1st--What is the true spirit of the Constitution, and what the true
policy of the Federal government on the subject of slavery? and,
2d--How do the parties and the candidates now before the people stand in
regard to it?
I wish distinctly to say that I do not propose to consider the question
of slavery in its moral or religious aspects, but as a political
question under the Federal Constitution.
As to my personal opinion in regard to slavery, I am free to say I
consider it an evil, which I hope will be eradicated from the earth, but
I do not regard it as the greatest of evils, nor do I consider that it
requires political action from the Federal government. On the contrary,
I believe that while the question of slavery might be safely agitated,
with a view to political action, in a consolidated or imperial
government, or even in an American Federal State, it cannot under our
Federal system of government be safely or rightly agitated as a national
question. Its agitation as such has done more to alienate and embitter
the two sections of our Union--more to rouse the spirit of slavery
aggression and extension, and to tighten the bonds and increase the
burdens of the slave, than it has done to effect emancipation. Slavery
is an evil permitted by Providence for ends that time will reveal. From
this form of social evil, he is still educing good, far more good to the
slaves, as a class, than to the masters as a class. It must not be
suddenly nor rashly dealt with. Like a disease that pervades the blood
or the whole constitution of a man, it needs not, for it cannot be
reached by, the exterminating knife or cautery of the surgeon; it
requires the gradual, purifying and alterative influences of gentle
medicines, that work their way almost imperceptibly to the very
principle and seat of the malady.
For my part, while I yield to no man in my love of liberty and the
rights of man, I frankly say I had rather that the "rivulet of African
slavery" flow on for five hundred years to come, than to see around me
the fragments of a dissevered Union. In that Union, and the silent
steady workings of its glorious principles, more than in the conflict
of antagonist and angry parties, rest the hopes, not alone of African
emancipation, but of unborn nations.
The American Union grew out of the exigencies of the times. A common
cause and a common danger united the colonies first in resistance to the
aggressions and exactions of the British government, and finally in the
overthrow of its power over them. With the declaration of their
independence, came the conviction of the necessity of their permanent
Union, and this conviction after much of doubt and debate, resulted in
the adoption of the Articles of Confederation by the final ratification
of Maryland, on 1st March, 1781, which continued in force until the
present Constitution went into operation.
So long as the States were engaged in the war of the Revolution,
although the confederation was found to be in many things weak and
imperfect, amid the dangers and anxieties of those years of trial its
defects were overlooked or supplied by the earnest patriotism of our
fathers, and it accomplished its end in the triumph of independence. But
it was not long after the peace of 1783, when the Congress came to carry
on the Federal government with reference to the ends of peace and the
commercial policy and general prosperity of the United States, that it
was found that the Articles of Confederation could no longer answer as
the Constitution of the United States. A leading writer of that day in
addressing the public upon the subject, after enumerating many of the
defects of the Confederation with reference to the powers of the
Congress, summed up the whole in these brief words, "In short, they may
declare everything but do nothing."
Judge Story remarks in speaking of this period of our history--"That the
confederation had at least totally failed as an effectual instrument of
government. It stood the shadow of a mighty name."
Judge Marshall on the same subject says--"The confederation was
apparently expiring from mere debility."
Judge Story further says--"_It is, indeed, difficult to over-charge any
picture of the gloom end apprehension which pervaded the public
councils, as well as the private meditations of the ablest men of the
country._"
It was under such circumstances that the convention for forming the
present Constitution of the Union was called.
Into this convention were brought by the delegates of the States, the
same unceasing jealousy and watchfulness, which had marked the formation
of the confederation, in respect to the powers to be confided to the
general government.
In the Articles of Confederation it had been declared "that each State
retained its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction and right not expressly delegated to the United States."
The States were generally unwilling to surrender anything of their
internal sovereignty. They claimed then as they claim now, full right
and power to regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way,
and were willing to surrender to the general government only such powers
as were necessary to the complete efficiency of a Federal government in
attaining the purposes of the Union. These were in the language of
Alexander Hamilton:
"The common defence of the members; the preservation of the public peace
as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation
of commerce with other nations and between the States; the
superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with
foreign countries."
The difficulty of obtaining a ratification of the Constitution by the
people of the States, was not less than the difficulty of framing it in
convention. Georgia, New Jersey and Delaware unanimously approved the
Constitution. It was supported by large majorities in Pennsylvania,
Connecticut, Maryland and South Carolina. It was carried in
Massachusetts, New York and Virginia only by a small majority. North
Carolina and Rhode Island were the last to adopt it, and the former at
first rejected it.
In the address of the convention to Congress on presenting the
Constitution with the recommendation for its submission to and approval
by the States, the convention say: "The Constitution which we now
present, _is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual
deference and concession_ which the peculiarity of our political
situation rendered indispensable." In these few words of the framers of
the Constitution, expressing its reason or spirit, we find the true
guide to its interpretation and administration. The spirit of
compromise, so far as relates to the clashing views or conflicting
interests of different States or sections of the Union, pervades the
Constitution in every part, and especially is this the case in reference
to the now all-absorbing question of negro slavery.
What was the state of this institution at the adoption of the
Constitution, and how did the Constitution deal with it?
The first introduction of African slaves into the American colonies was
in 1620. The total number imported by means of the African slave trade
between 1715 and 1790, was about 300,000. When the Constitution was
ratified in 1790, the total number of slaves in all the States and
territories was near 700,000. All the States ratifying the Constitution,
except Massachusetts, held slaves; Virginia the largest number--over
293,000; New Hampshire the smallest number--158. Even the granite hills
of New Hampshire were not then free from the feet of bondmen.
Our fathers were not responsible for the existence of slavery in their
midst. As already stated, the introduction of slaves had commenced in
1620, 156 years before the declaration of independence, and the
institution had under the patronage of the British government,
insidiously grown up and strengthened itself, especially in the Southern
States, which were adapted to negro labor. There it had interwoven
itself with the entire fabric of the social and domestic relations, and
could not be suddenly or rashly severed without involving greater evils
than its own existence.
It is undoubtedly true that a large number of the framers of the
Constitution were themselves slaveholders, among them George Washington
himself. With these men domestic slavery, though it might have been
regarded as an evil, was certainly not looked upon as a mortal sin, nor
were they, whatever might have been their theoretical opinions,
practical believers in the doctrine of universal equality of rights or
universal suffrage.
Here then, coeval with the organization of the Federal government, was
the domestic institution of slavery, existing in all the States but one,
and embracing over one sixth of their entire population. There were two
very plain methods by which it might have been dealt with. One was by an
express declaration of the Constitution, affirming as the Republican
sectional party affirm, that slavery is a relic of barbarism, and
therefore slavery shall be abolished in all the States and territories
of the American Union. Another method was to have declared in the
Constitution, as ultra men of the South now declare, that slavery is a
benign institution, deserving of protection, encouragement and extension
by the Federal government, and therefore slavery shall be protected and
extended in all the States and territories of the American Union. Had
the constitutional convention been a sectional and not a national
organization; had its members been governed by a sectional and not a
national spirit, they would doubtless have taken one or the other of the
horns of this dilemma, but in that "_spirit of amity, mutual deference
and concession_," which governed their lofty patriotism, they took
neither of the extremes. They took the position that the institution of
domestic slavery was of local origin and of local concern--a matter
directly pertaining to the internal sovereignty of each State; that it
was not a legitimate subject for national or Federal legislation, and so
far as related to its extension or its abolition within the States, they
left it where they found it, with the people of the States whom it most
concerned, the Congress assuming only the right, after the period of
twenty years, to prohibit the importations of slaves from beyond the
limits of the United States. The political reason of this prohibition is
apparent. Without it the principle of non-intervention with slavery by
the Federal government which pervades the Constitution, could not have
been carried out. So long as the foreign traffic in slaves was made
lawful to any of the States, slavery was nationalized. American slave
ships, engaged in a lawful commerce, and bearing the national flag,
would be as much entitled to national protection as any other of the
American mercantile marine. Permission of the African slave trade was
essentially intervention in favor of slavery, and the right to prohibit
it, and the exercise of that right, in no wise conflict with the
principle of non-interference with it within the States.
There are but four provisions of the Constitution wherein the subject of
slavery is alluded to, viz: Art. 1, sec. 2; art. 1, sec. 9; art. 4, sec.
2; and art. 5.