no longer. He exhibited them in forms so boldly and accurately--with
contours so distinctly traced--with features so pronounced and
striking that I was unconscious for a moment that they might be old
acquaintances. I received them as a _novi hospites_ within these walls,
and gazed upon them with astonishment and alarm. I have recovered,
however, thank God, from this paroxysm of terror, although not from that
of astonishment. I have sought and found tranquillity and courage in
my former consolatory faith. My reliance is that these principles will
obtain no general currency; for, if they should, it requires no gloomy
imagination to sadden the perspective of the future. My reliance is upon
the unsophisticated good sense and noble spirit of the American people.
I have what I may be allowed to call a proud and patriotic trust, that
they will give countenance to no principles which, if followed out to
their obvious consequences, will not only shake the goodly fabric of the
Union to its foundations, but reduce it to a melancholy ruin. The people
of this country, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as
well as virtuous. They know the value of that federal association which
is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their
warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of
prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by
whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive or alluring in their
aspect.'
* * * * *
Sir, it was but the other day that we were forbidden, (properly
forbidden I am sure, for the prohibition came from you,) to assume that
there existed any intention to impose a prospective restraint on
the domestic legislation of Missouri--a restraint to act upon it
contemporaneously with its origin as a State, and to continue adhesive
to it through all the stages of its political existence. We are now,
however, permitted to know that it is determined by a sort of political
surgery to amputate one of the limbs of its local sovereignty, and thus
mangled and disparaged, and thus only, to receive it into the bosom of
the Constitution. It is now avowed that, while Maine is to be ushered
into the Union with every possible demonstration of studious reverence
on our part, and on hers, with colors flying, and all the other graceful
accompaniments of honorable triumph, this ill-conditioned upstart of the
West, this obscure foundling of a wilderness that was but yesterday
the hunting-ground of the savage, is to find her way into the American
family as she can, with an humiliating badge of remediless inferiority
patched upon her garments, with the mark of recent, qualified
manumission upon her, or rather with a brand upon her forehead to tell
the stogy of her territorial vassalage, and to perpetuate the memory of
her evil propensities. It is now avowed that, while the robust district
of Maine is to be seated by the side of her truly respectable parent,
co-ordinate in authority and honor, and is to be dandled into that power
and dignity of which she does not stand in need, but which undoubtedly
she deserves, the more infantine and feeble Missouri is to be repelled
with harshness, and forbidden to come at all, unless with the iron
collar of servitude about her neck, instead of the civic crown of
republican freedom upon her brows, and is to be doomed forever to
leading-strings, unless she will exchange those leading-strings for
shackles.
I am told that you have the power to establish this odious and revolting
distinction, and I am referred for the proofs of that power to various
parts of the Constitution, but principally to that part of it which
authorizes the admission of new States into the Union. I am myself
of opinion that it is in that part only that the advocates for this
restriction can, with any hope of success, apply for a license to
impose it; and that the efforts which have been made to find it in
other portions of that instrument, are too desperate to require to be
encountered. I shall, however, examine those other portions before I
have done, lest it should be supposed by those who have relied upon
them, that what I omit to answer I believe to be unanswerable.
The clause of the Constitution which relates to the admission of new
States is in these words: "The Congress may admit new States into this
Union," etc., and the advocates for restriction maintain that the use
of the word "may" imports discretion to admit or to reject; and that in
this discretion is wrapped up another--that of prescribing the terms and
conditions of admission in case you are willing to admit: "_Cujus est
dare ejus est disponere_." I will not for the present inquire whether
this involved discretion to dictate the terms of admission belongs to
you or not. It is fit that I should first look to the nature and extent
of it.
I think I may assume that if such a power be anything but nominal, it
is much more than adequate to the present object--that it is a power
of vast expansion, to which human sagacity can assign no reasonable
limits--that it is a capacious reservoir of authority, from which you
may take, in all time to come, as occasion may serve, the means of
oppression as well as of benefaction. I know that it professes at this
moment to be the chosen instrument of protecting mercy, and would win
upon us by its benignant smiles; but I know, too, it can frown and play
the tyrant, if it be so disposed. Notwithstanding the softness which it
now assumes, and the care with which it conceals its giant proportions
beneath the deceitful drapery of sentiment, when it next appears before
you it may show itself with a sterner countenance and in more awful
dimensions. It is, to speak the truth, sir, a power of colossal size--if
indeed it be not an abuse of language to call it by the gentle name of a
power. Sir, it is a wilderness of power, of which fancy in her happiest
mood is unable to perceive the far distant and shadowy boundary. Armed
with such a power, with religion in one hand and philanthropy in the
other, and followed with a goodly train of public and private virtues,
you may achieve more conquests over sovereignties not your own than
falls to the common lot of even uncommon ambition. By the aid of such a
power, skilfully employed, you may "bridge your way" over the Hellespont
that separates State legislation from that of Congress; and you may do
so for pretty much the same purpose with which Xerxes once bridged his
way across the Hellespont that separates Asia from Europe. He did so, in
the language of Milton, "the liberties of Greece to yoke." You may do so
for the analogous purpose of subjugating and reducing the sovereignties
of States, as your taste or convenience may suggest, and fashioning
them to your imperial will. There are those in this House who appear
to think, and I doubt not sincerely, that the particular restraint now
under consideration is wise, and benevolent, and good; wise as respects
the Union--good as respects Missouri--benevolent as respects the unhappy
victims whom with a novel kindness it would incarcerate in the south,
and bless by decay and extirpation. Let all such beware, lest in their
desire for the effect which they believe the restriction will produce,
they are too easily satisfied that they have the right to impose it.
