called a manufacturing town. For this her citizens deserve to be
crowned,--not with laurel,--but with the solid gold of prosperity. But
how came it that Wheeling, and next to her, Wellsburg,--of all the
towns in Virginia,--should become manufacturing towns? Answer: They
breathe the atmosphere of free states, almost touching them on both
sides. But again; seeing that Wheeling, as a seat for manufactures,
is equal to Pittsburg, and inferior to no town in America, except
Richmond; and that, moreover, she has almost no slaves; why is
Wheeling so far behind Pittsburg, and comparatively so slow in her
growth? Answer: She is in a country in which slavery is established by
law.
We shall explain, by examples, how a few slaves in a country may do
its citizens more immediate injury than a large number.
When a white family own fifty or one hundred slaves, they can, so long
as their land produces well, afford to be indolent and expensive in
their habits; for though each yields only a small profit, yet each
member of the family has ten or fifteen of these black work-animals
to toil for his support. It is not until the fields grow old, and the
crops grow short, and the negroes and the overseer take nearly all,
that the day of ruin can be no longer postponed. If the family be not
_very_ indolent and _very_ expensive, this inevitable day may not come
before the third generation. But the ruin of small slaveholders is
often accomplished in a single lifetime.
When a white family own five or ten slaves, they cannot afford to
be indolent and expensive in their habits; for one black drudge
cannot support one white gentleman or lady. Yet, because they are
slaveholders, this family will feel some aspirations for a life of
easy gentility; and because field work and kitchen work are negroes’
work, the young gentlemen will dislike to go with the negroes to
dirty field work, and the young ladies will dislike to join the black
sluts in any sort of household labor. Such unthrifty sentiments are
the natural consequence of introducing slaves among the families
of a country, especially negro slaves. They infallibly grow and
spread, creating among the white families a distaste for all servile
labor, and a desire to procure slaves who may take all drudgery off
their hands. Thus general industry gives way by degrees to indolent
relaxation, false notions of dignity and refinement, and a taste for
fashionable luxuries. Then debts slyly accumulate. The result is, that
many families are compelled by their embarrassments to sell off and
leave the country. Many who are unable to buy slaves leave it also,
because they feel degraded, and cannot prosper, where slavery exists.
Citizens of the valley! is it not so? Is not this the chief reason why
your beautiful country does not prosper like the northern valleys?
We have examined the census of counties for the last thirty or forty
years, in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, with the view to
discover the law of population in the northern slave states. The
following are among the general results:--
When a county had at first comparatively few slaves, the slave
population, except near the free borders, gained upon the whites, and
most rapidly in the older parts of the country.
The population, as a whole, increased so long as the slaves were
fewer than the whites, but more slowly as the numbers approached to
equality. In our valley, a smaller proportion of slaves had the effect
of a larger one in East Virginia, to retard the increase of population.
When the slaves became as numerous as the whites in the eastern
and older parts of the country, population came to a stand; when
they outnumbered the whites, it declined. Consequently, the slave
population has tended to diffuse itself equally over the country,
rising more rapidly as it was further below the white population, and
going down when it had risen above them.
The price of cotton has regulated the price of negroes in Virginia;
and so it must continue to do; because slave labor is unprofitable
here, and nothing keeps up the price of slaves but their value as a
marketable commodity in the south. Eastern negroes and western cattle
are alike in this, that, if the market abroad go down or be closed,
both sorts of animals, the horned and the woolly-headed, become
a worthless drug at home. The fact is, that our eastern brethren
must send off, on any terms, the increase of their slaves, because
their impoverished country cannot sustain even its present stock of
negroes. We join not the English and American abolition cry about
“slave-breeding” in East Virginia, as if it were a chosen occupation,
and therefore a reproachful one. It is no such thing, but a case of
dire necessity, and many a heartache does it cost the good people
there. But behold in the east the doleful consequences of letting
slavery grow up to an oppressive and heart-sickening burden upon a
community! Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the
power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will
have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
Good policy will require the Southern States, ere long, to close their
markets against northern negroes. When the southern slave market is
closed, or when, by the reduced profits of slave labor in the south,
it becomes glutted,--then the stream of Virginia negroes, heretofore
pouring down upon the south, will be thrown back upon the state, and,
like a river dammed up, must spread itself over the whole territory
of the commonwealth. The head spring in East Virginia cannot contain
itself; it must find vent; it will shed its black streams through
every gap of the Blue Ridge and pour over the Alleghany, till it is
checked by abolitionism on the borders. But even abolitionism cannot
finally stop it. Abolitionism itself will tolerate slavery, when
slaveholders grow sick and tired of it.
