ernment; that from the very foundation of the Government each State made such laws regarding the entry and stay of foreigners as its local policy required; that New York and Pennsylvania had established health laws to prevent the importation of diseased men; that Massachusetts had forbidden the entry of felons and paupers of Europe; and that by exactly the same right South Carolina had stopped the importation of free negroes. When New York quarantined ships from South Carolina, and made it felony for a citizen of Charleston to leave the quarantine ground, nobody protested. But when South Carolina confined a negro cook from New York to a particular spot in Charleston, the cry of unconstitutionality was heard. New York thought men from disease-infected regions dangerous to her safety; South Carolina thought free negroes fresh from the lectures of an abolition society equally menacing to her safety and welfare, and required them to live on a particular enclosure. Each was exercising the right which Nature and necessity sanctioned, and which South Carolina had no intention of relinquishing.* That the law could not be enforced without clashing with the Federal right to regulate commerce was admitted.

The defence were careful not to point out the fact that New York did not charge quarantined negro sailors with board, lodging, and fees, and sell them into slavery if they could not pay. Nevertheless, it was absolutely necessary for the State to enact the law in question; ex necessitate, it was a power South Carolina must and would use, and, "if a dissolution of the Union must be the alternative, they were ready to abide by the result." +

The Court decided that the act was unconstitutional, and went so far as to say that it was equivalent to a declaration of war on Great Britain. No little excitement followed the decision; but the seizure of negroes went on just the same, and before the close of the year another British ship was

These views are elaborately stated in The Argument of Benjamin Faneuil Hunt, in the case of the arrest of the Person claiming to be a British seaman, under the third section of the State Act of December, 1822, in relation to Negroes, etc., before the Hon. Judge Johnson, etc., Charleston, 1823.

See Judge Johnson's decision in Niles's Register, September 6, 1823.

1824.

SOUTH CAROLINA DEFENDS HER LAW.

203

boarded and four free blacks, subjects of Great Britain, were dragged by the sheriff from the deck. The master was put to heavy expense in securing the release of his men, and, on reaching Liverpool, complained to the president of His Majesty's Board of Trade.* Another protest, more vigorous than the first, now came from the British Minister, and Adams referred the law to Attorney-General Wirt for an opinion. Wirt pronounced it a violation of the treaty, a regulation of trade by a State, and therefore unconstitutional and void; and this opinion, together with the protest of the British Minister, was sent by Adams to the Governor of South Carolina, who transmitted them to the Legislature when it met.t

Each branch passed resolutions which the other would not accept. Those from the Senate declared that it was the duty of the State to guard against insurrections among its colored population, and to regulate any cause which might produce it; that "this duty is paramount to all laws, all treaties, all constitutions"; that it arose from the law of selfpreservation, and would "never by this State be renounced, compromised, controlled, or participated with any power whatever"; that the Legislature" was aware of the dangerous and insidious conduct of a party in Great Britain and the United States, who were ever ready to indulge their benevolent propensities at the expense of their neighbors"; that South Carolina protested against the United States meddling with her slaves, which property she would "not permit to be meddled with or tampered with, or in any way ordered, regulated, or controlled by any other power, foreign or domestic, than this Legislature."

The House, having rejected these resolutions as too bitter, passed a milder set of its own, asserting that the law was not a commercial regulation, but part of a system of domestic policy, that it was absolutely necessary, and ought not to be repealed. These the Senate rejected, and, both branches

* His letter dated January, 1824, is in Niles's Register, December 25, 1824. The documents and the message are in Niles's Register, December 25,

1824.

The resolutions passed the Senate 36 to 6, and were rejected by the House 97 to 17.-Niles's Register, December 25, 1824; January 8, 1825.

having refused to repeal the act of 1822, it remained on the statute-book at the opening of the civil war.

