Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

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.