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.
Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify
it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not the blood, of the
Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right," back
upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of "necessity." Let us
return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in
peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South, let all
Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and good
work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall
have so saved it as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving.
We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free happy
people the world over shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest
generations.
At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially as I
have here, Judge Douglas replied to me; and as he is to reply to me here,
I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing some of the points he made
there. He commenced by stating I had assumed all the way through that the
principle of the Nebraska Bill would have the effect of extending slavery.
He denied that this was intended or that this effect would follow.
I will not reopen the argument upon this point. That such was the
intention the world believed at the start, and will continue to believe.
This was the countenance of the thing, and both friends and enemies
instantly recognized it as such. That countenance cannot now be changed by
argument. You can as easily argue the color out of the negro's skin. Like
the "bloody hand," you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of guilt
still sticks and stares horribly at you.
Next he says that Congressional intervention never prevented slavery
anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern Territory, nor
in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the Union as a slave State;
that the principle of the Nebraska Bill expelled it from Illinois, from
several old States, from everywhere.
Now this is mere quibbling all the way through. If the Ordinance of '87
did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how happens it that
the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely free from it, while the
southeast shore, less than a mile distant, along nearly the whole length
of the river, is entirely covered with it?
If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it that made
the difference between Illinois and Missouri? They lie side by side, the
Mississippi River only dividing them, while their early settlements were
within the same latitude. Between 1810 and 1820 the number of slaves in
Missouri increased 7211, while in Illinois in the same ten years they
decreased 51. This appears by the census returns. During nearly all of
that ten years both were Territories, not States. During this time the
ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing forbade it to
go into Missouri. It did go into Missouri, and did not go into Illinois.
That is the fact. Can any one doubt as to the reason of it? But he says
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State. Silence, perhaps, would
be the best answer to this flat contradiction of the known history of the
country. What are the facts upon which this bold assertion is based? When
we first acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some slaves
within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia. The territorial
legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave States as indentured
servants. One year after the adoption of the first State constitution,
the whole number of them was--what do you think? Just one hundred and
seventeen, while the aggregate free population was 55,094,--about four
hundred and seventy to one. Upon this state of facts the people framed
their constitution prohibiting the further introduction of slavery, with
a sort of guaranty to the owners of the few indentured servants, giving
freedom to their children to be born thereafter, and making no mention
whatever of any supposed slave for life. Out of this small matter the
Judge manufactures his argument that Illinois came into the Union as a
slave State. Let the facts be the answer to the argument.
The principles of the Nebraska Bill, he says, expelled slavery from
Illinois. The principle of that bill first planted it here--that is, it
first came because there was no law to prevent it, first came before we
owned the country; and finding it here, and having the Ordinance of '87 to
prevent its increasing, our people struggled along, and finally got rid of
it as best they could.
But the principle of the Nebraska Bill abolished slavery in several of the
old States. Well, it is true that several of the old States, in the last
quarter of the last century, did adopt systems of gradual emancipation by
which the institution has finally become extinct within their limits; but
it may or may not be true that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was
the cause that led to the adoption of these measures. It is now more
than fifty years since the last of these States adopted its system of
emancipation.
If the Nebraska Bill is the real author of the benevolent works, it
is rather deplorable that it has for so long a time ceased working
altogether. Is there not some reason to suspect that it was the principle
of the Revolution, and not the principle of the Nebraska Bill, that led
to emancipation in these old States? Leave it to the people of these old
emancipating States, and I am quite certain they will decide that neither
that nor any other good thing ever did or ever will come of the Nebraska
Bill.
In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me to say
that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was very old; that it originated
when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to
choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make. At
the time I thought this was merely playful, and I answered it accordingly.
But in his reply to me he renewed it as a serious argument. In
seriousness, then, the facts of this proposition are not true as stated.
God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his
choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree of the fruit
of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death. I should scarcely
wish so strong a prohibition against slavery in Nebraska.
