ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
Mr. Buchanan presented the memorial of the religious society of
"Friends," in the State of Pennsylvania, adopted at their Caln
quarterly meeting, requesting Congress to abolish slavery and the
slave trade, in the District of Columbia. He said the memorial did
not emanate from fanatics, endeavoring to disturb the peace and
security of society in the Southern States, by the distribution of
incendiary publications, but from a society of Christians, whose
object had always been to promote good-will and peace among men.
It was entitled to respect from the character of the memorialists;
but he dissented from the opinion which they expressed and the
request which they made. The constitution recognized slavery; it
existed here; was found here when the District was ceded to the
United States; the slaves here were the property of the inhabitants;
and he was opposed to the disturbance of their rights. Congress
had no right to interfere with slavery in the States. That was
determined in the first Congress that ever sat--in the Congress
which commenced in 1789 and ended in 1791--and in the first session
of that Congress. The Religious Society of Friends then petitioned
Congress against slavery, and it was resolved, in answer to that
petition, that Congress had no authority to interfere in the
emancipation of slaves, or with their treatment, in any of the
States: and that was the answer still to be given. He then adverted
to the circumstances under which the memorial was presented. A
number of fanatics, led on by foreign incendiaries, have been
scattering firebrands through the Southern States--publications
and pictures exciting the slaves to revolt, and to the destruction
of their owners. Instead of benefiting the slaves by this conduct,
they do them the greatest injury, causing the bonds to be drawn
tighter upon them; and postponing emancipation even in those States
which might eventually contemplate it. These were his opinions on
slavery, and on the prayer of this memorial. He was opposed to
granting the prayer, but was in favor of receiving the petition
as the similar one had been received, in 1790, and giving it the
same answer; and, he had no doubt, with the same happy effect of
putting an end to such applications, and giving peace and quiet to
the country. He could not vote for the motion of the senator from
South Carolina, Mr. Calhoun, to reject it. He thought rejection
would inflame the question: reception and condemnation would quiet
it. Mr. Calhoun had moved to reject all petitions of the kind--not
reject upon their merits, after consideration, but beforehand, when
presented for reception. This was the starting point of a long and
acrimonious contest in the two Houses of Congress, in which the
right of petition was maintained on one side, and the good policy
of quieting the question by reception and rejection: on the other
side, it was held that the rights, the peace, and the dignity of the
States required all anti-slavery petitions to be repulsed, at the
first presentation, without reception or consideration. The author
of this View aspired to no lead in conducting this question; he
thought it was one to be settled by policy; that is to say, in the
way that would soonest quiet it. He thought there was a clear line
of distinction between mistaken philanthropists, and mischievous
incendiaries--also between the free States themselves and the
incendiary societies and individuals within them; and took an
early moment to express these opinions in order to set up the line
between what was mistake and what was crime--and between the acts of
individuals, on one hand, and of States, on the other; and in that
sense delivered the following speech:
"Mr. Benton rose to express his concurrence in the suggestion of the
senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Buchanan), that the consideration of
this subject be postponed until Monday. It had come up suddenly and
unexpectedly to-day, and the postponement would give an opportunity
for senators to reflect, and to confer together, and to conclude
what was best to be done, where all were united in wishing the same
end, namely, to allay, and not to produce, excitement. He had risen
for this purpose; but, being on his feet he would say a few words
on the general subject, which the presentation of these petitions
had so suddenly and unexpectedly brought up. With respect to the
petitioners, and those with whom they acted, he had no doubt but
that many of them were good people, aiming at benevolent objects,
and endeavoring to ameliorate the condition of one part of the human
race, without inflicting calamities on another part; but they were
mistaken in their mode of proceeding; and so far from accomplishing
any part of their object, the whole effect of their interposition
was to aggravate the condition of those in whose behalf they were
interfering. But there was another part, and he meant to speak of
the abolitionists, generally, as the body containing the part of
which he spoke; there was another part whom he could not qualify
as good people, seeking benevolent ends by mistaken means, but
as incendiaries and agitators, with diabolical objects in view,
to be accomplished by wicked and deplorable means. He did not go
into the proofs now to establish the correctness of his opinion of
this latter class, but he presumed it would be admitted that every
attempt to work upon the passions of the slaves, and to excite them
to murder their owners, was a wicked and diabolical attempt, and the
work of a midnight incendiary. Pictures of slave degradation and
misery, and of the white man's luxury and cruelty, were attempts
of this kind; for they were appeals to the vengeance of slaves,
and not to the intelligence or reason of those who legislated for
them. He (Mr. B.) had had many pictures of this kind, as well as
many diabolical publications, sent to him on this subject, during
the last summer; the whole of which he had cast into the fire,
and should not have thought of referring to the circumstance at
this time, as displaying the character of the incendiary part of
the abolitionists, had he not, within these few days past, and