In plain terms, fellow-citizens, eastern slaveholders will come with
their multitudes of slaves to settle upon the fresh lands of West
Virginia. Eastern slaves will be sent by thousands for a market in
West Virginia. Every valley will echo with the cry, “Negroes! Negroes
for sale! Dog cheap! Dog cheap!” And because they are dog cheap, many
of our people will buy them. We have shown how slavery has prepared
the people for this; how a little slavery makes way for more, and
how the law of slave increase operates to fill up every part of the
country to the same level with slaves.
And then, fellow-citizens, when you have suffered your country to be
filled with negro slaves instead of white freemen; when its population
shall be as motley as Joseph’s coat of many colors; as ring-streaked
and speckled as father Jacob’s flock was in Padan Aram,--what will the
white basis of representation avail you, if you obtain it? Whether
you obtain it or not, East Virginia will have triumphed; or, rather,
_slavery_ will have triumphed, and all Virginia will have become a
land of darkness and of the shadow of death.
Then, by a forbearance which has no merit, and a supineness which
has no excuse, you will have given to your children, for their
inheritance, this lovely land blackened with a negro population,--the
offscourings of Eastern Virginia, the fag-end of slavery, the
loathsome dregs of that cup of abomination which has already sickened
to death the eastern half of our commonwealth.
Delay, not, then, we beseech you, to raise a barrier against this
Stygian inundation, to stand at the Blue Ridge, and with sovereign
energy say to this Black Sea of misery, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and
no farther.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. Madison thought the original ordinance to be clearly invalid.
See Federalist, No. 38. It is just as clear that he thought the
constitution gave validity to it. See Federalist, No. 43.
[2] Here Mr. HILLIARD, of Alabama, rose to ask if the south, by the
Missouri compromise, had not surrendered its right to carry slavery
north of the compromise line? His question was not understood. If it
had been, it would have been replied, that the existence of slavery at
New Orleans, and a few other places in Louisiana, at the time of the
treaty with France, by no means established the right to carry it to
the Pacific Ocean, if the treaty extended so far. Slavery being against
natural right, can only exist by virtue of positive law, backed by
force sufficient to protect it. It could not lawfully exist, therefore,
in any part of Louisiana, which had not been laid out, organized, and
subjected to the civil jurisdiction of the government. Such was not the
case with any part of the territory north of the compromise line, and
therefore nothing was surrendered. On the other hand, in the formation
of the territorial governments of Orleans, Missouri, Arkansas, and
Florida, a vast extent of country was surrendered to slavery. And this
is independent of the question whether Congress, by the constitution,
has any more right to establish slavery _any where_ than it has to
establish an inquisition, create an order of nobility, or anoint a king.
[3] Essays on Domestic Industry, or an Inquiry into the Expediency of
establishing Cotton Manufactories in South Carolina, 1845.
SKETCH
OF THE OPENING ARGUMENT IN THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES _vs._ DANIEL
DRAYTON, INDICTED, (IN FORTY-ONE SEVERAL BILLS OF INDICTMENT,) FOR
STEALING AND CARRYING AWAY, IN THE SCHOONER PEARL, A CARGO OF SLAVES
FROM WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ON THE NIGHT OF THE 15TH
OF APRIL, 1848; TRIED BEFORE THOMAS H. CRAWFORD, JUDGE OF THE CRIMINAL
COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. P. B. KEY, DISTRICT ATTORNEY;
HORACE MANN AND JAMES M. CARLISLE, COUNSEL FOR THE PRISONER.
GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY;
I rise before you under circumstances rarely exceeded in embarrassment.
I am an utter stranger to his honor, the judge, and to all of you,
gentlemen, who compose the jury. Among all the eager faces in this
crowded hall, there is not one with which I am familiar. I suppose
there is not one man in this vast assembly who has any sympathy for my
client or for me.
The case before us is acknowledged, on all sides, to be one of
great moment. It directly affects human interests,--large pecuniary
interests,--and these are among the most active and powerful of human
impulses. It is a case which has given birth to great excitement. It
has been narrated with formidable exaggerations in the public papers;
it has been angrily discussed in both houses of Congress, and bruited
over the land. From what has transpired in and about this court room,
since the trial commenced, I perceive that each individual seems not
only to be convinced that the prisoner at the bar has committed a great
offence, but, like a light reflected from a multiplying glass, he sees
that offence multiplied a thousand fold in the opinions and feelings
of those around him. I cannot forbear to add, that it is a case, also,
which, in some of its aspects, touches the deepest and tenderest
sympathies of the human heart; for this prosecution not only deals with
human beings as offenders, but with human beings and human rights, as
the subject matters of the offence.
We have been called to trial, too, at an untimely hour. I have not had
time for the preparation and investigation which so important a case
demands. Added to this, my colleague, [Mr. CARLISLE,] was taken ill on
the day he was retained, and, until the evening immediately preceding
the commencement of the trial, I had no opportunity for a single
interview with him, and then but for an hour, in his sick chamber.
During all this time, too, as some of you may know, my attention has
been called away by official duties elsewhere.
Gentlemen, let me come a little closer to my relations to this case and
to yourselves. I stand here, on this side of the table; you sit there,
on the other side. Our _persons_ are near to each other; but should
I not greatly deceive myself, were I to suppose that our _opinions_
were as near together as our persons? We are within shaking-hands’
distance of each other; still, our convictions and sentiments on
certain subjects may be wide asunder as the poles. On a subject of
vast importance and gravity,--a subject reflected from every feature
of this case,--I was born, and from my birth have been trained up, in
one set of ideas; and I mean no discourtesy when I say that you have
been born and trained in another set of ideas. Hence it is natural,
yes, it is inevitable,--is it not?--that we should approach this
subject with widely different views, and, as it were, from opposite
points of the moral compass. I am admonished, then, in the outset,
that your prepossessions are against me. The frame of your minds must
be adverse to the reception of my views. We are in a position where
the hearer, consciously or unconsciously, braces himself against the
pressure of the speaker’s arguments. And of all difficult positions in
which advocate or orator was ever placed, the most difficult is that of
encountering the honest antipathies of his hearers. The heart, secure
in its own convictions, closes itself against the argument that would
overthrow them, as a fond parent bars his doors against the foe that
would carry away his children.
But, gentlemen, amid all these adverse circumstances, and amid these
conflicts of hostile and perhaps irreconcilable feelings, is there not
some common ground on which you and I can stand together, and greet
each other as brethren? Is there not one spot where we can stand side
by side, as friends, sympathize with each other, and act together in
harmony? Yes, gentlemen, there _is_ one such spot. _It is the ground
of_ DUTY. In this case, I have certain duties to perform; you, too,
have certain duties to perform; and the feeling of a common duty is
always creative of the feeling of brotherhood. We are called to these
duties as by the voice of God; we are to perform them as under the eye
of the Omniscient. Here we are embarked in a common cause. From this
moment, then, let all feelings of alienation or repugnance be banished
from between us.
Gentlemen, this prisoner has requested me to be his counsel; and I,
perhaps unwisely, have acceded to his request. I have taken an oath
to be true to him. This has imposed certain responsibilities upon me,
which, before Heaven, I may not escape. In this I find my strength.