The South Carolina act and the unseemly dispute that arose from its enforcement deeply impressed the people everywhere, and went far to strengthen the belief that the solution of the negro problem lay in the removal of the free blacks to Africa. Indeed, the matter was serious enough to call out expressions of opinion from States both slave and free. Georgia proposed an amendment to the Federal Constitution, declaring that no part of it should be construed to authorize the importation or ingress of persons of color into any one of the United States contrary to the laws of such State.* The General Assembly of Ohio declared that a system of colonization might be adopted which would, in due time, effect the emancipation of all slaves without violating the rights of individuals, and recommended the passage of an act by Congress providing that the children of persons then held as slaves born after the passage of the law should be free when twentyone years old, provided they would consent to be transported to some place of colonization.t Delaware declared that it was requisite for the prosperity of the country, and, what was of far more importance, essential to its safety, that measures should be taken for the removal of all free negroes and mulattoes from the United States. New Jersey pronounced the existence of slavery in the United States a great national evil, declared that the people of New Jersey and of her sister States ought to share in the burden of removing it, and advocated the colonization of free negroes as a reasonable way of securing emancipation. New Jersey believed that colonization would be conducive of emancipation, and would furnish an asylum for free blacks without any violation of the "national compact" or infringement of the rights of individuals. South Carolina, Mississippi, and Missouri approved the amendment proposed by Georgia. Illinois indorsed the suggestion of Ohio. The lower branch of the

* Passed by Georgia, December 22, 1823. Presented to the House of Representatives of Congress, February 6, 1824.

Passed January 17, 1824.

1824.

GEORGIA ON STATE RIGHTS.

205

Legislature of Georgia, led on by the excitable Governor Troup, seemed for a time quite ready for civil war.

The Governor had been aroused by the action of Senator King, of New York, who, inspired by the sentiment of the hour, moved that when the national debt had been paid to the last cent the public lands with the net proceeds of their sales should constitute a fund to be used in aiding the emancipation of slaves and the removal of free negroes to Africa. A motion of like import had been laid before the House of Representatives by a member from Virginia, who proposed that a part of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains should be reserved for the colonization of free people of color. But, passing this by, Troup selected the motion of Mr. King and a supposed argument of Mr. Wirt, and made them the subject of special complaint to the Legislature. Since your meeting last year, said he, our feelings have again been outraged by officious and impertinent intermeddling with our domestic Besides the motion of Mr. King, it is understood that the Attorney-General, who may be supposed to speak the sentiments of the administration, has maintained doctrines before the Supreme Court which, if sanctioned by that tribunal, will make it easy for Congress by a short decree to abolish slavery without the cost of one dollar or the loss of one acre of public land. "Temporize," therefore, "no longer. Make known your resolution that this subject shall not be touched by them but at their peril," and while "it is not too late, stand forth and, having exhausted the argument, stand by your arms."

concerns.

The committee to whom his remarks were referred reported that in their opinion" the hour is come, or is rapidly approaching, when the States from Virginia to Georgia, from Missouri to Louisiana, must confederate, and as one man say to the Union: We will no longer submit our retained rights to the snivelling insinuations of bad men on the floor of Congress, our constitutional rights to the dark and strained constructions of designing men upon judicial benches; that we protest the doctrine and disclaim the principle of unlimited submission to the General Government; that we concur with the Governor in the sentiment that, having exhausted

the argument, we stand by our arms; and that, in support of this declaration, we pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."* Happily, the House took no action for the accomplishment of such a purpose.

The fears of Troup were wholly groundless. The district attorney had made no such argument as was attributed to him. The Supreme Court was not at all likely to be called on to attack slavery; Congress had not the most remote intention of exchanging public lands for slaves in order to set them free; nor did the motion of Mr. King call for such action till the national debt, then more than eighty-three million dollars, had been paid in full. Yet Troup's fears were very real, and were intensified a few months later by the action of the American Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color.

Encouraged by the rising popularity of its antislavery scheme and the hearty indorsement of its purpose by the Legislatures of six States, the society, early in 1827, applied to Congress for aid, and succeeded so well that a select committee reported that were it not that the session had almost ended and that the matter could not then be considered, it would have recommended a grant of money. This again excited the Georgia Legislature, and drew from it a strong remonstrance and a flat denial of the right of Congress to use the public funds for any such purpose. No one, the Legislature contended, can have the hardiness to assert that there is a word in the Constitution which expressly gives to Congress the power to make the appropriation in question; or that the exercise of it is necessary to give full effect to any power which is expressly granted; or that it comes under the flimsy covering of the words " provide for the common defence and general welfare." The establishment of an African colony on a barbarous and pestilential coast three thousand miles away, and the liberation of the slave population of the South are not essential to the common defence nor conducive of the

*The message of the Governor is printed in Niles's Register, June 11, 1825. The report of the committee is in the Register for June 25, 1825.

+ Executive Documents, Nineteenth Congress, Second Session, vol. iv, No. 64, January 25, 1827.