England States, were all true, it would avail him nothing; for, in
the eye of patriotism, it matters not where such seizures are made.
I refer to it only to show that Mr. Webster is not to be relied upon
in these matters, either for the accuracy of his original positions,
or for a retraction of them, when their error is pointed out by the
public press. I wish not to be understood, _on this particular point_,
as imputing to Mr. Webster an intentional misstatement; because he
accompanied his original statement with a salvo. He confessed,--and
he is entitled to the full benefit of the confession,--that his
information might not be “entirely accurate,” though he supposed it not
to be “materially erroneous.” It is “materially erroneous;” and though
one error has been exposed in the Maine papers, he does not rectify it.
Possibly he does not know it.
While holding Massachusetts up to reproach for “growing fervid on
Pennsylvania wrongs,” Mr. Webster draws succor and encouragement
from the Society of Friends, and especially from the Friends of
Pennsylvania. He says that they remain “of sound and disposing minds
and memories;” and he contrasts their wisdom and composure with the
“vehement and empty declarations, the wild and fantastic conduct of
both men and women which have so long disturbed and so much disgraced
the commonwealth” of Massachusetts. He then adds, “I am misled by
authority which ought not to mislead, if it be not true, that that
great body, [of Friends,] approves the sentiments to which I gave
utterance on the floor of the Senate.” I will now show that this
alleged approval by the Friends, though worthy of any price but truth,
was too dearly bought.
It is well known that the Friends are divided into two great
denominations. Each has its periodical, one now in its eighth, the
other in its fourth year. In the numbers published since the appearance
of the Newburyport letter, both these periodicals do not “approve,”
but repudiate and denounce the sentiments to which Mr. Webster gave
utterance “on the floor of the Senate.”
The _Friend’s Intelligencer_ deals at length with Mr. Webster’s
“sentiments” on the “Fugitive Slave Bill;” on the legislation of the
north for the protection of its own citizens; on his pseudo discoveries
in “physical geography;” and on the “legal construction and effect” of
the Texas resolutions; and it condemns them all.
The _Friend’s Review_ dissents not less positively from Mr. Webster’s
positions; and both call him severely to account for the defamation of
themselves, which his letter implies.
On his “sentiments” respecting fugitive slaves, the “_Review_” observes
that they have yet to learn “that that part of his speech was approved
by any member or professor of the society.”
I wish I had space to quote from these able articles, but must forbear.
John G. Whittier, Esq., speaking for the Quakers of New England, gives
“a peremptory denial” to Mr. Webster’s statement. I quote the following
paragraph from him:--
“Now, we undertake to say that there is not a member of the Society of
Friends, in free or slave states, who, whether acting as a magistrate
or as citizen, could carry out the provisions of this most atrocious
bill, without rendering himself liable to immediate expulsion from
a society whose character would be disgraced, and whose discipline
would be violated, by such action. It has been, in times past, the
misfortune of the Society of Friends to be vilified, caricatured,
and misrepresented; but we remember nothing, even in the old days of
persecution, so hard to bear as the compliments of the Massachusetts
senator. Whatever his ‘authority’ may have been, we do not hesitate to
pronounce it unqualifiedly false to the last degree.”
Now what shall be thought of a cause that requires such a series of
fabrications as Mr. Webster is here proved to have made, or of the man
that can make it!
There are many other points presented by Mr. Webster’s speech of the
7th of March, or by what he has since said and written to defend it,
which seem to me as unwarrantable in fact, and as reprehensible in
principle, as any above enumerated. I shall close these notes, however,
with one comment more; reserving others,--though sincerely hoping never
to have occasion to use them.
Among the excoriations with which Mr. Webster amused himself and his
southern new-born pro-slavery admirers, on the 7th of March last, he
flayed nobody half so deeply or so complacently, as he did his old
fellow-senators, Messrs. Dix, of New York, and Niles, of Connecticut.
He scored them to the living flesh, and then soothed their smarting
wounds by vitriol and caustic, as though he loved them. Their agency
in the Texas swindle, he made odiously conspicuous. He taunted them
with heart-piercing innuendo for their compulsory retirement from
public life. And then he portrayed them as occupying their enforced
vacation in attempting to rouse the people to save those regions
from the curse of slavery, which, but for their sins, never would
have been exposed to it. He worked up the scene so graphically, that
every one mocked at their contemptible plight, and at the ridiculous
contrast between the swiftness of their offence and the lameness of
their expiation. The effect was dramatic. The pro-slavery part of the
gallery and the floor responded with a shout of laughter. Yet devoted
and long-tried friends of Mr. Webster were there, whom no darkness of
blindness could prevent from seeing that his bitter sarcasm against
the ex-senators, though calculated to make the “unskilful laugh,” must
make the “judicious grieve.” They could not fail to see that he, Mr.
Webster himself, at that very moment, was occupying precisely the same
pro-slavery ground, which Messrs. Dix and Niles had occupied, when
they brought in Texas and “reännexed” California and New Mexico. He
was exerting all his great talents to do an act of precisely the same
character which Messrs. Dix and Niles had done;--that is, to open new
territory to slavery. And doubtless the first thought which arose in
many a mind was the same melancholy one which spontaneously arose in
my own, that should he succeed in arguing down, or laughing down the
“_Wilmot_” as he twice scornfully called the great proviso of freedom;
and should he then betake himself to penitence and prayer, and by years
of effort, strive to stay back from slavery the regions he had doomed
to it, he would only have elevated himself to the very “platform” on
which Messrs. Dix and Niles stood _when he made them the objects of his
taunts and ridicule_!
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The above criticism on Mr. Webster’s latinity aroused many
self-supposed scholars, or at least fair proficients in the Latin
grammar, to take up the pen in his defence. But unluckily, the quills
they seized were plucked, not from the Roman eagle, but from the wings
of some of those “unclean birds,” to which Mr. Webster had introduced
them. Among the most conspicuous of these defenders of Mr. Webster’s
ludicrous blunder, was Professor Felton, of Harvard College. If any
person wishes to see one of the most neat, elegant, and at the same
time thorough cases of _deplumation_, any where to be found in literary
history, in which an individual who strutted on to the stage as a
_peacock_, was soon obliged to leave it as a _daw_, he has only to read
Dr. Beck’s articles in “The Literary World,” in which the fabricated
quotation of Mr. Webster, and Professor Felton’s defence of it, are
shown to be exceedingly bad as Latin, and much worse as logic.
[13] Cong. Globe, 1st session 30th Congress, p. 533.
[14] Professor Stuart, in a pamphlet entitled “Conscience and the
Constitution,” pp. 78, 9, steps in to defend Mr. Webster’s position
that we are bound, by contract with Texas, to admit from her territory,
“slave states to the number of four;” and he incidentally refers to and
combats my views on this subject.
I respectfully submit to the revered and learned professor a single
consideration, which I trust will convince him that I am not in error.
For argument’s sake, admit the contract with Texas to be unimpeachable;
although, if it be so, I see not why any one Congress may not absorb
and exhaust all the power to admit new states, which the constitution
contains, by making contracts for centuries to come, for all the
new states that shall be admitted; and for all the applications for
admission that shall be rejected. But, admitting the validity of the
Texan contract, what does it purport? That “new states,” “not exceeding
four,” “may be formed out of the territory thereof.” Those south of 36°
30´, may be slave; that, or those, north of 36° 30´, shall be free;
the whole “not exceeding four.” Here, then, is an executory and mutual
contract. It is executory; because it is not to be executed at the time
of making, but _in futuro_. It is mutual, because, for the State of
Texas, and for the one or more slave states, south of 36° 30´, there
are to be one or more free states north of it.
Now, the principle is so clear that I think no one will for a moment
dispute it, that when an executory and mutual contract is to be
executed, say at four different times, each preceding act of execution
must be such as to allow of the ultimate execution of the whole.
Neither the first, second, nor third act of execution, must be so
executed as to render the fourth impossible. Neither the first, second,
nor third act, must be so executed in favor of either of the parties,
as to render the execution of the fourth, in favor of the other party,
impossible. But if Texas can have “_slave_ states to the number of
_four_,” formed in succession out of her territory, then, as the whole
number to be formed is not to exceed “four,” there can be _no_ free
state formed, under the alleged contract.
It is not within my knowledge that such an interpretation of this
supposed contract was ever suggested by any Texan citizen, or by
any southern man. I suppose it to have been advanced, _first_, by a
northern senator; and seconded, _first_, by a northern divine.
LETTER
ANSWERING AN INVITATION TO CELEBRATE THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORDINANCE
OF 1787, AT CLEVELAND, OHIO.
WEST NEWTON, July 9, 1849.
GENTLEMEN;
I have received your kind invitation to be present at Cleveland, on
the 13th inst., to celebrate the anniversary of the great “Ordinance”
which excluded slavery forever from, and secured freedom forever to the
North-western Territory. If I could tell you how deeply I sympathize
with you in this movement, and how much my soul desires, not merely to
celebrate, but to hallow the event, you would then believe me when I
say, that I have had a sharp struggle not to forego all considerations
of business and of health, for the purpose of joining in your festival.
I regard the Ordinance which redeemed a territory of more than _two
hundred and sixty thousand square miles_, from the unspeakable sin and
curse of slavery, and consecrated it to freedom, as one of the grandest
moral events in the annals of mankind.
Without that Ordinance, the Declaration of Independence itself, in
its application to that vast and fertile region, would have been
deprived of its power to confer blessing and prosperity upon it; and
it is a fact never to be forgotten, that the original Declaration and
the original Ordinance were both drawn up by the same great champion
of human rights, whose hatred of slavery grew strong and deep by his
personal knowledge of its wrongs and its calamities.
Without the Ordinance, the Revolution itself, in its application to
that territory, and the treaty of 1783, by which its ample domain was
secured to the Union, would have been shorn of their glory, and robbed
of their value.
Without the Ordinance, the discovery of this Western continent, so far
as that territory constitutes a part of it, would have given us no
occasion to remember the name of Columbus with gratitude.
Without the Ordinance, it would have been better, at the creation of
the world, that all that part of it which now constitutes your five
beautiful and flourishing states, with a residuum of space large enough
for still another, had been left as a “Dead Sea,” whose bitter and
poisonous waters would not have allowed a live thing to swim beneath
its surface, nor to fly above it, nor a green thing to grow by its
shores.
And without the Ordinance, it is no irreverence to say, that even the
omnipotent Spirit of God, working through natural laws, for human
progress and human blessedness, would have met with bafflings and
threatenings in its operations and influences for the redemption of the
race.
Accept, gentlemen, the assurance of my sympathy and regard.
HORACE MANN.
Messrs. J. C. VAUGHAN, } Committee.
THOMAS BROWN, }
LETTER
ACCEPTING THE NOMINATION OF THE FREE SOIL CONVENTION FOR REPRESENTATIVE
TO THE THIRTY-SECOND CONGRESS.
WEST NEWTON, Oct. 24, 1850.
HON. C. F. ADAMS;
Dear Sir,--Your favor of the 21st inst., is this day received. It
informs me that at a convention, (over which you had the honor to
preside,) held at Dedham, on the 16th inst., I was unanimously
nominated as a candidate for Representative to the thirty-second
Congress of the United States. For the kind terms in which your
communication is expressed, be pleased to accept my thanks.
This nomination places me in no new relation to the friends of freedom
and humanity, wherever they may be found. I believe my name was first
suggested to the voters of this district, (now nearly three years
ago,) on the ground of my supposed devotion to the rights of men.
The resolutions passed at all the conventions by which I have been
nominated, and especially those passed so repeatedly and unanimously
by our state legislature, have been in the nature of instructions;
or, at least, of urgent advice and solicitation, in regard to my
course on the great questions which have since agitated the country.
My own convictions of duty so fully and entirely corresponding with
the injunctions thus laid upon me, it has been easy for me to act in
full conformity to the wishes of the great majority of my constituents
and of the state, as those wishes have been repeatedly expressed.
This renders any detailed exposition of expectations on your part,
or of assurances on mine, unnecessary. I know that the leading and
most valued article in your creed is the sacredness and security of
human freedom. You know that I embrace this same article of faith
with my whole heart. Other matters may be very important, but still
are subordinate. Peculiar forms of organization are comparatively
non-essentials. They are but means to ends; and, in regard to them,
a large allowance is to be made for honest differences of opinion.
But the natural right of every human being to the liberty which God
has given him, until forfeited by crime of his own; the duty of
our government to save every part of this earth over which it has
jurisdiction from the direst of all earthly curses and the greatest
of all social crimes,--the curse and the crime of slavery;--these are
among the first of the dread accountabilities that attach to rational
and immortal creatures.
I believe it also to be the duty of government to provide for the
economical or pecuniary welfare of the people; to encourage industry
by securing the rewards of labor to the laborer, and to discourage the
competitions into which those who rule and control the impoverished,
degraded, and almost brutified laborers of other countries, are
striving to enter with our own people,--competitions, which, if
not prevented, will, to a great extent, reduce our laborers to the
wretchedness and privation of theirs. I believe that the money, and
the comforts purchasable with it, which such competitions take from
the workman here, do not go to improve the condition of the workman
there, but are intercepted and appropriated by others. I make this
statement of my views all the more readily, because I do not wish to
receive an unintelligent vote from any man, and I therefore abjure all
disguises and reserves. From my past votes and speeches in Congress my
constituents know upon what principles and to what ends I have acted.
To them I refer, and deem it unnecessary to say more.
Those who have taken the trouble to read what I have said on the floor
of the House, must have seen that, though I have endeavored to express
some stern truths, on vital subjects, in unambiguous language, yet that
I have never uttered a word designed to inflict unnecessary pain upon
our political brethren of the south; or to wound feelings which men may
erroneously call honorable. I desire to pursue the same course at all
times and with all men. The cause of liberty is one in which the true
object of ambition is to make great principles most clear, and not to
use harsh expressions respecting the conduct or opinion of others. It
is as necessary that the man whom I would convince should be in a calm
state of mind, as that I should be in such a state myself. Exasperation
paralyzes judgment. The great points on which men and parties so
vehemently differ, can only be permanently settled at the tribunal of
reason and conscience.
Several laws were passed at the last session of Congress, on which
I desired and designed to speak, in the name and on behalf of my
constituents. But I was obliged to act upon them, under the silence
enforced by the previous question. One of them, in particular, was so
hostile to all the principles which history and reason had ever taught
me, and so wounding to all the sentiments which I had ever imbibed
from benevolence and religion, that I resolved to seize the first
opportunity that should be offered to portray some of its features.
I refer to the Fugitive Slave act, so called; and I trust this will
not be deemed an unfitting occasion to lay bare a portion of its
enormities. I will remark, that I had prepared an amendment for the
security of our free colored seamen in southern ports, but was shut out
from all chance of offering it. It struck me that if new and oppressive
measures were to be taken to carry back alleged slaves to bondage,
something should also be done to restore freemen to liberty. While the
south were seeking new guaranties for men who claim to own other men,
it was a time for the north to demand new guaranties for men who own
themselves. But all debate was suppressed; property vanquished liberty;
and a pure pro-slavery law was enacted, unadulterated by any alloy of
freedom.
In regard to this Fugitive Slave act, is it not astonishing that men
should ever ask the question, Does the constitution _demand_ the trial
by jury? instead of the question, Will the constitution _allow_ it? The
first is the tyrant’s question, granting no more than he is compelled
to give. The last is the republican’s question, volunteering all that
he can grant. In a free government, where the trial by jury is held
to be the surest safeguard of personal liberty, the inquiry ought
never to be, whether the constitution _secures or necessitates_ this
form of trial; for it is enough, if the constitution will _permit_ or
_tolerate_ it. Instead of seeking evasions, and close constructions,
and hunting among the musty precedents of darker times, in order to
shut out the jury trial in cases of personal liberty, the true lover
of freedom would ask only for an interpretation that would _warrant_
it. It would not be among his last thoughts; he would not wait until
a stern necessity forced such a construction upon him; but his
first desire and effort would be to find some legitimate reason for
conferring it. He would not ask, in how few cases he must, but in how
many he might, admit it. Yet this matter has been discussed, and is
still discussed, on one side, as though we were bound to avoid the
jury trial if we could; not as though we were bound to grant it, if by
fair interpretation we might. It has been discussed as though the jury
trial, to protect a man’s right to himself, were an evil; and as though
the sudden seizure, “summary” adjudication, and speedy consignment of
a fellow-being to bondage, were too precious a blessing to be put in
jeopardy, by submission to twelve good and lawful men. Not how much
may we do for freedom, but how much can we do for slavery, has been
the tacit assumption of the argument. But I pass by this for graver
objections.
The Fugitive Slave act purports to confer judicial power upon persons
who are not judges. It provides for the creation of scores and hundreds
of officers called “commissioners,” and upon these, it is said on high
authority, to confer _original_ and _final_ jurisdiction on questions
of human liberty. The constitution declares in whom “the judicial power
of the United States shall be vested.” It shall be vested in “one
supreme court, and in such inferior courts as Congress may from time
to time establish.” No commissioner, nor any number of commissioners,
constitute one of these courts. “The judges, both of the supreme and
inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior.” A
commissioner can be made and unmade on any day. These judges are
to “receive for their services a compensation, which shall not be
diminished during their continuance in office.” The commissioners are
compensated by chance fees, and not by a fixed salary. The President
nominates and the Senate confirms judges of the supreme and inferior
courts. Commissioners are only the “inferior officers” who may be
appointed by “the courts of law.”
I need not enforce the position, that the power which this act purports
to confer upon commissioners is _judicial_. It has all the attributes
of judicial power. It is _original_, _final_, and _exclusive_. They are
“to hear and _determine_.” The fourth section says they “shall have
_concurrent_ jurisdiction with the judges of the circuit and district
courts of the United States.” The attorney-general of the United
States, in a written opinion, given by command of the President of the
United States, says as follows: “These officers, [the commissioners,]
and each of them, have _judicial_ power, and jurisdiction to hear,
examine, and decide the case.” “The certificate to be granted to
the owner is to be regarded as the act and judgment of a judicial
tribunal having competent jurisdiction.” “Congress has constituted
a tribunal with exclusive jurisdiction to determine summarily, and
without appeal, who are fugitives from service.” “The judgment of
the tribunal created by this act is conclusive upon all tribunals.”
The power of a commissioner, therefore, is _judicial_ in the highest
sense,--in the sense of the constitution. His decision cannot be
reheard or reëxamined by any judge, or by any court, of any state, or
of the United States. In no other case can a commissioner perform any
judicial act, or issue any executive order, whose validity may not
be reëxamined in the court for which he acts, or in some other. He
cannot strike a blow, nor fine a dollar, nor punish by imprisonment
for an hour. By appeal, by injunction, by mandamus or certiorari, the
proceedings of inferior courts or magistrates can be reached, and their
legality or constitutionality tested. But here a multitude of tribunals
are established, over whose proceedings, not the supreme court of
any state, no, not even the supreme court of the United States, has
supervision. And what do these commissioners decide? That a man has no
right to himself; that his body, limbs, faculties, are the _property_
of another; that he _owes service_. Suppose the question were, whether
the respondent owed the claimant a dollar. Could the commissioner give
judgment and issue execution for it? Certainly not. But yet he is here
authorized to decide questions infinitely more important than any
amount of money. He is to decide that a man owes life-long service from
himself, and from all the children of his loins.