significance of some of the epithets by which the parties to this
discussion are characterized. The term “Free Soiler” is perpetually
used upon this floor as a term of ignominy and reproach; yet I
maintain that in its original and legitimate sense, as denoting an
advocate of the doctrine that all our territorial possessions should
be consecrated to freedom, there is no language that can supply a more
honorable appellation. It expresses a determination on the part of its
disciples to keep free the territory that is now free; to stand upon
its frontiers as the cherubim stood at the gates of Paradise, with
a flaming sword to turn every way, to keep the sin of slavery from
crossing its borders. If, in any instance, the original advocates of
Free Soil have abandoned their integrity, and have courted allies who
had no sympathy with their principles, but were only eager to join them
in a struggle for mere political ascendency, then, in my judgment,
they have lost infinitely more in moral power than they have gained
in numbers. They have ceased to be genuine and single-hearted Free
Soilers, whom I love, and have become partisans, whom I condemn. For
myself, I will engage in any honorable measure most likely to secure
freedom to the new territories. I will resist any and every measure
that proposes to abandon them to slavery. The epithet “Free Soiler,”
therefore, when rightly understood and correctly applied, implies both
political and moral worth; and I covet the honor of its application
to myself. But what does its opposite mean? What does the term “Slave
Soiler” signify? It signifies one who desires and designs that all
soil should be made to bear slaves. Its dreadful significancy is,
that, after Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, in Great Britain,
and after the Declaration of Independence, in this country, we should
cast aside with scorn, not only the teachings of Christianity, but the
clearest principles of natural religion and of natural law, and should
retrograde from our boasted civilization, into the Dark Ages,--ay, into
periods that the dark ages might have called dark. It means that this
_Republic_, as we call it, formed to establish freedom, should enlist
in a crusade against freedom.
And again; those of us at the north who resist slavery extension, who
mean to withstand its spread beyond the limits where it now exists, are
denounced as Abolitionists. This epithet is applied to us as a term
of reproach and obloquy; as a brand and stigma upon our characters
and principles. No distinction is made between those few individuals
among us who desire to abolish the constitution of the United States,
and that great body of the people, who, while their allegiance to
this constitution is unshaken, mean also to maintain their allegiance
to truth and to duty, in withstanding the hitherto onward march of
slavery. Among the latter class, Mr. Collamer, the postmaster-general,
is called an Abolitionist. Mr. John Quincy Adams was denounced as an
arch-Abolitionist. Every man who advocates the Jefferson proviso,
against the spread of slavery, is so called; and if an unspeakable
abhorrence of this institution, and the belief that it is the second
greatest enormity which the oppressor, in his power, ever committed
against the oppressed, in his weakness,--being inferior only to that
ecclesiastical domination which has trampled upon the religious freedom
of man,--I say, if this abhorrence of slavery, and this belief in its
criminality, entitle a man to be denominated an Abolitionist, then I
rejoice in my unquestionable right to the name.
In my apprehension, sir, before we can decide upon the honor or the
infamy of the term “Abolitionist,” we must know what things they
are which he proposes to abolish. We of the north, you say, are
Abolitionists; but abolitionists of what? Are we abolitionists of
the inalienable, indefeasible, indestructible rights of man? Are we
abolitionists of knowledge, abolitionists of virtue, of education,
and of human culture? Do we seek to abolish the glorious moral and
intellectual attributes which God has given to his children, and thus,
as far as it lies in our power, make the facts of slavery conform to
the law of slavery, by obliterating the distinction between a man and a
beast?