With the fierce excitement, which blazed forth in this District when
the prisoners of the “Pearl” were first arrested, still hot around me;
with the generally adverse feelings which I suppose you entertain
towards the side of the cause which I have espoused, and therefore
against its advocate; with these thronged spectators, who show, at
every turn and incident of the trial, what their feelings are towards
the prisoner and his defenders, I should not be able to stand here one
moment, were it not for the supporting, uplifting sentiment, glowing
through every fibre of my frame, that I am here in the performance of a
high and holy duty. In all else I may be weak; in this I am strong.[4]
So you, gentlemen, sit there to perform a duty. Swearing upon the Holy
Evangelists, you have invoked the vengeance of Heaven upon your souls,
if, consciously and wittingly, you swerve a hair’s breadth from the
line of rectitude; if you allow any partiality in favor of a cherished
institution, or any prejudice against the prisoner, to close your eyes
or blind your minds to any fact of evidence or rule of law which may be
adduced in his behalf.
I might even add a consideration of a lighter nature leading to the
same result. Your fortune and mine, for some days to come, I suppose
to be settled. I know not how protracted this trial may be, but,
gentlemen, we are in it, for longer or shorter, for better or worse;
and while we are in it, we shall be obliged to come together from day
to day, and live in each other’s presence and company. Now, I trust
you have too much philosophy about you to make bad worse. And so of
myself. Were we fellow-travellers in the same stage-coach or steamboat,
and were doomed to be so for a week or a fortnight, it would be most
unwise to add to our inevitable discomforts that of striving to annoy
each other; so, when packed together in this room, which seems to have
been constructed for creatures that do not breathe, and with the
thermometer above ninety degrees, I trust any icy feelings we may have
had towards each other will speedily melt away. In a word, I heartily
concur, and I trust you will do the same, in the opinion of the old man
who declared, according to the anecdote, that after the experience of a
long life, he had found it best to submit to what he could not possibly
help.
What, then, is the business before us? Daniel Drayton is set here
at the bar charged with a grave offence, and you are impanelled to
try him. And who is Daniel Drayton? We shall prove to you that he is
a man of sober and industrious life, against whose character, as a
just, upright, exemplary citizen, no charge was ever before preferred.
Whatever may have been his errors in regard to the transaction which
has brought him before you, he has, in consequence of it, passed
through scenes which must move your sympathy. He has been torn from
his family and immured in a loathsome cell. From feeling that sense
of security from lawless violence, which every man, whether guilty or
innocent, is entitled to feel, he has been in imminent danger of being
torn in pieces by an infuriated mob. Yes, gentlemen, on Tuesday, the
eighteenth day of April last, this man, this fellow-citizen of ours,
in this capital of the nation, within sight of Congress, and of the
President’s house, and within hearing of them, too, was pursued by a
mob, from near the river’s side on the south of us to the very doors of
the jail on the north,--a mob estimated to consist of from four to six
thousand people,--many of them armed with deadly weapons; the thrusts
of a dirk knife, which was drawn upon him, coming within an inch of
his body; amid wrathful cries of “Hang him!” “Lynch him!” accompanied
by all the profanities and abominations of speech which usually issue
from the foul throat of that hideous monster--A MOB. Arrived at the
jail, the mob besieged him there. When afterwards, and while under
examination before magistrates of the city, a distinguished gentleman
and member of Congress, [the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio,]
appeared at his request and in his defence, the mob surrounded the
gates of the jail, demanding the immediate expulsion of the counsel;
and the jailer, to save bloodshed, insisted upon his departure. The
storm swept beyond the prison and the prisoner. It assailed all who
were supposed to sympathize with him. The office of a newspaper in this
city, (the National Era,) was threatened with demolition. At a mob
meeting, votes were passed,--without any great scrutiny, I presume,
into the qualifications of the voters,--that the paper should be
discontinued. Its editor was waited upon at night, or at midnight, by
a mob-elected committee, and a peremptory demand was made upon him to
remove his establishment beyond the District, or to abandon it.
