Part 2
The opinions already quoted from many of the wise men of the South go far to demonstrate that the gentleman from Mississippi is entirely mistaken. There is, however, another test by which we can try the accuracy of what the gentleman has said about the non-slaveholders of the South. The census report of 1850 shows this important fact: that of the white men in the slave States over twenty-one years of age, there is about one in every twelve that cannot read and write; while in the free States there is only one out of every forty-five. It must also be remembered, that a very large number of those in the free States who cannot read, came originally from the slave States. Take, for instance, Massachusetts, where there are but very few persons from the slave States, if any, and there is only one in seven hundred and seventy-eight that cannot read and write. Take Indiana and Illinois--States that have large populations from the slave States--Indiana, one in every fourteen cannot read; in Illinois, one in every twenty-one and a half; and if any one will take the trouble to examine, it will no doubt be found that this ignorance exists almost entirely where the population from the slave States largely predominates. I will venture the assertion, that there can scarcely be a man found in the State of Ohio, that was born there, who possesses intellect capable of cultivation, that cannot read; while a very large portion of those ignorant men in the slave States were "to the manor born."
It must also be borne in mind that, in making the estimate of the free States, the men that perform all the labor are included. In the slave States, the men who do nearly all the work are not included. I do not know that any great good can come of making these comparisons. But when the gentleman tells us that the non-slaveholders in his State are the most prosperous and the most elevated of mankind, the inquiry is at once presented to the mind, how elevated in the scale of existence can a man be who can neither read nor write?
I have shown that slavery was regarded as a political, moral, and social evil, by the founders of this Republic, and by able Southern statesmen within thirty years; that their anxious query has been, "what is to be done with it?" We are now asked to discredit those men, and give ear to a modern creed, that slavery is not only necessary, but beneficent--a divine ordinance--and that Southern non-slaveholders, even, are prosperous and elevated just in proportion to the number of slaves owned by their neighbors.
Not such, sir, were the "speculations" of the fathers of the Republic; nor is the world to be deceived by such assumptions. Decree and carry out what non-intercourse you will; surround yourselves with barriers as impassable as the Chinese wall, or the great gulf between Dives and Lazarus, still the evidences of your condition will exist on the imperishable pages of history, in the records left by the mighty and venerated dead; and the attempt to establish the belief that slavery is a universal blessing will be received but as an aggression upon the credulity of mankind.
Forty years ago, a slave Territory applied for admission to the Union as a State. The friends of freedom objected that its reception would be contrary to the policy of our Government. "Admit it," it was urged, "with its present Constitution, and we will consent to a line of demarkation, north of which slavery shall never pass." This was solemnly agreed to before the whole world; and this compact, forced upon the country by the slave power, was claimed by it as a great triumph of slavery. Men at the North felt that this was a great aggression, a great outrage upon freedom; yet, to give quiet and restore harmony, they submitted, consoled by the national pledge that slavery should be extended no further, and believing that the nation might joyously look forward to long years of happiness and repose. But despotism is ever restless and grasping; but twenty-five years rolled by--a very short period in the life of a nation--ere Texas was admitted to the Union, that slavery propagandists could have a wider field for their operations. As everybody foresaw, war ensued; and the best blood of the nation fattened the soil of Mexico. More than two hundred millions of treasure were expended, and many thousand valuable lives sacrificed. All over this land, "the sky was hung with blackness;" "mourning was spread over the mountain tops." Territory enough was obtained to make four large States, well adapted to the productive labor of human chattels, and this territory was blackened over with slavery. Such a triumph ought to have satisfied the most grasping of the friends of this "peculiar institution;" but the world should have known that nothing short of universal dominion would satisfy the slave owner and slave breeder. Less than ten years after the annexation of Texas, it was discovered by Southern men that there was a Territory west of Missouri, wherein the peculiar institution of the South could be made profitable; but by a solemn league and covenant this land had been, for more than a third of a century, consecrated to freedom. This bond of national faith, this pledge of national honor, stood in the road of their ambition.
But men whose lives are but a series violations of the dearest rights that God has bestowed on man cannot be expected to be bound by pledges of national faith and national honor. This time-honored compact was annulled, the barrier between freedom and slavery broken down. The whole country was astounded at the perfidy of the act.