Do our laws and our institutions seek to blot out and abolish the
image of God in the human soul? Do we abolish the marriage covenant;
and instead of saying, with the apostle, that wives shall submit
themselves to their husbands, command them to submit themselves to
any body, and to their master as husband over all? Do we ruthlessly
tear asunder the sacred ties of affection by which God has bound
the parent to the child and the child to the parent? Do we seek to
abolish all those noble instincts of the human soul, by which it
yearns for improvement and progress; and do we quench its sublime
aspirations after knowledge and virtue? A stranger would suppose,
from hearing the epithets of contumely that are heaped upon us, that
we were abolitionists of all truth, purity, knowledge, improvement,
civilization, happiness, and holiness. On this subject, perversion of
language and of idea has been reduced to a system, and the falsehoods
of our calumniators exclude truth with the exactness of a science.
But if the word “Abolitionist” is to be used in a reproachful and
contumelious sense, does it not more properly belong to those who would
extend a system which in its very nature abolishes freedom, justice,
equity, and a sense of human brotherhood? Does it not belong to those
who would abolish not only all social and political, but all natural
rights; who would abolish “liberty and the pursuit of happiness;”
who would close up all the avenues to knowledge; who would render
freedom of thought and liberty of conscience impossible, by crushing
out the faculties by which alone we can think and decide; who would
rob a fellow-man of his parental rights, and innocent children of
the tenderness and joys of a filial love; who would introduce a foul
concubinage in place of the institution of marriage, and who would
remorselessly trample upon all the tenderest and holiest affections
which the human soul is capable of feeling? After Mr. Jefferson, in the
Declaration of Independence, had enumerated a few oppressive deeds of
the British king towards his American colonists, he denominated him
“a prince whose character was marked by every act that could define a
tyrant.” There are now as many slaves in this country as there were
colonists in 1776. Compare the condition of these three million slaves
with the condition of the three million colonists. The conduct of
that sovereign who was denounced before earth and heaven as having
committed all the atrocities that could “define a tyrant,” was mercy
and loving-kindness compared with the wrongs and privations of three
millions of our fellow-beings, now existing among us. If the word
“Abolitionist,” then, is to be used in a reproachful sense, let it be
applied to those who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in
defiance of all the lights of the age, would extend the horrors of an
institution which, by one all-comprehending crime towards a helpless
race, makes it impossible to commit any new crime against them,--unless
it be to enlarge the area of their bondage, and to multiply the number
of their victims.
If we are abolitionists, then, we are abolitionists of human bondage;
while those who oppose us are abolitionists of human liberty. We
would prevent the extension of one of the greatest wrongs that man
ever suffered upon earth; they would carry bodily chains and mental
chains,--chains in a literal and chains in a figurative sense,--into
realms where even the half-civilized descendants of the Spaniard and
the Indian have silenced their clanking. We would avert the impending
night of ignorance and superstition; they would abolish the glorious
liberty wherewith God maketh his children free. In using this word,
therefore, to calumniate us, they put darkness for light, and light for
darkness; good for evil, and evil for good.
The constitutional right of Congress to legislate for the territories
is still debated. Having presented my views on this subject before,
I shall now treat it with brevity. In a speech, by General Cass,
which has lately been published, that distinguished senator, in order
to prove that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject of
slavery in the territories, has attempted to prove that it has no
right to legislate for the territories at all. I refer to the senator
from Michigan, because he now stands before the country in the twofold
character of being the head of the Democratic party, which goes for
the “_largest liberty_,” and also of the extreme pro-slavery party,
which goes for the _largest bondage_. He would sever all diplomatic
relations between this country and Austria, because she has robbed the
Hungarians of _a part_ of their liberties, while he is drawing closer
the political ties which bind him to the south, which has despoiled
three millions of the African race of _all_ their liberties, and is now
intent on propagating other millions for new despoliations. He claims,
as the great bequest of the barons of Runnymede, that the inhabitants
of the territories, under all circumstances of infancy, or poverty,
or weakness, shall have the sole and exclusive right of governing
themselves, when the practical result of this doctrine, so nicely
timed, would be, that one part of those inhabitants would be crowned
with power like so many King Johns, to lord it over their vassals.
Under the name of liberty, he enters a path that terminates in bondage.
