arguing from physics to metaphysics. It is determining the law of
the spirit by geographical phenomena. It is undertaking to settle
by mountains and rivers, and not by the Ten Commandments, a great
question of human duty. It abandons the second commandment of Christ
and all bills of rights enacted in conformity thereto, and leaves our
obligations to our “neighbor” to be determined by the accidents of
earth and water and air. To ascertain whether a people will obey the
Divine command, and do to others as they would be done by, it looks at
the thermometer. What a problem would this be: “Required the height
above the level of the sea at which the oppressor ‘will undo the heavy
burdens and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke,’--to be
determined barometrically.” Alas! this cannot be done. Slavery depends,
not upon climate, but upon conscience. Wherever the wicked passions of
the human heart can go, there slavery can go. Slavery is an effect.
Avarice, sloth, pride, and the love of domination, are its cause. In
ascending mountain sides, at what altitude do men leave these passions
behind them? Different vegetable growths are to be found at different
heights, depending also upon the zone. This I can understand. There is
the altitude of the palm, the altitude of the oak, the altitude of
the pine, and, far above them all, the line of perpetual snow. But, in
regard to innocence and guilt, where is the _white line_? How high up
can a slaveholder go and not lose his free agency? At what elevation
will the whip fall from the hand of the master, and the fetter from the
limbs of the slave? There is no such point. Freedom and slavery on the
one hand, and climate and geology on the other, are incommensurable
quantities. We might as well attempt to determine a question in
theology by the cube root, or a question in ethics by the black art.
Slavery, being a crime founded upon human passions, can go wherever
those passions are unrestrained. It has existed in Asia from the
earliest ages, notwithstanding its “formation and scenery.” It labors
and groans on the flanks of the Ural mountains now. There are to-day
forty-eight millions of slaves in Russia, not one rood of which comes
down so low as the northern boundary of California and New Mexico.
Had Mr. Webster’s philosophy been correct, then California was at
superfluous pains when she incorporated the ordinance of 1787 into
her constitution. Instead of saying that “slavery and involuntary
servitude, (except for crime,) shall be forever prohibited,” she should
have said, “Whereas, by a law of nature, of physical geography, the law
of the formation of the earth,” “slavery cannot exist in California,”
therefore we will not “reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reenact the
will of God.”
Should it be said that slavery will not go into the new territories,
because it is unprofitable; I ask, Where is it profitable? Where is
ignorance so profitable as knowledge? Where is ungodliness gain, even
for the things of this life? How little is the hand worth at one end
of an arm, if there is not a brain at the other! Do not Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, and other states, furnish witnesses by
thousands and tens of thousands that slavery impoverishes? Yet with
what enthusiasm they cherish it! Generally, ignorance is a necessary
concomitant of slavery. Of white persons, over twenty years of age,
unable to read and write, there were, according to the last census,
58,787 in Virginia, 56,609 in North Carolina, 58,513 in Tennessee,
and so forth. I have a letter before me, received this morning,
dated in Indiana, in which the writer says, he removed from North
Carolina in 1802, when he was fourteen years old, and at that time
he had never seen a newspaper in his life. Can there be genius, the
inventive talent, or profitable labor, where ignorance is so dense?
Can the oppression that tramples out voluntary industry, enterprise,
intelligence, and the desire of independence, conduce to riches? Yet
this is done wherever slavery exists, and is part and parcel of its
working. Is any other form of robbery profitable? Yet individuals and
communities have practised it and lived by it, and we may as well rely
upon a “law of physical geography” to arrest the one as the other. It
is not poetry, but literal truth, that the breath of the slave blasts
vegetation, his tears poison the earth, and his groans strike it with
sterility. It would be easy to show why the master does not abandon
slavery, even amid the desolation with which it has surrounded him.
There is a combination of poverty and pride, which slavery produces,
_on the doctrine of natural appetence_, and which, therefore, it
exactly fits. The helplessness of the master in regard to all personal
wants seems to necessitate the slavery that has begotten it. All moral
and religious principles are lowered till they conform to the daily
practice. Custom blinds conscience, until, without any attempt to
emancipate or ameliorate their victims, men can preach and pray and
hold slaves, as Hamlet’s grave digger jests and sings while he turns up
skulls.
