from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he
is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence
and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others who
have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false
belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live"
were of the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and deception for
truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely
believes "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,"
used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them
to understand that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or
some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control
as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he
should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that,
in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did
themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by
asserting that they "understood the question just as well, and even better
than we do now."
But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the
Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and
even better than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted
upon it. This is all Republicans ask--all Republicans desire--in relation
to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an
evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because
of, and so far as, its actual presence among us makes that toleration and
protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it be
not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained. For this Republicans
contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen--as I suppose they will not--I would address
a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just
people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice
you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us
Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the
best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates
or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all
your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional
condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended
to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable
prerequisite license, so to speak among you, to be admitted or permitted
to speak at all: Now; can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause, and to
consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring
forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough
to hear us deny or justify.
You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden
of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that
our party has no existence in your section--gets no votes in your section.
The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does,
then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in
your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape
this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you
will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall
get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover,
as the truth plainly is, that your proof, does not touch the issue. The
fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and
not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily
yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by, some wrong
principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or
practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to
have started to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If
our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit
of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are
sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on
the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your
section; and so meet us as if it were possible that something may be said
on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that
the principle which "our fathers who framed the Government under which we
live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and
again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand
your condemnation without a moment's consideration.
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional
parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years
before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United
States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition
of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of
the Government upon that subject up to, and at, the very moment he penned
that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote La Fayette
that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same
connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free
States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon
this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or
in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast
the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon
you, who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we
commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right
application of it.
But you say you are conservative--eminently conservative--while we
are revolutionary, destructive, or something, of the sort. What is
conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against a new and
untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point
in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government
under which we live"; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and
spit upon that old policy and insist upon substituting something new.
True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be.
You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in
rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are
for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional slave
code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to
prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the
Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple"
that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,"
fantastically called "popular sovereignty"; but never a man among you in
favor of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according
to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which
we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an
advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider,
then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge
of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable
foundations.
Again: You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it
formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny
that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy
of the fathers. We resisted and still resist your innovation; and thence
comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question
reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has
been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace
of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.
You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it;
and what is your proof'? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that
matter you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do
not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for
persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not
know to be true is simply malicious slander.
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged
the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We
know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held
to and made by our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred,
some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident
glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get
an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your
expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that,
as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much
inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines
and declarations are accompanied with a continued protest against any
interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves.
Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common
with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare
our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare
even this. For any thing we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know
there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally
know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your
political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with
sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge,
defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder
among the slaves.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the
Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection,
twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times as many lives
were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very
elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by Black
Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I
do not think a general or even a very extensive slave insurrection is
possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The
slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen,
black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in
parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied the indispensable
connecting trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their
masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an
uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals
before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or
mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution
in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar
circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected
with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were
admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a
friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted
the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy
assassinations in the field, and local revolts, extending to a score
or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no
general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for
a long time. Whoever much fears or much hopes for such an event will be
alike disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in
our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably,
and in such slow degrees as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and
their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the
contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the
prospect held up."
Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of
emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as
to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slave holding States
only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of
restraining the extension of the institution--the power to insure that
a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now
free from slavery.
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It
was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the
slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves,
with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That
affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts related in
history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods
over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by
Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little
else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the
same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and
on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two
things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown,
Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human
action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.
There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which
cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that
judgment and feeling--that sentiment--by breaking up the political
organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and
disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your
heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the
sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box,
into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your
constitutional rights.
That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not
fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to
deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution. But we
are proposing no such thing.
When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood
allusion to an assumed constitutional right of yours to take slaves into
the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such
right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is
literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such
a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the
Government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution
as you please on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule
or ruin, in all events.
This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme
Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in your favor.
Not quite so. But, waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and
decision, the court have decided the question for you in a sort of way.
The court have substantially said it is your constitutional right to take
slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.
When I say, the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made
in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite
agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made
as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning,
and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact--the
statement in the opinion that "the right of property in a slave is
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in
a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind,
the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is
impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity
that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there--"distinctly," that
is, not mingled with anything else; "expressly," that is, in words meaning
just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other
meaning.
If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to
show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in
the Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection with
language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and that wherever in
that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person"; and
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it
is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due," as a debt payable
in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of
speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution
the idea that there could be property in man.
To show all this, is easy and certain.
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their notice,
is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken
statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?
And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers; who framed
the Government under which we live",--the men who made the
Constitution--decided this same constitutional question in our favor,
long ago; decided it without division among themselves, when making the
decision, without division among themselves about the meaning of it after
it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon
any mistaken statement of facts.
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to
break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is shall be
at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?
But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that
supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say,
the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A
highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "stand
and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you'll be a murderer!"
To be sure, what the robber demanded of me-my money was my own, and I had
a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my
own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of
destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished
in principle.
A few words now to Republicans: It is exceedingly desirable that all
parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony one with
another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much
provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though
the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly
consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of
our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the
subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we
can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered
to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against
us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections
are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing
to do with invasions and, insurrections? We know it will not. We so
know because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and
insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the
charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only
let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so
trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but
with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to
convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join
them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly--done in
acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated--we must place
ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be
enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong,
whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must
arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must
pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be
disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will
cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most
of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and
say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone have never
disturbed them--so that after all it is what we say which dissatisfies
them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.
I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of
our free State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of
slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it;
and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow
of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the
demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole
of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they
can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they
do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot
cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a
social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction
that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and
constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality
its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its
extension--its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant if we
thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they
thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the
precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right,
as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as
being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we
cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral,
social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think
slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that
much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the
nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread
into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free
States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our
duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those
sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and
belabored-contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the
right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a
living man nor a dead man-such as a policy of "don't care" on a question
about which all true men do care--such as Union appeals beseeching
true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule,
and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance--such as
invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said,
and undo what Washington did.