But this argument strikes me as not a little remarkable in another
particular--in its strong resemblance to the old argument for the "divine
right of kings." By the latter, the king is to do just as he pleases with
his white subjects, being responsible to God alone. By the former,
the white man is to do just as he pleases with his black slaves, being
responsible to God alone. The two things are precisely alike, and it is
but natural that they should find similar arguments to sustain them.
I had argued that the application of the principle of self-government, as
contended for, would require the revival of the African slave trade; that
no argument could be made in favor of a man's right to take slaves to
Nebraska which could not be equally well made in favor of his right
to bring them from the coast of Africa. The Judge replied that the
Constitution requires the suppression of the foreign slave trade, but
does not require the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. That is a
mistake in point of fact. The Constitution does not require the action of
Congress in either case, and it does authorize it in both. And so there is
still no difference between the cases.
In regard to what I have said of the advantage the slave States have over
the free in the matter of representation, the Judge replied that we in
the free States count five free negroes as five white people, while in
the slave States they count five slaves as three whites only; and that the
advantage, at last, was on the side of the free States.
Now, in the slave States they count free negroes just as we do; and it so
happens that, besides their slaves, they have as many free negroes as we
have, and thirty thousand over. Thus, their free negroes more than balance
ours; and their advantage over us, in consequence of their slaves, still
remains as I stated it.
In reply to my argument that the compromise measures of 1850 were a system
of equivalents, and that the provisions of no one of them could fairly
be carried to other subjects without its corresponding equivalent being
carried with it, the Judge denied outright that these measures had any
connection with or dependence upon each other. This is mere desperation.
If they had no connection, why are they always spoken of in connection?
Why has he so spoken of them a thousand times? Why has he constantly
called them a series of measures? Why does everybody call them a
compromise? Why was California kept out of the Union six or seven months,
if it was not because of its connection with the other measures? Webster's
leading definition of the verb "to compromise" is "to adjust and settle
a difference, by mutual agreement, with concessions of claims by the
parties." This conveys precisely the popular understanding of the word
"compromise."
We knew, before the Judge told us, that these measures passed separately,
and in distinct bills, and that no two of them were passed by the votes of
precisely the same members. But we also know, and so does he know, that
no one of them could have passed both branches of Congress but for the
understanding that the others were to pass also. Upon this understanding,
each got votes which it could have got in no other way. It is this fact
which gives to the measures their true character; and it is the universal
knowledge of this fact that has given them the name of "compromises," so
expressive of that true character.
I had asked: "If, in carrying the Utah and New Mexico laws to Nebraska,
you could clear away other objection, how could you leave Nebraska
'perfectly free' to introduce slavery before she forms a constitution,
during her territorial government, while the Utah and New Mexico laws
only authorize it when they form constitutions and are admitted into the
Union?" To this Judge Douglas answered that the Utah and New Mexico laws
also authorized it before; and to prove this he read from one of their
laws, as follows: "That the legislative power of said Territory shall
extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the
Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act."
Now it is perceived from the reading of this that there is nothing express
upon the subject, but that the authority is sought to be implied merely
for the general provision of "all rightful subjects of legislation." In
reply to this I insist, as a legal rule of construction, as well as the
plain, popular view of the matter, that the express provision for Utah and
New Mexico coming in with slavery, if they choose, when they shall form
constitutions, is an exclusion of all implied authority on the same
subject; that Congress having the subject distinctly in their minds
when they made the express provision, they therein expressed their whole
meaning on that subject.
The Judge rather insinuated that I had found it convenient to forget the
Washington territorial law passed in 1853. This was a division of Oregon,
organizing the northern part as the Territory of Washington. He asserted
that by this act the Ordinance of '87, theretofore existing in Oregon, was
repealed; that nearly all the members of Congress voted for it, beginning
in the House of Representatives with Charles Allen of Massachusetts, and
ending with Richard Yates of Illinois; and that he could not understand
how those who now opposed the Nebraska Bill so voted there, unless it was
because it was then too soon after both the great political parties had
ratified the compromises of 1850, and the ratification therefore was too
fresh to be then repudiated.