wickedness on our part. I have tried to protect my widowed mother,
the South, by giving honest filial counsel against the whole
household. The Reubens have tried to sell me into Egypt for my
'dreaming.' But I am, nevertheless, loyal to the house of my
father and loving to my misguided brethren, and I mean to redouble
my efforts the more to save the house of Israel. If I must be
driven out as a dreamer, I will, at least, preserve 'mine
integrity,' and time and the day of famine will show whose counsel
and whose course will have saved the household and fed it, and all
the land of the stranger too. Aye; and is democracy as well as the
South to have no out-spoken, honest counsellor? Are we to be given
over to the federal gods of Pacific railroads? Are we to
_out-Yazoo Yazoo_? To out-Adams Adams in putting internal
improvements by the General Government on the most Omnipotent and
indefinitely stretching power of all powers of the Federal
Government--_the war power_? Are we to abolish _ad valorem_ and
adopt the specific duties to supply a tariff for revenue, the
standard of which is already eighty-one millions of expenditure on
three hundred and twenty-one millions average rate of
importations? Are we to increase eighty-one millions of
expenditure to the unknown limitless amount required for railroads
across this continent; for post-offices that don't pay expenses;
for pensions unheard of in character and amount; for a land office
which gives away three acres for every one sold, and brings us in
debt; for increase of a standing army such as our frontiers and
Indian wars and protectorates of foreign territory propose; and,
therefore, for such a navy as Isthmian wars with no less than
eight powers of the earth--England, Spain, France, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, New Granada, and Paraguay--demand if
threatened only? Is protection to be turned into prohibition? If
so, what is a 'direct tax?' Is land tax the only one which can be
'apportioned?' Are the landowners to pay all the cost of the
crusade of Congress and manifest destiny? Is strict construction
and are State rights to be abandoned, and are we to give up State
corporations to the bankruptcies of a federal commission? Where
would have been our people and their effects last year if a
federal power could have put our State banks into a course of
liquidation under a commission of bankruptcy? Is the South, is any
portion of our community, in a situation to rush into wars--wars
invited by the President with three European and five American
powers? And are we to be a grand consolidated, elective, North and
South American imperialism? The question is not, 'Will the Union
be dissolved?' That is a settled question. But the question is,
'Is the old Virginia democratic faith to be abandoned, and are we
to rush on with the President into a full scheme of federal policy
which in its outline and filling up, exceeds any federalism, in
all its points, which a Hamilton, or Adams, or any other
latitudinarian, ever dared to project or propose?
"For my part, I take ground now firmly and at once against the war
power. I am for the Washington policy of peace, and against all
entangling alliances and protectorates, and the Jackson rule of
'demanding nothing but what is right, and submitting to nothing
that is wrong,' and for preserving and protecting the South and
whole country from ambitious and buccaneering wars, of which the
landed and planting interests would have to bear the burden, at a
great sacrifice of present prosperity. I am against internal
improvements by the General Government, more than ever since their
construction is put on the war power. If we could beard England up
to 54 deg. 40', ten years ago, without a road or known route to
Oregon, why can't we wait for emigrants to beat a path on their
way to gold mines, and hold California, without cutting a military
road in time of peace? I am for retrenchment and reform of all
expenditures, and for revenue only for economical administration,
on a scale of pure, old-fashioned republican simplicity,
discriminating no more than is necessary to prevent prohibition on
non-dutiable articles. I am for free trade, and the protection it
affords is demonstrably ample for a people of enterprise and art
like ours. I am against State-bank bankruptcy, and all sorts of
bankruptcy whatever. The Federal Government shall never declare
again that honest debts shall be paid by gulping and oaths, with
my consent. But my paper is run out.
"The President bids high. To filibusters he offers Cuba and the
Isthmus and North Mexico; to the West a Pacific Railroad; to the
North protection to iron and coarse woollens; and to the great
commercial countries the power of centralization by obvious uses
and abuses of a bankrupt act to supply to State banks. Yesterday
Biddle was a monster, and to-day a few Wall street bankers can
expand and contract upon us more like a vice than he did; and what
would they not do if they could force the poor provinces when they
pleased into bankruptcy?"
