penalties or forfeitures he has wrongfully extorted; show some signs of contrition for the men whom he has unlawfully imprisoned or hung, it will remove the suspicions of many minds, in regard to the sincerity, if not the soundness, of his argument.
I mention these facts from no personal feelings in regard to the senator from Michigan; but only to show to what desperate extremities men are driven in order to defend the right of spreading slavery from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean; and because this is the last reading of the constitution which has been invented for the purpose.
Since the last session of Congress, the condition of a part of this territory has greatly changed. The unexampled velocity with which a living stream of men has poured into it within the last twelve months, has reversed its condition and decided its destiny. In other countries, _individuals_ seek their fortunes by changing their residence. Under the vehement action of our enterprise, _cities_ migrate. The new residents of California have framed a constitution, have applied for admission into this Union, and their application is now pending before us. Of their own accord, they have excluded slavery from their borders by their fundamental law. Until the discovery of gold in that country, and until all incredulity in regard to that remarkable fact had been overcome, it was confidently anticipated at the south, and intensely feared at the north, that the whole region would be overrun with slaveholders and with slaves. As far back as 1842, Mr. Wise, of Virginia, the administration leader in the House of Representatives, boldly declared that “_slavery should pour itself abroad without restraint, and find no limit but the Southern Ocean_.” The war with Mexico was waged for the twofold purpose of robbing that republic of its territory, and then robbing that territory of its freedom. Congressional orators and the southern press avowed that the object of acquiring territory was to extend the “divine institution.” I could quote pages in proof of this assertion. The north had no hope, the south had no fear, if the territories were left without control, but that they would first be filled with slaveholders, and would then incorporate slavery into their organic law. While these prospects continued, the south insisted that the territories should be left untrammelled. Distinguished men in this House, Mr. Calhoun and other senators, the government organ, which was supposed to express the views of President Polk and his cabinet, all proclaimed that the territories should be left free to institute such government as they might choose.[8] But since California has formed a _free_ constitution, what a sudden change has taken place in the convictions of men! Within the present week we have had three most elaborate speeches in this House, in which the admission of California, with her free constitution, is vehemently opposed on constitutional grounds. Yes, sir, did you know it? _the constitution of the United States has just been altered;_ or, what is intended to produce the same effect, without the trouble of an alteration in the manner prescribed by itself, its interpretation has been altered. While California promised to be a slave state, all interference was unconstitutional. Now, as she desires to be a free state, it has become constitutional to interfere and repel her. Not only so, but, according to the gentleman from Alabama, (Mr. INGE,) in swearing to support the constitution we have sworn to perpetuate, and not only to perpetuate, but to _extend_ slavery. “To those,” he says, “who are disposed to resist my views, I commend a more attentive reading of that instrument. They will find that it not only guarantees slavery, but provides for its extension.” Or, as he says in another place, it makes provision “to extend the institution indefinitely.” And, therefore, when a territory asks to be admitted as a free state, it is to be repulsed, and virtually told, “If you will incorporate slavery into your constitution, you shall be admitted; if not, not.” Had the man who first uttered the adage that “circumstances alter cases,” foreseen our times, he would have said, “circumstances alter _principles_.”
The same gentleman defends slavery by an appeal to the Bible. But if the Bible be authority for the principal, is it not authority for the incidents also? If an authority for the cruelties of bondage, is it not an equal authority for its mitigations? Is not the command to “hallow the fiftieth year,” as a year of jubilee, and to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” contained in the same code, and in the same chapter of the same code, with that oft-cited authority to buy bondmen and bondmaids of the heathen? If the Bible is your commission, why do you not follow the terms of the commission, observing its limitations as well as its powers? This is the fiftieth year of the century,--the very year of jubilee itself; and yet, instead of “returning every man unto his possession, and every man unto his family,” this is the chosen year for subjugating new realms to bondage. It is not to be “hallowed,” as a year of jubilee, but to be profaned as a year of captivity and mourning.
Sir, I must express the most energetic dissent from those who would justify modern slavery from the Levitical law. My reason and conscience revolt from those interpretations which
“Torture the hallowed pages of the Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood, And, in oppression’s hateful service, libel Both man and God.”
Priests appealed to the Bible in Galileo’s time, to refute the truths of astronomy. For more than two hundred years, the same class of men appealed to the same authority to disprove the science of geology. And now, this authority is cited, not to disprove a law of physical nature merely, but to deny a great law of the human soul,--a law of human consciousness,--a law of God, written upon the tablet of every man’s heart, authenticating and attesting his title to freedom. Sir, let those who reverence the Bible beware how they suborn it to commit this treason and perjury against the sacred rights of man and the holy law of God. Whatever they gain for the support of their doctrine, will be so much subtracted from the authority of the Scriptures. If the Bible has crossed the Atlantic to spread slavery over a continent where it was unknown before, then the Bible is a book of death, and not a book of life.
It is further objected to the admission of California, that its dimensions are too large for a single state. The force of this objection is somewhat abated when we reflect that it comes from men who were most strenuous for the admission of Texas. However, I shall not object very earnestly to the reduction of its limits. I will say, in frankness, that the southern portion of California is understood to be even more attached to freedom than the northern. The result may, therefore, be, if this objection is persisted in and a division made, that we shall soon have two free states instead of one. It was said by the last administration, that Mexico was to be dismembered, in order “to extend the area of freedom.” The most just retribution for that diabolical irony is, to carry out the declaration literally.
But I now come to a more substantial part of this great question. The south rests its claims to the new territory upon the great doctrine of equality. There are fifteen slave states; there are only fifteen free states. The south contributed men and money for the conquest, not less than the north; hence, equal ownership and equal rights of enjoyment. This is the argument. In a long and most elaborate speech, delivered in the Senate this week by one of the most eminent jurists in the Southern States, (Judge BERRIEN,) he founds the whole claim of the south on this doctrine of equality.
Now, I admit this principle in its fullest extent, and without hesitation. That country is equally free to all the people of the United States. The government can sell the lands not already covered by valid titles; and any citizen who will comply with its terms can buy them. The people of each of the United States can go there and establish their domicile. The laws of Congress make no discrimination between them. The constitution makes no such discrimination. The law of nature and of nations makes none. The north has no privilege over the south, and the south has none over the north. If the north has any greater right there than the south, the equality is destroyed. If the south has any greater right there than the north, the equality is equally destroyed.
And now, practically, what right has the north, or what right is claimed by the north, which the south has not to an equal extent? What article of property can a citizen of Massachusetts carry there which a citizen of Georgia can _not_ carry there? Can we carry any of our local laws there; even though all the inhabitants of the state should remove thither in a body? Certainly not. When we leave our state, we leave our local laws behind us. A citizen of Boston has a right to educate his children at school, at the public expense. In the Boston public schools, he can prepare his son to enter any college in this country, even though he is too poor to pay a cent for taxes, and never has paid a cent for taxes. Has he any such right on arriving at San Francisco? If the city of Boston debars him of this right of educating his son at the public charge, he can institute a suit against it and recover full damages. Can he do the same thing at San Francisco or San Jose? Certainly not. He has left the laws and institutions of Massachusetts behind him. But, it is said, we can carry our _property_ there, and you cannot carry your _property_ there. I think those who use this argument, like the old Roman augurs, must smile at each other askance, for the credulity or simplicity of those they beguile by it. Will not every man, even of the feeblest discernment, see the fallacy which is here covered up under the word “_property_?” What is meant by this deceptive term “_property_?” If you mean silver, or gold, or seeds, or grains, or sheep, or horses, cannot you carry these there as freely as we can? But you have special laws; local and peculiar laws,--laws contrary to the great principles of the common law, by which you call _men and women_ property. And then, forsooth, because we can carry _property_ there, when _property_ means grain and cattle, you can carry property there when it means human beings,--perhaps your own brothers, or sisters, or children. Because we can carry our property there, when property means inanimate substances, you have only to call a human being _property_;--you have only to call a creature, formed in the image of God, _property_, and then he can be smuggled in under the new name. Why, sir, there is not a respectable village in the country, where, if a juggler or mountebank were to attempt to palm off upon his audience so flimsy a trick as this, he would not be hissed from the stage. There are certain kinds of property and rights which we can carry with us to the territories, and other kinds which we cannot. We can carry movable property, but not immovable,--a diamond or a library, but not a cotton factory nor a cotton field.
By the papers of this city, as I open them every morning, I see that lotteries are authorized by more or less of the Southern States. Their “schemes” are regularly advertised. I remember, when stopping for a day in one of the southern cities, that some half-official looking personages came into the hotel, cleared a large space in the public hall, set down a rotary machine, and proceeded to draw a lottery. Now, in Massachusetts, and in many of the Northern States, lotteries are prohibited, under severe penalties. With us, it is highly penal to advertise a lottery in any form, to placard one at the corners of the streets, or to exhibit any plan or emblem of one at a shop window. We act upon the well-known truth, that there is a much less number of persons who draw any considerable prize in a lottery, than there are who are killed by lightning; and therefore, whatever chance a ticket-holder has of drawing any considerable prize, we know that he has a much greater chance of being killed by lightning. Now, when a citizen of Virginia and a citizen of Massachusetts go to the new territories, does the former carry his right to establish and draw a lottery, or the latter carry his right to prosecute the other for doing so? Neither; certainly neither. Both have left the local law behind them. If any state in this Union had adopted polygamy as its peculiar institution, could an inhabitant of that state take a dozen wives with him into the new territories, and defend his claim to live with them there, because he could do so at home? Or, suppose, in pursuance of the “manifest destiny” principle, we should _re_-annex a part of China to this Union, could the Chinese, on removing to California, carry the practice of infanticide with them? Just as well, I answer, and on precisely the same legal ground that the south can carry slavery into New Mexico. The reason is that the law of slavery is a _local_ law. Like lotteries, or polygamy, or infanticide, it can legally exist in no land where the principles of the common law prevail, until it is legalized and sanctioned by a special law. Then it is permitted on the simple ground that so much of the common law as secures liberty and property, the right of _habeas corpus_ and freedom of speech to each individual, has been cut out and cast away. The constitution proceeds upon this doctrine when it provides for the recapture of fugitive slaves. Why did it not provide for the capture of a fugitive horse or ox? Why did it not provide that, if a horse or an ox should escape from a slave state into a free state, it should be delivered up, or be recoverable by legal process? Because horses and oxen are _property_, by the common consent of mankind. It needed no law to make them property. They are property by the law of nations, by the English common law, by the law of every state in this Union,--_while men and women are not_. An escaped slave could not be recovered before the adoption of the constitution. The power to seize upon escaping slaves was one of the motives for adopting it. These considerations demonstrate that slaves are not _property_, within the meaning of this word, when it is affirmed that if the north can carry _its_ property into the territories, so can the south. As the constitution, in terms, adopts the common law, it leaves slavery nothing to stand upon but the local laws of the states where it is established. Freedom is the rule, slavery is the exception. Judge Berrien’s favorite doctrine of equality would, therefore, be destroyed, if the exception should prevail over the rule. For, if slavery can be carried into any of our territories by force of the constitution, it can into all of them; and if carried into all of them, the exception becomes the rule, and the rule perishes. Ay, the rule ceases to be even so much as an exception to that which was _its_ own exception. It is wholly swallowed up and lost.