The moral beauty of the present purpose, or even its political
recommendations (whatever they may be), can do nothing for a power
like this, which claims to prescribe conditions _ad libitum_, and to
be competent to this purpose, because it is competent to all. This
restriction, if it be not smothered in its birth, will be but a small
part of the progeny of the prolific power. It teems with a mighty brood,
of which this may be entitled to the distinction of comeliness as well
as of primogeniture. The rest may want the boasted loveliness of their
predecessor, and be even uglier than "Lapland witches".
* * * * *
I would not discourage authorized legislation upon those kindly,
generous, and noble feelings which Providence has given to us for the
best of purposes; but when power to act is under discussion, I will
not look to the end in view, lest I should become indifferent to the
lawfulness of the means. Let us discard from this high constitutional
question all those extrinsic considerations which have been forced
into its discussion. Let us endeavor to approach it with a philosophic
impartiality of temper--with a sincere desire to ascertain the
boundaries of our authority, and a determination to keep our wishes in
subjection to our allegiance to the Constitution.
Slavery, we are told in many a pamphlet, memorial, and speech, with
which the press has lately groaned, is a foul blot upon our otherwise
immaculate reputation. Let this be conceded--yet you are no nearer than
before to the conclusion that you possess power which may deal with
other subjects as effectually as with this. Slavery, we are further
told, with some pomp of metaphor, is a canker at the root of all that
is excellent in this republican empire, a pestilent disease that is
snatching the youthful bloom from its cheek, prostrating its honor and
withering its strength. Be it so--yet if you have power to medicine to
it in the way proposed, and in virtue of the diploma which you claim,
you have also power in the distribution of your political alexipharmics
to present the deadliest drugs to every territory that would become a
State, and bid it drink or remain a colony forever. Slavery, we are also
told, is now "rolling onward with a rapid tide towards the boundless
regions of the West," threatening to doom them to sterility and sorrow,
unless some potent voice can say to it,thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther. Slavery engenders pride and indolence in him who commands, and
inflicts intellectual and moral degradation on him who serves. Slavery,
in fine, is unchristian and abominable. Sir, I shall not stop to deny
that slavery is all this and more; but I shall not think myself the less
authorized to deny that it is for you to stay the course of this dark
torrent, by opposing to it a mound raised up by the labors of this
portentous discretion on the domain of others--a mound which you cannot
erect but through the instrumentality of a trespass of no ordinary
kind--not the comparatively innocent trespass that beats down a few
blades of grass which the first kind sun or the next refreshing shower
may cause to spring again--but that which levels with the ground
the lordliest trees of the forest, and claims immortality for the
destruction which it inflicts.
