MR. PRESIDENT,--Undertaking now, after a silence of more than four
years, to address the Senate on this important subject, I should
suppress the emotions natural to such an occasion, if I did not
declare on the threshold my gratitude to that Supreme Being through
whose benign care I am enabled, after much suffering and many changes,
once again to resume my duties here, and to speak for the cause so
near my heart. To the honored Commonwealth whose representative I
am, and also to my immediate associates in this body, with whom I
enjoy the fellowship which is found _in thinking alike concerning the
Republic_,[25] I owe thanks which I seize the moment to express for
indulgence extended to me throughout the protracted seclusion enjoined
by medical skill; and I trust that it will not be thought unbecoming
in me to put on record here, as an apology for leaving my seat so long
vacant, without making way, by resignation, for a successor, that I
acted under the illusion of an invalid, whose hopes for restoration to
natural health continued against oft-recurring disappointment.
When last I entered into this debate, it became my duty to expose the
Crime against Kansas, and to insist upon the immediate admission of
that Territory as a State of this Union, with a Constitution forbidding
Slavery. Time has passed, but the question remains. Resuming the
discussion precisely where I left it, I am happy to avow that rule
of moderation which, it is said, may venture to fix the boundaries
of wisdom itself. I have no personal griefs to utter: only a vulgar
egotism could intrude such into this Chamber. I have no personal wrongs
to avenge: only a brutish nature could attempt to wield that vengeance
which belongs to the Lord. The years that have intervened and the
tombs that have opened[26] since I spoke have their voices, too, which
I cannot fail to hear. Besides, what am I, what is any man among the
living or among the dead, compared with the question before us? It is
this alone which I shall discuss, and I begin the argument with that
easy victory which is found in charity.
* * * * *
The Crime against Kansas stands forth in painful light. Search history,
and you cannot find its parallel. The slave-trade is bad; but even this
enormity is petty, compared with that elaborate contrivance by which,
in a Christian age and within the limits of a Republic, all forms of
constitutional liberty were perverted, all the rights of human nature
violated, and the whole country held trembling on the edge of civil
war,--while all this large exuberance of wickedness, detestable in
itself, becomes tenfold more detestable, when its origin is traced
to the madness for Slavery. The fatal partition between Freedom and
Slavery, known as the Missouri Compromise,--the subsequent overthrow
of this partition, and the seizure of all by Slavery,--the violation
of plighted faith,--the conspiracy to force Slavery at all hazards
into Kansas,--the successive invasions by which all security there was
destroyed, and the electoral franchise itself was trodden down,--the
sacrilegious seizure of the very polls, and, through pretended forms of
law, the imposition of a foreign legislature upon this Territory,--the
acts of this legislature, fortifying the Usurpation, and, among other
things, establishing test-oaths, calculated to disfranchise actual
settlers friendly to Freedom, and securing the privileges of the
citizen to actual strangers friendly to Slavery,--the whole crowned
by a statute, “the be-all and the end-all” of the whole Usurpation,
through which Slavery was not only recognized on this beautiful soil,
but made to bristle with a Code of Death such as the world has rarely
seen,--all these I fully exposed on a former occasion. And yet the most
important part of the argument was at that time left untouched: I mean
that found in the Character of Slavery. This natural sequel, with the
permission of the Senate, I now propose to supply.
Motive is to Crime as soul to body; and it is only when we comprehend
the motive that we can truly comprehend the Crime. Here the motive is
found in Slavery and the rage for its extension. Therefore, by logical
necessity, must Slavery be discussed,--not indirectly, timidly, and
sparingly, but directly, openly, and thoroughly. It must be exhibited
as it is, alike in its influence and its animating character, so that
not only outside, but inside, may be seen.
This is no time for soft words or excuses. All such are out of place.
They may turn away wrath; but what is the wrath of man? This is no time
to abandon any advantage in the argument. Senators sometimes announce
that they resist Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us that
they say nothing of the moral question. This is wrong. Slavery must
be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds,
whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor
is it any strife of rival factions, of White and Red Roses, of theatric
Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong,
between Good and Evil. Such a battle cannot be fought with rosewater.
There is austere work to be done, and Freedom cannot consent to fling
away any of her weapons.
* * * * *
If I were disposed to shrink from this discussion, the boundless
assumptions made by Senators on the other side would not allow me.
The whole character of Slavery, as a pretended form of Civilization,
is put directly in issue, with a pertinacity and a hardihood which
banish all reserve on this side. In these assumptions Senators from
South Carolina naturally take the lead. Following Mr. Calhoun, who
pronounced Slavery “the most solid and durable foundation on which to
rear free and stable political institutions,”[27] and Mr. McDuffie,
who did not shrink from calling it “the corner-stone of our republican
edifice,”[28] the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. HAMMOND] insists
that its “frame of society is the best in the world”[29]; and his
colleague [Mr. CHESNUT] takes up the strain. One Senator from
Mississippi [Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS], adds, that Slavery “is but a form
of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern
themselves”;[30] and his colleague [Mr. BROWN] openly vaunts that it
“is a great moral, social, and political blessing,--a blessing to the
slave, and a blessing to the master.”[31] One Senator from Virginia
[Mr. HUNTER], in a studied vindication of what he is pleased to call
“the social system of the South,” exalts Slavery as “the normal
condition of human society,” “beneficial to the non-slave-owner as it
is to the slave-owner,” “best for the happiness of both races,”--and,
in enthusiastic advocacy, declares, “that the very keystone of the
mighty arch, which, by its concentrated strength, and by the mutual
support of its parts, is able to sustain our social superstructure,
consists in the black marble block of African Slavery: knock that out,
and the mighty fabric, with all that it upholds, topples and tumbles
to its fall.”[32] These are his very words, uttered in debate here.
And his colleague [Mr. MASON], who never hesitates where Slavery is in
question, proclaims that it is “_ennobling_ to both races, the white
and the black,”--a word which, so far as the slave is concerned, he
changes, on a subsequent day, to “elevating,” assuming still that it
is “ennobling” to the whites,[33]--which is simply a new version of
the old assumption, by Mr. McDuffie, of South Carolina, that “the
institution of Domestic Slavery supersedes the necessity of an order of
nobility.”[34]
Thus, by various voices, is Slavery defiantly proclaimed a form of
Civilization,--not seeing that its existence is plainly inconsistent
with the first principles of anything that can be called Civilization,
except by that figure of speech in classical literature where a thing
takes its name from something which it has not, as the dreadful
Fates were called merciful because they were without mercy. Pardon
the allusion, if I add, that, listening to these sounding words for
Slavery, I am reminded of the kindred extravagance related by that
remarkable traveller in China, the late Abbé Huc, where a gloomy hole
in which he was lodged, infested by mosquitoes and exhaling noisome
vapors, with light and air entering by a single narrow aperture only,
was styled by Chinese pride “The Hotel of the Beatitudes.” According to
a Hindoo proverb, the snail sees nothing but its own shell, and thinks
it the grandest palace in the universe. This is another illustration of
the delusion which we are called to witness.
It is natural that Senators thus insensible to the true character of
Slavery should evince an equal insensibility to the true character of
the Constitution. This is shown in the claim now made, and pressed
with unprecedented energy, degrading the work of our fathers, that by
virtue of the Constitution the pretended property in man is placed
beyond the reach of Congressional prohibition even within Congressional
jurisdiction, so that the slave-master may at all times enter the broad
outlying territories of the Union with the victims of his oppression,
and there continue to hold them by lash and chain.
Such are two assumptions, the first of fact, and the second of
Constitutional Law, now vaunted without apology or hesitation. I meet
them both. To the first I oppose the essential Barbarism of Slavery,
in all its influences, whether high or low,--as Satan is Satan still,
whether towering in the sky or squatting in the toad. To the second
I oppose the unanswerable, irresistible truth, that the Constitution
of the United States nowhere recognizes property in man. These two
assumptions naturally go together. They are “twins” suckled by the same
wolf. They are the “couple” in the present slave-hunt. And the latter
cannot be answered without exposing the former. It is only when Slavery
is exhibited in its truly hateful character that we fully appreciate
the absurdity of the assumption, which, in defiance of express letter
in the Constitution, and without a single sentence, phrase, or word
upholding human bondage, yet foists into this blameless text the
barbarous idea that man can hold property in man.
On former occasions I have discussed Slavery only incidentally: as, in
unfolding the principle that Slavery is Sectional and Freedom National;
in exposing the unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Bill; in
vindicating the Prohibition of Slavery in the Missouri Territory; in
exhibiting the imbecility, throughout the Revolution, of the Slave
States, and especially of South Carolina; and, lastly, in unmasking the
Crime against Kansas. On all these occasions, where I spoke at length,
I said too little of the character of Slavery,--partly because other
topics were presented, and partly from a prevailing disinclination
to press the argument against those whom I knew to have all the
sensitiveness of a sick man. But, God be praised, this time has passed,
and the debate is now lifted from details to principles. Grander debate
has not occurred in our history,--rarely in any history; nor can it
close or subside, except with the triumph of Freedom.