I know it is said that the _fact_ of slavery always precedes the _law_ of slavery; that _law_ does not go before the institution and create it, but comes afterwards to sanction and regulate it. But this is no more true of slavery than of every other institution or practice among mankind, whether right or wrong. Homicide existed before law; the law came in subsequently, and declared that he who took an innocent man’s life without law, should lose his own by law. The law came in to regulate homicide; to authorize the taking of human life for crime, just as we authorize involuntary servitude for crime; and it may just as well be argued that murder is a natural right because it existed before law, as that slavery is a natural right because it existed before law. _This argument appeals to the crime which the law was enacted to prevent, in order to establish the supremacy of the crime over the law that forbids it._
There is another fallacy in the arguments which southern gentlemen use on this subject, which, though not as transparent as the preceding, is quite as unsound. They speak of the _rights_ of the slaveholder in the new territories. They speak as though the collective ownership of the territories by the government, were the ownership of the people in severalty; as though each citizen could go there and draw a line round a “placer,” and say _this is mine_; and then, _because it is his_, introduce his slaves upon it. But nothing is more clear than that there is no such _individual_ right. The right of the government is, _first_, a right of sovereignty and jurisdiction; and _second_, the right of ownership of all lands, navigable waters, &c., which have not been conveyed away by the preëxisting government. Individuals retain their citizenship on going there, as they do on going to Great Britain, or France; but a slave has just as much right to a portion of the public lands in California, when he gets there, as his master.
Again; if the master carries into California the legal right to hold slaves, which he possessed at home, does not the slave also retain his legal rights when he is transferred there? The laws which govern slaves are as various as the states where they exist. In some states manumission is comparatively unobstructed. In Delaware, it is a penal offence even to sell a slave to a notorious slavedealer. In Georgia, the law forbids, or lately forbade, the importation of slaves for sale. Now, how can a Georgian import slaves into California from Georgia, when the very laws of his own state, under which he claims to hold slaves, and under which laws he claims to carry slaves with him, forbid their importation?
And further, political franchises or privileges are just as much a part of a man’s rights as any tangible commodity. In South Carolina, the ownership of ten slaves constitutes a property qualification for being a member of the legislature. On removing to California, will the citizen of South Carolina, who owns ten slaves, carry an eligibility to the legislature of California with him? Nay, this political privilege in South Carolina goes further. It is a right in every owner of ten slaves, that no man who does not own ten slaves, (or some legal equivalent,) shall be a member of the legislature. The aspirant for office has a legal right in the limitation of the number of his competitors, as much as in any thing else. Can he carry _this_ to California with him? The inference is inevitable, that if the inhabitants of the fifteen slave states can carry slaves into California by virtue of the laws of their respective states, then they must also carry all the incidents of slavery known to their respective codes. For, how can the incident be separated from the principal? You might, therefore, have, in a neighborhood of fifteen families, fifteen slave codes in operation at the same time,--a manifest absurdity.
The conclusion, then, is irresistible, that when you come to the boundary line between a slave state and a free state, you come to the boundary line of slavery itself. On one side of the line, down to the nadir and up to the zenith, the blackness of the slave code pervades all things; but, on the other side, as high above and as deep below, is the purity of freedom. Virginia cannot extend her laws one hair’s breadth over the line into Pennsylvania or into Ohio, because their soil is beyond her jurisdiction. So neither Virginia, nor all the fifteen slave states combined, can extend their slave laws one hair’s breadth into the new territories; and for the same reason,--the territories are beyond their jurisdiction.
As to the argument that the constitution of the United States recognizes slavery, and that, upon the cession of new territories, the constitution, by some magical and incomprehensible elasticity, extends itself over them, and carries slavery into them, I think I speak with all due respect when I say it does not come up to the dignity of a sophism. Where do strict constructionists, or even latitudinarian constructionists, find any clause, or phrase, or word, which shows that the constitution is any thing but a compact between _states_? Where do they find any thing that shows it to be a compact between territories, or between territories _and_ states conjoined? On its very face, the constitution meets this pretension with a denial. The preamble declares, “We the people of the United States,”--not the people of the territories, nor the people of the states _and_ territories,--“in order to form a more perfect Union,”--“do ordain and establish this constitution for _the United States_ of America.” If the constitution is a compact between the United States _and_ the territories, then the people of the territories have all the rights under it which the people of the states have,--the right to choose electors for President and Vice-President, &c., and to be represented in Congress by a member who can vote as well as speak. The only way in which the constitution ever was extended, or ever can be extended over any part of the earth’s surface outside of the “original thirteen,” is this: The constitution in express terms authorizes the admission of new states, and therefore, when a new state is admitted, it becomes one of these “United States of America.” The constitution does not extend over the territories, but Congress, being the creature of the constitution, is, when legislating for the territories, not only invested with constitutional powers, but is limited by constitutional restrictions.
It would have been a much more plausible pretension, when the purchase of Louisiana and Florida was made, that the constitution carried freedom into those territories; because the constitution was built upon the basis of the common law, and, in terms, adopts the common law for its legal processes and its rules of judicial interpretation; and every body knows that there is no principle more dear to the common law than that all treaties, statutes, and customs shall be construed in favor of life and in favor of liberty.
Having, as I trust, refuted the argument of the slaveholder, that the prohibition of slavery in the territories is an act of injustice to his rights, I will consider his next assertion, that it is an insult to his feelings. We are told that the exclusion of slavery from the territories is an affront to the honorable sensibilities of the south; and that acquiescence in this exclusion would involve their dishonor and degradation.
There are two answers to this complaint. The first is, that among gentlemen, no insult is ever offered where none is intended. There may be heedlessness of conduct, there may be an unintentional wounding of sensibilities; but there can be no affront where the design to affront is wanting. He is not a gentleman, but a poltroon and a braggart, who pretends he is insulted and proceeds to retaliate for the affront, when all insult and all affront are sincerely disclaimed. Now, it is infinitely far from the purpose of the north to offer any indignity to the south by excluding slavery from the territories. Their hostility to slavery grows out of an honest allegiance to what they believe to be the highest moral and religious duty; it is fortified by the opinions of mankind; and is perfectly compatible with the most fraternal feelings towards the south. They wish to expostulate, in regard to the wrong, in such a way as to arrest the wrong, and not, by inflaming the wrongdoer, to increase the evil. However erroneous, then, their language or their sentiments may be, they are not affrontive nor contumelious; and, when all such purpose is disavowed, those who aspire to stand on the footing of gentlemen cannot reiterate the charge.
But there is another consideration,--one which appertains to the party supposed to be insulted, rather than the party charged with the insult. In his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith maintains that it is the judgment of men,--the opinion of the bystanders,--that gives us the pleasure of being approved, or the pain of being disapproved, on account of our conduct. Now, in this contest between the north and the south, on the subject of extending slavery, who are the bystanders? They are the civilized nations of the earth. We, the north and the south, are contending in the arena. All civilized men stand around us. They are a ring of lookers-on. It is an august spectacle. It is a larger assemblage than ever witnessed any other struggle in the history of mankind; and their shouts of approbation or hisses of scorn are worthy of our heed. And what do these spectators say, in the alternations of the combat? Do they urge on the south to mightier efforts, to the wider spread of slavery, and the multiplication of its victims? Do they shout when she triumphs? When new chains are forged and riveted, when new realms are subdued by haughty taskmasters, and overrun by imbruted slaves, do their plaudits greet your ears and rouse you to more vehement efforts? All the reverse; totally the reverse. They are now looking on with disgust and abhorrence. They groan, they mock, they hiss. The brightest pages of their literature portray you, as covered with badges of dishonor; their orators hold up your purposes as objects for the execration of mankind; their wits hurl the lightnings of satire at your leaders; their statute books abound in laws in which institutions like yours are branded as crimes; their moralists, from their high and serene seats of justice, arraign and condemn you; their theologians find your doom of retribution in the oracles of God. England has abolished slavery. France, in one fervid moment of liberty, struck the chains from off all her slaves, as the bonds of Paul and Silas were loosed in the inner prison by the mighty power of God. Sweden has abolished it. More than twenty years ago, impotent, half-civilized Mexico did the same. Tunis, a Barbary state, and, I might add, a barbarous state, has abolished slavery. Mahometanism precedes Christianity, and sets it an example of virtue. Liberia, a republic of emancipated slaves, the very brothers and sisters of those whom you now hold in bondage, has been acknowledged as an independent sovereignty, and welcomed into the family of nations, by two of the most powerful governments on the globe. By this act, freedom secures a new domain on the eastern continent, while you are striving to give a new domain to bondage on the western. A monarchy hails the advent of a free nation in Africa, where slavery existed before; a republic is seeking to create ten thousand absolute despotisms in America, where freedom existed before.
