Extracts from the speech of John Quincy Adams, delivered in the U.S.
House of Representatives, April 14 and 15, 1842, on War with Great
Britain and Mexico:--
What I say is involuntary, because the subject has been brought into
the House from another quarter, as the gentleman himself admits. I
would leave that institution to the exclusive consideration and
management of the States more peculiarly interested in it, just as
long as they can keep within their own bounds. So far, I admit that
Congress has no power to meddle with it. As long as they do not step
out of their own bounds, and do not put the question to the people of
the United States, whose peace, welfare and happiness are all at
stake, so long I will agree to leave them to themselves. But when a
member from a free State brings forward certain resolutions, for
which, instead of reasoning to disprove his positions, you vote a
censure upon him, and that without hearing, it is quite another
affair. At the time this was done, I said that, as far as I could
understand the resolutions proposed by the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr.
Giddings,) there were some of them for which I was ready to vote, and
some which I must vote against; and I will now tell this House, my
constituents, and the world of mankind, that the resolution against
which I would have voted was that in which he declares that what are
called the slave States have the exclusive right of consultation on
the subject of slavery. For that resolution I never would vote,
because I believe that it is not just, and does not contain
constitutional doctrine. I believe that, so long as the slave States
are able to sustain their institutions without going abroad or
calling upon other parts of the Union to aid them or act on the
subject, so long I will consent never to interfere. I have said this,
and I repeat it; but if they come to the free States, and say to
them, you must help us to keep down our slaves, you must aid us in an
insurrection and a civil war, then I say that with that call comes a
full and plenary power to this House and to the Senate over the whole
subject. It is a war power. I say it is a war power, and when your
country is actually in war, whether it be a war of invasion or a war
of insurrection, Congress has power to carry on the war, and must
carry it on, according to the laws of war; and by the laws of war, an
invaded country has all its laws and municipal institutions swept by
the board, and martial law takes the place of them. This power in
Congress has, perhaps, never been called into exercise under the
present Constitution of the United States. But when the laws of war
are in force, what, I ask, is one of those laws? It is this: that
when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set in martial
array, the commanders of both armies have power to emancipate all the
slaves in the invaded territory. Nor is this a mere theoretic
statement. The history of South America shows that the doctrine has
been carried into practical execution within the last thirty years.
Slavery was abolished in Columbia, first, by the Spanish General
Morillo, and, secondly, by the American General Bolivar. It was
abolished by virtue of a military command given at the head of the
army, and its abolition continues to be law to this day. It was
abolished by the laws of war, and not by municipal enactments; the
power was exercised by military commanders, under instructions, of
course, from their respective Governments. And here I recur again to
the example of Gen. Jackson. What are you now about in Congress? You
are about passing a grant to refund to Gen. Jackson the amount of a
certain fine imposed upon him by a Judge, under the laws of the State
of Louisiana. You are going to refund him the money, with interest;
and this you are going to do because the imposition of the fine was
unjust. And why was it unjust? Because Gen. Jackson was acting under
the laws of war, and because the moment you place a military commander
in a district which is the theatre of war, the laws of war apply to
that district.
I might furnish a thousand proofs to show that the pretensions of
gentlemen to the sanctity of their municipal institutions under a
state of actual invasion and of actual war, whether servile, civil
or foreign, is wholly unfounded, and that the laws of war do, in all
such cases, take the precedence. I lay this down as the law of
nations. I say that military authority takes, for the time, the
place of all municipal institutions, and slavery among the rest; and
that, under that state of things, so far from its being true that the
States where slavery exists have the exclusive management of the
subject, not only the President of the United States, but the
Commander of the Army, has power to order the universal emancipation
of the slaves. I have given here more in detail a principle which I
have asserted on this floor before now, and of which I have no more
doubt than that you, sir, occupy that chair. I give it in its
development, in order that any gentleman from any part of the Union
may, if he thinks proper, deny the truth of the position, and may
maintain his denial; not by indignation, not by passion and fury, but
by sound and sober reasoning from the laws of nations and the laws of
war. And if my position can be answered and refuted, I shall receive
the refutation with pleasure; I shall be glad to listen to reason,
aside, as I say, from indignation and passion. And if, by the force
of reasoning, my understanding can be convinced, I here pledge myself
to recant what I have asserted.
Let my position be answered; let me be told, let my constituents be
told, the people of my State be told--a State whose soil tolerates
not the foot of a slave--that they are bound by the Constitution to
a long and toilsome march under burning summer suns and a deadly
Southern clime for the suppression of a servile war; that they are
bound to leave their bodies to rot upon the sands of Carolina, to
leave their wives widows and their children orphans; that those who
cannot march are bound to pour out their treasures while their sons
or brothers are pouring out their blood to suppress a servile,
combined with a civil or a foreign war, and yet that there exists no
power beyond the limits of the slave State where such war is raging
to emancipate the slaves. I say, let this be proved--I am open to
conviction; but till that conviction comes, I put it forth not as a
dictate of feeling, but as a settled maxim of the laws of nations,
that, in such a case, the military supersedes the civil power; and on
this account I should have been obliged to vote, as I have said,
against one of the resolutions of my excellent friend from Ohio, (Mr.
Giddings,) or should at least have required that it be amended in
conformity with the Constitution of the United States.