Mr. President, if we were engaged in the performance of our
accustomed legislative duties, I might well rest content with the
simple statement of my concurrences in the remarks just made by my
colleague [Mr. Slidell]. Deeply impressed, however, with the
solemnity of the occasion, I cannot remain insensible to the duty of
recording, among the authentic reports of your proceedings, the
expression of my conviction that the State of Louisiana has judged
and acted well and wisely in this crisis of her destiny.
Sir, it has been urged, on more than one occasion, in the
discussions here and elsewhere, that Louisiana stands on an
exceptional footing. It has been said that whatever may be the
rights of the States that were original parties to the Constitution,
--even granting their right to resume, for sufficient cause, those
restricted powers which they delegated to the general government in
trust for their own use and benefit,--still Louisiana can have no
such right, because she was acquired by purchase. Gentlemen have
not hesitated to speak of the sovereign States formed out of the
territory ceded by France as property bought with the money of the
United States, belonging to them as purchasers; and, although they
have not carried their doctrine to its legitimate results, I must
conclude that they also mean to assert, on the same principle, the
right of selling for a price that which for a price was bought.
I shall not pause to comment on this repulsive dogma of a party
which asserts the right of property in free-born white men, in order
to reach its cherished object of destroying the right of property in
slave-born black men--still less shall I detain the Senate in
pointing out how shadowy the distinction between the condition of
the servile African and that to which the white freeman of my State
would be reduced, if it, indeed, be true that they are bound to this
government by ties that cannot be legitimately dissevered without
the consent of that very majority which wields its powers for their
oppression. I simply deny the fact on which the argument is
founded. I deny that the province of Louisiana, or the people of
Louisiana, were ever conveyed to the United States for a price as
property that could be bought or sold at will. Without entering
into the details of the negotiation, the archives of our State
Department show the fact to be, that although the domain, the public
lands, and other property of France in the ceded province, were
conveyed by absolute title to the United States, the sovereignty was
not conveyed otherwise than in trust.
A hundredfold, sir, has the Government of the United States been
reimbursed by the sales of public property, of public lands, for the
price of the acquisition; but not with the fidelity of the honest
trustee has it discharged the obligations as regards the
sovereignty.
I have said that the government assumed to act as trustee or
guardian of the people of the ceded province, and covenanted to
transfer to them the sovereignty thus held in trust for their use
and benefit, as soon as they were capable of exercising it. What is
the express language of the treaty?
"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the
Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible,
according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the
enjoyments of all rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of
the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and
protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the
religion which they profess."
And, sir, as if to mark the true nature of the cession in a manner
too significant to admit of misconstruction, the treaty stipulates
no price; and the sole consideration for the conveyance, as stated
on its face, is the desire to afford a strong proof of the
friendship of France for the United States. By the terms of a
separate convention stipulating the payment of a sum of money, the
precaution is again observed of stating that the payment is to be
made, not as a consideration or a price or a condition precedent of
the cession, but it is carefully distinguished as being a
consequence of the cession. It was by words thus studiously chosen,
sir, that James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson marked their
understanding of a contract now misconstrued as being a bargain and
sale of sovereignty over freemen. With what indignant scorn would
those stanch advocates of the inherent right of self-government have
repudiated the slavish doctrine now deduced from their action!
How were the obligations of this treaty fulfilled? That Louisiana
at that date contained slaves held as property by her people through
the whole length of the Mississippi Valley, that those people had an
unrestricted right of settlement with their slaves under legal
protection throughout the entire ceded province, no man has ever yet
had the hardihood to deny. Here is a treaty promise to protect
their property--their slave property--in that Territory, before
it should become a State. That this promise was openly violated, in
the adjustment forced upon the South at the time of the admission of
Missouri, is a matter of recorded history. The perspicuous and
unanswerable exposition of Mr. Justice Catron, in the opinion
delivered by him in the Dred Scott case, will remain through all
time as an ample vindication of this assertion.