Now, these are the bystanders and lookers-on in this grand and awful contestation. They are all agreed, as one man, in their opinions about it. They are unitedly visiting your course with execration and anathema. There is not a nation on the globe, that has a printing press and a people that can read, from which you can extort one token of approval. I would agree to submit the question now at issue between the north and the south to the arbitrament of any people on the face of the earth, not absolutely savage, and to abide its decision. Nay, the wild tribes of the Caucasus and of Upper India, who have defended themselves so nobly against aggression, would spurn your claim and deride its pretexts. And yet you say you are insulted, dishonored, disgraced in the eyes of mankind, if you are not permitted to bring down upon our heads, also, the curses they are pouring upon yours. So far is this from truth, that if you would promptly and cheerfully consecrate the new territories to freedom, every nation in the world would send their plaudits of your conduct to the skies.
But gentlemen of the south not only argue the question of right and of honor; they go further, and they tell us what they will proceed to do if we do not yield to their demands. A large majority of the southern legislatures have solemnly “resolved” that if Congress prohibits slavery in the new territories, they will resist the law “at any and at every hazard.” And yet they say they do not mean to threaten us. They desire to abstain from all language of menace, for threats and menaces are beneath the character of gentlemen. Sir, what is the meaning of the terms “threats” and “menaces?” Mr. Troup, formerly governor of Georgia, speaking of us who are upon this floor, and of others who resist the extension of slavery, calls each of us a “fanatic.” He says that it is only the dread of death that will stay our hands or stop our machinations; and then adds, “THAT DREAD YOU MUST PRESENT TO HIM IN A VISIBLE, PALPABLE FORM.” “If,” he says in another place, “the abolitionists resolve to force emancipation, or _to force dishonor upon the southern states by any act of Congress_, then it is my decided opinion that, with the military preparation here indicated, conjoined to a good volunteer instead of a militia system, THE STATE SHOULD MARCH UPON WASHINGTON AND DISSOLVE THE GOVERNMENT.” The gentleman from North Carolina, [Mr. CLINGMAN,] forewarns us that if certain measures,--and they are legal and constitutional measures which he indicates,--are taken in order to carry on the business of legislation in this House, the House itself shall be the “Lexington” of a new revolution, and that “such a struggle would not leave a quorum to do business.” I could occupy my hour in citing passages of a similar character from the southern press and from southern men. Now, if these are not threats,--threats most gross, flagrant, and offensive,--I know not the meaning of the word. Perhaps those who utter such sentiments are only practising an inversion of language equal to their inversion of ideas on this subject, and would call them “enticements;” like the sailor, who said he was enticed to join a mutiny, and being asked what arts had been used to entice him, said that the ringleader sprang at him with a handspike, and swore if he did not join it he would knock out his brains.
And do those gentlemen who make these threats soberly consider how deeply they are pledging themselves and their constituents by them? Threats of dissolution, if executed, become rebellion and treason. The machinery of this government is now moving onward in its majestic course. Custom-houses, post-offices, land-offices, army, navy, are fulfilling their prescribed circle of duties. They will continue to fulfil them until arrested by violence. Should the hand of violence be laid upon them, then will come that exigency expressly provided for in the constitution and in the President’s inaugural oath, “TO TAKE CARE THAT THE LAWS BE FAITHFULLY EXECUTED.” Mr. Chairman, such collision would be _war_. Such forcible opposition to the government would be _treason_. Its agents and abettors would be _traitors_. Wherever this rebellion rears its crest, martial law will be proclaimed; and those found with hostile arms in their hands must prepare for the felon’s doom.
Sir, I cannot contemplate this spectacle without a thrill of horror. If the two sections of this country ever marshal themselves against each other, and their squadrons rush to the conflict, it will be a war carried on by such powers of intellect, animated by such vehemence of passion, and sustained by such an abundance of resources, as the world has never before witnessed. “Ten foreign wars,” it has been well said, “are a luxury compared with one civil war.” But I turn from this scene with a shudder. If, in the retributive providence of God, the volcano of civil war should ever burst upon us, it will be amid thunderings above, and earthquakes below, and darkness around; and when that darkness is lifted up, we shall see this once glorious union,--this oneness of government, under which we have been prospered and blessed as Heaven never prospered and blessed any other people,--rifted in twain from east to west, with a gulf between us wide and profound, save that this gulf will be filled and heaped high with the slaughtered bodies of our countrymen; and when we reäwaken to consciousness, we shall behold the garments and the hands of the survivors red with fratricidal blood.
And what is the object for which we are willing to make this awful sacrifice? Is it to redeem a realm to freedom? No! But to subjugate a realm to slavery. Is it to defend the rights of man? No! But to abolish the rights of man!
Mr. BOWDON. Does not the gentleman think that such a picture as he has drawn would induce the north to yield a portion of the new territories to the institution of slavery?
Mr. MANN. I trust that no pictures _and no realities_ will ever induce us to extend slavery beyond its present limits. Beyond those limits, “No more slave territories, no more slave states,” is the doctrine by which I, for one, shall live and die.
Now, sir, as this event of a dissolution of the Union is so frequently forced upon our contemplation, I propose to occupy the residue of my hour in considering some of its more obvious consequences. Southern papers and southern resolution writers have a favorite phrase, that if Congress shall pass any law against the extension of slavery, they will resist it “at any and every hazard.” Let us inquire, soberly, what a few of these hazards are:--
First, as to the recovery, or non-recovery, of fugitive slaves, which is one of the alleged provocatives of dissolution. Take a map of the Southern States and spread it out before you. Although they cover an area of about nine hundred thousand square miles, yet it is a very remarkable fact, that only an insignificantly small portion of this vast extent lies more than two hundred and fifty miles from a free frontier; and those parts which do lie beyond this distance hold but few slaves. Those portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, where their upper boundaries converge among the mountains, are a little more than this distance from a free border; but this territory is relatively insignificant in size, and sparsely populated with slaves. An outside belt or border region of the slave states, no part of which shall be more than one hundred miles from a free frontier, would embrace nearly one half of their whole area; and, as I suppose, much more than one half of their whole slave population. What is to prevent the easy escape of slaves living within these limits? While God sends nights upon the earth, nothing can prevent it. I venture to predict, that in such a state of things, slaves will become cheap, and horses will become dear. I am aware of your laws which forbid slaves to cross bridges or ferries, without a pass; but you can have no law against seasons of low water. The old adage says, “riches have wings.” You will find that these riches have legs. The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, where they border upon free states, will be alive as with shoals of porpoises. Remember there is no constitution of the United States now. That you have broken. The free states are therefore absolved from all obligation to surrender fugitives. The law of 1793 is at an end. No action can be maintained for aiding them to escape, nor for harboring or concealing them. The distinguished senator from Kentucky, [Mr. CLAY,] said, in his late speech, that no instance had ever come to his knowledge where an action for harboring runaways had not been maintained in the courts of the free states, and damages recovered. But this remedy you will have annulled. The constitution of the United States, and the law of 1793, being at an end, the law of nature revives. By this law, every case of an escaping slave is but _the self-recovery of stolen goods_. When they cross the line into a free state, they are free,--as free as you or I. The states being separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into bondage, as I would return a fugitive slave. Before God, and Christ, and all Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters. As our laws make it piracy to kidnap slaves in Africa, or to ship them thence, so it shall be a felony, punishable with death, for any southern master to kidnap a colored man, in a free state, or transport him from it, on the ground of alleged ownership. You are fond of quoting Scripture to us, in justification of slavery. We will retort the Scripture, that “he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or _if he be found in his hand_, he shall surely be put to death.”
Here, then, is a free land frontier of about two thousand miles, and a free ocean frontier of about twenty-five hundred miles; and more than one half of all your slaves are within two days’ run of it. More than one quarter of them are within one night’s run of it. Thousands and tens of thousands can escape, even while you are dining. Canada, now so distant, is brought five hundred miles nearer. The under-ground railroad will be abandoned, and its stock so invested as to yield quicker returns. What facilities for escape, too, will the ocean present. Fleets of vessels are constantly passing and repassing within a few hours’ sail of the coast. The day for the power and the triumph of those whom you hate as abolitionists will have arrived. Steamboats could lie out of sight of land in the day time, run in at night, and be out of sight again before the rising of the sun. To guard twenty-five hundred miles of coast is impossible. If you declare war in order to avenge your losses, then that war makes your coast lawfully accessible both by day and by night, and multiplies a hundred fold the opportunities and facilities for this self-recovery of stolen goods.
I know it is said that some of the Northern States are averse to the reception of blacks. Let us analyze this idea. There are now by estimation three millions of slaves. Say one half of these are either too old or too young to have the strength or the intelligence to escape. A million and a half are left; five hundred thousand of these will have attachments to their own parents or children, or to their masters, too strong to be broken; or they may be so degraded as to be contented with bondage; for their contentment is always one of the measures of their degradation. This would leave a million for fugitives, consisting wholly of the most able bodied and intelligent. The Northern States comprise a territory of five hundred thousand square miles. A million of escaped slaves would give but two to a square mile, and this surely would not be a formidable number, even where colorphobia is strongest. Suppose the case of a family of fourteen slaves,--two grandparents, too decrepit for labor, six athletic sons or daughters, and six grand children. What but affection should prevent the able-bodied and the profitable from escaping, and leaving the aged and the young on their masters’ hands. Affection, indeed, would bind the parents to their children, but they know too well how often this bond is remorselessly broken by the master; and, besides, an enlightened affection would look to future children and their posterity forever, as well as to those they already have.
Will you make your laws horribly penal, in order to deter slaves from escaping by fear? Will you mutilate them, or scourge them till within a minute of death? Do so. All such punishments not only nourish the love of freedom, but breed the purpose of revenge; and it is a kind of lesson which a brutalized nature is always prone to retaliate with improvements. Will you make the act of escape a capital offence in a slave, and destroy the victim you cannot restrain? Do so. Though you may inflict death in a paroxysm of wrath, yet of all your penal dispensations it is the most merciful. It not only releases the slave himself, but is a prospective and perpetual amnesty,--a true act of oblivion,--for all his descendants. But this extremity of punishment is not likely to be resorted to. In looking over the criminal codes of the slave states, I think I have noted cases where the slave is not punished with death for an offence for which a white man is. The _value_ moderates the vengeance. There are not many who, like Cleopatra, can afford to dissolve a pearl in the cup of revenge, and swallow it at a draught, when that pearl will command five hundred or a thousand dollars in the market-place.
Southern gentlemen, when they threaten disunion, cannot surely be so much at fault as to forget that slavery exists here as it never existed before in the world. In Greece there were slaves;--in some cases, highly intelligent and accomplished slaves. They could have escaped if they would; but where should they escape to? All coterminous nations,--the whole circle round,--were barbarians. These slaves, therefore, had no place to flee to, where better institutions and juster laws prevailed. So it was with Rome. Whither could her slaves fly but to barbarous Spain, or more barbarous Gaul, or to some nation whose language they did not understand. Ignorance of language is a more insuperable barrier than mountains or oceans. It is just the reverse here. The English language is spoken on all sides; and our slave land is encircled by free land or free ocean,--Jamaica, the Bermudas, and two thousand miles of northern frontier. And I have lately seen an estimate from a credible source, that if an inter-oceanic canal should be opened across the Isthmus of Darien, twelve hundred ships would annually pass through it; and, as they sail to and fro, they will skirt the whole of your gulf coast, and the whole of your Atlantic coast, a great part of the voyage being within sight, or within a day’s sail, of your shores. Now, the ignorant slave knows but little of geography, but he would know of these avenues to freedom, and nothing but death could extinguish such knowledge and the hopes it would inspire. I say, sir, under such circumstances, slavery would melt away upon your borders like an iceberg in the tropics. The particles, that is, the individuals of the exposed surface, would disappear; and you might as well attempt to stop solar evaporation by statutory laws, as to prevent their escape. Perhaps a dissolution of the Union is the means foreordained by God for the extinction of slavery; and did I not foresee its doom before any very long period shall have elapsed, without the unspeakable horrors of a civil and a servile war, I cannot say to what conclusion the above considerations would lead my own mind.
Having shown how the “_redress_” of disunion will operate upon one of the grievances alleged as its motive and excuse, let us look at another of those “hazards,” whose list, of indefinite length, the south is so willing to brave. In case of rebellion or secession, to whom will the territories belong? It is the rule of political as well as of municipal law, that whoever retires from a community, leaves its common property behind him. I have a direct interest and proprietorship in the church in my parish, in the schoolhouse in my town, and in the state-house and other public property belonging to my state. But if I expatriate myself, I leave all that interest and proprietorship behind me. If the county of Brooke, in Virginia, should secede from the State of Virginia, and should annex itself to Ohio or Pennsylvania, no one doubts that it would forfeit all its rights to whatever public property the State of Virginia possesses. In like manner, if the “_United States South_”--as the new confederacy has already been named by the “Richmond Enquirer,”--should secede, they would, by the very act of secession, surrender and abandon all right, title, and interest in the new territories. By such secession, all their citizens become foreigners. They have no rights under the treaty with Mexico. The new Spanish citizen, whose allegiance was transferred by the treaty with Mexico, and whose citizenship is not yet two years old, would have a right to expel them. The “United States South,” it is true, may declare war, and attempt the conquest of the territories by force; but in such a contest, the army and navy and military stores of the government, which, also, they have lost by secession, will be turned against them. But, I venture to prophesy, that if the slave states shall pass through one war, single-handed, they will afterwards be the most peaceable nation the world ever saw. To every frontier country and to every naval power, they have given three millions of hostages for their good behavior.
Let us look at a third grievance they mean to redress, and a third “hazard” they are ready to encounter. They complain of northern agitation on the subject of slavery, and northern instigation of the slaves themselves. On the subject of “agitation,” I deny that the north has ever overstepped the limits of their constitutional rights. They have never agitated the question of slavery in the states. It has been only in regard to slavery in this District, or the annexation of Texas, or the acquisition of territory for the extension of slavery, or the imprisonment of her own citizens in southern ports, or a denial of the inviolable right of petition;--it has been only on such subjects that the north has lifted up the voice of expostulation and remonstrance. Even these constitutional rights she has used forbearingly. She has never exerted force, nor threatened force, either to maintain the right of petition or to liberate her own citizens imprisoned in southern jails.
In regard to instigating slaves to escape, I acknowledge there have been some instances of it; but they have been few. The perpetrators have been tried and severely punished, and the north has acquiesced; for they acknowledge that, if a man will go into a slave state and violate its laws, he must be judged by them. But I have never known of a single case,--I believe there is no well-authenticated case on record,--where a northern man has instigated the slaves to rise in rebellion, and to retaliate upon their masters for the wrongs which they and their race have suffered. As I dread indiscriminate massacre and conflagration, I should abhor the perpetrator of such a crime. But will separation bring relief or security? No, sir; it will enhance the danger a myriad fold. Thousands will start up, who will think it as much a duty and an honor to assist the slaves in any contest with their masters, as to assist Greeks, or Poles, or Hungarians, in resisting their tyrants. Two things exist at the north which the south does not duly appreciate,--the depth and intensity of our abhorrence of slavery, and that reverence for the law which keeps it in check. The latter counterpoises the former. We are a law-abiding people. But release us from our obligations, tear off from the bond with your own hands the signatures which bind our consciences and repress our feelings, destroy those compensations which the world and which posterity would derive from a continuance of this Union, and well may you tremble for the result. I have seen fugitive slaves at the north, and heard from their own lips the dreadful recital of their wrongs: and if I am any judge of the natural language of men; if I can divine from the outward expression what passions are burning within, each one of them had a hundred conflagrations and a hundred massacres in his bosom. They felt as you and I should feel if we had been subjected to Algerine bondage. And do you doubt, sir, does any southern gentleman on this floor doubt, for one moment, that if he were seized by a Barbary corsair and sold into Algerine bondage, and carried a hundred miles into the interior, that he would improve the first opportunity to escape, though at every step in his flight he should crush out a human life, and should leave an ever-widening expanse of conflagration behind him? If agitation and instigation are evils now, woe to those who would seek to mitigate or to repress them by the remedies of disunion and civil war. Let men who live in a powder-mill beware how they madden pyrotechnists.
But it is said that if dissolution occurs, the “United States South” can form an alliance with Great Britain. And are there no instigators and abolitionists in England? Yes, sir, ten in England where there is one at the north. Frederick Douglass has just returned from England, where he has enjoyed the honors of an ovation. William Wells Brown, another fugitive slave, is now travelling in England. His journeys from place to place are like the “progresses” of one of the magnates of that land,--passing wherever he will with free tickets, and enjoying the hospitalities of the most refined and educated men. The very last steamer brought out an account of his public reception at Newcastle. An entertainment was given him which was attended by four hundred ladies and gentlemen. Men of high distinction and character adorned it by their presence. The ladies made up a purse of twenty sovereigns, which they gave him. It was presented in a beautiful purse that one of their number,--the successful competitor for the honor,--had wrought with her own hands. All their generosity and kindness they considered as repaid by hearing from his own lips the pathetic story of his captivity and the heroism of his escape. Sir, every man who has travelled in England knows that there are large, wealthy, and refined circles there, no member of which would allow a slaveholder to sit at his table or enter his doors. Not only churches, but moral and religious men, the world over, have begun to read slaveholders out of their communion and companionship. If the south expects to rid itself of agitation and abolitionism by rupturing its bonds with the north and substituting an alliance with Great Britain for our present constitution, they may envy the wisdom of the geese who invited the fox to stand sentinel over them while they slept. Northern interference will increase a hundred fold; and the whole power and wealth of British abolitionism, not only founded on moral principle but nursed by national pride, will be brought to bear directly upon them.
I said that the slave does not know much of geography; but he understands enough of it to know where lies the free frontier. The slave does not know much of astronomy; but there is one star in the firmament which is dearer to him than all the heavenly host were to the Chaldeans. He worships the north star with more than Persian idolatry. But let the south form commercial alliances with Great Britain; let the carrying trade be carried on in British vessels; and the slave will find a star in the east as beautiful to his eye, and as inspiring to his hopes, as the star in the north.
Is the case of the _Amistad_ forgotten, where a few ignorant, degraded wretches, fresh from the jungles of benighted Africa herself, seized upon the vessel in which they were transported, and compelled the master, under peril of his life, to steer for the north star,--that light which God kindled in the heavens, and which he will as soon extinguish as he will extinguish the love of liberty which he has kindled in every human breast?
And will a slave, escaping to Great Britain, or to any of her colonial possessions, be reclaimable? Examine Somerset’s case for an answer. No, sir. Neither the third clause of the second section of the fourth article of the constitution, nor the law of 1793, will ever be extended over the Three Kingdoms or their dependencies.
It surely is not beneath the dignity of the place or the occasion to look at another of those “hazards” which the south are invoking. They are proud of their past history, and I doubt not their reflecting and patriotic men are at least reasonably solicitous of their future fame. When they meet in august council to inaugurate the great event of establishing an independent confederacy of slave states, and of dissolving the political bands which now unite them with us, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” will “require them to declare the causes which had impelled them to the separation.” And will they find a model for their manifesto in that glorious Declaration of American Independence which their own immortal Jefferson prepared, and to which many of the greatest of all their historic names are subscribed? Alas, they will have to read that Declaration, as the devil reads Scripture, backwards! I know not what may be the rhetorical terms and phrases of the new Declaration, but I do know that its _historic_ form and substance cannot be widely different from this:--
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are not created equal; that they are not endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights; that white men, of the Anglo-Saxon race, were born to rob, and tyrannize, and enjoy, and black men, of the African race, to labor, and suffer, and obey; that a man, with a drop of African blood in his veins, has no political rights, and therefore shall never vote; that he has no pecuniary rights, and therefore whatever he may earn or receive, belongs to his master; that he has no judicial rights, and therefore he shall never be heard as a witness to redress wrong, or violence, or robbery, committed by white men upon him; that he has no parental rights, and therefore his children may be torn from his bosom, at the pleasure or caprice of his owner; that he has no marital rights, and therefore his wife may be lawfully sold away into distant bondage, or violated before his eyes; that he has no rights of mind or of conscience, and therefore he shall never be allowed to read or to think, and all his aspirations for improvement shall be extinguished; that he has no religious rights, and therefore he shall never read the Bible; that he has no heaven-descended, God-given rights of freedom, and therefore he and his posterity shall be slaves forever. We hold that governments were instituted among men to secure and fortify this ascendency of one race over another; that this ascendency has its foundation in force ratified by law, and in ignorance and debasement inflicted by intelligence and superiority; and when any people, with whom we are politically associated, would debar us from propagating our doctrines or extending our domination into new realms and over free territories, it becomes our duty to separate from them, and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind,--friends when they make slaves, enemies when they make freemen.”
I say, sir, of whatever words and phrases the southern “Magna Charta” may consist, this, or something like this, must be its substance and reality.
So the preamble to their constitution must run in this wise: “We, the people of the ‘United States South,’ in order to form a more perfect conspiracy against the rights of the African race, establish injustice, insure domestic slavery, provide for holding three millions of our fellow-beings, with all the countless millions of their posterity, in bondage, and to secure to ourselves and our posterity the enjoyment of power, and luxury, and sloth, do ordain and establish this constitution for the ‘United States South.’”
Sir, should a civil war ensue between the north and the south, (which may God in his mercy avert,) in consequence of an attempt to dissolve this Union, and the certain resistance which would be made to such an attempt, it would be difficult to exaggerate the immediate evils which would befall the interests of New England and some other parts of the north. Our manufactures and our commerce would suffer at least a temporary derangement. But we have boundless resources in our enterprise and our intelligence. Knowledge and industry are recuperative energies that can never long be balked in their quest of prosperity. The people that bore the embargo of 1807, and the war of 1812, when all their capital was embarked in commerce, can survive any change that does not stop the revolution of the seasons or suspend the great laws of nature. And, when the day of peace again returns, business will again return to its old channels. The south, notwithstanding any personal hostility, will be as ready to take northern gold as though it had come from the English mint; and they will employ those first, who will do their manufacturing or their commercial labor cheapest and best. Gold is a great pacificator between nations; and, in this money-loving age, mutual interests will, in the end, subdue mutual hostilities. Our share, therefore, of the calamities of a civil war, will be mainly of a pecuniary nature. They will not be intolerable. They will invade none of the securities of home; they will not associate poison with our daily food, nor murder and conflagration with our nightly repose; nor black violation with the sanctities of our daughters and our wives.
Even in a pecuniary point of view, a dissolution of our political ties would cause less immediate and intense suffering at the north than at the south. Our laws and institutions are all framed so as to encourage the poor man, and, by education, to elevate his children above the condition of their parents; but their laws and institutions all tend to aggrandize the rich, and to perpetuate power in their hands. Were it not for the visions of horror and of bloodshed which southern threats have so intimately associated with this controversy, one remarkable feature, which has hitherto been eclipsed, would have been most conspicuous.
With every philanthropic northern man, a collateral motive for keeping the new territories free is, that they may be a land of hope and of promise to the poor man, to whichever of all our states he may belong; where he may go and find a home and a homestead and abundance. But the south, in attempting to open these territories to the slaveholders, would give them to the rich alone,--would give them to less than three hundred thousand persons out of a population of six millions. The interests of the poorer classes at the south all demand free territory, where they can go and rise at once to an equality with their fellow-citizens, which they never can do at home. They are natural abolitionists, and unless blinded by ignorance, or overawed by their social superiors, they will so declare themselves. Every intelligent and virtue-loving wife or mother, at the south, when she thinks of her husband and her sons, is forced to be an abolitionist. The attempt, therefore, to subject the new territories to the law of slavery is not made in the name of one half of the people of the United States; it is not made for the six millions, more or less, who inhabit the slave states; but it is made for less than three hundred thousand slaveholders among more than twenty millions of people.
There is one other “hazard,” sir, which the south invokes and defies, which to her high-minded and honor-loving sons, should be more formidable than all the rest. She is defying the Spirit of the Age. She is not only defying the judgment of contemporaries, but invoking upon herself the execrations of posterity. Mark the progress in the public sentiment of Christendom, within the last few centuries, on the subject of slavery and the rights of man. After the discovery of this continent by Columbus, the ecclesiastics of Spain held councils to discuss the question, whether the aborigines of this country had or had not souls to be saved. They left this question undecided; but they said, as it was possible that the nations of the new world might have an immortal spirit, they would send them the gospel, so as to be on the safe side; and the mission of Las Casas was the result. In the time of Lord Coke, only a little more than two centuries ago, the doctrine was openly avowed and held, in Westminster Hall, that the heathen had no rights; and therefore that it was lawful for Christians to drive them out of their inheritance, and to despoil them, as the Jews despoiled the Egyptians and drove out the Canaanites. During the seventeenth century, all the commercial nations of Europe engaged in the African slave trade, without compunction or reproach. In the last, or eighteenth century, the horrors of that trade were aggravated and blackened by such demoniacal atrocities, as, were it not for some redeeming attributes among men, would have made the human race immortally hateful. Even when our own constitution was formed, in 1787, this dreadful traffic was not only sanctioned, but a solemn compact was entered into, by which all prohibition of it was prohibited for twenty years. Yet, in the year 1820, after the lapse of only thirty-three years, this very trade was declared to be piracy,--the highest offence known to the law,--and the felon’s death was denounced against all principals and abettors. We are often reminded by gentlemen of the south, that, at the time of the adoption of that constitution, slavery existed in almost every state in the Union; and that some northern merchants, by a devilish alchemy, transmuted gold from its tears and blood. But can they read no lesson as to the progress of the age from the fact that all those states have since abjured slavery of their own free will; and that, at the present day, it would be more tolerable for any northern merchant, rather than to be reasonably suspected of the guilt of this traffic, to be cast into the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, seven times heated? In Europe, the tide of liberty, though meeting with obstructions from firm-seated dynasties and time-strengthened prerogative, still rises, and sweeps onward with unebbing flow. In France, revolutions follow each other in quicker and quicker succession. These revolutions are only gigantic struggles of the popular will to escape from oppression; and, at each struggle, the giant snaps a chain.
Great Britain, which in former times sent more vessels to the coast of Africa to kidnap and to transport its natives, than all the other nations of the earth together, now maintains a fleet upon the same coast to suppress the trade she so lately encouraged. Three times, during the present century, has that government escaped civil commotion by making large concessions to popular rights. Since the year 1814, written constitutions have been extorted by the people from more than three fourths of all the sovereigns of Europe. What a tempest now beats upon Austria, from all points of the compass, because, during the last season, she attempted only to half enslave the Hungarians,--because she attempted to do what, during the last century, she might have done without a remonstrance! The rights of individuals, not less than the rights of communities, have emerged from oblivion into recognition, and have become law. Penal codes have been ameliorated, and barbarous customs abolished. There are now but two places on the globe where a woman can be publicly whipped,--in Hungary and in the Southern States! And the universal scorn and hissing with which the rulers of the former country have been visited for their women-whipping, and their execution of those whose sole crime was their love of freedom, only foretoken that fiercer scorn and louder hissing with which, from all sides of the civilized world, the latter will soon be visited. Let the high-toned and chivalrous sons of the south,--those “who feel a stain upon their honor like a wound,”--think of all this, as one in the long catalogue of “hazards” upon which they are rushing.
Sir, the leading minds in a community are mainly responsible for the fortunes of that community. Under God, the men of education, of talent, and of attainment, turn the tides of human affairs. Where great social distinctions exist, the intelligence and the wealth of a few stimulate or suppress the volition of the masses. They are the sensorium of the body politic, and their social inferiors are the mighty limbs, which, for good or for evil, they wield. Such is the relation in which the three hundred thousand, or less than three hundred thousand slave owners of the south, hold to their fellow-citizens. They can light the torch of civil war, or they can quench it. But if civil war once blazes forth, it is not given to mortal wisdom to extinguish or control it. It comes under other and mightier laws, under other and mightier agencies. Human passions feed the combustion; and the flame which the breath of man has kindled, the passions of the multitude,--stronger than the breath of the hurricane,--will spread. Among these passions, one of the strongest and boldest is the love of liberty, which dwells in every bosom. In the educated and civilized, this love of liberty is a regulated but paramount desire; in the ignorant and debased, it is a wild, vehement instinct. It is an indestructible part of the nature of man. Weakened it may be, but it cannot be destroyed. It is a thread of asbestos in the web of the soul, which all the fires of oppression cannot consume.