I shall not, I am sure, be told that I exaggerate this power. It has
been admitted here and elsewhere that I do not. But I want no such
concession. It is manifest that as a discretionary power it is
everything or nothing--that its head is in the clouds, or that it is a
mere figment of enthusiastic speculation--that it has no existence, or
that it is an alarming vortex ready to swallow up all such portions of
the sovereignty of an infant State as you may think fit to cast into
it as preparatory to the introduction into the union of the miserable
residue. No man can contradict me when I say, that if you have this
power, you may squeeze down a new-born sovereign State to the size of a
pigmy, and then taking it between finger and thumb, stick it into some
niche of the Union, and still continue by way of mockery to call it a
State in the sense of the Constitution. You may waste it to a shadow,
and then introduce it into the society of flesh and blood an object of
scorn and derision. You may sweat and reduce it to a thing of skin and
bone, and then place the ominous skeleton beside the ruddy and healthful
members of the Union, that it may have leisure to mourn the lamentable
difference between itself and its companions, to brood over its
disastrous promotion, and to seek in justifiable discontent an
opportunity for separation, and insurrection, and rebellion. What may
you not do by dexterity and perseverance with this terrific power? You
may give to a new State, in the form of terms which it cannot
refuse, (as I shall show you hereafter,) a statute book of a
thousand volumes--providing not for ordinary cases only, but even for
possibilities; you may lay the yoke, no matter whether light or heavy,
upon the necks of the latest posterity; you may send this searching
power into every hamlet for centuries to come, by laws enacted in the
spirit of prophecy, and regulating all those dear relations of domestic
concern which belong to local legislation, and which even local
legislation touches with a delicate and sparing hand. This is the first
inroad. But will it be the last? This provision is but a pioneer for
others of a more desolating aspect. It is that fatal bridge of which
Milton speaks, and when once firmly built, what shall hinder you to pass
it when you please for the purpose of plundering power after power at
the expense of new States, as you will still continue to call them, and
raising up prospective codes irrevocable and immortal, which shall leave
to those States the empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, and convert
them into petty pageants, in themselves contemptible, but rendered
infinitely more so by the contrast of their humble faculties with the
proud and admitted pretensions of those who having doomed them to
the inferiority of vassals, have condescended to take them into their
society and under their protection?
"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." It is
objected that the word "may" imports power, not obligation--a right to
decide--a discretion to grant or refuse.
To this it might be answered that power is duty on many occasions. But
let it be conceded that it is discretionary. What consequence follows?
A power to refuse, in a case like this, does not necessarily involve a
power to exact terms. You must look to the result which is the declared
object of the power. Whether you will arrive at it, or not, may depend
on your will; but you cannot compromise with the result intended and
professed.
What then is the professed result? To admit a State into this Union.
What is that Union? A confederation of States equal in
sovereignty--capable of everything which the Constitution does not
forbid, or authorize Congress to forbid. It is an equal union, between
parties equally sovereign. They were sovereign independently of the
Union. The object of the Union was common protection for the exercise
of already existing sovereignty. The parties gave up a portion of that
sovereignty to insure the remainder. As far as they gave it up by the
common compact they have ceased to be sovereign. The Union provides the
means of defending the residue; and it is into that Union that a new
State is to come. By acceding to it, the new State is placed on the same
footing with the original States. It accedes for the same purpose,
i.e., protection for their unsurrendered sovereignty. If it comes in shorn
of its beams--crippled and disparaged beyond the original States, it is
not into the original Union that it comes. For it is a different sort
of Union. The first was Union _inter pares_. This is a Union between
"_disparates_"--between giants and a dwarf--between power and
feebleness--between full proportioned sovereignties and a miserable
image of power--a thing which that very Union has shrunk and shrivelled
from its just size, instead of preserving it in its true dimensions.
It is into this Union, i. e., the Union of the Federal Constitution,
that you are to admit, or refuse to admit. You can admit into no other.
You cannot make the Union, as to the new State, what it is not as to the
old; for then it is not this Union that you open for the entrance of a
new party. If you make it enter into a new and additional compact, is it
any longer the same Union?
We are told that admitting a State into the Union is a compact. Yes,
but what sort of a compact? A compact that it shall be a member of the
Union, as the Constitution has made it. You cannot new fashion it. You
may make a compact to admit, but when admitted the original compact
prevails. The Union is a compact, with a provision of political power
and agents for the accomplishment of its objects. Vary that compact as
to a new State--give new energy to that political power so as to make it
act with more force upon a new State than upon the old--make the will
of those agents more effectually the arbiter of the fate of a new State
than of the old, and it may be confidently said that the new State has
not entered into this Union, but into another Union. How far the Union
has been varied is another question. But that it has been varied is
clear.
If I am told that by the bill relative to Missouri, you do not legislate
upon a new State, I answer that you do; and I answer further that it is
immaterial whether you do or not. But it is upon Missouri, as a State,
that your terms and conditions are to act. Until Missouri is a State,
the terms and conditions are nothing. You legislate in the shape of
terms and conditions, prospectively--and you so legislate upon it that
when it comes into the Union it is to be bound by a contract degrading
and diminishing its sovereignty--and is to be stripped of rights which
the original parties to the Union did not consent to abandon, and which
that Union (so far as depends upon it) takes under its protection and
guarantee.
Is the right to hold slaves a right which Massachusetts enjoys? If it
is, Massachusetts is under this Union in a different character from
Missouri. The compact of Union for it, is different from the
same compact of Union for Missouri. The power of Congress is
different--everything which depends upon the Union is, in that respect,
different.
But it is immaterial whether you legislate for Missouri as a State or
not. The effect of your legislation is to bring it into the Union with a
portion of its sovereignty taken away.
