masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an
uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals
before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or
mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution
in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar
circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected
with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were
admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a
friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted
the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy
assassinations in the field, and local revolts, extending to a score
or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no
general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for
a long time. Whoever much fears or much hopes for such an event will be
alike disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in
our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably,
and in such slow degrees as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and
their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the
contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the
prospect held up."
Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of
emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as
to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slave holding States
only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of
restraining the extension of the institution--the power to insure that
a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now
free from slavery.
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It
was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the
slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves,
with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That
affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts related in
history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods
over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by
Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little
else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the
same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and
on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two
things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown,
Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human
action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.
There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which
cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that
judgment and feeling--that sentiment--by breaking up the political
organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and
disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your
heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the
sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box,
into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your
constitutional rights.
That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not
fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to
deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution. But we
are proposing no such thing.
When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood
allusion to an assumed constitutional right of yours to take slaves into
the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such
right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is
literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such
a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the
Government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution
as you please on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule
or ruin, in all events.
This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme
Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in your favor.
Not quite so. But, waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and
decision, the court have decided the question for you in a sort of way.
The court have substantially said it is your constitutional right to take
slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.
When I say, the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made
in a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite
agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made
as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning,
and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact--the
statement in the opinion that "the right of property in a slave is
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in
a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind,
the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is
impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity
that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there--"distinctly," that
is, not mingled with anything else; "expressly," that is, in words meaning
just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other
meaning.
If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to
show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in
the Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection with
language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and that wherever in
that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person"; and
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it
is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due," as a debt payable
in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of
speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution
the idea that there could be property in man.
To show all this, is easy and certain.
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their notice,
is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken
statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?
And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers; who framed
the Government under which we live",--the men who made the
Constitution--decided this same constitutional question in our favor,
long ago; decided it without division among themselves, when making the
decision, without division among themselves about the meaning of it after
it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon
any mistaken statement of facts.
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to
break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is shall be
at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?
But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that
supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say,
the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A
highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "stand
and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you'll be a murderer!"
To be sure, what the robber demanded of me-my money was my own, and I had
a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my
own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of
destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished
in principle.
A few words now to Republicans: It is exceedingly desirable that all
parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony one with
another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much
provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though
the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly
consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of
our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the
subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we
can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered
to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against
us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections
are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing
to do with invasions and, insurrections? We know it will not. We so
know because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and
insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the
charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only
let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so
trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but
with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to
convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they
have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will
convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join
them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly--done in
acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated--we must place
ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be
enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong,
whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must
arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must
pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be
disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will
cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most
of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and
say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone have never
disturbed them--so that after all it is what we say which dissatisfies
them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.
I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of
our free State constitutions. Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of
slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it;
and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow
of these constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the
demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole
of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they
can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they
do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot
cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a
social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction
that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and
constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality
its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its
extension--its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant if we
thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they
thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the
precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right,
as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as
being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we
cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral,
social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think
slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that
much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the
nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread
into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free
States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our
duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those
sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and
belabored-contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the
right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a
living man nor a dead man-such as a policy of "don't care" on a question
about which all true men do care--such as Union appeals beseeching
true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule,
and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance--such as
invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said,
and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us,
nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of
dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN
THAT FAITH LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
SPEECH AT NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, MARCH 6, 1860
MR. PRESIDENT, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW HAVEN:--If the Republican
party of this nation shall ever have the national House entrusted to its
keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs
of national housekeeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up,
whatever difficulties may arise in its way of administration of the
Government, that party will then have to attend to. It will then be
compelled to attend to other questions, besides this question which now
assumes an overwhelming importance--the question of slavery. It is true
that in the organization of the Republican party this question of slavery
was more important than any other: indeed, so much more important has
it become that no more national question can even get a hearing just at
present. The old question of tariff--a matter that will remain one of the
chief affairs of national house-keeping to all time; the question of the
management of financial affairs; the question of the disposition of the
public domain how shall it be managed for the purpose of getting it well
settled, and of making there the homes of a free and happy people? these
will remain open and require attention for a great while yet, and these
questions will have to be attended to by whatever party has the control of
the Government. Yet, just now, they cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do
not propose to detain you upon these topics or what sort of hearing they
should have when opportunity shall come.
For, whether we will or not, the question of slavery is the question, the
all-absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us--and by that I
mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here
and elsewhere--all of us wish this question settled, wish it out of the
way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving
of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping. The
people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled,
and yet it is not settled. And the reason is that they are not yet agreed
how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and
some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies
are pulling in different directions, and none of them, having a decided
majority, are able to accomplish the common object.
In the beginning of the year 1854, a new policy was inaugurated with the
avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and forever
put an end to the slavery agitation. It was again and again declared that
under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would
be forever rid of this whole question. Yet under the operation of that
policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly
augmented. And this too, although, from the day of its introduction, its
friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly
insisted, down to the time that the Lecompton Bill was introduced, that it
was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove the
question forever from the politics of the country. Can you call to mind
any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
down to the time of the Lecompton Bill, in which it was not predicted that
the slavery agitation was just at an end, that "the abolition excitement
was played out," "the Kansas question was dead," "they have made the most
they can out of this question and it is now forever settled"? But since
the Lecompton Bill no Democrat, within my experience, has ever pretended
that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped. They themselves do
not pretend, now, that the agitation of this subject has come to an end
yet.
The truth is that this question is one of national importance, and we
cannot help dealing with it; we must do something about it, whether
we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid
considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating.
It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and closely as the
natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important that
this matter should be taken up in earnest, and really settled: And one way
to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand its true
magnitude.
There have been many efforts made to settle it. Again and again it has
been fondly hoped that it was settled; but every time it breaks out
afresh, and more violently than ever. It was settled, our fathers
hoped, by the Missouri Compromise, but it did not stay settled. Then the
compromises of 1850 were declared to be a full and final settlement of
the question. The two great parties, each in national convention, adopted
resolutions declaring that the settlement made by the Compromise of 1850
was a finality that it would last forever. Yet how long before it was
unsettled again? It broke out again in 1854, and blazed higher and raged
more furiously than ever before, and the agitation has not rested since.
These repeated settlements must have some faults about them. There must
be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose to which they were
designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault, that inadequacy,
is, but we may perhaps profit by past experiences.
I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best
and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question.
They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores--plasters
too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have
proved temporary--so evanescent.
Look at the magnitude of this subject: One sixth of our population, in
round numbers--not quite one sixth, and yet more than a seventh,--about
one sixth of the whole population of the United States are slaves. The
owners of these slaves consider them property. The effect upon the minds
of the owners is that of property, and nothing else it induces them to
insist upon all that will favorably affect its value as property, to
demand laws and institutions and a public policy that shall increase and
secure its value, and make it durable, lasting, and universal. The effect
on the minds of the owners is to persuade them that there is no wrong
in it. The slaveholder does not like to be considered a mean fellow for
holding that species of property, and hence, he has to struggle within
himself and sets about arguing himself into the belief that slavery is
right. The property influences his mind. The dissenting minister who
argued some theological point with one of the established church was
always met with the reply, "I can't see it so." He opened a Bible and
pointed him a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, "I can't see
it so." Then he showed him a single word--"Can you see that?" "Yes, I see
it," was the reply. The dissenter laid a guinea over the word and asked,
"Do you see it now?" So here. Whether the owners of this species of
property do really see it as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they
do, they see it as it is through two thousand millions of dollars, and
that is a pretty thick coating. Certain it is that they do not see it
as we see it. Certain it is that this two thousand millions of dollars,
invested in this species of property, all so concentrated that the mind
can grasp it at once--this immense pecuniary interest--has its influence
upon their minds.
But here in Connecticut and at the North slavery does not exist, and we
see it through no such medium.
To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men,
not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in
the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say we
think, most of us, that this charter of freedom applies to the slaves as
well as to ourselves; that the class of arguments put forward to batter
down that idea are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free
government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of
free society. We think slavery a great moral wrong, and, while we do not
claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a
wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that
a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God
that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will
properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white
men--in short, we think slavery a great moral, social, and political
evil, tolerable only because, and so far as, its actual existence makes it
necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that it ought to be treated as a
wrong.
Now these two ideas, the property idea that slavery is right, and the
idea that it is wrong, come into collision, and do actually produce that
irrepressible conflict which Mr. Seward has been so roundly abused for
mentioning. The two ideas conflict, and must conflict.
Again, in its political aspect, does anything in any way endanger the
perpetuity of this Union but that single thing, slavery? Many of our
adversaries are anxious to claim that they are specially devoted to the
Union, and take pains to charge upon us hostility to the Union. Now we
claim that we are the only true Union men, and we put to them this one
proposition: Whatever endangers this Union, save and except slavery? Did
any other thing ever cause a moment's fear? All men must agree that this
thing alone has ever endangered the perpetuity of the Union. But if it
was threatened by any other influence, would not all men say that the
best thing that could be done, if we could not or ought not to destroy it,
would be at least to keep it from growing any larger? Can any man believe,
that the way to save the Union is to extend and increase the only thing
that threatens the Union, and to suffer it to grow bigger and bigger?