country over which the Confederacy then claimed any sort of jurisdiction.
We were then living under the Articles of Confederation, which were
superseded by the Constitution several years afterward. The question of
ceding the territories to the General Government was set on foot. Mr.
Jefferson,--the author of the Declaration of Independence, and otherwise
a chief actor in the Revolution; then a delegate in Congress; afterward,
twice President; who was, is, and perhaps will continue to be, the
most distinguished politician of our history; a Virginian by birth and
continued residence, and withal a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of
taking that occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern
Territory. He prevailed on the Virginia Legislature to adopt his views,
and to cede the Territory, making the prohibition of slavery therein
a condition of the deed. (Jefferson got only an understanding, not a
condition of the deed to this wish.) Congress accepted the cession with
the condition; and the first ordinance (which the acts of Congress were
then called) for the government of the Territory provided that slavery
should never be permitted therein. This is the famed "Ordinance of '87,"
so often spoken of.
Thenceforward for sixty-one years, and until, in 1848, the last scrap of
this Territory came into the Union as the State of Wisconsin, all parties
acted in quiet obedience to this ordinance. It is now what Jefferson
foresaw and intended--the happy home of teeming millions of free, white,
prosperous people, and no slave among them.
Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of
prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. Thus, away back to the
Constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of the Revolution, the State
of Virginia and the national Congress put that policy into practice. Thus,
through more than sixty of the best years of the republic, did that policy
steadily work to its great and beneficent end. And thus, in those five
States, and in five millions of free, enterprising people, we have before
us the rich fruits of this policy.
But now new light breaks upon us. Now Congress declares this ought never
to have been, and the like of it must never be again. The sacred right of
self-government is grossly violated by it. We even find some men who drew
their first breath--and every other breath of their lives--under this very
restriction, now live in dread of absolute suffocation if they should
be restricted in the "sacred right" of taking slaves to Nebraska. That
perfect liberty they sigh for--the liberty of making slaves of other
people, Jefferson never thought of, their own fathers never thought of,
they never thought of themselves, a year ago. How fortunate for them they
did not sooner become sensible of their great misery! Oh, how difficult it
is to treat with respect such assaults upon all we have ever really held
sacred!
But to return to history. In 1803 we purchased what was then called
Louisiana, of France. It included the present States of Louisiana,
Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa; also the Territory of Minnesota, and the
present bone of contention, Kansas and Nebraska. Slavery already existed
among the French at New Orleans, and to some extent at St. Louis. In 1812
Louisiana came into the Union as a slave State, without controversy. In
1818 or '19, Missouri showed signs of a wish to come in with slavery. This
was resisted by Northern members of Congress; and thus began the first
great slavery agitation in the nation. This controversy lasted several
months, and became very angry and exciting--the House of Representatives
voting steadily for the prohibition of slavery in Missouri, and the Senate
voting as steadily against it. Threats of the breaking up of the Union
were freely made, and the ablest public men of the day became seriously
alarmed. At length a compromise was made, in which, as in all compromises,
both sides yielded something. It was a law, passed on the 6th of March,
1820, providing that Missouri might come into the Union with slavery, but
that in all the remaining part of the territory purchased of France
which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude,
slavery should never be permitted. This provision of law is the "Missouri
Compromise." In excluding slavery north of the line, the same language
is employed as in the Ordinance of 1787. It directly applied to Iowa,
Minnesota, and to the present bone of contention, Kansas and Nebraska.
Whether there should or should not be slavery south of that line, nothing
was said in the law. But Arkansas constituted the principal remaining
part south of the line; and it has since been admitted as a slave State,
without serious controversy. More recently, Iowa, north of the line, came
in as a free State without controversy. Still later, Minnesota, north
of the line, had a territorial organization without controversy. Texas,
principally south of the line, and west of Arkansas, though originally
within the purchase from France, had, in 1819, been traded off to Spain
in our treaty for the acquisition of Florida. It had thus become a part
of Mexico. Mexico revolutionized and became independent of Spain. American
citizens began settling rapidly with their slaves in the southern part
of Texas. Soon they revolutionized against Mexico, and established an
independent government of their own, adopting a constitution with slavery,
strongly resembling the constitutions of our slave States. By still
another rapid move, Texas, claiming a boundary much farther west than when
we parted with her in 1819, was brought back to the United States, and
admitted into the Union as a slave State. Then there was little or no
settlement in the northern part of Texas, a considerable portion of which
lay north of the Missouri line; and in the resolutions admitting her into
the Union, the Missouri restriction was expressly extended westward across
her territory. This was in 1845, only nine years ago.
