CONTENTS. 34 .50 Delivered at the Free Soil State Convention, Indianapolis, May 25, 1853. THE CAUSE AND CURE OF OUR NATIONAL TROUBLES In Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, January 14, 1862. RADICALISM AND CONSERVATISM - THE TRUTH OF HIS- 229 In Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, February 7, 1865. In the Hall of the House of Representatives, Indianapolis, November 17, SUFFRAGE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA House of Representatives, January 16, 1866. 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. 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 Thermopylæ, 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 1 Jefferson Davis. |