448

SEWARD'S REPLY TO WEBSTER.

Seward would not defeat it by consenting to a law which would forbid Congress to abolish slavery there. The same principle applied to the territories.

He took issue with Webster as to the obligation of Congress to admit four new slave States to be formed out of Texas. The question was not quite so simple as Webster had presented. The States once formed, had the right to come in free or slave, according to their own choice. But Seward held, they could not be formed at all without the consent of Congress, and Congress was not obliged to give its consent. As he could find no authority in the Constitution for the annexation of foreign territory by a resolution of Congress, and no power adequate to that purpose but the treaty making power of the President and the Senate, he insisted that the constitutionality of the annexation of Texas itself should be cleared up before he could agree to the admission of any new States which might be formed within it; and he gave notice that he would vote to admit no more slave States, unless under circumstances absolutely compulsory and no such case, he said, was now foreseen. Calhoun had rested his argument on the original equality of the States and the common property rights of each State in the acquisitions since 1789. Seward questioned the accuracy of this statement. It rested, he said, on a syllogism of Vattel, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, but, added Seward, as States are only lawful aggregations of individual men, who severally are equal, therefore, they are equal in natural rights. By Vattel's dictum, the right of property in slaves would fall to the ground, for one who was equal to another could not be an owner of property in that other. But Calhoun would answer, that the Constitution recognized property in slaves. It would be sufficient, said Seward, to reply, that this constitutional recognition

NO RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN MAN.

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must be void because repugnant to the law of nature and of nations. But Seward took a bolder stand than this and denied that the Constitution recognized property in man. Not only did it not affirm that principle, but on the contrary altogether excluded it. Citing from Jay, in the Federalist, and from the debates in the convention of 1787,1 he concluded that the slave was divested of only two-fifths of a man, "leaving still three-fifths; leaving the slave still an inhabitant, a person, a living, breathing, moving, reasoning, immortal man." The Constitution, therefore, did not recognize property in man, but left that question as between the States, to the law of nature and of nations.

The right to have a slave implied the right in some one to make the slave, a right which must be equal and mutual, and which would resolve society into a state of perpetual war. But granting the constitutional recognition of slaves as property and the original equality of the States, Seward declared, that Calhoun's argument failed; the States were not a party to the Constitution as States, for the Constitution is of the people of the United States. But even if a party to it as States, they surrender their equality as States and submit themselves to the sway of the numerical majority on the two important qualifications; first, slave representation, and secondly, equal representation of the States in the Senate, the classification of the States into slave and free, or Northern and Southern, was purely imaginary, and the idea of a joint stock association or co-partnership in the Union was erroneous. "The United States," said he, "was a political state or organized society whose end is government for the security, welfare and happiness of all who live under its protection."

1 Those of August 28 and 29, 1787.

450

SLAVERY NOT A RULING INSTITUTION.

Seward further objected to the compromise, because it assumed that slavery, if not the only institution in a slave State, was at least a ruling institution. On the contrary, slavery was only one of many institutions in a State. Freedom was equally an institution. Slavery was only temporary, accidental, partial and incongruous, but freedom was perpetual, organic, universal, in harmony with the Constitution itself. Clay's proposed compromise regarded the national domain only as a possession to be enjoyed by the citizens of the old States, either in common or by petition; but in truth they held no arbitrary power over it, they were only stewards. "The Constitution," said he, "devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare and to liberty." But it was his next declaration which most astounded many of his listeners, and which opened up a new political vista. "There is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain. The territory is a part, but no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind bestowed upon them by the Creator of the Universe. We are His stewards and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness. And now, the simple, bold and awful question which presents itself to us is this: Shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions, shall we, who know by experience the wise and the just and are free to choose them and to reject the erroneous and unjust, shall we establish human bondage, or permit it by our sufferance to be established?" The same question had come up when the Fathers were establishing the organic law under which the States of the northwest were to come into the Union, and they had solemnly repudiated slavery from those States forever.

He then took up the principal argument which had been

SLAVERY NOT A RULING INSTITUTION.

451

advanced in defense of the compromise, and held that Congress had power to legislate on the subject of slavery within the territories; that it was necessary for the general welfare to exclude it; that it was not climate or any natural necessity, but the indolence of mankind which demanded slavery. Its evils would be increased not diminished by its diffusion. The fierce conflict of parties over the slavery question was no proof, he said, that the proposed compromise would restore harmony, the question was essentially one of morals. To the ominous threat of secession, if the demands of the South were not granted, Seward made reply, that the question of dissolving the Union was too complex, embracing the fearful issue whether the Union should stand, and slavery under the steady, peaceful action of moral, social and political causes, be removed by gradual voluntary effort and with compensation, or whether the Union should be dissolved and civil war ensue, "bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation." The stage of National progress had been reached when the crisis could be foreseen. Nothing was heard but slavery. All the public embarrassments arose from the want of moral courage to meet the question of emancipation. Because slavery had always existed, and here Seward parted company with both the old parties, he was convinced that slavery must give way "to the salutary instructions of economy and to the ripening influences of humanity." He considered emancipation inevitable and near. It might be hastened or hindered. All measures which fortified slavery or extended it, tended to its violent end, but all that checked its extension, tended to its peaceful extirpation. Seward advocated only lawful, constitutional and peaceful means to secure even that end, but the change could not go on too fast, if the only alternative would be a war of

452 SEWARD'S PHILOSOPHY THE "HIGHER LAW.”

races. So long as slavery possesses the cotton fields, the sugar fields and the rice fields of the world, so long would commerce and capital yield it toleration and sympathy. Emancipation would be a Democratic revolution.

Seward's political philosophy is easy to understand. He looked to the recently new States of the West, and to the new States yet to be there, for the guarantees of freedom. The fate of the Union would depend upon the people of the West. Even if the Union were destroyed it would rise again in all its just and magnificent proportions. For the vindication of his beliefs, Seward looked not to the verdict of the passing hour, but to the countless generations who should inhabit the new regions of the American continent. Freedom was national. He had sounded the key-note to the new Democracy. One expression in Seward's speech immediately gave it a name and standing among the people; his appeal to the higher law, that corrective in nature, which not understood is supposed to rule the affairs of this world ultimately for justice. The speech is unquestionably the most important spoken on the compromise, and may be studied with care as containing the program of a new political party, whose interpretation of the Constitution was to utilize the doctrine of the higher law.

On the eighteenth of April, Clay's resolutions and some others which had been introduced during the debate were referred to a Select Committee, chosen on the following day. Clay was made its chairman. On the eighth of May he reported seven resolutions, all of which had received the support of a majority of the committee, but no two of which had received an equal support. During the next six weeks the committee's report, by successive amendments, was almost entirely divested of its original features, and it became evident that the "omnibus bill," as it was somewhat