House of Representatives, January 16, 1866. AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION . House of Representatives, January 29, 1866. THE PUNISHMENT OF REBEL LEADERS House of Representatives, April 30, 1866. RADICALISM THE NATION'S HOPE . House of Representatives, June 16, 1866. 319 332 348 IMPOLICY OF LAND BOUNTIES - THE HOMESTEAD LAW DE- FENDED . 385 In Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, July 13, 1868. SPEECHES. THE SLAVERY QUESTION. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 14, 1850, IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION. [This speech, like the one which follows it, will vividly recall the anti-slavery crisis of 1850, and the shameful surrender of Congress to the slave power through the famous compromise measures of that year. These measures paved the way for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the bloody raid into Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and the final chapter of civil war; and in the light of these results the facts and arguments here so carefully arrayed possess a certain historical interest, while completely vindicating the action of the little party of Independents in the Thirty-first Congress in standing aloof from the Whig and Democratic organizations, and warning the country against further submission to their rule.] MR. CHAIRMAN, - Representing, as I do, one of the strongest anti-slavery districts in the Union, I feel called upon to express, as nearly as may be, the views and feelings of my constituents, in reference to the exciting and painfully interesting question of slavery. I am not vain enough to suppose that anything I may say will influence the action of this committee; yet I should hereafter reproach myself were I to sit here day after day, and week after week, till the close of the session, listening to the monstrous heresies, and I am tempted to say the impudent bluster, of Southern gentlemen, without confronting them on this floor with a becoming protest in the name of the people I have the honor to represent. Sir, what is the language with which these gentlemen have greeted our ears for some months past? The gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. CLINGMAN] tells us, that less pauperism and crime abound in the South than in the North, and that there never has existed a higher state of civilization than is now exhibited by the slaveholding States of this Union; and so in love is he with his "peculiar institution," which thus promotes the growth of civilization by turning three millions of human beings into savages, and prevents them from becoming paupers by converting them into brutes, that he gives out the threat, doubtless in behalf of his Southern friends, that unless they are permitted, under national sanction, to extend their accursed system over the virgin soil of our Territories, they will block the wheels of government, revolutionize the forms of legislation, and involve this nation in the horrors of civil war. Nay, he goes farther, and anticipating the triumph of Northern arms, and comparing the vanquished "chivalry" to the Spartans at Thermopyla, he kindly furnishes the future historian with the epitaph which is to tell posterity the sad story of slaveholding valor: "Here lived and died as noble a race as the sun ever shone upon,” — fighting (he should have added) for the extension and perpetuation of human bondage! The gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. BROWN] manifests an equal devotion to the controlling interest of the South. He declares that he regards slavery "as a great moral, social, political, and religious blessing, a blessing to the slave and a blessing to the master." The celebrated John Wesley was so "fanatical" as to declare that "slavery is the sum of all villainies." Had he lived in this enlightened age and Christian land, he would have learned. that, on the contrary, it is the sum of all blessings. He would have been told that even the Bible sanctions it as a Divine institution. Southern gentlemen remind us that it "existed in the tents of the Patriarchs, and in the households of His own chosen people; "that "it was established by decree of Almighty God," and "is sanctioned in the Bible-in both Testaments- from Genesis to Revelation; "1 and so sacredly is it to be cherished, that we in the North are not allowed to give utterance to our deepest moral convictions respecting it. My friend from Mississippi graciously admits that we think slavery an evil; but he adds, “Very well, think so; but keep your thoughts to yourselves." Thus, in the imperative mood and characteristic style of a slave-driver are we to be silenced. In this "freest nation on earth," our thoughts must be suppressed by this slaveholding inquisition. We must, I suppose, make a bonfire of the writings of Whittier, and expurgate our best literature. Indeed, to be consistent, and in order to eradicate every trace of "fanaticism" from the minds of the people, we must blot out the history of the American Revolution, and keep our liberty a secret," lest we should give offense to the immaculate institution of the South. Of other institutions of society we may speak with the utmost freedom. We may talk of Northern labor and Northern pauperism. We may advocate with 