Southern gentlemen had all admitted the power of Congress to legislate
for the territories, though they denied the special inference,
deducible from the general power, that they could legislate to prohibit
slavery in them. But, seeing that the right to legislate on the subject
of slavery flows irresistibly from the right to legislate on all other
subjects, because no rule of interpretation, which concedes the power
to make laws respecting political franchises, courts, crimes, officers,
and the militia, can stop short at the subject of slavery;--seeing all
this, General Cass denies both inference and premises, _and places
the general government in the relation of a foreign power to the
territories which it owns_, and of which it possesses the acknowledged
sovereignty. He reminds one of the man who denied the existence of
future punishment, and, when pressed with arguments drawn from the
deserts of men, and from the justice of God, he suddenly arrested his
antagonist by denying the existence of a God!
When some immensely long speech made in the British House of Commons,
was spoken of before Sheridan as being _luminous_, he expressed both a
negative and an affirmative opinion respecting it, in a single word,
by replying that it was _vo_-luminous. General Cass, in a speech
that fills more than nineteen columns in the Washington _Union_, has
reviewed the decisions of all the judges of the Supreme Court who have
ever expressed any opinion on the subject of congressional power over
territorial legislation; he has commented upon the views of all the
jurists who have written upon it, and of most of the speakers in both
Houses of Congress who have discussed it; he has surveyed the course of
administration of all the Presidents we have ever had; and has come to
the clear conclusion that all of them,--judges, jurists, legislators,
and presidents,--have systematically violated the constitution of
the United States, or commended its violation, on every practicable
occasion for the last sixty years.
Omitting the hundred ways in which the absurdity of this conclusion
can be exposed, let me subject it to one practical test. We have
acquired territory from Mexico. General Cass voted to ratify the treaty
of cession. Measures have been instituted for the formation of three
separate governments in this Territory,--those of California, Deseret,
[Utah,] and New Mexico. The boundaries marked out by California and
Deseret overlay each other to the amount of thousands of square miles.
If they have the exclusive right of self-government, as General Cass
declares, and Congress none, then they must settle this question of
boundary themselves. They may declare war against each other, make
alliances with foreign powers, equip armies, build fleets; while
Congress can do nothing within their limits but--sell land.
But what renders the argument of General Cass still more extraordinary
is the fact, that, according to his own doctrine, he has spent the
greater part of his political life in violating the constitution, while
constantly repeating his oath to support it. As marshal of Ohio, as
governor of Michigan, as Indian agent, he has appointed officers and
magistrates, and executed laws, when, according to his own showing, he
was a mere interloper and usurper; he has met territorial legislatures,
which had no more right to assemble than a mob; he has doubtless
imprisoned, if not executed many alleged offenders, who had as good
a legal right to execute or to imprison him; and he has received
salaries for more than twenty years, to which the khan of Tartary was
as much entitled as he. Now, if he will refund the salaries he has
unconstitutionally received; make reparation for the penalties or
forfeitures he has wrongfully extorted; show some signs of contrition
for the men whom he has unlawfully imprisoned or hung, it will remove
the suspicions of many minds, in regard to the sincerity, if not the
soundness, of his argument.
I mention these facts from no personal feelings in regard to the
senator from Michigan; but only to show to what desperate extremities
men are driven in order to defend the right of spreading slavery from
the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean; and because this is the last reading
of the constitution which has been invented for the purpose.
Since the last session of Congress, the condition of a part of this
territory has greatly changed. The unexampled velocity with which a
living stream of men has poured into it within the last twelve months,
has reversed its condition and decided its destiny. In other countries,
_individuals_ seek their fortunes by changing their residence. Under
the vehement action of our enterprise, _cities_ migrate. The new
residents of California have framed a constitution, have applied
for admission into this Union, and their application is now pending
before us. Of their own accord, they have excluded slavery from their
borders by their fundamental law. Until the discovery of gold in that
country, and until all incredulity in regard to that remarkable fact
had been overcome, it was confidently anticipated at the south, and
intensely feared at the north, that the whole region would be overrun
with slaveholders and with slaves. As far back as 1842, Mr. Wise, of
Virginia, the administration leader in the House of Representatives,
boldly declared that “_slavery should pour itself abroad without
restraint, and find no limit but the Southern Ocean_.” The war with
Mexico was waged for the twofold purpose of robbing that republic
of its territory, and then robbing that territory of its freedom.
