LIMITATION OF PUBLIC LAND SALES. SUSPENSION OF SURVEYS. ABOLITION
OF THE OFFICE OF SURVEYOR GENERAL. ORIGIN OF THE UNITED STATES
LAND SYSTEM. AUTHORSHIP OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY ORDINANCE OF 1778.
SLAVERY CONTROVERSY. PROTECTIVE TARIFF. INCEPTION OF THE DOCTRINE OF
NULLIFICATION.
At the commencement of the session 1829-'30, Mr. Foot, of
Connecticut, submitted in the Senate a resolution of inquiry which
excited much feeling among the western members of that body. It
was a proposition to inquire into the expediency of limiting the
sales of the public lands to those then in market--to suspend the
surveys of the public lands--and to abolish the office of Surveyor
General. The effect of such a resolution, if sanctioned upon
inquiry and carried into legislative effect, would have been to
check emigration to the new States in the West--to check the growth
and settlement of these States and territories--and to deliver up
large portions of them to the dominion of wild beasts. In that sense
it was immediately taken up by myself, and other western members,
and treated as an injurious proposition--insulting as well as
injurious--and not fit to be considered by a committee, much less to
be reported upon and adopted. I opened the debate against it in a
speech, of which the following is an extract:
"Mr. Benton disclaimed all intention of having anything to do
with the motives of the mover of the resolution: he took it
according to its effect and operation, and conceiving this to
be eminently injurious to the rights and interests of the new
States and Territories, he should justify the view which he had
taken, and the vote he intended to give, by an exposition of
facts and reasons which would show the disastrous nature of the
practical effects of this resolution.
"On the first branch of these effects--checking emigration to
the West--it is clear, that, if the sales are limited to the
lands now in market, emigration will cease to flow; for these
lands are not of a character to attract people at a distance.
In Missouri they are the refuse of forty years picking under
the Spanish Government, and twenty more under the Government
of the United States. The character and value of this refuse
had been shown, officially, in the reports of the Registers and
Receivers, made in obedience to a call from the Senate. Other
gentlemen would show what was said of it in their respective
States; he would confine himself to his own, to the State of
Missouri, and show it to be miserable indeed. The St. Louis
District, containing two and a quarter millions of acres, was
estimated at an average value of fifteen cents per acre; the
Cape Girardeau District, containing four and a half millions
of acres, was estimated at twelve and a half cents per acre;
the Western District, containing one million and three quarters
of acres, was estimated at sixty-two and a half cents; from
the other two districts there was no intelligent or pertinent
return; but assuming them to be equal to the Western District,
and the average value of the lands they contain would be only
one half the amount of the present minimum price. This being the
state of the lands in Missouri which would be subject to sale
under the operation of this resolution, no emigrants would be
attracted to them. Persons who remove to new countries want new
lands, first choices; and if they cannot get these, they have no
sufficient inducement to move.
"The second ill effect to result from this resolution, supposing
it to ripen into the measures which it implies to be necessary
would be in limiting the settlements in the new States and
Territories. This limitation of settlement would be the
inevitable effect of confining the sales to the lands now in
market. These lands in Missouri, only amount to one third of
the State. By consequence, only one third could be settled.
Two thirds of the State would remain without inhabitants; the
resolution says, for 'a certain period,' and the gentlemen, in
their speeches, expound this certain period to be seventy-two
years. They say seventy-two millions of acres are now in market;
that we sell but one million a year; therefore, we have enough
to supply the demand for seventy-two years. It does not enter
their heads to consider that, if the price was adapted to the
value, all this seventy-two millions that is fit for cultivation
would be sold immediately. They must go on at a million a year
for seventy-two years, the Scripture term of the life of man--a
long period in the age of a nation; the exact period of the
Babylonish captivity--a long and sorrowful period in the history
of the Jews; and not less long nor less sorrowful in the history
of the West, if this resolution should take effect.
"The third point of objection is, that it would deliver up large
portions of new States and Territories to the dominion of wild
beasts. In Missouri, this surrender would be equal to two-thirds
of the State, comprising about forty thousand square miles,
covering the whole valley of the Osage River, besides many other
parts, and approaching within a dozen miles of the centre and
capital of the State. All this would be delivered up to wild
beasts: for the Indian title is extinguished, and the Indians
gone; the white people would be excluded from it; beasts alone
would take it; and all this in violation of the Divine command
to replenish the earth, to increase and multiply upon it, and
to have dominion over the beasts of the forest, the birds of
the air, the fish in the waters, and the creeping things of the
earth.
"The fourth point of objection is, in the removal of the land
records--the natural effect of abolishing all the offices of
the Surveyors General. These offices are five in number. It is
proposed to abolish them all, and the reason assigned in debate
is, that they are sinecures; that is to say, offices which
have revenues and no employment. This is the description of a
sinecure. We have one of these offices in Missouri, and I know
something of it. The Surveyor General, Colonel McRee, in point
of fidelity to his trust, belongs to the school of Nathaniel
Macon; in point of science and intelligence, he belongs to the
first order of men that Europe or America contains. He and his
clerks carry labor and drudgery to the ultimate point of human
exertion, and still fall short of the task before them; and this
is an office which it is proposed to abolish under the notion of
a sinecure, as an office with revenues, and without employment.
The abolition of these offices would involve the necessity of
removing all their records, and thus depriving the country of
all the evidences of the foundations of all the land titles.
This would be sweeping work; but the gentleman's plan would be
incomplete without including the General Land Office in this
city, the principal business of which is to superintend the five
Surveyor General's offices, and for which there could be but
little use after they were abolished.
"These are the practical effects of the resolution. Emigration
to the new States checked their settlement limited; a large
portion of their surface delivered up to the dominion of
beasts; the land records removed. Such are the injuries to be
inflicted upon the new States, and we, the senators from those
States, are called upon to vote in favor of the resolution which
proposes to inquire into the expediency of committing all these
enormities! I, for one, will not do it. I will vote for no such
inquiry. I would as soon vote for inquiries into the expediency
of conflagrating cities, of devastating provinces, and of
submerging fruitful lands under the waves of the ocean.
"I take my stand upon a great moral principle, that it is never
right to inquire into the expediency of doing wrong.
