tenth part,--one fiftieth part,--of the votes of the Massachusetts
legislature for the office of senator, had the curtain of the future
been lifted up, and his present position been revealed? You know there
never was. But, during the year 1850, without any initial change, or
symptom of a change, on the part of northern Whigs, the administration,
prompted by its own purposes, or yielding from its own weakness,
faced square about; and ever since that time it has been striving,
by all the lures of patronage and the terrors of denunciation, to
force the Whigs of the north on to a kind of political turn-table,
like those railroad turn-tables you see at a car-house, so that the
whole party, too, should be faced square about, made to retrace their
course, by going backward among the same people who had seen them go
forward, shouting down all they had shouted up, and forswearing all the
glorious doctrines of liberty to which the whole world had heard them
swear. Gentlemen, if, in this stress of circumstances, any body asks
me, “Where shall I go?” my reply is, Don’t get on to that political
turn-table which the administration has prepared for the Whig party,
and not the Whig party for the administration; for it will carry your
country to ruin, and yourself to dishonor.
During the canvass last autumn for a member of Congress for the eighth
district, when, as you all know, there were such “godlike” exertions
made against my election, I was asked, as a test question, by numbers
of most respectable members of the Whig party, what I thought of the
Free Soil party, and their proposed coalition at that time. I replied
to them in the following words, and my answer is now on record in the
hands of my constituents: “I say, as I have often said, that, if the
Whigs will live up to their professions a hundred times made, I see no
reason or warrant for separate organizations or coalitions. But if the
great body of the Whigs mean to belie all their professions, and to
persecute and punish all who remain faithful to the lessons which the
Whig party itself has been teaching so strenuously for so many years,
then what true Whig can blame any man for attempting to carry out what
the Whigs themselves have promised to do, but have abandoned?”
But the Massachusetts Whig State Convention at that time passed the
most pointed and emphatic resolution, affirming anew what they avowed
themselves to have affirmed and reäffirmed so often before, on the
subject of slavery. I reposed trust in their honesty; I believed in
their veracity; and, as a consequence of my faith, I voted the entire
Whig state ticket. Having read their last address and resolutions, I
must now say, that if they desire any more votes of mine, they must
revive my faith by some new evidence of their good works.
Let me advert to a few of the more salient points in that address. It
labors to sustain a charge of coalition against the Free Soil party.
Well, before I either approve or condemn a “coalition,” I must know by
whom, and for what purpose, it was formed. A coalition, I suppose, like
other acts, must be right or wrong according to the motive that prompts
it.
But it is said the Free Soil party formed an alliance with those
who, on some important points, had no sympathy with it. And where is
this said? Why, in a land where our revolutionary fathers, fighting
for freedom and for a republic, formed an alliance or coalition with
monarchical and despotic France, and with monarchical and despotic
Spain. What were the points of resemblance or unison between the
American Confederation on the one side, and France or Spain on
the other? In government, in policy, in manners, in education, in
religion, nothing could have been more different. In what did they
agree? In hostility to Great Britain alone; but not in a single one of
the reasons for that hostility, nor in but one of the objects to be
accomplished by it,--the humiliation of a haughty and overbearing power.
At the same time, Great Britain formed coalitions with the North
American savages, to extinguish the rising dawn of freedom. And in
this they have been too faithfully imitated by the old hunkers of
both parties;--_imitated_, I say, not only in the object and spirit
of the coalition, but in the weapons with which the warfare is waged.
Yes, fellow-citizens; for there is an attempt, and that attempt is
to be followed up, to overwhelm the Free Soil party by obloquy and
denunciation. There is to be a cry of “bargain and corruption” to put
down the Free Soil party, just as the administration of Mr. John Quincy
Adams was put down by the same cry. Who now believes any thing about
the charge of “bargain and corruption” against Mr. Adams,--except
that it was a villanous charge? I believe the same charge against
the Free Soil party will have come, twenty years hence, to the same
result,--that of conferring honor upon its object, and infamy upon its
authors.
