expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, but in all things besides these
rights were guarded by the limitation of the powers granted and by express
reservation of all powers not granted in the compact of union. Thus the
great power of taxation was limited to purposes of common defense and
general welfare, excluding objects appertaining to the local legislation of
the several States; and those purposes of general welfare and common
defense were afterwards defined by specific enumeration as being matters
only of co-relation between the States themselves or between them and
foreign governments, which, because of their common and general nature,
could not be left to the separate control of each State.
Of the circumstances of local condition, interest, and rights in which a
portion of the States, constituting one great section of the Union,
differed from the rest and from another section, the most important was the
peculiarity of a larger relative colored population in the Southern than in
the Northern States.
A population of this class, held in subjection, existed in nearly all the
States, but was more numerous and of more serious concernment in the South
than in the North on account of natural differences of climate and
production; and it was foreseen that, for the same reasons, while this
population would diminish and sooner or later cease to exist in some
States, it might increase in others. The peculiar character and magnitude
of this question of local rights, not in material relations only, but still
more in social ones, caused it to enter into the special stipulations of
the Constitution.
Hence, while the General Government, as well by the enumerated powers
granted to it as by those not enumerated, and therefore refused to it, was
forbidden to touch this matter in the sense of attack or offense, it was
placed under the general safeguard of the Union in the sense of defense
against either invasion or domestic violence, like all other local
interests of the several States. Each State expressly stipulated, as well
for itself as for each and all of its citizens, and every citizen of each
State became solemnly bound by his allegiance to the Constitution that any
person held to service or labor in one State, escaping into another, should
not, in consequence of any law or regulation thereof, be discharged from
such service or labor, but should be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor might be due by the laws of his State.
Thus and thus only, by the reciprocal guaranty of all the rights of every
State against interference on the part of another, was the present form of
government established by our fathers and transmitted to us, and by no
other means is it possible for it to exist. If one State ceases to respect
the rights of another and obtrusively intermeddles with its local
interests; if a portion of the States assume to impose their institutions
on the others or refuse to fulfill their obligations to them, we are no
longer united, friendly States, but distracted, hostile ones, with little
capacity left of common advantage, but abundant means of reciprocal injury
and mischief. Practically it is immaterial whether aggressive interference
between the States or deliberate refusal on the part of any one of them to
comply with constitutional obligations arise from erroneous conviction or
blind prejudice, whether it be perpetrated by direction or indirection. In
either case it is full of threat and of danger to the durability of the
Union.
Placed in the office of Chief Magistrate as the executive agent of the
whole country, bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and
specially enjoined by the Constitution to give information to Congress on
the state of the Union, it would be palpable neglect of duty on my part to
pass over a subject like this, which beyond all things at the present time
vitally concerns individual and public security.
It has been matter of painful regret to see States conspicuous for their
services in rounding this Republic and equally sharing its advantages
disregard their constitutional obligations to it. Although conscious of
their inability to heal admitted and palpable social evils of their own,
and which are completely within their jurisdiction, they engage in the
offensive and hopeless undertaking of reforming the domestic institutions
of other States, wholly beyond their control and authority. In the vain
pursuit of ends by them entirely unattainable, and which they may not
legally attempt to compass, they peril the very existence of the
Constitution and all the countless benefits which it has conferred. While
the people of the Southern States confine their attention to their own
affairs, not presuming officiously to intermeddle with the social
institutions of the Northern States, too many of the inhabitants of the
latter are permanently organized in associations to inflict injury on the
former by wrongful acts, which would be cause of war as between foreign
powers and only fail to be such in our system because perpetrated under
cover of the Union.
Is it possible to present this subject as truth and the occasion require
without noticing the reiterated but groundless allegation that the South
has persistently asserted claims and obtained advantages in the practical
administration of the General Government to the prejudice of the North, and
in which the latter has acquiesced? That is, the States which either
promote or tolerate attacks on the rights of persons and of property in
other States, to disguise their own injustice, pretend or imagine, and
constantly aver, that they, whose constitutional rights are thus
systematically assailed, are themselves the aggressors. At the present time
this imputed aggression, resting, as it does, only in the vague declamatory
charges of political agitators, resolves itself into misapprehension, or
misinterpretation, of the principles and facts of the political
organization of the new Territories of the United States.