"The proposed inquiry is to do wrong; to inflict unmixed,
unmitigated evil upon the new States and Territories. Such
inquiries are not to be tolerated. Courts of law will not
sustain actions which have immoral foundations; legislative
bodies should not sustain inquiries which have iniquitous
conclusions. Courts of law make it an object to give public
satisfaction in the administration of justice; legislative
bodies should consult the public tranquillity in the
prosecution of their measures. They should not alarm and
agitate the country; yet, this inquiry, if it goes on, will
give the greatest dissatisfaction to the new States in the
West and South. It will alarm and agitate them, and ought to
do it. It will connect itself with other inquiries going on
elsewhere--in the other end of this building--in the House of
Representatives--to make the new States a source of revenue
to the old ones, to deliver them up to a new set of masters,
to throw them as grapes into the wine press, to be trod and
squeezed as long as one drop of juice could be pressed from
their hulls. These measures will go together; and if that
resolution passes, and this one passes, the transition will
be easy and natural, from dividing the money after the lands
are sold, to divide the lands before they are sold, and then
to renting the land and drawing an annual income, instead of
selling it for a price in hand. The signs are portentous; the
crisis is alarming; it is time for the new States to wake up to
their danger, and to prepare for a struggle which carries ruin
and disgrace to them, if the issue is against them."
The debate spread, and took an acrimonious turn, and sectional,
imputing to the quarter of the Union from which it came an old,
and early policy to check the growth of the West at the outset
by proposing to limit the sale of the western lands to a "clean
riddance" as they went--selling no tract in advance until all in the
rear was sold out. It so happened that the first ordinance reported
for the sale and survey of western lands in the Congress of the
Confederation, (1785,) contained a provision to this effect; and
came from a committee strongly Northern--two to one, eight against
four: and was struck out in the House on the motion of southern
members, supported by the whole power of the South. I gave this
account of the circumstance:
"The ordinance reported by the committee, contained the plan
of surveying the public lands, which has since been followed.
It adopted the scientific principle of ranges of townships,
which has been continued ever since, and found so beneficial
in a variety of ways to the country. The ranges began on the
Pennsylvania line, and proceeded west to the Mississippi; and
since the acquisition of Louisiana, they have proceeded west
of that river; the townships began upon the Ohio River, and
proceeded north to the Lakes. The townships were divided into
sections of a mile square, six hundred and forty acres each; and
the minimum price was fixed at one dollar per acre, and not less
than a section to be sold together. This is the outline of the
present plan of sales and surveys; and, with the modifications
it has received, and may receive, in graduating the price of the
land to the quality, the plan is excellent. But a principle was
incorporated in the ordinance of the most fatal character. It
was, that each township should be sold out complete before any
land could offered in the next one! This was tantamount to a law
that the lands should not be sold; that the country should not
be settled: for it is certain that every township, or almost
every one, would contain land unfit for cultivation, and for
which no person would give six hundred and forty dollars for six
hundred and forty acres. The effect of such a provision may be
judged by the fact that above one hundred thousand acres remain
to this day unsold in the first land district; the district of
Steubenville, in Ohio, which included the first range and first
township. If that provision had remained in the ordinance,
the settlements would not yet have got out of sight of the
Pennsylvania line. It was an unjust and preposterous provision.
It required the people to take the country clean before them;
buy all as they went; mountains, hills, and swamps; rocks,
glens, and prairies. They were to make clean work, as the giant
Polyphemus did when he ate up the companions of Ulysses:
'No entrails, blood, nor solid bone remains.'
Nothing could be more iniquitous than such a provision. It
was like requiring your guest to eat all the bones on his plate
before he should have more meat. To say that township No. 1
should be sold out complete before township No. 2 should be
offered for sale, was like requiring the bones of the first
turkey to be eat up before the breast of the second one should
be touched. Yet such was the provision contained in the first
ordinance for the sale of the public lands, reported by a
committee of twelve, of which eight were from the north and
four from the south side of the Potomac. How invincible must
have been the determination of some politicians to prevent the
settlement of the West, when they would thus counteract the
sales of the lands which had just been obtained after years of
importunity, for the payment of the public debt!
"When this ordinance was put upon its passage in Congress, two
Virginians, whose names, for that act alone, would deserve the
lasting gratitude of the West, levelled their blows against the
obnoxious provision. Mr. Grayson moved to strike it out, and Mr.
Monroe seconded him; and, after an animated and arduous contest,
they succeeded. The whole South supported them; not one recreant
arm from the South; many scattering members from the North also
voted with the South, and in favor of the infant West; proving
then, as now, and as it always has been, that the West has true
supporters of her rights and interests--unhappily not enough of
them--in that quarter of the Union from which the measures have
originated that several times threatened to be fatal to her."
Still enlarging its circle, but as yet still confined to the sale
and disposition of the public lands, the debate went on to discuss
the propriety of selling them to settlers at auction prices,
and at an arbitrary minimum for all qualities, and a refusal of
donations; and in this hard policy the North was again considered
as the exacting part of the Union--the South as the favorer of
liberal terms, and the generous dispenser of gratuitous grants to
the settlers in the new States and Territories. On this point, Mr.
Hayne, of South Carolina, thus expressed himself:
"The payment of 'a penny,' or a 'pepper corn,' was the
stipulated price which our fathers along the whole Atlantic
coast, now composing the old thirteen States, paid for their
lands; and even when conditions, seemingly more substantial,
were annexed to the grants; such for instance as 'settlement and
cultivation;' these were considered as substantially complied
with, by the cutting down a few trees and erecting a log
cabin--the work of only a few days. Even these conditions very
soon came to be considered as merely nominal, and were never
required to be pursued, in order to vest in the grantee the fee
simple of the soil. Such was the system under which this country
was originally settled, and under which the thirteen colonies
flourished and grew up to that early and vigorous manhood, which
enabled them in a few years to achieve their independence; and
I beg gentlemen to recollect, and note the fact, that, while
they paid substantially nothing to the mother country, the whole
profits of their industry were suffered to remain in their own
hands. Now, what, let us inquire, was the reason which has
induced all nations to adopt this system in the settlement of
new countries? Can it be any other than this; that it affords
the only certain means of building up in a wilderness, great
and prosperous communities? Was not that policy founded on
the universal belief, that the conquest of a new country, the
driving out "the savage beasts and still more savage men,"
cutting down and subduing the forest, and encountering all the
hardships and privations necessarily incident to the conversion
of the wilderness into cultivated fields, was worth the fee
simple of the soil? And was it not believed that the mother
country found ample remuneration for the value of the land so
granted, in the additions to her power and the new sources of
commerce and of wealth, furnished by prosperous and populous
States? Now, sir, I submit to the candid consideration of
gentlemen, whether the policy so diametrically opposite to this,
which has been invariably pursued by the United States towards
the new States in the West has been quite so just and liberal,
as we have been accustomed to believe. Certain it is, that the
British colonies to the north of us, and the Spanish and French
to the south and west, have been fostered and reared up under
a very different system. Lands, which had been for fifty or a
hundred years open to every settler, without any charge beyond
the expense of the survey, were, the moment they fell into the
hands of the United States, held up for sale at the highest
price that a public auction, at the most favorable seasons, and
not unfrequently a spirit of the wildest competition, could
produce; with a limitation that they should never be sold below
a certain minimum price; thus making it, as it would seem, the
cardinal point of our policy, not to settle the country, and
facilitate the formation of new States, but to fill our coffers
by coining our lands into gold."
