authorized to make it. I deny the charge. I deny that the free States"keep up and foster in their bosoms Abolition societies," for any purpose. The Abolition societies, now known as such, belong to what is called the Garrison School. They are voluntary associations of men and women, the Northern States being no more responsible for their doings than the Southern States. Unlike all other parties in the North, they lay down their platform outside of the Constitution, and hold that the freedom of the black race can only be accomplished by its overthrow; but they rely upon moral force alone for the triumph of their cause. I deny that they are guilty of inciting, or of wishing to incite servile insurrections, or of scattering firebrands among the slaves, or licentious pictures. These Abolitionists are generally the friends of peace, non-resistants, the enemies of violence and blood; and they would regret as much as any people in the Union to see a servile war set on foot by the millions in the land of slavery. I will add further, while dissenting entirely from their constitutional doctrines, that they have among them some of the purest and most gifted men in the nation. But is the charge meant for the Free Soil party of the North? Are they the incendiaries complained of, and their doctrines the firebrands which have been scattered in the South? We hold that Congress should abolish slavery in this District, prevent its extension beyond its present limits, refuse the admission of any more slave States, and that the government should relieve itself from all responsibility for the existence or support of slavery where it has the constitutional power thus to relieve itself, leaving it a State institution, dependent upon State law exclusively. We are for non-intervention in its true sense. Such is our creed, and we proclaim it North and South. If it is incendiary, then are we guilty, for our newspapers circulate in the slaveholding States. If our faith is a firebrand, we have scattered it, not among your slaves, who are unable to read, but among their owners. Acting within the Constitution, and resolving not to go beyond its granted powers, we mean to avail ourselves of a free press to disseminate our views far and wide. If truth is incendiary, we shall still proclaim it; if our constitutional acts are firebrands, we shall nevertheless do our duty. Sir, this charge has been conceived in the diseased brain of the slaveholder, or the sickly conscience of the doughface. I reiterate my denial that any party in the free States has labored to bring about a war between the two races in the South. I am aware that we have our ultra men among us, nor do I pretend to justify all they have done. They must answer for themselves, and can

not involve the North in their responsibility. But there is no party. in the free States that harbors any such purpose, or that would not shudder at the contemplation of so merciless and heart-appalling a project.

Passing over the subject' of slavery in this District, which I shall notice in a different connection, I come now to the Wilmot Proviso. This would seem to be the sum of all wrongs and outrages — the aggression of aggressions, the monster that, if not at once throttled and destroyed, is to rend the Union asunder. Let us once more look it in the face, take its dimensions, and contemplate its supposed power of mischief. This Wilmot Proviso has been much discussed in Congress and throughout the country; it might be thought, by this time, a stale topic; yet it is far from being an uninteresting one, as the continual discussion of it here evinces. Endeavoring as much as possible to lay aside passion, I would say to Southern gentlemen, "Let us reason together.' Suppose this alarming measure should pass both houses of Congress, and receive the Executive sanction, I ask wherein would consist the aggression upon the guaranteed rights of the South? Would not every slave State still retain its sovereignty over its peculiar institution? Would not the rights of the master, as sanctioned by local law, remain unimpaired? Look next at the constitutional compromises. The free States bound themselves to allow you to pursue your fugitives upon their soil. Would the adoption of the proviso affect, in the smallest degree, this right? We agreed that you might carry on or, if you please, that we would join you in carrying on the slave-trade, for twenty years. We faithfully lived up to this compromise; and there is, long since, an end of it. Of course, the proviso can have nothing to do with it. Lastly, it was stipulated that every five of your slaves, for the purposes of taxation and representation, should be counted equal to three of our citizens. Most obviously, the passage of the proviso would not invalidate the rights of the South growing out of this compromise. The old slave States, and those subsequently admitted, would retain all the advantages of the original bargain. Now, I maintain that these subjects of taxation, representation, and the recovery of fugitives, are the only matters touching which. Congress can constitutionally legislate in favor of slavery. So far, I admit, our fathers compromised the freedom of the black race, and involved the free States in the political obligation to uphold slavery. Beyond these express compromises, they did not go nor design to go. They yielded thus much to the South, under the