But slavery cannot go into California or New Mexico, because their
staple productions are not “tobacco, corn, cotton, or rice.” (p.
44.) These are agricultural products. But is slave labor confined to
agriculture? Suppose that predial slavery will not become common in
the new territories. Cannot menial? If slaves cannot do field work,
cannot they do house work? There is an opening for a hundred thousand
slaves to-day in the new territories, for purposes of domestic labor.
And beyond this, let me ask, who possesses any such geologic vision
that, at a distance of a thousand miles, he can penetrate the valleys
and gorges of New Mexico, and say that gold will not yet be found
there as it is in California,--not in sand and gravel only, but in
forty-eight-pounders and fifty-sixes? This is the very kind of labor
on which slaves, in all time, have been so extensively employed,--the
very labor on which a million of slaves in Hispaniola lost their lives,
within a few years after its discovery by Columbus. Gold deposits are
now worked within twenty-five miles of Santa Fe. The last account
which I have seen, of a company of emigrants passing from Santa Fe to
California by the River Gila, announces rich discoveries of gold upon
that river. A fellow-citizen of mine has just returned home, who says
he saw a slave sold at the mines in California, in September last. As
yet, the distant regions of the Gila and the Colorado cannot be worked,
because of the Apaches, the Utahs, and other tribes of Indians. But
admit slavery there, and the power of the government will be invoked
to exterminate these Indians, as it was before to exterminate the
Cherokees and Seminoles,--not to drive them beyond the Mississippi,
but beyond the Styx. A few days since a letter was published in the
papers, dated on board a steamer descending the Mississippi, which
stated that a considerable number of slaves were on board, bound for
California, under an agreement with their masters that they should
be free after serving two years at the mines. We know, too, that the
reason assigned for incorporating a provision in the constitution
of California, authorizing its legislature to pass laws for the
exclusion of free blacks from the state, was, that slaves would be
brought there under this very form of agreement, and by and by the
country would be overspread by people of color who had bought their
freedom. The sagacious men who framed the California constitution
came from all parts of the territory, and, being collected on the
spot, having surveyed all its mountains, having breathed its air at
all temperatures, and turned up its golden soil,--these men had never
discovered any “law of physical geography” which the fell spirit of
slavery could not transgress. Slaves were carried into Oregon, ten
degrees of latitude higher up. Its colonists reënacted the ordinance
of 1787 before Congress gave them a territorial government. In the
territorial government that was given them, the prohibition was
inserted; and President Polk signed the bill, with an express protest,
that he ratified this exclusion of slavery only because the country
lay north of the Missouri compromise line; but declared that, had it
embraced the very region in question, he would have vetoed the bill.
General Cass never took the ground that slavery _could not_ exist in
the new territories; and no inconsiderable part of the opposition
made to him in Massachusetts and in other free states, was placed
expressly upon the ground that he would not prohibit it. Mr. Webster,
in his Marshfield speech, September 1, 1848, opposed the election of
General Cass, because, through his recreancy to northern principles,
slavery would invade the territories. This was expressed with his usual
clearness and force, as follows:--
“He, [General CASS,] will surely have the Senate; and with the
patronage of the government, with every interest that he, as a
northern man, can bring to bear, coöperating with every interest
that the south can bring to bear, we cry safety before we are out
of the woods, _if we feel that there is no danger as to these new
territories_.”
Yet Mr. Webster now says, that to support the “Proviso,” would “do
disgrace to his own understanding.” (p. 46.)
During the same campaign, also, the Hon. Rufus Choate, one of the most
eloquent men in New England, and known to be the personal friend of Mr.