If then, sir, the people of Louisiana had a right, which Congress
could not deny, of the admission into the Union with all the rights
of all the citizens of the United States, it is in vain that the
partisans of the right of the majority to govern the minority with
despotic control, attempt to establish a distinction, to her
prejudice, between her rights and those of any other State. The only
distinction which really exists is this, that she can point to a
breach of treaty stipulations expressly guaranteeing her rights, as
a wrong superadded to those which have impelled a number of her
sister States to the assertion of their independence.
The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign State are those of Virginia;
no more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated
powers successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right,
in spite of her express reservation made and notified to her sister
States when she consented to enter the Union! And, sir, permit me to
say that, of all the causes which justify the action of the Southern
States, I know none of greater gravity and more alarming magnitude
than that now developed of the right of secession. A pretension so
monstrous as that which perverts a restricted agency constituted by
sovereign States for common purposes, into the unlimited despotism
of the majority, and denies all legitimate escape from such
despotism, when powers not delegated are usurped, converts the whole
constitutional fabric into the secure abode of lawless tyranny, and
degrades sovereign States into provincial dependencies.
It is said that the right of secession, if conceded, makes of our
government a mere rope of sand; that to assert its existence
imputes to the framers of the Constitution the folly of planting
the seeds of death in that which was designed for perpetual
existence. If this imputation were true, sir, it would merely prove
that their offspring was not exempt from that mortality which is the
common lot of all that is not created by higher than human
power. But it is not so, sir. Let facts answer theory. For
two-thirds of a century this right has been known by many of the
States to be, at all times, within their power. Yet, up to the
present period, when its exercise has become indispensable to a
people menaced with absolute extermination, there have been but two
instances in which it has been even threatened seriously; the first,
when Massachusetts led the New England States in an attempt to
escape from the dangers of our last war with Great Britain; the
second, when the same State proposed to secede on account of the
admission of Texas as a new State into the Union.
Sir, in the language of our declaration of secession from Great
Britain, it is stated as an established truth, that "all experience
has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are
sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which
they have been accustomed"; and nothing can be more obvious to the
calm and candid observer of passing events than that the disruption
of the Confederacy has been due, in a great measure, not to the
existence, but to the denial of this right. Few candid men would
refuse to admit that the Republicans of the North would have been
checked in their mad career had they been convinced of the existence
of this right, and the intention to assert it. The very knowledge of
its existence by preventing occurrences which alone could prompt its
exercise would have rendered it a most efficient instrument in the
preservation of the Union, But, sir, if the fact were otherwise--
if all the teachings of experience were reversed--better, far
better, a rope of sand, aye, the flimsiest gossamer that ever
glistened in the morning dew, than chains of iron and shackles of
steel; better the wildest anarchy, with the hope, the chance, of one
hour's inspiration of the glorious breath of freedom, than ages of
the hopeless bondage and oppression to which our enemies would
reduce us.
We are told that the laws must be enforced; that the revenues must
be collected; that the South is in rebellion without cause, and that
her citizens are traitors.
Rebellion! the very word is a confession; an avowal of tyranny,
outrage, and oppression. It is taken from the despot's code, and
has no terror for others than slavish souls. When, sir, did
millions of people, as a single man, rise in organized, deliberate,
unimpassioned rebellion against justice, truth, and honor? Well did
a great Englishman exclaim on a similar occasion:--
"You might as well tell me that they rebelled against the light of
heaven, that they rejected the fruits of the earth. Men do not war
against their benefactors; they are not mad enough to repel the
instincts of self-preservation. I pronounce fearlessly that no
intelligent people ever rose, or ever will rise, against a sincere,
rational, and benevolent authority. No people were ever born
blind. Infatuation is not a law of human nature. When there is a
revolt by a free people, with the common consent of all classes of
society, there must be a criminal against whom that revolt is
aimed."
