There are the two points; and, as the honorable Senator asks me questions, I will ask him another. Is there any other cause of complaint, except under these two clauses of the Constitution, belonging to the constitutional controversy! SENATOR BENJAMIN.-I enumerated six. If the Senator will do me the honor to read the complaints which I made in behalf of the South, he will find them. Then, if those are not sufficient, I can furnish half a dozen more. SENATOR BAKER.-Mr. President, I may remark that those other causes of grievance which, upon an occasion so solemn as that presented by the Senator the other day, were not mentioned in that category, were best left unsummed. If they were not of sufficient importance to be enumerated then, they ought not to be brought up by way of make-weight now. I hold him to his record. SENATOR BENJAMIN.-Read. SENATOR BAKER.-One of the six charges is that we slander you. Surely we do not do that under the Constitution. We slander you, we vilify you, we abuse you, you say. Well, that is not a constitutional difficulty [laughter]; and, if my distinguished friend will look at his "dreary catalogue," he will find that, save the two which I have mentioned, the remainder are but amplification, extension of grievances arising outside of the Constitution, from difference of sentiment, opinions, morals, or habits, and not the cause of constitutional complaint. Therefore I am not answered when he says: "Look at my catalogue.' I repeat, take the whole tenor of the speech, the complaint, the catalogue, the "dreary catalogue"; it all ends in this: that there are differences of opinion among us of sentiment. You complain of our bad morals and our bad manners; you say we rob you; you say we intend to establish a cordon of free States around you; you say that we are persistent in what we do on this point; but at last, in your better and your more candid moments, you say that the difficulty seems to arise chiefly from a difference in our construction of the Constitution. Senator Baker then discussed the chief constitutional issue between the North and the South: the admission of slavery into the Territories. Speaking of the reestablishment of the Missouri Compromise as a concession to the North to which certain Senators from the South were inclined to agree, he said: If you, the Senator from Louisiana, do, in your conscience, believe that an act of Congress to prohibit slavery in the terri tory of the United States, or in any part or parcel thereof, is in violation of the Constitution of the United States, and in derogation of the rights either of the States or the people-if, in your heart and conscience, you really do believe that, you are false and perjured when you do it. Let me add, as the language is strong, that I am quite as sure as I live that with that view the Senator never would do it. SENATOR BENJAMIN.-Mr. President, I endeavored to make my proposition as plain as I know how to do it. I say that, under the Constitution, Congress has no power to exclude the Southern States from participation in the territory, from going there with their slave property, and there finding protection. I say that, notwithstanding the absence of all that congressional power, it is perfectly competent, and in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, for Southern members, even by way of an act of Congress, to pledge the honor of their States that they will not avail themselves of the privilege of going into that part of the territory that is north of a particular line, and of proposing that to the people of the North as a settlement of a disputed question-not because the act of Congress would thereby be binding, under the Constitution itself, but because it would be good and authentic evidence to the people of the North of an agreement by the people of the South not to insist on that part of the Constitution which gave that right. SENATOR BAKER.-The point of the argument is not to be evaded by any pretence that it is a mere agreement in a court of honor to do that which they have no legal and constitutional right to do. Suppose a gentleman from Alabama comes up and says: "Sir, you, the Senator from Louisiana, have voted to prohibit me from taking my slaves into the territory north of 36° 30′; what do you mean by it; have you any right to do it?" "Oh, no," the Senator says, "no right in the world; it is just a sort of legislative flourish; the exercise of a right which theoretically we do not claim; we have just done it because we hope, having done it, nobody will undo it. I do not think the argument can be defended other than upon the ground assumed by a justice of the peace, well known to my distinguished friend from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], old Bolling Green, in answer to a little law advice that I gave him on one occasion when the Senator and I were both very young men, and (if he will excuse me for saying so) very poor lawyers. [Laughter.] Old Bolling Green, then a magistrate, came to me and said: "Baker, I want to know if I have jurisdiction in a case of slander." I put on a very important air; looked at him steadily-looked as wise as I could, and I said to him: "Squire, you have no such authority; that is reserved to a court of general jurisdiction." "Well," said he, "think again; you have not read the law very well, or very long; try it again; now, have I not jurisdiction; can I not do it?" "No," I said, "you cannot; I know it; I have read the law from Blackstone to well, I have read Blackstone, and I know you cannot do it.' "Now, sir," said he, "I know I can; for, by Heaven, I have done it." [Laughter.] I understand, now, that the sum total of the answer which is made to my objection as to the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise touching the consciences of the gentlemen who proposed to pass it without power, is just the reply of my old friend Bolling Green. They say: "Theoretically we have not the power; constitutionally we have not the power; but, by Heaven, we have done it." [Laughter.] If that be the opinion of Lousiana, of the entire South; if they have done it by their leaders, by their speeches; if they have lived by it; if, being a compact, it is an executed compact; if under it State after State has come into this Union, is it not too late for them to deny now that we are justified if we wish to adhere to that principle? Have they a right to come and say: "You are declaring slavery to be a creature of the local law, and we will justly dissolve the Union by revolution in consequence thereof"? I think that this is neither fair, nor just, nor right, nor constitutional. There is no escape. Now, in regard to interference with slavery in the State. If it is charged that, in violation of the Constitution of the United States, we of the North or West, by any bill, resolution, or act, do in anywise interfere with the state and condition of slavery where it exists within the States of this Union, or any of them, by virtue of local law, by which alone it can be treated, we deny it. SENATOR BENJAMIN.