Chapter 18

ANSWER. But at present it is necessary to swear to support it _as it is_. What the Constitution may become, a century hence, we know not; we speak of it _as it is_, and repudiate it _as it is_. How long may one promise to do evil, in hope some time or other to get the power to do good? We will not brand the Constitution of the United States as pro-slavery, after--it had ceased to be so! This objection reminds me of Miss Martineau's story of the little boy, who hurt himself, and sat crying on the sidewalk. "Don't cry!" said a friend, "it won't hurt you tomorrow."--"Well then," said the child, "I won't cry tomorrow."

We come then, it seems to me, back to our original conclusion: that the man who swears to support the Constitution, swears to support the whole of it, pro-slavery clauses and all,--that he swears to support it _as it is_, not as it hereafter may become,--that he swears to support it in the sense given to it by the Courts and the Nation, not as he chooses to understand it,--and that the Courts and the Nation expect such an one in office to do his share toward the suppression of slave, as well as other, insurrections, and to aid the return of fugitive slaves. After an _abolitionist_ has taken such an oath, or by his vote sent another to take it for him, I do not see how he can look his own principles in the face.

Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou lie?

We who call upon the slaveholder to do right, no matter what the consequences or the cost, are certainly bound to look well to our own example. At least we can hardly expect to win the master to do justice by _setting him an example of perjury_. It is almost an insult in an abolitionist, while not willing to sacrifice even a petty ballot for his principles, to demand of the slaveholder that he give up wealth, home, old prejudices and social position at their call.

EXTRACTS FROM J.Q. ADAMS.

The benefits of the Constitution of the United States, were the restoration of credit and reputation, to the country--the revival of commerce, navigation, and ship building--the acquisition of the means of discharging the debts of the Revolution, and the protection and encouragement of the infant and drooping manufactures of the country. All this, however, as is now well ascertained, was insufficient to propitiate the rulers of the Southern States to the adoption of the Constitution. What they specially wanted was _protection_. Protection from the powerful and savage tribes of Indians within their borders, and who were harassing them with the most terrible of wars--and protection from their own negroes--protection from their insurrections--protection from their escape--protection even to the trade by which they were brought into this country--protection, shall I not blush to say, protection to the very bondage by which they were held. Yes! it cannot be denied--the slaveholding lords of the South prescribed, as a condition of their assent to the Constitution, three special provisions to secure the perpetuity of their dominion over their slaves. The first was the immunity for twenty years of preserving the African slave-trade; the second was the stipulation to surrender fugitive slaves--an engagement positively prohibited by the laws of God, delivered from Sinai; and thirdly, the exaction, fatal to the principles of popular representation, of a representation for slaves--for articles of merchandise, under the name of persons.

In outward show, it is a representation of persons in bondage; in fact, it is a representation of their masters,--the oppressor representing the oppressed.--Is it in the compass of human imagination to devise a more perfect exemplification of the art of committing the lamb to the tender custody of the wolf?--The representative is thus constituted, not the friend, agent and trustee of the person whom he represents, but the most inveterate of his foes. To call government thus constituted a democracy, is to insult the understanding of mankind. It is doubly tainted with the infection of riches and of slavery. _There is no name in the language of national jurisprudence that can define it_--no model in the records of ancient history, or in the political theories of Aristotle, with which it can be likened. Here is one class of men, consisting of not more than one-fortieth part of the whole people, not more than one-thirtieth part of the free population, exclusively devoted to their personal interests identified with their own as slaveholders of the same associated wealth, and wielding by their votes, upon every question of government or of public policy, two-fifths of the whole power of the House. In the Senate of the Union, the proportion of the slaveholding power is yet greater. Its operation upon the government of the nation is, to establish an artificial majority in the slave representation over that of the free people, in the American Congress, and thereby to make the PRESERVATION, PROPAGATION, AND PERPETUATION OF SLAVERY THE VITAL AND ANIMATING SPIRIT OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.--The result is seen in the fact that, at this day, the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and five out of nine of the Judges of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the United States, are not only citizens of slaveholding States, but individual slaveholders themselves. So are, and constantly have been, with scarcely an exception, all the members of both Houses of Congress from the slaveholding States; and so are, in immensely disproportionate numbers, the commanding officers of the army and navy; the officers of the customs; the registers and receivers of the land offices, and the post-masters throughout the slaveholding States.