What is the voice of history? When the ordinance which provided for the
government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio and for its
eventual subdivision into new States was adopted in the Congress of the
Confederation, it is not to be supposed that the question of future
relative power as between the States which retained and those which did not
retain a numerous colored population escaped notice or failed to be
considered. And yet the concession of that vast territory to the interests
and opinions of the Northern States, a territory now the seat of five among
the largest members of the Union, was in great measure the act of the State
of Virginia and of the South.
When Louisiana was acquired by the United States, it was an acquisition not
less to the North than to the South; for while it was important to the
country at the mouth of the river Mississippi to become the emporium of the
country above it, so also it was even more important to the whole Union to
have that emporium; and although the new province, by reason of its
imperfect settlement, was mainly regarded as on the Gulf of Mexico, yet in
fact it extended to the opposite boundaries of the United States, with far
greater breadth above than below, and was in territory, as in everything
else, equally at least an accession to the Northern States. It is mere
delusion and prejudice, therefore, to speak of Louisiana as acquisition in
the special interest of the South.
The patriotic and just men who participated in the act were influenced by
motives far above all sectional jealousies. It was in truth the great event
which, by completing for us the possession of the Valley of the
Mississippi, with commercial access to the Gulf of Mexico, imparted unity
and strength to the whole Confederation and attached together by
indissoluble ties the East and the West, as well as the North and the
South.
As to Florida, that was but the transfer by Spain to the United States of
territory on the east side of the river Mississippi in exchange for large
territory which the United States transferred to Spain on the west side of
that river, as the entire diplomatic history of the transaction serves to
demonstrate. Moreover, it was an acquisition demanded by the commercial
interests and the security of the whole Union. In the meantime the people
of the United States had grown up to a proper consciousness of their
strength, and in a brief contest with France and in a second serious war
with Great Britain they had shaken off all which remained of undue
reverence for Europe, and emerged from the atmosphere of those
transatlantic influences which surrounded the infant Republic, and had
begun to turn their attention to the full and systematic development of the
internal resources of the Union.
Among the evanescent controversies of that period the most conspicuous was
the question of regulation by Congress of the social condition of the
future States to be rounded in the territory of Louisiana.
The ordinance for the government of the territory northwest of the river
Ohio had contained a provision which prohibited the use of servile labor
therein, subject to the condition of the extraditions of fugitives from
service due in any other part of the United States. Subsequently to the
adoption of the Constitution this provision ceased to remain as a law, for
its operation as such was absolutely superseded by the Constitution. But
the recollection of the fact excited the zeal of social propagandism in
some sections of the Confederation, and when a second State, that of
Missouri, came to be formed in the territory of Louisiana proposition was
made to extend to the latter territory the restriction originally applied
to the country situated between the rivers Ohio and Mississippi.
Most questionable as was this proposition in all its constitutional
relations, nevertheless it received the sanction of Congress, with some
slight modifications of line, to save the existing rights of the intended
new State. It was reluctantly acquiesced in by Southern States as a
sacrifice to the cause of peace and of the Union, not only of the rights
stipulated by the treaty of Louisiana, but of the principle of equality
among the States guaranteed by the Constitution. It was received by the
Northern States with angry and resentful condemnation and complaint,
because it did not concede all which they had exactingly demanded. Having
passed through the forms of legislation, it took its place in the statute
book, standing open to repeal, like any other act of doubtful
constitutionality, subject to be pronounced null and void by the courts of
law, and possessing no possible efficacy to control the rights of the
States which might thereafter be organized out of any part of the original
territory of Louisiana.
In all this, if any aggression there were, any innovation upon preexisting
rights, to which portion of the Union are they justly chargeable? This
controversy passed away with the occasion, nothing surviving it save the
dormant letter of the statute.
But long afterwards, when by the proposed accession of the Republic of
Texas the United States were to take their next step in territorial
greatness, a similar contingency occurred and became the occasion for
systematized attempts to intervene in the domestic affairs of one section
of the Union, in defiance of their rights as States and of the stipulations
of the Constitution. These attempts assumed a practical direction in the
shape of persevering endeavors by some of the Representatives in both
Houses of Congress to deprive the Southern States of the supposed benefit
of the provisions of the act authorizing the organization of the State of
Missouri.
But the good sense of the people and the vital force of the Constitution
triumphed over sectional prejudice and the political errors of the day, and
the State of Texas returned to the Union as she was, with social
institutions which her people had chosen for themselves and with express
agreement by the reannexing act that she should be susceptible of
subdivision into a plurality of States.
