Showing posts with label James K Polk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James K Polk. Show all posts

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Congressman Albert G. Brown’s Speech in the House of Representatives, on Slavery, and on the action of the Administration in relation to California and New Mexico, January 30, 1850

GENTLEMEN say they deprecate discussion on the subject of slavery. My judgment approves it. We have gone too far to recede without an adjustment of our difficulties. Better far that this agitation should never have commenced. But when wrong has been perpetrated on one side and resented on the other, an adjustment in some form is indispensable. It is better so than to leave the thorn of discord thus planted, to rankle and fester, and finally to produce a never-healing sore. We need attempt no such useless task as that of disguising from ourselves, our constituents, and in truth the world at large, that ill blood has been engendered, that we are losing our mutual attachment, that we are daily becoming more and more estranged, that the fibres of the great cord which unites us as one people are giving way, and that we are fast verging to ultimate and final disruption. I hold no communion with the spurious patriotism which closes its eyes to the dangers which visit us, and with a loud voice, sing hosannas to the Union; such patriotism will not save the Union, it is destructive of the Union. Open wide your eyes and look these dangers full in the face, and with strong arms and stout hearts assault them, vanquish them, and on the field of your triumph erect an altar sacred to the cause of liberty, and on that altar offer as a willing sacrifice this accursed demon of discord. Do this, and we are safe; refuse, and these dangers will thicken, these misty elements will grow darker and blacker as days roll on. The storm which now lingers will burst, and the genius of dissolution will preside where the Union now is.

I am for discussion, for an interchange of sentiments. Let there be no wrangling about small grievances, but with an elevated patriotism—a patriotism high as our noble mountains, and broad as the Union itself—let us come to the consideration of the difficulties and dangers which beset us.

In all matters of dispute it is important to consider who committed the first wrong; until this is done, no satisfactory basis of an adjustment can be established.

The Union is divided in sentiment upon a great question, by a geographical line. The North is opposed to slavery, and the South is in favor of it. The North is for abolishing it, the South is for maintaining it. The North is for confining it within it in its present limits, where they fancy it will languish, and languishing, will die. The South is for leaving it unrestrained to go wherever (within our limits) it may be invited by soil, climate, and population. These issues and their necessary incidents have brought the two ends of the Union into their present perilous position—a position from which one or the other must recede, or a conflict, dangerous to liberty and fatal to the Union, will certainly ensue.

Who is at fault, or rather who was first in fault in this fraternal quarrel? We were the owners of slaves; we bought them from your fathers. We never sought to make slaveholders of you, nor to force slavery upon you. When you emancipated the remnant of your slaves, we did not interpose. Content to enjoy the fruits of our industry at home, within our own limits, we never sought to intrude upon your domestic quiet. Not so with you. For twenty years or more, you have not ceased to disturb our peace. We have appealed in vain to your forbearance. Not only have you disregarded these appeals, but every appeal has been followed by some new act of outrage and aggression. We have in vain pointed to our domicils, and begged that you would respect the feelings of their inmates. You have threatened them with conflagration. When we have pointed to our wives and our sleeping infants, and in their names besought your forbearance, you have spurned our entreaties and mocked the fears of these sacred pledges of our love. Long years of outrage upon our feelings and disregard of our rights have awakened in every southern heart a feeling of stern resistance. Think what you will, say what you will, perpetrate again and again if you will, these acts of lawless tyranny; the day and the hour is at hand when every southern son will rise in rebellion, when every tongue will say, Give us justice or give us death.

I repeat, we have never sought to disturb your quiet. We have forborne to retaliate your wrongs. Content to await a returning sense of justice, we have submitted. That sense of justice, we fear, never will return, and submission is no longer a virtue. We owe it to you, to ourselves, to our common country, to the friends of freedom throughout the world, to warn you that we intend to submit no longer.

Gentlemen tell us they do not believe the South is in earnest. They believe we will still submit. Let me warn them to put away that delusion. It is fatal to the cause of peace. If the North embrace it the Union is gone. It is treason to encourage a hope of submission. Tell the truth, speak out boldly, go home and tell your people the issue is made up; they must now choose between non-interference with southern rights on the one side, and a dissolution of the Union on the other. Tell them the South asks nothing from their bounty, but only asks their forbearance.

The specious arguments by which you cover up your unauthorized attempts to drive us from the territories may deceive the unwary, but an enlightened public sentiment will not fail to detect its fallacy, and posterity will award you the credit of destroying the Union in a lawless effort to seize the spoils of a victory won by other hearts and hands than yours. Territory now free must remain free, say you. Who gave you the right to speak thus oracularly? Is this an acquisition of your own, or is it a thing obtained by the joint effort of us all? I have been told that the United States acquired the territory from Mexico, and that the Congress, speaking for the United States, must dispose of it. Technically speaking, the United States did make the acquisition; but what is the United States? a mere agent for the states, holding for them certain political powers in trust, to be exercised for their mutual benefit, and among these is the power to declare war and make peace. In the exercise of these powers the territory was acquired, and for whom? Not certainly for the agent, but for the principal. Not for the United States, but the states.

Who fought the battles, who won the victories which resulted in the acquisition? The people of the United States? Certainly not. There is no such thing as the people of the United States. They can perform no act—have in fact no political existence. Do the people of the United States elect this Congress? No; we are elected by states—most of us by districts in states. The states elect senators, and the President is himself elected by state electoral colleges, and not by the people of the United States. There is no such political body as the people of the United States; they can do nothing, have done nothing, have in fact no existence. When the war with Mexico began, on whom did the President call? Not, certainly, on the people of the United States, but on the people of the states by states, and by states they responded, by states they made their contributions to the grand army; and whatever was acquired, was of necessity acquired for the states, each having an equal interest; and the United States, as agent, trustee, or general repository of the common fund, is bound to do equal and exact justice to all the parties interested.

The army was created and supported by thirty sovereignties allied together. These sovereignties acted through a common head for the common defence and general welfare of all. But it does not follow that such head may rightfully appropriate the award of the conflict to fifteen of the allies, leaving nothing to the remaining fifteen. Sovereigns are equal; there is no such thing as great or small sovereigns, or, to speak more correctly, sovereigns of great and small degree. They are equals, except when by conventional agreement that equality is destroyed. No such agreement has been made between the sovereigns composing our confederacy. Hence, Delaware is equal to New York, and the fifteen southern states are equal to the fifteen northern states. It follows that the fifteen sovereignties of the North cannot exclude the fifteen sovereignties of the South from an equal participation in, and control over, the joint acquisition or property of all. Nor can the common agent, the United States, hearken to the voice of the fifteen northern in preference to those of the fifteen southern allies. So long as one of the sovereigns in alliance protests against a common disposition of what belongs to all and to each one in an equal degree, no disposition can be rightfully made. The strong may take by force from the weak, but in such case power gives the right. The North may take from the South in this way, unless perchance it should turn out in the course of the conflict that the South is the stronger party, in which case it would be our right to take from you.

Without pursuing this course of reasoning, unprofitable as I feel it must be, I come at once to the conclusion, that we of Mississippi have the same right to go into the territories with our slave property as you of New York have to go there with your personal estate of whatever kind. And if you deny us this right, we will resist your authority, and to the last extremity. You affect to think us not in earnest in this declaration. Look at the attitude of the South; hear her voice as it comes up from her bench, her bar, her legislative halls, and, above all, from her people. Sir, there is not a hamlet in the South from which you will not hear the voice of stern resistance to your lawless mandate. Our men will write it on their shields, our women will teach little children to lisp it with their earliest breath. I invoke your forbearance on this question. Ask yourselves if it is right to exasperate eight millions of people upon an abstraction; a matter to us of substance and of life, but to you the merest shadow of an abstraction. Is it likely, let me ask, that the Union can survive the shock which must ensue if you drive eight millions of people to madness and desperation? Look, sir, to the position of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the glorious old state of South Carolina; listen to the warning voice of these, and all the Southern States, as they come to us upon every breeze that sweeps from the South, and tell me if we are not sporting above a volcano. Oh! gentlemen, pause, I beseech you, in this mad career. The South cannot, will not, DARE not submit to your demand. The consequences to her are terrible beyond description; to you forbearance would be a virtue—virtue adorned with love, truth, justice, and patriotism. To some men I can make no appeal. I appeal not to the gentleman from Ohio. He, like Peter the Hermit, feels himself under some religious obligation to lead on this crusade. I make no appeal to the putative father of the Wilmot proviso; like Ephraim, he is joined to his idols—I will let him alone. But to sound men, to patriotic and just men, I do make a solemn appeal that they array themselves on the side of the Constitution, and save the Union. When the fatal step is taken it will be too late to repent the folly of this hour. When the deed is done, and the fatal consequences have fallen upon us, it will be vain, idle, worse than folly to deprecate the evil councils which now prevail. Now, now is the time for good men to do their duty. Let those who desire to save the Constitution and the Union come out from among the wicked and array themselves on the side of justice. And here in this hall, erected by our fathers and dedicated to liberty and law, we will make new vows, enter into new covenants to stand together and fight the demon of discord until death shall summon us to another and better world.

You think that slavery is a great evil. Very well, think so; but keep your thoughts to yourselves. If it be an evil, it is our evil; if it be a curse, it is our curse. We are not seeking to force it upon you; we intend to keep it ourselves. If you do not wish to come in contact with this crying evil, stay where you are, it will never pursue you.

For myself, I regard slavery as a great moral, social, political, and religious blessing—a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master. This is my opinion. I do not seek to propagate it. It does not concern me whether you think so or not. I have seen more of slavery than you, know more about it; and my opinions are, I think, worth more than yours. Slavery, African slavery, was, as I religiously believe, planted in this country through the providence of God; and he, in his own good time, will take it away. Civilization dawned in Africa. The Christian religion was preached to the African race before its votaries carried it to other lands. Africa had the glad tidings of the Saviour long before his divine mission was revealed to us. And where is she now? Centuries have passed away, and all traces of Christianity, every vestige of civilization, have departed from that degraded and benighted land—a race of cannibals, roasting, eating men as we do swine and cattle. Resisting with fire and sword all efforts of Christian ministers to lift them from the deep degradation, they perseveringly worship idols and graven images, and run continually after false gods. Look at the condition of this people, and contrast it with the worst condition of the same race in this country, and tell me if the eye of fancy, in its utmost stretch, can measure the elevation at which the Southern slave stands above the African in his native jungle? And yet philanthropy, double distilled, extra refined philanthropy, bewails in piteous accents the fallen condition of the poor slave. The negro race in the South have been civilized; many of them evangelized. Some are pure Christians; all have been improved in their moral, social, and religious condition. And who shall undertake to say it was not within the providence of their Creator to transplant them to our soil for wise, beneficent, and holy purposes?

It is no part of my purpose to discuss this proposition. The subject, in this view of it, belongs rather to the pulpit than to the halls of legislation.

It may seem to those not familiar with the state of public sentiment North and South, and the dangerous issues to which it is conducting us, out of time and out of place for us to discuss the value of the Union. I am not afraid of the consequences of such a discussion. It is a discussion not to be coveted, but one which the times and tempers of men have forced upon us. It is useless to deny that the Union is in danger. To discuss its value is to ascertain its worth. When we shall have done this, we can better decide how great a sacrifice we can afford to make to secure its perpetuity.

We of the South have ever been the fast friends of the Union. We have been so from an earnest attachment to its founders, and from a feeling of elevated patriotism, a patriotism which rises above all grovelling thoughts, and entwines itself about our country, and our whole country. We have made, and are now making day by day, greater sacrifices to uphold and maintain the Union in all its purity and dignity, than all the other parts of the country. Drop for a moment the sacrifice of feeling; forget the galling insults you are habitually heaping upon us, and let us look to other sacrifices. We export annually, in rice, cotton, and tobacco, the peculiar products of our soil, more than seventy-five millions of dollars in value. Your whole national exports do but a little exceed one hundred and forty millions of dollars. These articles of southern export are the support of your immense carrying trade, and of all your flourishing and profitable commerce; and these do not include the sugar of Louisiana, Texas, and Florida, nor do I estimate the cotton, rice, and tobacco consumed in the United States. If all these were embraced, our exports could not fall short of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars. I need not add, that as a separate, independent confederacy we should have the heaviest agricultural export of any people on the face of the earth; and that our wealth would in a short time be commensurate with our immense exports, no reasonable man can doubt. In the Union, our exports become the common trading fund of the nation, and the profits go into the general coffers. We know all this; and more, we know how much we contribute to the support of the Government, and we know too how little we get back. It gives me no pleasure to discuss questions like this, but a solemn duty I will not forego, from any mawkish, sentimental devotion to the Union. It is right that we fully understand one another. You think the South is not in earnest. Now, this opinion is based upon one of two hypotheses, either that we are too much devoted to the Union to run the hazard of its dissolution by a manly vindication of our rights; or else that we are afraid to encounter the perils of a dissolution. That we have loved the Union is most true. That our affections entwine themselves about it, and are reluctant to give it up, is also true. But our affection is no ordinary plant. Nourish it, and it will grow in the poorest soil. Neglect it, or trample upon it, and it will perish in the richest fields. I will not recount the story of our wrongs. I but ask you, can such wrongs ever be the handmaids of love, of that mutual and earnest, devoted love, which stood godfather when the infant Union was baptized, and without whose fostering care it cannot, will not, must not survive? Throw an impartial eye over the history of the last twenty years, and answer me if there is anything there which challenges our devotion? Who does not know that time after time we have turned away in sorrow from your oppressions, and yet have come back clinging to the Union, and proclaiming that "with all her faults we loved her still." And you expect us to do so now again and again; you expect us to return, and, on bended knees, crave your forbearance. No, you do not; you cannot think so meanly of us. There is nothing in our past history which justifies the conclusion that we will thus abase ourselves. You know how much a high-toned people ought to bear; and you know full well that we have borne to the last extremity. You know that we ought not to submit any longer. There is not a man of lofty soul among you all, who in his secret heart does not feel that we ought not to submit. If you fancy that our devotion to the Union will keep us in the Union, you are mistaken. Our love for the Union ceases with the justice of the Union. We cannot love oppression, nor hug tyranny to our bosoms.