Fellow-citizens,--with a body of men thus composed, for legislators and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been your legislation? The numbers of freemen constituting your nation are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free. You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union. Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the Government ought to be in the proportion of three to two. But how stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers, here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a representation, nominally of persons, but really of property, ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of supplementary power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the compact, CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AND HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.

In the Articles of Confederation, there was no guaranty for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation could purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Constitution of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert the first principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority shall rule the land. By means of the double representation, the minority command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW AND PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY.

THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.

ADDRESS TO THE FRIENDS OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY, ON THE VIOLATION BY THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE RIGHT OF PETITION AT THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, NO. 143 NASSAU STREET.

1840.

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ADDRESS.

TO THE FRIENDS OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY:--

There was a time, fellow citizens, when the above address would have included the PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. But, alas! the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the right of petition, are now hated and dreaded by our Southern citizens, as hostile to the perpetuity of human bondage; while, by their political influence in the Federal Government, they have induced numbers at the North to unite with them in their sacrilegious crusade against these inestimable privileges.

On the 28th January last, the House of Representatives, on motion of Mr. Johnson, from Maryland, made it a standing RULE of the House that "no petition, memorial, resolution, or other paper, praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or any State or Territory of the United States, in which it now exists, SHALL BE RECEIVED BY THE HOUSE, OR ENTERTAINED IN ANY WAY WHATEVER."

Thus has the RIGHT OF PETITION been immolated in the very Temple of Liberty, and offered up, a propitiatory sacrifice to the demon of slavery. Never before has an outrage so unblushingly profligate been perpetrated upon the Federal Constitution. Yet, while we mourn the degeneracy which this transaction evinces, we behold, in its attending circumstances, joyful omens of the triumph which awaits our struggle with the hateful power that now perverts the General Government into an engine of cruelty and loathsome oppression.

Before we congratulate you on these omens, let us recall to your recollection the steps by which the enemies of human rights have advanced to their present rash and insolent defiance of moral and constitutional obligation.

In 1831, a newspaper was established in Boston, for the purpose of disseminating facts and arguments in favor of the duty and policy of immediate emancipation. The Legislature of Georgia, with all the recklessness of despotism, passed a law, offering a reward of $5000, for the abduction of the Editor, and his delivery in Georgia. As there was no law, by which a citizen of Massachusetts could be tried in Georgia, for expressing his opinions in the capital of his own State, this reward was intended as the price of BLOOD. Do you start at the suggestion? Remember the several sums of $25,000, of $50,000, and of $100,000, offered in Southern papers for kidnapping certain abolitionists. Remember the horrible inflictions by Southern Lynch clubs. Remember the declaration, in the United States Senate, by the brazen-fronted Preston, that, should an abolitionist be caught in Carolina, he would be HANGED. But, as the Slaveholders could not destroy the lives of the Abolitionists, they determined to murder their characters. Hence, the President of the United States was induced, in his Message of 1835, to Congress, to charge them with plotting the massacre of the Southern planters; and even to stultify himself, by affirming that, for this purpose, they were engaged in sending, by _mail_, inflammatory appeals to the _slaves_--sending papers to men who could not read them, and by a conveyance through which they could not receive them! He well knew that the papers alluded to were appeals on the immorality of converting men, women, and children, into beasts of burden, and were sent to the masters, for _their_ consideration. The masters in Charleston, dreading the moral influence of these appeals on the conscience of the slaveholding community, forced the Post Office, and made a bonfire of the papers. The Post Master General, with the sanction of the President, also hastened to their relief, and, in violation of oaths, and laws, and the constitution, established ten thousand censors of the press, each one of whom was authorized to abstract from the mail every paper which _he_ might think too favorable to the rights of man.

For more than twenty years, petitions have been presented to Congress, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The right to present them, and the power of Congress to grant their prayer, were, until recently, unquestioned. But the rapid multiplication of these petitions alarmed the slaveholders, and, knowing that they tended to keep alive at the North, an interest in the slave, they deemed it good policy to discourage and, if possible, suppress all such applications. Hence Mr. Pinckney's famous resolution, in 1836, declaring, "that all petitions, or papers, relating _in any way, or to any extent_ whatever to the _subject of slavery_, shall, without being printed or referred, be laid on the table; and no further action, whatever shall be had thereon!"