But the climax was not reached. The Territory was overrun with desperadoes; ruffians from adjoining States usurped the rights of actual settlers, stuffed ballot-boxes with illegal votes, and elected members of their own lawless bands to the Legislature, to enact laws by which every friend of freedom might be driven from the country.
Innocent and unoffending men were murdered in cold blood, houses were consumed with fire, hamlets laid in smoking ruins, homeless and houseless innocents, women and tender children, were driven forth, exposed to the winds and storms of heaven.
All these wrongs, all these outrages, all these crimes of blood and deeds of horror, were committed to plant the accursed institution on the soil that had been, by a great national act, dedicated to freedom. But violence and arson, bloodshed and murder, failed. The black banner of slavery is trailing in the dust. The stars and stripes wave triumphantly over a free and joyous people. The heretofore invincible is conquered. I have borrowed the word "aggression" to express the conduct of the South toward the North. I do not intend to make the charge without the specifications.
1. I charge upon slavery, that the enforcement of the Missouri compromise was an aggression upon the North.
2. I charge the annexation of Texas, whereby the Mexican war was brought upon the country, more than two hundred millions of money were spent, and many thousand lives sacrificed, as an aggression.
3. I charge that the adoption of the fugitive slave law, with many of its odious and obnoxious provisions, was an aggression upon the people of the North.
4. I charge that the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case was an aggression upon the North. It was a decision made for the benefit of slavery, and to deprive the people of the free States of their equal rights in the Territories.
5. I charge that the repeal of the Missouri compromise line was an outrageous aggression upon the rights of the North; disreputable to the nation, and dishonorable to the party engaged in it; one that has brought in its train innumerable woes, and created an excitement that will not be allayed during the present generation.
6. I charge that the murders, robberies, and arsons, in Kansas, were aggressions of slavery.
All these things I have charged as aggressions of slavery are national aggressions, for which the slavery party, having control of the administration of this Government, are responsible. I charge them as direct, positive aggressions, on the rights of the free people of the North. In addition to these great national aggressions, there are numerous similar infringements upon the rights of individuals of the North--of tarring and feathering, of whipping--acts of such barbarity and cruelty, that it would chill a man's blood to hear them recited.
Recently, a whole community of moral, peaceable citizens were driven from their homes, compelled to abandon their property, and seek refuge in a free State, from the violence of slaveholders. There are, no doubt, many good and humane men in slave States, who deprecate these wrongs; but they dare not utter a word--every mouth must be stopped, every lip must be sealed, every voice must be hushed, all must be silent as the grave--the most inexorable despotism reigns supreme.
Having endeavored to show what slavery was, and what it has done, I now propose to show what it intends to do. Its advocates claim that the territory now belonging to the Government is the common property of all the States, having been acquired by the common blood and treasure of all; that, therefore, the inhabitants of the slave States have a right to emigrate to the Territories, and take with them their slaves. I am willing to admit that the inhabitants of one section of the country have just the same rights in the Territories that the inhabitants of another section have. I say it would be an act of injustice to deny one man any right in the Territory that another man has, and would be just cause of complaint. But I am not willing to give to a man from a slave State any greater rights than to a man from a free State. And when I have admitted that all have the same constitutional rights in the Territories, I have by no means admitted that men from the South have a right to hold slaves in the Territories. You may go, and take your slaves with you, if you have a mind to run the risk; I say you shall not take your slave laws with you.
I say that slavery is but the creation of some local enactment, and that no property can exist in a human being, unless it is made so by some law. This opinion was entertained by the founders of this Republic, and by nearly every statesman in this country, until very recently. We hear much said about the constitutional rights of the South; it is thundered in our ears from the beginning to the end of the session of Congress. What is meant by this stereotyped expression, I do not exactly comprehend; and, I presume, many who make use of the phrase do not understand it. If you mean by this that the Constitution of the United States gives you the right to go into the Territories belonging to the people of this country, and take with you not only your human chattels, but also your bloody slave laws, I say, you have no such constitutional rights. The Constitution of the United States nowhere recognises slaves as property. The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that slaves are not property under the Constitution. The Constitution gives you the right to reclaim your slaves, if they escape into any other State; this is all the right it gives you, and all there is in the Constitution that can by any possibility be construed to apply to slaves. To contend that there is any power given in the Constitution which enables the slaveholder to take his slaves with him into a Territory, and not only his slaves, but his slave laws, and the slave laws of all the slave States, is an assumption of power that I am not willing to concede to him. It is claimed that if persons from the slave States are not permitted to go into the Territories, and take with them their slaves and slave laws, the rights of the slave States are violated. This cannot be. If you claim to take into the Territories the laws of the slave States, and not only the laws, but the Constitution of a slave State, I claim, also, that I will take the Constitution of my State, which says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude; and if you do not permit this, the rights of my State are violated, if your doctrine be true.