Have we any reason to fear a dissolution of the Union? Look at the question dispassionately, and answer to yourselves the important inquiry, Can anything be expected from the fears of the southern people? Do not deceive yourselves—look at things as they really are. For myself, I can say with a clear conscience, we do not fear it; we are not appalled at the prospect before us; we deprecate disunion, but we do not fear it; we know our position too well for that. Whilst you have been heaping outrage upon outrage, adding insult to insult, our people have been calmly calculating the value of the Union. The question has been considered in all its bearings, and our minds are made up. The point has been designated beyond which we will not submit. We will not, because submission beyond that point involves consequences to us more terrible than disunion. It involves the fearful consequences of sectional degradation. We have not been slow in manifesting our devotion to the Union. In all our national conflicts we have obeyed the dictates of duty, the behests of patriotism. Our money has gone freely. The lives of our people have been freely given up. Their blood has washed many a blot from the national escutcheon. We have loved the Union, and we love it yet; but not for this, or a thousand such Unions, will we suffer dishonor at your hands.

I tell you candidly, we have calculated the value of the Union. Your injustice has driven us to it. Your oppression justifies me to-day in discussing the value of the Union, and I do so freely and fearlessly. Your press, your people, and your pulpit, may denounce this as treason; be it so. You may sing hosannas to the Union—it is well. British lords called it treason in our fathers when they resisted British tyranny. British orators were eloquent in their eulogiums on the British crown[.] Our fathers felt the oppression, they saw the hand that aimed the blow, and they resolved to resist. The result is before the world. We will resist, and trust to God and our own stout hearts for the consequences.

The South afraid of dissolving the Union?—why should we fear? What is there to alarm us or awaken our apprehensions? Are we not able to maintain ourselves? Shall eight millions of freemen, with more than one hundred millions of annual exports, fear to take their position among the nations of the earth? With our cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco, products of a southern soil, yielding us annually more than a hundred millions of dollars, need we fear the frowns of the world? You tell us all the world is against us on the slavery question. We know more of this than you; fanaticism in the Old World, like fanaticism at home, assails our domestic relations, but we know how much British commerce and British labor depend for subsistence on our cotton, to feel at all startled by your threats of British power. Massachusetts looms will yield a smaller profit, and British looms will stop when you stop the supply of southern cotton. When the looms stop, labor will stop, ships will stop, commerce will stop, bread will stop. Build yourselves no castles in the air. Picture to your minds no such halcyon visions as that Great Britain will meddle with our slaves. She made an experiment in the West Indies in freeing negroes. It cost her one hundred millions of pounds sterling, and crippled her commerce to more than three times that amount, and now her emancipated blacks are relapsing into a state of barbarism. By the united verdict of every British statesman the experiment was a signal failure, injurious to the negro and detrimental to the kingdom. England will not interfere with southern slaves. Our cotton bags are our bonds of peace.

Have we anything to fear from you in the event of dissolution? A little gasconade, and sometimes a threat or two, altogether out of place on so grave an issue as this, are resorted to on your part. As to there being any conflict of arms growing out of a dissolution, I have not thought it at all probable. You complain of your association with slaves in the Union. We propose to take them out of the Union—to dissolve the unpleasant association. Will you seek a battle-field to renew, amid blood and carnage, this loathsome association? I take it for granted that you will not. But if you should, we point you to the record of the past, and warn you, by its blood-stained pages, that we shall be ready to meet you. When you leave your homes in New England, or in the great West, on this mission of love—this crusade against the South; when you come to take slavery to your bosoms, and to subdue eight millions of southern people, I warn you to make all things ready. Kiss your wives, bid your children a long farewell, make peace with your God; for I warn you that you may never return.

I repeat, we deprecate disunion. Devoted to the Constitution—reverencing the Union—holding in sacred remembrance the names, the deeds, and the glories of our common and illustrious ancestry—there is no ordinary ill to which we would not bow sooner than dissolve the political association of these states. If there was any point short of absolute ruin to ourselves and desolation to our country, at which these aggressive measures would certainly stop, we would say at once, go to that point and give us peace. But we know full well, that when all is obtained that you now ask, the cormorant appetite for power and plunder will not be satisfied. The tiger may be driven from his prey, but when once he dips his tongue in blood, he will not relinquish his victim without a struggle.

I warn gentlemen, if they persist in their present course of policy, that the sin of disunion is on their heads—not ours. If a man assaults me, and I strike in self-defence, I am no violator of the public peace. If one attacks me with such fury as to jeopardize my life, and I slay him in the conflict, I am no murderer. If you attempt to force upon us sectional desolation and—what to us is infinitely worse—sectional degradation, we will resist you; and if in the conflict of resistance the Union is dissolved, we are not responsible. If any man charges me with harboring sentiments of disunion, he is greatly mistaken. If he says that I prefer disunion to sectional and social degradation, he does me no more than justice.

Does any man desire to know at what time and for what cause I would dissolve the Union, I will tell him: At the first moment after you consummate your first act of aggression upon slave property, I would declare the Union dissolved; and for this reason: such an act, perpetrated after the warning we have given you, would evince a settled purpose to interpose your authority in the management of our domestic affairs, thug degrading us from our rightful position as equals to a state of dependence and subordination. Do not mistake me; I do not say that such an act would, per se, justify disunion; I do not say that our exclusion from the territories would alone justify it; I do not say that the destruction of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, nor even its abolition here, nor yet the prohibition of the slave trade among the states, would justify it. It may be, that not one, nor two, nor all of these combined would justify disunion. These are but the initiative steps—they lead you on to the mastery over us, and you shall not take these steps. The man must have studied the history of our revolt against the power of Britain to but little purpose who supposes that the throwing a few boxes of tea into the water in Boston harbor produced, or had any material influence in producing, the mighty conflict of arms which ensued. Does any man suppose that the stamp act and its kindred measures produced the revolution? They produced a solemn conviction on the minds of our fathers that Britain was determined to oppress and degrade the colonies. This conviction prepared a heroic people for resistance; and the otherwise trivial incident of throwing the tea overboard supplied the occasion for manifesting that state of public sentiment. I warn gentlemen by the history of these transactions, not to outrage the patience of a patriotic people, nor yet, like the British king and parliament, to spurn our entreaties, and turn a deaf ear to our prayers for justice.

Before the first fatal step is taken, remember that we have interests involved which we cannot relinquish; rights which it were better to die with than live without. The direct pecuniary interest involved in this issue is not less than twenty hundred millions of dollars, and yet the loss of this will be the least of the calamities which you are entailing upon us. Our country is to be made desolate. We are to be driven from our homes—the homes hallowed by all the sacred associations of family and friends. We are to be sent, like a people accursed of God, to wander through the land, homeless, houseless, and friendless; or, what is ten thousand times worse than these, than all, remain in a country now prosperous and happy, and see ourselves, our wives and children, degraded to a social position with the black race. These, these are the frightful, terrible consequences you would entail upon us. Picture to yourselves Hungary, resisting the powers of Austria and Russia; and if Hungary, which had never tasted liberty, could make such stout resistance, what may you not anticipate from eight millions of southrons made desperate by your aggression? I tell you, sir, sooner than submit we would dissolve a thousand such unions as this. Sooner than allow our slaves to become our masters, we would lay waste our country with fire and sword, and with our broken spears dig for ourselves honorable graves.

You tell us, sir, there is no intention of pushing us to extremities like these. I do not doubt the sincerity of gentlemen who make this avowal. If there was fixedness in their positions I would believe them, I would trust them. If members of Congress were to the political what stars are to the planetary system, I would take their solemn—and, I hope, sincere—declarations, and be satisfied. I should feel secure. But a few days, a brief space, and you will pass away, and your places will be filled by men more hostile than you, as you are more hostile than your predecessors, and the next who come after your successors will be more hostile than they. Look to the Senate—the conservative branch of the government. Already there are senators from the mighty states of New York and Ohio, who repudiate the Constitution. One [Mr. Chase, of Ohio] says the Constitution is a nullity as regards slavery, and another [Mr. Seward, of New York] declares that slavery can and will be abolished, and that you and he will do it. He tells us how this to be done. He, too, repudiates the constitutional obligation, and says that slavery rests for its security on public sentiment, and that public sentiment must and will destroy it. These are fearful declarations, coming from that quarter. They evince a settled purpose to pursue these aggressive movements to the last terrible extremity; and yet, sir, we are asked to fold our arms and listen to the syren song that all your ills will soon be o'er.

And now, Mr. Chairman, before the sands of my brief hour have quite run out, let me turn for a moment to the late recent and extraordinary movements in the territory of California,—movements fraught with incalculable mischief, and, if not arrested, destined to entail calamities the most terrible upon this country. I am told that the late administration is in some degree responsible for these movements. I know not if this be true. I hope it is not. Indeed, I have authority for saying it is not. Certainly no evidence has been advanced that the statement is true. But I care not who prompted the anomalous state of things now existing in California. At whatever time, and by whomsoever done, it has been without precedent, against the voice of the people's representatives, in derogation of the Constitution of the United States, and intended to rob the Southern States of their just and rightful possessions. Viewing the transaction in this light, and without stopping to inquire whose it was, I denounce it as unwise, unpatriotic, sectional in its tendencies, insulting to the South, and in the last degree despicable.

Twelve short months ago it was thought necessary to invoke the authority of Congress for the people of California to form a state constitution. The present Secretary of the Navy, then a member of this House, did, on the 7th day of February, 1849, introduce a bill for that purpose. The first section declared "that the Congress doth consent that a new state may be erected out of the territory ceded to the United States," &c. (See Congressional Globe, 2 Sess. 30 Con. p. 477.)

Whether the honorable Secretary, as a member of the cabinet, advised and consented to the late extraordinary proceedings in California, I pretend not to know. I do know that he bitterly inveighed against General Cass, in 1848, for a supposed intimation that the people of the territories might settle the slavery question for themselves, and chiefly on the ground that it was a monstrous outrage to allow aliens and foreigners to snatch from the South territory won by the valor of her troops. I know that he introduced the bill to which I have adverted, and urged its passage in a speech which was said to have given him his position in the cabinet. He certainly thought at that time, that the consent of Congress was necessary to the formation of a state government in California. The bill itself, to say nothing of the speech, assigned one pregnant reason for this thought, for by its second section it declared "that the foregoing consent is given upon the following reservations and conditions: First, that the United States hereby unconditionally reserves to the federal government all right of property in the public lands."

It was then thought a matter of some moment to reserve to the parties in interest, their right of property in the soil. But the progressive spirit of the President and cabinet has gone far beyond such idle whims, and "the introduction of California into the Union as a sovereign state is earnestly recommended," without reservation of any kind, save alone that her constitution shall conform to the Constitution of the United States. If any one here knows the secrets of the cabinet councils, he can best inform us whether Mr. Secretary Preston thought it worth his while to intimate to the President and his associates that the formation of an independent government in California would of necessity vest in such government the right of property in the soil, and that her incorporation into the Union without reservation, would be to surrender the right of eminent domain. It would disclose an interesting piece of cabinet history to ascertain whether so trivial a matter ever engrossed the thoughts of that most august body-the President and his constitutional advisers.

It is amusing to see with how much cunning the author of the late special message endeavors to divide the responsibility of this nefarious proceeding with the late administration. Several times in the message it is broadly hinted that President Polk took the initiative in this business. This may be so. I have seen no evidence of it, and do not believe it; but whether true or false, it does not render the transaction less odious or more worthy of support. The President himself seems to think it too much for one administration to bear, and, therefore, strives to divide its responsibility with his distinguished Democratic predecessor. I commend his discretion, more than his generosity. It is discreet in him to shake off as much of the odium of this thing as possible. If it had been a worthy action, I doubt if he would not have appropriated the honors of it entirely to himself.

The President sees, as well as you or I, that there is a fearful accountability ahead, and he cries out in time, "Polk was to blame—I only followed up what he began." I would to God he were as willing to carry out all of Polk's unfinished plans.

Is there nothing wrong, let me ask the friends of the President, in this thing of the Executive of his own volition, and upon his own responsibility—establishing a state government over the territory of the United States, and that too after Congress had been invoked and had refused her consent to the establishment of such a government? I have seen the time when if this thing had been done, the nation would have reverberated with the eloquent burst of patriotic indignation from gentlemen on the other side. General Jackson was charged with taking the responsibility, but he never assumed responsibility like this.

The manner of doing this thing is still more extraordinary than the thing itself. General Riley, a military commander, charged with the execution of certain necessary civil functions, is made the man of power in this business. That officer, on the 3d day of June, 1849, issued his proclamation, a paper at once novel and bold. His object is to make a new state, and he commences thus:

"Congress having failed at its recent session to provide a new government for this country, the undersigned would call attention to the means which he deems best," &c., &c.

Yes, sir, there it is. Congress having failed to give government to California, General Riley notifies the inhabitants that he has taken matters into his own hands; that he will give them a government, and that HE will authorize them to make a state for themselves. He does this, too, because Congress had refused.

I must do General Riley the justice to say he is not wholly an usurper in this business. He declares to the world in this same proclamation (a document by the way drawn up with acumen and legal precision), that the course indicated by him "is advised by the President and the Secretaries of State and of War," and he (General Riley) solemnly affirms that his acts are "fully authorized by law." I hope the General did not understand that Mr. Secretary Preston's bill was the law that "fully authorized" his acts. There might be a difficulty in sustaining the opinion on that basis, inasmuch as the bill did not pass Congress.

There are stranger things than these in this Riley proclamation "advised by the President, and Secretaries Clayton and Crawford." The General not only sets forth circumstantially what is to be done, but he designates the persons who are to do the things which he bids to be done. Hear him:

"Every free male citizen of the United States and of Upper California, 21 years of age, will be entitled to the right of suffrage. All citizens of Lower California who have been forced to come into this territory on account of having rendered assistance to the American troops during the recent war with Mexico, should also be allowed to vote in the district where they actually reside," &c.

Now, sir, I humbly ask who gave the President and his cabinet the right to "advise" this military commander by one sweeping proclamation to admit the "free male citizens of Upper California," and "ALL the citizens of Lower California," (then in the country, under certain circumstances,) to the right of voting? In so important a matter as forming a state constitution, which was to affect important interests within the territory, and still more important interests without the territory, it would have been at least respectful to his southern constituents, if the President had confined the voting to white people; but all free males of Upper California, and ALL from Lower California, whether bond or free, were fully authorized to vote. Shame, shame upon the man who, in the midst of our struggles for blood-bought rights, thus coolly submits them to the arbitrament of such a people.

