the rights of man, an extent of territory was acquired equal to
all we possessed before; and this addition accrued to the special
advantage of those who maintain, as the first great article in their
creed, the wrongs of man. The same European wars which enabled
Mr. Jefferson’s administration to purchase Louisiana with fifteen
millions of dollars,--a sum mostly paid by the north,--brought the
commercial interests of the north also within the destructive sweep
of those contests, and the non-intercourse act and the embargo were
the consequence. These came upon New England at a time when commerce
was her only resource. They brought as great a calamity upon the New
England states as it would now be to the south if their whole cotton
crop, or to the west if their whole grain crop, were to fail for a
series of years. They palsied our industry; and, without industry,
men, any where out of Paradise, will be poor. Upon the back of this
calamity came the war of 1812, which we bore as well as we could, and
performed our full share in carrying the country through it, though
it cut off our very means of living. That war revealed a lamentable
condition of things. It revealed the fact that, notwithstanding our
political independence, we were, in a commercial sense, most deplorably
dependent. It pointed to a new policy. It put the country upon
achieving its second independence,--its independence, at least for the
necessaries of life, of foreign mechanics, manufacturers, and artisans,
as it had already achieved its political independence of foreign kings,
aristocracies, and ecclesiastics. It gave birth to the American system,
in which Calhoun, Lowndes, Cheves, and Clay,--all from the slave
states,--took the lead. I mention the first three names, particularly,
because they were from the state of South Carolina. So heartily did
they enter into the new policy that they took their seats in Congress
clad in homespun. They said they would exemplify their principles
by their garments, and wear them outside as well as inside of their
bodies. I am sorry their principles lasted but little longer than their
clothes,--one suit worn out, and all, both without and within, clean
gone. Even Mr. Madison boasted that his coat was woven in an American
loom. The south led off in this policy, and New England, whose capital
had been wrecked on the ocean, was reluctantly compelled to follow
their lead. This was the origin of the protective tariff, the child of
South Carolina, though, at a later period, adopted by Massachusetts.
It was not, however, until 1824, that New England, and Massachusetts
particularly, gave in her adhesion to the protective policy. Then
our people engaged in manufactures. The streams were dammed, and the
mighty powers of nature were set to spinning and weaving, to dyeing
and printing, under the guidance of that genius which had been kindled
and nurtured in our schoolhouses. Those establishments were founded
which have produced so marvellous a change in our household condition,
surrounding all with so many comforts, and filling our dwellings with
so vast a variety of the refinements and luxuries of life. Those of
you who have arrived at my age, and are therefore acquainted with the
condition of things throughout our country towns thirty years ago, know
that the change is almost magical. Though opposed in its inception by
the cities and the merchants, yet it has promoted their prosperity not
less than that of the people.
In the year 1820, a national question of a great moral character arose.
The south, whose policy had before secured a territory as large as
that of the original thirteen, sought to extend slavery over its whole
surface. Missouri applied to be admitted into the Union as a slave
state. The morality and religion of the north thought the time had come
to arrest the strides of slavery, and they opposed the application.
Earnest resistance was made. The battle was obstinately fought; but at
last, the north, or rather enough recreants of the north yielded, and
the day was lost. The south bought or bullied a sufficient number of
the invertebrate creatures whom we send to Congress, and triumphed over
us. This was the first great surrender of principle on the part of the
north, and a fatal surrender it was. We, and humanity, and all that
is dearest to the heart and thoughts of man, might have achieved the
victory but for a few cases of foul treachery to the cause of freedom.
O, that the retributions for that treason had been so terrible, that
the coward motive of fear, if not the angel impulse of humanity, might
have deterred all men in after times from ever daring to repeat it.