66 1 Jefferson Davis. tongue and pen the most radical schemes of reform, and thus assail every existing feature of our civilization. We may discourse freely of things even the most sacred, as the Supreme Being, his attributes, and Providence-yes, in this boasted land of free speech, we may deny his existence, or blaspheme his name by invoking his sanction of the most heaven-daring crimes; but American slavery is an institution so precious, so beneficent, so exalted among the ordinances of God, so" sanctioned and sanctified by the legislation of two hundred years," that Northern men are not permitted to breathe an honest whisper against it. We must hold our tongues and seal our lips before the majesty of this Southern Moloch, lest he should lose some of the victims which otherwise his worshippers might sacrifice upon his blood-stained altar. O, the devouring loveliness, the enrapturing beauties, the unspeakable beatitudes of the "patriarchal institution!" And what a blessed thing it must be to live in the pure atmosphere and under the clear sky of the South, feasting upon philosophy and reason, far removed from the folly and "fanaticism" of the North! And the gentleman from Mississippi, like his friend from North Carolina, is in favor of extending the blessings of slavery at all hazards. The South will not submit to be girdled round by free soil; and if we dare to thwart her purpose, we are reminded of the struggle of our fathers against British tyranny. Southern gentlemen point us to the battle-fields of our Revolution, and bid us beware. A Northern man, especially if disposed to be "fanatical," would suppose that our Southern brethren would avoid such allusions. Our fathers, it is true, resisted the aggressions of the mother country "at all hazards, and to the last extremity;" but their resistance was not in behalf of slavery, but freedom. Mr. Madison declared, in 1783, that "it was the boast and pride of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature." And Mr. Jefferson said, that "one hour" of this American slavery, which has been so recently transfigured into all blessedness, "is fraught with more misery than ages of that which we rose in rebellion to oppose.' In speaking of an apprehended struggle of the blacks to rid themselves of their bondage, he affirmed that "the Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest." Yet Southern gentlemen appeal to our revolutionary history as a warning to us, and a justification of a war on their part, not for the establishment, but for the subversion of liberty, and the destruction of "the rights of human nature," by the indefinite extension over free lands of that system of bondage which the very soul of Jefferson abhorred. All this, to Northern men, seems strange. As a specimen of Southern philosophy it may be very creditable to politicians from that quarter, and it may appeal powerfully to their patriotism, but we cannot comprehend it. Nothing short of the serene understanding and unclouded vision of a slaveholder can fathom such arguments in defense of the South. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. MORTON] makes war upon the ballot-box. He says it has become "sectional ;" and a distinguished gentleman in the other end of the Capitol, after charging it with being the parent of the anti-slavery agitation and its apprehended disasters to the country, pronounces it "worse than Pandora's box." We in the North have been taught that a constitutional majority should rule. We believe this principle lies at the foundation of our free system of government. We have been so "fanatical" as to regard the ballot-box as the palladium of our liberty. But our slaveholding brethren have discovered that this supposed safeguard of freedom is, in fact, an engine of mischief. It is the dreaded instrument by which this Union is to be broken into fragments. How we should get along in a Democratic government without it, I am not able to explain; and I regret that Southern gentlemen, whose minds are free from any "fanatical" influence, have not seen fit to enlighten us on that subject. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. WELLBORN] assails the dogma that "men are created equal; "he styles it "a mystical postulate," although our fathers regarded it as a self-evident truth. They, I suppose, lived in the twilight of political wisdom; for, since I have had the honor to occupy a seat on this floor, I have on more occasions than one heard Southern gentlemen denounce Jefferson as a sophist, and the Declaration of Independence as a humbug. And some of these gentlemen, strange to tell, coolly style themselves Democrats! Why, we are told that so far from being created equal, men are not created at all. Adam alone was a created man. Neither are men born. Neither are men born. Infants are born, and grow up to the estate of manhood; but men are neither born nor created. The equality of men js declared to be absurd for other reasons. Some men, we are told, are taller than others, some of a fairer complexion, some more richly endowed with intellect; as if the author of the Declaration of Independence had meant to affirm that men are equal in respect to their physical or intellectual peculiarities! Mr. Chairman, I will speak seriously. I need not further |