abolitionists reached their climax. From 1807 up to 1818 their
successes were fairly balanced by their reverses. The great
acquisitions of new territory during this period were so many triumphs
for the South, and the new free States which came into existence were
erected in districts into which the slave system had never ventured.
The spirit which had supported the friends of humanity in their
labors seemed to be gradually decaying. The representatives of free
principles in the southern States grew yearly less numerous, while an
unaccountable apathy was creeping over the once vigorous and energetic
societies of the North. Politicians took less and less interest in
views which, if openly professed, would rob them of many friends,
while candidates for National offices took refuge from such dangerous
ground in discreet silence or studied ambiguity. Without spending time,
therefore, upon the many less important debates that intervened between
this and the year 1819 we may pass at once to the memorable one which
in that and the following year, threw the whole nation into a state of
unparalleled excitement. A few remarks will serve to explain the origin
of this new form of the question. In 1787, before the adoption of the
Constitution, the old Congress had, by a _unanimous_ vote, passed
their famous ordinance for the government of the territories of the
United States. Among the fundamental conditions of this compact, as
it was called, and which was “forever to remain unalterable,” except
by the mutual consent of both the contracting parties, was an article
providing for the perpetual exclusion of slavery from this “virgin
soil.” The honor of introducing the provision has been since disputed
between Virginia and Massachusetts; but be that as it may, its adoption
seems to have been a natural effusion from the spirit of freedom
which warmed every heart in those days from New Hampshire to Georgia.
The subsequent cessions of territory by Georgia and North Carolina,
out of which the States of Mississippi and Tennessee were erected,
had, however, been guarded by express reservations of the rights of
slaveholders, and these reservations were, as we have seen, necessarily
respected by Congress. But upon the purchase of Louisiana and Missouri
from France in 1803, no such stipulations had been introduced into the
Treaty; yet while Congress does not seem to have thought itself at
liberty to interfere with the already vested rights of slaveholders
in those territories, every possible measure was adopted to prevent
the further increase of the race by migration or importation from
abroad. Louisiana was admitted almost immediately, passing with scarce
any transition from her condition as a French colony to that of an
independent American State. With regard to her, therefore, it was
thought inexpedient to startle these recently acquired and scarce
reconciled citizens, by legislation which they might misconstrue into
arbitrary misgovernment taking advantage of their helplessness. In
1802, 1816 and 1818, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois had been successively
and quietly admitted under the terms of the ordinance of ’87. The
country was thus in a state of perfect repose so far as this question
was concerned. All early excitement had died away, a new generation
had arisen in Congress, and new intellects were roaming about seeking
the material for agitation and display. At this juncture Missouri
applied for admission to the Union. A large majority of the Northern
members at once decided that they would in all future legislation bind
themselves irrevocably to the free principles of the ordinance of
’87. Missouri, it was true, had at the time a large number of slaves
within her borders, but upon these vested rights as the South was
pleased to call them, the North did not propose to encroach. But they
contended, that up to the last moment of her territorial existence
the paramount authority of Congress over her could not be questioned.
The Constitution in providing that “new States may be admitted into
the Union,” must have intended to allow Congress to exercise some
discretionary power in the case, and how could such power possibly be
exercised if not by imposing conditions upon the high privilege they
were bestowing. Was it to be in the power of any community, no matter
how barbarous their laws or how monstrous their social habits, to claim
admission into a Union already the hope and admiration of the world,
simply upon showing that they numbered the requisite population and
had set up a Government which they might choose to call republican?
Such a doctrine could never be tolerated in a civilized and Christian
society, and never had been acquiesced in heretofore by the general
Government. Not a single State had yet been admitted, except upon some
conditions or restrictions. And if the general principle were once
allowed that the power to impose such restrictions existed, could a
case be imagined more urgently demanding its exercise? Were Congress to
be called upon at this late day to roll back the tide of legislation
which ever since the “immortal ordinance of ’87” had been flowing on
towards the fulfillment of those bright visions of universal freedom
and equality in which the fathers of the revolution had indulged?
Could it be, that the southern members, who had uniformly mourned over
slavery as the greatest of evils, and had proclaimed again and again
that it was a heavy hereditary curse of which their constituents longed
to free themselves, could it be that these very statesmen were seeking
to extend this curse, to perpetuate this evil, and fasten upon the
growing west an Institution that Washington, Madison and Jefferson had
denounced as demoralizing and debilitating?
On the other side, it was argued that the Ordinance of ’87 was never
intended by its framers to apply to any other territory than that
which was actually in the possession of the United States at the time
of its passage; that the established habits of the region which was
now to be admitted, peremptorily called for the toleration of slavery;
that the Constitution did not, and no power could restrain a sovereign
State from establishing slavery, or any other institution she chose,
in her midst; that any proviso like this, therefore, pretending to
control that sovereignty, was an absurdity; that Congress had no power
to legislate, except for territories, and by the very act into which
this proviso was sought to be introduced, Missouri would cease to be
a territory, and claim equal powers with those who now presumed to
dictate to her; that as well might the South seek to impose slavery
upon Michigan and the uninhabited forests bordering on the great
lakes. As to the inhumanity of extending what was acknowledged to
be an evil and a curse, it must be remembered that the narrower the
boundaries into which slavery was crowded, the more terrible these
evils became, and that it was only by widely diffusing it that a hope
could be entertained of ameliorating, and perhaps eradicating them.
Of course, the usual hints about dissolution, anarchy, and bloodshed,
accompanied these arguments. But the question did not confine itself to
Congress. The excitement spread rapidly both North and South. The daily
press teemed with the proceedings of public meetings, with private
remonstrances, and with legislative resolutions. The future condition
of an enormous territory, stretching far into the distant West, was
supposed to be at stake. No means were spared to rouse the public
feeling to the highest possible pitch; dissolution and civil war, with
all their ghastly paraphernalia, were paraded before the people through
every possible medium; and when, at last, the session closed, and the
question still remained unsettled, there were few hearts firm enough to
look with untroubled equanimity upon the rapidly gathering storm.
The debate of the following session was still more violent. The
wide-spread popular excitement urged on the Representatives of every
section to express, in the angriest terms, the feelings of their
constituents. The Senate had repeatedly negatived the restricting
proviso, as it was called, and the House as often insisted upon
inserting it. At this juncture, Maine applied for admission as a
separate and independent State; and as no possible objection could
be urged against her, a bill for the purpose passed rapidly through
the House, and was sent to the Senate. This happy opportunity for
forcing the House into a Compromise was eagerly seized, and an attempt
made to saddle the bill with an extraordinary series of amendments
providing for the unconditional admission of Missouri. The opponents
of slavery in the Senate, though a minority, were, however, a most
determined one. But in vain they represented the absurdity of calling
this a Compromise, merely because two utterly incongruous measures
were strangely crowded into a wholesale bill; and equally in vain,
when a separation of the unnatural Union was denied them, did they,
for more than a month of anxious debating, struggle to hang their
favorite proviso to this already many-tailed monster. The bill, with
its amendments, was sent back to the House; but the Representatives
had been as busy as their neighbors, and having, by this time, nearly
completed a bill of their own on the Missouri claims, the monster
of the Senate’s creation was, with little ceremony, stripped of all
his tails, and sent back again to that august body in his original
simplicity. The crisis was now approaching with a vengeance. In vain
the bill was tossed back and forward, from House to House; the fourth
of March was rapidly approaching, and owing to her peculiar relations
to Massachusetts, the fourth of March was the last day upon which Maine
could hope for an independent existence. Rumors of secession grew
louder and louder, as the hope of an adjustment grew hourly fainter.
The people were wound up to the highest pitch of excitement; all other
objects were forgotten in the one absorbing question that agitated
every heart; and on the morning of the second of March, an earthquake
might almost have rolled away unheeded, as at the battle of Thrasymene.