I have been speaking of what the President expressly authorized. He, by his agent, General Riley, in terms, authorized these people of whom I have been speaking to vote. They did vote; they were voted for; some of them had seats in the so-called California Convention. But the gross wrong—the palpable outrage—did not stop here. We all know the President knows that everybody voted. The whole heterogeneous mass of Mexicans, and foreign adventurers, and interlopers voted; and yet, the President, without one word of comment or caution touching these strange events, calmly recommends the progeny of this strange convention to the favorable consideration of Congress. If I had not ceased to be amazed at the conduct of the present President of the United States, I should indeed wonder what singular infatuation had possessed the old man's brain when he made that recommendation. Can it be that he has not read the treaty with Mexico, or the laws of his own country on the subject of naturalizing foreigners, that he thus recommends the admission of a state into the Union, with a constitution formed mainly by persons who were strangers to our laws, and who, by our laws and by the treaty, were not citizens, and consequently had no right of suffrage? Look you, sir, to the treaty with Mexico. In its 8th article it is declared: "That Mexicans who shall prefer to remain in the territory may either retain the rights and title of Mexican citizens or acquire those of citizens of the United States." They shall make their election in one year after the treaty is ratified. "And those who shall remain in the territory after the expiration of that year without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have ELECTED to become citizens of the United States."

Mexicans remaining in the territory after twelve months "shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States;" but who shall make them citizens? This question is fully answered by the ninth article of this treaty. We have seen that Mexicans may acquire the rights of citizens of the United States, and that under certain circumstances they are deemed to have elected to become citizens, &c. Read the ninth article of the treaty: "Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States, and be ADMITTED at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States according to the principles of the Constitution."

Here we have it. They are "to be incorporated into the Union, and be admitted at the proper time, to be judged of by Congress, to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States." Where did the President get his authority to dispense with these articles, these solemn stipulations of the treaty? By what right does he extend to these people that dearest privilege of an American freeman, the right of suffrage? By what authority does he confer the power to hold office, to sit in a convention, and to trample under foot the rights of the southern people? The late Administration had something to do with making this treaty, and they provided that these people, at a proper time, to be judged of by Congress, should enjoy all these rights. Congress has not judged in the matter. Congress has done nothing. Congress has refused to act, and the President tells these people to vote, to accept office, to make a state constitution, to elect governors, secretaries, auditors, members of Congress, &c., &c. And when they have done as he bid them, he "earnestly recommends their acts to the favorable consideration of Congress." And this is the President who was going to act according to the laws and the Constitution, and abstain from all interference with the duties of Congress. O tempora! O mores!

[Here the hammer fell, and Mr. BROWN gave notice that he would append the unfinished remarks to his printed speech.]

The present President of the United States delights in doing in all things like Washington. In his annual message he alludes no less than three times, with evident self-complacency, to supposed similitudes between his acts and those of the illustrious Father of his Country.

In the earlier history of the republic, and in the time of Washington's presidency, a case bearing close resemblance to the one under discussion was presented for his consideration. How closely the second Washington copies the precedent of the first may be gathered from the history of the transaction. That history has been briefly sketched by a distinguished, eloquent, and aged friend of President Taylor. I read from a pamphlet by George Poindexter:

Shortly after the cession by North Carolina of the south-western territory, certain influential individuals, anxious to hasten the formation of an independent state government within the ceded territory, induced the inhabitants to call a convention and frame a state constitution, to which they gave the name of the State of Franklin. This proceeding met the unhesitating frowns and disapprobation of the Father of his Country—the illustrious Washington—who caused it to be instantly suppressed, and in lieu of this factitious state government, a territorial government was extended to the inhabitants by Congress, under which they lived and prospered for many years."

If the first President, the great, the good, the illustrious Washington, would not listen to the proposition of the Franklanders, citizens as they were of the United States, for admission into the Union, under the circumstances attending their application, I ask how the present President shall justify his proceeding, in first prompting the free male citizens of Upper California, all the people of Lower California, and in fact the interlopers and adventurers from all the nations of the earth, now upon our territory, to form a state constitution, and ask admission into our Union? And now when this constitution, the creation of such a conglomerate mass, is about to be presented, let the friends of the President justify, if they can, his "earnest recommendation that it may receive the favorable consideration of Congress."

Frankland was not admitted as a state, but a territorial government was given to the country under the name of Tennessee. As a territory these people again applied for admission, and again their application was rejected. I read from Poindexter's pamphlet the history of this second application:

"Subsequent to these transactions, the inhabitants of the south-western territory having increased, as it was believed, to a sufficient number to entitle them to become one of the states of the Union, the territorial legislature directed a census to be taken under the authority of an act passed by that body. This census having been so taken, exhibited a number of free inhabitants exceeding 60,000—being a greater number than was required by the ordinance of 1787 to admit them into the Union; and on the 28th of November, 1795, the governor being authorized thereto by law, issued his proclamation requiring the inhabitants of the several counties of the territory to choose persons to represent them in convention, for the purpose of forming a constitution or permanent form of government. This body so chosen, met in convention on the 11th January, 1796, and adopted a constitution, in which they declared the people of that part of said territory which was ceded by North Carolina, to be a free and independent state, by the name of the State of Tennessee. Without entering into minute details of all the proceedings which took place in relation to this constitution, it will be sufficient for my present purpose to refer to the Senate Journal of the first session of the fourth Congress, to which that constitution was submitted for the reception and approbation of Congress. In the report of the committee of the Senate, to whom this constitution was referred, it will be seen that this act of the territorial authorities was deemed premature and irregular; that the census ordered to be taken of the inhabitants was in many respects deficient in detail, and more especially that the enumeration of the inhabitants must, by the Constitution, be made by Congress; that this rule applied to the original states of the Union, and as their rights as members of the Union are affected by the admission of new states, the same principle which enjoins the census of their inhabitants to be taken under the authority of Congress, equally requires the enumeration of the inhabitants of any new state, laid out by Congress in like manner, should be made under their authority. This rule, the committee are of opinion, left Congress without discretion on this point. The committee therefore reported, that the inhabitants of that part of the territory south of Ohio, ceded by North Carolina, are not at this time entitled to be received as a new state into the Union. This example is drawn from the action of Congress during the administration of Washington, and will serve to show you, sir, the great caution with which, under the administration of that illustrious individual, the state was admitted into the Union."

In the purer and better days of the republic it was thought necessary to consult Congress as to the disposition to be made of the territory belonging to the United States, and our fathers thought it necessary to show a decent regard to the demands of the Constitution, in admitting new states into the Union. But in these latter days, when soldiers become statesmen, without study, and men intuitively understand the Constitution, the old-fashioned notions of Washington and his compatriots are treated with scorn, and we are given to understand that the soldier-President can make new states without the aid of Congress, and in defiance of the Constitution. Whether the people will submit to this highhanded proceeding I do not know; but for my single self I am prepared to say, that "live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish," I will oppose it "at all hazards and to the last extremity."

What, Mr. Chairman, is to be the effect of admitting California into the Union as a state? Independent, sir, of all the objections I have been pointing out, it will effectually unhinge that sectional balance which has so long and happily existed between the two ends of the Union, and at once give to the North that dangerous preponderance in the Senate, which ambitious polititions have so earnestly desired. The admission of one such state as California, opens the way for, and renders easy the admission of another. The President already prompts New Mexico to a like course. The two will reach out their hands to a third, and they to a fourth, fifth, and sixth. Thus precedent follows. precedent, with locomotive velocity and power, until the North has the two-thirds required to change the Constitution. WHEN THIS IS DONE THE CONSTITUTION WILL BE CHANGED. That public opinion, to which Senator SEWARD so significantly alludes, will be seen, and its power will be felt—universal emancipation will become your rallying cry. We see this. It is clearly set forth in all your movements. The sun at noonday is not more visible than is this startling danger. Its presence does arouse our fears and set our thoughts in motion. It comes with giant strides and under the auspices of a southern President, but we will meet it, and we will vanquish it. The time for action is almost come. It is well for us to arrange the order of battle. I have listened, and will again listen with patience and pleasure, to the plans of our southern friends. My own opinion is this: that we should resist the introduction of California as a state, and resist it successfully; resist it by our votes first, and lastly by other means. We can, at least, force an adjournment without her admission. This being done, we are safe. The Southern States, in convention at Nashville, will devise means for vindicating their rights. I do not know what these means will be, but I know what they may be, and with propriety and safety. They may be to carry slaves into all of southern California, as the property of sovereign states, and there hold them, as we have a right to do; and if molested, defend them, as is both our right and duty.

We ask you to give us our rights by NON-INTERVENTION; if you refuse, I am for taking them by ARMED OCCUPATION.

SOURCE: M. W. Cluskey, Editor, Speeches, Messages, and Other Writings of the Hon. Albert G. Brown, A Senator in Congress from the State of Mississippi, p. 162-76

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Gideon Welles to Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, January 28, 1850

HARTFORD, 28th January, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR—Your valuable favor of the 17th was duly received, and I am under obligations, not only for the kind manner in which my communication was received, but for the confidences and suggestions therein manifested.

The debate which took place on the 17th I read attentively, and particularly your able and well-timed remarks, when Mr. Clemens undertook to expel the whole of the democracy from the political church. It is about twenty years since Mr. Calhoun commenced his efforts to build up a sectional party, first on the tariff, and recently on another issue. There was an interval during the administration of Mr. Van Buren and the early part of John Tyler's, when he undoubtedly had expectation of rising by reinstating himself with the Democratic party, that then these sectional animosities were at rest. But the elevation of Mr. Polk extinguished his hopes, and has made him a sour and discontented man. He has no aspirations connected with the integrity of the Democratic party, and can have none. It is to be regretted that the South should embark so fully in his schemes, or lend themselves to his intrigues.

The indications are that you will have a somewhat stormy and boisterous session; but I have no doubt that the ultimate result will be for the permanent welfare of the whole country. There may be some changes of parties and men, for a time at least, but with right and principle the Constitution and the Union will triumph. You, with others who have, to a great extent, the custody of public measures, will so shape matters that the country will receive no detriment from the intrigues of the aspiring and restless, or the overheated zeal of the unreflecting and impulsive.

But I must not intrude on your time. We regret extreemly to hear of the illness of your son. Until the receipt of your letter I was not aware that he had returned. Mrs. Niles continues about the same. I presented your compliments to the Judge, who sensibly felt them, and spoke of your kind feelings, friendly relations, and your attention and devotion to your public duties.

I am in hopes to visit Washington some time during the session. Until then it will be a gratification if you can occasionally let me hear from you. With kind regards, in which Mrs. Welles unites, to yourself, and to your family when you write or see them, I am, dear sir,

Very truly yours,
GIDEON WELLES.

SOURCE: John R. Dickinson, Editor, Speeches, Correspondence, Etc., of the Late Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, Vol. 2, p. 421-2

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

John H. McHenry* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, February 21, 1850

HARTFORD, KY., 21st February, 1850.

MY DEAR SIR: Perhaps you may almost have forgotten the individual who now addresses you, and who retains a vivid recollection of the many meetings and pleasant greetings he had with you when he had the honor of being an humble member of the committee of which you were chairman in the 29th Con[gress].

At the risk however of being entirely forgotten I have concluded to drop you a line if it be only to ascertain the fact.

Since we separated you have been busily engaged in the Senate of the U[nited] S[tates] aiding in the councils of our Nation, while I have been mostly engaged in the practice of the law riding over hills and vallies, swamps and waters as duty or necessity might require. Last year I was elected a delegate and took a part, an humble part, in forming a new constitution for my own native state. Except this I have been wholly disengaged from politics. I have been looking with deep solicitude at the course of events since I left Congress and have seen nothing to change the opinion which I expressed to you in a conversation during the pending of the three million bill or just before I do not now recollect which, "that the Mexican War was gotten up by the abolition raving of the then Cabinet to get a large scope of territory to make free States out of and to surround the slave States entirely to get back what they were pleased to term the balance of power which they said they had lost by giving up half of Oregon,” and advised you if possible to put a stop to the war before the rank and file got into the secret for if you did not the devil himself could not do it, that even Giddings and Culver would come in if they found out what it was for. You told me that you and your immediate friends were doing your best but were powerless, but if I would only keep Garrett Davis from throwing in his d----d resolutions of warning, which were calculated though not intended to bind the party together, that you thought you could possibly do something. I have often thought of this conversation and wondered if you had any recollection of it. Things that have occurred since have indelibly impressed it upon my memory.

In looking about for the causes of the Mexican war, I believed those assigned by the particular friends of the president were some of them insufficient and some of them unfounded and therefore I looked round for some reason to satisfy my own mind, and could find none but that. I named it to several of my friends and colleagues but could find none to agree with me. I formed the opinion first from reading Morey's instructions for raising Stephensons regiment. I thought the intention was to settle that regiment on the southern border of whatever land we might acquire and thus form the nucleus for a settlement from the free states immediately on our southern border and thus prevent a settlement from the slave states, by slave holders at least, within the bounds of the newly acquired territory. Upon due consideration of all that has happened since that time do you not now think that I at least guessed well if I did not form a correct opinion? In my canvass for delegate last summer I had to encounter emancipation in all its forms and triumphed over it. The leading men in this country are with the south but they are also for the Union and do not look to disunion as a remedy for any evil. They will "fight for slavery but die by the Union." As to the boys up the hollows and in the brush who form a considerable portion of our country they are not to [be] relied on in any contest against the Union. In a contest about the Union they would be willing to have the motto of the first soldiers of the revolution "Liberty or death"—but in a contest about slavery they would be a good deal like one Barney Decker who was about to have a soldiers badge and motto made and when the lady who made the badge asked him if he would have the same motto hesitated and then replied "You may put ‘liberty or be crippled.’” I am afraid the boys will say "slavery or be crippled." For God's sake try and settle all these questions of slavery if possible and let us not dissolve the Union.

But if we have to write like Francis the 1st to his mother, "Madam all's lost but honor" let us do it with this and we will have the approval of our own conscience without which a man is nothing.

_______________

* A Representative in Congress from Kentucky, 1845-1847.

SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), p. 104-6

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Speech of Jefferson Davis, January 3, 1844

Speech of Jefferson Davis before the State Democratic Convention held in Jackson Mississippi January 3, 1844, for the purpose of sending delegates to the National Convention of the party and for the selection of presidential electors.*

(From The Mississippian, January 12, 1844.)