But it is said the Free Soil party have seized the offices and
emoluments of the state. I was absent last January at the time of the
organization of the state government; but I have heard that those
who were distinctively called Free Soilers received only the office
of secretary of state, and president of the senate, and two or three
out of the nine councillors;--all of them nearly or quite without
patronage. I suppose all their emoluments combined would not equal what
is received by the Boston postmaster, or the collector of the Boston
port. Vast “ways and means” these for the corruption of the people! The
whole of them would not suffice a cabinet officer for a _bonne bouche_
or a tidbit.
And now I suggest a further point. Was there a single Free Soiler who
received an office last winter, on what is called the _division of the
spoils_, which the people, when they voted for him at the polls, did
not desire and mean that he should receive?
Now, I need not say that when men conspire or coalesce for a selfish
purpose, whether that purpose be office, or emolument, or the profits
of trade, or the increase of dividends, and especially if they
sacrifice great principles of public utility, or morality, or religion,
for the selfish end, I condemn the deed with my whole heart. So when
representatives, or agents of any kind, are elected or appointed for
special purposes, and by votes or influences without which they could
not have obtained their posts, and then, for their own ambitious
or mercenary objects, _they_ coalesce to defeat the will of their
constituents, any severity of language, in holding up their conduct
to reprobation, may be used with my full consent. Precisely of this
nature was the coalition between Mr. Webster and General Cass, to carry
through the compromise measures and the Fugitive Slave bill. Both
were agents, both betrayed and violated the will of their principals.
Could Mr. Eliot, of Boston, have been elected to Congress, had he
avowed his intention to vote for the Fugitive Slave bill? Every body
knows he could not. Yet he coalesced with the secessionists, Messrs.
Clingman and Venable, of North Carolina, and with the whole South
Carolina disunion delegation, in voting for the Fugitive Slave bill.
For Massachusetts, it was said that the passage of that bill would
raise the price of manufacturing stocks; as, for North Carolina, it
would increase the profits of negro-breeding. Here, then, are cases of
coalition between persons mutually hostile on other points; and all the
northern members engaged in it, not to carry out, but to defeat, the
will of their constituents.
But the coalition entered into by the Free Soil party in this state,
last year, was a coalition planned, formed, sanctioned, and executed,
as far as they could execute it, by the people themselves, acting in
their original, sovereign capacity, at their primary meetings, and at
the ballot box. It was not originated by representatives against the
wishes of their constituents; but the representatives carried out what
the people who chose them willed. What conclusively proves this to be
so is, that the people who elected these representatives were satisfied
with what they did; and, since the work has been done, have shown their
approval of it in every practicable way.
There may be wrong motives prompting to the most useful and beneficent
acts, as good motives sometimes lead to the most pernicious conduct;
but I am speaking of these acts of alleged coalition which were
instituted by the people themselves, discussed in their hearing at all
the primary meetings and all the conventions, and afterwards ratified
by their votes; and I say, to compare such a coalition with that which
took place between Whigs and Democrats in the Senate of the United
States, and between unionists and disunionists, slave-breeders and
manufacturers, in the House, to carry through the compromise bills
and the Fugitive Slave bill, seems to me illogical, preposterous, and
absurd. But it is said that the bargain in the one case was open and
public; and that its terms were reduced to writing, like a bond or
covenant between individuals. Is it any the worse for that? Had you not
as lief have an open bargain that you can see, as secret ones, like the
Texas stock bargains, that you cannot see? I suppose that coalitions
can be _implied_ and _understood_, as well as contracts. Why, have
you not seen such an implied coalition carried out in Faneuil Hall
within a year, when the Hon. Benjamin F. Hallett led on his cohorts,
and the Hon. Rufus Choate advanced his forces to join them; when Mr.
Benjamin R. Curtis joined hands with Mr. David Henshaw, who was present
by letter, if not in person,--honorable men all,--and formed one of
the most loving and harmonious coalitions out of as heterogeneous and
repulsive elements as ever chaos jumbled together,--a coalition not to
lift the bleeding form of liberty up, but to crush it down.