All sides began to be seriously alarmed at the possible consequences
of their temerity--the majority yielded, as usual; in a few short
hours the great Missouri Compromise was passed, the storm died away,
the breakers were cleared, the Union was saved, and the newspapers
said that everybody was overjoyed at the happy adjustment. Whether the
slaves in Missouri joined in the general jubilee and offered up their
thanksgivings for the salvation of the country, does not distinctly
appear--possibly, because the slaves of Missouri were not in the habit
of expressing their opinions, or offering their worship through the
convenient medium of the public press. In substance, the Compromise
admitted the new state without the restricting proviso, and prohibited
slavery forever in the rest of the purchased territory north of 36° 30´.
For nearly a year, the Union slept in peace, earnestly trying to
flatter itself into the conviction, that the “distracting question”
was at last put to rest, and obstinately oblivious of an ancient law
enacted by Providence long before the foundations of the Union or the
earth, either, were laid; and, wherein, it is provided, that of two
opposing principles, one must be right, and the other wrong, that
no compromise between them, however unanimously voted, can, in the
nature of things, be permanent; and that in spite of enthusiastic
conventions and full-mouthed Congresses, said compromises will forever
tend to change, to decay, and to self-destruction. The operation of
this most impracticable law, as modern politicians would term it,
suddenly and most disagreeably startled the Union from its comfortable
nap. Missouri, after discovering so cheap a path to celebrity, was
not disposed to abandon it without further efforts to distinguish her
infant name. It was still necessary for her, ere she could take her
place in the happy and united family of American States, to frame for
herself a Constitution, and present it for the approval of Congress. In
this, she made it the duty of her future Legislature to “pass such laws
as were necessary to prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to
and settling in the State, under any pretext whatever.”
The constitutionality of this provision, which has since been
adopted by several of the Southern States, has never been judicially
determined. The clause with which it is thought to conflict, is that
which provides, that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to
all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.”
Now, if residence and the right to be protected in acquiring and
transmitting property under the laws be sufficient to constitute
citizenship, the free negro population of every Northern State would be
entitled to some privileges in the State of Missouri; and, assuredly,
when a party is entitled to exercise certain rights within a given
territory, it can never be legal to deprive him of those rights, by
forbidding him to enter it. And even if these qualifications are
insufficient to constitute citizenship, (a theory which would exclude
a large proportion of the white population in some of the Southern
States,) yet in a few of the free States the right of voting is at
present added to them; and in these cases, at least, if the clause
be not doomed to remain forever a dead letter, it would seem to
find its application. On the other hand, it was urged with great
force, that if the Legislature of a State esteem a certain class of
population dangerous to its existence, it must be entitled by the first
principle of self-preservation--the foundation both of national and
individual existence--to exclude them from its midst. The clause in the
Constitution cannot mean that every citizen of each State is entitled
to become such in every other State. This is notoriously untrue. In
some States freehold qualifications are required for voters; in others
not. In some there are restraints upon the acquisition of property,
which in others do not exist. Where, then, is the line to be drawn
between constitutional and unconstitutional differences? Each State may
determine the qualifications necessary for its voters--why may not one
of them be a peculiar color? Each State may exclude from its borders
the professors of particular occupations, which may be distasteful to
it, or which it may fancy to be dangerous; why not those who have, at
any time, exercised such occupations--which would amount to the same
thing as the exclusion of an obnoxious race?
During a long and troubled session, this intricate question was argued
both by Congress and the people, with a violence unknown before. Mr.
Clay, for a long time, struggled in vain to close the rapidly widening
breach. In vain, his famous Committee of Thirteen reported a series
of compromising resolutions; both sides were too far advanced to
retract, and the platform was angrily rejected. No question, however
insignificant, could be taken up, into which these bitter feelings were
not dragged; the business of the Nation was wholly suspended, while
the contending forces hurled harangues of defiance at each others’
heads, which were re-echoed with equal fury from every village in the
country. A settlement grew more and more hopeless; and, at last, a
formal plan of secession was agreed upon by a minority of the State.