Mr. Davis remarked in substance—Though instructed by the delegation from Warren to cast the vote of our county, in this convention, for Mr. Van Buren, as the presidential candidate, I hope I will be excused for availing myself of the nomination of Mr. Calhoun, to express some of my opinions, as an individual, in relation to the comparative claims these gentlemen have upon us. I would here premise, that I wish nothing which I may say to be referred to a willingness to depreciate the high, just, and often-acknowledged claims of Mr. Van Buren; a democrat who long and severely tried, has never been found wanting—a democrat, than whom there is none I have more implicit confidence—none to whom I would more freely confide in times of difficulty, of danger, and of personal temptation, the safe keeping of the constitution; and in proof of the correctness of this opinion, I will refer to but a single instance: When the "independent treasury" was opposed by a prejudice so fixed and wide-spread among our people, that it was apparent if one had risen from the dead to bear testimony to its merits, he would not have been believed, still did Mr. Van Buren give it his open, decided and unwavering support. Surely it will not now be contended by those who attribute to him so much political shrewdness as to attach to him the name of magician, that he was ignorant of the danger to which an adherence to this measure exposed his political fortune. Upon us, however, it forces itself as conclusive evidence, that he valued truth and the good of his country above power and place, and the conscientious discharge of his duty above personal advancement.

Mr. President, it is not my purpose to attempt an eulogy of Mr. Calhoun. I should be inadequate to the task, and should deem the labor superfluous in the hand of the most able—a long public life of virtue and intelligence, of active and patriotic devotion to the best interest of his country, having shed around his name a halo which it is not in the power of language to brighten. Neither, sir, is it my intention to review the political principles of that great statesman; for in comparing him with Mr. Van Buren, I find no exception to that proud and generally just boast of the democracy, that the principles of our party are the same throughout the Union. The points of my preference for Mr. Calhoun will be merely indicated to you; because, resting as they do upon basis so well understood by you, any elucidation of them is uncalled for. First, I will mention "free trade," by which is meant, as I understand it, the most liberal principles of commerce, and from which we may anticipate as a consequence, the freest exchange of the products of different soils and climates, the largest amount of comforts for a given amount of labor. Again, as incident to the freest national intercourse, we may expect the extension of amicable relations, until our canvas-winged doves shall bear us across every sea, olive branches from every land. In addressing Mississippians, who rely upon a foreign market for the disposal of their products, an argument in support of unrestricted commerce is surely unnecessary, and I will close the consideration of this point by saying I consider Mr. Calhoun its exponent.

The annexation of the republic of Texas to our Union, is another point of vital importance to the south, and demanding, by every consideration, prompt action. Daily are we becoming relatively weaker, and with equal step is the advance of that fanatical spirit which has for years been battering in breach the defences with which the federal constitution surrounds our institutions.

Would Mr. Calhoun have less zeal than one less intimately connected with the south, or would he support this measure with less ability? I would answer not less but more. The ardent, able and honest support which he gives to all measures having his entire approbation, enables him more successfully than any one I have ever known, to combat prejudice and error; and I would add that among the many I have known who had enjoyed his intercourse, I recollect not one who had not imbibed some of his opinions.

Again, I believe that Mr. Calhoun could reduce the various divisions of the executive department at Washington to such order, and introduce a system of such prompt accountability, by the various agents, that defalcation could seldom reach that point which would result in loss to the government. That he possesses this ability, I conceive to be demonstrated by his administration of the war department; considered, I believe, of the various departments, that which is most difficult and complex in its disbursements. He found it in great confusion—he reduced it to an organization so perfect, that it has received but slight modifications down to the present time, and has been that department which has afforded but few examples of unfaithful depositories of the public money.

With the experience he acquired then, and the knowledge he has acquired since, may we not expect all that I claim for him on this point?

I will, Mr. President, tax the patience of the convention with but one point more, and that is one nearly affecting us: it is the defence of the southern Atlantic and gulf coasts. We have been treated ungenerously and unjustly, in that the majority has, through a long course of years, refused to us, the minority, that protection which it was the duty of the federal government to give us. Having made such appropriations for the benefit of other portions of the Union, inability has not been the cause of this failure in duty towards us—a failure which is aggravated by the recollection that throughout the whole period of our federal existence, we have contributed, as consumers, to the revenue, in a higher ratio than that of our representation in the halls of legislation, (by the number of our unrepresented slave population,) and therefore our claim to a share of those appropriations to which we are all entitled, is something stronger than our representative rate. Sir, if we institute a comparison as to the importance, in a national point of view, between the objects for which we require appropriations and those for which we have been neglected, still do we find nothing to justify the treatment we have received. Whilst the northern harbors and cities have been surveyed, and as far as the ability of the treasury would allow, fortified—whilst navy yards have been erected along the northern coast—whilst surveys have been made of the sinuosities of our northern lakes, sometimes where it required the perspective eye of the engineer to see a harbor, and millions expended year after year, for these joint purposes, there stand the cape and keys of Florida unprotected, though by them flows the whole commerce of the south and west, and though they overlook the straits through which, in peace or war, is the only maritime communication between the different portions of our Union, and around which sweeps a wide curve of circumvallation, extending from the Oronoko to the banks of the Bahama, from various points of which, within signal distance, from the batteries of Great Britain.

Looking further westward, which brings us nearer home here upon our own coast lie, wholly unprotected, the islands upon which the British fleet found a safe anchorage and harbor; where British troops debarked for the attack on New Orleans, an event which, though it brought glory to the American arms, and made this day an American festival, does not the less enforce itself as a warning on our government, and should have proved sufficient reason to all who loved their country more than sectional interest, to have guarded against the recurrence of such contingency.

Mr. President, the South has a delicate and daily increasing interest in the navy. She needs her own sons in the navy to represent that interest; she therefore needs in her own waters navy yards, and squadrons at home, on her own waters, to develope the nautical feeling of our youth. A survey made of the Tortugas, by the recommendation of that great man who directed the glorious event to which I but just now alluded as connected with the day on which we are assembled, exhibits a harbor admirably adapted to the purposes of a navy yard. At Pensacola, we have another favorable point, so recognized by our government in building a dock and giving it the name of "navy yard;" and they both have this great advantage over any northern harbor, they are convenient to "live oak," our most important ship timber.

Sir, I will not detain the Convention farther than to urge upon their consideration the necessity we have for a Southern President to advance these measures. The South has borne long; let her be true to herself, that justice may be done.

Jefferson Davis, of Warren, offered the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted.

Resolved, That our delegates to the national convention, in the event of any contingency which shall defeat the purpose for which they are appointed, viz., the nominations of Martin Van Buren for president, and James K. Polk for vice president, that they shall consider as our second choice, John C. Calhoun for president, and Levi Woodbury for vice-president.

_______________

* This speech brought Mr. Davis into statewide notice and marked the beginning of his political career. As a delegate from Warren county he favored John C. Calhoun for the presidency.

SOURCE: Dunbar Rowland, Editor, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, Volume 1, p. 6-9

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Daniel Webster’s Speech on the Constitution and the Union, March 7, 1850

Mr. PRESIDENT, — I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States. It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions and government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the North, and the stormy South combine to throw the whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat with the political elements; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform it with fidelity, not without a sense of existing dangers, but not without hope. I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole, and the preservation of all; and there is that which will keep me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear, or shall not appear for many days. I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. “Hear me for my cause." I speak to-day, out of a solicitous and anxious heart, for the restoration to the country of that quiet and that harmony which make the blessings of this Union so rich, and so dear to us all. These are the topics that I propose to myself to discuss; these are the motives, and the sole motives, that influence me in the wish to communicate my opinions to the Senate and the country; and if I can do any thing, however little, for the promotion of these ends, I shall have accomplished all that I expect.

Mr. President, it may not be amiss to recur very briefly to the events which, equally sudden and extraordinary, have brought the country into its present political condition. In May, 1846, the United States declared war against Mexico. Our armies, then on the frontiers, entered the provinces of that republic, met and defeated all her troops, penetrated her mountain passes, and occupied her capital. The marine force of the United States took possession of her forts and her towns, on the Atlantic and on the Pacific. In less than two years a treaty was negotiated, by which Mexico ceded to the United States a vast territory, extending seven or eight hundred miles along the shores of the Pacific, and reaching back over the mountains, and across the desert, until it joins the frontier of the State of Texas. It so happened, in the distracted and feeble condition of the Mexican government, that, before the declaration of war by the United States against Mexico had become known in California, the people of California, under the lead of American officers, overthrew the existing Mexican provincial government, and raised an independent flag. When the news arrived at San Francisco that war had been declared by the United States against Mexico, this independent flag was pulled down, and the stars and stripes of this Union hoisted in its stead. So, Sir, before the war was over, the forces of the United States, military and naval, had possession of San Francisco and Upper California, and a great rush of emigrants from various parts of the world took place into California in 1846 and 1847. But now behold another wonder.

In January of 1848, a party of Mormons made a discovery of an extraordinarily rich mine of gold, or rather of a great quantity of gold, hardly proper to be called a mine, for it was spread near the surface, on the lower part of the south, or American, branch of the Sacramento. They attempted to conceal their discovery for some time; but soon another discovery of gold, perhaps of greater importance, was made, on another part of the American branch of the Sacramento, and near Sutter's Fort, as it is called. The fame of these discoveries spread far and wide. They inflamed more and more the spirit of emigration towards California, which had already been excited; and adventurers crowded into the country by hundreds, and flocked towards the Bay of San Francisco. This, as I have said, took place in the winter and spring of 1848. The Digging commenced in the spring of that year, and from that time to this the work of searching for gold has been prosecuted with a success not heretofore known in the history of this globe. You recollect, Sir, how incredulous at first the American public was at the accounts which reached us of these discoveries; but we all know, now, that these accounts received, and continue to receive, daily confirmation, and down to the present moment I suppose the assurance is as strong, after the experience of these several months, of the existence of deposits of gold apparently inexhaustible in the regions near San Francisco, in California, as it was at any period of the earlier dates of the accounts.

It so happened, Sir, that although, after the return of peace, it became a very important subject for legislative consideration and legislative decision to provide a proper territorial government for California, yet differences of opinion between the two houses of Congress prevented the establishment of any such territorial government at the last session. Under this state of things, the inhabitants of California, already amounting to a considerable number, thought it to be their duty, in the summer of last year, to establish a local government. Under the proclamation of General Riley, the people chose delegates to a convention, and that convention met at Monterey. It formed a constitution for the State of California, which, being referred to the people, was adopted by them in their primary assemblages. Desirous of immediate connection with the United States, its Senators were appointed and representatives chosen, who have come hither, bringing with them the authentic constitution of the State of California; and they now present themselves, asking, in behalf of their constituents, that it may be admitted into this Union as one of the United States. This constitution, Sir, contains an express prohibition of slavery, or involuntary servitude, in the State of California. It is said, and I suppose truly, that, of the members who composed that convention, some sixteen were natives of, and had been residents in, the slave-holding States, about twenty-two were from the nonslave-holding States, and the remaining ten members were either native Californians or old settlers in that country. This prohibition of slavery, it is said, was inserted with entire unanimity.

It is this circumstance, Sir, the prohibition of slavery, which has contributed to raise, I do not say it has wholly raised, the dispute as to the propriety of the admission of California into the Union under this constitution. It is not to be denied, Mr. President, nobody thinks of denying, that, whatever reasons were assigned at the commencement of the late war with Mexico, it was prosecuted for the purpose of the acquisition of territory, and under the alleged argument that the cession of territory was the only form in which proper compensation could be obtained by the United States from Mexico, for the various claims and demands which the people of this country had against that government. At any rate, it will be found that President Polk's message, at the commencement of the session of December, 1847, avowed that the war was to be prosecuted until some acquisition of territory should be made. As the acquisition was to be south of the line of the United States, in warm climates and countries, it was naturally, I suppose, expected by the South, that whatever acquisitions were made in that region would be added to the slave-holding portion of the United States. Very little of accurate information was possessed of the real physical character, either of California or New Mexico, and events have not turned out as was expected. Both California and New Mexico are likely to come in as free States; and therefore some degree of disappointment and surprise has resulted. In other words, it is obvious that the question which has so long harassed the country, and at some times very seriously alarmed the minds of wise and good men, has come upon us for a fresh discussion; the question of slavery in these United States.

Now, Sir, I propose, perhaps at the expense of some detail and consequent detention of the Senate, to review historically this question, which, partly in consequence of its own importance, and partly, perhaps mostly, in consequence of the manner in which it has been discussed in different portions of the country, has been a source of so much alienation and unkind feeling between them.

We all know, Sir, that slavery has existed in the world from time immemorial. There was slavery, in the earliest periods of history, among the Oriental nations.

There was slavery among the Jews; the theocratic government of that people issued no injunction against it. There was slavery among the Greeks; and the ingenious philosophy of the Greeks found, or sought to find, a justification for it exactly upon the grounds which have been assumed for such a justification in this country; that is, a natural and original difference among the races of mankind, and the inferiority of the black or colored race to the white. The Greeks justified their system of slavery upon that idea, precisely. They held the African and some of the Asiatic tribes to be inferior to the white race; but they did not show, I think, by any close process of logic, that, if this were true, the more intelligent and the stronger had therefore a right to subjugate the weaker.

The more manly philosophy and jurisprudence of the Romans placed the justification of slavery on entirely different grounds. The Roman jurists, from the first and down to the fall of the empire, admitted that slavery was against the natural law, by which, as they maintained, all men, of whatsoever clime, color, or capacity, were equal; but they justified slavery, first, upon the ground and authority of the law of nations, arguing, and arguing truly, that at that day the conventional law of nations admitted that captives in war, whose lives, according to the notions of the times, were at the absolute disposal of the captors, might, in exchange for exemption from death, be made slaves for life, and that such servitude might descend to their posterity. The jurists of Rome also maintained, that, by the civil law, there might be servitude or slavery, personal and hereditary; first, by the voluntary act of an individual, who might sell himself into slavery; secondly, by his being reduced into a state of slavery by his creditors, in satisfaction of his debts; and, thirdly, by being placed in a state of servitude or slavery for crime. At the introduction of Christianity, the Roman world was full of slaves, and I suppose there is to be found no injunction against that relation between man and man in the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ or of any of his Apostles. The object of the instruction imparted to mankind by the founder of Christianity was to touch the heart, purify the soul, and improve the lives of individual men. That object went directly to the first fountain of all the political and social relations of the human race, as well as of all true religious feeling, the individual heart and mind of man.