The debate was taking a turn which was foreign to the expectations
of the mover of the resolution, and which, in leading to sectional
criminations, would only inflame feelings without leading to any
practical result. Mr. Webster saw this; and to get rid of the
whole subject, moved its indefinite postponement; but in arguing
his motion he delivered a speech which introduced new topics, and
greatly enlarged the scope, and extended the length of the debate
which he proposed to terminate. One of these new topics referred
to the authorship, and the merit of passing the famous ordinance
of 1787, for the government of the Northwestern Territory, and
especially in relation to the antislavery clause which that
ordinance contained. Mr. Webster claimed the merit of this
authorship for Mr. Nathan Dane--an eminent jurist of Massachusetts,
and avowed that "_it was carried by the North, and by the North
alone_." I replied, claiming the authorship for Mr. Jefferson,
and showing from the Journals that he (Mr. Jefferson) brought the
measure into Congress in the year 1784 (the 19th of April of that
year), as chairman of a committee, with the antislavery clause in
it, which Mr. Speight, of North Carolina, moved to strike out; and
it was struck out--the three Southern States present voting for the
striking out, because the clause did not then contain the provision
in favor of the recovery of fugitive slaves, which was afterwards
ingrafted upon it. Mr. Webster says it was struck out because "nine
States" did not vote for its retention. That is an error arising
from confounding the powers of the confederation. Nine States were
only required to concur in measures of the highest import, as
declaring war, making peace, negotiating treaties, &c.,--and in all
ordinary legislation the concurrence of a bare majority (seven) was
sufficient; and in this case there were only six States voting for
the retention, New Jersey being erroneously counted by Mr. Webster
to make seven. If she had voted the number would have been seven,
and the clause would have stood. He was led into the error by seeing
the name of Mr. Dick appearing in the call for New Jersey; but New
Jersey was not present as a State, being represented by only one
member, and it requiring two to constitute the presence of a State.
Mr. Dick was indulged with putting his name on the Journal, but his
vote was not counted. Mr. Webster says the ordinance reported by
Mr. Jefferson in 1784 did not pass into a law. This is a mistake
again. It did pass; and that within five days after the antislavery
clause was struck out--and that without any attempt to renew that
clause, although the competent number (seven) of non-slaveholding
States were present--the colleague of Mr. Dick having joined him,
and constituted the presence of New Jersey. Two years afterwards, in
July 1787, the ordinance was passed over again, as it now stands,
and was pre-eminently the work of the South. The ordinance, as it
now stands, was reported by a committee of five members, of whom
three were from slaveholding States, and two (and one of them the
chairman) were from Virginia alone. It received its first reading
the day it was reported--its second reading the next day, when one
other State had appeared--the third reading on the day ensuing;
going through all the forms of legislation, and becoming a law in
three days--receiving the votes of the eight States present, and
the vote of every member of each State, except one; and that one
from a free State north of the Potomac. These details I verified by
producing the Journals, and showed under the dates of July 11th,
1787, and July 12th and 13th, the votes actually given for the
ordinance. The same vote repealed the ordinance (Mr. Jefferson's)
of 1784. I read in the Senate the passages from the Journal of the
Congress of the confederation, the passages which showed these
votes, and incorporated into the speech which I published, the
extract from the Journal which I produced; and now incorporate the
same in this work, that the authorship of that ordinance of 1787,
and its passage through the old Congress, may be known in all
time to come as the indisputable work, both in its conception and
consummation, of the South. This is the extract:
THE JOURNAL.
_Wednesday, July 11th, 1787._
"Congress assembled: Present, the seven States above mentioned."
(Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia--7.)
"The Committee, consisting of Mr. Carrington (of Virginia),
Mr. Dane (of Massachusetts), Mr. R. H. Lee (of Virginia), Mr.
Kean (of South Carolina), and Mr. Smith (of New York), to whom
was referred the report of a committee touching the temporary
government of the Western Territory, reported an ordinance for
the government of the Territory of the United States northwest
of the river Ohio; which was read a first time.
"Ordered, That to-morrow be assigned for the second reading."
"_Thursday, July 12th, 1787._
"Congress assembled: Present, Massachusetts, New York, New
Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia--(8.)
"According to order, the ordinance for the government of the
Territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio, was
read a second time.
"Ordered, That to-morrow be assigned for the third reading of
said ordinance."
"_Friday, July 13th, 1787._
"Congress assembled: Present, as yesterday.
"According to order, the ordinance for the government of the
Territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio, was
read a third time, and passed as follows."
[Here follows the whole ordinance, in the very words in which
it now appears among the laws of the United States, with the
non-slavery clause, the provisions in favor of schools and
education, against impairing the obligation of contracts,
laying the foundation and security of all these stipulations
in compact, in favor of restoring fugitives from service, and
repealing the ordinance of 23d of April, 1784--the one reported
by Mr. Jefferson.]
"On passing the above ordinance, the yeas and nays being
required by Mr. Yates:
_Massachusetts_--Mr. Holten, aye; Mr. Dane, aye.
_New York_--Mr. Smith, aye; Mr. Yates, no; Mr. Harring, aye.
_New Jersey_--Mr. Clarke, aye; Mr. Scheurman, aye.
_Delaware_--Mr. Kearney, aye; Mr. Mitchell, aye.
Virginia--Mr. Grayson, aye; Mr. R. H. Lee, aye; Mr. Carrington,
aye.
_North Carolina_--Mr. Blount, aye; Mr. Hawkins, aye.
_South Carolina_--Mr. Kean, aye; Mr. Huger, aye.
_Georgia_--Mr. Few, aye; Mr. Pierce, aye.
So it was resolved in the affirmative." (Page 754, volume 4.)
The bare reading of these passages from the Journals of the Congress
of the old confederation, shows how erroneous Mr. Webster was in
these portions of his speech:
"At the foundation of the constitution of these new northwestern
States, we are accustomed, sir, to praise the lawgivers
of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and
Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver,
ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct,
marked, and lasting character, than the ordinance of '87.
That instrument, was drawn by Nathan Dane, then, and now, a
citizen of Massachusetts. It was adopted, as I think I have
understood, without the slightest alteration; and certainly it
has happened to few men to be the authors of a political measure
of more large and enduring consequence. It fixed, for ever,
the character of the population in the vast regions northwest
of the Ohio, by excluding from them involuntary servitude. It
impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness,
an incapacity to bear up any other than free men. It laid the
interdict against personal servitude, in original compact, not
only deeper than all local law, but deeper, also, than all
local constitutions. Under the circumstances then existing,
I look upon this original and seasonable provision, as a real
good attained. We see its consequences at this moment, and we
shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall
flow. It was a great and salutary measure of prevention. Sir, I
should fear the rebuke of no intelligent gentleman of Kentucky,
were I to ask whether if such an ordinance could have been
applied to his own State, while it yet was a wilderness, and
before Boon had passed the gap of the Alleghany, he does not
suppose it would have contributed to the ultimate greatness of
that commonwealth? It is, at any rate, not to be doubted, that
where it did apply it has produced an effect not easily to be
described, or measured in the growth of the States, and the
extent and increase of their population. Now, sir, this great
measure again was carried by the north, and by the north alone.
There were, indeed, individuals elsewhere favorable to it; but
it was supported as a measure, entirely by the votes of the
northern States. If New England had been governed by the narrow
and selfish views now ascribed to her, this very measure was,
of all others, the best calculated to thwart her purposes. It
was, of all things, the very means of rendering certain a vast
emigration from her own population to the west. She looked to
that consequence only to disregard it. She deemed the regulation
a most useful one to the States that would spring up on the
territory, and advantageous to the country at large. She adhered
to the principle of it perseveringly, year after year, until it
was finally accomplished.
"An attempt has been made to transfer, from the North to
the South, the honor of this exclusion of slavery from the
northwestern territory. The journal, without argument or
comment, refutes such attempt. The cession by Virginia was
made, March, 1784. On the 19th of April following, a committee,
consisting of Messrs. Jefferson, Chase, and Howell, reported a
plan for a temporary government of the territory, in which was
this article: 'that, after the year 1800, there shall be neither
slavery, nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States,
otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall
have been convicted.' Mr. Speight, of North Carolina, moved to
strike out this paragraph. The question was put, according to
the form then practised: 'Shall these words stand, as part of
the plan,' &c.? New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania--seven
States, voted in the affirmative. Maryland, Virginia, and South
Carolina, in the negative. North Carolina was divided. As the
consent of nine States was necessary, the words could not stand,
and were struck out accordingly. Mr. Jefferson voted for the
clause, but was overruled by his colleagues.
"In March, the next year [1785], Mr. King of Massachusetts,
seconded by Mr. Ellery of Rhode Island, proposed the formerly
rejected article, with this addition: '_And that this
regulation shall be an article of compact, and remain a
fundamental principle of the constitutions between the thirteen
original States, and each of the States described in the
resolve_,' &c. On this clause, which provided the adequate
and thorough security, the eight northern States at that time
voted affirmatively, and the four southern States negatively.
The votes of nine States were not yet obtained, and thus,
the provision was again rejected by the southern States. The
perseverance of the north held out, and two years afterwards the
object was attained."
This is shown to be all erroneous in relation to this ordinance.
It was not first drawn by Mr. Dane, but by Mr. Jefferson, and that
nearly two years before Mr. Dane came into Congress. It was not
passed by the North alone, but equally by the South--there being
but eight States present at the passing, and they equally of the
North and the South--and the South voting unanimously for it, both
as States and as individual members, while the North had one member
against it. It was not baffled two years for the want of nine
States; if so, and nine States had been necessary, it would not have
been passed when it was, and never by free State votes alone. There
were but eight States (both Northern and Southern) present at the
passing; and there were not nine free States in the confederacy at
that time. There were but thirteen in all: and the half of these,
as nearly as thirteen can be divided, were slave States. The fact
is, that the South only delayed its vote for the antislavery clause
in the ordinance for want of the provision in favor of recovering
fugitives from service. As soon as that was added, she took the lead
again for the ordinance--a fact which gives great emphasis to the
corresponding provision in the constitution.
Mr. Webster was present when I read these extracts, and said
nothing. He neither reaffirmed his previous statement, that Mr. Dane
was the author of the ordinance, and that "_this great measure was
carried by the North, and by the North alone_." He said nothing;
nor did he afterwards correct the errors of his speech: and they
now remain in it; and have given occasion to a very authentic
newspaper contradiction of his statement, copied, like my statement
to the Senate, from the Journals of the old Congress. It was by
Edward Coles, Esq., formerly of Virginia, and private secretary to
President Madison, afterwards governor of the State of Illinois, and
now a citizen of Pennsylvania, resident of Philadelphia. He made
his correction through the National Intelligencer, of Washington
City; and being drawn from the same sources it agrees entirely with
my own. And thus the South is entitled to the credit of originating
and passing this great measure--a circumstance to be remembered and
quoted, as showing the South at that time in taking the lead in
curtailing and restricting the existence of slavery. The cause of
Mr. Webster's mistakes may be found in the fact that the ordinance
was three times before the old Congress, and once (the third time)
in the hands of a committee of which Mr. Dane was a member. It was
first reported by a committee of three (April, 1784) of which two
were from slave states, (Mr. Jefferson of Virginia and Mr. Chase of
Maryland,) Mr. Howard, of Rhode Island; and this, as stated, was
nearly two years before Mr. Dane became a member. The antislavery
clause was then dropped, there being but six States for it. The next
year, the antislavery clause, with some modification, was moved by
Mr. Rufus King, and sent as a proposition to a committee: but did
not ripen into a law. Afterwards the whole ordinance was passed as
it now stands, upon the report of a committee of six, of whom Mr.
Dane was one; but not the chairman.
Closely connected with this question of authorship to which Mr.
Webster's remarks give rise, was another which excited some warm
discussion--the topic of slavery--and the effect of its existence
or non-existence in different States. Kentucky and Ohio were taken
for examples, and the superior improvement and population of Ohio
were attributed to its exemption from the evils of slavery. This
was an excitable subject, and the more so because the wounds of
the Missouri controversy, in which the North was the undisputed
aggressor, were still tender, and hardly scarred over. Mr. Hayne
answered with warmth and resented as a reflection upon the slave
States this disadvantageous comparison. I replied to the same topic
myself, and said:
"I was on the subject of slavery, as connected with the Missouri
question, when last on the floor. The senator from South
Carolina [Mr. Hayne] could see nothing in the question before
the Senate, nor in any previous part of the debate, to justify
the introduction of that topic. Neither could I. He thought he
saw the ghost of the Missouri question brought in among us.
So did I. He was astonished at the apparition. I was not: for
a close observance of the signs in the West had prepared me
for this development from the East. I was well prepared for
that invective against slavery, and for that amplification of
the blessings of exemption from slavery, exemplified in the
condition of Ohio, which the senator from Massachusetts indulged
in, and which the object in view required to be derived from
the Northeast. I cut the root of that derivation by reading a
passage from the Journals of the old Congress; but this will
not prevent the invective and encomium from going forth to do
their office; nor obliterate the line which was drawn between
the free State of Ohio and the slave State of Kentucky. If
the only results of this invective and encomium were to exalt
still higher the oratorical fame of the speaker, I should
spend not a moment in remarking upon them. But it is not to be
forgotten that the terrible Missouri agitation took its rise
from the "substance of two speeches" delivered on this floor;
and since that time, antislavery speeches, coming from the same
political and geographical quarter, are not to be disregarded
here. What was said upon that topic was certainly intended for
the north side of the Potomac and Ohio; to the people, then,
of that division of the Union, I wish to address myself, and
to disabuse them of some erroneous impressions. To them I can
truly say, that slavery, in the abstract, has but few advocates
or defenders in the slave-holding States, and that slavery as
it is, an hereditary institution descended upon us from our
ancestors, would have fewer advocates among us than it has, if
those who have nothing to do with the subject would only let
us alone. The sentiment in favor of slavery was much weaker
before those intermeddlers began their operations than it is
at present. The views of leading men in the North and the
South were indisputably the same in the earlier periods of our
government. Of this our legislative history contains the highest
proof. The foreign-slave trade was prohibited in Virginia, as
soon as the Revolution began. It was one of her first acts of
sovereignty. In the convention of that State which adopted the
federal constitution, it was an objection to that instrument
that it tolerated the African slave-trade for twenty years.
Nothing that has appeared since has surpassed the indignant
denunciations of this traffic by Patrick Henry, George Mason,
and others, in that convention.
"Sir, I regard with admiration, that is to say, with wonder,
the sublime morality of those who cannot bear the abstract
contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred or a
thousand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to say, it
affects a vast superiority over the morality of the primitive
Christians, the apostles of Christ, and Christ himself. Christ
and the apostles appeared in a province of the Roman empire,
when that empire was called the Roman world, and that world was
filled with slaves. Forty millions was the estimated number,
being one-fourth of the whole population. Single individuals
held twenty thousand slaves. A freed man, one who had himself
been a slave, died the possessor of four thousand--such were
the numbers. The rights of the owners over this multitude of
human beings was that of life and death, without protection
from law or mitigation from public sentiment. The scourge,
the cross, the fish-pond, the den of the wild beast, and the
arena of the gladiator, was the lot of the slave, upon the
slightest expression of the master's will. A law of incredible
atrocity made all slaves responsible with their own lives for
the life of their master; it was the law that condemned the
whole household of slaves to death, in case of the assassination
of the master--a law under which as many as four hundred have
been executed at a time. And these slaves were the white people
of Europe and of Asia Minor, the Greeks and other nations,
from whom the present inhabitants of the world derive the
most valuable productions of the human mind. Christ saw all
this--the number of the slaves--their hapless condition--and
their white color, which was the same with his own; yet he said
nothing against slavery; he preached no doctrines which led to
insurrection and massacre; none which, in their application
to the state of things in our country, would authorize an
inferior race of blacks to exterminate that superior race of
whites, in whose ranks he himself appeared upon earth. He
preached no such doctrines, but those of a contrary tenor,
which inculcated the duty of fidelity and obedience on the
part of the slave--humanity and kindness on the part of the
master. His apostles did the same. St. Paul sent back a runaway
slave. Onesimus, to his owner, with a letter of apology and
supplication. He was not the man to harbor a runaway, much less
to entice him from his master; and, least of all, to excite an
insurrection."
This allusion to the Missouri controversy, and invective against the
free States for their part in it, brought a reply from Mr. Webster,
showing what their conduct had been at the first introduction of the
slavery topic in the Congress of the United States, and that they
totally refused to interfere between master and slave in any way
whatever. This is what he said:
"When the present constitution was submitted for the
ratification of the people, there were those who imagined that
the powers of the government which it proposed to establish
might, perhaps, in some possible mode, be exerted in measures
tending to the abolition of slavery. This suggestion would, of
course, attract much attention in the southern conventions. In
that of Virginia, Governor Randolph said:
"'I hope there is none here who, considering the subject in the
calm light of philosophy, will make an objection dishonorable to
Virginia--that, at the moment they are securing the rights of
their citizens, an objection is started, that there is a spark
of hope that those unfortunate men now held in bondage may, by
the operation of the general government, be made free.'
"At the very first Congress, petitions on the subject
were presented, if I mistake not, from different States.
The Pennsylvania society for promoting the abolition of
slavery, took a lead, and laid before Congress a memorial,
praying Congress to promote the abolition by such powers as
it possessed. This memorial was referred, in the House of
Representatives, to a select committee consisting of Mr. Foster
of New Hampshire; Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Huntington of
Connecticut; Mr. Lawrence of New-York; Mr. Sinnickson of New
Jersey; Mr. Hartley of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Parker of Virginia;
all of them, sir, as you will observe, northern men, but the
last. This committee made a report, which was committed to a
committee of the whole house, and there considered and discussed
on several days; and being amended, although in no material
respect, it was made to express three distinct propositions on
the subject of slavery and the slave-trade. First, in the words
of the constitution, that Congress could not, prior to the year
1808, prohibit the migration or importation of such persons as
any of the States, then existing, should think proper to admit.
Second, that Congress had authority to restrain the citizens of
the United States from carrying on the African slave-trade, for
the purpose of supplying foreign countries. On this proposition,
our laws against those who engage in that traffic, are founded.
The third proposition, and that which bears on the present
question, was expressed in the following terms:
"'_Resolved_, That Congress have no authority to interfere in
the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any
of the States; it remaining with the several States alone to
provide rules and regulations therein, which humanity and true
policy may require.'
"This resolution received the sanction of the House of
Representatives so early as March, 1790. And now, sir, the
honorable member will allow me to remind him, that not only were
the select committee who reported the resolution, with a single
exception, all northern men, but also that of the members then
composing the House of Representatives, a large majority, I
believe nearly two thirds, were northern men also.
"The house agreed to insert these resolutions in its journal,
and, from that day to this, it has never been maintained or
contended that Congress had any authority to regulate, or
interfere with, the condition of slaves in the several States.
No northern gentleman, to my knowledge, has moved any such
question in either house of Congress.
"The fears of the South, whatever fears they might have
entertained, were allayed and quieted by this early decision;
and so remained, till they were excited afresh, without cause,
but for collateral and indirect purposes. When it became
necessary, or was thought so, by some political persons, to
find an unvarying ground for the exclusion of northern men
from confidence and from lead in the affairs of the republic,
then, and not till then, the cry was raised, and the feeling
industriously excited, that the influence of northern men in
the public councils would endanger the relation of master and
slave. For myself I claim no other merit than that this gross
and enormous injustice towards the whole North, has not wrought
upon me to change my opinions, or my political conduct. I hope
I am above violating my principles, even under the smart of
injury and false imputations. Unjust suspicions and undeserved
reproach, whatever pain I may experience from them, will not
induce me, I trust, nevertheless, to overstep the limits of
constitutional duty, or to encroach on the rights of others.