With the creation of every human being, God creates this love of liberty anew. The slave shares it with his master, and it has descended into his bosom from the same high source. Whether dormant or wakeful, it only awaits an opportunity to become the mastering impulse of the soul. Civil war is that opportunity. Under oppression it bides its time. Civil war is the fulness of time. It is literal truth that the south fosters within its homes three millions of latent rebellions. Imbedded in a material spontaneously combustible, it laughs at fire. Has it any barriers to keep the spirit of liberty, which has electrified the Old World, from crossing its own borders, and quickening its bondmen into mutinous life?--not all of them, but one in ten thousand, one in a hundred thousand of them. If there is no Spartacus among them, with his lofty heroism and his masterly skill for attack and defence, is the race of Nat Turners extinct, who, in their religious musings, and their dumb melancholy, take the impulses of their own passions for the inspiration of God, and, after prayer and the eucharist, proceed to massacre and conflagration? In ignorant and imbruted minds, a thousand motives work which we cannot divine. A thousand excitements madden them, which we cannot control. It may be a text of Scripture, it may be the contents of a wine vault; but the result will be the same,--havoc wherever there is wealth, murder wherever there is life, violation wherever there is chastity. Let this wildfire of a servile insurrection break out in but one place in a state; nay, in but ten places, or in five places in all the fifteen states; and then, in all their length and breadth, there will be no more quiet sleep. Not Macbeth, but the angel of retribution, will “murder sleep.” The mother will clasp her infant to her breast, and, while she clasps it, die a double death. But, where will the slaves find arms? “_Furor arma ministrat._” Rage will supply their weapons. Read the history of those slaves who have escaped from bondage; mark their endurance and their contrivance, and let incredulity cease forever. They have hid themselves under coverts; dug holes and burrowed in the earth for concealment; sunk themselves in ponds, and sustained life by breathing through a reed, until their pursuers had passed by; wandered in “Dismal Swamps,” far away from the habitations of men; almost fasting for forty days and forty nights, like Christ in the wilderness; crushed themselves into boxes, but of half a coffin’s dimensions, to be nailed up and transported hundreds of miles, as merchandise; and, in this horrible condition, have endured hunger and thirst, and, standing upon the head, without a groan or a sigh;--and, will men, who devise such things, and endure such things, be balked in their purposes of hope and of revenge, when the angel of destruction, in the form of the angel of liberty, descends into their breasts?
The state of slavery is always a state of war. In its deepest tranquillity, it is but a truce. Active hostilities are liable at any hour to be resumed. Civil war between the north and the south,--any thing that brings the quickening idea of freedom home to the mind of the slave; that supplies him with facilities of escape, or immunities for revenge,--will unleash the bloodhounds of insurrection. Can you muster armies in secret, and march them in secret, so that the slave shall not know that they are mustered and marched to perpetuate his bondage, and to extend the bondage of his race? Was not Major Dade’s whole command supposed to be massacred through the treachery of a slave? A foray within your borders places you in such a relation to the slave that you are helpless without him, and in danger of assassination with him. He that defends slavery by war, wars against the eternal laws of God, and rushes upon the thick bosses of Jehovah’s buckler. Such are some of the “hazards” which the leaders of public opinion at the south, the legislators and guides of men in this dark and perilous hour, are invoking upon themselves and their fellows; not for the interests of the whole, but for the fancied interests of the slaveholders alone, and against the real interest of a vast majority of the people. May God give that wisdom to the followers which he seems not yet to have imparted to the leaders.
Sir, in these remarks, I have studiously abstained from every thing that seemed to me like retaliation or unkindness. I certainly have suffered no purposed word of crimination to pass my lips. If I have uttered severe truths, I have not sought for severe language in which to clothe them. What I have said, I have said as to a brother sleeping on the brink of a precipice, where one motion of his troubled sleeping, or of his bewildered awaking, might plunge him into remediless ruin.
In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding conviction of the character of slavery, that under a full sense of my responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion,--better a civil or a servile war,--better any thing that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.
Upon the close of Mr. Mann’s remarks,
MR. BURT, of South Carolina, rose and said that he had not interrupted the gentleman from Massachusetts during his speech, but he presumed he did not wish to have any error go forth under the sanction of his name; and he therefore called upon him to retract what he had said in regard to slaves ever being exempted from capital punishment for crimes for which the whites were executed. He called upon him also to withdraw the imputation that the pecuniary value of the slave was a motive for any such difference in the laws respecting them. He remarked that, by the laws of the Southern States, such a distinction is not made. I know, said he, no instance in which it exists. On the contrary, slaves are punished capitally for offences that are not so punished when committed by white men. In South Carolina, slaves have never been admitted to the benefit of clergy for offences at common law; and thus a slave is punished capitally for maiming or grievously beating a white man. Mr. Burt was also understood to say that there were “six or eight,” or “eight or ten,” offences in South Carolina for which slaves were punished capitally, but for which white men were not.
MR. MANN replied that he had stated what he believed to be true; but if he had fallen into any mistake, he should be most happy to be corrected. He was assured also by the gentleman from Georgia, on his left, [Mr. TOOMBS,] that no such distinction existed as he had supposed; and it was but reasonable to believe that those gentlemen were more conversant with the southern laws than himself.
MR. MANN added that he, (Mr. Mann,) could not be expected to have the statute books of the Southern States before him, at that time, to meet so unexpected a denial. Neither could he be expected by any honorable gentleman to make a retraction until he had time to see whether the ground he had taken were tenable.
NOTE BY MR. MANN. On repairing to the Law library to ascertain which party was right in regard to the above difference of opinion, the second book I opened contained at least three cases, where the courts were authorized to sentence a slave to be transported for the commission of an offence, for which a white man must be unconditionally hung. See North Carolina Rev. Stat. vol. i. chap. 3, §§ 36, 37, 39. Of course, the reason of this difference is the pecuniary value of the slave. Hung, he would be worthless; transported to Cuba, he might bring five hundred dollars.
The law was formerly so in Mr. Burt’s own state.
In the seventh volume of the Statutes at Large of South Carolina, No. 344, § 5, I find the following: “And _whereas_, it has been found by experience that the execution of several negroes for felonies of a smaller nature, by which they have been condemned to die, has been of great charge and expense to the public, and will continue, (if some remedy be not found,) to be very chargeable and burdensome to this province; _Be it therefore enacted_, by the authority aforesaid, that all negroes or other slaves who shall be convicted and found guilty of any capital crime, (murder excepted,) for which they used to receive the sentence of death, as the law directs, shall be transported from this province, by the public receiver for the time being, to any other of his majesty’s plantations, or other foreign part, where he shall think fitting to send them, _for the use of the public_.”
The slave condemned to transportation was to be appraised, and his master paid out of the public treasury, and this amount was, of course, to be reimbursed by what should be received from the foreign sale. From the statement of Mr. Burt, that no such law _now_ exists in South Carolina, I suppose the above enactment must have been repealed.
The _fact_ stated in the speech is therefore proved, although the instances may be fewer than I had supposed. As to the motive attributed, there can be no doubt. The cases are most numerous in the Southern States, where white men are merely _imprisoned_ for offences for which slaves are whipped, branded, and cropped, or otherwise corporally punished. The slave’s time is too valuable to be lost in a prison, but the white man’s is not; the white man’s skin is too sacred to be flayed or branded, but the slave’s is not.
But laws which punish “_six or eight_,” or “_eight or ten_,” or any other number of offences with death, when committed by slaves, while the same offences receive a milder penalty when committed by whites; or laws denying the benefit of clergy, (where that relic of barbarism still prevails,) to a slave, while it is granted to a white man, are surely among the greatest atrocities recorded in the history of the race. Ponder for a moment upon the accursed fact. A freeman acting under all the motives to self-respect; moved by all the incentives to good conduct; enjoying all the means of education; inspired by all the influences of the gospel; and capable of comprehending all the powerful restraints and the sublime rewards connected with a hereafter, _exonerated_ from the punishment of death; while death, in all the horrors with which ignorance and superstition can invest it, is inflicted upon men who are subjected to bondage; deprived of all motive for honorable conduct; debarred from every avenue to knowledge by cruel penalties; blinded to the light of the gospel; and, in a land of boasted Christianity, left in the darkness of heathenism! These are not the customs of a lawless banditti, of outcasts or renegades, but solemn enactments of state legislatures, devised by talent and eminence, enforced and preserved by the oligarchical few, by the virtual nobility and flower of populous communities. Such laws demand a return of five talents, under penalty of death, where only one talent had been confided; they absolve him who had received five talents, though he brings none of them back. Such laws make the Scriptures read, that the servant who knoweth his lord’s will, but doeth it not, shall be beaten with but few stripes; but the servant who did not know it, whom his very master debarred from knowing it, shall be beaten with many stripes; for unto whomsoever much is given, but little shall be required; but to whom men have committed much, of him little shall be asked. What shall be thought of a system, AND OF EXTENDING A SYSTEM, which so perverts the hearts of men, otherwise clear-headed, high-minded, and generous!
What more fitting theme could be conceived, were the arch-enemy of mankind to compose a _burlesque_, in ridicule of _Republics_, to be represented in that Theatre which is all “_Pit_”?
It is not, however, the _existence_ of slavery, but its _extension_, we now intend to avert.
* * * * *
The last paragraph in the foregoing speech gave rise to the following correspondence, which was published in the National Intelligencer:--
LETTER FROM MR. MANN.
MESSRS. EDITORS; Your paper of this morning contains a portion of a speech of the Hon. MR. BADGER, of North Carolina, delivered in the Senate on the 19th instant, in which he comments upon some remarks lately made by me in the House of Representatives. The respect which, (without any personal acquaintance,) I have long entertained for this distinguished senator, would deter me from noticing any such miscontructions of my remarks as a candid mind might inadvertently commit; but the misrepresentations which the senator has made are so gratuitous and gross, that I am constrained to notice them. I therefore ask the favor of a place in your paper, where he can answer me, if he pleases, though he chose a place for his animadversions where he knew I could not answer him.
The following is a passage in his speech:--
“Nor, Mr. President, must I forget that, in considering the effect which this proviso is likely to have upon the condition of the southern mind, we must look to what has been said by northern gentlemen in connection with this subject. Permit me to call the attention of the Senate to a very brief extract from a speech delivered in the other end of the capitol:--
“‘In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding conviction of the character of slavery, that, under a full sense of my responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion, better a civil or a servile war, better any thing that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.’