The next great struggle was in 1833, when nullification first reared
its hideous head. At that epoch, the south, and especially South
Carolina, observing that our capital had been too deeply invested in
manufactures to be withdrawn, changed their policy, and sought to
reap a double harvest,--both of the manufacturing system they had
introduced, and of the free trade system they had abandoned. She
therefore set about to strangle that offspring of protection to which
she had given birth. Even in Virginia, Mr. Madison’s coat had become
an unconstitutional coat, and the idea of American woollens so wrought
upon Mr. John Randolph’s gentle affections, that he said he would go a
mile out of his way to kick a sheep. The South Carolina resistance was
beginning to assume a military form. Then occurred a most admirable
opportunity to test the strength of our government,--to learn and know
whether the pillars of this Union are made of granite or of pipe-stems.
We had a clear case of right. In the chair of state was a man of Roman
will, who would have rejoiced in the opportunity to _see that the
republic received no detriment._ He contemned the nonsense as much as
he despised the fraud, of the cry that the Union was in danger. If it
was in any danger, he would have saved it in such a way that it would
not need saving again every twelvemonth. But the chance was lost. A
compromise was brought forward, by which South Carolina consented to
a sort of armed truce, on her part, provided the tariff, though not
given up, should be tapered down almost to nothing. Though, on many
accounts, I have a high respect for the author of that compromise, yet
I regard it as the most unfortunate act ever done,--the most fatal
precedent ever set by this government. It taught the south the efficacy
of clamoring; it taught them that there are cases where a Bombastes
Furioso is as powerful as a Julius Cæsar; and it taught them also,
notwithstanding all appearances of solidity and firmness, of what a
delicate nervous tissue a money-bag consists.
When that compromise law had had time to reach its legitimate issues,
you all know the result. A whirlwind of bankruptcy swept over the
land. Its ravages reached even the humblest portions of society. The
laborer suffered even more than the capitalist. The latter suffered
in his gains, but the former in his bread. All classes perceived the
cause; and they rallied, almost as one man, to that tremendous effort
to change the policy of the country, which resulted in the election
to the presidency of General Harrison. Though, but a few days after
his inauguration, the reins of government fell from his lifeless
hands, yet the tariff of 1842 was the consequence of his election.
This restored the drooping fortunes of New England. Then it was, while
we were immersed in our business and our money making, that southern
politicians addressed themselves to that great scheme of pro-slavery
aggrandizement,--the annexation of Texas. You are all familiar with the
details of this transaction, and it is painful to revert to them. The
kid was seethed in its mother’s milk. Northern Democrats cast the votes
which gave Texas to the south, and destroyed our own prosperity. Texas
was admitted just in season to repeal, by her votes in the Senate, the
tariff of 1842, by that of 1846. This again put in jeopardy all our
means embarked in manufactures. Would to Heaven that nothing more dear
than pecuniary interests had been sacrificed by that measure.
I do not blame the south for seeking an equilibrium with the north;
but they do not seek the true equilibrium. If they would sustain
themselves in a competition with us in economical affairs, they must
encourage labor and render it honorable. They must, all of them, labor
as we do, in one way or another, with the hand or with the head;
or,--which is the only true way,--with both together. They must build
schoolhouses to develop the minds of their children, and churches to
cultivate their morals. If they would only do this, and not attempt to
carry every thing by slave-begotten votes, and by adding new states
to beget more slave votes, they would soon surpass us; for nature has
done vastly more for them, in soil and climate and in all the means of
earthly prosperity, than for us. A superiority obtained in this way,
we, as lovers of human happiness, should not repine at, but rejoice in.
The next struggle in which they engaged for political aggrandizement,
was the Mexican war. It could, indeed, hardly be called a
struggle,--the north so readily and ignominiously yielded. They wanted
more territory. Texas, already gravid with future slave states, was not
sufficient. And though it was yet somewhat uncertain whether Congress
would not interdict the extension of slavery over that country,
even should they conquer it; still, as they had always triumphed in
their contests with us, they assumed the risk, and trusted to their
future prowess and skill to monopolize the plunder. The territory
was conquered; and then, perhaps, the most important question arose
which has ever come before this country since the Declaration of
Independence. The most momentous consequences were suspended on the
decision of this question. We had, as it were, a creative power put
into our hands. We had the shaping of the destinies of half a continent
intrusted to our keeping. Our authority once exercised, the act would
be irrevocable, and the doom of all that region would be fixed, as
by a decree of Omnipotence. When God gives to the world a generation
of children, and they are ruined through parental neglect, he gives
another generation, that another trial may be made. But if we once
admit slavery into those immense regions, comprising all the unsettled
residue of this continent, God will give us no new continent on which
the error may be retrieved.
Now, on this great question, what has been done? I grieve to say that
I fear the battle has been lost. If not lost, nothing can save it but
a vigor and an energy on the part of the north, such as they have not
lately put forth. So far as legislation is concerned, the whole battle
field is in possession of the enemy. Let me read a passage from one of
the acts of the last session of Congress, which settles this fact. By
the law for creating the territorial government of New Mexico, it is
expressly provided,--
“That when admitted as a state, the said territory, or any portion of
the same, shall be received into the Union, WITH OR WITHOUT SLAVERY,
as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.”
The act providing a territorial government for Utah contains a
provision precisely similar. In regard to Texas, we have gratuitously
given her a right to form one more slave state than she was authorized
to do by the resolution of annexation. By the third article of the
second section of that resolution, Texas was authorized to form new
states, not exceeding _four_, of which those south of 36° 30´ should be
admitted, with or without slavery, as their people should elect, while
in the state or _states_, (and there must, therefore, be at least one,)
which should be formed north of 36° 30´, there should be no slavery
or involuntary servitude except for crime. But by the act of the last
session, for establishing the boundary of Texas, though the United
States buys up the claim of Texas to all the territory north of 36°
30´, yet it authorizes Texas to form as many slave states out of the
residue of her territory, as she could have formed by the resolution of
annexation, both of slave and free. This is manifest, by the following
provision:--
“Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to impair
or qualify any thing contained in the third article of the second
section of the joint resolution for annexing Texas to the United
States, approved March 1, 1845, _either as regards the number of
states that may hereafter be formed out of the State of Texas, or
otherwise_.”
Here, then, instead of three states, four are provided for, with full
consent that they shall all be slave states. Now, I ask, if this gift
of a slave state is a trifle to be thrown in like the value of a small
coin in the settlement of an account? In some of the pro-slavery
papers of the north, which have professed to publish this act for the
information of their readers, I have observed that this clause has been
left out! They did not dare to trust their readers during the present
political campaign with a knowledge of it.
I know it is said, by here and there an individual, that slavery cannot
go into those territories. But it is to be remembered that all the
south, almost as one man, dissent from this proposition. They say it
can and shall; and is not their opinion, on such a subject, of greater
weight than that of any northern man? They threaten to dissolve the
Union if slavery be prohibited from going there. Are they such lunatics
as to dissolve the Union, because we assume to prohibit what nature
has already made impossible? Slave states border on those territories,
and should there be any rush of emigration towards them, as, by the
discovery of mines or other causes there may be, a cloud of slaves
would immediately overspread them. If it be said that the local law of
the territories prohibits slavery, I reply, so it did in Texas. Slavery
had been abolished throughout Mexico, of which Texas was a province.
But though slavery was no longer legal there, peonage was. Hence the
southern planters, at least some of them, when about to remove to
Texas, indented their own slaves to themselves, as peons, so that they
might hold them by the Mexican law of peonage, until they should become
strong enough to pass a law for slavery. It will be no more difficult
to introduce slavery into New Mexico and Utah than it was into Texas.
I will not now go back to the questions which agitated the country and
the Whig party at the time when General Taylor was nominated for the
presidency. Whatever I may have thought of him, and of the propriety
of nominating him, it is but justice to say that I now believe that
he was a true man, and an anti-slavery man. He intended honestly to
carry out the will of Congress, and execute the laws of his country,
regardless of slaveholding dictation. He would have crushed the first
movement for disunion; or rather, a knowledge of what he would do,
would have prevented any such movement. With his own lips, in his own
house, he told me that in case any state should attempt to nullify an
act of Congress, he should immediately order a naval force to blockade
its coast; he would allow nothing to pass into, or to come out of, the
rebellious state; and in six months, said he, it would give up its
resistance without the shedding of blood. It was President Taylor’s
plan, as you well know, to leave the adjustment of the slavery question
to the territories themselves; not that he was not prepared to have
it settled by Congress, and a prohibition imposed, but because he
saw that while a prohibitory act might be passed by the House, it
would certainly be rejected by the Senate. He therefore threw himself
forward to what he knew the condition of things must be, after all the
ineffectual attempts at legislation on the subject had been made; and
he adopted that future condition and result of things as his present
plan of action. Should the northern members of the House prove true
to their constituencies and their pledges, they would never allow
the territories to be organized without the proviso; and the fear of
such a prohibition would exclude slavery from the territories, as
certainly as the prohibition itself. Slaveholders would not venture to
carry slaves into a country, where, at any moment an act of Congress
might emancipate them. And if slavery could only be kept out of the
territories while they remained territories, it would, of course, be
prohibited by the state itself, when the condition of territorial
pupilage should be succeeded by that of state independence. A boy
trained up to virtuous resolves until the day he is twenty-one, will
not adopt all the vices the day after.
The recent act has given Texas more than fifty thousand square miles
of free New Mexican territory, and the promise of ten millions of
dollars in fourteen years, with interest at five per cent. up to that
time; which, at compound interest, makes a prospective grant of twenty
millions of dollars. This is done on pretence of discharging debts
which she owed at the time of her annexation. But those debts, at
the highest estimate, do not exceed seven millions, so that a clear
gratuity is left to her of at least three millions in addition to the
grant of another slave state. The interest of these three millions
will support her government, and keep her supplied with the means of
fighting the battles of slavery.
There is something most extraordinary in the claim of Texas to the
territory for which she has obtained so extravagant a price. Her
title was not by conquest, nor by purchase, but by an act of her own
legislature. She claimed the territory merely because she had extended
her legislation over it, when she had no more right to legislate for it
than for Canada. I have brought with me for your inspection, if any of
you desire to see them, a series of maps which illustrate the growth
of Texas. By Humboldt’s map, of 1804, Texas contained 71,752 square
miles. By Tanner’s map, of 1826, it contained 108,097 square miles. By
Austin’s map, of 1839, it had grown to 179,567 square miles. The late
claim of its legislature was the enormous quantity of 325,000 square
miles, which the act of Congress cuts down only to 237,321! By its own
legislative assumptions it grew from 70,000 to 325,000 square miles.
By good husbandry, in this part of the country, we are able to make
greater crops grow on the same land, but in Texas they make the land
itself grow. I think Humboldt himself would have been astonished at any
such geological theory of the uprising of the earth as would enlarge
an area of 70,000 square miles, in an inland country, into more than
300,000, in less than fifty years.
But, fellow-citizens, slavery is already in the territories, whether
prohibited by God and nature, or not! The line of 36° 30´ crosses the
territory appropriated to the Indians, which is already full of slaves.
Whenever the Indian title is extinguished, slavery will be found there
in possession of the soil. Utah has slaves to-day, and I was informed
by a gentleman chosen as a delegate from that territory to Congress,
that the Mormon religion prescribes nothing on the subject.
I need not now dwell on another act of the last session,--the Fugitive
Slave Law,--because, as yet, I believe no voice in Massachusetts has
been raised in its defence or palliation. It is an act which might turn
all of us here, at this moment, into slave hunters; which might break
up this meeting at the present time, should an officer, clothed with
the authority of the United States, appear at that door and command us
to chase an alleged fugitive, perhaps a native-born freeman, over the
graves of our Pilgrim fathers.
Standing here, then, before you, my constituents, to give account of my
stewardship, I have to say, that with voice and vote, by expostulation
and by remonstrance, by all means in my power, I have, to the full
extent of my ability, resisted the passage of all these laws. Why
have I done so? Because, in the first place, I felt myself a moral
and accountable being; and, as such, I could not do otherwise. I have
done so, in the second place, because I was your representative, and
believed myself to be acting in conformity with your wishes, with the
wishes of the Whig party of Massachusetts, and of my constituents
generally. Have I been mistaken? [A volley of noes.]
To ascertain what were the wishes of the Whig party, and of those
who put me in nomination, I shall refer you to a series of the
resolutions of conventions, and of the declarations of the best
accredited authorities of that party, on this subject, for years past.
The following are among the resolutions of the Whig convention which
assembled in this town, March, 1848, to nominate a successor to the
Hon. John Quincy Adams. They were unanimously adopted:--
“_Resolved_, That the members of this convention, met together for the
purpose of nominating a candidate to supply the vacancy existing in
the eighth congressional district, mourn, in common with the state and
the nation, the event which has deprived them of the services of that
eminent son of Massachusetts, whose voice was ever raised in the cause
of freedom, whose vast and varied powers, more than those of any other
statesman of his time, were devoted to the service of his country,
shedding light upon her institutions, and leading her on in the path
of duty, prosperity, and glory.
“_Resolved_, That the loss of his services in the halls of Congress,
at this time, is the more deeply to be deplored, when his great weight
of character, his influence, his talents, his wisdom, his zeal, and
indomitable energy would have been so benignly felt upon the great
questions of freedom and slavery, which are to be discussed and
settled for our newly-acquired domain, stretching from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
“_Resolved_, That it behooves us to unite upon a candidate to
represent this district upon the floor of Congress, whose principles
shall be in consonance with those of his predecessor, whose fidelity
to the great principles of human freedom shall be unwavering, whose
voice and vote shall on all occasions be exercised in extending and
securing liberty to the human race.”
In September, 1848, the Whig state convention of Massachusetts met at
Worcester, when the following resolution, among others, reported by the
Hon. Joseph Bell, of Boston, since then president of the Massachusetts
Senate, was unanimously adopted:--
“_Resolved_, That being impressed with a profound sense of our
responsibility, as the representatives of the Whigs of Massachusetts,
that responsibility which attaches to our words, acts, and votes,--we
cannot fail, on this occasion, as we have never failed on any other
general assemblage of the Whigs of Massachusetts, to record, in the
most solemn and deliberate manner, our unqualified opposition to any
extension of the institution of slavery into our territory, or any
acquisitions of territory, for the purpose of such extension. On this
question, the voice of the Whigs of Massachusetts has been unwavering
and uniform, and never has that voice spoken with higher eloquence
and power than when our distinguished senator in Congress, speaking
for himself, and for the whole people of the commonwealth, said, ‘I
consent to no further extension of the area of slavery in the United
States, or to the further increase of slavery representation in the
House of Representatives.’”
In September of the same year, another Whig convention assembled at
this place, to nominate a candidate for the Thirty-first Congress. My
views, as recorded by my votes on all the questions of slavery, and as
expressed in my speech, delivered on the 30th of the preceding June,
were then before the people. That convention, among other resolutions,
passed the following, by acclamation:--
“_Resolved_, That we cordially approve of the course of the Hon.
Horace Mann, and that his position in regard to _free_ principles,
_free_ labor, and _free_ speech, sustained with such signal ability,
was but a satisfactory fulfilment of the expectations that we had when
we nominated him to succeed the illustrious Adams. Regarding the past
as the best and only honorable pledge of the future, this convention
unanimously present his name to the people of this district for
reëlection.”