The domestic slavery of the South I leave where I find it--in
the hands of their own governments. It is their affair, not
mine. Nor do I complain of the peculiar effect which the
magnitude of that population has had in the distribution of
power under this federal government. We know, sir, that the
representation of the states in the other house is not equal.
We know that great advantage, in that respect, is enjoyed by
the slaveholding States; and we know, too, that the intended
equivalent for that advantage, that is to say, the imposition of
direct taxes in the same ratio, has become merely nominal; the
habit of the government being almost invariably to collect its
revenues from other sources, and in other modes. Nevertheless,
I do not complain: nor would I countenance any movement to
alter this arrangement of representation. It is the original
bargain, the compact--let it stand: let the advantage of it be
fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefit to be
hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I
go for the constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is.
But I am resolved not to submit, in silence, to accusations,
either against myself individually, or against the North,
wholly unfounded and unjust; accusations which impute to us a
disposition to evade the constitutional compact, and to extend
the power of the government over the internal laws and domestic
condition of the States. All such accusations, wherever and
whenever made, all insinuations of the existence of any such
purposes, I know, and feel to be groundless and injurious. And
we must confide in southern gentlemen themselves; we must trust
to those whose integrity of heart and magnanimity of feeling
will lead them to a desire to maintain and disseminate truth,
and who possess the means of its diffusion with the southern
public; we must leave it to them to disabuse that public of its
prejudices. But, in the mean time, for my own part, I shall
continue to act justly, whether those towards whom justice is
exercised, receive it with candor or with contumely."
This is what Mr. Webster said on the subject of slavery; and
although it was in reply to an invective of my own, excited by
the recent agitation of the Missouri question, I made no answer
impugning its correctness; and must add that I never saw any thing
in Mr. Webster inconsistent with what he then said; and believe that
the same resolves could have been passed in the same way at any time
during the thirty years that I was in Congress.
But the topic which became the leading feature of the whole
debate; and gave it an interest which cannot die, was that of
nullification--the assumed right of a state to annul an act of
Congress--then first broached in our national legislature--and in
the discussion of which Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne were the champion
speakers on opposite sides--the latter understood to be speaking the
sentiments of the Vice-President, Mr. Calhoun. This new turn in the
debate was thus brought about: Mr. Hayne, in the sectional nature of
the discussion which had grown up, made allusions to the conduct of
New England during the war of 1812; and especially to the assemblage
known as the Hartford Convention, and to which designs unfriendly to
the Union had been attributed. This gave Mr. Webster the rights both
of defence and of retaliation; and he found material for the first
in the character of the assemblage, and for the second in the public
meetings which had taken place in South Carolina on the subject of
the tariff--and at which resolves were passed, and propositions
adopted significant of resistance to the act; and, consequently, of
disloyalty to the Union. He, in his turn, made allusions to these
resolves and propositions, until he drew out Mr. Hayne into their
defence, and into an avowal of what has since obtained the current
name of "_Nullification_;" although at the time (during the debate)
it did not at all strike me as going the length which it afterwards
avowed; nor have I ever believed that Mr. Hayne contemplated
disunion, in any contingency, as one of its results. In entering
upon the argument, Mr. Webster first summed up the doctrine, as he
conceived it to be avowed, thus:
"I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina
to maintain, that it is a right of the State legislature
to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, this government
transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the
operation of its laws.
"I understand him to maintain this right, as a right existing
under the constitution; not as a right to overthrow it, on the
ground of extreme necessity, such as would justify violent
revolution.
"I understand him to maintain an authority, on the part of the
States, thus to interfere, for the purpose of correcting the
exercise of power by the general government, of checking it, and
of compelling it to conform to their opinion of the extent of
its powers.
"I understand him to maintain that the ultimate power of judging
of the constitutional extent of its own authority is not lodged
exclusively in the general government, or any branch of it;
but that, on the contrary, the States may lawfully decide for
themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case,
the act of the general government transcends its power.
"I understand him to insist that, if the exigency of the case,
in the opinion of any State government, require it, such State
government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act
of the general government, which it deems plainly and palpably
unconstitutional."
Mr. Hayne, evidently unprepared to admit, or fully deny, the
propositions as broadly laid down, had recourse to a statement
of his own; and, adopted for that purpose, the third resolve of
the Virginia resolutions of the year 1798--reaffirmed in 1799. He
rose immediately and said that, for the purpose of being clearly
understood, he would state that his proposition was in the words of
the Virginia resolution; and read it--
"That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare,
that it views the powers of the federal government as resulting
from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited
by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting
that compact, as no farther valid than they are authorized by
the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers,
not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties
thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for
arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within
their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties,
appertaining to them."
Thus were the propositions stated, and argued--each speaker taking
his own proposition for his text; which in the end, (and as the
Virginia resolutions turned out to be understood in the South
Carolina sense) came to be identical. Mr. Webster, at one point,
giving to his argument a practical form, and showing what the South
Carolina doctrine would have accomplished in New England if it had
been acted upon by the Hartford Convention, said:
"Let me here say, sir, that, if the gentleman's doctrine had
been received and acted upon in New England, in the times of
the embargo and non-intercourse, we should probably not now
have been here. The government would, very likely, have gone to
pieces, and crumbled into dust. No stronger case can ever arise
than existed under those laws; no States can ever entertain a
clearer conviction than the New England States then entertained;
and if they had been under the influence of that heresy of
opinion, as I must call it which the honorable member espouses,
this Union would, in all probability, have been scattered to
the four winds. I ask the gentleman, therefore, to apply his
principles to that case; I ask him to come forth and declare,
whether, in his opinion, the New England States would have been
justified in interfering to break up the embargo system, under
the conscientious opinions which they held upon it? Had they a
right to annul that law? Does he admit or deny? If that which is
thought palpably unconstitutional in South Carolina, justifies
that State in arresting the progress of the law, tell me,
whether that which was thought palpably unconstitutional also in
Massachusetts, would have justified her in doing the same thing?
Sir, I deny the whole doctrine. It has not a foot of ground in
the constitution to stand on. No public man of reputation ever
advanced it in Massachusetts, in the warmest times, or could
maintain himself upon it there at any time."
He argued that the doctrine had no foundation either in the
constitution, or in the Virginia resolutions--that the constitution
makes the federal government act upon citizens within the States,
and not upon the States themselves, as in the old confederation:
that within their constitutional limits the laws of Congress were
supreme--and that it was treasonable to resist them with force: and
that the question of their constitutionality was to be decided by
the Supreme Court. On this point, he said:
"The people, then, sir, erected this government. They gave it
a constitution; and in that constitution they have enumerated
the powers which they bestow on it. They have made it a
limited government. They have defined its authority. They have
restrained it to the exercise of such powers as are granted; and
all others, they declare, are reserved to the States or to the
people. But, sir, they have not stopped here. If they had, they
would have accomplished but half their work. No definition can
be so clear as to avoid possibility of doubt; no limitation so
precise as to exclude all uncertainty. Who then shall construe
this grant of the people? Who shall interpret their will, where
it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With whom do
they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers of
the government? Sir, they have settled all this in the fullest
manner. They have left it with the government itself, in its
appropriate branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main design,
for which the whole constitution was framed and adopted was, to
establish a government that should not be obliged to act through
State agency, or depend on State opinion and State discretion.
