could to develop and cultivate the faculties which God has bestowed
upon him, and which, therefore, he holds under a divine charter. I
would take from his neck the heel that has trodden him down; I would
dispel from his mind the cloud that has shrouded him in moral night; I
would remove the obstructions that have forbidden his soul to aspire;
and having done this, I would leave him, as I would leave every other
man, to find his level,--to occupy the position to which he should be
entitled by his intelligence and his virtues. I entertain no fears on
the much dreaded subject of amalgamation. Legal amalgamation between
the races will never take place, unless, in the changed condition of
society, reasons shall exist to warrant and sanction it; and, in that
case, it will carry its own justification with it. But one thing I
could never understand,--why those who are so horror-stricken at the
idea of _theoretic_ amalgamation, should exhibit to the world, in all
their cities, on all their plantations, and in all their households,
such numberless proofs of _practical_ amalgamation. I never could
see why those who arraign and condemn us at the north so vehemently,
because, as they say, we obtrude our prying eyes into what they call
a “domestic” or “fireside” institution, should have no hesitation in
exhibiting to the world, through all their borders, ten thousand, and
ten times ten thousand, living witnesses, that they make it a bedside
institution. Multitudes of the slaves of the south bear about upon
their persons a brand as indelible as that of Cain; but the mark has
been fastened upon them, not for their own crimes, but for the crimes
of their fathers. In the complexion of the slave, we read the horrid
history of the guilt of the enslavers. They demonstrate that the one
race has been to the other, not the object of benevolence, but the
victim of licentiousness.
But to resume. When the visitor to this city from the north leaves
his lodgings, and goes into the public streets, half the people whom
he meets there are of the same degraded class. Their tattered dress
and unseemly manners denote congenital debasement. Their language
proclaims their ignorance. If you have occasion to send them on an
errand, they cannot read the direction of a note, or a sign on a
shopboard. Their ideas are limited within the narrowest range. They
speak the natural language of servility, and they wear the livery of
an inferior condition. The conviction of their deplorable state is
perpetually forced upon the mind. You do not need their color to remind
you of their degradation. Color, sir! They are oftentimes almost as
white as ourselves. Sir, there is not a member of Congress who has
not frequently seen some of his fellow-members, in the spring of the
year, with a jaundiced skin more sallow and more yellow than that of
many a slave who is bought and sold and owned in this city. I have
seen members of this House to whom I have been disposed to give a
friendly caution to keep their “free papers” about their persons, lest
suddenly, on the presumption from color, they should be seized and sold
for runaway slaves. A yellow complexion here is so common a badge of
slavery, that one whose skin is colored by disease is by no means out
of danger. To enjoy security, a man must do more than take care of his
life; he must take care of his health. It is not enough to take heed
to the meditations of his heart; he must see also to the secretions of
his liver.
But, sir, the stranger from the north visits the courts of justice
in this city; he goes into halls set apart and consecrated, even
in the dark and half-heathenish periods of English history, to the
investigation of truth and the administration of justice; but if he
sees any specimens of the colored race there, he sees them only as
menials. They cannot go there as witnesses. However atrocious the
wrongs they may suffer in their own person and character, or in the
person and character of wife or children, they cannot appeal to the
courts to avenge or redress them. If introduced there at all, it is as
a bale of goods is introduced, or as an ox or a horse is brought within
their purlieus, for the purpose of trying some disputed question of
identity or ownership. They go not as suitors, but as sacrifices. In
the courts of law; in the temples with which all our ideas of justice,
of right between man and man, are associated; where truth goes to be
vindicated, where innocence flies to be avenged,--in these courts,
an entire portion of the human race are known, not as men, but as
chattels, as cattle. Where, for them, is the Magna Charta that the old
barons wrested from King John? Is a whole race to be forever doomed to
this outlawry? Are they forever to wear a “wolf’s head,” which every
white man may cut off when he pleases? Sir, it cannot be that this
state of things will last forever. If all the rights of the black race
are thus withheld from them, it is just as certain as the progress of
time that they, too, will have their Runnymede, their Declaration of
Independence, their Bunker Hill, and their Yorktown.
