THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE PEOPLE.
Although the inquiry may be of no legal importance, it may nevertheless
be one pertinent to the subject, whether it be matter of _history_
even--to say nothing of legal proof--that the _people_ of the country
did really understand or believe that the constitution sanctioned
slavery? Those who make the assertion, are bound to prove it. The
presumption is against them. Where is their contrary history?
They will say that a part of the people were actually slaveholders, and
that it is unreasonable to suppose they would have agreed to the
constitution, if they had understood it to be a free one.
The answer to this argument is, that the actual slaveholders were few in
number compared with the whole people; comprising probably not more than
one-eighth or one-sixth of the voters, and one-fortieth or one-thirtieth
of the whole population. They were so few as to be manifestly incapable
of maintaining any separate political organization; or even of holding
their slave property, except under the sufferance, toleration and
protection of the non-slaveholders. They were compelled, therefore, to
agree to any political organization, which the non-slaveholders should
determine on. This was at that time the case even in the strongest of
the slaveholding states themselves. In all of them, without exception,
the slaveholders were either obliged to live, or from choice did live,
under free constitutions. They, of course, held their slave property in
defiance of their constitutions. They were enabled to do this through
the corrupting influence of their wealth and union. Controlling a large
proportion of the wealth of their states, their social and political
influence was entirely disproportionate to their numbers. They could act
in concert. They could purchase talent by honors, offices and money.
Being always united, while the non-slaveholders were divided, they could
turn the scale in elections, and fill most of the offices with
slaveholders. Many of the non-slaveholders doubtless were poor,
dependent and subservient, (as large portions of the non-slaveholders
are now in the slaveholding states,) and lent themselves to the support
of slavery almost from necessity. By these, and probably by many other
influences that we cannot now understand, they were enabled to maintain
their hold upon their slave property in defiance of their constitutions.
It is even possible that the slaveholders themselves did not choose to
have the subject of slavery mentioned in their constitutions; that they
were so fully conscious of their power to corrupt and control their
governments, that they did not regard any constitutional provision
necessary for their security; and that out of mere shame at the
criminality of the thing, and its inconsistency with all the principles
the country had been fighting for and proclaiming, they did not wish it
to be named.
But whatever may have been the cause of the fact, the fact itself is
conspicuous, that from some cause or other, either with the consent of
the slaveholders, or in defiance of their power, the constitutions of
every one of the thirteen states were at that time free ones.
Now is it not idle and useless to pretend, when even the strongest
slaveholding states had free constitutions--when not one of the separate
states, acting for itself, would have any but a free constitution--that
the whole thirteen, when acting in unison, should concur in establishing
a slaveholding one? The idea is preposterous. The single fact that all
the state constitutions were at that time free ones, scatters for ever
the pretence that the majority of the people of all the states either
intended to establish, _or could have been induced to establish_, any
other than a free one for the nation. Of course it scatters also the
pretence that they believed or understood that they were establishing
any but a free one.
There very probably may have been a general belief among the people,
that slavery would for a while live on, on sufferance; that the
government, until the nation should have become attached to the
constitution, and cemented and consolidated by the habit of union, would
be too weak, and too easily corrupted by the innumerable and powerful
appliances of slaveholders, to wrestle with and strangle slavery. But to
suppose that the nation at large did not look upon the constitution as
designed to destroy slavery, whenever its principles should be carried
into full effect, is obviously to suppose an intellectual impossibility;
for the instrument was plain, and the people had common sense; and those
two facts cannot stand together consistently with the idea that there
was any general, or even any considerable misunderstanding of its
meaning.