Webster, delivered a speech at Salem, in which the following passage
occurs:--
“It is the passage of a law to say that California and New Mexico
shall remain forever free. That is, fellow-citizens, undoubtedly an
object of great and transcendent importance; for there is none who
will deny that we should go up to the very limits of the constitution
itself, and with the wisdom of the wisest, and zeal of the most
zealous, should unite to accomplish this great object, and to defeat
the always detested, and forever to be detested object of the dark
ambition of that candidate of the Baltimore convention, (General
CASS,) who has ventured to pledge himself in advance that he will veto
the future law of freedom; and may God avert the madness of all those
who hate slavery and love freedom, that would unite in putting him
in the place where his thrice accursed pledge may be redeemed!... Is
there a Whig upon this floor who doubts that the strength of the Whig
party next March will insure freedom to California and New Mexico, if
by the constitution they are entitled to freedom at all? Is there a
member of Congress that would not vote for freedom? You know there is
not one. Did not every Whig member of Congress from the free states
vote at the last session for freedom? You know that every man of them
returned home covered with the thanks of his constituents for that
vote. Is there a single Whig constituency, in any free state in this
country, that would return any man that would not vote for freedom?
_Do you believe that Daniel Webster himself could be returned if there
was the least doubt upon the question?_”
Mr. Choate then adds: “Upon this question alone, we always differ from
those Whigs of the south; and on that one, we _propose simply to vote
them down_.” Mr. Webster now says he will not join in voting them down.
Under such circumstances, is it frivolous or captious to ask for
something more than a dogmatic assertion that slavery cannot impregnate
these new regions, and cause them to breed monsters forever? On a
subject of such infinite importance I cannot be satisfied with a
dictum; I want a demonstration. I cannot accept the prophecy without
inquiring what spirit inspired the prophet. As a revelation from
Heaven, it would be most delightful; but, as it conflicts with all
human experience, it requires at least one undoubted miracle to attest
the divinity of its origin.
According to the last census, there were more than eight thousand
persons of African blood in Massachusetts. Abolish the moral and
religious convictions of our people, let slavery appear to be in
their sight not only lawful and creditable, but desirable as a badge
of aristocratic distinction, and as a “political, social, moral, and
religious blessing,” and what obstacle would prevent these eight
thousand persons from being turned into slaves, on any day, by the
easy, cheap, and shorthand kidnapping of a legislative act? Africans
can exist here, for the best of all reasons,--they do exist here. A
state of slavery would not stop their respiration, nor cause them to
vanish “into thin air.” Think, for a moment, of the complaints we
constantly hear in certain circles, of the difficulty and vexatiousness
of commanding domestic service. If no moral or religious objection
existed against holding slaves, would not many of those respectable
and opulent gentlemen who signed the letter of thanks to Mr. Webster,
and hundreds of others indeed, instead of applying to intelligence
offices, or visiting emigrant ships for “domestics,” as we call them,
go at once to the auction room and buy a man or a woman with as little
hesitancy or compunction as they now send to Brighton for beeves, or go
to Tattersall’s for a horse? If the cold of the higher latitudes checks
the flow of African blood, or benumbs African limbs, the slaveholder
knows very well that a trifling extra expense for whips will make up
for the difference.
But suppose a doubt could be reasonably entertained about the invasion
of the new territories by slavery. Even suppose the chances to
preponderate against it. What then? Are we to submit a question of
human liberty over vast regions and for an indefinite extent of time,
to the determination of chance? With all my faculties I say, _No!_ Let
me ask any man, let me respectfully ask Mr. Webster himself, if it
were his own father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and sons and
daughters, who were in peril of such a fate, whether he would abandon
them to chance,--even to a favorable chance. Would he suffer their
fate to be determined by dice or divination, when positive prohibition
was in his power? And by what rule of Christian morality, or even of
enlightened heathen morality, can we deal differently with the kindred
of others from what we would with our own? He is not a Christian whose
humanity is bounded by the legal degrees of blood, or by general types
of feature.