Such, sir, are the sights that molest us when we come here from the
north,--that molest us in the hotels, that molest us in the streets,
that molest us in the courts, that molest us every where. But the
week passes away, and the Sabbath comes,--the day of rest from
worldly toils, the day set apart for social worship, when men come
together, and, by their mutual presence and assistance, lift up the
hearts of each other in gratitude to God. But where now are the colored
population, that seemed to be so numerous every where else? Have they
no God? Have they no interest in the Savior’s example and precepts?
Have they no need of consolation, of faith in the Unseen, to help them
bear up under the burdens and anxieties of life? Is their futurity so
uncertain or so worthless that they need no guide to a better country,
or that they can be turned off with a guide as ignorant and blind as
themselves?
We go from the courts and the churches to the schools. But no child
in whose skin there is a shadow of a shade of African complexion is
to be found there. The channels are so cut that all the sacred and
healing waters of knowledge flow, not to him, but by him. Sir, of all
the remorseless and wanton cruelties ever committed in this world of
wickedness and woe, I hold that to be the most remorseless and wanton
which shuts out from all the means of instruction a being whom God has
endued with the capacities of knowledge, and inspired with the divine
desire _to know_. Strike blossom and beauty from the vernal season of
the year, and leave it sombre and cheerless; annihilate the harmonies
with which the birds of spring make vocal the field and the forest,
and let exulting Nature become silent and desolate; dry up even those
fountains of joy and gladsomeness that flow unbidden from the heart
of childhood, and let the radiant countenance of youth become dull
and stony like that of age;--do all this, if you will, but withhold
your profane hand from those creative sources of knowledge which
shall give ever-renewing and ever-increasing delight through all the
cycles of immortality, and which have the power to assimilate the
finite creature more and more nearly to the infinite Creator. Sir, he
who denies to children the acquisition of knowledge works devilish
miracles. If a man destroys my power of hearing, it is precisely the
same to me as though, leaving my faculty of hearing untouched, he had
annihilated all the melodies and harmonies of the universe. If a man
obliterates my power of vision, it is precisely the same to me as
though he had blotted out the light of the sun, and flung a pall of
darkness over all the beauties of the earth and the glories of the
firmament. So, if a usurper of human rights takes away from a child
the faculties of knowledge, or the means and opportunities to know,
it is precisely the same to that child as though all the beauties
and the wonders, all the magnificence and the glory, of the universe
itself had been destroyed. To one who is permitted to know nothing of
the charms and sublimities of science, all science is non-existent.
To one who is permitted to know nothing of the historical past, all
the past generations of men are a nonentity. To one whose mind is
not made capacious of the future, and opened to receive it, all the
great interests of futurity have less of reality than a dream. I say,
therefore, in strict, literal, philosophical truth, that whoever
denies knowledge to children works devilish miracles. Just so far
as he disables and incapacitates them from knowing, he annihilates
the objects of knowledge; he obliterates history; he destroys the
countless materials in the natural world that might, through the medium
of the useful arts, be converted into human comforts and blessings;
he suspends the sublime order and progression of Nature, and blots
out those wonderful relations of cause and effect that belong to her
unchangeable laws. Nay, there is a sense in which such an impious
destroyer of knowledge may be said to annihilate the attributes of
the Creator himself, for he does annihilate the capacity of forming a
conception of that Creator, and thus prevents a soul that was created
in the image of God from ever receiving the image it was created to
reflect. Such a destroyer of knowledge dims the highest moral splendor
of the universe. God is more to me than a grand and solitary Being,
though refulgent with infinite perfections. Contemplated as enthroned
in the midst of his works, his spiritual offspring in all the grand
circuit of the worlds he has formed become a multiplying glass,
reflecting back the Original in the profusion and countlessness of
infinity. But when the wickedness of man cuts off entire generations
and whole races from the capacity of reflecting back this radiant
image of the Creator, then all that part of the universe where they
dwell becomes black and revolting, and all that portion of the Mirror
of Souls which was designed to reproduce and rekindle the glories of
the Eternal absorbs and quenches the rays which it should have caught
and flamed with anew, and multiplied and returned. And still further,
sir, I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to
geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only
works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the
creation of evil also. He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens
the door to all the error that supplies its place. Ignorance breeds
monsters to fill up all the vacuities of the soul that are unoccupied
by the verities of knowledge. He who dethrones the idea of law, bids
chaos welcome in its stead. Superstition is the mathematical complement
of religious truth; and just so much less as the life of a human being
is reclaimed to good, just so much more is it delivered over to evil.