But it is a State which you are to admit. What is a State in the sense
of the Constitution? It is not a State in the general--but a State as
you find it in the Constitution. A State, generally, is a body politic
or independent political society of men. But the State which you are to
admit must be more or less than this political entity. What must it be?
Ask the constitution. It shows what it means by a State by reference to
the parties to it. It must be such a State as Massachusetts, Virginia,
and the other members of the American confederacy--a State with full
sovereignty except as the constitution restricts it.
* * * * *
In a word, the whole amount of the argument on the other side is, that
you may refuse to admit a new State, and that therefore if you admit,
you may prescribe the terms.
The answer to that argument is--that even if you can refuse, you can
prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do.
You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would
make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it
stands, it would be. You can prescribe no terms which will make
the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially
different from that compact among the original States. You may admit, or
refuse to admit: but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense
of the Constitution--a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the
original parties: and it must be into this Union that you are to admit
it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing
Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and
effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference
to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort--the
energy of restraint and destruction.
* * * * *
One of the most signal errors with which the argument on the other side
has abounded, is this of considering the proposed restriction as if
levelled at the introduction or establishment of slavery. And hence the
vehement declamation, which, among other things, has informed us that
slavery originated in fraud or violence.
The truth is, that the restriction has no relation, real or pretended,
to the right of making slaves of those who are free, or of introducing
slavery where it does not already exist. It applies to those who are
admitted to be already slaves, and who (with their posterity) would
continue to be slaves if they should remain where they are at present;
and to a place where slavery already exists by the local law. Their
civil condition will not be altered by their removal from Virginia, or
Carolina, to Missouri. They will not be more slaves than they now are.
Their abode, indeed, will be different, but their bondage the same.
Their numbers may possibly be augmented by the diffusion, and I think
they will. But this can only happen because their hardships will be
mitigated, and their comforts increased. The checks to population,
which exist in the older States, will be diminished. The restriction,
therefore does not prevent the establishment of slavery, either with
reference to persons or place; but simply inhibits the removal from
place to place (the law in each being the same) of a slave, or make his
emancipation the consequence of that removal. It acts professedly merely
on slavery as it exists, and thus acting restrains its present lawful
effects. That slavery, like many other human institutions, originated
in fraud or violence, may be conceded: but, however it originated, it is
established among us, and no man seeks a further establishment of it
by new importations of freemen to be converted into slaves. On the
contrary, all are anxious to mitigate its evils, by all the means within
the reach of the appropriate authority, the domestic legislatures of the
different States.
* * * * *
Of the declaration of our independence, which has also been quoted in
support of the perilous doctrines now urged upon us, I need not now
speak at large. I have shown on a former occasion how idle it is to rely
upon that instrument for such a purpose, and I will not fatigue you by
mere repetition. The self-evident truths announced in the Declaration
of Independence are not truths at all, if taken literally; and the
practical conclusions contained in the same passage of that declaration
prove that they were never designed to be so received.
The articles of confederation contain nothing on the subject; whilst the
actual Constitution recognizes the legal existence of slavery by various
provisions. The power of prohibiting the slave trade is involved in that
of regulating commerce, but this is coupled with an express inhibition
to the exercise of it for twenty years. How then can that Constitution
which expressly permits the importation of slaves authorize the National
Government to set on foot a crusade against slavery?
The clause respecting fugitive slaves is affirmative and active in its
effects. It is a direct sanction and positive protection of the right of
the master to the services of his slave as derived under the local laws
of the States. The phraseology in which it is wrapped up still leaves
the intention clear, and the words, "persons held to service or labor
in one State under the laws thereof," have always been interpreted to
extend to the case of slaves, in the various acts of Congress which
have been passed to give efficacy to the provision, and in the judicial
application of those laws. So also in the clause prescribing the ratio
of representation--the phrase, "three-fifths of all other persons,"
is equivalent to slaves, or it means nothing. And yet we are told that
those who are acting under a Constitution which sanctions the existence
of slavery in those States which choose to tolerate it, are at liberty
to hold that no law can sanction its existence.
It is idle to make the rightfulness of an act the measure of sovereign
power. The distinction between sovereign power and the moral right
to exercise it has always been recognized. All political power may be
abused, but is it to stop where abuse may begin? The power of declaring
war is a power of vast capacity for mischief, and capable of inflicting
the most wide-spread desolation. But it is given to Congress without
stint and without measure. Is a citizen, or are the courts of justice
to inquire whether that, or any other law, is just, before they obey or
execute it? And are there any degrees of injustice which will withdraw
from sovereign power the capacity of making a given law?
* * * * *
The power is "to admit new States into this Union," and it may be safely
conceded that here is discretion to admit or refuse. The question is,
what must we do if we do anything? What must we admit, and into what?
The answer is a State--and into this Union.