impelling desire for union, believing that the powers of the gov ernment, with the exceptions expressly made, would be "actively and perpetually exerted on the side of freedom," and that slavery would gradually cease to exist in the country. I do not speak of this as matter of conjecture. As early as 1774, Mr. Jefferson declared that the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies;" and the opinion was then common throughout the country that this object could be attained by discontinuing the importation of slaves from abroad. The action of the memorable Congress of this year, and popular movements in all the colonies, about this time, evinced a very decided determination to carry into practice this non-importation policy. This, I presume, will be denied by no one. Our revolutionary struggle commenced soon afterwards; and, basing its justification upon the inalienable rights of man, it could not fail to give an impulse to the spirit of liberty favorable to the abolition of slavery in the colonies. After the war was over, Mr. Jefferson himself declared that such had been its tendency. Indeed, our fathers could not avoid seeing that slavery was practically at war with the Declaration of Independence, and their own example in resisting the tyranny of Britain. In 1787 the Federal Constitution was framed, and it is a noteworthy fact, that the word slave is not to be found in it. According to Mr. Madison, this word was studiously omitted, to avoid the appearance of a sanction, by the Federal Government, of the idea "that there could be property in man." This circumstance, it seems to me, is very significant. The Constitution is so guardedly framed, that, were slavery at any moment to cease to exist, scarcely a clause or a word would require to be changed. Who does not see in this, that whilst our fathers were framing a constitution that was to last for ages, the idea stood out palpably before their minds that the days of slavery were numbered? Be it remembered, too, that at the time the Constitution was adopted, slavery had already been abolished, or measures had been taken for its abolition, in seven of the thirteen colonies; and at the very time the convention which formed the Constitution was in session, maturing its provisions, the Congress of the Confederation was sitting at New York, enacting the celebrated ordinance by which territory enough for five large States was forever consecrated to freedom. Every inch of soil which the government then owned was, by this ordinance, made free, and a preponderance secured in favor of the North of twelve nonslaveholding to only six slaveholding States. Thus we see, that

at the time the government was about to enter upon its career, and to exemplify the spirit of its founders, slavery was a receding power, a decaying interest, a perishing institution. Not chains and stripes, but freedom, was the dominant idea, the great thought of our fathers. They would have been astounded at the suggestion that slavery was to be perpetuated in this country, as the source of all blessings, and lauded as "the corner-stone of our republican edifice." It was among them, and had been forced upon them by the mother country; and not being able immediately to get rid of it, it was to be tolerated, and endured, till measures could be taken for its final extirpation from the land. And if they regarded it as a curse, and did not expect it to be perpetuated where it then existed, much less did they imagine that it was to be carried into new regions under the sanction of the government of their formation, and become the great central power and all-absorbing interest of the nation. Sir, the thought is monstrous, that the Northern States, when reluctantly agreeing to those compromises by which slavery received a qualified support in the old States, intended that those compromises should afterwards be indefinitely extended over the American Continent. Let it be borne in mind, also, as corroborating the view under consideration, that the founders of our government had no expectation that the boundaries of the United States, as established by the Treaty of 1783, would ever be enlarged. There is not one syllable of evidence, either in the Constitution itself, or the history of its formation, to justify the idea that the acquisition of foreign territory was contemplated. This has been admitted by distinguished Southern gentlemen in this hall, and in the other end of the Capitol. Mr. Jefferson seems to have entertained this view; for he questioned the power of the nation to annex foreign territory without an amendment of the Constitution. I deduce from this the obvious and inevitable conclusion, that the Constitution was made for the United States as then bounded, and that the compromises on the subject of slavery, to which the Northern States assented, had reference alone to the slavery of the then slaveholding States; the slavery that was dwindling and perishing under the weight of its own acknowledged evils; the slavery that our fathers prevented from spreading into the only territory then belonging to the government; the slavery that was almost universally expected, at no very distant day, to be swept from the Republic. The adoption of the Wilmot Proviso, therefore, would be in harmony with the Constitution, with the views and expectations of the people at the time of its formation, and

with the Declaration of Independence, on which our fathers planted themselves in their struggle against a foreign yoke. It is impossible to escape this conclusion without contradicting the truth. of history, and branding the founders of the government as hypocrites, who, after having paraded the rights of man before the world, and achieved their own freedom, deliberately went to work to found an empire of slaves. And yet Southern gentlemen speak of the restriction of slavery as an aggression upon their rights! What makes this charge look still worse is the fact, that the supreme power of legislation by Congress over the Territories of the government has been uniformly exercised from its beginning till the year 1848, and acquiesced in by all its departments. The power in question — that of restricting slavery was exercised in 1787; it was exercised in 1820; it was exercised in the passage of the resolutions annexing Texas in 1845, and in its most objectionable form; and it was again exercised in 1848, with the sanction of a slaveholding President. And still we are told that the passage of the Proviso would be such an intolerable outrage as to justify the dissolution of the Union!

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Mr. Chairman, I have now briefly noticed most of the alleged aggressions of the North. The historical facts I have brought forward, bearing upon the question of slavery restriction, have been often presented; but they cannot be too often repeated, or too carefully remembered, in the present crisis. Sir, it is as true at this day as at any former period of our history, that "a frequent recurrence to first principles is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty."

Turning now to the other side of the picture, I propose to glance at that policy and some of those acts by which slavery, instead of wearing out its life within its original limits, has been transplanted into new regions, fostered by the government as a great national interest, and interwoven with the whole fabric of its policy. I shall make no special complaint about "Southern aggression," for it will appear, as I have already stated, that the slave power has built itself up by the coöperation or acquiescence of the non-slaveholding States. Nor shall I claim any novelty for the facts I am about to present. They form a part of the history of the country and the public records of the government. Through various channels they have found their way to the people; yet it may not be entirely a useless labor to gather them together, and endeavor to keep them in remembrance in determining what further concessions shall be made to the demands of slavery.