But Mr. Webster would not “taunt” the south. Neither would I. I would
not taunt any honorable man, much less a criminal. Still, when the
most precious interests of humanity are in peril, I would not be
timid. I would not stop too long to cull lovers’ phrases. Standing
under the eye of God, in the forum of the world and before the august
tribunal of posterity, when the litigants are freedom and tyranny, and
human happiness and human misery the prize they contest, it should
happen to the sworn advocate of liberty, as Quintilian says it did
to Demosthenes, “not to speak and to plead, but to thunder and to
lighten.” Mr. Webster would not taunt the south; and yet I say the
south were never so insulted before as he has insulted them. Common
scoffs, jeers, vilifications, are flattery and sycophancy compared
with the indignities he heaped upon them. Look at the facts. The south
waged war with Mexico from one, and only one, motive; for one, and only
one, object,--the extension of slavery. They refused peace unless it
surrendered territory. That territory must be south of the abhorred
line of 36° 30´. The same President who abandoned the broad belt of
country on our northern frontier, from 49° to 54° 40´, to which we had,
in his own words, “an unquestionable title,” would allow no prohibition
of slavery to be imposed upon the territory which Mexico ceded, though
she would bury it a foot deep in gold. The Proviso had been resisted
in all forms, from the beginning. Southern Whigs voted against the
ratification of the treaty, foreseeing the struggle that was to follow.
Desperate efforts had been made, at the close of the last session of
Congress, to smuggle in an unrestricted territorial government, against
all parliamentary rule and all constitutional implication. The whole
south, as one man, claimed it as a “describable, weighable, estimable,
tangible,” and most valuable “right” to carry slaves there. Calhoun,
Berrien, Badger, Mason, Davis,--the whole southern phalanx, Whig and
Democrat, pleaded for it, argued for it, and most of them declared
themselves ready to fight for it; and yet Mr. Webster rises in his
place, and tells them they are all moonstruck, hallucinated, fatuous;
because “an ordinance of nature and the will of God” had settled this
question against them from the beginning of the world. Mr. Calhoun
said, immediately after this speech, “Give us free scope and time
enough, and we will take care of the rest.”
MR. MASON said,--
“We have heard here from various quarters, and from high quarters, and
repeated on all hands,--repeated here again to-day by the honorable
senator from Illinois, [Mr. SHIELDS,] that there is a law of nature
which excludes the southern people from every portion of the state
of California. I know of no such law of nature,--none whatever; but
I do know the contrary, that if California had been organized with a
territorial form of government only, and for which, at the last two
sessions of Congress, she has obtained the entire southern vote, the
people of the Southern States would have gone there freely, and have
taken their slaves there in great numbers. They would have done so,
because the value of the labor of that class would have been augmented
to them many hundred fold. Why, in the debates which took place in
the convention in California which formed the constitution, and which
any senator can now read for himself, after the provision excluding
slavery was agreed upon, it was proposed to prohibit the African
race altogether, free as well as bond. A debate arose upon it, and
the ground was distinctly taken, as shown in those debates, that if
the entire African race was not excluded, their labor would be found
so valuable that the owners of slaves would bring them there, even
though slavery were prohibited, under a contract to manumit them in
two or three years. And it required very little reasoning, on the
part of those opposed to this class of population, to show that the
productiveness of their labor would be such as to cause that result.
An estimate was gone into with reference to the value of the labor of
this class of people, showing that it would be increased to such an
extent in the mines of California, that they could not be kept out.
It was agreed that the labor of a slave in any one of the states from
which they would be taken, was not worth more than one hundred or one
hundred and fifty dollars a year, and that in California it would be
worth from four to six thousand dollars. They would work themselves
free in one or two years, and thus the country would be filled by
a class of free blacks, and their former owners have an excellent
bargain in taking them there.”
Yet Mr. Webster stands up before all this array, and says, “Gentlemen,
you are beside yourselves. You have eaten ‘of the insane root.’ You
would look more in character should you put on the ‘cap and bells.’ In
sober sense, in seeing his object clearly and in pursuing it directly,
Don Quixote was Doctor Franklin, compared with _you_. The dog in the
fable, who dropped his meat to snap at his shadow, is no allegory in
your case. I see two classes around me,--wise men and fools; _you_ do
not belong to the former. The chancellor, who keeps the king’s idiots,
should have custody of you.” Such is a faithful abstract of what Mr.
Webster said to southern senators, and, through them, to all the south.
Here certainly was a reflection upon the understanding and intelligence
of the south, such as never was cast upon them before. But the balm
went with the sting. They bore the affront to their judgments, because
it was so grateful to their politics and pockets. I think it no
injustice to those senators to say, that they would have nearly torn
Mr. Webster in pieces for such a collective insult, had it not promised
to add, what Mr. Mason called “many hundred fold,” to their individual
property, and to secure and perpetuate their political ascendency.