The coalition entered into by the Free Soilers certainly did one thing
which would atone for many errors. They elected Mr. Charles Sumner
to the Senate of the United States. And I cannot believe there is a
man to be found in any party so shameless and depraved as to charge
Mr. Sumner with any dishonorable coalescing, or with being tainted,
in a hair of his head or in a filament of his garments, with “bargain
and corruption.” Mr. Sumner was not elected on any principle of
availability, but on the principle of “_Detur digniori_,”--“Let it be
given to the most worthy.” His lofty pedestal is too firm to be shaken
by any such accusation. His character is not to be affected by any
office which he shall hold, but only by what _he does_, whether in
office or out of it.
While defending, in this way, the principle of coalitions, when formed
by the people themselves, no one, of course, could be understood as
pledging himself to vote for all their measures. This would be the old
and wicked partisan principle of standing by our party, right or wrong.
I am also free to say that there is, in my opinion, a _prima facie_
objection against coalitions; but I cannot doubt the existence of cases
where they are not only justifiable, but laudable. I lay down this
great principle: I think the Free Soil party should act at any time,
on any point, with any party through whom they can help the cause of
freedom.
The Whig address remarks as follows: “We are now able to say, after
the experience of nearly a twelvemonth, that it, [the administration,]
has fully earned the confidence which we awarded to it in advance.
_The great interests of the country have been faithfully cared for!_”
I ask, What great interests of the country have been faithfully cared
for? What interest of the Whig party, assuming to be the country, has
been faithfully cared for? Have we got a tariff? Mr. Webster dissipated
all chance of that for the present, and I fear for years to come,
when he taught the south to threaten and prevail. Have we any river
and harbor appropriations? Alas! northern capital and northern lives
still go to the bottom on our western waters. Is the financial policy
of the country changed? Let the condition of the money market for the
last few months, and also its prospective condition, grinding the
middle classes of tradesmen and manufacturers as between the upper
and nether millstone, answer this question. A reform in all these
particulars would doubtless have been affected but for Mr. Webster’s
apostasy; but where are these reforms now? If they exist at all, they
exist in some indefinite future. What interest of the country, then,
has been faithfully cared for or secured? Not one! Not one! The most
prominent member of the administration has been engaged in carrying
out the policy of the south,--in visiting southern cities to pander to
the slave power, and northern cities to stifle the spirit of freedom.
Two armed expeditions have been fitted out in our own ports against
the territory of a government with which we are at peace, resulting
in the loss of hundreds of lives, while the President and his first
secretary have been spending their time gayly at watering-places. When
some of our citizens, a few years ago, afforded some assistance to the
“Liberals” of Canada, in favor of a movement which Canadians themselves
had already set on foot, the government promptly and energetically
interfered. But Canada and Cuba are wider apart _politically_ than they
are _geographically_. Slavery makes the difference between them.
The only valorous exploit of this administration was the issuing of
a proclamation, when one southern slave, from among three millions,
escaped from the house of bondage, and found that protection under the
British ensign which was denied to him by the American flag, and that
right to a trial by jury under a monarchy which was denied to him by a
republic. Or, if any other act should be added to the preceding, it was
the President’s letter to Dr. Collins, of Georgia, offering the use of
the army and navy of the United States to catch one poor white woman,
Ellen Crafts, and her husband, and return them to bondage.
In another passage of the Whig address all disguise is cast off, and it
is openly declared, that the giving of an extra slave state to Texas,
with territory enough for half a dozen more as large as Massachusetts,
and ten millions of dollars in addition to that, and the statutory
permission that slavery may go into New Mexico and Utah, and even
that abhorred enactment, the Fugitive Slave law, are only “factitious
and imaginary” grounds of complaint. The Free Soil party is condemned
because it takes any notice of such “factitious and imaginary” causes.
A three-penny tax on tea was a real grievance,--one fit to be resisted
unto blood, to be historically recorded, and to which we are not
ashamed to refer when descanting upon the honor of our fathers. But
such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the
robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority,
too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and
imaginary” causes of dissatisfaction. Men of Massachusetts! moral and
religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared
for this?