The peculiar atrocity of this resolution was, that it not merely trampled upon the rights of the petitioners, but took from each member of the House his undoubted privilege, as a legislator of the District, to introduce any proposition he might think proper, for the protection of the slaves. In every Slave State there are laws affording, at least, some nominal protection to these unhappy beings; but, according to this resolution, slaves might be flayed alive in the streets of Washington, and no representative of the people could offer even a resolution for inquiry. And this vile outrage upon constitutional liberty was avowedly perpetrated "to repress agitation, to allay excitement, and re-establish harmony and tranquillity among the various sections of the Union!!"

But this strange opiate did not produce the stupefying effects anticipated from it. In 1836, the petitioners were only 37,000--the next session they numbered 110,000. Mr. Hawes, of Ky., now essayed to restore tranquillity, by gagging the uneasy multitude; but, alas! at the next Congress, more than 300,000 petitioners carried new terror to the hearts of the slaveholders. The next anodyne was prescribed by Mr. Patton, of Va., but its effect was to rouse from their stupor some of the Northern Legislatures, and to induce them to denounce his remedy as "a usurpation of power, a violation of the Constitution, subversive of the fundamental principles of the government, and at war with the prerogatives of the people."[105] It was now supposed that the people most be drugged by a _northern_ man, and _Atherton_ was found a fit instrument for this vile purpose; but the dose proved only the more nauseous and exciting from the foul hands by which it was administered.

[Footnote 105: Resolutions of Massachusetts and Connecticut, April and May, 1838.]

In these various outrages, although all action on the petitions was prohibited, the papers themselves were received and laid on the table, and _therefore_ it was contended, that the right of petition had been preserved inviolate. But the slaveholders, maddened by the failure of all their devices, and fearing the influence which the mere sight of thousands and tens of thousands of petitions in behalf of liberty, would exert, and, taking advantage of the approaching presidential election to operate upon the selfishness of some northern members, have succeeded in crushing the right of petition itself.

That you may be the more sensible, fellow citizens, of the exceeding profligacy of the late RULE and of its palpable violation of both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution, which those who voted for it had sworn to support, suffer us to recall to your recollection a few historical facts.

The framers of the Federal Constitution supposed the right of petition too firmly established in the habits and affections of the people, to need a constitutional guarantee. Their omission to notice it, roused the jealousy of some of the State conventions, called to pass upon the constitution. The _Virginia_ convention proposed, as an amendment, "that every _freeman_ has a right to petition, or apply to the Legislature, for a redress of grievances." And this amendment, with others, was ordered to be forwarded to the different States, for their consideration. The Conventions of North Carolina, New York, and Rhode Island, were held subsequently, and, of course, had before them the Virginia amendment. The North Carolina Convention adopted a declaration of rights, embracing the very words of the proposed amendment; and this declaration was ordered to be submitted to Congress, before that State would enter the Union. The Conventions of New York and of Rhode Island incorporated in their _certificates of ratification_, the assertion that "Every _person_ has a right to petition or apply to the legislature for a redress of grievances"--using the Virginia phraseology, merely substituting the word _person_ for _freeman_, thus claiming the right of petition even for slaves; while Virginia and North Carolina confined it to freemen.

The first Congress, assembled under the Constitution, gave effect to the wishes thus emphatically expressed, by proposing, as an amendment, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or _abridging_ the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and _to petition Government_ for a redress of grievances." This amendment was duly ratified by the States, and when members of Congress swear to support the Constitution of the United States, they are as much bound by their oath to refrain from abridging the right of petition, as they are to fulfil any other constitutional obligation. And will the slaveholders and their abettors, dare to maintain that they have not foresworn themselves, because they have abridged the right of the people to petition for a redress of grievances, by a RULE of the House, and not by a _law_? If so, they may by a RULE require every member, on taking his seat, to subscribe the creed of a particular church, and then call their Maker to witness that they are guiltless of making a _law_ "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The right to petition is one thing, and the disposition of a petition after it is received, is another. But the new rule makes no disposition of the petitions; it PROHIBITS THEIR RECEPTION; they may not be brought into the legislative chamber. Hundreds of thousands of the people are debarred all access to their representatives, for the purpose of offering them a prayer.

