assistance, and thus maintain the position of neutrality, or nonaction, assigned us by the Constitution. Can it be that the Northern States have any other duties to perform than those which the Constitution itself imposes? Is slavery so endeared to us that we must volunteer in its support? Sir, in examining this question, the constitutional rights of the South, and the corresponding constitutional obligations of the North, are the only legitimate matters of consideration. No free State has as yet passed any laws discharging fugitives from the service they owe by the laws of other States, or preventing their recapture; and if this is not done, there can be no reasonable ground of complaint against the North. According to the decision alluded to, the fugitive may be recaptured without warrant, and, without any trial of his rights by jury or otherwise, carried into slavery. This manifestly exposes the colored people of the free States to the Southern kidnapper. They have the right, which belongs to all communities, to guard the liberties of their own citizens; and if, for this purpose, some of them have passed laws against the kidnapping of free persons as slaves, and providing a trial by jury to determine the question whether the party claimed is or is not a slave, is it an aggression upon Southern rights? When the free colored citizens of the North visit the ports of South Carolina, they are thrown into prison, and sometimes even sold into slavery. This, if I mistake not, is justified by the South on the ground of a necessary police regulation. Have not the Northern States a right to establish their police regulations, to secure the rights of their citizens? Are not police regulations in behalf of liberty as justifiable as police regulations in behalf of slavery?

As regards the enticement of slaves from their masters, the number of such cases is small. Neither the States, nor the mass of their citizens, are accountable, or have any connection whatever with such transactions. The great majority of escapes are prompted by other causes than Northern interference. The slave has the power of locomotion, and the instinct to be free; and it would indeed be wonderful did he not, of his own will and by his own efforts, struggle for the prize of which he has been robbed. That men will strive to better their condition is a law of nature. flight of the bondman is a necessary consequence of the oppression under which he groans. Blame not the North for this, but blame your diabolical system, which impiously tramples under foot the God-given rights of men. Upbraid Nature, for she is always "agitating" the question of slavery, and persuading its victims to

The

flee. You hold three millions of your fellow-beings as chattels. You shut out from them the light of the Bible, and degrade and brutalize them to the extent of your power, for your system requires it. You trample under foot their marriage contracts, and spread licentiousness over half the States of the Union. You deny them that principle of eternal justice, a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. You sunder their dearest relations, separating at your will husbands and wives, parents and children. And do you suppose the poor slave, smarting under these wrongs, will not seek deliverance by flight? And when, through, peril and starvation, he finds his way among us, panting for that liberty for which our fathers poured out their blood, do you imagine we shall drop our work and join in the chase with his Christless pursuers? Sir, there is no power on earth that can induce us thus to take sides with the oppressor. Such, I rejoice to believe, is the public sentiment of the North, that I care not what laws Congress may enact, the slave-hunter will find himself unaided. The free States will observe faithfully the compromises of the Constitution. They will give up their soil as a hunting-ground for the slaveholder, suspending their sovereignty that he may give free chase to his fugitive. They will pass no law to discharge him from the service he may legally owe to his claimant, or to hinder his recapture. But we will not actively coöperate against the unhappy victim of your tyranny. And if Southern gentlemen mean to insist upon such active coöperation on our part, as a condition of their continuing in the Union, they may as well, in my judgment, begin to look about them for some way of getting out of it on the best terms they can. Under no circumstances, I trust, will we yield to their demand.

Another intolerable aggression with which the North is charged is that of scattering incendiary publications in the South, designed to incite insurrections among the slaves. The Southern gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Ross] has paraded this charge in the most hideous colors. My friend from North Carolina has also been quite graphic in setting it forth, declaring that the free States "keep up and foster in their bosoms Abolition societies, whose main purpose is to scatter firebrands throughout the South, to incite servile insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to invade the persons of our white women." Sir, this is a serious accusation, and if true, the South unquestionably has a right to complain. I will not charge the gentleman with fabricating it, but I regret that he did not produce the evidence on which he felt

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 government, 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