But the address goes still further. It goes into an elaborate
palliation of the Fugitive Slave law itself. It first attempts to shift
the question by asking the Free Soilers what they would do with regard
to the constitutional provision respecting escaped slaves. The views of
the Free Soil party on this point, and their purpose of fidelity to the
constitution, have been set forth a hundred times. In further answer,
therefore, to this question, I trust it is only necessary to remark,
that the Free Soil party _will do what they say_, and not pass ten long
years in asserting, and protesting, and resolving, and calling Earth
and Heaven to witness their devotion to Freedom, and then disavow all
they had ever avowed, and forswear their oaths.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the
address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
“Is nothing meant,” it gravely asks, “but the substitution of the
verdict of a jury for the decision of a judge.” Nothing but--_what_?
“The verdict of a jury for the decision of a judge,” that is, of a
commissioner! And are the persons who prepared that address so nearly
stone blind as not to recognize the infinite difference between the
verdict of a jury and the decisions of such commissioners as Messrs.
Ingraham, Smith, and Nelson? Ingraham, of Philadelphia, sent a man
into bondage whom the alleged claimant refused to receive as soon
as he saw him, knowing that all his family, and all his slaves, and
all his neighbors would see that he had no right to him. Smith, of
Buffalo, gave a certificate to carry Daniel into slavery, when not a
single item, or particle, or tittle of legal and admissible evidence
was before him as proof, as was afterwards shown by Judge Conkling,
of the United States court. Nelson, of New York, forced the facts in
Bolding’s case to bring them within the law which he himself had laid
down, as much as ever a fraudulent book-keeper forced balances to cover
an embezzlement. Sims, instead of having common-law notice and time to
send for evidence, was seized at night on a false and trumped-up charge
of stealing. Daniel was knocked down by the claimant’s agent with a
club, tumbled and tortured upon a hot stove, his scalp torn open, and
then compelled to go to trial, while, as described by an eye witness,
“he sat dozing, unable to talk with his counsel, with the blood slowly
oozing out of his mouth and nostrils.” Hamlet, Long, and Bolding
were sprung upon as remorselessly as a tiger springs upon a lamb,
and carried to trial without being allowed to go to their respective
homes to bid farewell to their families. An alleged slave has lately
been taken from Pennsylvania who was seized in the night, tried in the
night, and carried away on the same night, without any opportunity
for preparation, for counsel, or for defence. The kidnapper, Alberti,
now lies in a Pennsylvania prison for carrying away a mother and her
child; but the mother and the child are now groaning under the lash of
a southern taskmaster. Had this villain, Alberti, and his accomplices
been detected while the victims were still in their hands, I suppose
he would have carried them before Mr. Commissioner Ingraham, and had
the wrong _legally_ rectified,--the blackness of the crime _judicially_
washed white. These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law
has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized
with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the
claims of justice and mercy left among us. And yet the writer of this
address and the committee that offered it, ask us whether all we mean
is the substitution of the verdict of a jury for the decision of a
commissioner. I answer, that this difference which they so be-little
and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and
bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between
happiness and perdition.
And now, fellow-citizens, if, in addition to having our northern
freemen kidnapped in southern ports, and imprisoned and sold into
bondage; if, in addition to fighting for foreign territory to be added
to the domain of slavery; if, in addition to being taxed, in sums of
millions and tens of millions, to fortify the slave power;--if, in
addition to all this, we are to be deprived and defrauded of that
noble and venerable institution, the trial by jury,--an institution
sanctified by the blood of martyrs, hallowed by the prayers of sainted
patriots, held sacred by all good men, and taught to their children
like the living oracles of God;--if this attempt is to be made, as the
late Whig address foreshadows,--then I say, a more flagrant case of
apostasy is nowhere to be found on the records of any history, sacred
or profane, since Satan broke into paradise and _Websterized_ our first
parents.
I shall advert to but one more point in the address. It speaks of the
“pitiable humbug of ballot envelopes.” Now, gentlemen, I may be all
wrong on this subject. My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may
all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this
subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have
all been in its favor. Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than
useless, if it be not FREE! Better be debarred from the privilege of
voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the
substance. A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern
laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates. It may be
very well for an opulent man, one of vast fortune, who is dependent
on nobody, and so cares for nobody, who goes quarterly and takes his
thousands of dollars for rents or dividends; it may be very well for
him to laugh at the secret ballot, and call it a “humbug;” but let
us look at the other end of the scale. Let us look in the thousands
of day-laborers, of workmen on corporation grounds, of dependent
clerks, of subordinates at custom-houses and other public offices, and
so forth, who have no capital but their industry, no resources but
their daily earnings, who have an aged mother or dependent sisters to
support, or a family of children to be fed, clothed, and educated;
who may be turned out even of the humble tenements where they live,
as winter is coming on; who may be refused promotion or advancement
in their work and in their wages; and in regard to some of whom the
wolf of hunger sits growling at the door; let us look at these, I
say, and then answer the question, whether they ought not to be
protected in voting according to their judgment and conscience. The
liberty of voting includes all other liberties. The man of independent
circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even
the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
I do not desire this secret ballot law for myself. I like to lay my
ballot in the box, face upwards, looking heavenward; looking the Paul
Prys who hover round, full in the eye; but I am willing and glad to put
that ballot in an envelope, in order to protect my poor neighbor, the
bread of whose mouth, the shelter of whose family, and the education of
whose children, may depend upon the vote he gives. Ay, I go further.
I should think that any high-minded man, any man having proper
sensibilities respecting his relations to his social inferiors, would
rejoice in such a law as this; because it would take away all ground of
accusation or imputation that he would do so unrighteous and dastardly
a deed as to invade a dependant’s right of voting as it might seem to
him good.
Gentlemen, it is said, in one of the Springfield resolutions, that
the last legislature cost the state an extra fifty thousand dollars.
Whether it did or not is not of any very vast importance; though I
confess I have a great respect for Poor Richard’s economy, and would
save all that I could. But does not the very mention of this sum of
fifty thousand remind one of another sum, almost precisely the same,
which was spent last year on one of Mr. Sumner’s predecessors in the
senatorial office? And if it cost fifty thousand dollars for a ticket
to pass Mr. Webster out of the Senate, it was surely worth as much for
a ticket to pass Mr. Sumner in.
Gentlemen, I close by remarking that it is in view of these great
questions of human freedom,--in view of the solemn responsibility in
which we stand to our country and to posterity, that we have assembled
here to-day. May this meeting prove to be a concentration of rays of
scattered light and wisdom, meeting and burning in a focus, and then
sending back illumination and cheering to all the parts of our beloved
commonwealth. If, in my humble way, I can do any thing to promote so
glorious an object, my services are at your disposal.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Seneca. [The passage is quoted in the Dedication, pp. ix., x.]
Transcriber’s Notes
Page 24: “chaper 41,” changed to “chapter 41,”
Page 107: “From the speeeh” changed to “From the speech”
Page 161: “Hebpurn et al” changed to “Hepburn et al”
Page 189: “Sierra Neveda” changed to “Sierra Nevada”
Page 190: “not only guranties” changed to “not only guarantees”
Page 239: “36´ 30°” changed to “36° 30´”
Page 265: “leger book” changed to “ledger book”
Page 287: “synonymes given” changed to “synonyms given”
Page 315: “wordly affairs,” changed to “worldly affairs,”
Page 321: “travel though any part” changed to “travel through any part”
Page 333: “reverened and learned” changed to “revered and learned”
Page 336: “be villified” changed to “be vilified”
Page 376: “of New Hamphire” changed to “of New Hampshire”
Page 414: “the apellants” changed to “the appellants”
Page 444: “as orginally” changed to “as originally”
Page 464: “wordly advantages” changed to “worldly advantages”