The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from
a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of
changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though
he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet
of ours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid
zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown,
and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless
reign. Sir, the laws recorded in the statute books of the free states,
providing the means of education, and wooing the children to receive
the blessedness of true knowledge, are worthy to be inscribed as
emblems and hieroglyphics upon the golden gates of heaven; but those
laws which deform the statute books of the slave states of this Union,
making it a penal offence to educate human beings, and dooming immortal
souls to perpetual ignorance, would make the most appropriate adornment
wherewith to embellish with inscription and bas-relief the pillars of
the council hall of Pandemonium.
Sir, if there is any thing for which I would go back to childhood,
and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting,
transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold
their earliest communion with knowledge. When the panting and thirsting
soul first drinks the delicious waters of truth; when the moral and
intellectual tastes and desires first seize the fragrant fruits that
flourish in the garden of knowledge; then does the child catch a
glimpse and foretaste of heaven. He regales himself upon the nectar
and ambrosia of the gods. Late in life, this zest is rarely if ever
felt so keenly as at the beginning. Such ought not to be the fact;
but our bodies are so systematically abused by transgressions of the
laws of health and diet, that the sympathizing soul loses the keenness
of its early relish. Even then, however, age has its compensations.
The old may experience the delights of learning, anew, in the reflex
pleasure of seeing children learn. But these lofty and enduring
satisfactions,--this pleasure,--it is no extravagance to say, this
bliss of knowledge, both for parent and child, is withheld, cruelly,
remorselessly withheld, from the slave. We know all this; we see its
imbruting consequences; and we are compelled to see them, because the
government will uphold slavery here.
Such, sir, is the spectacle which is presented to all northern men,
whenever for duty, for business, or for pleasure, they visit this
metropolis. Wherever we go, wherever we are, the odious, abhorred
concomitants of this institution are forced upon our observation, and
become a perpetual bitterness in the cup of life. The whole system,
with all its adjuncts, is irreconcilably repugnant to our ideas of
justice. We believe it to be a denial of the rights of man; we believe
it to be contrary to the law of God. Whether these feelings wear away
by the lapse of time, and the indurating power of custom, I know not;
but, for one, I hope never to become hardened and callous to the sight;
for it is a case where I could experience no mitigation of my pains,
without a corresponding debasement of my nature.
Now, in all sincerity, and in all kindness, I ask our southern brethren
what there is to them so valuable and desirable in retaining slavery
here, as to be a compensation for all the pain and evil which its
existence inflicts upon the north? Surely its abandonment here would be
a small thing to them, while its continuance is a great thing to us. It
is a great thing to us, because we are held responsible for it by the
whole civilized world. This District is the common possession of the
nation. Congress has power of exclusive legislation over it. Congress,
therefore, is responsible for its institutions, as a man is responsible
for the condition of his house, and the customs of his family. The
general government is not responsible for the local institutions of
Massachusetts or of Mississippi. Each of them has supreme control over
its own domestic concerns. They may honorably discharge their debts or
repudiate them; they may build up institutions of charity, of learning,
and of religion; or they may suffer inhumanity and violence, ignorance
and paganism, to prevail; and we, here, cannot help it, and therefore
are not responsible for it. But it is wholly otherwise with regard to
the institutions that prevail in this District; their honor, or their
infamy, attaches to us. We are judged by them the world round. We of
the Northern States feel it at home; we are made to feel it still more
deeply abroad. Throughout every nation in Europe, it is the common
language and the common sentiment, that an institution which exists
in one half of the states of this Union is in flagrant contrast and
contradiction to the theory of our government. When we are reminded of
this,--whether in a kindly and expostulatory manner by our friends, or
in an offensive and taunting one by our enemies,--we of the north can
say, at least, that we are not responsible for it. We can explain why
we are no more amenable for the local laws of Arkansas or Missouri than
we are for the Catholic religion in Mexico, or for the revolutions in
the South American republics. This is our answer. But they still retort
upon us, and say, There is one spot for which you are responsible,--the
District of Columbia. You could abolish slavery there if you would;
you do not; and therefore the sin of its continuance is yours, as much
as if it existed in New York or Massachusetts. Now I ask southern
gentlemen how it is consistent with magnanimity and honor, with a
fraternal feeling towards the north, for them to force the odium of
this inconsistency upon us? Surely they gain no credit, no character by
it; we lose both credit and character. The existence of slavery here is
no benefit to them; it is of unspeakable injury to us. They would lose
nothing by surrendering it; we suffer every thing by its continuance.