Now, Sir, upon the general nature and influence of slavery there exists a wide difference of opinion between the northern portion of this country and the southern. It is said on the one side, that, although not the subject of any injunction or direct prohibition in the New Testament, slavery is a wrong; that it is founded merely in the right of the strongest; and that it is an oppression, like unjust wars, like all those conflicts by which a powerful nation subjects a weaker to its will; and that, in its nature, whatever may be said of it in the modifications which have taken place, it is not according to the meek spirit of the Gospel. It is not “kindly affectioned"; it does not “seek another's, and not its own”; it does not “let the oppressed go free.” These are sentiments that are cherished, and of late with greatly augmented force, among the people of the Northern States. They have taken hold of the religious sentiment of that part of the country, as they have, more or less, taken hold of the religious feelings of a considerable portion of mankind. The South, upon the other side, having been accustomed to this relation between the two races all their lives, from their birth, having been taught, in general, to treat the subjects of this bondage with care and kindness, and I believe, in general, feeling great kindness for them, have not taken the view of the subject which I have mentioned. There are thousands of religious men, with consciences as tender as any of their brethren at the North, who do not see the unlawfulness of slavery; and there are more thousands, perhaps, that, whatsoever they may think of it in its origin, and as a matter depending upon natural right, yet take things as they are, and, finding slavery to be an established relation of the society in which they live, can see no way in which, let their opinions on the abstract question be what they may, it is in the power of the present generation to relieve themselves from this relation. And candor obliges me to say, that I believe they are just as conscientious, many of them, and the religious people, all of them, as they are at the North who hold different opinions.

The honorable Senator from South Carolina1 the other day alluded to the separation of that great religious community, the Methodist Episcopal Church. That separation was brought about by differences of opinion upon this particular subject of slavery. I felt great concern, as that dispute went on, about the result. I was in hopes that the difference of opinion might be adjusted, because I looked upon that religious denomination as one of the great props of religion and morals throughout the whole country, from Maine to Georgia, and westward to our utmost western boundary. The result was against my wishes and against my hopes. I have read all their proceedings and all their arguments; but I have never yet been able to come to the conclusion that there was any real ground for that separation; in other words, that any good could be produced by that separation. I must say I think there was some want of candor and charity. Sir, when a question of this kind seizes on the religious sentiments of mankind, and comes to be discussed in religious assemblies of the clergy and laity, there is always to be expected, or always to be feared, a great degree of excitement. It is in the nature of man, manifested by his whole history, that religious disputes are apt to become warm in proportion to the strength of the convictions which men entertain of the magnitude of the questions at issue. In all such disputes, there will sometimes be found men with whom every thing is absolute; absolutely wrong, or absolutely right. They see the right clearly; they think others ought so to see it, and they are disposed to establish a broad line of distinction between what is right and what is wrong. They are not seldom willing to establish that line upon their own convictions of truth and justice; and are ready to mark and guard it by placing along it a series of dogmas, as lines of boundary on the earth's surface are marked by posts and stones. There are men who, with clear perceptions, as they think, of their own duty, do not see how too eager a pursuit of one duty may involve them in the violation of others, or how too warm an embracement of one truth may lead to a disregard of other truths equally important. As I heard it stated strongly, not many days ago, these persons are disposed to mount upon some particular duty, as upon a war-horse, and to drive furiously on and upon and over all other duties that may stand in the way. There are men who, in reference to disputes of that sort, are of opinion that human duties may be ascertained with the exactness of mathematics. They deal with morals as with mathematics; and they think what is right may be distinguished from what is wrong with the precision of an algebraic equation. They have, therefore, none too much charity towards others who differ from them. They are apt, too, to think that nothing is good but what is perfect, and that there are no compromises or modifications to be made in consideration of difference of opinion or in deference to other men's judgment. If their perspicacious vision enables them to detect a spot on the face of the sun, they think that a good reason why the sun should be struck down from heaven. They prefer the chance of running into utter darkness to living in heavenly light, if that heavenly light be not absolutely without any imperfection. There are impatient men; too impatient always to give heed to the admonition of St. Paul, that we are not to “do evil that good may come”; too impatient to wait for the slow progress of moral causes in the improvement of mankind. They do not remember that the doctrines and the miracles of Jesus Christ have, in eighteen hundred years, converted only a small portion of the human race; and among the nations that are converted to Christianity, they forget how many vices and crimes, public and private, still prevail, and that many of them, public crimes especially, which are so clearly offences against the Christian religion, pass without exciting particular indignation. Thus wars are waged, and unjust wars. I do not deny that there may be just wars. There certainly are; but it was the remark of an eminent person, not many years ago, on the other side of the Atlantic, that it is one of the greatest reproaches to human nature that wars are sometimes just. The defence of nations sometimes causes a just war against the injustice of other nations. In this state of sentiment upon the general nature of slavery lies the cause of a great part of those unhappy divisions, exasperations, and reproaches which find vent and support in different parts of the Union.

But we must view things as they are. Slavery does exist in the United States. It did exist in the States before the adoption of this Constitution, and at that time. Let us, therefore, consider for a moment what was the state of sentiment, North and South, in regard to slavery, at the time this Constitution was adopted. A remarkable change has taken place since; but what did the wise and great men of all parts of the country think of slavery thenIn what estimation did they hold it at the time when this Constitution was adopted? It will be found, Sir, if we will carry ourselves by historical research back to that day, and ascertain men's opinions by authentic records still existing among us, that there was then no diversity of opinion between the North and the South upon the subject of slavery. It will be found that both parts of the country held it equally an evil, a moral and political evil. It will not be found that, either at the North or at the South, there was much, though there was some, invective against slavery as inhuman and cruel. The great ground of objection to it was political; that it weakened the social fabric; that, taking the place of free labor, society became less strong and labor less productive; and therefore we find from all the eminent men of the time the clearest expression of their opinion that slavery is an evil. They ascribed its existence here, not without truth, and not without some acerbity of temper and force of language, to the injurious policy of the mother country, who, to favor the navigator, had entailed these evils upon the Colonies. I need hardly refer, Sir, particularly to the publications of the day. They are matters of history on the record. The eminent men, the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the same sentiments; that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, and a curse.

There are no terms of reprobation of slavery so vehement in the North at that day as in the South. The North was not so much excited against it as the South; and the reason is, I suppose, that there was much less of it at the North, and the people did not see, or think they saw, the evils so prominently as they were seen, or thought to be seen, at the South.

Then, Sir, when this Constitution was framed, this was the light in which the Federal Convention viewed it. That body reflected the judgment and sentiments of the great men of the South. A member of the other house, whom I have not the honor to know, has, in a recent speech, collected extracts from these public documents. They prove the truth of what I am saying, and the question then was, how to deal with it, and how to deal with it as an evil. They came to this general result. They thought that slavery could not be continued in the country if the importation of slaves were made to cease, and therefore they provided that, after a certain period, the importation might be prevented by the act of the new government. The period of twenty years was proposed by some gentleman from the North, I think, and many members of the Convention from the South opposed it as being too long. Mr. Madison especially was somewhat warm against it. He said it would bring too much of this mischief into the country to allow the importation of slaves for such a period. Because we must take along with us, in the whole of this discussion, when we are considering the sentiments and opinions in which the constitutional provision originated, that the conviction of all men was, that, if the importation of slaves ceased, the white race would multiply faster than the black race, and that slavery would therefore gradually wear out and expire. It may not be improper here to allude to that, I had almost said, celebrated opinion of Mr. Madison. You observe, Sir, that the term slave, or slavery, is not used in the Constitution. The Constitution does not require that “fugitive slaves” shall be delivered up. It requires that persons held to service in one State, and escaping into another, shall be delivered up. Mr. Madison opposed the introduction of the term slave, or slavery, into the Constitution; for he said that he did not wish to see it recognized by the Constitution of the United States of America that there could be property in men.

Now, Sir, all this took place in the Convention in 1787; but connected with this, concurrent and contemporaneous, is another important transaction, not sufficiently attended to. The Convention for framing this Constitution assembled in Philadelphia in May, and sat until September, 1787. During all that time the Congress of the United States was in session at New York. It was a matter of design, as we know, that the Convention should not assemble in the same city where Congress was holding its sessions. Almost all the public men of the country, therefore, of distinction and eminence, were in one or the other of these two assemblies; and I think it happened, in some instances, that the same gentlemen were members of both bodies. If I mistake not, such was the case with Mr. Rufus King, then a member of Congress from Massachusetts. Now, at the very time when the Convention in Philadelphia was framing this Constitution, the Congress in New York was framing the Ordinance of 1787, for the organization and government of the territory northwest of the Ohio. They passed that Ordinance on the 13th of July, 1787, at New York, the very month, perhaps the very day, on which these questions about the importation of slaves and the character of slavery were debated in the Convention at Philadelphia. So far as we can now learn, there was a perfect concurrence of opinion between these two bodies; and it resulted in this Ordinance of 1787, excluding slavery from all the territory over which the Congress of the United States had jurisdiction, and that was all the territory northwest of the Ohio. Three years before, Virginia and other States had made a cession of that great territory to the United States; and a most munificent act it was. I never reflect upon it without a disposition to do honor and justice, and justice would be the highest honor, to Virginia, for the cession of her northwestern territory. I will say, Sir, it is one of her fairest claims to the respect and gratitude of the country, and that, perhaps, it is only second to that other claim which belongs to her; that from her counsels, and from the intelligence and patriotism of her leading statesmen, proceeded the first idea put into practice of the formation of a general constitution of the United States. The Ordinance of 1787 applied to the whole territory over which the Congress of the United States had jurisdiction. It was adopted two years before the Constitution of the United States went into operation; because the Ordinance took effect immediately on its passage, while the Constitution of the United States, having been framed, was to be sent to the States to be adopted by their Conventions; and then a government was to be organized under it. This Ordinance, then, was in operation and force when the Constitution was adopted, and the government put in motion, in April, 1789.

Mr. President, three things are quite clear as historical truths. One is, that there was an expectation that, on the ceasing of the importation of slaves from Africa, slavery would begin to run out here. That was hoped and expected. Another is, that, as far as there was any power in Congress to prevent the spread of slavery in the United States, that power was executed in the most absolute manner, and to the fullest extent. An honorable member,2 whose health does not allow him to be here to-day—

A SENATOR. He is here.

I am very happy to hear that he is; may he long be here, and in the enjoyment of health to serve his country! The honorable member said, the other day, that he considered this Ordinance as the first in the series of measures calculated to enfeeble the South, and deprive them of their just participation in the benefits and privileges of this government. He says, very properly, that it was enacted under the old Confederation, and before this Constitution went into effect; but my present purpose is only to say, Mr. President, that it was established with the entire and unanimous concurrence of the whole South. Why, there it stands! The vote of every State in the Union was unanimous in favor of the Ordinance, with the exception of a single individual vote, and that individual vote was given by a Northern man. This Ordinance prohibiting slavery for ever northwest of the Ohio has the hand and seal of every Southern member in Congress. It was therefore no aggression of the North on the South. The other and third clear historical truth is, that the Convention meant to leave slavery in the States as they found it, entirely under the authority and control of the States themselves.

This was the state of things, Sir, and this the state of opinion, under which those very important matters were arranged, and those three important things done; that is, the establishment of the Constitution of the United States with a recognition of slavery as it existed in the States; the establishment of the ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory, prohibiting, to the full extent of all territory owned by the United States, the introduction of slavery into that territory, while leaving to the States all power over slavery in their own limits; and creating a power, in the new government, to put an end to the importation of slaves, after a limited period. There was entire coincidence and concurrence of sentiment between the North and the South, upon all these questions, at the period of the adoption of the Constitution. But opinions, Sir, have changed, greatly changed; changed North and changed South. Slavery is not regarded in the South now as it was then. I see an honorable member of this body paying me the honor of listening to my remarks;3 he brings to my mind, Sir, freshly and vividly, what I have learned of his great ancestor, so much distinguished in his day and generation, so worthy to be succeeded by so worthy a grandson, and of the sentiments he expressed in the Convention in Philadelphia.4

Here we may pause. There was, if not an entire unanimity, a general concurrence of sentiment running through the whole community, and especially entertained by the eminent men of all parts of the country. But soon a change began, at the North and the South, and a difference of opinion showed itself; the North growing much more warm and strong against slavery, and the South growing much more warm and strong in its support. Sir, there is no generation of mankind whose opinions are not subject to be influenced by what appear to them to be their present emergent and exigent interests. I impute to the South no particularly selfish view in the change which has come over her. I impute to her certainly no dishonest view. All that has happened has been natural. It has followed those causes which always influence the human mind and operate upon it. 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 that subject, so that, from being thought and described in the terms I have mentioned and will not repeat, it has now become an institution, a cherished institution, in that quarter; no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and moral blessing, as I think I have heard it latterly spoken of? I suppose this, Sir, is owing to the rapid growth and sudden extension of the cotton plantations of the South. So far as any motive consistent with honor, justice, and general judgment could act, it was the cotton interest that gave a new desire to promote slavery, to spread it, and to use its labor. I again say that this change was produced by causes which must always produce like effects. The whole interest of the South became connected, more or less, with the extension of slavery. If we look back to the history of the commerce of this country in the early years of this government, what were our exports? Cotton was hardly, or but to a very limited extent, known. In 1791 the first parcel of cotton of the growth of the United States was exported, and amounted only to 19,200 pounds.5 It has gone on increasing rapidly, until the whole crop may now, perhaps, in a season of great product and high prices, amount to a hundred millions of dollars. In the years I have mentioned, there was more of wax, more of indigo, more of rice, more of almost every article of export from the South, than of cotton. When Mr. Jay negotiated the treaty of 1794 with England, it is evident from the twelfth article of the treaty, which was suspended by the Senate, that he did not know that cotton was exported at all from the United States.

Well, Sir, we know what followed. The age of cotton became the golden age of our Southern brethren. It gratified their desire for improvement and accumulation, at the same time that it excited it. The desire grew by what it fed upon, and there soon came to be an eagerness for other territory, a new area or new areas for the cultivation of the cotton crop; and measures leading to this result were brought about rapidly, one after another, under the lead of Southern men at the head of the government, they having a majority in both branches of Congress to accomplish their ends. The honorable member from South Carolina6 observed that there has been a majority all along in favor of the North. If that be true, Sir, the North has acted either very liberally and kindly, or very weakly; for they never exercised that majority efficiently five times in the history of the government, when a division or trial of strength arose. Never. Whether they were out-generalled, or whether it was owing to other causes, I shall not stop to consider; but no man acquainted with the history of the Union can deny that the general lead in the politics of the country, for three fourths of the period that has elapsed since the adoption of the Constitution, has been a Southern lead.