The people had had quite enough of that kind of government
under the confederacy. Under that system, the legal action,
the application of law to individuals, belonged exclusively to
the States. Congress could only recommend; their acts were not
of binding force, till the States had adopted and sanctioned
them. Are we in that condition still? Are we yet at the mercy
of State discretion, and State construction? Sir, if we are,
then vain will be our attempt to maintain the constitution under
which we sit. But, sir, the people have wisely provided, in the
constitution itself, a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for
settling questions of constitutional law. There are, in the
constitution, grants of powers to Congress, and restrictions
on these powers. There are, also, prohibitions on the States.
Some authority must, therefore, necessarily exist, having the
ultimate jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the interpretation of
these grants, restrictions, and prohibitions. The constitution
has, itself, pointed out, ordained, and established, that
authority. How has it accomplished this great and essential end?
By declaring, sir, that 'the constitution, and the laws of the
United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme
law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any
State to the contrary notwithstanding.'
"This, sir, was the first great step. By this, the supremacy
of the constitution and laws of the United States is declared.
The people so will it. No State law is to be valid which comes
in conflict with the constitution or any law of the United
States. But who shall decide this question of interference? To
whom lies the last appeal? This, sir, the constitution itself
decides also, by declaring 'that the judicial power shall
extend to all cases arising under the constitution and laws of
the United States.' These two provisions, sir, cover the whole
ground. They are, in truth, the key-stone of the arch. With
these, it is a constitution; without them it is a confederacy.
In pursuance of these clear and express provisions, Congress
established, at its very first session, in the Judicial Act, a
mode for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all
questions of constitutional power to the final decision of the
Supreme Court. It then, sir, became a government. It then had
the means of self-protection; and, but for this, it would, in
all probability, have been now among things which are past.
Having constituted the government, and declared its powers,
the people have farther said, that, since somebody must decide
on the extent of these powers, the government shall itself
decide; subject, always, like other popular governments, to its
responsibility to the people. And now, sir, I repeat, how is
it that a State legislature acquires any power to interfere?
Who or what gives them the right to say to the people, 'we, who
are your agents and servants for one purpose, will undertake to
decide that your other agents and servants, appointed by you for
another purpose, have transcended the authority you gave them?'
The reply would be, I think, not impertinent: who made you judge
over another's servants? To their own masters they stand or
fall."
With respect to the Virginia resolutions, on which Mr. Hayne relied,
Mr. Webster disputed the interpretation put upon them--claimed for
them an innocent and justifiable meaning--and exempted Mr. Madison
from the suspicion of having penned a resolution asserting the right
of a State legislature to annul an act of Congress, and thereby
putting it in the power of one State to destroy a form of government
which he had just labored so hard to establish. To this effect he
said:
"I wish now, sir, to make a remark upon the Virginia resolutions
of 1798. I cannot undertake to say how these resolutions were
understood by those who passed them. Their language is not a
little indefinite. In the case of the exercise, by Congress, of
a dangerous power, not granted to them, the resolutions assert
the right, on the part of the State, to interfere, and arrest
the progress of the evil. This is susceptible of more than one
interpretation. It may mean no more than that the States may
interfere by complaint and remonstrance; or by proposing to the
people an alteration of the federal constitution. This would all
be quite unobjectionable; or, it may be, that no more is meant
than to assert the general right of revolution, as against all
governments, in cases of intolerable oppression. This no one
doubts; and this, in my opinion, is all that he who framed the
resolutions could have meant by it: for I shall not readily
believe that he (Mr. Madison) was ever of opinion that a State,
under the constitution, and in conformity with it, could, upon
the ground of her own opinion of its unconstitutionality,
however clear and palpable she might think the case, annul a law
of Congress, so far as it should operate on herself, by her own
legislative power."
Mr. Hayne, on his part, disclaimed all imitation of the Hartford
Convention; and gave (as the practical part of his doctrine)
the pledge of forcible resistance to any attempt to enforce
unconstitutional laws. He said:
"Sir, unkind as my allusion to the Hartford Convention has been
considered by its supporters, I apprehend that this disclaimer
of the gentleman will be regarded as 'the unkindest cut of
all.' When the gentleman spoke of the Carolina conventions of
Colleton and Abbeville, let me tell him that he spoke of that
which never had existence, except in his own imagination. There
have, indeed, been meetings of the people in those districts,
composed, sir, of as high-minded and patriotic men as any
country can boast; but we have had no 'convention' as yet; and
when South Carolina shall resort to such a measure for the
redress of her grievances, let me tell the gentleman that, of
all the assemblies that have ever been convened in this country,
the Hartford Convention is the very last we shall consent to
take as an example; nor will it find more favor in our eyes,
from being recommended to us by the senator from Massachusetts.
Sir, we would scorn to take advantage of difficulties created
by a foreign war, to wring from the federal government a
redress even of our grievances. We are standing up for our
constitutional rights, in a time of profound peace; but if the
country should, unhappily, be involved in a war to-morrow, we
should be found flying to the standard of our country--first
driving back the common enemy, and then insisting upon the
restoration of our rights.
"The gentleman has called upon us to carry out our scheme
practically. Now, sir, if I am correct in my view of this
matter, then it follows, of course, that the right of a State
being established, the federal government is bound to acquiesce
in a solemn decision of a State, acting in its sovereign
capacity, at least so far as to make an appeal to the people
for an amendment to the constitution. This solemn decision of
a State (made either through its legislature, or a convention,
as may be supposed to be the proper organ of its sovereign
will--a point I do not propose now to discuss) binds the federal
government, under the highest constitutional obligation, not
to resort to any means of coercion against the citizens of the
dissenting State. How, then, can any collision ensue between
the federal and State governments, unless, indeed, the former
should determine to enforce the law by unconstitutional means?
What could the federal government do, in such a case? Resort,
says the gentleman, to the courts of justice. Now, can any man
believe that, in the face of a solemn decision of a State,
that an act of Congress is 'a gross, palpable, and deliberate
violation of the constitution,' and the interposition of its
sovereign authority to protect its citizens from the usurpation,
that juries could be found ready merely to register the decrees
of the Congress, wholly regardless of the unconstitutional
character of their acts? Will the gentleman contend that juries
are to be coerced to find verdicts at the point of the bayonet?