Whatever advantage the interests of the Southern States, as such, gained by
this were far inferior in results, as they unfolded in the progress of
time, to those which sprang from previous concessions made by the South.
To every thoughtful friend of the Union, to the true lovers of their
country, to all who longed and labored for the full success of this great
experiment of republican institutions, it was cause of gratulation that
such an opportunity had occurred to illustrate our advancing power on this
continent and to furnish to the world additional assurance of the strength
and stability of the Constitution. Who would wish to see Florida still a
European colony? Who would rejoice to hail Texas as a lone star instead of
one in the galaxy of States? Who does not appreciate the incalculable
benefits of the acquisition of Louisiana? And yet narrow views and
sectional purposes would inevitably have excluded them all from the Union.
But another struggle on the same point ensued when our victorious armies
returned from Mexico and it devolved on Congress to provide for the
territories acquired by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The great
relations of the subject had now become distinct and clear to the
perception of the public mind, which appreciated the evils of sectional
controversy upon the question of the admission of new States. In that
crisis intense solicitude pervaded the nation. But the patriotic impulses
of the popular heart, guided by the admonitory advice of the Father of his
Country, rose superior to all the difficulties of the incorporation of a
new empire into the Union. In the counsels of Congress there was manifested
extreme antagonism of opinion and action between some Representatives, who
sought by the abusive and unconstitutional employment of the legislative
powers of the Government to interfere in the condition of the inchoate
States and to impose their own social theories upon the latter, and other
Representatives, who repelled the interposition of the General Government
in this respect and maintained the self-constituting rights of the States.
In truth, the thing attempted was in form alone action of the General
Government, while in reality it was the endeavor, by abuse of legislative
power, to force the ideas of internal policy entertained in particular
States upon allied independent States. Once more the Constitution and the
Union triumphed signally. The new territories were organized without
restrictions on the disputed point, and were thus left to judge in that
particular for themselves; and the sense of constitutional faith proved
vigorous enough in Congress not only to accomplish this primary object, but
also the incidental and hardly less important one of so amending the
provisions of the statute for the extradition of fugitives from service as
to place that public duty under the safeguard of the General Government,
and thus relieve it from obstacles raised up by the legislation of some of
the States.
Vain declamation regarding the provisions of law for the extradition of
fugitives from service, with occasional episodes of frantic effort to
obstruct their execution by riot and murder, continued for a brief time to
agitate certain localities. But the true principle of leaving each State
and Territory to regulate its own laws of labor according to its own sense
of right and expediency had acquired fast hold of the public judgment, to
such a degree that by common consent it was observed in the organization of
the Territory of Washington. When, more recently, it became requisite to
organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, it was the natural and
legitimate, if not the inevitable, consequence of previous events and
legislation that the same great and sound principle which had already been
applied to Utah and New Mexico should be applied to them--that they should
stand exempt from the restrictions proposed in the act relative to the
State of Missouri.
These restrictions were, in the estimation of many thoughtful men, null
from the beginning, unauthorized by the Constitution, contrary to the
treaty stipulations for the cession of Louisiana, and inconsistent with the
equality of these States.
They had been stripped of all moral authority by persistent efforts to
procure their indirect repeal through contradictory enactments. They had
been practically abrogated by the legislation attending the organization of
Utah, New Mexico, and Washington. If any vitality remained in them it would
have been taken away, in effect, by the new Territorial acts in the form
originally proposed to the Senate at the first session of the last
Congress. It was manly and ingenuous, as well as patriotic and just, to do
this directly and plainly, and thus relieve the statute book of an act
which might be of possible future injury, but of no possible future
benefit; and the measure of its repeal was the final consummation and
complete recognition of the principle that no portion of the United States
shall undertake through assumption of the powers of the General Government
to dictate the social institutions of any other portion.
The scope and effect of the language of repeal were not left in doubt. It
was declared in terms to be "the true intent and meaning of this act not to
legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom,
but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of
the United States."