-The charge is not that Congress does it, but that the States do it. SENATOR BAKER.-Very well. The great champion of the South upon this question gets up in his place in the Senate and admits that there is no ground of complaint that the Federal Government ever has attempted to interfere with the existence of slavery in the Southern States. We will get that down upon the record, and I apprehend it will be quoted before this controversy is over, again and again. But it is said that the Northern States, the Western States, in other words, the free States, do so interfere. Again we deny it. The fact is not so. The proof cannot be made. Why, sir, I might ask, in the first place, how can the States so interfere? Suppose Illinois were to violate all the opinions which she has manifested in her history, and desired to interfere with the existence of slavery in Virginia, how would she go about it? I have the profoundest respect for my friend as a lawyer; but I would like to know what bill he could frame by which Illinois could interfere with the existence of slavery in Virginia. SENATOR BENJAMIN.-Mr. President, I will tell the Senator, not how they can do it by bill, but how they do it in acts. A body of men penetrated into the State of Virginia by force of arms into a peaceful village at the dead hour of night, armed with means for the purpose of causing the slaves to rise against their masters, seized upon the public property of the United States, and murdered the inhabitants. A man [John A. Andrew] was found in Massachusetts who, in public speeches, declared that he approved of that, and that the invasion was right; and the people of Massachusetts, by an enormous majority, elected him their Governor, indorsed the invasion of a sister State, indorsed the murder of the peaceful inhabitants of the State of Virginia. SENATOR BAKER.-I asked the gentleman from Louisiana to point out to me and to the Senate, how, if the State of Illinois were desirous to interfere with the existence of slavery in Virginia, it could be done. I leave to his cooler temper and his better taste to examine how he has answered me. Why, sir, he runs off into a disquisition upon John Brown, which would not dignify a stump. Now, I submit that that is not the point between us. I hold that his answer is an acknowledgment that a free State cannot, as a State, interfere in any conceivable way with slavery in a slave State; and that being so, we advance another step. We agree now that Congress never have interfered, and that States never can. Now, as to the interference with slavery in the States by individuals. There are people in Massachusetts and in Illinois and in Oregon who will not only violate the rights of the slave States but the rights of the free. There are people in the North who will not only steal niggers, but steal horses. There are people in the North who will not only try to burn down houses in the slave States, but who will be incendiary in the free States. It is the duty of the distinguished Senator from Louisiana and myself sometimes, as counsel, to defend such men. Nor do I know that such men or such defences are confined to the North or the West alone. I apprehend, if a grateful procession of the knaves and rascals who are indebted to the distin guished Senator from Louisiana for an escape from the penitentiary and the halter, were to surround him to-day, it would be difficult for even admiring friends to get near him to congratulate him upon the success of his efforts upon this floor. [Laughter.] Now, I beg leave to say to the honorable Senator that the desire to interfere with the rights of slavery in the slave States is not the desire of the Northern people. I may say more, that in all my association with the Republican party, I have yet to find among them, from their chiefs down to their humblest private, one man who proposes to interfere with the existence of slavery in the slave States by force, by legislation, or by congressional action. I have known no such man in all my short experience, nor do I believe that the Senator from Louisiana can point out any such man. SENATOR BENJAMIN.-If the Senator merely desires me to answer him, I will tell him that the belief of the South is, and I admit I share it, that without intending to violate the letter of the Constitution by going into States for the purpose of forcibly emancipating slaves, it is the desire of the whole Republican party to close up the Southern States with a cordon of free States for the avowed purpose of forcing the South to emancipate them. SENATOR BAKER.-Very well, sir. See how gloriously we advance step by step. We abandon now the charge that Congress does it; we abandon now the charge that States do it; we abandon now the charge that the individual members of the Northern and Western communities as a body desire to interfere with slavery contrary to law; to violate any existing right in the slave States; but we insist tenaciously and pertinaciously on our fourth count in the indictment; and it is this SENATOR BENJAMIN.-The Senator, I trust, does not desire to misrepresent what I said. I understood the Senator to ask me, in relation to the Republican party, what proof I had of their desire to destroy slavery in the States. I gave it to him. I did not say that independently of that, there were not other attacks upon Southern slavery. I just this moment referred him to the direct attack of the State of Massachusetts-the State as a State. Independently of that, by the further exemplification of the State of Massachusetts, I will refer him to the fact that her legislature indorsed the vituperations of her Senator on this floor, by an enormous majority, and made that a State act; and, furthermore, that she passed a law in violation of the rights of Southern slaveholders, and all her eminent legal men are now |