Congressional orators and the southern press avowed that the object of
acquiring territory was to extend the “divine institution.” I could
quote pages in proof of this assertion. The north had no hope, the
south had no fear, if the territories were left without control, but
that they would first be filled with slaveholders, and would then
incorporate slavery into their organic law. While these prospects
continued, the south insisted that the territories should be left
untrammelled. Distinguished men in this House, Mr. Calhoun and other
senators, the government organ, which was supposed to express the views
of President Polk and his cabinet, all proclaimed that the territories
should be left free to institute such government as they might
choose.[8] But since California has formed a _free_ constitution, what
a sudden change has taken place in the convictions of men! Within the
present week we have had three most elaborate speeches in this House,
in which the admission of California, with her free constitution, is
vehemently opposed on constitutional grounds. Yes, sir, did you know
it? _the constitution of the United States has just been altered;_ or,
what is intended to produce the same effect, without the trouble of
an alteration in the manner prescribed by itself, its interpretation
has been altered. While California promised to be a slave state, all
interference was unconstitutional. Now, as she desires to be a free
state, it has become constitutional to interfere and repel her. Not
only so, but, according to the gentleman from Alabama, (Mr. INGE,)
in swearing to support the constitution we have sworn to perpetuate,
and not only to perpetuate, but to _extend_ slavery. “To those,” he
says, “who are disposed to resist my views, I commend a more attentive
reading of that instrument. They will find that it not only guarantees
slavery, but provides for its extension.” Or, as he says in another
place, it makes provision “to extend the institution indefinitely.”
And, therefore, when a territory asks to be admitted as a free state,
it is to be repulsed, and virtually told, “If you will incorporate
slavery into your constitution, you shall be admitted; if not, not.”
Had the man who first uttered the adage that “circumstances alter
cases,” foreseen our times, he would have said, “circumstances alter
_principles_.”
The same gentleman defends slavery by an appeal to the Bible. But if
the Bible be authority for the principal, is it not authority for the
incidents also? If an authority for the cruelties of bondage, is it
not an equal authority for its mitigations? Is not the command to
“hallow the fiftieth year,” as a year of jubilee, and to “proclaim
liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,”
contained in the same code, and in the same chapter of the same code,
with that oft-cited authority to buy bondmen and bondmaids of the
heathen? If the Bible is your commission, why do you not follow the
terms of the commission, observing its limitations as well as its
powers? This is the fiftieth year of the century,--the very year of
jubilee itself; and yet, instead of “returning every man unto his
possession, and every man unto his family,” this is the chosen year for
subjugating new realms to bondage. It is not to be “hallowed,” as a
year of jubilee, but to be profaned as a year of captivity and mourning.
Sir, I must express the most energetic dissent from those who would
justify modern slavery from the Levitical law. My reason and conscience
revolt from those interpretations which
“Torture the hallowed pages of the Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood,
And, in oppression’s hateful service, libel
Both man and God.”
Priests appealed to the Bible in Galileo’s time, to refute the truths
of astronomy. For more than two hundred years, the same class of men
appealed to the same authority to disprove the science of geology. And
now, this authority is cited, not to disprove a law of physical nature
merely, but to deny a great law of the human soul,--a law of human
consciousness,--a law of God, written upon the tablet of every man’s
heart, authenticating and attesting his title to freedom. Sir, let
those who reverence the Bible beware how they suborn it to commit this
treason and perjury against the sacred rights of man and the holy law
of God. Whatever they gain for the support of their doctrine, will be
so much subtracted from the authority of the Scriptures. If the Bible
has crossed the Atlantic to spread slavery over a continent where it
was unknown before, then the Bible is a book of death, and not a book
of life.