Traitors! Treason! Ay, sir, the people of the South imitate and
glory in just such treason as glowed in the soul of Hampden; just
such treason as leaped in living flame from the impassioned lips of
Henry; just such treason as encircles with a sacred halo the undying
name of Washington.
You will enforce the laws. You want to know if we have a government;
if you have any authority to collect revenue; to wring tribute from
an unwilling people? Sir, humanity desponds, and all the inspiring
hopes of her progressive improvement vanish into empty air at the
reflections which crowd on the mind at hearing repeated, with
aggravated enormity, the sentiments against which a Chatham launched
his indignant thunders nearly a century ago. The very words of Lord
North and his royal master are repeated here in debate, not as
quotations, but as the spontaneous outpourings of a spirit the
counterpart of theirs.
In Lord North's speech on the destruction of the tea in Boston
harbor, he said:--
"We are no longer to dispute between legislation and taxation; we
are now only to consider whether or not we have any authority
there. It is very clear we have none, if we suffer the property of
our subjects to be destroyed. We must punish, control, or yield to
them."
And thereupon he proposed to close the port of Boston, just as the
representatives of Massachusetts now propose to close the port of
Charleston, in order to determine whether or not you have any
authority there. It is thus that, in 1861, Boston is to pay her
debt of gratitude to Charleston, which, in the days of her struggle,
proclaimed the generous sentiment that "the cause of Boston was the
cause of Charleston." Who, after this, will say that republicans
are ungrateful? Well, sir, the statesmen of Great Britain answered
to Lord North's appeal, "yield." The courtiers and the politicians
said, "punish," "control." The result is known. History gives you
the lesson. Profit by its teachings!
So, sir, in the address sent under the royal sign-manual to
Parliament, it was invoked to take measures "for better securing the
execution of the laws," and it acquiesced in the suggestion. Just as
now, a senile executive, under the sinister influence of insane
counsels, is proposing, with your assent, "to secure the better
execution of the laws," by blockading ports and turning upon the
people of the States the artillery which they provided at their own
expense for their own defense, and intrusted to you and to him for
that and for no other purpose--nay, even in States that are now
exercising the undoubted and most precious rights of a free people;
where there is no secession; where the citizens are assembling to
hold peaceful elections for considering what course of action is
demanded in this dread crisis by a due regard for their own safety
and their own liberty; aye, even in Virginia herself, the people are
to cast their suffrages beneath the undisguised menaces of a
frowning fortress. Cannon are brought to bear on their homes, and
parricidal hands are preparing weapons for rending the bosom of the
mother of Washington.
Sir, when Great Britain proposed to exact tribute from your fathers
against their will, Lord Chatham said:--
"Whatever is a man's own is absolutely his own; no man has a right
to take it from him without his consent. Whoever attempts to do it
attempts an injury. Whoever does it commits a robbery. You have no
right to tax America. I rejoice that America has resisted.
"Let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be
asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend
to every point of legislation whatever, so that we may bind their
trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power, except
that of taking money out of their own pockets without their
consent."
It was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century, and
for the Congress of a Republic of free men, to witness the willing
abnegation of all power, save that of exacting tribute. What
Imperial Britain, with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited power
over dependent colonies, could not even attempt without the vehement
protest of her greatest statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated
form, if you can enforce it, against independent States.
Good God, sir! since when has the necessity arisen of recalling to
American legislators the lessons of freedom taught in lisping
childhood by loving mothers; that pervade the atmosphere we have
breathed from infancy; that so form part of our very being, that in
their absence we would lose the consciousness of our own identity?
Heaven be praised that not all have forgotten them; that when we
shall have left these familiar halls, and when force bills,
blockades, armies, navies, and all the accustomed coercive
appliances of despots shall be proposed and advocated, voices shall
be heard from this side of the chamber that will make its very roof
resound with the indignant clamor of outraged freedom. Methinks I
still hear ringing in my ears the appeal of the eloquent
Representative [Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio], whose Northern
home looks down on Kentucky's fertile borders: "Armies, money, blood
cannot maintain this Union; justice, reason, peace may."