In 1802, in pursuit of the idea of opening a new cotton region, the United States obtained a cession from Georgia of the whole of her western territory, now embracing the rich and growing States of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1803 Louisiana was purchased from France, out of which the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri have been framed, as slave-holding States. In 1819 the cession of Florida was made, bringing in another region adapted to cultivation by slaves. Sir, the honorable member from South Carolina thought he saw in certain operations of the government, such as the manner of collecting the revenue, and the tendency of measures calculated to promote emigration into the country, what accounts for the more rapid growth of the North than the South. He ascribes that more rapid growth, not to the operation of time, but to the system of government and administration established under this Constitution. That is matter of opinion. To a certain extent it may be true; but it does seem to me that, if any operation of the government can be shown in any degree to have promoted the population, and growth, and wealth of the North, it is much more sure that there are sundry important and distinct operations of the government, about which no man can doubt, tending to promote, and which absolutely have promoted, the increase of the slave interest and the slave territory of the South. It was not time that brought in Louisiana; it was the act of men. It was not time that brought in Florida; it was the act of men. And lastly, Sir, to complete those acts of legislation which have contributed so much to enlarge the area of the institution of slavery, Texas, great and vast and illimitable Texas, was added to the Union as a slave State in 1845; and that, Sir, pretty much closed the whole chapter, and settled the whole account.

That closed the whole chapter and settled the whole account, because the annexation of Texas, upon the conditions and under the guaranties upon which she was admitted, did not leave within the control of this government an acre of land, capable of being cultivated by slave labor, between this Capitol and the Rio Grande or the Nueces, or whatever is the proper boundary of Texas; not an acre. From that moment, the whole country, from this place to the western boundary of Texas, was fixed, pledged, fastened, decided, to be slave territory for ever, by the solemn guaranties of law. And I now say, Sir, as the proposition upon which I stand this day, and upon the truth and firmness of which I intend to act until it is overthrown, that 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 territory or slave territory, is not fixed by some law, and some irrepealable law, beyond the power of the action of the government. Is it not so with respect to Texas? It is most manifestly so. The honor able member from South Carolina, at the time of the admission of Texas, held an important post in the executive department of the government; he was Secretary of State. Another eminent person of great activity and adroitness in affairs, I mean the late Secretary of the Treasury,7 was a conspicuous member of this body, and took the lead in the business of annexation, in coöperation with the Secretary of State; and I must say that they did their business faithfully and thoroughly; there was no botch left in it. They rounded it off, and made as close joiner-work as ever was exhibited. Resolutions of annexation were brought into Congress, fitly joined together, compact, efficient, conclusive upon the great object which they had in view, and those resolutions passed.

Allow me to read a part of these resolutions. It is the third clause of the second section of the resolution of the 1st of March, 1845, for the admission of Texas, which applies to this part of the case.

That clause is as follows:

“New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution. And such States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of said Missouri Compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.”

Now, what is here stipulated, enacted, and secured? It is, that all Texas south of 36° 30', which is nearly the whole of it, shall be admitted into the Union as a slave State.

It was a slave State, and therefore came in as a slave State; and the guaranty is, that new States shall be made out of it, to the number of four, in addition to the State then in existence and admitted at that time by these resolutions, and that such States as are formed out of that portion of Texas lying south of 36° 30' may come in as slave States. I know no form of legislation which can strengthen this. I know no mode of recognition that can add a tittle of weight to it. I listened respectfully to the resolutions of my honorable friend from Tennessee.8 He proposed to recognize that stipulation with Texas. But any additional recognition would weaken the force of it; because it stands here on the ground of a contract, a thing done for a consideration. It is a law founded on a contract with Texas, and designed to carry that contract into effect. A recognition now, founded not on any consideration or any contract, would not be so strong as it now stands on the face of the resolution. I know no way, I candidly confess, in which this government, acting in good faith, as I trust it always will, can relieve itself from that stipulation and pledge, by any honest course of legislation whatever. And therefore I say again, that, so far as Texas is concerned, in the whole of that State south of 36° 30, which, I suppose, embraces all the territory capable of slave cultivation, there is no land, not an acre, the character of which is not established by law; a law which cannot be repealed without the violation of a contract, and plain disregard of the public faith.

I hope, Sir, it is now apparent that my proposition, so far as it respects Texas, has been maintained, and that the provision in this article is clear and absolute; and it has been well suggested by my friend from Rhode Island,9 that that part of Texas which lies north of 36° 30' of north latitude, and which may be formed into free States, is dependent, in like manner, upon the consent of Texas, herself a slave State.

Now, Sir, how came this? How came it to pass that within these walls, where it is said by the honorable member from South Carolina that the free States have always had a majority, this resolution of annexation, such as I have described it, obtained a majority in both houses of Congress? Sir, it obtained that majority by the great number of Northern votes added to the entire Southern vote, or at least nearly the whole of the Southern vote. The aggregate was made up of Northern and Southern votes. In the House of Representatives there were about eighty Southern votes and about fifty Northern votes for the admission of Texas. In the Senate the vote for the admission of Texas was twenty-seven, and twenty-five against it; and of those twenty-seven votes, constituting the majority, no less than thirteen came from the free States, and four of them were from New England. The whole of these thirteen Senators, constituting within a fraction, you see, one half of all the votes in this body for the admission of this immeasurable extent of slave territory, were sent here by free States.

Sir, there is not so remarkable a chapter in our history of political events, political parties, and political men as is afforded by this admission of a new slave-holding territory, so vast that a bird cannot fly over it in a week. New England, as I have said, with some of her own votes, supported this measure. Three fourths of the votes of liberty-loving Connecticut were given for it in the other house, and one half here. There was one vote for it from Maine, but, I am happy to say, not the vote of the honorable member who addressed the Senate the day before yesterday,10 and who was then a Representative from Maine in the House of Representatives; but there was one vote from Maine, ay, and there was one vote for it from Massachusetts, given by a gentleman then representing, and now living in, the district in which the prevalence of Free Soil sentiment for a couple of years or so has defeated the choice of any member to represent it in Congress. Sir, that body of Northern and Eastern men who gave those votes at that time are now seen taking upon themselves, in the nomenclature of politics, the appellation of the Northern Democracy. They undertook to wield the destinies of this empire, if I may give that name to a republic, and their policy was, and they persisted in it, to bring into this country and under this government all the territory they could. They did it, in the case of Texas, under pledges, absolute pledges, to the slave interest, and they afterwards lent their aid in bringing in these new conquests, to take their chance for slavery or freedom. My honorable friend from Georgia,11 in March, 1847, moved the Senate to declare that the war ought not to be prosecuted for the conquest of territory, or for the dismemberment of Mexico. The whole of the Northern Democracy voted against it. He did not get a vote from them. It suited the patriotic and elevated sentiments of the Northern Democracy to bring in a world from among the mountains and valleys of California and New Mexico, or any other part of Mexico, and then quarrel about it; to bring it in, and then endeavor to put upon it the saving grace of the Wilmot Proviso. There were two eminent and highly respectable gentlemen from the North and East, then leading gentlemen in the Senate, (I refer, and I do so with entire respect, for I entertain for both of those gentlemen, in general, high regard, to Mr. Dix of New York and Mr. Niles of Connecticut,) who both voted for the admission of Texas. They would not have that vote any other way than as it stood; and they would have it as it did stand. I speak of the vote upon the annexation of Texas. Those two gentlemen would have the resolution of annexation just as it is, without amendment; and they voted for it just as it is, and their eyes were all open to its true character. The honorable member from South Carolina who addressed us the other day was then Secretary of State. His correspondence with Mr. Murphy, the Chargé d'Affaires of the United States in Texas, had been published. That correspondence was all before those gentlemen, and the Secretary had the boldness and candor to avow in that correspondence, that the great object sought by the annexation of Texas was to strengthen the slave interest of the South, Why, Sir, he said so in so many words

MR. CALHOUN. Will the honorable Senator permit me to interrupt him for a moment?

[MR. WEBSTER.] Certainly.

MR. CALHOUN. I am very reluctant to interrupt the honorable gentleman; but, upon a point of so much importance, I deem it right to put myself rectus in curia. I did not put it upon the ground assumed by the Senator. I put it upon this ground: that Great Britain had announced to this country, in so many words, that her object was to abolish slavery in Texas, and, through Texas, to accomplish the abolition of slavery in the United States and the world. The ground I put it on was, that it would make an exposed frontier, and, if Great Britain succeeded in her object, it would be impossible that that frontier could be secured against the aggressions of the Abolitionists; and that this government was bound, under the guaranties of the Constitution, to protect us against such a state of things.

[MR. WEBSTER.] That comes, I suppose, Sir, to exactly the same thing. It was, that Texas must be obtained for the security of the slave interest of the South.

MR. CALHOUN. Another view is very distinctly given.

[MR. WEBSTER.] That was the object set forth in the correspondence of a worthy gentleman not now living,12 who preceded the honorable member from South Carolina in the Department of State. There repose on the files of the Department, as I have occasion to know, strong letters from Mr. Upshur to the United States minister in England, and I believe there are some to the same minister from the honorable Senator himself, asserting to this effect the sentiments of this government; namely, that Great Britain was expected not to interfere to take Texas out of the hands of its then existing government and make it a free country. But my argument, my suggestion, is this; that those gentlemen who composed the Northern Democracy when Texas was brought into the Union saw clearly that it was brought in as a slave country, and brought in for the purpose of being maintained as slave territory, to the Greek Kalends. I rather think the honorable gentleman who was then Secre. tary of State might, in some of his correspondence with Mr. Murphy, have suggested that it was not expedient to say too much about this object, lest it should create some alarm. At any rate, Mr. Murphy wrote to him that England was anxious to get rid of the constitution of Texas, because it was a constitution establishing slavery; and that what the United States had to do was to aid the people of Texas in upholding their constitution; but that nothing should be said which should offend the fanatical men of the North. But, Sir, the honorable member did avow this object himself, openly, boldly, and manfully; he did not disguise his conduct or his motives.

MR. CALHOUN. Never, never.

[MR. WEBSTER.] What he means he is very apt to say.

MR. CALHOUN Always, always.

[MR. WEBSTER.] And I honor him for it.

This admission of Texas was in 1845. Then, in 1847, flagrante bello between the United States and Mexico, the proposition I have mentioned was brought forward by my friend from Georgia, and the Northern Democracy voted steadily against it. Their remedy was to apply to the acquisitions, after they should come in, the Wilmot Proviso. What followsThese two gentlemen,13 worthy and honorable and influential men, (and if they had not been they could not have carried the measure,) these two gentlemen, members of this body, brought in Texas, and by their votes they also prevented the passage of the resolution of the honorable member from Georgia, and then they went home and took the lead in the Free Soil party. And there they stand, Sir! They leave us here, bound in honor and conscience by the resolutions of annexation; they leave us here, to take the odium of fulfilling the obligations in favor of slavery which they voted us into, or else the greater odium of violating those obligations, while they are at home making capital and rousing speeches for free soil and no slavery. And therefore I say, Sir, that there is not a chapter in our history, respecting public measures and public men, more full of what would create surprise, more full of what does create, in my mind, extreme mortification, than that of the conduct of the Northern Democracy on this subject.

Mr. President, sometimes, when a man is found in a new relation to things around him and to other men, he says the world has changed, and that he has not changed. I believe, Sir, that our self-respect leads us often to make this declaration in regard to ourselves when it is not exactly true. An individual is more apt to change, perhaps, than all the world around him. But, under the present circumstances, and under the responsibility which I know I incur by what I am now stating here, I feel at liberty to recur to the various expressions and statements, made at various times, of my own opinions and resolutions respecting the admission of Texas, and all that has followed. Sir, as early as 1836, or in the early part of 1837, there was conversation and correspondence between myself and some private friends on this project of annexing Texas to the United States; and an honorable gentleman with whom I have had a long acquaintance, a friend of mine, now perhaps in this chamber, I mean General Hamilton, of South Carolina, was privy to that correspondence. I had voted for the recognition of Texan independence, because I believed it to be an existing fact, surprising and astonishing as it was, and I wished well to the new republic; but I manifested from the first utter opposition to bringing her, with her slave territory, into the Union. I happened, in 1837, to make a public address to political friends in New York, and I then stated my sentiments upon the subject. It was the first time that I had occasion to advert to it; and I will ask a friend near me to have the kindness to read an extract from the speech made by me on that occasion. It was delivered in Niblo's Garden, in 1837.

[Mr. Greene then read the following extract from the speech of Mr. Webster to which he referred:]

“Gentlemen, we all see that, by whomsoever possessed, Texas is likely to be a slave-holding country; and I frankly avow my entire unwillingness to do any thing which shall extend the slavery of the African race on this continent, or add other slave-holding States to the Union. When I say that I regard slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political evil, I only use language which has been adopted by distinguished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding States. I shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further extension. We have slavery already amongst us. The Constitution found it in the Union; it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties. To the full extent of these guaranties we are all bound, in honor, in justice, and by the Constitution. All the stipulations contained in the Constitution in favor of the slave-holding States which are already in the Union ought to be fulfilled, and, so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fulness of their spirit, and to the exactness of their letter. Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves; they have never submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I shall concur, therefore, in no act, no measure, no menace, no indication of purpose, which shall interfere or threaten to interfere with the exclusive authority of the several States over the subject of slavery as it exists within their respective limits. All this appears to me to be matter of plain and imperative duty.

 

“But when we come to speak of admitting new States, the subject assumes an entirely different aspect. Our rights and our duties are then both different. . . .

 

“I see, therefore, no political necessity for the annexation of Texas to the Union; no advantages to be derived from it; and objections to it of a strong, and, in my judgment, decisive character.”