Thus originated the Missouri Compromise; and thus has it been respected
down to 1845. And even four years later, in 1849, our distinguished
Senator, in a public address, held the following language in relation to
it:
"The Missouri Compromise has been in practical operation for about a
quarter of a century, and has received the sanction and approbation of men
of all parties in every section of the Union. It has allayed all sectional
jealousies and irritations growing out of this vexed question, and
harmonized and tranquillized the whole country. It has given to Henry
Clay, as its prominent champion, the proud sobriquet of the 'Great
Pacificator,' and by that title, and for that service, his political
friends had repeatedly appealed to the people to rally under his standard
as a Presidential candidate, as the man who had exhibited the patriotism
and power to suppress an unholy and treasonable agitation, and preserve
the Union. He was not aware that any man or any party, from any section
of the Union, had ever urged as an objection to Mr. Clay that he was the
great champion of the Missouri Compromise. On the contrary, the effort was
made by the opponents of Mr. Clay to prove that he was not entitled to the
exclusive merit of that great patriotic measure, and that the honor was
equally due to others, as well as to him, for securing its adoption;
that it had its origin in the hearts of all patriotic men, who desired
to preserve and perpetuate the blessings of our glorious Union--an origin
akin to that of the Constitution of the United States, conceived in the
same spirit of fraternal affection, and calculated to remove forever the
only danger which seemed to threaten, at some distant day, to sever the
social bond of union. All the evidences of public opinion at that day
seemed to indicate that this compromise had been canonized in the hearts
of the American people, as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would
ever be reckless enough to disturb."
I do not read this extract to involve Judge Douglas in an inconsistency.
If he afterward thought he had been wrong, it was right for him to change.
I bring this forward merely to show the high estimate placed on the
Missouri Compromise by all parties up to so late as the year 1849.
But going back a little in point of time. Our war with Mexico broke out
in 1846. When Congress was about adjourning that session, President Polk
asked them to place two millions of dollars under his control, to be used
by him in the recess, if found practicable and expedient, in negotiating
a treaty of peace with Mexico, and acquiring some part of her territory. A
bill was duly gotten up for the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly in
the House of Representatives, when a member by the name of David Wilmot, a
Democrat from Pennsylvania, moved as an amendment, "Provided, that in any
territory thus acquired there never shall be slavery."
This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso. It created a great
flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill
passed with it through the House. The Senate, however, adjourned without
final action on it, and so both appropriation and proviso were lost for
the time. The war continued, and at the next session the President renewed
his request for the appropriation, enlarging the amount, I think, to
three millions. Again came the proviso, and defeated the measure. Congress
adjourned again, and the war went on. In December, 1847, the new Congress
assembled. I was in the lower House that term. The Wilmot Proviso, or the
principle of it, was constantly coming up in some shape or other, and I
think I may venture to say I voted for it at least forty times during
the short time I was there. The Senate, however, held it in check, and it
never became a law. In the spring of 1848 a treaty of peace was made
with Mexico, by which we obtained that portion of her country which now
constitutes the Territories of New Mexico and Utah and the present State
of California. By this treaty the Wilmot Proviso was defeated, in so far
as it was intended to be a condition of the acquisition of territory.
Its friends, however, were still determined to find some way to restrain
slavery from getting into the new country. This new acquisition lay
directly west of our old purchase from France, and extended west to the
Pacific Ocean, and was so situated that if the Missouri line should be
extended straight west, the new country would be divided by such extended
line, leaving some north and some south of it. On Judge Douglas's motion,
a bill, or provision of a bill, passed the Senate to so extend the
Missouri line. The proviso men in the House, including myself, voted it
down, because, by implication, it gave up the southern part to slavery,
while we were bent on having it all free.