To help our conceptions in regard to Mr. Webster’s course on this
subject, let us imagine a parallel case,--or, rather, an approximate
one, for there can be no parallel. Suppose a contest between the north
and the south, on the subject of the tariff, to have been raging for
years. The sober blood of the north is heated to the fever point.
The newspapers treat of nothing else. Public meetings and private
conversations discuss no other theme. Hundreds of delegates wait upon
Congress to add, if it be but a feather’s weight, to the scale which
holds their interests. Petitions flow in, in thousands and tens of
thousands. It is announced that Mr. Calhoun will pour out his great
mind on the subject. Expectation is on tiptoe. All eyes, from all
sides of the country, are turned towards Washington, as the Moslem’s
to Mecca. The senate chamber is packed, and the illustrious senator
rises. After an historic sketch of existing difficulties, after reading
from the speeches which he made in 1832 and in 1846, he proceeds to
say that he withdraws all opposition to a tariff,--to any tariff!
He will not offend the delicate nerves of northern manufacturers by
further hostility. Were a bill then before him, he would not oppose
it. “Take the schedules,” says he, scornfully, to northern senators,
“and fill up the blanks from A to Z with what per centages you please.
For _ad valorem_ rates, put in minimums and maximums at your pleasure.
I will ‘taunt’ you no longer. I am for peace and the glorious Union.
I have discovered an irrepealable and irreversible law of nature,
which overrules all the devices of men. You cannot make one yard of
woollens or cottons in New England. There, water has no gravity, steam
has no force, and wheels will not revolve. In Vermont and New York,
wool will not grow on sheep’s backs. I have penetrated the geology
of Pennsylvania, and through all its stratifications there is not a
thimble full of coal, nor an ounce of iron ore; and, if there were,
combustion would not help to forge it; for oxygen and carbon are
divorced. As Massachusetts contributed one third of the men and one
third of the money to carry on the revolutionary war, I am willing
to compensate her for her lost blood and treasure to the amount of
hundreds of millions of dollars, with which she may fertilize the
barrenness of her genius, and indulge her insane love for churches and
schools.” Had the great southern senator spoken thus, I think that even
idolatrous, man-worshipping South Carolina,--a state which Mr. Calhoun
has ruled and moved for the last twenty-five years, as a puppet showman
plays Punch and Judy,--would have sent forth, through all her organs,
a voice of unanimous dissent.
As much as freedom is higher than tariff, so much stronger than their
dissent should be ours.
Mr. Webster’s averment that he would not “reäffirm an ordinance of
nature, nor reënact the will of God,” (p. 44,) has been commented
on more pungently than I am able or willing to do. It has been well
said that all law and all volition must be in harmony with the will
of the Good Spirit, or with that of the evil one; and if we will not
reënact the will of the former, then, either all legislation ceases,
or we must register the decrees of the latter. But one important and
pertinent consideration belongs to this subject, which I have nowhere
seen developed. It is this: Endless doubts and contradictions exist
among men, as to what is the will of God; and on no subject is there a
wider diversity of opinion than on this very subject of slavery. Whose
law was reënacted by the ordinance of 1787? whose, when the African
slave trade was prohibited? whose, when it was declared piracy? True,
it is useless to put upon our statute books an astronomical law,
regulating sunrise, or high tides; but that is physical and beyond the
jurisdiction of man, while slavery belongs to morals, and is within
the jurisdiction of man. Cease to transcribe upon the statute book
what our wisest and best men believe to be the will of God in regard
to our worldly affairs, and the passions which we think appropriate
to devils will soon take possession of society. In regard to slavery,
piracy, and so forth, there are multitudes of men whose fear of the
penal sanctions of another life is very much aided by a little salutary
fine and imprisonment in this. Look at that noble array of principles
which is contained in the Declaration of Rights in the constitution
of Massachusetts. Is it not a most grand and beautiful exposition of
“the will of God,”--a transcript, as it were, from the Book of Life?
So of the amendments to the constitution of the United States. Yet our
fathers thought it no tampering with holy things to enact them; and, in
times of struggle and peril, they have been to many a tempted man as an
anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast.