The benefits of the Constitution of the United States, were the
restoration of credit and reputation, to the country--the revival of
commerce, navigation, and ship building--the acquisition of the
means of discharging the debts of the Revolution, and the protection
and encouragement of the infant and drooping manufactures of the
country. All this, however, as is now well ascertained, was
insufficient to propitiate the rulers of the Southern States to
the adoption of the Constitution. What they specially wanted was
_protection_. Protection from the powerful and savage tribes of
Indians within their borders, and who were harassing them with the
most terrible of wars--and protection from their own
negroes--protection from their insurrections--protection from their
escape--protection even to the trade by which they were brought into
this country--protection, shall I not blush to say, protection to
the very bondage by which they were held. Yes! it cannot be
denied--the slaveholding lords of the South prescribed, as a
condition of their assent to the Constitution, three special
provisions to secure the perpetuity of their dominion over their
slaves. The first was the immunity for twenty years of preserving
the African slave-trade; the second was the stipulation to surrender
fugitive slaves--an engagement positively prohibited by the laws of
God, delivered from Sinai; and thirdly, the exaction, fatal to the
principles of popular representation, of a representation for
slaves--for articles of merchandise, under the name of persons.
In outward show, it is a representation of persons in bondage; in
fact, it is a representation of their masters,--the oppressor
representing the oppressed.--Is it in the compass of human
imagination to devise a more perfect exemplification of the art of
committing the lamb to the tender custody of the wolf?--The
representative is thus constituted, not the friend, agent and trustee
of the person whom he represents, but the most inveterate of his foes.
To call government thus constituted a democracy, is to insult the
understanding of mankind. It is doubly tainted with the infection of
riches and of slavery. _There is no name in the language of national
jurisprudence that can define it_--no model in the records of
ancient history, or in the political theories of Aristotle, with
which it can be likened. Here is one class of men, consisting of not
more than one-fortieth part of the whole people, not more than
one-thirtieth part of the free population, exclusively devoted to
their personal interests identified with their own as slaveholders
of the same associated wealth, and wielding by their votes, upon
every question of government or of public policy, two-fifths of the
whole power of the House. In the Senate of the Union, the proportion
of the slaveholding power is yet greater. Its operation upon the
government of the nation is, to establish an artificial majority in
the slave representation over that of the free people, in the
American Congress, and thereby to make the PRESERVATION, PROPAGATION,
AND PERPETUATION OF SLAVERY THE VITAL AND ANIMATING SPIRIT OF THE
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.--The result is seen in the fact that, at this
day, the President of the United States, the President of the Senate,
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and five out of nine of
the Judges of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the United States, are
not only citizens of slaveholding States, but individual slaveholders
themselves. So are, and constantly have been, with scarcely an
exception, all the members of both Houses of Congress from the
slaveholding States; and so are, in immensely disproportionate
numbers, the commanding officers of the army and navy; the officers
of the customs; the registers and receivers of the land offices, and
the post-masters throughout the slaveholding States.
Fellow-citizens,--with a body of men thus composed, for legislators
and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been
your legislation? The numbers of freemen constituting your nation
are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free.
You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union.
Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the
Government ought to be in the proportion of three to two. But how
stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence
exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers,
here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a
representation, nominally of persons, but really of property,
ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing
your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of supplementary
power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the compact,
CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AND
HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and
oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.
In the Articles of Confederation, there was no guaranty for the
property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him in the
Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the
recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came
to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and
Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should
be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation
could purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the
North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the
Constitution of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert
the first principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority
shall rule the land. By means of the double representation, the
minority command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW
AND PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY.