partially embodied in the constitution of the United States. But,
as the preëxisting metaphysics and mythology of the heathen nations
mingled with the pure spirit of Christianity, and corrupted it, so the
preëxisting laws and usages of oppression deformed to some extent the
doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, and stamped some hideous
features upon the otherwise fair face of the federal constitution.
But such a preponderance of good did that instrument contain, that
it was adopted by all the states. It was adopted, however, with the
universal understanding that the healing influence of time would purge
away the virus of the disease; and with no apprehension of the now
undeniable fact, that the disease would be allowed to spread, like a
gangrene, over the healthy parts. Had our fathers foreseen that the
pro-slavery clauses in the constitution would prove a curse to whole
classes and races of men entitled to protection under it, that they
would be a shame to its administrators, and an opprobrium, throughout
the civilized world, to the name of Republic,--it would be impious
towards their memories to say they would ever have ratified it. But
instead of the sounder parts diffusing healthful influences, and
gradually eradicating the disease, the diseased parts have shot their
infection through all the veins and organs of the body politic, until,
from the heart to the extremities, there is not now to be found an
uncontaminated spot.
Or to leave metaphor for literal speech: The constitution of the United
States gave the most comprehensive and fundamental guaranties in favor
of freedom, with here and there only an exception in behalf of slavery.
It allowed “persons” who were held to service or labor and who should
escape into other states to be retaken, but it also secured the trial
by jury to every “person” who should claim it on any question of life
or liberty, and on all questions of property even down to the paltry
sum of twenty dollars. Yet there is not now, in the United States, a
single spot, from ocean to ocean, where a free man is free from danger
of being kidnapped and carried into horrible bondage for himself and
his posterity forever; or,--what is as keenly torturing to every
mind penetrated by the spirit and amenable to the precepts of the
gospel,--of being called upon, under penalty of fines and fetters, to
surrender his soul to this accursed work.
Now, as a true disciple of Christ ought to feel if he saw the imbruting
dogmas and Moloch rites of heathenism returning to invade Christendom
and to extinguish the lights of the gospel, so should every lover of
liberty feel when he sees the fell spirit of slavery regaining its lost
empire over the institutions of freedom.
The analogy between the present condition of this country and that of
Europe is too striking not to attract attention. In 1848, there was a
great uprising of the friends of liberty in both hemispheres. Thousands
and tens of thousands sought to redress the wrongs of humanity,--by
the cartridge box there, and by the ballot box here. The phalanx of
tyranny and of mammon was unprepared for so sudden an onset, and
for a moment their ranks were broken by the violence of the shock.
But despotism and wealth have almost inconceivable advantages in a
contest with the honest and toiling millions. In Europe, they have the
military force,--a soulless machine, always ready to be turned against
the people who are made to maintain it. They have also the whole
ecclesiastical power, which leans upon the government for support, and
fights with spiritual weapons for the masters whose plunder it shares.
In this country, owing to our different institutions, the means of
quelling the spirit of liberty have been different. The administration
have an immense amount of patronage at their disposal. They give
contracts to the amount of millions, and select the contractors.
Directly, or indirectly, they appoint some thirty thousand
office-holders; and, by a lamentable reduplication of the powers
of evil, they control twice or four times that number who are
aspirants for office. Their influence bought over the slave power, by
surrendering all our new territories to the invasion of slavery, and
by giving fifty thousand square miles of free New Mexican territory
to be turned into Texan slave territory, thus adding to the already
enormous size of that slave-begotten state. Ten millions of dollars
of almost worthless Texan stock were raised to par value by the
signature of Millard Fillmore. During the whole pendency of the
compromise measures, agents and brokers, reputed to be interested in
this stock, hovered about the purlieus of the national Capitol. The
stock was transferred from hand to hand, without record and without
daylight, so that, besides the accomplices, Heaven and Satan only know
into whose possession it came. And, as though the means of patronage
and seducement on so magnificent a scale were not sufficient, a
private purse, almost up to the figure of fifty thousand dollars, was
presented to the “foremost man of all this world” in his apostasy to
the principles of human liberty. These, fellow-citizens, were among the
agencies and seductions which caused the discomfiture of the friends
of freedom in the national contest of 1850. The tyrants of Europe had
no vacant lands, or Texas stocks, wherewith to put down humanity, and
so they used gunpowder and bayonets. Our slave power and its northern
allies, being debarred by the principles of our government from bullets
and bayonets, accomplished their work by the Judas articles of scrip
and “dotation.” To carry out these purposes, the generals Haynau and
Radetsky were found there; the senators, Webster and Cass, here.
The origin and the present necessity of the Free Soil party may be
briefly stated. Some years previous to the annexation of Texas, an
apprehension existed that that great breach of the constitution and
outrage upon northern principles and feelings were meditated. Mr.
