and while voting against the extension of the Missouri line, we never
thought of disturbing the original Missouri Compromise, is found in the
fact that there was then, and still is, an unorganized tract of fine
country, nearly as large as the State of Missouri, lying immediately west
of Arkansas and south of the Missouri Compromise line, and that we never
attempted to prohibit slavery as to it. I wish particular attention to
this. It adjoins the original Missouri Compromise line by its northern
boundary, and consequently is part of the country into which by
implication slavery was permitted to go by that compromise. There it has
lain open ever s, and there it still lies, and yet no effort has been made
at any time to wrest it from the South. In all our struggles to prohibit
slavery within our Mexican acquisitions, we never so much as lifted a
finger to prohibit it as to this tract. Is not this entirely conclusive
that at all times we have held the Missouri Compromise as a sacred thing,
even when against ourselves as well as when for us?
Senator Douglas sometimes says the Missouri line itself was in principle
only an extension of the line of the Ordinance of '87--that is to say, an
extension of the Ohio River. I think this is weak enough on its face. I
will remark, however, that, as a glance at the map will show, the Missouri
line is a long way farther south than the Ohio, and that if our Senator in
proposing his extension had stuck to the principle of jogging southward,
perhaps it might not have been voted down so readily.
But next it is said that the compromises of '50, and the ratification of
them by both political parties in '52, established a new principle which
required the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. This again I deny. I deny
it, and demand the proof. I have already stated fully what the compromises
of '50 are. That particular part of those measures from which the virtual
repeal of the Missouri Compromise is sought to be inferred (for it is
admitted they contain nothing about it in express terms) is the provision
in the Utah and New Mexico laws which permits them when they seek
admission into the Union as States to come in with or without slavery, as
they shall then see fit. Now I insist this provision was made for Utah
and New Mexico, and for no other place whatever. It had no more direct
reference to Nebraska than it had to the territories of the moon. But,
say they, it had reference to Nebraska in principle. Let us see. The
North consented to this provision, not because they considered it right in
itself, but because they were compensated--paid for it.
They at the same time got California into the Union as a free State. This
was far the best part of all they had struggled for by the Wilmot Proviso.
They also got the area of slavery somewhat narrowed in the settlement
of the boundary of Texas. Also they got the slave trade abolished in the
District of Columbia.
For all these desirable objects the North could afford to yield something;
and they did yield to the South the Utah and New Mexico provision. I do
not mean that the whole North, or even a majority, yielded, when the law
passed; but enough yielded--when added to the vote of the South, to
carry the measure. Nor can it be pretended that the principle of this
arrangement requires us to permit the same provision to be applied to
Nebraska, without any equivalent at all. Give us another free State; press
the boundary of Texas still farther back; give us another step toward the
destruction of slavery in the District, and you present us a similar case.
But ask us not to repeat, for nothing, what you paid for in the first
instance. If you wish the thing again, pay again. That is the principle of
the compromises of '50, if, indeed, they had any principles beyond their
specific terms--it was the system of equivalents.
Again, if Congress, at that time, intended that all future Territories
should, when admitted as States, come in with or without slavery at their
own option, why did it not say so? With such a universal provision, all
know the bills could not have passed. Did they, then--could they-establish
a principle contrary to their own intention? Still further, if they
intended to establish the principle that, whenever Congress had control,
it should be left to the people to do as they thought fit with slavery,
why did they not authorize the people of the District of Columbia, at
their option, to abolish slavery within their limits?
I personally know that this has not been left undone because it was
unthought of. It was frequently spoken of by members of Congress, and by
citizens of Washington, six years ago; and I heard no one express a doubt
that a system of gradual emancipation, with compensation to owners,
would meet the approbation of a large majority of the white people of the
District. But without the action of Congress they could say nothing; and
Congress said "No." In the measures of 1850, Congress had the subject of
slavery in the District expressly on hand. If they were then establishing
the principle of allowing the people to do as they please with slavery,
why did they not apply the principle to that people?