The emigrants from every State in the Union, under the power claimed by the slavery propagandists, would have a right to take with them all the constitutions and all the laws of all the States. The confusion which would follow would be worse than at the Tower of Babel. If a citizen of any slave State leaves it, and goes into a free State or Territory to reside, he takes with him none of the rights or powers with which his State clothed him while he remained therein. He can take with him such articles as, by the universal consent of mankind, are considered property, and exercise ownership over them. When at home, I am a legal voter; I can vote for any State or county officer, or President of the United States. But if I cross the river, a distance of eighty rods, or go out of my election district, or in any other direction, I have no such privilege. The right of suffrage, which is the highest right that ever can be exercised by a citizen, is controlled by the laws and Constitution of each particular State. In the State of Ohio, a man need not be a property holder to entitle him to the right of suffrage; if he remove into a State where he must have a property qualification before he can vote, are the rights of the State he left violated? I presume no one will contend that they are. A man may have some power in the State of Virginia, given by its Legislature--the right to issue paper money, for instance; but if he remove to Ohio, he has not this right. No man would pretend to claim that any of the rights of Virginia are infringed.
Yet the man who would make this claim, would be just as reasonable as he who should claim that the rights of Virginia are invaded because her slaveholders are not permitted to take slaves into Kansas or Nebraska.
I understand those Southern men, who talk so much about Southern rights, claim not only the right to take slaves into the Territories, but they claim the right to take slave laws and the habits and customs which are practiced in the slave States. They claim to take laws by which four million negroes are reduced to the condition of brutes. Six million white men, women, and children, who have to obtain their living by labor, are condemned to perpetual degradation and ignorance, by which three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders can govern and control the destinies of the millions of people in the slave States; and not only of those people, but of this great country of ours. They not only claim the right to take their negroes into the Territories, but they claim to take laws there that will deny to every man the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press. They claim the right to seal every man's lips, and stop every man's mouth, on questions of great national interest. They claim to take with them the right to condemn as a felon the man who may utter and maintain the Declaration of Independence, or the opinions of the conscript fathers of the Republic. They claim to take with them the right to condemn as a felon the man who dares proclaim the precepts of our holy religion. They claim to take with them the right to strip naked and cut into gashes the back of the man who utters opinions that do not exactly "square and corner" with the interests of the aristocratic slaveholders.
A negro population is one by no means desirable, but a free white man could live where there are negroes, and maintain his freedom; but no white non-slaveholder can live where slave laws, customs, and habits, pertain, and retain the rights that belong to free men in free States.
A man may live in the swamps of the torrid zone, and escape the crocodiles, alligators, and other slimy and creeping things, but he cannot escape the miasma and poison of the atmosphere.
If the slaveholder is permitted to go into the Territories, and take his slave laws, habits, and customs, the people of the free States are to a great extent excluded therefrom, and deprived of all rights therein.
But slaveholders say they will go; they will take their slaves, and their slave code; they will establish there such a despotism as reigns in some of the slave States; they will poison the air that surrounds the fertile plains of the West, until freedom shall sicken and die; and we are constantly told, that if we do not yield to their unreasonable demands, this Union shall be dissolved.
But these threats do not move or alarm me, and for the best of all possible reasons; I do not believe that the gentlemen who make these threats intend to leave their places on this floor--nor, if they should, would the country suffer any loss. The section they represent would still remain under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and our glorious flag would still wave over its fertile plains and lofty mountains, its woody dells and shelving rocks, its gurgling fountains and rippling rills. Good, loyal, and patriotic men would come here to fill the vacant places, ready and able to discharge their duty to the country, and to the whole country.
Notwithstanding these threats of disunion from the Democratic party, we hear much holy horror expressed in regard to a sectional party, and much laudation of a national, conservative party. The nationality of the Democratic party consists in devoting all the energies and power of the Federal Government to advancing the interests, aims, and ends, of about one hundred thousand men. Its conservatism consists in its avowed determination to dissolve the Union, should a majority of our people, in the exercise of their legal and constitutional rights, elect a President not acceptable to that party.