It is said that the manifold abominations perpetrated in the District are no grievances to the petitioners, and _therefore_ they have no right to ask for their removal. But the right guaranteed by the Constitution, is a right to ask for the redress of _grievances_, whether personal, social, or moral. And who, except a slaveholder, will dare to contend that it is no grievance that our agents, our representatives, our servants, in our name and by our authority, enact laws erecting and licensing markets in the Capital of the Republic, for the sale of human beings, and converting free men into slaves, for no other crime, than that of being too poor to pay United States' officers the JAIL FEES accruing from an iniquitous imprisonment?

Again, it is pretended that the objects prayed for, are palpably unconstitutional, and that _therefore_ the petitions ought not to be received. And by what authority are the people deprived of their right to petition for any object which a majority of either House of Congress, for the time being, may please to regard as unconstitutional? If this usurpation be submitted to, it will not be confined to abolition petitions. It is well known that most of the slaveholders _now_ insist, that all protecting duties are unconstitutional, and that on account of the tariff the Union was nearly rent by the very men who are now horrified by the danger to which it is exposed by these _petitions_! Should our Northern Manufacturers again presume to ask Congress to protect them from foreign competition, the Southern members will find a precedent, sanctioned by Northern votes, for a rule that "no petition, memorial, resolution, or other paper, praying for the IMPOSITION OF DUTIES FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MANUFACTURES, shall be received by the House, or entertained in any way whatever."

It does indeed, require Southern arrogance, to maintain that, although Congress is invested by the Constitution with "exclusive jurisdiction, in all cases whatsoever," over the District of Columbia, yet that it would be so palpably unconstitutional to abolish the slave-trade, and to emancipate the slaves in the District, that petitions for these objects ought not to be received. Yet this is asserted in that very House, on whose minutes is recorded a resolution, in 1816, appointing a committee, with power to send for persons and papers, "to inquire into the existence of an inhuman and illegal traffic in slaves, carried on, in and through the District of Columbia, and report whether any, and what means are necessary for putting a stop to the same:" and another, in 1829, instructing the Committee on the District of Columbia to inquire into the expediency of providing by law, "for the gradual abolition of slavery in the District."

In the very first Congress assembled under the Federal Constitution, petitions were presented, asking its interposition for the mitigation of the evils, and final abolition of the African slave-trade, and also praying it, as far as it possessed the power, to take measures for the abolition of slavery. These petitions excited the wrath and indignation of many of the slave-holding members, yet no one thought of refusing to receive them. They were referred to a select committee, at the instance of Mr. Madison, himself, who "entered into a critical review of the circumstances respecting the adoption of the Constitution, and the ideas upon the limitation of the powers of Congress to interfere in the regulation of the commerce of slaves, and showed that they undoubtedly were not precluded from interposing in their importation; and generally to regulate the mode in which every species of business shall be transacted. He adverted to the western country, and the Cession of Georgia, in which Congress have certainly the power to _regulate the subject of slavery_; which shows that gentlemen are mistaken in supposing, that Congress cannot constitutionally interfere in the business, in any degree, whatever. He was in favor of committing the petition, and justified the measure by repeated precedents in the proceedings of the House."--_U.S. Gazette, 17th Feb._, 1790.

Here we find one of the earliest and ablest expounders of the Constitution, maintaining the power of Congress to "regulate the subject of slavery" in the national territories, and urging the reference of abolition petitions to a special committee.

The committee made a report; for which, after a long debate, was substituted a declaration, by the House, that Congress could not abolish the slave trade prior to the year 1808, but had a right so to regulate it as to provide for the humane treatment of the slaves on the passage; and that Congress could not interfere in the emancipation or treatment of slaves in the _States_.

This declaration gave entire satisfaction, and no farther abolition petitions were presented, till after the District of Columbia had been placed under the "exclusive jurisdiction" of the General Government.

You all remember, fellow citizens, the wide-spread excitement which a few years since prevailed on the subject of SUNDAY MAILS. Instead of attempting to quiet the agitation, by outraging the rights of the petitioners, Congress referred the petitions to a committee, and made no attempt to stifle discussion.