country? And if we surrender the control of it, do we not surrender the
right of self-government? It is part of ourselves. If you say we shall not
control it, because it is only part, the same is true of every other part;
and when all the parts are gone, what has become of the whole? What
is then left of us? What use for the General Government, when there is
nothing left for it to govern?
But you say this question should be left to the people of Nebraska,
because they are more particularly interested. If this be the rule, you
must leave it to each individual to say for himself whether he will have
slaves. What better moral right have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to
say that the thirty-second shall not hold slaves than the people of
the thirty-one States have to say that slavery shall not go into the
thirty-second State at all?
But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take and hold
slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy them where they can
buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly, will be on the coast of Africa,
provided you will consent not to hang them for going there to buy
them. You must remove this restriction, too, from the sacred right of
self-government. I am aware you say that taking slaves from the States to
Nebraska does not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave-trader can
say just as much. He does not catch free negroes and bring them here.
He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black captors, and he
honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton handkerchief a head.
This is very cheap, and it is a great abridgment of the sacred right of
self-government to hang men for engaging in this profitable trade.
Another important objection to this application of the right of
self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the succeeding
many of a free exercise of the right of self-government. The first few
may get slavery in, and the subsequent many cannot easily get it out. How
common is the remark now in the slave States, "If we were only clear
of our slaves, how much better it would be for us." They are actually
deprived of the privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the
action of a very few in the beginning. The same thing was true of the
whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed.
Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories, is not
a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole
nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories.
We want them for homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any
considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States
are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to. New
free States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their
condition. For this use the nation needs these Territories.
Still further: there are constitutional relations between the slave
and free States which are degrading to the latter. We are under legal
obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves to them: a sort
of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as a general rule, the
slaveholders will not perform for one another. Then again, in the control
of the government--the management of the partnership affairs--they have
greatly the advantage of us. By the Constitution each State has two
senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to the number
of its people, and each has a number of Presidential electors equal to
the whole number of its senators and representatives together. But in
ascertaining the number of the people for this purpose, five slaves are
counted as being equal to three whites. The slaves do not vote; they are
only counted and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's
votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a comparison
of the States of South Carolina and Maine. South Carolina has six
representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina has eight Presidential
electors, and so has Maine. This is precise equality so far; and of course
they are equal in senators, each having two. Thus in the control of the
government the two States are equals precisely. But how are they in the
number of their white people? Maine has 581,813, while South Carolina has
274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over. Thus,
each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in
Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides her free people, has
384,984 slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over
the white man in every other free State as well as in Maine. He is more
than the double of any one of us in this crowd. The same advantage, but
not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave States
over those of the free; and it is an absolute truth, without an exception,
that there is no voter in any slave State but who has more legal power in
the government than any voter in any free State. There is no instance
of exact equality; and the disadvantage is against us the whole chapter
through. This principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave States in the
present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven more than
the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska Bill.
Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to complain of
it, in so far as it is already settled. It is in the Constitution, and I
do not for that cause, or any other cause, propose to destroy, or alter,
or disregard the Constitution. I stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly.
But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other people to say
whether new partners are to be bred up and brought into the firm, on
the same degrading terms against me, I respectfully demur. I insist that
whether I shall be a whole man or only the half of one, in comparison with
others is a question in which I am somewhat concerned, and one which no
other man can have a sacred right of deciding for me. If I am wrong in
this, if it really be a sacred right of self-government in the man who
shall go to Nebraska to decide whether he will be the equal of me or the
double of me, then, after he shall have exercised that right, and thereby
shall have reduced me to a still smaller fraction of a man than I already
am, I should like for some gentleman, deeply skilled in the mysteries of
sacred rights, to provide himself with a microscope, and peep about, and
find out, if he can, what has become of my sacred rights. They will surely
be too small for detection with the naked eye.
Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the
whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is
the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.
And if they shall think as I do, that the extension of slavery endangers
them more than any or all other causes, how recreant to themselves if
they submit The question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere
handful of men bent only on seif-interest. If this question of slavery
extension were an insignificant one, one having no power to do harm--it
might be shuffled aside in this way; and being, as it is, the great
Behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the nation be loosened upon
him, to intrust him to the hands of such feeble keepers?
I have done with this mighty argument of self-government. Go, sacred
thing! Go in peace.
But Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure. Well, I too go for
saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension
of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any
great evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union-saving, I must
believe, at least, that the means I employ have some adaptation to the
end. To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation.
"It hath no relish of salvation in it."
