proposition that the States must, without the interference of the
General Government, do all those things that pertain exclusively to
themselves,--that are local in their nature, that have no connection
with the General Government. After Judge Douglas has established this
proposition, which nobody disputes or ever has disputed, he proceeds
to assume, without proving it, that slavery is one of those little,
unimportant, trivial matters which are of just about as much consequence
as the question would be to me whether my neighbor should raise horned
cattle or plant tobacco; that there is no moral question about it, but
that it is altogether a matter of dollars and cents; that when a new
Territory is opened for settlement, the first man who goes into it may
plant there a thing which, like the Canada thistle or some other of those
pests of the soil, cannot be dug out by the millions of men who will come
thereafter; that it is one of those little things that is so trivial in
its nature that it has nor effect upon anybody save the few men who first
plant upon the soil; that it is not a thing which in any way affects the
family of communities composing these States, nor any way endangers the
General Government. Judge Douglas ignores altogether the very well known
fact that we have never had a serious menace to our political existence,
except it sprang from this thing, which he chooses to regard as only upon
a par with onions and potatoes.
Turn it, and contemplate it in another view. He says that, according
to his popular sovereignty, the General Government may give to the
Territories governors, judges, marshals, secretaries, and all the other
chief men to govern them, but they, must not touch upon this other
question. Why? The question of who shall be governor of a Territory for a
year or two, and pass away, without his track being left upon the soil, or
an act which he did for good or for evil being left behind, is a question
of vast national magnitude; it is so much opposed in its nature to
locality that the nation itself must decide it: while this other matter
of planting slavery upon a soil,--a thing which, once planted, cannot be
eradicated by the succeeding millions who have as much right there as the
first comers, or, if eradicated, not without infinite difficulty and
a long struggle, he considers the power to prohibit it as one of these
little local, trivial things that the nation ought not to say a word
about; that it affects nobody save the few men who are there.
Take these two things and consider them together, present the question of
planting a State with the institution of slavery by the side of a question
who shall be Governor of Kansas for a year or two, and is there a man
here, is there a man on earth, who would not say the governor question
is the little one, and the slavery question is the great one? I ask any
honest Democrat if the small, the local, and the trivial and temporary
question is not, Who shall be governor? while the durable, the important,
and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery?
This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas's mind from
his peculiar structure. I suppose the institution of slavery really looks
small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would
hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. That is
the build of the man, and consequently he looks upon the matter of slavery
in this unimportant light.
Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is endeavoring to force this
policy upon the American people, that while he is put up in that way,
a good many are not. He ought to remember that there was once in
this country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a
Democrat,--a man whose principles and policy are not very prevalent
amongst Democrats to-day, it is true; but that man did not take exactly
this view of the insignificance of the element of slavery which our friend
judge Douglas does. In contemplation of this thing, we all know he was led
to exclaim, "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just!"
We know how he looked upon it when he thus expressed himself. There was
danger to this country,--danger of the avenging justice of God, in that
little unimportant popular sovereignty question of judge Douglas. He
supposed there was a question of God's eternal justice wrapped up in the
enslaving of any race of men, or any man, and that those who did so braved
the arm of Jehovah; that when a nation thus dared the Almighty, every
friend of that nation had cause to dread his wrath. Choose ye between
Jefferson and Douglas as to what is the true view of this element among
us.
There is another little difficulty about this matter of treating the
Territories and States alike in all things, to which I ask your attention,
and I shall leave this branch of the case. If there is no difference
between them, why not make the Territories States at once? What is
the reason that Kansas was not fit to come into the Union when it was
organized into a Territory, in Judge Douglas's view? Can any of you tell
any reason why it should not have come into the Union at once? They are
fit, as he thinks, to decide upon the slavery question,--the largest and
most important with which they could possibly deal: what could they do by
coming into the Union that they are not fit to do, according to his view,
by staying out of it? Oh, they are not fit to sit in Congress and decide
upon the rates of postage, or questions of ad valorem or specific duties
on foreign goods, or live-oak timber contracts, they are not fit to decide
these vastly important matters, which are national in their import, but
they are fit, "from the jump," to decide this little negro question. But,
gentlemen, the case is too plain; I occupy too much time on this head, and
I pass on.
Near the close of the copyright essay, the judge, I think, comes very near
kicking his own fat into the fire. I did not think, when I commenced these
remarks, that I would read that article, but I now believe I will:
"This exposition of the history of these measures shows conclusively that
the authors of the Compromise measures of 1850 and of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854, as well as the members of the Continental Congress of 1774.,
and the founders of our system of government subsequent to the Revolution,
regarded the people of the Territories and Colonies as political
communities which were entitled to a free and exclusive power of
legislation in their provisional legislatures, where their representation
could alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity."
When the judge saw that putting in the word "slavery" would contradict
his own history, he put in what he knew would pass synonymous with it,
"internal polity." Whenever we find that in one of his speeches, the
substitute is used in this manner; and I can tell you the reason. It would
be too bald a contradiction to say slavery; but "internal polity" is a
general phrase, which would pass in some quarters, and which he hopes will
pass with the reading community for the same thing.
"This right pertains to the people collectively, as a law-abiding and
peaceful community, and not in the isolated individuals who may wander
upon the public domain in violation of the law. It can only be exercised
where there are inhabitants sufficient to constitute a government, and
capable of performing its various functions and duties,--a fact to be
ascertained and determined by" who do you think? Judge Douglas says "by
Congress!" "Whether the number shall be fixed at ten, fifteen or twenty
thousand inhabitants, does not affect the principle."
Now, I have only a few comments to make. Popular sovereignty, by his own
words, does not pertain to the few persons who wander upon the public
domain in violation of law. We have his words for that. When it does
pertain to them, is when they are sufficient to be formed into an
organized political community, and he fixes the minimum for that at ten
thousand, and the maximum at twenty thousand. Now, I would like to know
what is to be done with the nine thousand? Are they all to be treated,
until they are large enough to be organized into a political community, as
wanderers upon the public land, in violation of law? And if so treated
and driven out, at what point of time would there ever be ten thousand?
If they were not driven out, but remained there as trespassers upon the
public land in violation of the law, can they establish slavery there? No;
the judge says popular sovereignty don't pertain to them then. Can they
exclude it then? No; popular sovereignty don't pertain to them then. I
would like to know, in the case covered by the essay, what condition
the people of the Territory are in before they reach the number of ten
thousand?
But the main point I wish to ask attention to is, that the question as
to when they shall have reached a sufficient number to be formed into a
regular organized community is to be decided "by Congress." Judge Douglas
says so. Well, gentlemen, that is about all we want. No, that is all the
Southerners want. That is what all those who are for slavery want. They
do not want Congress to prohibit slavery from coming into the new
Territories, and they do not want popular sovereignty to hinder it; and as
Congress is to say when they are ready to be organized, all that the South
has to do is to get Congress to hold off. Let Congress hold off until they
are ready to be admitted as a State, and the South has all it wants in
taking slavery into and planting it in all the Territories that we now
have or hereafter may have. In a word, the whole thing, at a dash of the
pen, is at last put in the power of Congress; for if they do not have this
popular sovereignty until Congress organizes them, I ask if it at last
does not come from Congress? If, at last, it amounts to anything at all,
Congress gives it to them. I submit this rather for your reflection
than for comment. After all that is said, at last, by a dash of the pen,
everything that has gone before is undone, and he puts the whole question
under the control of Congress. After fighting through more than three
hours, if you undertake to read it, he at last places the whole matter
under the control of that power which he has been contending against, and
arrives at a result directly contrary to what he had been laboring to do.
He at last leaves the whole matter to the control of Congress.
There are two main objects, as I understand it, of this Harper's Magazine
essay. One was to show, if possible, that the men of our Revolutionary
times were in favor of his popular sovereignty, and the other was to show
that the Dred Scott decision had not entirely squelched out this popular
sovereignty. I do not propose, in regard to this argument drawn from
the history of former times, to enter into a detailed examination of the
historical statements he has made. I have the impression that they are
inaccurate in a great many instances,--sometimes in positive statement,
but very much more inaccurate by the suppression of statements that really
belong to the history. But I do not propose to affirm that this is so to
any very great extent, or to enter into a very minute examination of his
historical statements. I avoid doing so upon this principle,--that if it
were important for me to pass out of this lot in the least period of time
possible, and I came to that fence, and saw by a calculation of my known
strength and agility that I could clear it at a bound, it would be folly
for me to stop and consider whether I could or not crawl through a crack.
So I say of the whole history contained in his essay where he endeavored
to link the men of the Revolution to popular sovereignty. It only requires
an effort to leap out of it, a single bound to be entirely successful.
If you read it over, you will find that he quotes here and there from
documents of the Revolutionary times, tending to show that the people of
the colonies were desirous of regulating their own concerns in their own
way, that the British Government should not interfere; that at one time
they struggled with the British Government to be permitted to exclude
the African slave trade,--if not directly, to be permitted to exclude
it indirectly, by taxation sufficient to discourage and destroy it. From
these and many things of this sort, judge Douglas argues that they were
in favor of the people of our own Territories excluding slavery if they
wanted to, or planting it there if they wanted to, doing just as they
pleased from the time they settled upon the Territory. Now, however his
history may apply and whatever of his argument there may be that is sound
and accurate or unsound and inaccurate, if we can find out what these men
did themselves do upon this very question of slavery in the Territories,
does it not end the whole thing? If, after all this labor and effort
to show that the men of the Revolution were in favor of his popular
sovereignty and his mode of dealing with slavery in the Territories, we
can show that these very men took hold of that subject, and dealt with
it, we can see for ourselves how they dealt with it. It is not a matter of
argument or inference, but we know what they thought about it.
It is precisely upon that part of the history of the country that one
important omission is made by Judge Douglas. He selects parts of the
history of the United States upon the subject of slavery, and treats it as
the whole, omitting from his historical sketch the legislation of Congress
in regard to the admission of Missouri, by which the Missouri Compromise
was established and slavery excluded from a country half as large as the
present United States. All this is left out of his history, and in nowise
alluded to by him, so far as I can remember, save once, when he makes
a remark, that upon his principle the Supreme Court were authorized to
pronounce a decision that the act called the Missouri Compromise was
unconstitutional. All that history has been left out. But this part of the
history of the country was not made by the men of the Revolution.
There was another part of our political history, made by the very men
who were the actors in the Revolution, which has taken the name of the
Ordinance of '87. Let me bring that history to your attention. In 1784, I
believe, this same Mr. Jefferson drew up an ordinance for the government
of the country upon which we now stand, or, rather, a frame or draft of an
ordinance for the government of this country, here in Ohio, our neighbors
in Indiana, us who live in Illinois, our neighbors in Wisconsin and
Michigan. In that ordinance, drawn up not only for the government of that
Territory, but for the Territories south of the Ohio River, Mr. Jefferson
expressly provided for the prohibition of slavery. Judge Douglas says,
and perhaps is right, that that provision was lost from that ordinance. I
believe that is true. When the vote was taken upon it, a majority of all
present in the Congress of the Confederation voted for it; but there were
so many absentees that those voting for it did not make the clear majority
necessary, and it was lost. But three years after that, the Congress of
the Confederation were together again, and they adopted a new ordinance
for the government of this Northwest Territory, not contemplating
territory south of the river, for the States owning that territory had
hitherto refrained from giving it to the General Government; hence they
made the ordinance to apply only to what the Government owned. In fact,
the provision excluding slavery was inserted aside, passed unanimously, or
at any rate it passed and became a part of the law of the land. Under
that ordinance we live. First here in Ohio you were a Territory; then an
enabling act was passed, authorizing you to form a constitution and
State Government, provided it was republican and not in conflict with the
Ordinance of '87. When you framed your constitution and presented it for
admission, I think you will find the legislation upon the subject will
show that, whereas you had formed a constitution that was republican, and
not in conflict with the Ordinance of '87, therefore you were admitted
upon equal footing with the original States. The same process in a few
years was gone through with in Indiana, and so with Illinois, and the same
substantially with Michigan and Wisconsin.
Not only did that Ordinance prevail, but it was constantly looked to
whenever a step was taken by a new Territory to become a State. Congress
always turned their attention to it, and in all their movements upon
this subject they traced their course by that Ordinance of '87. When they
admitted new States, they advertised them of this Ordinance, as a part of
the legislation of the country. They did so because they had traced the
Ordinance of '87 throughout the history of this country. Begin with the
men of the Revolution, and go down for sixty entire years, and until the
last scrap of that Territory comes into the Union in the form of the State
of Wisconsin, everything was made to conform with the Ordinance of '87,
excluding slavery from that vast extent of country.
