doubt the truth of what I assert. I know it has been said on this floor that the acquisition of Texas was not a Southern measure, but a measure of the National Democratic party. I am aware too that John Quincy Adams declared, in 1845, that it was "in its conception and in its conclusion a Whig measure.' With these declarations I have nothing to do. I do not charge any party in the North with favoring annexation with the design of extending slavery. I speak not as a partisan, but as a seeker of facts, bearing upon the alleged charge of Northern aggression; and what I assert is, that while the motive of the South in grasping Texas was unmasked, and was in fact glaringly manifest, the North was induced to come to her rescue, and thus added an empire of slavery to her dominions in the Southwest. Was this a Northern aggression? Nine slaveholding States have been added to the Union since the date of its formation, and five of them out of soil then the property of foreign nations. All this has been generously done by the free States, for they have had the strength in every instance to prevent these additions, and this constantly augmenting Southern power.

The facts I have stated are significant. They show that the Northern States, instead of aggressing upon the rights of the South, have aided her in incorporating additional slaveholding States into the Union, whenever such aid has been demanded. But this is not all. Some thirty years ago the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Missouri, were more or less incumbered with an Indian population. The white man and his slave were shut out from large regions of those States by the barriers of the red man, which the States themselves had no power to remove. All these regions are now redeemed from the Indian, and actual slavery extended where it could not go before; and all this has been done by the help of Northern votes; for without that help, the laws could not have been passed, nor the treaties have been ratified, by which this great extension of slavery in so many great States was accomplished.1 What a commentary upon the charge of Northern aggression!

In 1778 and 1790 the States of Virginia and Maryland ceded to the General Government the territory constituting the District of Columbia, till the late retrocession of the portion ceded by the former. These cessions, under the Constitution, necessarily gave Congress the exclusive power of legislation over the territory ceded, and its inhabitants. Congress accepted these grants, and in 1801 reënacted the slave codes of Maryland and Virginia, and thus legal1 Benton's late speech.

ized and nationalized slavery in this District. Slaves are now held here by virtue of this law, and have been so held for nearly half a century. The free States have always had strength enough in Congress to repeal it, but they have forborne to do so. They have done more; they have permitted you to carry on, by their sanction, the slave traffic here, which is interdicted by your own slave States. This execrable commerce, which the laws of the civilized world pronounce piracy, punishable with death, and which even the Sultan of Turkey and the Bey of Tunis have put under their ban; this "piratical warfare," as Jefferson called it, and which he declared, three quarters of a century ago, to be the "opprobrium of infidel powers;" this heir of all abominations has existed here for nearly fifty years by our permission, here in the heart of this

Model Republic, around the walls of its Capitol, and under the folds of its flag; here, in the noon of the nineteenth century, and under the full blaze of Christian truth! And Northern men have not only upheld this traffic thus far, but their forbearance toward the South inclines some of them to uphold it still longer. I doubt if there are men enough in Congress to-day to pass a bill through either House for its abolition. And yet, Southern gentlemen talk about the aggressions of the North, and threaten to break up the Union to secure their deliverance from our oppression! Will they snap asunder the cords that bind us, in anticipation of an act of justice? Suppose Congress should abolish slavery and the slavetrade here; would such abolition interfere in any way with the constitutional rights of the slaveholding States? We in the North are upholding these evils in this District; we are morally and politically responsible for their continuance; and I say to gentlemen from the South, that if by the exercise of an unquestionable power of Congress we rid ourselves of this responsibility, it is our business, not yours. You have no right to complain, and your clamor in this respect about Northern aggression ought to be regarded as an insult to the free States.

I pass to another topic. Since the formation of the government, if I have rightly calculated, about five hundred thousand dollars have been paid by the United States, either directly or indirectly, for fugitive slaves that have taken shelter among the Creek and Seminole Indians. The most of this sum has been paid to the slaveholders of the State of Georgia alone, and directly from the public treasury.

Have the slave States the right thus to call on the General Government and the common fund of the nation to aid them? It has

been truly said by an eminent man, himself a slaveholder, that "the existence, continuance, and support of slavery depend exclusively upon the power and authority of the several States in which it is situated." It was not the intention of our fathers, as I have shown, that this government should interfere with slavery in the States, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. It is their own affair; and if their laws are not strong enough to give it life, it must submit to its doom. When your bondman comes among us in the character of a fugitive, you have the right, guaranteed by the express terms of the Constitution, to carry him again into slavery ; but have no right to call upon us to pay our money for slaves escaping into Canada, Mexico, or among the savages and swamps of a Spanish province. Believing slavery to be a great moral and political evil, we will not go beyond the express letter of our covenant in giving it our support. The Constitution, in the language of Judge McLean, acts upon slaves as persons, and not as property. Congress has uniformly been governed by this principle; and you might as well call upon us to pay for your runaway mules as your slaves. The action of the treaty-making power has been different. A large number of slaves fled from their masters during our last war with Great Britain; and for twenty years did this government ply its diplomacy in urging the British Government to pay for these fugitives. The sum of one million two hundred and four thousand dollars was at length obtained and paid to Southern slaveholders. This open espousal of the cause of slavery by the Federal Government seems to have been sanctioned by the free States. It was not the work, exclusively, of Southern men. The policy of our fathers was to discourage slavery, and as far as possible to divorce the government from it. Is the reversal of this policy a Northern aggression?