I have nothing, Sir, to add to, or to take from, those sentiments. That speech, the Senate will perceive, was made in 1837. The purpose of immediately annexing Texas at that time was abandoned or postponed; and it was not revived with any vigor for some years. In the mean time it happened that I had become a member of the executive administration, and was for a short period in the Department of State. The annexation of Texas was a subject of conversation, not confidential, with the President and heads of departments, as well as with other public men. No serious attempt was then made, however, to bring it about. I left the Department of State in May, 1843, and shortly after I learned, though by means which were no way connected with official information, that a design had been taken up of bringing Texas, with her slave territory and population, into this Union. I was in Washington at the time, and persons are now here who will remember that we had an arranged meeting for conversation upon it. I went home to Massachusetts and proclaimed the existence of that purpose, but I could get no audience and but little attention. Some did not believe it, and some were too much engaged in their own pursuits to give it any heed. They had gone to their farms or to their merchandise, and it was impossible to arouse any feeling in New England, or in Massachusetts, that should combine the two great political parties against this annexation; and, indeed, there was no hope of bringing the Northern Democracy into that view, for their leaning was all the other way. But, Sir, even with Whigs, and leading Whigs, I am ashamed to say, there was a great indifference towards the admission of Texas, with slave territory, into this Union.

The project went on. I was then out of Congress. The annexation resolutions passed on the 1st of March, 1845; the legislature of Texas complied with the conditions and accepted the guaranties; for the language of the resolution is, that Texas is to come in “upon the conditions and under the guaranties herein prescribed.” I was returned to the Senate in March, 1845, and was here in December following, when the acceptance by Texas of the conditions proposed by Congress was communicated to us by the President, and an act for the consummation of the union was laid before the two houses. The connection was then not completed. A final law, doing the deed of annexation ultimately, had not been passed; and when it was put upon its final passage here, I expressed my opposition to it, and recorded my vote in the negative; and there that vote stands, with the observations that I made upon that occasion.14 Nor is this the only occasion on which I have expressed myself to the same effect. It has happened that, between 1837 and this time, on various occasions, I have expressed my entire opposition to the admission of slave States, or the acquisition of new slave territories, to be added to the United States. I know, Sir, no change in my own sentiments, or my own purposes, in that respect. I will now ask my friend from Rhode Island to read another extract from a speech of mine made at a Whig Convention in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the month of September, 1847.

[Mr. Greene here read the following extract:]

“We hear much just now of a panacea for the dangers and evils of slavery and slave annexation, which they call the “Wilmot Proviso.' That certainly is a just sentiment, but it is not a sentiment to found any new party upon. It is not a sentiment on which Massachusetts Whigs differ. There is not a man in this hall who holds to it more firmly than I do, nor one who adheres to it more than another.

 

“I feel some little interest in this matter, Sir. Did not I commit my self in 1837 to the whole doctrine, fully, entirely? And I must be per mitted to say that I cannot quite consent that more recent discoverers should claim the merit and take out a patent.

 

“I deny the priority of their invention. Allow me to say, Sir, it is not their thunder.

 

“We are to use the first and the last and every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of slave power.

 

“But I speak of it here, as in Congress, as a political question, a question for statesmen to act upon. We must so regard it. I certainly do not mean to say that it is less important in a moral point of view, that it is not more important in many other points of view; but as a legislator, or in any official capacity, I must look at it, consider it, and decide it as a matter of political action.”

On other occasions, in debates here, I have expressed my determination to vote for no acquisition, or cession, or annexation, north or south, east or west. My opinion has been, that we have territory enough, and that we should follow the Spartan maxim, “Improve, adorn what you have,” seek no further. I think that it was in some observations that I made on the three million loan bill that I avowed this sentiment. In short, Sir, it has been avowed quite as often, in as many places, and before as many assemblies, as any humble opinions of mine ought to be avowed.

But now that, under certain conditions, Texas is in the Union, with all her territory, as a slave State, with a solemn pledge, also, that, if she shall be divided into many States, those States may come in as slave States south of 36° 30', how are we to deal with this subject? I know no way of honest legislation, when the proper time comes for the enactment, but to carry into effect all that we have stipulated to do. I do not entirely agree with my honorable friend from Tennessee,15 that, as soon as the time comes when she is entitled to another representative, we should create a new State. On former occasions, in creating new States out of territories, we have generally gone upon the idea that, when the population of the territory amounts to about sixty thousand, we would consent to its admission as a State. But it is quite a different thing when a State is divided, and two or more States made out of it. It does not follow in such a case that the same rule of apportionment should be applied. That, however, is a matter for the consideration of Congress, when the proper time arrives. I may not then be here; I may have no vote to give on the occasion; but I wish it to be distinctly understood, that, according to my view of the matter, this government is solemnly pledged, by law and contract, to create new States out of Texas, with her consent, when her population shall justify and call for such a proceeding, and, so far as such States are formed out of Texan territory lying south of 36° 30', to let them come in as slave States. That is the meaning of the contract which our friends, the Northern Democracy, have left us to fulfil; and I, for one, mean to fulfil it, because I will not violate the faith of the government. What I mean to say is, that the time for the admission of new States formed out of Texas, the number of such States, their boundaries, the requisite amount of population, and all other things connected with the admission, are in the free discretion of Congress, except this; to wit, that, when new States formed out of Texas are to be admitted, they have a right, by legal stipulation and contract, to come in as slave States.

Now, as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be excluded from those territories by a law even superior to that which admits and sanctions it in Texas. I mean the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth. That law settles for ever, with a strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in California or New Mexico. Understand me, Sir; I mean slavery as we regard it; the slavery of the colored race as it exists in the Southern States. I shall not discuss the point, but leave it to the learned gentlemen who have undertaken to discuss it; but I suppose there is no slavery of that description in California now. I understand that peonism, a sort of penal servitude, exists there, or rather a sort of voluntary sale of a man and his offspring for debt, an arrangement of a peculiar nature known to the law of Mexico. But what I mean to say is, that it is as impossible that African slavery, as we see it among us, should find its way, or be introduced, into California and New Mexico, as any other natural impossibility. California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of mountains, of great height, with broken ridges and deep valleys. The sides of these mountains are entirely barren; their tops capped by perennial snow. There may be in California, now made free by its constitution, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable land. But it is not so in New Mexico. Pray, what is the evidence which every gentleman must have obtained on this subject, from information sought by himself or communicated by othersI have inquired and read all I could find, in order to acquire information on this important subject. What is there in New Mexico that could, by any possibility, induce any body to go there with slaves? There are some narrow strips of tillable land on the borders of the rivers; but the rivers themselves dry up before midsummer is gone. All that the people can do in that region is to raise some little articles, some little wheat for their tortillas, and that by irrigation. And who expects to see a hundred black men cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice, or any thing else, on lands in New Mexico, made fertile only by irrigation?

I look upon it, therefore, as a fixed fact, to use the current expression of the day, that both California and New Mexico are destined to be free, so far as they are settled at all, which I believe, in regard to New Mexico, will be but partially for a great length of time; free by the arrangement of things ordained by the Power above us. I have therefore to say, in this respect also, that this country is fixed for freedom, to as many persons as shall ever live in it, by a less repealable law than that which attaches to the right of holding slaves in Texas; and I will say further, that, if a resolution or a bill were now before us, to provide a territorial government for New Mexico, I would not vote to put any prohibition into it whatever. Such a prohibition would be idle, as it respects any effect it would have upon the territory; and I would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor to reënact the will of God. I would put in no Wilmot Proviso for the mere purpose of a taunt or a reproach. I would put into it no evidence of the votes of superior power, exercised for no purpose but to wound the pride, whether a just and a rational pride, or an irrational pride, of the citizens of the Southern States. I have no such object, no such purpose. They would think it a taunt, an indignity; they would think it to be an act taking away from them what they regard as a proper equality of privilege. Whether they expect to realize any benefit from it or not, they would think it at least a plain theoretic wrong; that something more or less derogatory to their character and their rights had taken place. I propose to inflict no such wound upon any body, unless something essentially important to the country, and efficient to the preservation of liberty and freedom, is to be effected. I repeat, therefore, Sir, and, as I do not propose to address the Senate often on this subject, I repeat it because I wish it to be distinctly understood, that, for the reasons stated, if a proposition were now here to establish a government for New Mexico, and it was moved to insert a provision for a prohibition of slavery, I would not vote for it.

Sir, if we were now making a government for New Mexico, and any body should propose a Wilmot Proviso, I should treat it exactly as Mr. Polk treated that provision for excluding slavery from Oregon. Mr. Polk was known to be in opinion decidedly averse to the Wilmot Proviso; but he felt the necessity of establishing a government for the Territory of Oregon. The proviso was in the bill, but he knew it would be entirely nugatory; and, since it must be entirely nugatory, since it took away no right, no describable, no tangible, no appreciable right of the South, he said he would sign the bill for the sake of en. acting a law to form a government in that Territory, and let that entirely useless, and, in that connection, entirely senseless, proviso remain. Sir, we hear occasionally of the annexation of Canada; and if there be any man, any of the Northern Democracy, or any one of the Free Soil party, who supposes it necessary to insert a Wilmot Proviso in a territorial government for New Mexico, that man would of course be of opinion that it is necessary to protect the everlasting snows of Canada from the foot of slavery by the same overspreading wing of an act of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a substantive good to be done, wherever there is a foot of land to be prevented from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I am pledged to it from the year 1837; I have been pledged to it again and again; and I will perform those pledges; but I will not do a thing unnecessarily that wounds the feelings of others, or that does discredit to my own understanding

Now, Mr. President, I have established, so far as I proposed to do so, the proposition with which I set out, and upon which I intend to stand or fall; and that is, that the whole territory within the former United States, or in the newly acquired Mexican provinces, has a fixed and settled character, now fixed and settled by law which cannot be repealed; in the case of Texas without a violation of public faith, and by no human power in regard to California or New Mexico; that, therefore, under one or other of these laws, every foot of land in the States or in the Territories has already received a fixed and decided character.

Mr. President, in the excited times in which we live, there is found to exist a state of crimination and recrimination between the North and South. There are lists of grievances produced by each; and those grievances, real or supposed, alienate the minds of one portion of the country from the other, exasperate the feelings, and subdue the sense of fraternal affection, patriotic love, and mutual regard. I shall bestow a little attention, Sir, upon these various grievances existing on the one side and on the other. I begin with complaints of the South. I will not answer, further than I have, the general statements of the honorable Senator from South Carolina, that the North has prospered at the expense of the South in consequence of the manner of administering this government, in the collecting of its revenues, and so forth. These are disputed topics, and have no inclination to enter into them. But I will allude to other complaints of the South, and especially to one which has in my opinion just foundation; and that is, that there has been found at the North, among individuals and among legislators, a disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into the free States. In that respect, the South, in my judgment, is right, and the North is wrong. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Constitution of the United States; and the article of the Constitution16 which says to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from service is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obligation. I have always thought that the Constitution addressed itself to the legislatures of the States or to the States themselves. It says that those persons escaping to other States “shall be delivered up,” and I confess I have always been of the opinion that it was an injunction upon the States themselves. When it is said that a person escaping into another State, and coming therefore within the jurisdiction of that State, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the clause is, that the State itself, in obedience to the Constitution, shall cause him to be delivered up. That is my judgment. I have always entertained that opinion, and I entertain it now. But when the subject, some years ago, was before the Supreme Court of the United States, the majority of the judges held that the power to cause fugitives from service to be delivered up was a power to be exercised under the authority of this government. I do not know, on the whole, that it may not have been a fortunate decision. My habit is to respect the result of judicial deliberations and the solemnity of judicial decisions. As it now stands, the business of seeing that these fugitives are delivered up resides in the power of Congress and the national judicature, and my friend at the head of the Judiciary Committee17 has a bill on the subject now before the Senate, which, with some amendments to it, I propose to support, with all its provisions, to the fullest extent. And I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the North, of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some fanatical idea or some false impression, to their constitutional obligations. I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the North as a question of morals and a question of conscience. What right have they, in their legislative capacity or any other capacity, to endeavor to get round this Constitution, or to embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured by the Constitution to the persons whose slaves escape from themNone at all; none at all. Neither in the forum of conscience, nor before the face of the Constitution, are they, in my opinion, justified in such an attempt. Of course it is a matter for their consideration. They probably, in the excitement of the times, have not stopped to consider of this. They have followed what seemed to be the current of thought and of motives, as the occasion arose, and they have neglected to investigate fully the real question, and to consider their constitutional obligations; which, I am sure, if they did consider, they would fulfil with alacrity. I repeat, therefore, Sir, that here is a well-founded ground of complaint against the North, which ought to be removed, which it is now in the power of the different departments of this government to remove; which calls for the enactment of proper laws authorizing the judicature of this government, in the several States, to do all that is necessary for the recapture of fugitive slaves and for their restoration to those who claim them. Wherever I go, and whenever I speak on the subject, and when I speak here I desire to speak to the whole North, I say that the South has been injured in this respect, and has a right to complain; and the North has been too careless of what I think the Constitution peremptorily and emphatically enjoins upon her as a duty.

Complaint has been made against certain resolutions that emanate from legislatures at the North, and are sent here to us, not only on the subject of slavery in this District, but sometimes recommending Congress to consider the means of abolishing slavery in the States. I should be sorry to be called upon to present any resolutions here which could not be referable to any committee or any power in Congress; and therefore I should be unwilling to receive from the legislature of Massachusetts any instructions to present resolutions expressive of any opinion whatever on the subject of slavery, as it exists as the present moment in the States, for two reasons: first, because I do not consider that the legislature of Massachusetts has any thing to do with it; and next, because I do not consider that I, as her representative here, have any thing to do with it. It has become, in my opinion, quite too common; and if the legislatures of the States do not like that opinion, they have a great deal more power to put it down than I have to uphold it; it has become, in my opinion, quite too common a practice for the State legislatures to present resolutions here on all subjects and to instruct us on all subjects. There is no public man that requires instruction more than I do, or who requires information more than I do, or desires it more heartily; but I do not like to have it in too imperative a shape. I took notice, with pleasure, of some remarks made upon this subject, the other day, in the Senate of Massachusetts, by a young man of talent and character, of whom the best hopes may be entertained. I mean Mr. Hillard. He told the Senate of Massachusetts that he would vote for no instructions whatever to be forwarded to members of Congress, nor for any resolutions to be offered expressive of the sense of Massachusetts as to what her members of Congress ought to do. He said that he saw no propriety in one set of public servants giving instructions and reading lectures to another set of public servants. To his own master each of them must stand or fall, and that master is his constituents. I wish these sentiments could become more common. I have never entered into the question, and never shall, as to the binding force of instructions. I will, however, simply say this: if there be any matter pending in this body, while I am a member of it, in which Massachusetts has an interest of her own not adverse to the general interests of the country, I shall pursue her instructions with gladness of heart and with all the efficiency which I can bring to the occasion. But if the question be one which affects her interest, and at the same time equally affects the interests of all the other States, I shall no more regard her particular wishes or instructions than I should regard the wishes of a man who might appoint me an arbitrator or referee to decide some question of important private right between him and his neighbor, and then instruct me to decide in his favor. If ever there was a government upon earth it is this government, if ever there was a body upon earth it is this body, which should consider itself as composed by agreement of all, each member appointed by some, but organized by the general consent of all, sitting here, under the solemn obligations of oath and conscience, to do that which they think to be best for the good of the whole.

