market is fully supplied with laborers. Slaves are like any other stock, of which merchandise is made. Widen the market for their sale, and you stimulate the production. Increase their value, and you prolong the years of their bondage. The extension of slavery and the increase of slaves are identical and inseparable-one and the same thing. It is the influence and effect of this policy upon white labor of which I especially complain. It gives up to the cupidity of the slaveholder, and to the unproductive tillage of his human cattle, that which of right belongs to free labor, and which is necessary for the support and happiness of our own people. It brings dishonor and degradation upon the poor white man, who is brought in close contact with the servile labor of the black. It mars his manhood. It destroys his self-respect and dignity of character. He feels a sense of humiliation when he looks up to the vast distances between himself and the lordly planter, in the shadow of whose aristocratic possessions he lives an inferior, if not a dependent. He lives in the midst of a social system, made up of lords and vassals; and if he cannot rise to the condition of the former, he must sink to a level with the latter.

This is the policy we are called upon to favor, and for the advancement of which an effort is made to control the action of the democratic party. The rights and interests of free labor are to be trodden under foot-the great mission of man's elevation abandoned the march of civilization turned back-the hopes of the patriot and philanthropist disappointed; and all this, to satisfy the demands of a few thousand slaveholders, whose pecuniary interests are promoted by the extension of slavery. The name of Democracy is invoked, to carry forward this work of barbarism and of bondage-a name sacred to progress and human advancement. Sir, before the time-honored name of Democracy is thus desecrated, there will be a fierce and mighty struggle in the land. The young and ardent, the noble and self-sacrificing, will fight a battle against selfishness, and patronage, and the power of party machinery, that shall shake this Confederacy from its center to its circumference-that shall tear down old organizations, and reconstruct parties anew. They will strike for the integrity of their party, the purity of its principles, and the honor of its ancient name. We know we are right in this contest, and we do

not mean to surrender, so long as there is an inch of ground on which we can stand and do battle.

Mr. Chairman, it would seem as if a studied effort was made in certain quarters to create alarm for the safety of the Union. The Union is in no danger. If there are enemies of its peace and perpetuity, they are to be found among those who, reckless of all else, are intent only upon the propagation of human slavery. Was it for this that the Union was formed? Is this the bond that unites us? When our fathers severed the ties that bound them to the mother country, they felt called upon, by a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, to declare the causes that impelled them to the separation. The Declaration of Independence records the history of the wrongs and injuries inflicted upon the Colonies, by the tyranny of Great Britain. It appealed to the impartial judgment of the world, and to the justice of Heaven. What would be the character of that declaration, upon which our southern brethren would declare the Union of these States dissolved? What the record of their wrongs upon which they would ask the judgment of a candid world? If it spoke the language of truth, it would set forth, "that the people and Government of the United States having refused to aid in the extension of human slavery, and, for this cause, feeling that our wrongs are insupportable, we do proclaim the Union of these States at an end, and the bonds that bound us together as one people forever severed and dissolved." Whose hand will pen such a declaration? It would meet with the scorn and execration of mankind. It would shock the moral sense of the civilised world. Humanity would shudder and tyrants exult in such a declaration. Sir, this cry of disunion is as idle as the which children are frightened into obedience. before. These continual croakings are out of season and out of place. Why should they be ever sounded in our ears? Is it an appeal to our fears? Are we so weak, or so timid, as to be frightened from our principles and our purpose? Are we so ignorant of the relative strength of the two great sections of the Union, as to fear for the safety of our homes and our firesides? I have no patience with those who are continually sounding the changes upon these discordant notes. It seems to me to imply cowardice upon the part of those to whom they are addressed,

nursery tales with We have heard it

It does not convince us that we are in error. It is not an appeal to our reason and sense of justice and right. It must, as it seems to me, be intended to intimidate; and, if so, we are bound, as brave and free men, to spurn the indignity. Our attachment to the Union is deep and abiding. We do not permit ourselves to calculate its value, or to talk lightly of its dissolution; but, sir, we do know, that we enjoy no monopoly of its advantages or its honors. Its profits are not to us alone. Then why should the specter of disunion be held up before us? If it ever becomes necessary, which God forbid, to contemplate it, terror will strike no deeper to the northern than to the southern heart. Sir, let us have done with this talk about disunion. This controversy is not to be settled by appeals to the fears of either the North or the South. Reason and justice must decide between us. right must prevail, and the wrong must give way.

The

Mr. Chairman, I have spoken with the frankness and earnestness that I believe due to this subject, but with no disposition to impugn the motives or the patriotism of others, with whom it is my misfortune to differ. Believing as I do, that this question is one of the first magnitude, I could not discharge my whole duty and say less. Would that I could have said more. Would that I were able to present to the country this momentous subject in all the length and breadth, and depth of its bearings upon the happiness of the people and the well-being of the Republic. Its settlement determines, for all coming time, the character and institutions of this Government. If the friends of freedom are overcome in this contest, it will be the last struggle ever made against the advancement of the slave power-a power which will then overshadow the country, and bear down all opposition to its will. Holding in its iron grasp by far the larger and better portion of the soil of the Republic, the great resource of the laboring man, it will trample at pleasure upon the rights of the masses, and in the end deprive them of their just influence and control in the Government. A triumph now, secures to slavery other and larger conquests. It will move on like a resistless current until it shall spread over the whole continent to the south. This is as certain as that time and the seasons will roll on. If the events of the last few years will not arouse the free laborers of the North to a sense of their danger, then, indeed, will all the

efforts of their friends upon this floor prove fruitless and unavailing. Give to slavery one half of our recent acquisitions, and it will have added to its dominion, within the last three years, a territory larger than that of the entire free States of this Union. Extend it to the Pacific, and it forthwith takes up its march to the South. The history of Texas will be the history of every Mexican province, until that Republic shall be overrun from her northern boundary to the Isthmus of Panama. Her effeminate and unresisting population will be exterminated or enslaved. Slavery will riot in the extent of its possessions and power; and then will grow up at the south the mightiest obligarchy that the world ever saw.

SPEECH ON THE PRESIDENT'S

III

MESSAGE TRANSMITTING THE

CONSTITUTION OF CALIFORNIA

MR. CHAIRMAN: This lengthened debate, in my judgment, has been productive of at least one good result. It has disclosed, beyond all question of denial or equivocation, the policy and purpose of the South. It affords ample justification, if any were needed where the path of duty is so clearly marked out, for firm adherence to that policy, upon which I have stood from the first, and upon which I intend to stand throughout this momentous struggle.1

Of the character of this struggle, if there were ever room for doubt, there can be doubt no longer. It must now be conceded that there is substance in this controversy-that the principle of positive prohibition by Congress against slavery in the territories of the nation, is not an abstraction, having no practical object, and leading to no practical result. Four years of earnest, and often acrimonious debate in the halls of this Capitol-an agitation widespread as the country, reaching all classes, and stirring to their profoundest depths the passions of men, attests the magnitude of the struggle, and the mighty interests dependent upon its issue. Except that protracted and bloody conflict which gave birth to the nation none has arisen, and, in my judgment, none will arise in our subsequent history, involving interests so vast, consequences so momentous for good or evil, as the one now pressing its fearful weight upon us-reaching, as it does, to the remotest posterity, and involving, if not the existence, the character and policy of our Government, so long as we shall have a name and a place among the family of nations. The ultimate decision of the present controversy will settle the great question, of the condition and destiny of the southern half of this Continent. It will

1 Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 3, 1850. Cong. Globe, Thirty-first Congress., 1st session, Appendix, pp. 511, et seq. See conclusion of Chapter XXIII.