while abolition petitions were pouring into the other end of the
Capitol, received one of these pictures, the design of which could
be nothing but mischief of the blackest dye. It was a print from
an engraving (and Mr. B. exhibited it, and handed it to senators
near him), representing a large and spreading tree of liberty,
beneath whose ample shade a slave owner was at one time luxuriously
reposing, with slaves fanning him; at another, carried forth in a
palanquin, to view the half-naked laborers in the cotton field,
whom drivers, with whips, were scourging to the task. The print
was evidently from the abolition mint, and came to him by some
other conveyance than that of the mail, for there was no post-mark
of any kind to identify its origin, and to indicate its line of
march. For what purpose could such a picture be intended, unless
to inflame the passions of slaves? And why engrave it, except to
multiply copies for extensive distribution? But it was not pictures
alone that operated upon the passions of the slaves, but speeches,
publications, petitions presented in Congress, and the whole
machinery of abolition societies. None of these things went to the
understandings of the slaves, but to their passions, all imperfectly
understood, and inspiring vague hopes, and stimulating abortive and
fatal insurrections. Societies, especially, were the foundation of
the greatest mischiefs. Whatever might be their objects, the slaves
never did, and never can, understand them but in one way: as allies
organized for action, and ready to march to their aid on the first
signal of insurrection! It was thus that the massacre of San Domingo
was made. The society in Paris, _Les Amis des Noirs_, Friends of
the Blacks, with its affiliated societies throughout France and
in London, made that massacre. And who composed that society? In
the beginning, it comprised the extremes of virtue and of vice;
it contained the best and the basest of human kind! Lafayette and
the Abbé Gregoire, those purest of philanthropists; and Marat and
Anacharsis Clootz, those imps of hell in human shape. In the end
(for all such societies run the same career of degeneration), the
good men, disgusted with their associates, retired from the scene;
and the wicked ruled at pleasure. Declamations against slavery,
publications in gazettes, pictures, petitions to the constituent
assembly, were the mode of proceeding; and the fish-women of
Paris--he said it with humiliation, because American females had
signed the petitions now before us--the fish-women of Paris,
the very _poissardes_ from the quays of the Seine, became the
obstreperous champions of West India emancipation. The effect upon
the French islands is known to the world; but what is not known
to the world, or not sufficiently known to it, is that the same
societies which wrapt in flames and drenched in blood the beautiful
island, which was then a garden and is now a wilderness, were
the means of exciting an insurrection upon our own continent: in
Louisiana, where a French slave population existed, and where the
language of _Les Amis des Noirs_ could be understood, and where
their emissaries could glide. The knowledge of this event (Mr. B.
said) ought to be better known, both to show the danger of these
societies, however distant, and though oceans may roll between them
and their victims, and the fate of the slaves who may be excited
to insurrection by them on any part of the American continent. He
would read the notice of the event from the work of Mr. Charles
Gayarre, lately elected by his native State to a seat on this floor,
and whose resignation of that honor he sincerely regretted, and
particularly for the cause which occasioned it, and which abstracted
talent from a station that it would have adorned. Mr. B. read
from the work, '_Essai Historique sur la Louisiane_:' 'The white
population of Louisiana was not the only part of the population
which was agitated by the French revolution. The blacks, encouraged
without doubt by the success which their race had obtained in San
Domingo, dreamed of liberty, and sought to shake off the yoke.
The insurrection was planned at Pointe Coupeé, which was then an
isolated parish, and in which the number of slaves was considerable.
The conspiracy took birth on the plantation of Mr. Julien Poydras,
a rich planter, who was then travelling in the United States, and
spread itself rapidly throughout the parish. The death of all the
whites was resolved. Happily the conspirators could not agree upon
the day for the massacre; and from this disagreement resulted a
quarrel, which led to the discovery of the plot. The militia of the
parish immediately took arms, and the Baron de Carondelet caused
them to be supported by the troops of the line. It was resolved
to arrest, and to punish the principal conspirators. The slaves
opposed it; but they were quickly dispersed, with the loss of
twenty of their number killed on the spot. Fifty of the insurgents
were condemned to death. Sixteen were executed in different parts
of the parish; the rest were put on board a galley and hung at
intervals, all along the river, as far as New Orleans (a distance
of one hundred and fifty miles). The severity of the chastisement
intimidated the blacks, and all returned to perfect order.'
"Resuming his remarks, Mr. B. said he had read this passage to show
that our white population had a right to dread, nay, were bound
to dread, the mischievous influence of these societies, even when
an ocean intervened, and much more when they stood upon the same
hemisphere, and within the bosom of the same country. He had also
read it to show the miserable fate of their victims, and to warn all
that were good and virtuous--all that were honest, but mistaken--in
the three hundred and fifty affiliated societies, vaunted by the
individuals who style themselves their executive committee, and
who date, from the commercial emporium of this Union, their high
manifesto against the President; to warn them at once to secede from
associations which, whatever may be their designs, can have no other
effect than to revive in the Southern States the tragedy, not of San
Domingo, but of the parish of Pointe Coupeé.