Then, Sir, there are the Abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. I think their operations for the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valuable. At the same time, I believe thousands of their members to be honest and good men, perfectly well meaning men. They have excited feelings; they think they must do something for the cause of liberty; and, in their sphere of action, they do not see what else they can do than to contribute to an Abolition press, or an Abolition society, or to pay an Abolition lecturer. I do not mean to impute gross motives even to the leaders of these societies, but I am not blind to the consequences of their proceedings. I cannot but see what mischiefs their interference with the South has produced. And is it not plain to every man? Let any gentleman who entertains doubts on this point recur to the debates in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832, and he will see with what freedom a proposition made by Mr. Jefferson Randolph for the gradual abolition of slavery was discussed in that body. Every one spoke of slavery as he thought; very ignominious and disparaging names and epithets were applied to it. The debates in the House of Delegates on that occasion, I believe, were all published. They were read by every colored man who could read, and to those who could not read, those debates were read by others. At that time Virginia was not unwilling or afraid to discuss this question, and to let that part of her population know as much of the discussion as they could learn. That was in 1832. As has been said by the honorable member from South Carolina, these Abolition societies commenced their course of action in 1835. It is said, I do not know how true it may be, that they sent incendiary publications into the slave States; at any rate, they attempted to arouse, and did arouse, a very strong feeling; in other words, they created great agitation the North against Southern slavery. Well, what was the result? The bonds of the slaves were bound more firmly than before, their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, which in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was opening out for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut itself up in its castle. I wish to know whether any body in Virginia can now talk openly as Mr. Randolph, Governor McDowell, and others talked in 1832, and sent their remarks to the press? We all know the fact, and we all know the cause; and every thing that these agitating people have done has been, not to enlarge, but to restrain, not to set free, but to bind faster, the slave population of the South.18

Again, Sir, the violence of the Northern press is complained of. The press violent! Why, Sir, the press is violent everywhere. There are outrageous reproaches in the North against the South, and there are reproaches as vehement in the South against the North. Sir, the extremists of both parts of this country are violent; they mistake loud and violent talk for eloquence and for reason. They think that he who talks loudest reasons best. And this we must expect, when the press is free, as it is here, and I trust always will be; for, with all its licentiousness and all its evil, the entire and absolute freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of government on the basis of a free constitution. Wherever it exists there will be foolish and violent paragraphs in the newspapers, as there are, I am sorry to say, foolish and violent speeches in both houses of Congress. In truth, Sir, I must say that, in my opinion, the vernacular tongue of the country has become greatly vitiated, depraved, and corrupted by the style of our Congressional debates. And if it were possible for those debates to vitiate the principles of the people as much as they have depraved their tastes, I should cry out, “God save the Republic!”

Well, in all this I see no solid grievance, no grievance presented by the South, within the redress of the government, but the single one to which I have referred; and that is, the want of a proper regard to the injunction of the Constitution for the delivery of fugitive slaves.

There are also complaints of the North against the South. I need not go over them particularly. The first and gravest is, that the North adopted the Constitution, recognizing the existence of slavery in the States, and recognizing the right, to a certain extent, of the representation of slaves in Congress, under a state of sentiment and expectation which does not now exist; and that, by events, by circumstances, by the eagerness of the South to acquire territory and extend her slave population, the North finds itself, in regard to the relative influence of the South and the North, of the free States and the slave States, where it never did expect to find itself when they agreed to the compact of the Constitution. They complain, therefore, that, instead of slavery being regarded as an evil, as it was then, an evil which all hoped would be extinguished gradually, it is now regarded by the South as an institution to be cherished, and preserved, and extended ; an institution which the South has already extended to the utmost of her power by the acquisition of new territory.

Well, then, passing from that, every body in the North reads; and every body reads whatsoever the newspapers contain; and the newspapers, some of them, especially those presses to which I have alluded, are careful to spread about among the people every reproachful sentiment uttered by any Southern man bearing at all against the North; every thing that is calculated to exasperate and to alienate; and there are many such things, as every body will admit, from the South, or some portion of it, which are disseminated among the reading people; and they do exasperate, and alienate, and produce a most mischievous effect upon the public mind at the North. Sir, I would not notice things of this sort appearing in obscure quarters; but one thing has occurred in this debate which struck me very forcibly. An honorable member from Louisiana addressed us the other day on this subject. I suppose there is not a more amiable and worthy gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman who would be more slow to give offence to any body, and he did not mean in his remarks to give offence. But what did he sayWhy, Sir, he took pains to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the laboring people of the North, giving the preference, in all points of condition, and comfort, and happiness, to the slaves of the South. The honorable member, doubtless, did not suppose that he gave any offence, or did any injustice. He was merely expressing his opinion. But does he know how remarks of that sort will be received by the laboring people of the North? Why, who are the laboring people of the North? They are the whole North. They are the people who till their own farms with their own hands; freeholders, educated men, independent men. Let me say, Sir, that five sixths of the whole property of the North is in the hands of the laborers of the North; they cultivate their farms, they educate their children, they provide the means of independence. If they are not freeholders, they earn wages; these wages accumulate, are turned into capital, into new freeholds, and small capitalists are created. Such is the case, and such the course of things, among the industrious and frugal. And what can these people think when so respectable and worthy a gentleman as the member from Louisiana undertakes to prove that the absolute ignorance and the abject slavery of the South are more in conformity with the high purposes and destiny of immortal, rational human beings, than the educated, the independent free labor of the North?

There is a more tangible and irritating cause of grievance at the North. Free blacks are constantly employed in the vessels of the North, generally as cooks or stewards. When the vessel arrives at a Southern port, these free colored men are taken on shore, by the police or municipal authority, imprisoned, and kept in prison till the vessel is again ready to sail. This is not only irritating, but exceedingly unjustifiable and oppressive. Mr. Hoar's mission, some time ago, to South Carolina, was a well-intended effort to remove this cause of complaint. The North thinks such imprisonments illegal and unconstitutional; and as the cases occur constantly and frequently, they regard it as a great grievance.

Now, Sir, so far as any of these grievances have their foundation in matters of law, they can be redressed, and ought to be redressed; and so far as they have their foundation in matters of opinion, in sentiment, in mutual crimination and recrimination, all that we can do is to endeavor to allay the agitation, and cultivate a better feeling and more fraternal sentiments between the South and the North.

Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from every member on this floor declarations of opinion that this Union could never be dissolved, than the declaration of opinion by any body, that, in any case, under the pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with distress and anguish the word “secession,” especially when it falls from the lips of those who are patriotic, and known to the country, and known all over the world, for their political services. Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish, I beg every body's pardon, as to expect to see any such thing? Sir, he who sees these States, now revolving in harmony around a common centre, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe. There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, Sir!

No, Sir! No, Sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, Sir, I see as plainly as I see the sun in heaven what that disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold character.

Peaceable secession! Peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secedeWhat is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longerAm I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of CongressHeaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower? or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground?

Why, Sir, our ancestors, our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living amongst us with prolonged lives, would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of that Union which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the armyWhat is to become of the navyWhat is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty States to defend itself? I know, although the idea has not been stated distinctly, there is to be, or it is supposed possible that there will be, a Southern Confederacy. I do not mean, when I allude to this statement, that any one seriously contemplates such a state of things. I do not mean to say that it is true, but I have heard it suggested elsewhere, that the idea has been entertained, that, after the dissolution of this Union, a Southern Confederacy might be formed. I am sorry, Sir, that it has ever been thought of, talked of, or dreamed of, in the wildest flights of human imagination. But the idea, so far as it exists, must be of a separation, assigning the slave States to one side and the free States to the other. Sir, I may express myself too strongly, perhaps, but there are impossibilities in the natural as well as in the physical world, and I hold the idea of a separation of these States, those that are free to form one government, and those that are slave-holding to form another, as such an impossibility. We could not separate the States by any such line, if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here to-day and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could.

Sir, nobody can look over the face of this country at the present moment, nobody can see where its population is the most dense and growing, without being ready to admit, and compelled to admit, that ere long the strength of America will be in the Valley of the Mississippi. Well, now, Sir, I beg to inquire what the wildest enthusiast has to say on the possibility of cutting that river in two, and leaving free States at its source and on its branches, and slave States down near its mouth, each forming a separate government? Pray, Sir, let ne say to the people of this country, that these things are worthy of their pondering and of their consideration. Here, Sir, are five millions of freemen in the free States north of the river Ohio. Can any body suppose that this population can be severed, by a line that divides them from the territory of a foreign and an alien government, down somewhere, the Lord knows where, upon the lower banks of the Mississippi? What would become of MissouriWill she join the arrondissement of the slave States? Shall the man from the Yellow Stone and the Platte be connected, in the new republic, with the man who lives on the southern extremity of the Cape of Florida? Sir, I am ashamed to pursue this line of remark. I dislike it, I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up this great government! to dismember this glorious country! to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government or any people! No, Sir! no, Sir! There will be no secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession.

Sir, I hear there is to be a convention held at Nashville. I am bound to believe that, if worthy gentlemen meet at Nashville in convention, their object will be to adopt conciliatory counsels; to advise the South to forbearance and moderation, and to advise the North to forbearance and moderation; and to inculcate principles of brotherly love and affection, and attachment to the Constitution of the country as it now is. I believe, if the convention meet at all, it will be for this purpose; for certainly, if they meet for any purpose hostile to the Union, they have been singularly inappropriate in their selection of a place. I remember, Sir, that, when the treaty of Amiens was concluded between France and England, a sturdy Englishman and a distinguished orator, who regarded the conditions of the peace as ignominious to England, said in the House of Commons, that, if King William could know the terms of that treaty, he would turn in his coffin! Let me commend this saying of Mr. Windham, in all its emphasis and in all its force, to any persons who shall meet at Nashville for the purpose of concerting measures for the overthrow of this Union over the bones of Andrew Jackson!

Sir, I wish now to make two remarks, and hasten to a conclusion. I wish to say, in regard to Texas, that if it should be hereafter, at any time, the pleasure of the government of Texas to cede to the United States a portion, larger or smaller, of her territory which lies adjacent to New Mexico, and north of 36° 30' of north latitude, to be formed into free States, for a fair equivalent in money or in the payment of her debt, I think it an object well worthy the consideration of Congress, and I shall be happy to concur in it myself, if I should have a connection with the government at that time.

I have one other remark to make. In my observations upon slavery as it has existed in this country, and as it now exists, I have expressed no opinion of the mode of its extinguishment or melioration. I will say, however, though I have nothing to propose, because I do not deem myself so competent as other gentlemen to take any lead on this subject, that if any gentleman from the South shall propose a scheme, to be carried on by this government upon a large scale, for the transportation of free colored people to any colony or any place in the world, I should be quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object. Nay, Sir, following an example set more than twenty years ago by a great man,19 then a Senator from New York, I would return to Virginia, and through her to the whole South, the money received from the lands and territories ceded by her to this government, for any such purpose as to remove, in whole or in part, or in any way to diminish or deal beneficially with, the free colored population of the Southern States. I have said that I honor Virginia for her cession of this territory. There have been received into the treasury of the United States eighty millions of dollars, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands ceded by her. If the residue should be sold at the same rate, the whole aggregate will exceed two hundred millions of dollars. If Virginia and the South see fit to adopt any proposition to relieve themselves from the free people of color among them, or such as may be made free, they have my full consent that the government shall pay them any sum of money out of the proceeds of that cession which may be adequate to the purpose.

And now, Mr. President, I draw these observations to a close. I have spoken freely, and I meant to do so. I have sought to make no display. I have sought to enliven the occasion by no animated discussion, nor have I attempted any train of elaborate argument. I have wished only to speak my sentiments, fully and at length, being desirous, once and for all, to let the Senate know, and to let the country know, the opinions and sentiments which I entertain on all these subjects. These opinions are not likely to be suddenly changed. If there be any future service that I can render to the country, consistently with these sentiments and opinions, I shall cheerfully render it. If there be not, I shall still be glad to have had an opportunity to disburden myself from the bottom of my heart, and to make known every political sentiment that therein exists.

And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in those caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh air of Liberty and Union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pigmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us, for the preservation of this Constitution and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest and brightest links in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the States to this Constitution for ages to come. We have a great, popular, constitutional government, guarded by law and by judicature, and defended by the affections of the whole people. No monarchical throne presses these States together, no iron chain of military power encircles them; they live and stand under a government popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as to last for ever. In all its history it has been beneficent; it has trodden down no man's liberty; it has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty and patriotism; its yet youthful veins are full of enterprise, courage, and honorable love of glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, become vastly larger. This republic now extends, with a vast breadth, across the whole continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental border of the buckler of Achilles:

“Now, the broad shield complete, the artist crowned

With his last hand, and poured the ocean round;

In living silver seemed the waves to roll,

And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole.”

_______________

1 Mr. [John C.] Calhoun.

2 Mr. Calhoun.

3 Mr. Mason of Virginia.

4 See Madison Papers, Vol. III. pp. 1390, 1428, et seq.

5 Seybert's Statistics, p. 92. A small parcel of cotton found its way to Liverpool from the United States in 1784, and was refused admission, on the ground that it could not be the growth of the United States.

6 Mr. Calhoun.

7 Mr. Walker.

8 Mr. [John] Bell.

9 Mr. Greene.

10 Mr. Hamlin.

11 Mr. Berrien.

12 Mr. Upshur.

13 Messrs. Niles of Connecticut and Dix of New York.

14 See the remarks on the Admission of Texas, p. 55 of this volume.

15  Mr. Bell.

16 Art. IV. Sect. 2, §2.

17 Mr. Mason.

18 See Note at the end of the Speech.

19 Mr. Rufus King.

SOURCE: Daniel Webster, The Works of Daniel Webster, Vol. 5, p. 324-66