But I will not dwell longer upon these details, so disgraceful to the
capital of a republic that calls itself _free_, and so abhorrent to
the feelings of every right-minded man. Were I to enumerate all the
perils, the indignities, and the privations to which my client has been
subjected, the day would be too short for the narration.
After Drayton’s examination, he was held to bail. And what, think
you, was the amount of the bail demanded? Seventy-six thousand
dollars! and seventy-six thousand dollars also for each of the other
prisoners,--$228,000 for the seventy-six alleged slaves, when the
common market value of such slaves in this neighborhood would not, I
suppose, be more than three or four hundred dollars apiece;--and though
all of them, too, had been returned, and were in possession of their
claimants at the time. Has the fact never yet come to the knowledge of
the magistrates of the District of Columbia, that the constitution of
the United States declares that “excessive bail shall not be required”?
But, gentlemen, these are not the only hardships and oppressions to
which my client has been subjected. How many, at the most, are the
offences against the laws of this District which he has committed? He
came here on the 13th of April, in the schooner Pearl. He departed
on the 15th. On the 17th, he was arrested near the mouth of the
Potomac, with a company of alleged slaves on board his vessel. Was
not this all one transaction? Can it be divided and separated into a
multitude of distinct offences? Can this one deed be made an offence
against different laws? If not, then there is another clause in the
constitution set at nought,--that clause which declares that no person
shall be “subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of
life or limb.”
And yet, gentlemen, what do we find on the records of this court? One
hundred and fifteen indictments against this prisoner for this one
act; and one hundred and fifteen indictments also against each of the
other prisoners for engaging in the same. Three hundred and forty-five
indictments! Reams of indictments for a single deed! Nor is this the
only injustice. Each of the prisoners is indicted for having violated,
by this one act, separate and distinct laws. There is an old law of
Maryland against stealing slaves, and another law against transporting
them out of the jurisdiction; and these laws are claimed, by virtue
of an act of Congress, to be in force in this District. Now, if the
prisoner stole the slaves, he is not guilty of the separate offence
of transporting. If he is guilty of transporting, he is not guilty
of stealing. That the two offences should have been committed by one
and the same act, is a legal impossibility. If the grand jury first
found the prisoner guilty of the offence of stealing the slaves, they
thereby declared that he was not guilty of the different offence of
transporting. Or, if they first found him guilty of the offence of
transporting, they thereby declared that he was not guilty of the
separate offence of stealing. To proceed, therefore, after a finding
for one offence, to charge the prisoner with the other, was not only a
legal absurdity, but a grievous injustice.
Besides, if these slaves were stolen, as is alleged, from forty-one
different masters, the whole might have been charged in different
counts in the same indictment, and the prisoner might be found guilty
upon as many of the counts as law and evidence would warrant.
So there was but one act of transportation. Even, therefore, if it were
just to charge the prisoner with the breach of two different laws for
the same act, still, as the transportation of the whole was but one, it
should have been charged only in one indictment.
See how fatal to any man must such a course of proceeding be. If the
stealing were charged in one indictment, it would be tried by one jury;
and the evidence being to a great degree the same, the whole trial
might be brought within a limited period of time. But with forty-one
indictments, there must be forty-one trials, before forty-one different
juries; for neither government nor prisoner would consent that a
jury, who had given an adverse verdict, should try another of the
cases. Now, gentlemen, I care not for the enormous expense of such a
proceeding,--ten dollars on each indictment, enuring to the benefit of
the district attorney,--
Here Mr. KEY, the district attorney, interrupted and said: If Mr. Mann
thinks I am to have ten dollars on each of these indictments, he is
mistaken; and in my argument to the jury I shall deny it.
Mr. CARLISLE. Mr. Mann is not mistaken in the general statement, that
the district attorney receives ten dollars on each indictment. He
receives ten dollars on each, until the income of his office amounts
to six thousand dollars a year. It is only when the emoluments of the
office reach that sum that he ceases to draw his ten dollars on each
indictment.