Again it is claimed that by the resolutions of the Illinois Legislature,
passed in 1851, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was demanded. This
I deny also. Whatever may be worked out by a criticism of the language of
those resolutions, the people have never understood them as being any
more than an indorsement of the compromises of 1850, and a release of our
senators from voting for the Wilmot Proviso. The whole people are living
witnesses that this only was their view. Finally, it is asked, "If we
did not mean to apply the Utah and New Mexico provision to all future
territories, what did we mean when we, in 1852, indorsed the compromises
of 1850?"
For myself I can answer this question most easily. I meant not to ask a
repeal or modification of the Fugitive Slave law. I meant not to ask
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. I meant not to
resist the admission of Utah and New Mexico, even should they ask to come
in as slave States. I meant nothing about additional Territories, because,
as I understood, we then had no Territory whose character as to slavery
was not already settled. As to Nebraska, I regarded its character as being
fixed by the Missouri Compromise for thirty years--as unalterably fixed
as that of my own home in Illinois. As to new acquisitions, I said,
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." When we make new
acquisitions, we will, as heretofore, try to manage them somehow. That is
my answer; that is what I meant and said; and I appeal to the people to
say each for himself whether that is not also the universal meaning of the
free States.
And now, in turn, let me ask a few questions. If, by any or all these
matters, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was commanded, why was not
the command sooner obeyed? Why was the repeal omitted in the Nebraska
Bill of 1853? Why was it omitted in the original bill of 1854? Why in the
accompanying report was such a repeal characterized as a departure from
the course pursued in 1850 and its continued omission recommended?
I am aware Judge Douglas now argues that the subsequent express repeal is
no substantial alteration of the bill. This argument seems wonderful to
me. It is as if one should argue that white and black are not different.
He admits, however, that there is a literal change in the bill, and that
he made the change in deference to other senators who would not support
the bill without. This proves that those other senators thought the
change a substantial one, and that the Judge thought their opinions worth
deferring to. His own opinions, therefore, seem not to rest on a very firm
basis, even in his own mind; and I suppose the world believes, and will
continue to believe, that precisely on the substance of that change this
whole agitation has arisen.
I conclude, then, that the public never demanded the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.
I now come to consider whether the appeal with its avowed principles, is
intrinsically right. I insist that it is not. Take the particular case. A
controversy had arisen between the advocates and opponents of slavery,
in relation to its establishment within the country we had purchased of
France. The southern, and then best, part of the purchase was already in
as a slave State. The controversy was settled by also letting Missouri
in as a slave State; but with the agreement that within all the remaining
part of the purchase, north of a certain line, there should never be
slavery. As to what was to be done with the remaining part, south of the
line, nothing was said; but perhaps the fair implication was, it should
come in with slavery if it should so choose. The southern part, except a
portion heretofore mentioned, afterward did come in with slavery, as the
State of Arkansas. All these many years, since 1820, the northern part
had remained a wilderness. At length settlements began in it also. In due
course Iowa came in as a free State, and Minnesota was given a territorial
government, without removing the slavery restriction. Finally, the
sole remaining part north of the line--Kansas and Nebraska--was to be
organized; and it is proposed, and carried, to blot out the old dividing
line of thirty-four years' standing, and to open the whole of that country
to the introduction of slavery. Now this, to my mind, is manifestly
unjust. After an angry and dangerous controversy, the parties made friends
by dividing the bone of contention. The one party first appropriates her
own share, beyond all power to be disturbed in the possession of it, and
then seizes the share of the other party. It is as if two starving men had
divided their only loaf, the one had hastily swallowed his half, and then
grabbed the other's half just as he was putting it to his mouth.
Let me here drop the main argument, to notice what I consider rather
an inferior matter. It is argued that slavery will not go to Kansas and
Nebraska, in any event. This is a palliation, a lullaby. I have some hope
that it will not; but let us not be too confident. As to climate, a glance
at the map shows that there are five slave States--Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and also the District of Columbia, all
north of the Missouri Compromise line. The census returns of 1850 show
that within these there are eight hundred and sixty-seven thousand two
hundred and seventy-six slaves, being more than one fourth of all the
slaves in the nation.
It is not climate, then, that will keep slavery out of these Territories.
Is there anything in the peculiar nature of the country? Missouri adjoins
these Territories by her entire western boundary, and slavery is already
within every one of her western counties. I have even heard it said that
there are more slaves in proportion to whites in the northwestern county
of Missouri than within any other county in the State. Slavery pressed
entirely up to the old western boundary of the State, and when rather
recently a part of that boundary at the northwest was moved out a little
farther west, slavery followed on quite up to the new line. Now, when the
restriction is removed, what is to prevent it from going still farther?
Climate will not, no peculiarity of the country will, nothing in nature
will. Will the disposition of the people prevent it? Those nearest the
scene are all in favor of the extension. The Yankees who are opposed to it
may be most flumerous; but, in military phrase, the battlefield is too far
from their base of operations.
But it is said there now is no law in Nebraska on the subject of slavery,
and that, in such case, taking a slave there operates his freedom. That is
good book-law, but it is not the rule of actual practice. Wherever slavery
is it has been first introduced without law. The oldest laws we find
concerning it are not laws introducing it, but regulating it as an already
existing thing. A white man takes his slave to Nebraska now. Who will
inform the negro that he is free? Who will take him before court to test
the question of his freedom? In ignorance of his legal emancipation he is
kept chopping, splitting, and plowing. Others are brought, and move on in
the same track. At last, if ever the time for voting comes on the question
of slavery the institution already, in fact, exists in the country, and
cannot well be removed. The fact of its presence, and the difficulty of
its removal, will carry the vote in its favor. Keep it out until a vote is
taken, and a vote in favor of it cannot be got in any population of forty
thousand on earth, who have been drawn together by the ordinary motives of
emigration and settlement. To get slaves into the Territory simultaneously
with the whites in the incipient stages of settlement is the precise stake
played for and won in this Nebraska measure.
The question is asked us: "If slaves will go in notwithstanding the
general principle of law liberates them, why would they not equally go in
against positive statute law--go in, even if the Missouri restriction were
maintained!" I answer, because it takes a much bolder man to venture
in with his property in the latter case than in the former; because the
positive Congressional enactment is known to and respected by all, or
nearly all, whereas the negative principle that no law is free law is not
much known except among lawyers. We have some experience of this practical
difference. In spite of the Ordinance of '87, a few negroes were brought
into Illinois, and held in a state of quasi-slavery, not enough, however,
to carry a vote of the people in favor of the institution when they came
to form a constitution. But into the adjoining Missouri country, where
there was no Ordinance of '87,--was no restriction,--they were carried
ten times, nay, a hundred times, as fast, and actually made a slave State.
This is fact-naked fact.
Another lullaby argument is that taking slaves to new countries does not
increase their number, does not make any one slave who would otherwise
be free. There is some truth in this, and I am glad of it; but it is not
wholly true. The African slave trade is not yet effectually suppressed;
and, if we make a reasonable deduction for the white people among us who
are foreigners and the descendants of foreigners arriving here since 1808,
we shall find the increase of the black population outrunning that of the
white to an extent unaccountable, except by supposing that some of them,
too, have been coming from Africa. If this be so, the opening of new
countries to the institution increases the demand for and augments the
price of slaves, and so does, in fact, make slaves of freemen, by causing
them to be brought from Africa and sold into bondage.
But however this may be, we know the opening of new countries to slavery
tends to the perpetuation of the institution, and so does keep men in
slavery who would otherwise be free. This result we do not feel like
favoring, and we are under no legal obligation to suppress our feelings in
this respect.
Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the
extension of slavery to new countries. That is to say, inasmuch as you do
not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object
to your taking your slave. Now, I admit that this is perfectly logical
if there is no difference between hogs and negroes. But while you thus
require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of
the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is kindly
provided that of all those who come into the world only a small percentage
are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave States
than in the free. The great majority South, as well as North, have human
sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of
their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms of
the Southern people manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong of
slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the
negro. If they deny this, let me address them a few plain questions. In
1820 you (the South) joined the North, almost unanimously, in declaring
the African slave trade piracy, and in annexing to it the punishment of
death. Why did you do this? If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did
you join in providing that men should be hung for it? The practice was no
more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as would buy them.
But you never thought of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses,
wild buffaloes, or wild bears.
Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native
tyrants known as the "slavedealer." He watches your necessities, and
crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating price. If you cannot help
it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your door.
You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or even
as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rollick
freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's children.
If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the job
without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands
with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the
ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich
and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the
ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now, why is this? You do
not so treat the man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco.
And yet again: There are in the United States and Territories, including
the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At five hundred dollars per
head they are worth over two hundred millions of dollars. How comes this
vast amount of property to be running about without owners? We do not see
free horses or free cattle running at large. How is this? All these free
blacks are the descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves; and
they would be slaves now but for something which has operated on their
white owners, inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice to liberate them.
What is that something? Is there any mistaking it? In all these cases it
is your sense of justice and human sympathy continually telling you that
the poor negro has some natural right to himself--that those who deny it
and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.
And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave, and
estimate him as only the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do what you will
not do yourselves? Why ask us to do for nothing what two hundred millions
of dollars could not induce you to do?
But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
is still to come. That argument is "the sacred right of self-government."
It seems our distinguished Senator has found great difficulty in getting
his antagonists, even in the Senate, to meet him fairly on this argument.
Some poet has said:
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I
meet that argument--I rush in--I take that bull by the horns. I trust I
understand and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in
the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with
all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of
justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men as
well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is politically wise, as
well as naturally just; politically wise in saving us from broils about
matters which do not concern us. Here, or at Washington, I would not
trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry laws
of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is right,--absolutely and
eternally right,--but it has no just application as here attempted. Or
perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends
upon whether a negro is or is not a man. If he is not a man, in that case
he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what he pleases
with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total
destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern
himself? When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but
when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than
self-government--that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why, then, my
ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there
can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another.
Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases
our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to
govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable
negroes!"
Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to
be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary.
What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man
without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle, the
sheet-anchor of American republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence
says:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR
JUST POWERS PROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."
I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according to our
ancient faith, the just powers of government are derived from the consent
of the governed. Now the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a total
violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without
his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different
from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed
an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is
self-government.
Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of political
and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the
contrary. I am not combating the argument of necessity, arising from the
fact that the blacks are already among us; but I am combating what is set
up as moral argument for allowing them to be taken where they have never
yet been--arguing against the extension of a bad thing, which, where it
already exists, we must of necessity manage as we best can.
In support of his application of the doctrine of self-government, Senator
Douglas has sought to bring to his aid the opinions and examples of our
Revolutionary fathers. I am glad he has done this. I love the sentiments
of those old-time men, and shall be most happy to abide by their opinions.
He shows us that when it was in contemplation for the colonies to break
off from Great Britain, and set up a new government for themselves,
several of the States instructed their delegates to go for the measure,
provided each State should be allowed to regulate its domestic concerns in
its own way. I do not quote; but this in substance. This was right; I see
nothing objectionable in it. I also think it probable that it had some
reference to the existence of slavery among them. I will not deny that
it had. But had it any reference to the carrying of slavery into new
countries? That is the question, and we will let the fathers themselves
answer it.
This same generation of men, and mostly the same individuals of the
generation who declared this principle, who declared independence,
who fought the war of the Revolution through, who afterward made the
Constitution under which we still live--these same men passed the
Ordinance of '87, declaring that slavery should never go to the Northwest
Territory.
I have no doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent in this.
It is a question of discrimination between them and him. But there is
not an inch of ground left for his claiming that their opinions, their
example, their authority, are on his side in the controversy.