The cry of “_Danger to the Union_” has become so hackneyed of late
years, as to be treated with contempt by rational men of all parties;
but, if ever it had a serious and alarming meaning, it was at the time
we are speaking of. Even President making and President greeting,
failed to drown the dismal foreboding, that soon all Presidents might
be memories of the past. A storm was raised that no one had power to
quell; “the spirits had come from the vasty deep,” and no magician
was found who could charm them back again. At length, by slow and
cautious advances, Mr. Clay again approached the troubled circle;
increased his Committee to twenty-three, representing all the States
of the Union, reasoned with them, exhorted them, entreated them;
brought all those wondrously conciliatory talents with which he was
gifted, to bear personally upon each member he could reach; and after
the most laborious and exhausting efforts, succeeded in passing the
Compromise, which, at last, quieted the Missouri question. It consisted
substantially in referring the subject to the National Judiciary, to
whose province it undoubtedly belonged, and to whose solemn decision
the North should, from the beginning, have been content to leave
it. That it has never been settled by this high authority, and that
we are still unable to answer the apparently simple question--“Who
are citizens of the United States?”--is certainly a very singular
predicament for a great people to be placed in, but one for which the
South are in no way to blame.
The violent sectional feeling, however, to which this discussion had
given birth, had sunk too deeply into the hearts of the people to be
eradicated by any Compromise. Its baneful effects have been since
witnessed in the manner in which every great national question has
been debated. We cannot, of course, fill our pages with references to
these really irrelevant matters, nor have we space to follow in all its
developments, the illiberal policy pursued by Congress with regard to
petitions from the North upon this subject. The treatment to which they
have been subjected is generally known, and the reasons for and against
it too well understood to require rehearsing.
During the fifteen or twenty years following, the feeling against
slavery grew constantly stronger in the Northern States, and gradually
assumed a more thoroughly organized character. Anti-Slavery Societies
were formed in the latter part of this period; the all-powerful
machinery of the press was called in to sustain the movement; public
discussions on the subject attracted general attention; and all
possible means were employed, which the leaders of the party could
devise, to propagate their views. The provisions of the Fugitive Law
of 1793 began to be, for the first time, severely commented upon. The
various laws which different States had passed, with a view to its
impartial administration, were strictly scrutinized, and the Act itself
denounced as arbitrary and unconstitutional. The State of Pennsylvania,
unwilling that the freedom of negroes within her borders should be
allowed to depend upon the unassisted judgment of Magistrates of the
lowest jurisdiction, passed an Act in 1826 requiring all such cases to
be heard before the Judges of the County Courts. In 1842, this law was
declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, in the celebrated case
of Prigg v. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In consequence of this
decision, the Legislature passed an Act which had already been adopted
in several of the Free States, by which all State Magistrates and
Judges were forbidden to take cognizance of cases of fugitive slaves,
the jails of the State were closed against the masters, and the whole
subject was left to the jurisdiction of Congress, where it properly
belonged.
Such was the state of public feeling, when the annexation of Texas
and the conquests won from Mexico called upon Congress to legislate
for a new and enormous territory. A large portion of the northern
members adhered to the platform laid down by them in the struggle
of 1819, resolving that nothing should induce them to swerve from
the great principle established by the ordinance of 1787. The
extraordinary rapidity with which the gold fever peopled California,
and her consequent application for admission into the Union, doubled
the difficulty; while the toleration of the domestic slave trade in
the District of Columbia, the unsettled boundaries of Texas, and the
complaints which both parties insisted upon, with regard to the old
Act for the recapture of fugitives, were each in itself sufficient to
embarrass the famous Congress of 1850. The men who prepared to meet
this swarm of dangers were, probably, superior to any that had ever
coped with the question before--veterans in the Cabinet and on the
floor--men who had grown grey in watching the Constitution--who had
received it in their childhood from its framers, and who had guarded
its safety for nearly half a century with almost superstitious love. To
review the famous debate which led to that Compromise, which swallowed
up all other Compromises, on the broad platform of which all parties
have learned to stand, though, perhaps, not very harmoniously, and in
the universality of which all minor distinctions are forgotten, would
be a lengthy, and is, happily, an unnecessary task. No one, who will
read this paper, needs to be reminded of events so recent, and so
widely interesting, that every school-boy in the land has thoroughly
mastered them and is prepared with a long train of reasoning in their
support or condemnation. Our only object has been to show their
historical connection with the many measures that have indirectly aided
in producing them, and that object, it is hoped, has been partially
accomplished.