In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California. This
attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that on, or soon
after, the meeting of the new Congress in December, 1849, she already had
a population of nearly a hundred thousand, had called a convention, formed
a State constitution excluding slavery, and was knocking for admission
into the Union. The proviso men, of course, were for letting her in,
but the Senate, always true to the other side, would not consent to her
admission, and there California stood, kept out of the Union because
she would not let slavery into her borders. Under all the circumstances,
perhaps, this was not wrong. There were other points of dispute connected
with the general question of Slavery, which equally needed adjustment. The
South clamored for a more efficient fugitive slave law. The North clamored
for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District
of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of the
Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of negroes were
collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets,
precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty
years. Utah and New Mexico needed territorial governments; and whether
slavery should or should not be prohibited within them was another
question. The indefinite western boundary of Texas was to be settled. She
was a slave State, and consequently the farther west the slavery men could
push her boundary, the more slave country they secured; and the farther
east the slavery opponents could thrust the boundary back, the less slave
ground was secured. Thus this was just as clearly a slavery question as
any of the others.
These points all needed adjustment, and they were held up, perhaps wisely,
to make them help adjust one another. The Union now, as in 1820, was
thought to be in danger, and devotion to the Union rightfully inclined
men to yield somewhat in points where nothing else could have so inclined
them. A compromise was finally effected. The South got their new fugitive
slave law, and the North got California, (by far the best part of our
acquisition from Mexico) as a free State. The South got a provision that
New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may come in with or without
slavery as they may then choose; and the North got the slave trade
abolished in the District of Columbia.. The North got the western boundary
of Texas thrown farther back eastward than the South desired; but, in
turn, they gave Texas ten millions of dollars with which to pay her old
debts. This is the Compromise of 1850.
Preceding the Presidential election of 1852, each of the great political
parties, Democrats and Whigs, met in convention and adopted resolutions
indorsing the Compromise of '50, as a "finality," a final settlement, so
far as these parties could make it so, of all slavery agitation. Previous
to this, in 1851, the Illinois Legislature had indorsed it.
During this long period of time, Nebraska (the Nebraska Territory, not
the State of as we know it now) had remained substantially an uninhabited
country, but now emigration to and settlement within it began to take
place. It is about one third as large as the present United States,
and its importance, so long overlooked, begins to come into view. The
restriction of slavery by the Missouri Compromise directly applies to
it--in fact was first made, and has since been maintained expressly for
it. In 1853, a bill to give it a territorial government passed the House
of Representatives, and, in the hands of Judge Douglas, failed of passing
only for want of time. This bill contained no repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. Indeed, when it was assailed because it did not contain such
repeal, Judge Douglas defended it in its existing form. On January 4,
1854, Judge Douglas introduces a new bill to give Nebraska territorial
government. He accompanies this bill with a report, in which last he
expressly recommends that the Missouri Compromise shall neither be
affirmed nor repealed. Before long the bill is so modified as to make two
territories instead of one, calling the southern one Kansas.
Also, about a month after the introduction of the bill, on the Judge's own
motion it is so amended as to declare the Missouri Compromise inoperative
and void; and, substantially, that the people who go and settle there may
establish slavery, or exclude it, as they may see fit. In this shape the
bill passed both branches of Congress and became a law.
This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history
may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I am sure it is
sufficiently so for all the use I shall attempt to make of it, and in
it we have before us the chief material enabling us to judge correctly
whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong. I think,
and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its direct effect,
letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective
principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world
where men can be found inclined to take it.
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal,
for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our
republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies
of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes
the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because
it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the very
fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of
Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but
self-interest.
Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice against the
Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If
slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it
did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe
of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both
sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances, and others who
would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of existence. We know
that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North and become tip-top
abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South and become most cruel
slave masters.
When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the
origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said
that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of
it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I
surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do
myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do
as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the
slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a moment's
reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think
there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is
impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish
in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money
enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them
all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this
betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any
rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon.
What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?