In his later letter--to Mr. Samford, of Alabama--Gov. Wise gave his
opinion of the Douglas "non-intervention" doctrine in unmistakable
language. He says:
"Intervention for protection, by the United States, through
Congress, is all-pervading. It penetrates into States,
territories, districts and other places throughout the United
States, and is one of the most vitally essential attributes of our
blessed Federal Union. No doctrine could be more repugnant to its
benign spirit, none more destructive of federal immunities and
privileges, and none more fatal to State rights and the safety of
individual persons and their property, than this new light of
"Non-Intervention" to protect all and everything in the
jurisdiction of the United States. It is a question which cannot
be retired from discussion in Congress, where it rises up every
day in every form, and where it must be met with intelligence,
integrity and courage. It cannot be renounced or smothered, or the
Government must relinquish its dominion over every subject of its
jurisdiction.
"And this doctrine of 'Non-Intervention for Protection' is only
equalled in danger and destructiveness by that correlative error
of some minds in these days: 'That Congress may not intervene to
protect; for if it has the power to protect, it has the power to
destroy.' This is a _non sequitur_, and a weak fallacy and gross
delusion. The power and duty to protect is the power and duty not
only not to destroy, but something far greater--it is the duty to
intervene against invasion and violence. The whole American system
of government throughout is one to protect against destruction.
Because Congress may and shall provide the writ of habeas corpus,
trial by jury, freedom of speech or of the press, etc., etc.,
shall it, therefore, be said to possess the power to withhold,
deny or destroy either or all of these rights?
"But, say some, _cui bono_?--if a majority of Congress are opposed
to the protection of the right, what use is there in claiming the
mere abstraction of the right? I reply that there is great use and
practical effect in it too.
"The proposition of non-intervention is: 'By the Compromise of
1850, the Kansas Nebraska act, and other declarations of its will,
Congress renounced the exercise of any direct jurisdiction over
the territories, and delegated its power to the local
legislatures.' But it concedes that Congress could bestow no
authority on the local legislatures of which it was not itself
possessed'--in other words, "Congress cannot delegate more power
than it possesses itself; and it has none to prohibit slavery.
Very well, and so good as to the power. But there is a positive
duty to be discharged as well as a power not to be exercised.
Suppose the territorial legislature attempts to prohibit slavery,
and thus do what Congress itself cannot do in the territories. Has
Congress renounced its jurisdiction in the case? Could it or can
it do so? If not, what is its duty? Does non-intervention renounce
this duty of protection, in such a case, or not? It replies that
this claim upon Congress to discharge this duty will be vain. Why?
There is a dead majority against us in Congress, and they will not
heed the appeal to the legislative department for protection.
"Well, but the case supposes a like dead majority and an
aggressive majority against us in the territorial legislature
too.--What then? There is no refuge of safety from a majority
against us in territorial legislatures. Non-intervention quickly
answers this dilemma, by saying: 'let the courts determine between
us and our adversaries.' This is what is called 'remitting' the
question to the judiciary, which may decide as well as the
Congress or the Executive.--True, the judiciary may and must
decide, anyhow, in either case, for that was no discovery of Mr.
Calhoun, but a Constitutional function, which has ever belonged to
the courts, and of which Congress and the Executive and the
Territorial authorities cannot deprive them; and, without any
remission by Congress, the judiciary department has the power of
deciding upon the validity of laws. And it can as well and more
directly pass upon the validity of laws enacted by Congress itself
as upon the validity of those enacted by the territorial
legislatures. If Congress passes an unconstitutional law, we can
go to the courts, just as easy as if the law was passed by its
delegate, the territorial Legislature. And if Congress does not
renounce its direct jurisdiction and delegate it to the
territorial legislature, then the latter will have no power to
annoy the slave property locally by its abuse of delegated power;
and the territorial legislature is more apt to pass a prohibition
than Congress is, for very obvious reasons. The eye of the whole
nation is immediately upon Congress, and no positive code is
required to establish its power and duty to protect persons and
property. The Constitution itself dictates and enjoins both. And
it is first of all necessary, that neither the power nor the duty
shall be practically denied, embarrassed or obstructed, by the
enactment of unconstitutional laws of prohibition. Positive
legislation is more apt to be passed against slavery by local than
by national laws. In any practical view, then, we are attempting
to shear a lion instead of a wolf. Non-intervention is simply
absurd and impossible, and it is worse than impracticable.