The success of this measure, time alone can determine. It has lived
thus long amid great extremes, both of popular favor and odium. So far
as the Fugitive Slave Law is concerned, the severest ordeal through
which it has passed, and one in which its practical working has been
most fully displayed, is undoubtedly the Trial of Hanway, to a brief
history of which the attention of the reader is now invited.
THE TREASON TRIALS.
On the 9th of September, A. D. 1851, Mr. Edward Gorsuch, a citizen of
Maryland, residing near Baltimore, appeared before Edward D. Ingraham,
Esq., U. S. Commissioner for Philadelphia, and asked for warrants under
the Act of Congress of the 18th Sept. 1850, for the arrest of four
of his slaves whom he had heard were secreted somewhere in Lancaster
County. Warrants were issued forthwith, directed to H. H. Kline, a
deputy U. S. Marshal, authorizing him to arrest George Hammond, Joshua
Hammond, Nelson Ford, and Noah Buley, persons held to service or labor
in the State of Maryland, and bring them before the said Commissioner.
Mr. Gorsuch then made arrangements with John Agin and Thompson Tully,
residents of Philadelphia, and police officers, to assist Kline in
making the arrests. They were to meet Mr. Gorsuch and some companions
at Penningtonville, a small place on the State railroad, about 50 miles
from Philadelphia. Kline, with the warrants, left Philadelphia, on the
same day about 2 P. M. for West Chester. Here he hired a conveyance and
rode on to Gallagherville. Here he hired another conveyance to take
him to Penningtonville. Before he had driven very far, the carriage
breaking down, he returned to Gallagherville, procured another and
started again. Owing to this detention, he was prevented from meeting
Mr. Gorsuch and his friends at the appointed time. When he reached
Penningtonville, about 2 A. M., on the 10th September, they had gone.
On entering the tavern, the place of rendezvous, he saw a colored man
whom he recognized as Samuel Williams, a resident of Philadelphia. To
put him off his guard, Kline asked the landlord some questions about
horse thieves. Williams replied that he had seen them, and told Kline
he had come too late.
Kline then drove on to the Gap. Seeing a person he believed to be
Williams following him, he stopped at several taverns along the road
to make inquiries about horse thieves. He reached the Gap about 3 A.
M., put up the horses and went to bed. At half past four he got up, ate
breakfast, and rode to Parksburg, about 45 miles from Philadelphia,
on the same railroad. Here he found Agin and Tully asleep in the bar
room. He awoke Agin, called him aside, and inquired for Mr. Gorsuch and
his party. He was told they had gone to Sadsbury, a small place on the
turnpike, four or five miles from Parksburg.
On going there, he found them, about 9 A. M. on the 10th Sept. Kline
told them he had seen Agin and Tully, who had determined to return
to Philadelphia, and proposed that the whole party should return to
Gallagherville. Mr. Gorsuch, however, determined to go to Parksburg
instead, to see Agin and Tully, and attempt to persuade them not to
return. The rest of the party were to go to Gallagherville, while
Kline returned to Downingtown, to see Agin and Tully there, should Mr.
Gorsuch fail to meet them at Parksburg. He left Gallagherville about
11 A. M., and met Agin and Tully at Downingtown. Agin said he had seen
Mr. Gorsuch, but refused to go back. He promised however to return
from Philadelphia in the evening cars. Kline returned to Downingtown,
and then met all the party except Mr. Edward Gorsuch, who had remained
behind to make the necessary arrangements for procuring a guide to the
houses where he had been informed his negroes were to be found.
About 3 P. M., Mr. Edward Gorsuch joined them at Gallagherville, and
at 11 P. M. on the night of the 10th Sept., they all went in the cars
down to Downingtown, where they waited for the evening train from
Philadelphia.