A change would work them no injury; it would be invaluable to us. I ask
them, on principles of common fairness and good neighborhood, that they
should courteously and voluntarily yield us this point, which would
allay so much bitterness and heart-burning at the north, and which,
according to their view of the matter, would fill the south with the
sweet savor of a generous deed.
I know, sir, that some southern gentleman profess to see a principle
in such a course that debars them from adopting it. They say that
if slavery in this District should be surrendered, it would only
be giving the adversary a vantage ground, on which he could plant
himself to attack slavery in the states. I dissent from this view
entirely. Has not the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. GIDDINGS,] who is
supposed to represent the extreme anti-slavery views which exist in
this House,--has he not declared here, a hundred times over, that
he disclaims all right, that he renounces all legal authority and
pretext, under the constitution, to lay the hands of this government,
for the purpose of freeing him, on a single slave in the slave states?
But clearly the principle is different in regard to slaves in this
District, where we possess the power of “exclusive legislation.” But
if gentlemen at the south see a principle which debars them from
surrendering slavery in this District, we at the north see a principle
which prompts us, and will prompt us, until the work is accomplished,
to renewed exertions. On the same ground on which slavery in this
District has been defended for the last fifty years, it can be defended
for the next fifty, or the next five hundred years; it can be defended
forever. This idea of perpetual slavery in the very household of a
republic of freemen is not to be tolerated, and cannot be tolerated.
But I will not dwell on this topic further. I close this branch of my
argument with a proposition which seems to me but fair and equitable.
The south has held this metropolis as a slave capital for fifty years.
Let it now be held as a free capital for fifty years; and if, at the
end of this period, adequate reasons can be shown, before any nation,
civilized or uncivilized, upon the face of the earth, for restoring it
to slavery again, I, for one, should have no fears of entering into an
engagement upon such a condition, that it should again become “a land
of Egypt and a house of bondage.”
* * * * *
Notwithstanding I have dwelt so long upon the social and moral
aspects of this subject, I am still tempted not to forego that which
was my principal object in rising, namely, to submit an argument
on the question of the legality or constitutionality of slavery in
this District. I have bestowed much careful attention upon this
subject, with the sincerest desire of arriving at true, legal, and
constitutional results. I submit my views with deference, because I
know they are in conflict with the views of others, for whose knowledge
and abilities I have a profound respect.
The legality of slavery in the District of Columbia has been assumed,
and practically acquiesced in, for fifty years. Had the question
of its validity been raised, and argued on the principles of the
constitution, immediately after the creation of the District, I believe
this territory would have been declared free soil. In my conscientious
opinion, slavery exists in this District only by original usurpation
and subsequent acquiescence. If so, Congress cannot be too speedily
invoked to abdicate the power it has usurped.