There are, I presume, not more than one hundred thousand men in this country who feel any desire to extend the boundaries of slavery, or who would, had they the power, add one other slave State to the Union. Yet the whole power of this Government is devoted to that one object; its entire strength concentrated in one spasmodic effort to extend slavery. The agricultural, the manufacturing, the great commercial interests of this country, are entirely ignored, neglected, and forgotten, that the interests of one hundred thousand slaveholders may be advanced. The great pursuits by which twenty-five million people live, are not considered worthy the attention of this Democratic party; while one hundred thousand aristocrats require its entire services. Yet this is the great national party! While so determined upon rule is it, that if a majority of the people should decide against it, and discharge its members from places of trust and honor, they threaten to destroy this Government. Such is the conservative party commended to our most favorable consideration.
The slavery party is constantly complaining that the free States enact personal-liberty laws, and that they do not fulfil their constitutional obligations. Whatever acts may be passed by our Legislatures, so that they do not interfere with the Constitution of the United States, you have no right to complain. But if you think that Constitution violated, you have your remedy. Send your attorneys into the free States; commence your suits in the Federal courts, and try the validity of our statutes. We pledge ourselves that your agents shall be kindly treated, and shall have a fair hearing. We will not follow your example; we will not pass laws in plain and palpable violation of your rights, and in palpable violation of the Constitution, and then drive out, by threats or violence, any man who may come into the State to test the validity of such enactments.
Before you complain of us, go home and seize and hang the pirates who are hovering around your shores, engaged in the slave trade. You may say a jury will not convict them. Why not? Because the community sustains them in their unholy traffic and in their violation of the laws. But if you really desired to punish those men, you could easily devise the ways and means--a whipping on the bare back with a raw-hide, a coat of tar and feathers, or some other corrective that you are in the habit of using. I would not advise these punishments; in a free State they would not be practicable; but in States where such things are in constant use, it is rather surprising that some person has not thought of thus applying them. Men who commit acts declared by the whole civilized world to be piracy, you permit to escape, while you say you will hang the man who circulates Helper's book. Before you complain of the free States, arrest and punish the scoundrels who so cruelly treated the Irishman at Columbia, South Carolina, for no offence but saying that slavery was detrimental to free labor.
Take from place and power the men whose hands and faces are reeking and smoking with the blood of our people in Kansas, and put them to death. Punish the thousands of others who have committed acts of violence against free-State men, and are yet unwhipped of justice. These things you must do, before you complain of us. I take no pleasure in these criminations and recriminations. I know that all the States are a part of my country; but when I hear of the wrongs and outrages perpetrated on men merely because they will not subscribe to the doctrines you hold, and hear you complain of us for not doing our duty as citizens, I will let you know that you, too, "are made of penetrable stuff." I have
"Learned to deride your fierce decree, And break you on the wheel you meant for me."
I do not mean to interfere with any man's legal or constitutional rights. The people of the slave States have the right to continue slavery there if they desire so to do. I have no right to interfere with it. But I intend to maintain my own rights.
To draw an impassable line around slavery, and confine it within its present limits; an absolute abolition of the African slave trade; the Territories to be kept free for homes for free men--these measures I regard as absolutely essential to the perpetuation of this Government, and to the highest development of the Anglo-Saxon race. I have endeavored to show what slavery is, what it has done, and what it intends to do. I have also endeavored to show what are the aims and objects of the Republican party; and if they cannot be tolerated--if such principles cannot be sustained by the people of any section of this country--it is the misfortune of that people. They are the principles that ought to be sustained by all people that are fitted for civil liberty; they are the principles on which this Government was founded; they were baptized in the best blood of this nation; they were cherished by the greatest names that adorn the brightest pages of the history of our country during its patriotic and virtuous and heroic age. They were emblazoned on every banner that waved over our army in every battle-field of the Revolution; during the storm and darkness, they were the bright "signet on the bosom of the cloud," the rainbow of promise and of hope.
_Published by the Republican Congressional Committee. Price 50 cents per hundred._
Transcriber's Note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained. Significant amendments to the original text have been listed below:
p. 2, 'Newbern' amended to _New Bern_; '... meeting in New Bern, North Carolina ...'
p. 6, 'Scot' amended to _Scott_; '... in the Dred Scott case ...'