John Quincy Adams sounded the alarm; but men were so engrossed by
their business, and by their paltry local and temporary political
strifes, that even his voice, potent and prophetic as it was, passed
by unheeded. Some respect, however, was due, at least from policy
if not from principle, to the many humble but earnest opponents of
so flagrant a wrong. Before the consummation of that iniquity, the
Massachusetts legislature passed strong resolutions against it. The
question was taken by yeas and nays, and all the Whigs and almost all
the Democrats in the general court recorded their names on the side of
the constitution and liberty. But the slave power then had possession
of all the departments of the national government, and under the
auspices of a slaveholding President, a breach was made in the walls of
the constitution wide enough to let in a foreign government, with all
its burden of slavery on its back. Yet, notwithstanding this perfidy to
all the principles of a true democracy, such was the external pressure
brought to bear upon the members of the Democratic party, that but
few of them abandoned its ranks. They “_acquiesced_,” as the modern
phrase is, when any thing specially iniquitous is to be sanctioned.
They were told, as the Whigs are now told in regard to the compromise
and the Fugitive Slave law, that the act was _done and irrevocable_.
The merchants were told, as the Whig merchants now are, that the crime
of extending slavery would at least be attended by increased profits
of trade. The manufacturers were told, as the Whig manufacturers now
are, that if the number of slaves were increased at the south, it
must create an increased demand for whips and negro cloths. And the
mere blind political partisans were told, as the same class of Whigs
are now, that if God designed to stop the heaven-defying enormity
of spreading slavery over this continent, he must do it in some way
consistent with the integrity of the Democratic party. Precisely the
arguments which were then used to seduce and corrupt the Democratic
party into “_acquiescence_” are used by leading Whigs and Whig presses
now for the same unhallowed purpose. They are alike, except that in
the one case there was the crime of originality, and in the other, the
meanness of plagiarism.
But from the fatal day of the annexation of Texas, thousands and
thousands of honest and intelligent Democrats, though still remaining
true to what they believed to be the principles of the party, became
alienated from its leaders. From that day, the claims of the party lay
lightly, but the sins of the party heavily, upon their souls; and some
there were who, like Daniel of old, went into their chambers three
times every day, and, throwing open the windows which looked towards
the Jerusalem of liberty, prayed aloud to the true God, although within
hearing of the wild beasts which had been prepared to devour them.
The Whig party at the north, and particularly in Massachusetts,
flourished under the reäction of the Texas fraud. Some of its leaders,
it is true, shouted a welcome to Texas, though yet afar off; and, even
while she stood outside of the Union, they threw their arms around her
blood-besmeared form, hideous as Milton’s picture of Sin, with all her
hell-hound progeny of future slave states howling in her womb, and
gave her a fraternal embrace; and when the time came, they were also
ready to vote men and money,--human blood and human souls,--for the
robber atrocities of the Mexican war, which a majority of the House of
Representatives in Congress, on motion of Mr. Ashmun, of Massachusetts,
declared to be “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced.” My
friends, in your observations of men, you will find there are some
moral nonentities,--political availabilities though they may be,--who
can listen most sanctimoniously to the Saint Stephens, when they
prophesy, and then hold the clothes of the Lynchers who stone them to
death.
During all this period, however, the managers and the presses of the
Whig party discoursed and printed very edifying anti-slavery homilies.
As the harvest months came on, an anti-slavery zeal became an epidemic
among them; and sporadic cases happened at other times, depending upon
the days and places appointed by the governor and council for special
elections. Every body remembers how the Boston _Atlas_ used to stir
up the pure minds of the Democratic party by way of remembrance, by
publishing,--periodically, as they say, and sometimes oftener,--the
names of those Democratic senators or representatives in our general
court who had voted for freedom and against Texas, in order to show
their flagrant inconsistency in still adhering to a party that had
been false to liberty. That paper has done some good service to our
cause, especially in holding up for a long time the Fugitive Slave act
to reprobation, while the other Whig presses in the city were daily
striving to hide its atrocities from public view, and to defend what
they could not hide. I trust the reluctant and struggling editors of
that paper are not to be overcome by the mammon of slavery, whatever
disguises it may assume or compulsion it may use. I trust the slave
power will never be able to use towards them the language which hell’s
portress addressed to Satan:--
“At first they called me _Sin_, and for a sign
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
_The most averse; thee chiefly_.”
Those prosperous days of the Massachusetts Whigs continued until 1848.