1. The first position I take is this: _That slavery has no legal
existence any where, unless by force of positive law._
If any man claims authority over the body, mind, and soul of one of
his fellow-men, and claims this authority not only for the whole life
of his victim, but a like authority over all his descendants, there
is no part of the civilized world where he will not be required to
show some positive law, authorizing the power and the bondage. If the
claimant says, “I am stronger, or I am wiser than he;” or, “I have an
Anglo-Saxon brain, while he has only an African brain;” or, “my skin
is white, and his skin is not white;” or, “I descended from Shem, and
he from Ham; and, therefore, he is my slave,”--there is not a court
in Christendom, which, though it may admit the fact, will ratify the
inference. If the claimant affirms that it is _morally_ right for
him to seize his fellow-man and reduce him to slavery; if he brings
the Bible into court as his law book, and cites Abraham and Isaac,
and Jacob and Paul, as his authorities; still, I say, there is not a
court in Christendom that will not deny the validity of the title, and
rebuke the arrogance of the demand.[6] Positive law, then, is the only
foundation of slavery. The authorities are numerous, if not numberless,
to establish this position. I shall not encumber this argument by
citing many of them. The few which I shall cite will contain a
reference to the rest.
The grand reason against slavery given by Lord Mansfield, in Somerset’s
case, was, “that it is so intrinsically wrong that it is incapable of
being introduced into any country, on any reasons moral or political,
and can only stand on positive law.” 20 State Trials, 1.
Chief Justice Marshall says, “That it [slavery] is contrary to the law
of nature, will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right
to the fruits of his own labor, is generally admitted; and that no
other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate
them against his will, seems to be the necessary result of this
admission.” Antelope, 10 Wheat., 120.
“The first objection,” says Mr. Justice Best, in the case of Forbes
and Cochrane, “which occurs to me, in this case, is that it does not
appear, in the special case, that the right to slaves exists in East
Florida. _That right is not a general but a local right_; it ought,
therefore, to have been shown that it existed in Florida, and that the
defendants knew of its existence. Assuming, however, that those facts
did appear, still, under the circumstances of this case, this action
could not be maintained.
“The question is, Were these persons slaves at the time when Sir
G. Cockburn refused to do the act which he was desired to do? I am
decidedly of opinion that they were no longer slaves. The moment they
put their feet on board of a _British_ man-of-war, not lying within the
waters of East Florida, (where undoubtedly the laws of that country
would prevail,) those persons who had before been slaves were free....
Slavery is a local law, and, therefore, if a man wishes to preserve his
slaves, let him attach them to him by affection, or make fast the bars
of their prison, or rivet well their chains; _for the instant they get
beyond the limits where slavery is recognized by the local law, they
have broken their chains, they have escaped from their prison, and are
free_.” 2 Barn. & Cres. 466-7; _Forbes_ vs. _Cochrane_, S. C., 3 Dowl.
& Ryland, 679.
“I am of opinion,” says Holroyd, J., in the same case, “that according
to the principles of the English law the right to slaves, even in a
country where such rights are recognized by law, must be considered as
founded, not upon the law of nature, but upon the particular law of
that country.”
“The law of slavery is a law _in invitum_; _and when a party gets
out of the territory where it prevails_, and out of the power of his
master, and gets under the protection of another power, without any
wrongful act done by the party giving that protection, the right of the
master, _which is founded on the municipal law of the particular place
only_, does not continue, and there is no right of action against a
party who merely receives the slave in that country, without doing any
wrongful act.”
The definition of slavery given by the Roman law implies that it is
local: _Servitus est constitutio juris gentium, qua quis dominio
alieno_, CONTRA NATURAM, _subjicitur_. _Commonwealth_ vs. _Aves_, 18
Pick. Rep., 193; _Lunsford_ vs. _Coquillon_, 14 Martin’s Rep. 402.
“The relation of owner and slave is a creation of the municipal law.”
_Rankin_ vs. _Lydia_, 3 Marshall, 470, Ky.; _Butler_ vs. _Hopper_, 1
Wash. C. C. Rep. 499; _Ex parte Simmons_, 4 Wash. C. C. 296; _Marie
Louise_ vs. _Marot et al._, 9 Curry’s Louisiana Rep. 473.