It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which ever endangers
the Union. When it came upon us, all was peace and quiet. The nation was
looking to the forming of new bends of union, and a long course of peace
and prosperity seemed to lie before us. In the whole range of possibility,
there scarcely appears to me to have been anything out of which the
slavery agitation could have been revived, except the very project of
repealing the Missouri Compromise. Every inch of territory we owned
already had a definite settlement of the slavery question, by which all
parties were pledged to abide. Indeed, there was no uninhabited country on
the continent which we could acquire, if we except some extreme northern
regions which are wholly out of the question.
In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself could scarcely have
invented a way of again setting us by the ears but by turning back and
destroying the peace measures of the past. The counsels of that Genius
seem to have prevailed. The Missouri Compromise was repealed; and here
we are in the midst of a new slavery agitation, such, I think, as we have
never seen before. Who is responsible for this? Is it those who resist
the measure, or those who causelessly brought it forward, and pressed it
through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must and would be
so resisted? It could not but be expected by its author that it would be
looked upon as a measure for the extension of slavery, aggravated by a
gross breach of faith.
Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked front and aspect
of the measure. And in this aspect it could not but produce agitation.
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature--opposition to it in
his love of justice. These principles are at eternal antagonism, and
when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them,
shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the
Missouri Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the Declaration of
Independence, repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human
nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery
extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will
continue to speak.
The structure, too, of the Nebraska Bill is very peculiar. The people are
to decide the question of slavery for themselves; but when they are to
decide, or how they are to decide, or whether, when the question is
once decided, it is to remain so or is to be subject to an indefinite
succession of new trials, the law does not say. Is it to be decided by the
first dozen settlers who arrive there, or is it to await the arrival of
a hundred? Is it to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of the
Legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort? To these questions the law
gives no answer. There is a mystery about this; for when a member proposed
to give the Legislature express authority to exclude slavery, it was
hooted down by the friends of the bill. This fact is worth remembering.
Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska to exclude
slavery from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the question to
be decided by voting in some way or other. But the Missourians are awake,
too. They are within a stone's-throw of the contested ground. They hold
meetings and pass resolutions, in which not the slightest allusion to
voting is made. They resolve that slavery already exists in the Territory;
that more shall go there; that they, remaining in Missouri, will protect
it, and that abolitionists shall be hung or driven away. Through all this
bowie knives and six-shooters are seen plainly enough, but never a glimpse
of the ballot-box.
And, really, what is the result of all this? Each party within having
numerous and determined backers without, is it not probable that the
contest will come to blows and bloodshed? Could there be a more apt
invention to bring about collision and violence on the slavery question
than this Nebraska project is? I do not charge or believe that such was
intended by Congress; but if they had literally formed a ring and placed
champions within it to fight out the controversy, the fight could be no
more likely to come off than it is. And if this fight should begin, is it
likely to take a very peaceful, Union-saving turn? Will not the first drop
of blood so shed be the real knell of the Union?
The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. For the sake of the Union,
it ought to be restored. We ought to elect a House of Representatives
which will vote its restoration. If by any means we omit to do this, what
follows? Slavery may or may not be established in Nebraska. But whether
it be or not, we shall have repudiated--discarded from the councils of the
nation--the spirit of compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in
a national compromise? The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which
first gave us the Constitution, and which has thrice saved the Union--we
shall have strangled and cast from us forever. And what shall we have
in lieu of it? The South flushed with triumph and tempted to excess;
the North, betrayed as they believe, brooding on wrong and burning for
revenge. One side will provoke, the other resent. The one will taunt,
the other defy; one aggresses, the other retaliates. Already a few in
the North defy all constitutional restraints, resist the execution of
the Fugitive Slave law, and even menace the institution of slavery in
the States where it exists. Already a few in the South claim the
constitutional right to take and to hold slaves in the free States, demand
the revival of the slave trade, and demand a treaty with Great Britain by
which fugitive slaves may be reclaimed from Canada. As yet they are but
few on either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the union whether
the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit
of all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these,
and fatally increase the number of both.
But restore the compromise, and what then? We thereby restore the national
faith, the national confidence, the national feeling of brotherhood. We
thereby reinstate the spirit of concession and compromise, that spirit
which has never failed us in past perils, and which may be safely trusted
for all the future. The South ought to join in doing this. The peace of
the nation is as dear to them as to us. In memories of the past and hopes
of the future, they share as largely as we. It would be on their part a
great act--great in its spirit, and great in its effect. It would be worth
to the nation a hundred years purchase of peace and prosperity. And what
of sacrifice would they make? They only surrender to us what they gave
us for a consideration long, long ago; what they have not now asked for,
struggled or cared for; what has been thrust upon them, not less to their
astonishment than to ours.