“SEVERAL SENATORS. Whose speech is that?
“A SENATOR. Mr. Mann’s.
“MR. BADGER. We have heard much, Mr. President, of the violence of southern declamation. I have most carefully avoided reading the speeches of southern gentlemen who were supposed to be liable to that charge. I happened, however, in the early part of this session, and before the other House was organized, to be in that body when there were some bursts of feeling and denunciation from southern gentlemen, which I heard with pain, mortification, almost with anguish of mind. But, sir, these were bursts of feeling; these were passionate and excited declarations; these had every thing to plead for them as being spontaneous and fiery ebullitions of men burning at the moment under a sense of wrong. And where, among these, will you find any thing equal to the cool, calm, deliberate announcement of the philosophic mind that delivered in the other House the passage which I have read: ‘Better disunion, better a civil or a servile war, better any thing that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.’
“In other words, it is the deliberate, settled, fixed opinion of the honorable gentleman who made that speech, that rather than the extension of slavery _one foot_,--yes sir, there is no qualification, _one foot_,--he would prefer a disunion of these states; he would prefer all the horrors of civil war, all the monstrous, untold, and almost inconceivable atrocities of a servile war; he would pile the earth with dead; he would light up heaven with midnight conflagrations; all this, yea, and more,--all the vials of wrath which God in his providence might see fit to pour down upon us, he would suffer, rather than permit, not one man who is now free to be made a slave,--that would be extravagant enough,--but rather than permit one man who now stands upon the soil of North Carolina a slave, to stand a slave upon the soil of New Mexico:
“Yes, sir, here is a sacrifice of life and happiness, and of all that is dear to the black and white races together, to a mere idealism,--a sacrifice proposed by a gentleman who claims to be a philosopher, and to speak the language of calm deliberation,--a sacrifice of our glorious Union proposed by a patriot,--not rather than freemen should be made slaves,--not rather than the condition of even one human being should be made worse than it now is,--but rather than one man shall remove from one spot of the earth to another without an improvement of his condition, without passing from slavery to freedom. Sir, after that announcement, thus made, which I beg to say, sir, I did not seek,--for the speech I have never read; the extract I found in one of the newspapers of the day,--after that announcement, talk not of southern violence, talk not of southern egotism, talk not of our disposition to sacrifice to our peculiar notions and our peculiar relations, the peace and happiness, the growing prosperity, and the mutual concord of this great Union. Now, sir, if that announcement goes abroad into the southern country, attended by the wanton application of this Wilmot proviso, an irritating commentary upon that patriotic announcement, what can be expected? What but the deepest emotions of indignation in the bosoms of those born and brought up where slavery exists, and taking totally different views of the institution from those which are taken by the honorable gentleman who has placed himself upon this cool and deliberate, humane and philosophical position.”
By his own confession, Mr. Badger had not read my speech. He takes up a single sentence, therefore, for comment, without the justice of looking at the context. He is like the man who should declare that the Scriptures say “there is no God,” when it is the fool, and not the Bible, that makes the declaration. My speech discussed the question of extending slavery over our territories and the proposed southern remedy for prohibiting that extension, namely, the disunion of the states. The conclusion to which I came was, that the north had better submit to the application of the southern remedy, than to surrender the new territories to all the horrors of bondage. Beyond our present limits “no more slave territories and no more slave states,” was the exact ground I took. But Mr. Badger represents me as saying that I would “prefer a disunion of these states,” and all the other evils in his long and labored catalogue, “rather than the extension of slavery _one foot_;” “yes,” he repeats with emphasis, “_one foot_.” Now, I never made such a declaration as this. I never said any thing to give countenance or color to such a declaration. Many persons, seeing the statement of the honorable senator, and relying upon his character for fairness and veracity, have believed that I did. But he has led them into the error. My argument and conclusion had reference to new slave territories, or to a new slave territory. Mr. Badger construes, or rather misconstrues this to mean “one foot.” If my speech is fairly susceptible of this construction, I wish so far to retract it. He shall have my consent to a “_one foot_” territory, and to as many slaves as he can hold on it under the _local law_.
Mr. Badger further charges me with invoking all the calamities he enumerates, “rather than permit one man who now stands upon the soil of North Carolina a slave, to stand a slave upon the soil of New Mexico.” This statement is not merely forced, but fabricated. Surely I said no such thing. I intimated nor hinted at, nor thought of such a thing. There may be little choice whether any one man who now “stands a slave,” shall “stand a slave” in one place or in another, _if that be all_. In a national point of view, and looking at the subject as a statesman, the sentiment imputed to me is simply ridiculous. But this wrongful imputation of such a sentiment, without substance or semblance to justify it, is far worse than ridiculous; it becomes unjust and ungenerous; and is none the less so for being made in a place where he knew I could not repel it. The whole scope and stress of my argument went against yielding any such portion of our new acquisitions to slavery as would form either a state or a territory. The eight or ten southern legislatures, the eight or ten governors of southern states, the southern Senators and Representatives in Congress, and the confederates in getting up the Nashville Convention, have never, to my knowledge, proposed a compromise on the platform of a “_one foot_” territory, or expressed their readiness to spare the Union if “one man who stands a slave in North Carolina,” is permitted to “stand a slave in New Mexico.” When such an issue is brought forward seriously, it will be met seriously. But the real issue on this point is, (and the senator must know it,) whether the victims of slavery shall be indefinitely multiplied by the addition to its domain of regions now free. That the creation of a new slave territory will increase the victims of slavery, is a proposition too plain to be argued. To deny this, is to assert that if slavery had been confined to the State of Virginia, or to the settlement at Jamestown, where the first cargo of slaves was landed, the present number of slaves in this country would be no less than it now is; or, in other words, there would now be three millions of slaves within the limits of Virginia, or within the limits of Jamestown.
I have made this reply to the honorable senator from North Carolina with great reluctance, and from no motive of personal unkindness. I have long been accustomed to regard his character with respect, and his opinions with deference; and I am happy in an opportunity to express a feeling of personal gratitude for his former endeavors to avert from the councils of the nation the subject-matter of this most lamentable contention.
Very truly, yours, &c., HORACE MANN.
WASHINGTON, March 28, 1850.
P. S. Another point in the honorable senator’s speech, in which he attempts to vindicate the penal slave code of North Carolina and of the other Southern States from the taint of cupidity, may be safely left without comment to intelligent men. Every student of the _criminal_ legislation of the Southern States in regard to slaves, knows that their laws are replete with proofs where the sensibilities of a man are sacrificed to the spirit of gain.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] In February, 1847, Mr. Calhoun offered a series of resolutions in the Senate of the United States, among which was the following:--
“_Resolved_, That it is a fundamental principle in our political creed, that a people, in forming a constitution, have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity and happiness; and, in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the Federal Constitution on a state, in order to be admitted into this Union, except that its constitution shall be “republican;” and that the imposition of any other by Congress would not only be in violation of the constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which our political system rests.”
In sustaining these resolutions, he said,--
“Sir, I hold it to be a fundamental principle of our political system that the people have a right to establish what government they may think proper for themselves; that every state ABOUT to become a member of this Union has a right to FORM ITS OWN GOVERNMENT AS IT PLEASES; and that, in order to be admitted, there is but one qualification, and that is, that the government shall be republican. There is no express provision to that effect, but it results from that important section which guaranties to every state in this Union a republican form of government.”
Mr. Senator Downs, of Louisiana, offered the following resolution:--
“_Resolved_, That it is competent and expedient, and not inconsistent with the practice of the government in some cases, to admit California, or such portion of it as Congress may deem proper, immediately into the Union, on an equal footing with the other states; and that the committee on ---- be instructed to report a bill for that purpose, for that portion of California which lies west of the summit of the Sierra Nevada mountains.”
* * * * *
The doctrine of these resolutions was fully indorsed by the Washington _Union_, speaking, doubtless, (for it never spoke any thing else,) the sentiments of the then administration.
“The south denies that Congress has any jurisdiction over the subject of slavery, and contends that the _people of the territories alone_, when they frame a constitution, preparatory to admission into the Union, _have a right to speak and be heard on that matter_. This fact being settled, _it really seems to us that this exciting question might be speedily adjusted_, if calm counsels prevail. The south contends for her honor, and for the great principles of non-intervention and state equality. _Why, then, cannot all unite, and permit California to come into the Union as soon as she can frame a constitution?_ Then, according to the doctrines which prevail on both sides of Mason’s and Dixon’s line, she may constitutionally establish her domestic institutions on any basis consistent with republican principles. _The south could lose nothing by adopting this course. On the contrary, she would save all for which she contends._”
MR. BADGER’S REPLY.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER;
A communication in your paper of yesterday, from the Hon. HORACE MANN, of the House of Representatives, seems to require a brief notice from me.
The honorable gentleman accuses me of having treated him with gross injustice in a recent speech, in which I referred to the closing paragraph of a speech of his, and made some comments thereupon.
Now, in what consists the injustice? I quoted that paragraph from his speech, and he does not deny that it was quoted truly. There is not a word or syllable attributed to him, not a word or syllable alleged or insinuated to have been spoken by him, except that paragraph, and that he admits was spoken and printed by him just as I quoted it. Then, in the statement of his language, I have done him no injustice.
In my comments, I gave “in other words,”--in my own words,--what I deemed a true interpretation of his; and, as I attributed to him no language which he did not use; as every thing to which he objects is, and upon the face of my remarks plainly purports to be, merely my own commentary upon the single quotation correctly taken from the gentleman’s speech, it is very obvious that I have “fabricated” nothing. Whether the interpretation given to the honorable gentleman’s language be correct or incorrect, a just carrying of it out to its true results, or an unfair exaggeration, intelligent men will be able to decide from the reading of my speech, which presents together both the text and the commentary, and to them I am willing to leave it.