* * * * *
"Such are the teachings to me of our past history, and I trust
that I have now demonstrated in the second place: 'That the
inhabitants or people of a territory are sovereign to form
themselves a constitution and State government as I have shown in
the first place, that in their territorial condition they are
within the entire control and jurisdiction, or under the entire
rule or regulation of Congress, subject to the Constitution of the
United States, and that the citizens of each and all of the States
are alike equally entitled to protection in all the privileges and
immunities of persons and property, common to equal confederates.
"And this right and this duty of protection is not to be evaded or
avoided either by the false _ad captandum_ clamor that a code is
required to be enacted by Congress for the protection of slave
property. This is but to cast odium upon slavery, by creating the
impression that a discrimination is necessary to distinguish it
above what is due to other personal and proprietary rights. On the
contrary, no such code is required to create either the right or
the duty of protection, and no law is necessary to distinguish
slave property from any other property. All persons and all
property, equally and alike, require only not to be assailed and
destroyed in, or excluded from the common territories. Every
species of rights requires laws, it is true, suited to its
character and to its case. Personal property, for example, must
have a law that it shall not be 'taken and carried away;' and
land, which cannot be 'taken and carried away,' must have a law
that it shall not be trespassed upon in some other way; and so
with slaves and everything else, they must have provisions
according to their kind. But the Constitution of the United
States, and the laws of Congress heretofore organizing territories
are sufficient, and if amendments of the laws are required, it is
the duty of Congress to see that they are provided, of the
Executive of the United States to see that they are executed, and
of the judiciary to decide upon the rights under the laws. The
slave States should never pretend to any peculiar privileges, and
do not, so far as I know. They ask only that their rights shall
not be assailed and invaded, and, if they be assailed, that they
may be protected as other personal and proprietary rights are
protected; that they may have equal, confederate, federal
privileges and immunities, and they ask for no special or peculiar
code....
"To escape danger or disaster to themselves, your Congress, and
Executives, and judiciary, and State legislatures, shall not, with
my consent, be allowed to drop the reins of government and leap
from the seats of power and responsibility, and renounce the duty
of protection and preservation to all within their care by the
ignoring and stultifying and disqualifying plea of
negation--'_Non-intervention_.' There are too many elements of
discord in this country which require to be restrained by the most
active and positive, but prudent intervention. These resolutions
of Vermont, the tendency of which is either to drive one section
of the States out of the Union, or to degrade and subjugate them
in it, are an example. If anything can be worse than disunion to
the United States, it would be the more dire alternative of
degrading and subjugating any one State by forcing her submission
to unequal laws and dishonorable conditions in the confederacy.
The state or section of states thus subdued and humbled, would be
unworthy of the union with other free republics, and such a union
would be no longer what union now is. It should, then, be the
watchful concern of all to maintain and support the honor,
dignity, and equality of each; and equality alone can reciprocally
maintain the strength of all. If first one and then another may be
subdued, finally all but one will become subject to that one,
central and consolidated. This should always combine the majority
of States to support the weaker portion of the Union against the
very appearance of oppression."
Such is the position of Gov. Wise on the slavery question. He is
radical in his views, demanding the fullest protection from the courts
and Congress for the protection of slavery. The faults as well as the
virtues of Gov. Wise he carries openly in his face; if he is bold and
imprudent, so he is frank and truthful. There is no deceit in him, and
his political enemies know the worst when they know anything of his
views or his course.
R. M. T. HUNTER.
Senator Hunter is a contrast, in almost every one of his traits of
character, to Governor Wise. The Governor is voluble--he writes
letters thirty columns long upon the condition of the country. Senator
Hunter is reticent. The Governor is, say his enemies, rash. Mr. Hunter
is cautious and prudent to a fault. Governor Wise, again, is a
reformer in his way--Senator Hunter is set down as an "old fogy" in
politics. Yet both are Democrats, and agree in essentials, as a matter
of course.