It is further objected to the admission of California, that its
dimensions are too large for a single state. The force of this
objection is somewhat abated when we reflect that it comes from men
who were most strenuous for the admission of Texas. However, I shall
not object very earnestly to the reduction of its limits. I will say,
in frankness, that the southern portion of California is understood to
be even more attached to freedom than the northern. The result may,
therefore, be, if this objection is persisted in and a division made,
that we shall soon have two free states instead of one. It was said by
the last administration, that Mexico was to be dismembered, in order
“to extend the area of freedom.” The most just retribution for that
diabolical irony is, to carry out the declaration literally.
But I now come to a more substantial part of this great question. The
south rests its claims to the new territory upon the great doctrine of
equality. There are fifteen slave states; there are only fifteen free
states. The south contributed men and money for the conquest, not less
than the north; hence, equal ownership and equal rights of enjoyment.
This is the argument. In a long and most elaborate speech, delivered in
the Senate this week by one of the most eminent jurists in the Southern
States, (Judge BERRIEN,) he founds the whole claim of the south on this
doctrine of equality.
Now, I admit this principle in its fullest extent, and without
hesitation. That country is equally free to all the people of the
United States. The government can sell the lands not already covered
by valid titles; and any citizen who will comply with its terms can
buy them. The people of each of the United States can go there and
establish their domicile. The laws of Congress make no discrimination
between them. The constitution makes no such discrimination. The law
of nature and of nations makes none. The north has no privilege over
the south, and the south has none over the north. If the north has
any greater right there than the south, the equality is destroyed. If
the south has any greater right there than the north, the equality is
equally destroyed.
And now, practically, what right has the north, or what right is
claimed by the north, which the south has not to an equal extent? What
article of property can a citizen of Massachusetts carry there which a
citizen of Georgia can _not_ carry there? Can we carry any of our local
laws there; even though all the inhabitants of the state should remove
thither in a body? Certainly not. When we leave our state, we leave
our local laws behind us. A citizen of Boston has a right to educate
his children at school, at the public expense. In the Boston public
schools, he can prepare his son to enter any college in this country,
even though he is too poor to pay a cent for taxes, and never has paid
a cent for taxes. Has he any such right on arriving at San Francisco?
If the city of Boston debars him of this right of educating his son
at the public charge, he can institute a suit against it and recover
full damages. Can he do the same thing at San Francisco or San Jose?
Certainly not. He has left the laws and institutions of Massachusetts
behind him. But, it is said, we can carry our _property_ there, and
you cannot carry your _property_ there. I think those who use this
argument, like the old Roman augurs, must smile at each other askance,
for the credulity or simplicity of those they beguile by it. Will not
every man, even of the feeblest discernment, see the fallacy which is
here covered up under the word “_property_?” What is meant by this
deceptive term “_property_?” If you mean silver, or gold, or seeds, or
grains, or sheep, or horses, cannot you carry these there as freely
as we can? But you have special laws; local and peculiar laws,--laws
contrary to the great principles of the common law, by which you call
_men and women_ property. And then, forsooth, because we can carry
_property_ there, when _property_ means grain and cattle, you can
carry property there when it means human beings,--perhaps your own
brothers, or sisters, or children. Because we can carry our property
there, when property means inanimate substances, you have only to call
a human being _property_;--you have only to call a creature, formed in
the image of God, _property_, and then he can be smuggled in under the
new name. Why, sir, there is not a respectable village in the country,
where, if a juggler or mountebank were to attempt to palm off upon his
audience so flimsy a trick as this, he would not be hissed from the
stage. There are certain kinds of property and rights which we can
carry with us to the territories, and other kinds which we cannot. We
can carry movable property, but not immovable,--a diamond or a library,
but not a cotton factory nor a cotton field.