The measure could not be withstood upon its merits alone. It was attacked
with violence on the false or delusive pretext that it constituted a breach
of faith. Never was objection more utterly destitute of substantial
justification. When before was it imagined by sensible men that a
regulative or declarative statute, whether enacted ten or forty years ago,
is irrepealable; that an act of Congress is above the Constitution? If,
indeed, there were in the facts any cause to impute bad faith, it would
attach to those only who have never ceased, from the time of the enactment
of the restrictive provision to the present day, to denounce and condemn
it; who have constantly refused to complete it by needful supplementary
legislation; who have spared no exertion to deprive it of moral force; who
have themselves again and again attempted its repeal by the enactment of
incompatible provisions, and who, by the inevitable reactionary effect of
their own violence on the subject, awakened the country to perception of
the true constitutional principle of leaving the matter involved to the
discretion of the people of the respective existing or incipient States.
It is not pretended that this principle or any other precludes the
possibility of evils in practice, disturbed, as political action is liable
to be, by human passions. No form of government is exempt from
inconveniences; but in this case they are the result of the abuse, and not
of the legitimate exercise, of the powers reserved or conferred in the
organization of a Territory. They are not to be charged to the great
principle of popular sovereignty. On the contrary, they disappear before
the intelligence and patriotism of the people, exerting through the ballot
box their peaceful and silent but irresistible power.
If the friends of the Constitution are to have another struggle, its
enemies could not present a more acceptable issue than that of a State
whose constitution clearly embraces "a republican form of government" being
excluded from the Union because its domestic institutions may not in all
respects comport with the ideas of what is wise and expedient entertained
in some other State. Fresh from groundless imputations of breach of faith
against others, men will commence the agitation of this new question with
indubitable violation of an express compact between the independent
sovereign powers of the United States and of the Republic of Texas, as well
as of the older and equally solemn compacts which assure the equality of
all the States.
But deplorable as would be such a violation of compact in itself and in all
its direct consequences, that is the very least of the evils involved. When
sectional agitators shall have succeeded in forcing on this issue, can
their pretensions fail to be met by counter pretensions? Will not different
States be compelled, respectively, to meet extremes with extremes? And if
either extreme carry its point, what is that so far forth but dissolution
of the Union? If a new State, formed from the territory of the United
States, be absolutely excluded from admission therein, that fact of itself
constitutes the disruption of union between it and the other States. But
the process of dissolution could not stop there. Would not a sectional
decision producing such result by a majority of votes, either Northern or
Southern, of necessity drive out the oppressed and aggrieved minority and
place in presence of each other two irreconcilably hostile confederations?
It is necessary to speak thus plainly of projects the offspring of that
sectional agitation now prevailing in some of the States, which are as
impracticable as they are unconstitutional, and which if persevered in must
and will end calamitously. It is either disunion and civil war or it is
mere angry, idle, aimless disturbance of public peace and tranquillity.
Disunion for what? If the passionate rage of fanaticism and partisan spirit
did not force the fact upon our attention, it would be difficult to believe
that any considerable portion of the people of this enlightened country
could have so surrendered themselves to a fanatical devotion to the
supposed interests of the relatively few Africans in the United States as
totally to abandon and disregard the interests of the 25,000,000 Americans;
to trample under foot the injunctions of moral and constitutional
obligation, and to engage in plans of vindictive hostility against those
who are associated with them in the enjoyment of the common heritage of our
national institutions.
Nor is it hostility against their fellow-citizens of one section of the
Union alone. The interests, the honor, the duty, the peace, and the
prosperity of the people of all sections are equally involved and imperiled
in this question. And are patriotic men in any part of the Union prepared
on such issue thus madly to invite all the consequences of the forfeiture
of their constitutional engagements? It is impossible. The storm of frenzy
and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock
of the Constitution. I shall never doubt it. I know that the Union is
stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of
social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds
of visionary sophists and interested agitators. I rely confidently on the
patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, on
the wisdom of Congress, and, above all, on the continued gracious favor of
Almighty God to maintain against all enemies, whether at home or abroad,
the sanctity of the Constitution and the integrity of the Union.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin Pierce
December 2, 1856
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
The Constitution requires that the President shall from time to time not
only recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as he may
judge necessary and expedient, but also that he shall give information to
them of the state of the Union. To do this fully involves exposition of all
matters in the actual condition of the country, domestic or foreign, which
essentially concern the general welfare. While performing his
constitutional duty in this respect, the President does not speak merely to
express personal convictions, but as the executive minister of the
Government, enabled by his position and called upon by his official
obligations to scan with an impartial eye the interests of the whole and of
every part of the United States.