My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know
that those of the great mass of whites will not. Whether this feeling
accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if
indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill
founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It
does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but
for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of
the South.
When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge
them--not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any
legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives which should not in
its stringency be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than our
ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting
slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for reviving the
African slave trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves
from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them
into Nebraska, can hardy be distinguished on any moral principle, and the
repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter.
The arguments by which the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is sought to
be justified are these:
First. That the Nebraska country needed a territorial government.
Second. That in various ways the public had repudiated that compromise and
demanded the repeal, and therefore should not now complain of it.
And, lastly, That the repeal establishes a principle which is
intrinsically right.
I will attempt an answer to each of them in its turn.
First, then: If that country was in need of a territorial organization,
could it not have had it as well without as with a repeal? Iowa and
Minnesota, to both of which the Missouri restriction applied, had, without
its repeal, each in succession, territorial organizations. And even the
year before, a bill for Nebraska itself was within an ace of passing
without the repealing clause, and this in the hands of the same men who
are now the champions of repeal. Why no necessity then for repeal? But
still later, when this very bill was first brought in, it contained
no repeal. But, say they, because the people had demanded, or rather
commanded, the repeal, the repeal was to accompany the organization
whenever that should occur.
Now, I deny that the public ever demanded any such thing--ever repudiated
the Missouri Compromise, ever commanded its repeal. I deny it, and call
for the proof. It is not contended, I believe, that any such command has
ever been given in express terms. It is only said that it was done in
principle. The support of the Wilmot Proviso is the first fact mentioned
to prove that the Missouri restriction was repudiated in principle, and
the second is the refusal to extend the Missouri line over the country
acquired from Mexico. These are near enough alike to be treated together.
The one was to exclude the chances of slavery from the whole new
acquisition by the lump, and the other was to reject a division of it, by
which one half was to be given up to those chances. Now, whether this was
a repudiation of the Missouri line in principle depends upon whether the
Missouri law contained any principle requiring the line to be extended
over the country acquired from Mexico. I contend it did not. I insist
that it contained no general principle, but that it was, in every sense,
specific. That its terms limit it to the country purchased from France is
undenied and undeniable. It could have no principle beyond the intention
of those who made it. They did not intend to extend the line to country
which they did not own. If they intended to extend it in the event of
acquiring additional territory, why did they not say so? It was just as
easy to say that "in all the country west of the Mississippi which we now
own, or may hereafter acquire, there shall never be slavery," as to say
what they did say; and they would have said it if they had meant it. An
intention to extend the law is not only not mentioned in the law, but is
not mentioned in any contemporaneous history. Both the law itself, and the
history of the times, are a blank as to any principle of extension; and
by neither the known rules of construing statutes and contracts, nor by
common sense, can any such principle be inferred.
Another fact showing the specific character of the Missouri law--showing
that it intended no more than it expressed, showing that the line was not
intended as a universal dividing line between Free and Slave territory,
present and prospective, north of which slavery could never go--is the
fact that by that very law Missouri came in as a slave State, north of the
line. If that law contained any prospective principle, the whole law must
be looked to in order to ascertain what the principle was. And by this
rule the South could fairly contend that, inasmuch as they got one slave
State north of the line at the inception of the law, they have the right
to have another given them north of it occasionally, now and then, in the
indefinite westward extension of the line. This demonstrates the absurdity
of attempting to deduce a prospective principle from the Missouri
Compromise line.
When we voted for the Wilmot Proviso we were voting to keep slavery out
of the whole Mexican acquisition, and little did we think we were thereby
voting to let it into Nebraska lying several hundred miles distant. When
we voted against extending the Missouri line, little did we think we were
voting to destroy the old line, then of near thirty years' standing.
To argue that we thus repudiated the Missouri Compromise is no less absurd
than it would be to argue that because we have so far forborne to acquire
Cuba, we have thereby, in principle, repudiated our former acquisitions
and determined to throw them out of the Union. No less absurd than it
would be to say that because I may have refused to build an addition to
my house, I thereby have decided to destroy the existing house! And if
I catch you setting fire to my house, you will turn upon me and say I
instructed you to do it!