But it is said we cannot restore it; that though we elect every member of
the lower House, the Senate is still against us. It is quite true that of
the senators who passed the Nebraska Bill a majority of the whole Senate
will retain their seats in spite of the elections of this and the next
year. But if at these elections their several constituencies shall clearly
express their will against Nebraska, will these senators disregard their
will? Will they neither obey nor make room for those who will?
But even if we fail to technically restore the compromise, it is still a
great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the restoration. The
moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated too highly. The authors
of Nebraska are not at all satisfied with the destruction of the
compromise--an indorsement of this principle they proclaim to be the
great object. With them, Nebraska alone is a small matter--to establish a
principle for future use is what they particularly desire.
The future use is to be the planting of slavery wherever in the wide world
local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it. Now, if you wish to
give them this indorsement, if you wish to establish this principle, do
so. I shall regret it, but it is your right. On the contrary, if you are
opposed to the principle,--intend to give it no such indorsement, let no
wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a direct vote against
it.
Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be thrown in
company with the abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an old Whig, to
tell them, good-humoredly, that I think this is very silly? Stand with
anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part
with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the
Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal
the Fugitive Slave law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern
disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases you are
right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand
on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are
national, and nothing less than national. This is the good old Whig
ground. To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than a
Whig--less than a man--less than an American.
I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of
this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it
because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of
one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free
people--a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that
liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere. I object to it because
the fathers of the republic eschewed and rejected it. The argument of
"necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery;
and so far, and so far only, as it carried them did they ever go. They
found the institution existing among us, which they could not help,
and they cast blame upon the British king for having permitted its
introduction.
The royally appointed Governor of Georgia in the early 1700's was
threatened by the King with removal if he continued to oppose slavery in
his colony--at that time the King of England made a small profit on every
slave imported to the colonies. The later British criticism of the United
States for not eradicating slavery in the early 1800's, combined with
their tacit support of the 'Confederacy' during the Civil War is a prime
example of the irony and hypocrisy of politics: that self-interest will
ever overpower right.
Before the Constitution they prohibited its introduction into the
Northwestern Territory, the only country we owned then free from it. At
the framing and adoption of the Constitution, they forbore to so much
as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In
the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a
"person held to service or labor." In that prohibiting the abolition of
the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "the
migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit," etc. These are the only provisions alluding
to slavery. Thus the thing is hid away in the Constitution, just as an
afflicted man hides away a wen or cancer which he dares not cut out at
once, lest he bleed to death,--with the promise, nevertheless, that the
cutting may begin at a certain time. Less than this our fathers could not
do, and more they would not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther
they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress under the
Constitution took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in
to the narrowest limits of necessity.
In 1794 they prohibited an outgoing slave trade--that is, the taking
of slaves from the United States to sell. In 1798 they prohibited the
bringing of slaves from Africa into the Mississippi Territory, this
Territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and
Alabama. This was ten years before they had the authority to do the same
thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the Constitution. In
1800 they prohibited American citizens from trading in slaves between
foreign countries, as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil. In 1803 they
passed a law in aid of one or two slave-State laws in restraint of the
internal slave trade. In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law,
nearly a year in advance,--to take effect the first day of 1808, the very
first day the Constitution would permit, prohibiting the African slave
trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties. In 1820, finding these
provisions ineffectual, they declared the slave trade piracy, and annexed
to it the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the
General Government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted
systems of gradual emancipation, by which the institution was rapidly
becoming extinct within their limits. Thus we see that the plain,
unmistakable spirit of that age toward slavery was hostility to the
principle and toleration only by necessity.
But now it is to be transformed into a "sacred right." Nebraska brings it
forth, places it on the highroad to extension and perpetuity, and with a
pat on its back says to it, "Go, and God speed you." Henceforth it is
to be the chief jewel of the nation the very figure-head of the ship of
state. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have
been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we began
by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning
we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave
others is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles cannot
stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and who ever holds
to the one must despise the other. When Pettit, in connection with his
support of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of Independence "a
self-evident lie," he only did what consistency and candor require all
other Nebraska men to do. Of the forty-odd Nebraska senators who sat
present and heard him, no one rebuked him. Nor am I apprised that any
Nebraska newspaper, or any Nebraska orator, in the whole nation has ever
yet rebuked him. If this had been said among Marion's men, Southerners
though they were, what would have become of the man who said it? If this
had been said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it would
probably have been hung sooner than Andre was. If it had been said in old
Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very doorkeeper would have
throttled the man and thrust him into the street. Let no one be
deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska are utter
antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter.
Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as well as North, shall we make no
effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world
express the apprehension that "the one retrograde institution in America
is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the
noblest political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of
enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard
it--to despise it? Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the
earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy
chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we "cancel and tear
in pieces" even the white man's charter of freedom.