"Mr. B. went on to say that these societies had already perpetrated
more mischief than the joint remainder of all their lives spent in
prayers of contrition, and in works of retribution, could ever atone
for. They had thrown the state of the emancipation question fifty
years back. They had subjected every traveller, and every emigrant,
from the non-slaveholding States, to be received with coldness, and
viewed with suspicion and jealousy, in the slaveholding States. They
had occasioned many slaves to lose their lives. They had caused
the deportation of many ten thousands from the grain-growing to
the planting States. They had caused the privileges of all slaves
to be curtailed, and their bonds to be more tightly drawn. Nor was
the mischief of their conduct confined to slaves; it reached the
free colored people, and opened a sudden gulf of misery to that
population. In all the slave States, this population has paid the
forfeit of their intermediate position; and suffered proscription
as the instruments, real or suspected, of the abolition societies.
In all these States, their exodus had either been enforced or was
impending. In Missouri there was a clause in the constitution which
prohibited their emigration to the State; but that clause had
remained a dead letter in the book until the agitation produced
among the slaves by the distant rumbling of the abolition thunder,
led to the knowledge in some instances, and to the belief in others,
that these people were the antennæ of the abolitionists; and their
medium for communicating with the slaves, and for exciting them
to desertion first, and to insurrection eventually. Then ensued
a painful scene. The people met, resolved, and prescribed thirty
days for the exodus of the obnoxious caste. Under that decree a
general emigration had to take place at the commencement of winter.
Many worthy and industrious people had to quit their business and
their homes, and to go forth under circumstances which rendered
them objects of suspicion wherever they went, and sealed the door
against the acquisition of new friends while depriving them of the
protection of old ones. He (Mr. B.) had witnessed many instances of
this kind, and had given certificates to several, to show that they
were banished, not for their offences, but for their misfortunes;
for the misfortune of being allied to the race which the abolition
societies had made the object of their gratuitous philanthropy.
"Having said thus much of the abolition societies in the
non-slaveholding States, Mr. B. turned, with pride and exultation,
to a different theme--the conduct of the great body of the people
in all these States. Before he saw that conduct, and while the
black question, like a portentous cloud was gathering and darkening
on the Northeastern horizon, he trembled, not for the South, but
for the Union. He feared that he saw the fatal work of dissolution
about to begin, and the bonds of this glorious confederacy about
to snap; but the conduct of the great body of the people in all
the non-slaveholding States quickly dispelled that fear, and in
its place planted deep the strongest assurance of the harmony and
indivisibility of the Union which he had felt for many years. Their
conduct was above all praise, above all thanks, above all gratitude.
They had chased off the foreign emissaries, silenced the gabbling
tongues of female dupes, and dispersed the assemblages, whether
fanatical, visionary, or incendiary, of all that congregated to
preach against evils which afflicted others not them; and to propose
remedies to aggravate the disease which they pretended to cure. They
had acted with a noble spirit. They had exerted a vigor beyond all
law. They had obeyed the enactments, not of the statute book, but of
the heart; and while that spirit was in the heart, he cared nothing
for laws written in a book. He would rely upon that spirit to
complete the good work it has begun; to dry up these societies; to
separate the mistaken philanthropist from the reckless fanatic and
the wicked incendiary, and put an end to publications and petitions
which, whatever may be their design, can have no other effect than
to impede the object which they invoke, and to aggravate the evil
which they deplore.
"Turning to the immediate question before the Senate, that of the
rejection of the petitions, Mr. B. said his wish was to give that
vote which would have the greatest effect in putting down these
societies. He thought the vote to be given to be rather one of
expediency than of constitutional obligation. The clause in the
constitution so often quoted in favor of the right of petitioning
for a redress of grievances would seem to him to apply rather to
the grievances felt by ourselves than to those felt by others, and
which others might think an advantage, what we thought a grievance.
The petitioners from Ohio think it a grievance that the people of
the District of Columbia should suffer the institution of slavery,
and pray for the redress of that grievance; the people of the
District think the institution an advantage, and want no redress;
now, which has the right of petitioning? Looking to the past action
of the Senate, Mr. B. saw that, about thirty years ago, a petition
against slavery, and that in the States, was presented to this body
by the society of Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and that
the same question upon its reception was made, and decided by yeas
and nays, 19 to 9, in favor of receiving it. He read the names, to
show that the senators from the slave and non-slaveholding States
voted some for and some against the reception, according to each
one's opinion, and not according to the position or the character
of the State from which he came. Mr. B. repeated that he thought
this question to be one of expediency, and that it was expedient to
give the vote which would go furthest towards quieting the public
mind. The quieting the South depended upon quieting the North; for
when the abolitionists were put down in the former place, the latter
would be at ease. It seemed to him, then, that the gentlemen of the
non-slaveholding States were the proper persons to speak first. They
knew the temper of their own constituents best, and what might have
a good or an ill effect upon them, either to increase the abolition
fever, or to allay it. He knew that the feeling of the Senate was
general; that all wished for the same end; and the senators of the
North as cordially as those of the South."