Few members of the Senate enjoy to such an extent the respect of the
entire body as Mr. Hunter. His manners, his bearing, his style of
speaking, and his deportment in social circles, are such as to win him
the esteem of all who know him, even in spite of political opposition.
In the Senate, he resembles some quiet unpretending farmer, who might
have come up from a rural district, to sit in a State legislature. He
dresses plain, is dignified without the least particle of pretension;
speaks plainly, slowly, but clearly. Never tries to ride down a
political opponent by declamation, but coolly _argues_ the point of
difference. During the most exciting debates he keeps his temper, and
though in political matters, especially upon the slavery question, he
is ultra-southern in his views, he is so watchful, so prudent, so mild
in his speech, that he contrives to win the esteem of his northern
associates, and to be very popular with them.
Mr. Hunter is a native of Essex County, Va., was liberally educated,
and adopted the law as a profession. His first political experience
was gained in the Virginian State Legislature, where he remained three
years; but in 1837, he was elected to Congress as a member of the
House of Representatives, where he remained four years. In 1845, he
was reelected to Congress, and was made Speaker of the Twenty-sixth
Congress. In 1847, he was elected United States' Senator, where he
still remains, and has been for years the able Chairman of the Finance
Committee.
Mr. Hunter's political views are known to the country at large. He is
a southern Democrat, with the views of a southern democratic
politician--anti-tariff, of course--anti-homestead law--in the last
Congress voting in the Senate against bringing up the bill for
consideration. His views on Popular Sovereignty, we will give,
shortly, from his own lips. He supported the Lecompton bill through
thick and thin, though he did it as he does all his work, in a modest,
quiet way, without bluster, or any attempt to intimidate.
In the non-intervention debate of March, 1839, Senator Hunter gave his
views of the question under discussion, in the following language:
"It is with extreme reluctance that I say a word on this subject so
unhappily sprung up on the appropriation bill, of which I stand here
as the guardian, a very insufficient one, as it seems; but the course
of the debate has made it necessary for me, in my own vindication, to
say a word or two in regard to this Nebraska-Kansas act.
"I differ from the senator from Illinois in regard to the bill,
the history of its inception, and what was intended by it. As I
understand it, we stood in this position: the southern senators, I
believe, almost without an exception, who spoke upon that
question--I know I did for one, as I have always done from the
time I first made my appearance on this floor--maintained that the
South had the right, under the Constitution, of protection of this
property in the Territories; on the other hand, senators from the
free States denied that right. None of them would vote to give it
to us; but there were a portion of the northern democracy who were
willing to do this; they were willing to repeal the Missouri
restriction, and establish a territorial government there. A bill
was immediately drawn which left this right to the territories to
legislate for the prohibition of slavery in abeyance. It neither
affirmed nor disaffirmed the power of the territorial legislature
to legislate upon this subject of slavery; but it provided very
carefully and cautiously that any question arising out of it might
be referred to the judiciary....
The case then stood thus: whilst the southern men maintained on
one side (and I was amongst them) that they had the right to the
protection of their property under the Constitution, those from
the free States maintained the opposite opinion. There could have
been no accord between them on that point; but the southern men,
with some objection and reluctance, in order to harmonize, did
agree, as the only mode of getting the Missouri Compromise
repealed, if the territorial legislature attempted to exercise the
power, that the court should decide; and this they could do with
perfect consistency, because they provided that whatever powers
were delegated to the territorial legislature should be exercised
under the Constitution. In their opinion, the Constitution not
only prohibited Congress from delegating a power to abolish
slavery to the territories, but from exercising it itself. Whilst
they maintained that Congress had the power to govern in the
territories, they maintained that there was an obligation on
Congress, imposed by the equality of the States, that they should
not prohibit the institutions of one State while they allowed
those of another; and that was the mode in which it was passed.