Again, in 1831 and 1833, the ships Comet and Encomium, laden with slaves, were wrecked on British soil; and the Federal Government, again hoisting its flag over the peculiar institution, obtained from Great Britain twenty-five thousand pounds for slaves lost by these accidents. Similar losses were incurred by the subsequent fate of the Enterprise, Creole, and Hermosa, and the United States threatened Great Britain with war, for refusing to foot these bills of Southern slaveholders. An honorable member of this House was virtually expelled from this hall in 1842, for introducing resolutions denying the constitutional power of the government to support the coast wise slave-trade, and declaring its duty to relieve itself from all action in favor of slavery. The Senate,

not wishing to be outdone by the House, unanimously adopted resolutions declaring it to be the duty of the government to protect by its flag the rights of American slaveholders in British ports, where by the local law their slaves would otherwise become free. Were these aggressions upon Southern rights?

Merely glancing at the unwarranted efforts of the government to obtain pay for fugitives to Canada and Mexico, in 1826 and 1828, I proceed to notice a more remarkable example of Federal intervention in favor of slavery. About twenty-five years ago, when Mexico and Colombia, who had just achieved their independence of Spain, and emancipated their slaves, were threatening to grasp the island of Cuba, our government distinctly intimated to these young republics that they must abandon their purpose. And why? Because emancipation in Cuba might otherwise take place, and the contagion spread in the United States. Thus the Federal Government espoused the cause of slavery in Cuba, in order at the same time to perpetuate it in our own boasted land of freedom. It did the same thing in 1829. Were these acts Northern aggressions? I need scarcely add in this connection, that the main, if not the sole reason, why the United States have refused to acknowledge the independence of Hayti, or to hold intercourse with her, is, that the independence of a black republic might prove dangerous to the perpetuity of American slavery. Thus the people of the North are deprived of the profits which would arise from established commercial relations between the two governments, in order that Southern slavery may be sustained.

In 1807, Congress passed a law regulating the coastwise slavetrade in vessels of over forty tons burden, and prescribing minutely the manifests, forms of entry at the custom-house, and specifications to be made by the masters of such vessels. The North was thus made responsible for a traffic which is piracy by the law of nations; and such has been our forbearance toward the South, that we have made no effort to relieve ourselves of this responsibility. Take another item of Congressional legislation in favor of slavery, the Act of 1793. This act made it the duty of State magistrates to assist in the recapture of fugitives, and for nearly fifty years the slaveholders had the benefit of it, in the prompt interference of the authorities of the North in behalf of their institution. This act, so far as it imposed duties on State magistrates, was unconstitutional, and has been so decided; but it committed the free States to the support of slavery, and gave important aid to the South during the whole period named. Nor is this all. Most of the free States re

enacted the substance of this act, as to the duty of State magistrates, and its provisions and penalties respecting the harboring or concealing of fugitives, thus legislating in favor of slavery, and of course out of a tolerant spirit toward the South. There is no constitutional or moral obligation which required it. It was a bounty, a gratuity, bestowed by the North in token of sympathy for slaveholders; for the recovery of fugitives, and the penalty for obstructing their recapture, are matters of federal cognizance entirely, as I have already shown. Yet these enactments now stand unrepealed on the statute books of several of the Northern States.

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In my own State we have a law punishing, by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, the harboring of a fugitive slave, as an offense against the peace and dignity of the State of Indiana." And this law is not a dead letter. Men are indicted and punished under it. Our courts and juries do not hesitate to regard it. Our Legislature, I know, is exceedingly well disposed toward it; for all attempts to repeal our "black laws" (and some of them are much blacker than this) have thus far signally failed. Is all this legislation of the North in behalf of the slaveholders an aggression upon their rights?

I have already stated that Florida was purchased because it was demanded by the slaveholding interest. I omitted the fact, that under the treaty by which it was acquired, and the laws of Congress enacted to carry it into effect, this government felt itself called upon to pay to the Florida slaveholders forty thousand dollars for slaves lost by the invasion of our troops in 1812. I have also passed over the inhuman slave code by which Florida was governed while a Territory, and which, of course, derived its validity from the sanction of Congress. I next observe that our first Seminole or Florida War received its birth in the jealous vigilance of the Federal Government in behalf of the interests of slavery. It was occasioned by the destruction of a negro fort on the Appalachicola River in 1816, by officers and troops in the service of the United States. About three hundred men, women, and children, were killed. It is true they were mostly fugitives; but they were living peaceably in Spanish territory. Certainly, the government was under no obligation to commit this wholesale murder, merely because the slaveholders of Florida desired it. Yet Congress, in 1839, passed a law by which the sum of five thousand dollars was paid out of the common treasury of the government, to its officers and crew, for blowing up this fort. Was this, too, a Northern aggression?