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If it remained confined to these states and grew weaker elsewhere, then human rights and the blessings of free labor would necessarily and steadily gain ground. If it struck deeper root and spread wider, then human rights, free labor and all freedom, political, religious and moral, would perforce ever bow lower under the yoke of the slavocracy, as long as men would neither sacrifice the Union nor venture to fight for the Union. The preservation of the status quo was impossible.

us to cultivate our lands with negroes, and that without them South Carolina would soon be a desert waste. . . We . . . assigned reasons for our insisting on the importation, which there is no occasion to repeat, as they must occur to every gentleman in the house." Elliot, Deb., IV., pp. 272, 285. The debates of the Georgia convention are not preserved, but the votes of the Georgia delegates at Philadelphia and the way in which they let the South Carolina delegates speak for them fully justify the assertion made in the text. In May, 1789, the first skir mish in congress on the slavery question took place. The provocation thereto was the motion by Parker of Virginia to lay a tax of $10 per head upon slaves imported. Jackson of Georgia said on this occasion: "They [gentlemen] do not wish to charge us for every comfort and enjoyment of life and at the same time take away the means of procuring them; they do not wish to break us down at once." Deb. of Congress, I., p. 73. Georgia was for a long time the only state which permitted the importation of slaves. South Carolina did not repeal her prohibition, which had existed since the time of the Philadelphia convention, nutil 1803 Georgia had then again forbidden it and by a clause in the constitution of 1798. Opinions of the Attorneys General, I., p. 449.

CHAPTER VIII.

HISTORY OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION FROM 1789 UNTIL THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

Washington had written as early as 1786 to Lafayette that he "despaired" of seeing the spirit of freedom gain the upper hand.1 Politicians and people, however, continued to be convinced of the contrary, although under the new constitution proofs of the justice of Washington's view rapidly accumulated. A most notable symptom of this was that no one was conscious how quickly the nation was striding forward on the wrong path. The constant speaking and writing about freedom during the revolution bore evil fruits. The gulf between abstract political reasoning and the actual development of freedom had become perilously broad. Not only was the faculty of political judgment hurt, but the political will of the nation had suffered. Men became impatient and unjust because they had talked themselves into believing the flattering illusion that in the struggle against the injustice of others, one starts from the absolute principle of justice. The speediest courser on the road to despotism is a principle ridden without reins. If men had given themselves up to gross illusions, at first, in regard to the readiness with which real interests would be sacrificed at the altar of principle, they now ruthlessly rejected the principle for the sake of empty prejudices. Their position on the slavery question might have been more or less excused by sad political necessity. But for the shameful treatment of the free men of color, not even this dubious justification can be brought forward

Wash., Writ., IX., p. 163.

TREATMENT OF FREE NEGROES.

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-at least not yet-and it therefore throws an especially clear light upon how far the principles of the Declaration of Independence, with their consequences, had become flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone of the people.

The free men of color, especially those in the northern states, had had an honorable share in the war of independence. On different occasions, as, for instance, at the defense of Red Bank, they had greatly distinguished themselves. The republic now praised them for this, while congress declared them unworthy to serve in the militia.' This did the slaveholders a service that involved the greatest consequences, for it had now been recognized as a fundamental fact that race and color were principles which should necessarily be taken account of in making laws.

The consequences logically resulting from this fact were practically followed up so widely that they almost instantly amounted to an emphatic recognition of slavery as a national institution. In the southern states, slavery was looked upon as, without doubt, the natural position of persons of color, so that the presumption of the law was that every colored man was a slave. If the freedom of a colored man was questioned by any one whatever, the burden of proof to the contrary rested on him. This upsetting of the fundamental principle of law recognized by all civilized peoples-affirmanti, non neganti, incumbit probatiowas formally approved by congress when it resolved that, in the District of Columbia, over which the constitution gave it unlimited power, the laws of Maryland and Virginia should respectively remain in force. Yet this is not

"In a state where slavery is allowed, every colored person is presumed to be a slave." Prigg vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Peters, Rep., XVI., p. 669; Curtis, XIV., p. 470.

Art. I., Sec. 8, § 17.

4 Law of Feb. 27, 1801; Stat. at Large, II., p. 105. The part of the District ceded by Virginia was afterwards given back to that state. In the report of the committee for the District, Jan. 11, 1827, it is affirmed:

all. Henceforth slavery existed in the District only by virtue of this law, -a slavery with a code which was a veritable muster-roll of horrors. It is possible, and in truth probable, that most members of congress were not aware what sort of abominations they had made laws of the Union by adopting the slave-code of Maryland, then nearly a century old. But how far does the excuse reach? If human rights had already become so much of a lie, as far as race and color were concerned, that it was no longer deemed worth the trouble to inquire what laws were made about them, then the nation was only one step from letting such outrages against the first demands of justice, humanity and morality, to say nothing of the principles of freedom, be framed into laws with the full consciousness of their meaning. History affords proof of this. Some decades after

"In this District, as in all the slave-holding states in the Union, the legal presumption is that persons of color going at large without any evidences of their freedem are absconding slaves and prima facie liable to all legal provisions applicable to that class of persons." Reports of Committees, XIX Congress, 2d Sess., I., No. 43.

"Laws of the Union" so far as congress, according to the decision of the supreme court of the United States, is not simply the local legislature of the District, but acts, even in this respect, as the legislature of the Union. In Cohens vs. Virginia (1821) the court affirmed that "this power is conferred on congress as the legislature of the Union; for strip them of that character, and they would not possess it. In legislating for the District, they necessarily preserve the character of the legislature of the Union. . . Those who contend that acts of congress made in pursuance of this power do not, like acts made in pursuance of other powers, bind the nation, ought to show some safe and clear rule which shall support this construction and prove that an act of congress clothed in all the forms which attend other legislative acts, and passed in virtue of a power conferred on and exercised by congress as the legis lature of the Union, is not a law of the United States and does not bind them." Wheaton, Rep., VI., pp. 424, 425; Curtis, V., p. 112.

2

In the report already quoted of the committee for the District of Columbia, it is said: “If a free man of color should be apprehended as a runaway, he is subjected to the payment of all fees and rewards [!] given by law for apprehending runaways; and upon failure to make such payment is liable to be sold as a slave." The committee recommended

SLAVE CODE OF CONGRESS.

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wards, through the direct action of congress, it became law at the seat of the national government that persons known to be free should be sold as slaves in order to cover the costs of imprisonment which they had suffered on account of the false suspicion that they were runaway slaves. And this law was repeatedly put into full effect. How many crowned despots can be mentioned in the history of the old world who have done things which compare in accursedness with this law to which the democratic republic gave birth? Can all history furnish a second example of a nation throwing so great a lie, with such insolent hardihood, in the face of the world, as the United States, with their belief in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, did for almost a century?

The judgment is hard, but just. Many people will not allow the least blame to be cast on this period, because it does not harmonize with their admiration of the "fathers," and because they have adopted, without any proof, the common view that the deeper shadows of slavery and slavocracy first appeared comparatively late. If we consider the spirit which filled the law-makers as the essential thing, we can still accept this view only as a partial justification. In order to judge of the spirit rightly, we must by no means fall into the very common error of overlooking the sins of omission chargeable to congress. In reading through the debates, single striking instances of injustice do not make the deepest impression. It is the omnipres ent unwillingness to practice justice towards colored person, yes, even to recognize them as actual beings. When the defense of their rights is demanded, then congress has always a deaf ear. The representatives of the slave states. oppose to every demand their firm and yet passionate Non possumus with a consistency and energy which would have

that the municipality of Washington should be charged with the costs, but the law remained unchanged.