But the gentleman says that in his speech he “discussed the question of extending slavery over our territories,” and that “no more slave territories and no more slave states was the exact ground” he took. And what has that to do with the matter of his complaint against me? I referred not to his discussion, or the grounds taken in it. I was not considering the course or validity of his reasoning, but the conclusion at which he arrived. That was set down in his speech in these words:--
“In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding conviction of the character of slavery, that, under a full sense of my responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion,--better a civil or a servile war,--better any thing that God in his providence shall send, than _an extension of the bounds of slavery_.”
Here is no reference to any particular degree, kind, or manner of extending slavery. He speaks not of the “proposed or desired extension,” of “extension into our territories,” or even of “_the_ extension,” but he speaks of “an extension of the bounds of slavery,” without a reference to any thing in the speech or elsewhere by which the generality of his language might be modified or explained. To refer, therefore, to the speech in order to understand the import of this general conclusion, is idle. If the reasoning in the speech be particular, and the deduction general, there would be the logical defect of a conclusion too large for the premises, but the _meanings_ of the conclusion would remain, and the want of reasoning to support it would not abate aught of its unmitigated and sweeping generality.
It is evident, then, that, whether supported by any reasoning, particular or general, the gentleman’s conclusion remains, that disunion, civil war, servile war, with certain undefined judgments of Heaven besides, are preferable to “an extension of the bounds of slavery;” but the indefinite article “an” is here exactly equivalent to “any,” and therefore whatever amounts to “any extension,” however small,--a square mile, or acre, or foot,--is strictly within the meaning of the language which he has thought proper deliberately to retain in his printed speech.
But I accept willingly the explanation now given of his meaning, and only regret that, when writing out his speech, he did not then give the explanation which converts his general into a particular proposition. By this explanation I learn that, in his conclusion, he meant to speak not of any extension, however small, but of an extension of slavery in our territories.
Then the gentleman’s conclusion, as modified by himself, will be thus: “Better disunion,” [the dissolution of our government and destruction of the Union formed by our fathers;] “better a civil or a servile war,” [the most disastrous, ferocious, and cruel of all wars;] “better any thing that God in his providence shall send,” [for example, pestilence and famine;] “than an extension of the bounds of slavery” over our territories!
I cheerfully submit to all “intelligent men,” if they are at the same time humane and patriotic, to pass upon such a sentiment. To his own intelligent, patriotic, and humane constituents, I submit it, with entire confidence that it will not meet their approval; but, on the contrary, that they will regard the honorable gentleman as having been betrayed by the pervading excitement on the slavery question, into an extravagant,--I will not say fanatical,--declaration, which he is not able to defend, or willing, as yet, to retract or qualify.
I had believed that the honorable gentleman had, under the exciting influence of discussion, unconsciously done injustice to my own state, but a remark added to his communication would perhaps justify me, if inclined to judge unkindly, in supposing that the wrong was wilful. But I am not so inclined, and draw no such conclusion. I infer, rather, that the bewildering excitement under which the speech was made has not yet passed away, but still continues to influence unfavorably the otherwise clear understanding and fair and upright purposes of the honorable gentleman.
GEO. E. BADGER.
WASHINGTON, March 30, 1850.
MR. MANN’S REJOINDER.
MESSRS. EDITORS; Your paper of this morning contains a communication from the Hon. Mr. BADGER, in reply to mine of the 29th ultimo. I ask your indulgence while I briefly answer him.
My complaint was, that he had taken half a dozen lines from my speech, and had attributed a meaning to them, in some respects odious, in other respects ridiculous, and in all respects unwarrantable. By his own admission, too, he had done this without reading the speech itself; when, had he accorded to me the justice of hearing me before he condemned me, he would have found that both subject-matter and context confuted his interpretation.
His first reply is, that he did not “attribute” to me “a word” nor “a syllable” which I did not use; and, repeating himself, he adds, that he did not “allege” or “insinuate” a “word” nor “a syllable” that I now deny. In view of this he asks, with an air of triumph, “In what consists the injustice?”
I answer, as before; the injustice consists in giving a false meaning to true “words” and “syllables,”--a meaning which both the subject-matter and context of my speech repudiate. I do not see that it is less unjustifiable to attach false meanings to words correctly quoted, than to forge quotations. Surely, the honorable senator is too good a lawyer to be ignorant of the maxim, “_qui hæret in litera_” &c.; and too good a theologian not to have read that “the letter killeth” if divorced from the spirit. When Beaumont and Fletcher were closeted together to devise the plan of one of their joint plays, in which a king was to be killed, they were severally overheard to say, “I will kill the king,” and “I will kill the king;” whereupon they were arrested, transported to London, and arraigned for conspiring the death of the reigning sovereign. Suppose them to have been convicted of treason and gibbeted; could not the perjured informer, with a charming and childlike simplicity, have used the exact language of Mr. BADGER, and said, I testified to the exact “_words_” and “_syllables_.” “In what consists the injustice?”
But the honorable senator goes on to say, that he had no concern with my _speech_, but only with my _conclusion_. His language is, “I was not considering the course or validity of his reasoning, but the conclusion at which he arrived.” He then repeats the quotation, and adds, “To refer, therefore, to the speech in order to understand the import of this conclusion, is idle.”
With all deference to the senator,--and mine is unfeignedly great,--I submit that this is false logic and worse ethics. As well may one declare the judgment of a court to be legal or illegal, merciful or tyrannous, without looking back to the allegations and proofs on which it is founded. As well may one affirm or deny the “Q. E. D.” of the geometer, without reference to the problem or demonstration to which it is subjoined. When a discussion exists respecting “_an extension of the bounds of slavery_,” (and these were my words,) and I say that I would prefer certain enumerated evils rather than the extension in controversy, it surely becomes all-important to know whether that extension is to embrace the whole earth and to extend through all time, or whether it is only the addition of one atom or granule to existing slave territory, or of one respiration, or one heart-beat of an existing slave, on territory now free. I affirm, then, that a knowledge of the premises _is_ indispensable to a judgment on the conclusion.
But he accepts my explanation, and then appeals from me to what he is pleased to call, (and I thank him for the justice that prompted the well-deserved compliment,) my “intelligent, patriotic, and humane constituents,”--“with entire confidence that it will not meet their approval.” I gladly join in this appeal. As “_intelligent_” men, my constituents foresee that the extension of slavery over our territories will not only be an unspeakable crime in itself, but will be converted into the means of future unspeakable crimes in further extensions. As “_patriotic_” men, they prefer to bear any calamity that may come upon themselves, rather than to devolve accumulated calamities, growing out of their own dereliction from duty, upon their posterity. As “_humane_” men, they would deprecate and forefend that greatest of inhumanities, the dooming of increased thousands and millions of their fellow-men to the dreadful inheritance of bondage. And as religious men,--as men who “tremble when they reflect that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever,”--they mean to use all constitutional means to arrest the slave-creating and slave-extending policy of this government, let the two or three hundred thousand slaveholders among our twenty millions of people do what they will.
That the bearings of the subject may be rightly understood, it should be remembered that my speech was made on the 15th of February, after ten weeks of threatened disunion on certain specified and not improbable contingencies. “My conclusion,” therefore, was not _aggressive_, but _submissive_. I only declared which branch of their proffered alternative I should prefer.
The closing paragraph of the respected senator’s communication alludes to the _motives_ of those wide and painful differences which are made between the whites and the slaves in the _criminal_ legislation of the Southern States. Nothing could be more edifying, as to the demoralizing nature of slavery and its effects upon men, who, like the senator, are otherwise honorable and generous, than a comparison of the two codes of law and the two systems of jurisprudence which the rulers have respectively established for themselves and for their bondmen. The laws or customs known to civilized men and to barbarians are not more diverse. It would be rash and reckless in me to encounter the distinguished senator on any other subject; but on this I would say, as was said by a knight in an old tournament, that he had such confidence in the justness of his cause that he would give his adversary the advantage of sun and wind.
HORACE MANN.
WASHINGTON, April 1, 1850.
LETTERS
ON THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY INTO CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO; AND ON THE DUTY OF CONGRESS TO PROVIDE THE TRIAL BY JURY FOR ALLEGED FUGITIVE SLAVES.
HON. HORACE MANN;
Dear Sir,--Having learned that you are spending a few days at home, and approving the course you have pursued in Congress, in maintaining so ably the sentiments and convictions which we maintain and cherish on the great national questions of the day, we respectfully request you, before returning to Washington, to give your constituents an opportunity of hearing somewhat more at length than the hour rule would allow, your views and opinions upon the question of the immediate admission of California, and other questions now before Congress, arising out of the acquisition of territory by the treaty with Mexico.
Should you comply with our request, please name some day which will be convenient for you, that we may give seasonable notice through your district.
_Dedham._
JAMES RICHARDSON, I. CLEVELAND, JOHN GARDNER.
_Roxbury._
DAVID A. SIMMONS, G. R. RUSSELL, JOSEPH H. BILLINGS, L. M. SARGENT, JOHN J. CLARKE, JOS. N. BREWER, WM. A. CRAFTS, WM. CAPEN, FRANCIS HILLIARD, DANIEL JACKSON, J. B. KETTELL.
_Brookline._
CHARLES WILD, MARSHALL STEARNS, WM. DEARBORN, G. GRIGGS, DAVID WILDER, Jr., G. F. HOMER.
_Dorchester._
E. SHARPE, N. F. SAFFORD, J. G. NAZRO.
_Brighton_, J. BRECK. _Foxboro’_, A. HODGES. _Walpole_, A. BIGELOW. _Randolph_, J. WALES. _Quincy_, L. RICHARDS. _Franklin_, L. HARDING. _Stoughton_, J. SMITH. _Milton_, J. REED. _Cohasset_, GEO. BEAL.
_Newton._
E. C. DYER, R. E. PATTERSON, W. S. WHITWELL.
_Hingham._
C. W. CUSHING.
April 23d, 1850.