They thrived in basket and in store, until, like Jeshurun, they waxed
fat, and, at least in the fourth and fifth congressional districts,
they performed some very hard kicking. Then came the nomination of
General Taylor. General Taylor was a Louisiana slaveholder. He had
been the hero of the Florida war,--as great an outrage against a race
as ever Rome or Russia committed. He had been a prominent, and, as
many believed, a willing instrument in spilling the innocent blood of
a sister republic. Even should the executive divest him of military
command, or he should grow too old for service, it was universally
known that there was a full black battalion on his own plantation
which he would always command. The south demanded his nomination
absolutely. They would hear no terms, and would offer no terms. In the
northern canvass it was strongly asserted that he had written a letter,
saying in so many words that he would not veto the Wilmot proviso;
but that letter was so warily kept in a certain unmentionable part of
a Whig merchant’s wardrobe, that neither Mesmerizers nor spiritual
rappers could read it aloud to the people.
Hence all omens foreboded evil. Those which we looked for on the earth
augured ill to our earthly interests; and those which we looked for
above were in the wrong quarter of the heavens. The character of many
of General Taylor’s friends brought distrust upon himself. He owed his
election far more to the repulsion which good men felt towards his
opponent, [General Cass,] than to any attraction they had towards him.
It was an occasion that tried the sagacity and the discretion of honest
men, and I have always felt great charity both for his advocates and
his opponents;--each being able to make out so plausible a case.
The course which the Connecticut clergyman took on that occasion
always commended itself to me. He voted the Taylor electoral ticket,
but indorsed a prayer on the back of his ballot, saying that he was
painfully uncertain as to the course of duty, and imploring that his
vote might be sanctified for the good of the country.
But I am happy to avail myself of this, and of all opportunities,
to do justice to the name of General Taylor. He turned out a very
different man from what his friends or his foes supposed him to be. I
believe he desired freedom for all the territories; and, could he have
been permitted to carry out his own plans, he would have secured not
only the freedom of the territories, but would also have consummated
all the great national measures of the party that brought him into
power. Mr. Clay threw the first stumbling-block in his way, by his
compromise scheme. This, alone, might have been surmounted. But Mr.
Webster’s apostasy, on the seventh of March, turned the tide of battle.
It broke up General Taylor’s phalanx, both north and south. It roused
the drooping and just yielding spirits of the slave power to frantic
exertion. An enemy on the field General Taylor was always ready to
meet; but he was not prepared for treachery in his own camp. Still,
he maintained his ground resolutely, until struck down by the power
that conquers the conquerors. There are many who believe it was Mr.
Webster’s perfidy, with the nameless labors and anxieties that came
in its train, which caused General Taylor’s death. It remains to be
seen whether the political Macbeth shall succeed to the Banquo he
spirited away, though all the “weird” brethren of the slave mart and
of the “Union and Safety Committees” still tempt him onward by their
incantations.
But it was under the circumstances of General Taylor’s nomination, and
not of his death, that a portion of the Free Soilers parted company
with the Whigs; as another portion did with the Democrats, because of
General Cass’s avowed subserviency to the south,--and the conduct of
all men is to be judged by the circumstances contemporary with their
acts, and not subsequent to them.
If, however, there are those who judge of motives by results, this
certainly can be said in vindication of the Free Soil party, that the
now acting President of the United States, who came in on General
Taylor’s ticket, and is now completing his presidential term, has done
more for slavery than the Free Soil party ever predicted or feared
would or could be done by the candidates whom they opposed. Even now,
when the third year of the presidential term is but half spent, the
Whig administration, aided by many leaders in the Whig party, is
carrying out, with a relentless hand, and a more relentless heart,
worse pro-slavery measures than the Free Soil party ever charged upon
them during the canvass, or ever believed or conceived they could
commit.
Such was the position of affairs in Massachusetts in 1848, when, almost
for the first time within the memory of man, the Whigs failed, at the
polls, to elect electors of President and Vice President.
Let us dwell for a moment on that crisis. It was during the canvass
of 1848 that the Whigs became so amorous towards the rank and file of
the Free Soil party. No knight-errant ever protested more fidelity,
or vowed to do more valorous deeds in his mistress’ cause. Than some
of them, no dove ever cooed with a sweeter gurgle. Than others, no
stag ever offended with a ranker breath. They wooed them by daylight,
by moonlight, and by torchlight. They swore belief not only in all
the Free Soil scriptures, but in the traditions of its rabbins. The
Ordinance of ’87 they loved; the Wilmot proviso they loved better; and
would the coy damsel of Free Soilism but consent to the affiance, the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia should gladden the
espousals. Every Whig rally, from ward and school district meetings
to monster mass meetings, resounded with Mr. Webster’s _slogan_, or
war-cry, “No more slave states! No more slave representation in the
Congress of the United States!” The Boston Daily _Advertiser_, the
_Courier_, and the _Journal_, which are now south of South Carolina,
in the impiety of the grounds on which they defend the wrongs and
the aggressions of slavery, and shout on slave hunts over Pilgrim
burial grounds,--all gave back the cry, with three times three, “No
more slave states! No more slave representation in the Congress of
the United States!” At all their conventions, the Whigs “resolved
and re-resolved,” and--but I hope we may not be compelled to finish
the line. You were told there was no more need of a Free Soil party
in Massachusetts than of two suns in the heavens. The Whigs were the
true Free Soilers; they held Free Soilism as a hereditament, or as
an heir-loom long possessed by the ancient family of the Whigs. Even
Mr. Webster, who had very much withdrawn from public gaze after the
Philadelphia convention, and who, like Achilles, sat “sulking in his
tent” and musing over the lost Briseis of a nomination, was at last
tempted, by a succession of brilliant retaining fees, to come forth and
reason with these recusant and contumacious Free Soilers face to face.
And what did he say? Addressing himself distinctively to Free Soilers,
he said, “If, my friends, the term ‘Free Soil’ party, or ‘Free Soil’
men, is meant to designate one who has been fixed, unalterable, to-day,
yesterday, and for some time past, in opposition to slavery extension,
then I may claim to be, and may hold myself, as good a Free Soil man
as any member of that Buffalo convention. I pray to know where is
their soil freer than that on which I have stood? I pray to know what
words they can use, or can dictate to me, freer than those which have
dwelt upon my lips. I pray to know with what feelings they can inspire
my breast _more resolute and firm in resisting slavery_ EXTENSION OR
ENCROACHMENT than have inhabited my bosom since the first time I opened
my mouth in public life.”
These, gentlemen, were his words, spoken at Marshfield, on the first
day of September, 1848. If he were here to-day to address you, could he
speak any _words_ more grateful to your ears? If only truth and a heart
were in that language, could he speak any thing better?
It was by such false pretences as these that thousands, and I doubt
not tens of thousands, of men wholly penetrated and imbued with Free
Soil principles, were kept in the Whig ranks. I was one of them. I had
faith in men; and I have it still,--with important exceptions however.
The needle points to the pole; but if you bring a huge black mass of
pig iron and place by its side, it trembles, yet deviates, like a man
struggling to be virtuous before overwhelming temptations. Remove the
disturbing force, and it returns to its fidelity. So, when the next
presidential election is over, I believe the great body of the rank
and file of the Whig party in Massachusetts will return to their duty;
for I venture to say, that if the Whigs of Massachusetts, in November,
1848, could have foreseen the present position of their party, and the
demoralization which its leaders have been able to work in it, not one
third of them, no, not one quarter of them, could have been induced
to vote the ticket that elected Mr. Fillmore, brought in the present
cabinet, and brought on the present disastrous policy.
But, gentlemen, I am occupying too much of your time. I will add but a
few more words. I said the address and resolutions of the Whig State
Convention, held at Springfield, last week, brought me here. I have
read them with profound sorrow. It was the first Whig convention that
ever met in Massachusetts that did not at least put forth some noble
doctrines in favor of freedom, whether they meant to stand by them or
not. Yes, even the convention of 1850,--only one year ago,--passed the
following:--
“_Resolved_, That Massachusetts avows her unalterable determination
to maintain all the principles and purposes she has in times past
affirmed and reäffirmed, in relation to the extension of slavery.”
And yet the late convention, the first one that has met since the
resolution which I have just read was adopted, has endorsed the
present administration, which has done more to corrupt and deaden
public sentiment at the north, as to the wrongs of slavery to the
enslaved, and its injury to the free, and to aggrandize the pro-slavery
south, and foster and encourage, ay, and _reward_ its aggressions;--has
done more, I say, than any other administration that ever existed under
this government. History will bear me out in this statement. Yet, at
this crisis in human affairs, the one idea, the master purpose of the
address and resolutions of that convention, seems to have been, to
disparage and depreciate the great, eternal principles of freedom, and
to bring odium and contempt upon the only party now organized for their
support.
Gentlemen, the Whig leaders, in this respect, and in regard to this
most important and paramount attribute of the Whig party, have lurched
and lurched round, until they have got into the very trough of the
pro-slavery sea. Its members, I admit, are free to follow them to their
ruin, if they will; but free, too, I thank God, to go on in their old
course, steering for the haven of honor and liberty. I give the great
majority even of the Whig leaders the credit of having yielded to this
pressure reluctantly, and under what they deemed a sort of political
duress; for, gentlemen, a new and most alarming fact in the history of
the Whig party of this country has been developed within the last two
years. It is this: formerly, and universally, the Whig administration
was supposed to be chosen to carry out the views of the Whig party; but
the present administration, having abandoned the grounds on which it
obtained power, and having, for its own purposes, taken new grounds,
now demands of the Whig party to carry out,--not the old policy of the
Whigs, but the new policy of the administration.
Fellow-citizens, could Mr. Fillmore by any possibility have been
elected, in 1848; could he have got so many as ten thousand votes
among all the Whigs of the Northern States, had his present attitude on
the subject of slavery been foreseen?