And if not, how are the United States to enforce an act solemnly
pronounced to be unconstitutional? But, if the attempt should
be made to carry such a law into effect, by force, in what
would the case differ from an attempt to carry into effect an
act nullified by the courts, or to do any other unlawful and
unwarrantable act? Suppose Congress should pass an agrarian law,
or a law emancipating our slaves, or should commit any other
gross violation of our constitutional rights, will any gentleman
contend that the decision of every branch of the federal
government, in favor of such laws, could prevent the States from
declaring them null and void, and protecting their citizens from
their operation?
"Sir, if Congress should ever attempt to enforce any such laws,
they would put themselves so clearly in the wrong, that no one
could doubt the right of the State to exert its protecting power.
"Sir, the gentleman has alluded to that portion of the militia
of South Carolina with which I have the honor to be connected,
and asked how they would act in the event of the nullification
of the tariff law by the State of South Carolina? The tone of
the gentleman, on this subject, did not seem to me as respectful
as I could have desired. I hope, sir, no imputation was
intended."
[Mr. Webster: "Not at all; just the reverse."]
"Well, sir, the gentleman asks what their leaders would be
able to read to them out of Coke upon Littleton, or any other
law book, to justify their enterprise? Sir, let me assure the
gentleman that, whenever any attempt shall be made from any
quarter, to enforce unconstitutional laws, clearly violating our
essential rights, our leaders (whoever they may be) will not
be found reading black letter from the musty pages of old law
books. They will look to the constitution, and when called upon,
by the sovereign authority of the State, to preserve and protect
the rights secured to them by the charter of their liberties,
they will succeed in defending them, or 'perish in the last
ditch.'"
I do not pretend to give the arguments of the gentlemen, or even
their substance, but merely to state their propositions and their
conclusions. For myself, I did not believe in any thing serious in
the new interpretation given to the Virginia resolutions--did not
believe in any thing practical from nullification--did not believe
in forcible resistance to the tariff laws from South Carolina--did
not believe in any scheme of disunion--believed, and still believe,
in the patriotism of Mr. Hayne: and as he came into the argument
on my side in the article of the public lands, so my wishes were
with him, and I helped him where I could. Of this desire to help,
and disbelief in disunion, I gave proof, in ridiculing, as well as
I could, Mr. Webster's fine peroration to liberty and union, and
really thought it out of place--a fine piece of rhetoric misplaced,
for want of circumstances to justify it. He had concluded thus:
"When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time,
the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken
and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their
last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous
ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming
in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor
a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable
interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words
of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but
every where, spread all over in characters of living light,
blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and
over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that
other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--Liberty
_and_ Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!"
These were noble sentiments, oratorically expressed, but too
elaborately and too artistically composed for real grief in presence
of a great calamity--of which calamity I saw no sign; and therefore
deemed it a fit subject for gentle castigation: and essayed it thus:
"I proceed to a different theme. Among the novelties of
this debate, is that part of the speech of the senator from
Massachusetts which dwells with such elaboration of declamation
and ornament, upon the love and blessings of union--the hatred
and horror of disunion. It was a part of the senator's speech
which brought into full play the favorite Ciceronian figure of
amplification. It was up to the rule in that particular. But,
it seemed to me, that there was another rule, and a higher,
and a precedent one, which it violated. It was the rule of
propriety; that rule which requires the fitness of things to be
considered; which requires the time, the place, the subject, and
the audience, to be considered; and condemns the delivery of
the argument, and all its flowers, if it fails in congruence to
these particulars. I thought the essay upon union and disunion
had so failed. It came to us when we were not prepared for it;
when there was nothing in the Senate, nor in the country to
grace its introduction; nothing to give, or to receive, effect
to, or from, the impassioned scene that we witnessed. It may be,
it was the prophetic cry of the distracted daughter of Priam,
breaking into the council, and alarming its tranquil members
with vaticinations of the fall of Troy; but to me, it all
sounded like the sudden proclamation for an earthquake, when the
sun, the earth, the air, announced no such prodigy; when all the
elements of nature were at rest, and sweet repose pervading the
world. There was a time, and you, and I, and all of us, did see
it, sir, when such a speech would have found, in its delivery,
every attribute of a just and rigorous propriety! It was at a
time, when the five-striped banner was waving over the land of
the North! when the Hartford Convention was in session! when the
language in the capitol was, "Peaceably, if we can; forcibly,
if we must!" when the cry, out of doors, was, "the Potomac the
boundary; the negro States by themselves! The Alleghanies the
boundary; the Western savages by themselves! The Mississippi
the boundary, let Missouri be governed by a prefect, or given
up as a haunt for wild beasts!" That time was the fit occasion
for this speech; and if it had been delivered then, either in
the hall of the House of Representatives, or in the den of the
Hartford Convention, or in the highway among the bearers and
followers of the five-striped banner, what effects must it not
have produced! What terror and consternation among the plotters
of disunion! But, here, in this loyal and quiet assemblage, in
this season of general tranquillity and universal allegiance,
the whole performance has lost its effect for want of affinity,
connection, or relation, to any subject depending, or sentiment
expressed, in the Senate; for want of any application, or
reference, to any event impending in the country."
I do not quote this passage for any thing that I now see out of
place in that peroration; but for a quite different purpose--for
the purpose of showing that I was slow to believe in any design
to subvert this Union--that at the time of this great debate
(February and March, 1830) I positively discredited it, and publicly
proclaimed my incredulity. I did not want to believe it. I repulsed
the belief. I pushed aside every circumstance that Mr. Webster
relied on, and softened every expression that Mr. Hayne used, and
considered him as limiting (practically) his threatened resistance
to the tariff act, to the kind of resistance which Virginia made
to the alien and sedition laws--which was an appeal to the reason,
judgment and feelings of the other States--and which had its
effect in the speedy repeal of those laws. Mr. Calhoun had not
then uncovered his position in relation to nullification. I knew
that Mr. Webster was speaking at him in all that he said to Mr.
Hayne: but I would believe nothing against him except upon his own
showing, or undoubted evidence. Although not a favorite statesman
with me, I felt admiration for his high intellectual endowments, and
respect for the integrity and purity of his private life. Mr. Hayne
I cordially loved; and believed, and still believe, in the loyalty
of his intentions to the Union. They were both from the South--that
sister Carolina, of which the other was my native State, and in both
of which I have relatives and hereditary friends--and for which I
still have the affections which none but the wicked ever lose for
the land of their birth: and I felt as they did in all that relates
to the tariff--except their remedy. But enough for the present. The
occasion will come, when we arrive at the practical application of
the modern nullification doctrine, to vindicate the constitution
from the political solecism of containing within itself a suicidal
principle, and to vindicate the Virginia resolutions, and their
authors (and, in their own language), from the "_anarchical and
preposterous_" interpretation which has been put upon their words.