American History Studies* VII. SLAVERY-CONTINUED. FOUND it utterly impossible to handle the subject of slavery in a satisfactory manner in one article; and it must be confessed that two numbers even do hardly more than touch the abundance of interesting and valuable matter that lies at hand. In the last number we had just reached the moment when this question began to absorb a large part of the thought of the American people. This article begins with the struggle over the "Incendiary Publications" and the "Right of Petition," of which J. Q. Adams was the hero, and ends with the inauguration of Lincoln. The next number will deal with the Civil War and Reconstruction. J. Q. ADAMS writes, 1820: Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union, and it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul whether its total abolition is or is not practicable: if practicable by what means it may be effected, and if a choice of means be within the scope of the object, what means would accomplish it at the smallest cost of human suffering. A dissolution, at least temporary, of the Union, as now constituted, would be certainly necessary, and the dissolution must be upon a point involving the question of slavery, and no other. The Union might then be organized on the fundamental principle of emancipation. The object is vast in its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue, a life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed.-J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, vol. IV, p. 531. If slavery be the destined sword in the hand of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut in sunder the bonds of slavery itself. A dissolution of the Union for the cause of slavery would be followed by a servile war in the slave-holding States combined with a war between the two severed portions of the Union. It seems to me that its result must be the exterpation of slavery from this whole continent; and, calamitous and desolating as this course of events in its progress must be, so glorious would be its final issue, that as God shall judge me, I do not say that it is not to be desired. Never since human sentiments and human conduct were influenced by human speech was there a theme for eloquence like the free side of this question. . . Oh, if but one man could arise with a genius capable of communicating those eternal truths that belong to this question, to lay bare in all its nakedness that outrage upon the goodness of God, human slavery; now is the time and this is the occasion, upon which such a man would perform the duties of an angel upon earth. -Ibid, vol. V, p. 210. HAYNE speaks on the Panama mission in the United States senate, March, 1826, in these prophetic words: The question of slavery is one, in all its bearings of extreme delicacy; and concerning which I know of but a single wise and safe rule, either for the states in which it exists or for the Union. It must be considered and treated entirely as a domestic question. With respect to foreign nations, the language of the United States ought to be, that it concerns the peace of our own political family, and therefore we cannot permit it to be touched; and in respect to the slavehold.ng s ates, the only safe and constitutional ground on which they can stand is, that they will not permit it to be brought into question, either by their sister states or by the federal government. It is a matter for ourselves. To touch it at all, is to violate our most sacred rights-to put in jeopardy our dearest interests-the peace of our country-the safety of our families, our altars, and our firesides. On the slave question my opinion is this: I consider our rights in that species of property as not even open to discussion, either here or elsewhere; and in respect to our duties, (imposed by our situation,) we are not to be taught them by fanatics, religious, or political. To call into question our rights, is grossly to violate them; to attempt to instruct us on this subject is to insult us; to dare to assail our institutions, is wantonly to invade our peace. Let me solemnly declare, once for all, that the Southern States never will permit, and never can permit, any interference whatever in their domestic concerns; and that the very day on which the unhallowed attempt shall be made by the authorities of the federal government, we will consider ourselves as driven from the Union. Let the consequences be what they may, they never can be worse than such as must inevitably result from suffering a rash and ignorant interference with our domestic peace and tranquillity. But . . . I apprehend no such violation of our constitutional rights. I believe that this house is not disposed and that the great body of our intelligent and patriotic fellow-citizens in the other states have no inclination whatever to interfere with us. . . . If we are true to ourselves we shall have nothing to fear.-Benton. These studies are reprinted monthly and issued on the tenth of the month following issue of magazine. See advertisement. By 1831 the raising of slaves in the northern states for market had become a recognized industry, as may be seen from the following letters and speeches: HENRY CLAY, in an address before the Kentucky Colonization Society in 1829, said: It is believed that nowhere in the United States would slave labor be generally employed, if the proprietor was not tempted to raise slaves by the high price of the Southern market, which keeps it up in his own.-Ibid, p. 257. PROF. DEW, president of William and Mary college, in reviewing the debates in the Virginia constitutional convention, in 1831-2, said of the domestic slave trade: A full equivalent being thus left in the place of the slave, this immigration becomes an advantage to the State, and does not check the black population because it furnishes every inducement to the master to attend to the negroes, to encourage breeding, and to cause the greatest number possible to be raised. Virginia is in fact a negro-raising State for other States. -Goodell, p. 250. CHAS. F. MERCER, in the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829, said: The tables of the natural growth of the slave population demonstrate, when compared with the [actual] increase of its numbers in the Commonwealth for 20 yrs. past, that an annual revenue of not less than a million and a half of dollars is derived from the exportation of a part of this population.-Ibid, p. 250. MR. GHOLSON, in the Virginia legislature, January 18, 1831 [Claimed the right of] the owner of brood mares to their product, and of the owner of female slaves to their increase. The legal maxim of partus sequiter ventrem is coeval with the existence of the right of property itself, and is founded in wisdom and justice. It is on the justice and inviolability of this maxim that the master foregoes the services of a female slave-has her nursed and raises the helpless infant offspring. The value of the property justifies the expense; and I do not hesitate to say that in its increase consists much of our wealth.-Ibid, p. 257. Let us now see what views were held in regard to the printing and disseminating of abolition literature by 1835. The South Carolina legislature passed this resolve in 1835: Resolved, That the Legislature of South Carolina, having every confidence in the justice and friendship of the non-slaveholding States, announces her confident expectation, and she earnestly requests, that the Govern ment of these States will promptly and effectually suppress all those associations within their respective limits, purporting to be abolition societies. Cited in Goodell, p. 413. The North Carolina general assembly [1835]: Resolved, That our sister States are respectfully requested to enact penal laws, prohibiting the printing, within their respective limits, all such publications as may have a tendency to make our slaves discontented. Ibid, p. 413. The Alabama legislature [1836]: Resolved, That we call upon our sister States, and respectfully request them to enact such penal laws as will finally put an end to the malignant deeds of the abolitionists.-Ibid, p. 413. Virginia legislature [1836]: Resolved, That the non-slaveholding States of the Union are respectfully but earnestly requested promptly to adopt penal enactments or such other measures as will effectually suppress all associations within their respective limits purporting to be, or having the character of abolition societies.-Ibid, p. 417. On learning that the United States mails had been searched for "incendiary documents" at Charleston, South Carolina, on July 29, 1835, POSTMASTER-GENERAL AMOS KENDALL said: By no act or direction of mine, official or private. could I be induced to aid, knowingly, in giving circulation to papers of this description, directly or indirectly. We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former be permitted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to dis regard them. Entertaining these views I cannot sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken. Your justification must be looked for in the character of the papers detained and the circumstances by which you are surrounded.-Ibid, p. 416. PRESIDENT JACKSON, in his annual message, December, 1835, used these words in discussing the subject: I would therefore call the special attention of Congress to the subject, and respectfully suggest the propriety of passing such a law as will prohibit under severe penalties, the circulation, in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection. THE RIGHT OF PETITION. KING (Ala.): We were sent here to do the business of the public and not to set up arbitrary codes for the protection of our dignity, and then be left to determine what dignity means. I consider true senatorial dignity to consist in [A discussion on petitions is bound to be merely] a discussion upon the merits of slavery. Sir, on such a discussion every speech made by a Representative from the north of Mason and Dixon's line, in this House, will be an incendiary pamphlet and what will you do with them? . . . The newspapers report these speeches; every speech is circulated through your whole country; and how can you arrest it? . Well, sir, you begin with suppressing the right of petition; you must next suppress the right of speech in this House; for you must offer a resolution that every member who dares to express a sentiment of this kind shall be expelled, or that speeches shall not go forth to the public-shall not be circulated. What will be the consequence then? You suppress the right of petition; you suppress the freedom of speech; the freedom of the press, and the freedom of religion; for, in the minds of many worthy, honest, and honorable men, fanatics, if you please so to call them, this is a religious question . . . and however erroneous may be their conclusions, it is not for me, nor for this House, to judge them.-Ibid, vol. XIII, pp. 9-10. Calhoun was the great apostle of the south, and his words-the words of an honest man considers it as a compact between sovereign and independent States, formed for their mutual prosperity and security? He saw (said Mr. C.) in the question before us the fate of the South. It was a higher than the mere naked question of master and slave. It involved a great political institution, essential to the peace and existence of one-half of this Union. They were there inseparably united, beyond the possibility of separation. Experience had shown that the existing relation between them secured the peace and happiness of both. Each had improved; the inferior greatly; so much so, that it had attained a degree of civilization never before attained by the black race in any age or country. Under no other relation could they co-exist together. To destroy it was to involve a whole region in slaughter, carnage, and desolation; and, come what will, we must defend and preserve it. This agitation has produced one happy effect at least; it has compelled us of the South to look into the nature and character of this great institution, and to correct many false impressions that even we had entertained in relation to it. Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world.-Congressional Globe, rol. VI, pp. 29, 61-62. It is easy to see the end. By the necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we must become, finally, two peoples. It is impossible under the deadly hatred which must spring up between the two great sections, if the present causes are permitted to operate unchecked, that we should continue under the same political system. The conflicting elements would burst the Union asunder. . . . We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions. But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding States is an evil:-far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolitionism. [Discusses relations; then says:] But I take higher will usually give us the very clearest insight ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, into the thought of his section: On the right of rejecting abolition petitions, although, in his opinion, one of the clearest that can be imagined, we of the South were, unfortunately for the peace of the country, in a minority. So, also, on the question of the constitutional right of abolishing slavery in this District and the Territories, and also on every other particular question which has been attempted to be raised on constitutional grounds, as a barrier co our rights and security. What remains, then, short of taking our protection into our own hands, but to find some barrier in the general character and structure of our political system? and where can we find that but in the view of the Constitution, which where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good-a positive good.-Calhoun, Works, vol. II, pp. 629-30. The various "Gag" rules, or rules to prevent the reception and discussion of petitions in regard to slavery, were passed as follows: [Pinckney's of 5 26 1836. Adopted by 117 to 68 votes in House of Representatives]: "Resolved, That all petitions, memorials, resolutions, and propositions relating, in any way, or to any extent, whatever, to the subject of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid on the table, and no further action whatever shall be had thereon." Hawes', 1|18|'37: enacted by 115 to 47. Patton's, 12|21|'37: enacted by 122 to 74. Atherton's, 1|12|'38: enacted by 126 to 78. Johnson's, 128, '40: enacted by 114 to 108, and made a standing rule of the House till 1846.-Goodell, pp. 422-3. William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, as the leaders of the Abolitionists, speak in no uncertain tones, as the following extracts will show: W. L. Garrison in Faneuil Hall, 1843. Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell"-involving both parties in atrocious criminality, and should be immediately annulled. We cannot regard any man as a consistent abolitionist who, while holding to the popular construction of the Constitution, makes himself a party to that instrument, by taking any office under it requiring an oath, or voting for its support. Resolutions of Wendell Phillips. That the abolitionists of this country should make it one of the primary objects of their agitation, to dissolve the American Union; [and again] That secession from the present United States Government is the duty of every abolitionist; since no one can take office, or throw a vote for another to hold office, under the United States Constitution, without violating his antislavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the slaveholder in his sin. W. L. Garrison, in an address to the Friends of Freedom in the United States, undertook a fresh declaration of its principles-first, as regards slavery: That it ought to be immediately and forever abolished; and as regards the existing national compact, "That it is a covenant with death and an agreement. with hell," and that henceforth, therefore, until slavery be abolished the watchword shall be No UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS. Continued-To accomplish this sublime resolution the Society registers its sacred pledge to continue its agitation on the above lines.-Life and Writings of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. III, pp. 88, 90, 100. PLATFORMS. Buffalo platform of Free Soil Party of 8-9-1848. Resolved, That we . . . do plant ourselves upon the National Platform of Freedom, in opposition to the Sectional Platform of Slavery. Resolved, That slavery in the several States of this Union which recognize its existence, depends upon State laws alone, which cannot be repealed or modified by the Federal Government, and for which laws that Government is not responsible. We therefore propose no interference by Congress with slavery within the limits of any State. Resolved, That the entire history of that period [1784-7, etc.] clearly shows that it was the settled policy of the nation not to extend, nationalize, or encourage, but to limit, localize, and discourage slavery; and to this policy, which should never have been departed from, the Government ought to return. Resolved, That we accept the issue which the slave power has forced upon us, and to their demand for more slave States, and more slave Territory, our calm but final answer is, No more slave States, and no more slave Territory. Let the soil of our extensive domains be ever kept free. From 1845 to 1850 the great question in congress was in regard to the nature of the power of government in the territories. The following extracts suggest several views: If... that experiment [annexation of new soil] shall not prove successful, so as to disprove the asserted possibility of the co-existence of the two races and two colors, side by side, on the same soil, in a relation of freedom and equality of rights, how can any of the friends of either desire to keep them forcibly pent up within the States when every day is tending faster and faster to ferment the discordant elements into a result which threatens to be the dissolution of bothinstead of opening this safety valve by which the noxious vapor may pass off harmlessly and insensibly? Crowd then your population into the Southern States as you may, rapidly and without fear. Texas will open before it as an outlet, and slavery, retiring from the Middle and Southern States of the present confederacy, will find for a time a resting-place there. But only for a time. For the irresistable law of population which decrees that in a densely peopled region slavery shall cease to exist, will emancipate Texas in her turn, and the negro will then pass to a land of political freedom and social dignity under a genial sky. He will pass without convulsion and leaving no domestic ruin in his path. As his labor becomes less and less valuable, emancipation, a gradual, progressive, at last universal, will pass him over the southern border to his own appropriate home in Mexico and the States beyond.Democratic Review, vol. XXIII, p. 106, 1848. RHETT (S. C.): The Court declares that the territories belong to the United States. They are tenants in common, or joint proprietors and co-sovereigns over them. As co-sov. ereigns they have agreed in their common compact, the Constitution, that their agent, the General Government, "may dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations" with regard to them. but beyond this, they are not limited or limitable in their rights. Thus sovereignty, unalienated and unimpaired by this mutual concession to each other, exists in all its plenitude over our territories; as much so as within the limits of the States themselves. Yet there can be no conflict, for none of the States can make any "rules and regulations" separately within the territories, which may bring them in conflict. The "rules and regulations" prevailing will be made by all and obligatory on all, through their common agency, the government of the United States. The only effect and probably the only object of their reserved sovereignty is that it secures to each State the right to enter the territories with her citizens and settle and occupy them with their property with whatever is recognized as property by each State. The ingress of the citizen is the ingress of his sovereign, who is bound to protect him in his settlement. . . . He is not responsible to any of the cosovereigns for the nature of his property.-Globe, 29th Congress, Second Session, App., p. 246. SENATOR BUTLER (S. C.): His advice to his constituents would be, to go to these new territories with arms in their hands; to go as armed communities, and take possession of the lands which they had helped to acquire, and see who would attempt to dispossess them. So help him God he would so advise his constituents to take with them their property there and settle at all hazards.-Globe, 30th Congress, First Session, p. 1060. CALHOUN (S. C.): The separation of the North and South is completed. The South has now a most solemn obligation to perform-to herself-to the Constitution-to the Union. She is bound to come to a decision not to permit this to go on any further but to show that, dearly as she prizes the Union, there are questions which she regards as of greater importance than the Union.-Ibid, p. 1074. WEBSTER (Mass.): We certainly do not prevent them [Southern men] from going into these territories with what is in general law called property: But these States have by their local laws created a property in persons, and they cannot carry these local laws with them. No man can be held as a slave, except the local law shall accompany him.-Ibid, p. 1078. DICKINSON (N. Y.): That no conditions can be constitutionally imposed upon any territorial acquisition, inconsistent with the right of the people thereof to form a free, sovereign State, with the powers and privileges of the original members of the Confederacy, I deem too obvious for serious argument. Whatever laws Congress may constitutionally enact for the regulation of the territories of the United States are subject to be altered or repealed at pleasure. . . . Every State admitted to the Union from the moment of its admission, enjoys all the rights of sovereignty common to every other member of the Confederacy. . . . If any State is prohibited from .. [any of or] all the rights of every other then it is not a sovereign State. Every State after its admission, may, in virtue of its own sovereign power, establish or abolish this institution [slavery] whatever may have been the conditions imposed, or attempted to be imposed, upon it during its territorial existence. Whatever power may or may not rest in Congress under the Constitution, that instrument could not take from the people of territories the right to prescribe their own domestic policy; nor has it attempted any such office. The republican theory teaches that sovereignty resides with the people of a State, and not with its political organization. . . . If sovereignty resides with the people and not with the organization, it rests as well with the people of a Territory, in all that concerns their internal condition as with the people of an organized State. . . . And if in this respect a form of government is proposed to them by the Federal Government, and adopted or acquiesced in by them, they may afterwards alter or abolish it at pleasure. Although the government of a Territory has not the same sovereign power as the government of a State in its political relations, the people of a Territory have, in all that appertains to their internal condition, the same sovereign rights as the people of a State.-Ibid, p. 88. CALHOUN (S. C.): The assumption [that the sovereignty resides in the inhabitants of the territories] is utterly unfounded, unconstitutional, without example, and contrary to the entire practice of the government from its commencement to the present time.-Globe, 31st Congress, First Session, p. 4514. Compromise of 1850. CLAY (Ky.): It would not be possible to get twenty votes in the Senate, or a proportional vote in the House, Clay said, in favor of the recognition of slavery south of 36 degrees 30 minutes. "It is impossible. All that you can getall that you can expect to get-all that was proposed at the last session-is action north of that line, and nonaction as regards slavery south of that line. . . It is better for the South, that there should be non-action as to slavery both north and south of the line-far better that there should be non-action both sides of the line, than that there should be action by the interdiction on the one side, without action for the admission upon the other side of the line."-Globe, vol. XXII, pt. I, p. 125. WEBSTER (Mass.): There is not at this moment, within the United States, or any territory of the United States, a single foot of land, the character of which in regard to its being free-soil territory or slave territory is not fixed by some law, and some irrepealable law beyond the power of the action of this government. What, then, have been the causes which have created so new a feeling in favor of slavery in the South-which have changed the whole nomenclature of the South on |