And now to you, Mr. President, and to my brother Senators, on all
sides of this chamber, I bid a respectful farewell; with many of
those from whom I have been radically separated in political
sentiment, my personal relations have been kindly, and have inspired
me with a respect and esteem that I shall not willingly forget; with
those around me from the Southern States I part as men part from
brothers on the eve of a temporary absence, with a cordial pressure
of the hand and a smiling assurance of the speedy renewal of sweet
intercourse around the family hearth. But to you, noble and
generous friends, who, born beneath other skies, possess hearts that
beat in sympathy with ours; to you, who, solicited and assailed by
motives the most powerful that could appeal to selfish natures, have
nobly spurned them all; to you, who, in our behalf, have bared your
breasts to the fierce beatings of the storm, and made willing
sacrifice of life's most glittering prizes in your devotion to
constitutional liberty; to you, who have made our cause your cause,
and from many of whom I feel I part forever, what shall I, can I
say? Naught, I know and feel, is needed for myself; but this I will
say for the people in whose name I speak to-day: whether prosperous
or adverse fortunes await you, one priceless treasure is yours--
the assurance that an entire people honor your names, and hold them
in grateful and affectionate memory. But with still sweeter and
more touching return shall your unselfish devotion be rewarded.
When, in after days, the story of the present shall be written, when
history shall have passed her stern sentence on the erring men who
have driven their unoffending brethren from the shelter of their
common home, your names will derive fresh lustre from the contrast;
and when your children shall hear repeated the familiar tale, it
will be with glowing cheek and kindling eye; their very souls will
stand a-tiptoe as their sires are named, and they will glory in
their lineage from men of spirit as generous and of patriotism as
high-hearted as ever illustrated or adorned the American Senate.
SLAVERY AS ESTABLISHED BY LAW (Delivered in the United States
Senate, March 11th, 1858)
Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property
there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the
inventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast
wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time
ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a
few of the patents now before us in this capitol for renewal was
$40,000,000. I cannot believe that the entire capital invested in
inventions of this character in the United States can fall short of
one hundred and fifty or two hundred million dollars. On what
protection does this vast property rest? Just upon that same
constitutional protection which gives a remedy to the slave-owner
when his property is also found outside of the limits of the State
in which he lives.
Without this protection what would be the condition of the Northern
inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law
would come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had
stolen his property, "Render me up my property, or pay me value for
its use." The Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he
were the counsel of this Vermont inventor: "Sir, if you want
protection for your property go to your own State; property is
governed by the laws of the State within whose jurisdiction it is
found; you have no property in your invention outside of the limits
of your State; you cannot go an inch beyond it." Would not this be
so? Does not every man see at once that the right of the inventor
to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his inspiration,
depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God has
implanted in the heart of man; and that wherever he cannot exercise
them, it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received
from God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?
Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont
himself has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a
horse riding him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator
says, "Now you see that slaves are not property, like other
property; if slaves were property like other property, why have you
this special clause in your Constitution to protect a slave? You
have no clause to protect a horse, because horses are recognized as
property everywhere." Mr. President, the same fallacy lurks at the
bottom of this argument, as of all the rest. Let Pennsylvania
exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over persons and things within
her own boundary, let her do as she has a perfect right to
do--declare that hereafter, within the State of Pennsylvania, there
shall be no property in horses, and that no man shall maintain a
suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a horse, and
where will your horse owner be then? Just where the English poet is
now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the
Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to
rights in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in
relation to such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if
you please, are not property like other property in this, that you
can easily rob us of them; but as to the right in them, that man has
to overthrow the whole history of the world, he has to overthrow
every treatise on jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common
sentiment of mankind, he has to repudiate the authority of all that
is considered sacred with man, ere he can reach the conclusion that
the person who owns a slave, in a country where slavery has been
established for ages, has no other property in that slave than the
mere title which is given by the statute law of the land where it is
found.