I omitted to mention in the right place that the Constitution of the
United States was in process of being framed when that Ordinance was
made by the Congress of the Confederation; and one of the first Acts of
Congress itself, under the new Constitution itself, was to give force to
that Ordinance by putting power to carry it out in the hands of the new
officers under the Constitution, in the place of the old ones, who had
been legislated out of existence by the change in the Government from the
Confederation to the Constitution. Not only so, but I believe Indiana once
or twice, if not Ohio, petitioned the General Government for the privilege
of suspending that provision and allowing them to have slaves. A report
made by Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, himself a slaveholder, was directly
against it, and the action was to refuse them the privilege of violating
the Ordinance of '87.
This period of history, which I have run over briefly, is, I presume, as
familiar to most of this assembly as any other part of the history of our
country. I suppose that few of my hearers are not as familiar with that
part of history as I am, and I only mention it to recall your attention
to it at this time. And hence I ask how extraordinary a thing it is that a
man who has occupied a position upon the floor of the Senate of the United
States, who is now in his third term, and who looks to see the government
of this whole country fall into his own hands, pretending to give a
truthful and accurate history o the slavery question in this country,
should so entirely ignore the whole of that portion of our history--the
most important of all. Is it not a most extraordinary spectacle that a man
should stand up and ask for any confidence in his statements who sets out
as he does with portions of history, calling upon the people to believe
that it is a true and fair representation, when the leading part and
controlling feature of the whole history is carefully suppressed?
But the mere leaving out is not the most remarkable feature of this most
remarkable essay. His proposition is to establish that the leading men
of the Revolution were for his great principle of nonintervention by the
government in the question of slavery in the Territories, while history
shows that they decided, in the cases actually brought before them, in
exactly the contrary way, and he knows it. Not only did they so decide
at that time, but they stuck to it during sixty years, through thick and
thin, as long as there was one of the Revolutionary heroes upon the stage
of political action. Through their whole course, from first to last, they
clung to freedom. And now he asks the community to believe that the men
of the Revolution were in favor of his great principle, when we have the
naked history that they themselves dealt with this very subject matter
of his principle, and utterly repudiated his principle, acting upon
a precisely contrary ground. It is as impudent and absurd as if a
prosecuting attorney should stand up before a jury and ask them to convict
A as the murderer of B, while B was walking alive before them.
I say, again, if judge Douglas asserts that the men of the Revolution
acted upon principles by which, to be consistent with themselves, they
ought to have adopted his popular sovereignty, then, upon a consideration
of his own argument, he had a right to make you believe that they
understood the principles of government, but misapplied them, that he
has arisen to enlighten the world as to the just application of this
principle. He has a right to try to persuade you that he understands their
principles better than they did, and, therefore, he will apply them now,
not as they did, but as they ought to have done. He has a right to go
before the community and try to convince them of this, but he has no right
to attempt to impose upon any one the belief that these men themselves
approved of his great principle. There are two ways of establishing a
proposition. One is by trying to demonstrate it upon reason, and the other
is, to show that great men in former times have thought so and so, and
thus to pass it by the weight of pure authority. Now, if Judge Douglas
will demonstrate somehow that this is popular sovereignty,--the right of
one man to make a slave of another, without any right in that other or
any one else to object,--demonstrate it as Euclid demonstrated
propositions,--there is no objection. But when he comes forward, seeking
to carry a principle by bringing to it the authority of men who themselves
utterly repudiate that principle, I ask that he shall not be permitted to
do it.
I see, in the judge's speech here, a short sentence in these words: "Our
fathers, when they formed this government under which we live, understood
this question just as well, and even better than, we do now." That is
true; I stick to that. I will stand by Judge Douglas in that to the bitter
end. And now, Judge Douglas, come and stand by me, and truthfully show how
they acted, understanding it better than we do. All I ask of you, Judge
Douglas, is to stick to the proposition that the men of the Revolution
understood this subject better than we do now, and with that better
understanding they acted better than you are trying to act now.
I wish to say something now in regard to the Dred Scott decision, as dealt
with by Judge Douglas. In that "memorable debate" between Judge Douglas
and myself, last year, the judge thought fit to commence a process of
catechising me, and at Freeport I answered his questions, and propounded
some to him. Among others propounded to him was one that I have here now.
The substance, as I remember it, is, "Can the people of a United States
Territory, under the Dred Scott decision, in any lawful way, against the
wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits,
prior to the formation of a State constitution?" He answered that they
could lawfully exclude slavery from the United States Territories,
notwithstanding the Dred Scot decision. There was something about that
answer that has probably been a trouble to the judge ever since.