The bill in itself was, in my opinion, a compromise in which
neither sacrificed principles, but left the whole question in
abeyance to be decided by the courts without taking from Congress
the power to resume jurisdiction, if they should choose to do so
afterward. They retained as much good as they could without
raising those questions upon which there could have been no accord
of opinion.
"Now, sir, I say it never was understood, so far as I had anything
to do with the bill, by the southern men who maintained the class
of opinions of which I am speaking, that they were conferring on
the territorial legislature the absolute power to deal with this
subject. They did not; but they were secured to vote for a bill
which would organize a territorial Legislature which should leave
this question in abeyance, and this bill decided nothing, but only
provided that the question should go to the courts, to be decided
under that jurisdiction.
"Nor did the bill--although everybody consented to strike out the
phrase to which the senator from Illinois alludes--nor did the
bill ever mean to say that Congress absolutely gave up
jurisdiction over the subject. Inasmuch as it was a common point
which accomplished good, which repealed what all the branches of
the Democracy thought unconstitutional--the Missouri
Compromise--they passed a bill which did that, without deciding
absolutely on other differences of opinion, but merely providing a
tribunal to decide them when they should come up."
That Senator Hunter stated the truth in reference to himself is
evident from the subjoined quotation from a speech of his, delivered
during the discussion of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854:
"But it has been often said by those who admit that Congress has
the power of governing the territories, that it is a power to be
exercised, not in reference to the rights of the States, but in
reference to the good and welfare of the people of the
territories. Now, if in exercising this power we are to be
confined to the single consideration of the good and welfare of
the people of the territories, then, I say, the whole subject of
government ought to be left to the people of the territories. That
is the true American principle. If the only consideration which is
to apply to their government be the good and welfare of the people
of the territories, then they ought to determine all questions in
regard to their domestic institutions and laws. But, in my
opinion, the government of these territories ought to be
administered with the double object of securing the rights of the
States as well as those of the people of the territories, and to
these last should be given all the rights of self-government which
are consistent with the limitation, that they shall not interfere
with the equal rights of the States, or violate the provisions of
the Constitution. With those limitations, all the power that could
possibly be given to the people of that territory, ought to be
given to them. All that portion of the power which is to be
exercised with a view to their interests, ought to be exercised as
they wish it. That, in my opinion, is the true principle.
"I know we have most high, distinguished, and respectable
authority for the opinion that the people of the territories have
a sort of natural right to exercise all power within those
territories. It is not my purpose to raise an issue upon that
question. I do not mean to argue it. I do not wish to raise an
issue with the friends of this bill, with those whom I am
assisting, and who are assisting me, to pass this measure. Nor
will I do it unless it should be absolutely necessary, which is
not now the case. For, happily, the bill is so framed that it can
be maintained, not only by those who entertain such opinions as I
have referred to, but by those, also, who entertain opinions like
my own. The bill provides that the legislatures of these
territories shall have the power to legislate over all rightful
subjects of legislation, consistently with the Constitution. And
if they should assume powers which are thought to be inconsistent
with the Constitution, the courts will decide that question,
whenever it may be raised. There is a difference of opinion
amongst the friends of this measure, as to the extent of the
limits which the Constitution imposes upon the territorial
legislatures. This bill proposes to leave these differences to the
decision of the courts. To that tribunal I am willing to leave
this decision, as it was once before proposed to be left, by the
celebrated compromise of the senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton),
a measure which, according to my understanding, was the best
compromise which was offered upon this subject of slavery. I say,
then, that I am willing to leave this point, upon which the
friends of this bill are at difference, to the decision of the
courts."
This position cannot be misunderstood. It is that the Supreme Court
may overturn the action of territorial legislatures. But does Senator
Hunter advocate, as Governor Wise does, Congressional intervention _to
enforce_ the decisions of the Supreme Court? Upon this point he is
silent; though, from the language he uses, it is evident enough that
as a matter of right he would claim the interference of Congress for
this purpose--but, considering the fact that there is not the
slightest chance that Congress could ever be brought to vote such
protection, he may _as a matter of policy_ relinquish the demand.
HENRY WILSON.