Page images
PDF
EPUB

were frequent interruptions, explanations, motions, and incidental ques tions, which served to protract the defense.

Mr. Adams called attention to the combination formed against him. He spoke first of the “coalition” between Mr. Gilmer and Mr. Marshall, both of whom had introduced resolutions of accusation against him; so that if acquitted on the charge of the latter, he would have to defend himself against those of the former. This coalition was pointed against one single individual, a member of this house, charged with half a dozen capital crimes; and this house was called upon to censure him because he had presented a petition. In what part of the constitution was this declared a crime? He would like the gentleman from Kentucky to look into his deep researches of law, to point out the law which made it a crime to present a petition, lead to what it might. In the first place, the gentleman had made the law; he had then gone on and accused an associate member of violating it—to sit as a judge upon him, and then turn executioner. And to crown all, he had declared that it was a great mercy and favor that the punishment was not much more severe! The report of the speech proceeds as follows:

“ He had spoken of the extraordinary position of the gentleman from Kentucky combined with the chief of the Tyler party, heretofore called the corporal's guard, but who, Mr. A. should think, was the field-marshal of the armies of the present administration. When he saw that combination in the first instance, he could not help asking, What is this ? Misery, it was said, makes strange bed-fellows. And he thought to himself, was the gentleman from Kentucky in such misery that he was compelled to seek such companions? (Laughter.) Then came the Georgia whigs, who, after endeavoring to produce an impression unfavorable to him for having presented a petition, on the ground that it was a hoax, had all gone on voting against him, for the purpose of bringing censure upon

him. “ The third part of this combination was a large portion of the Virginia whigs, who were neither Tylerites nor Kentuckians. And then, the great democracy of the free states—the auxiliaries of the “peculiar institution.” (Laughter.) This was a combination of parties he was called to meet in order to maintain his right as a member of this house, to present petitions complaining of grievances. A very strange composition !

He, Mr. A., hoped his southern confederates would lay it to their hearts, that they should have no more such resolutions as were prepared by the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Rhett,) and kept in his drawer to be presented to this house. He should have hoped that, out of mere sympathy, the gentleman, if he had thought him, (Mr. A.,)

[ocr errors]
[graphic]

guilty of the crime of perjury or high treason, as he would be, necessarily included in it, would have given him,(Mr. A.,) the benefit of his vote on this occasion. (A laugh.) But no, he was a part of the party. He now voted that he (Mr. A.) was guilty of subornation of perjury or high treason for presenting a petition exactly agreeing with his views! (A laugh.) That gentleman and the rest of the representatives from South Carolina-that land of nullification, against whom Andrew Jackson himself was reduced to the necessity of issuing a proclamation threatening them with the second section if they continued in it—here was the whole representation from that state, ready to indorse the charges of the gentleman from Kentucky, of high treason, because forty-five of his fellow-citizens thought on the particular points of the dissolution of the union just as they did !"

Mr. Adams demanded that, before the house came to the conclusion on the motives assumed in this charge, they should send him out to be tried before a tribunal of the country. Then he should have the benefit secured by the constitution. And he wanted, in that case, to have two or three calls made on the departments for information necessary for his defense ; and for this purpose he sent several resolutions to the chair. The first of these resolutions requested the president to communicate copies of the correspondence relating to an act of South Carolina directing the imprisonment of colored persons arriving from abroad in the ports of that state; also copies of the act or acts, and of any official opinions given by judge Johnson of the unconstitutionality of the said acts. [The act here referred to, subjects any colored person landing from a vessel in any port of South Carolina, to be arrested and imprisoned, and in case of inability to pay the costs incurred by such imprisonment, to be sold for the same as a slave. It will be recollected that the honorable Samuel Hoar, of Massachusetts, was sent by the authorities of that state to South Carolina to take measures to test the constitutionality of that law in the supreme court of the United States; and that while there, he was threatened with violence, and was compelled to flee from the state for his personal safety.] One of the other resolutions called for a copy of any letter or letters from the president to a certain member of the house, relating to the rule of the house excluding from reception anti-slavery petitions, or to any agency of the said member in introducing the rule. The first two resolutions, after considerable farther debate, were adopted. Upon the two relating to the “ 21st rule,” the vote was not then taken.

Mr. A. maintained that he was guilty of no offense ; he had, on presenting the petition, declared that it was the last thing he would ever vote for. He also repeated what he had said on former occasions, that he had given notice to the house, the petitioners, and the whole country, and his constituents among them, that if they sent to him their petitions for abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, because they expected him to support them, they were mistaken.

After Mr. Adams had occupied two or three days more in his defense, a disposition was manifested to get rid of the subject, by laying it on the table. He was willing to acquiesce in such a proposition, provided it should never be taken up again. The subject was thereupon laid on the table, by a vote of 106 to 93; and the reception of the petition was refused, 40 to 106.

On the 28th of February, 1842, Mr. Giddings, of Ohio, presented a petition from upwards of eighty citizens of Austinburg, in his district, of both political parties, it was said, praying for an amicable division of the union, separating the free and slave states. Mr. G. moved a reference of the petition to a select committee, with instructions to report against the prayer of the petitioners, and to assign reasons why their prayer should not be granted. Mr. Triplett, of Kentucky, considering the petition disrespectful both to the house and the man who presented it, moved that it be not received. The question on receiving the petition was decided in the negative : ayes 24; noes, 116.

The reasons for the prayer of the petitioners were assigned by them in a letter to Mr. G. from one of them, saying: “If our petitions are to be treated with open contempt and malignant insult, and we ourselves held up to the world as incendiaries and fanatics; if the federal government is to go on, year after year, increasing its efforts to sustain the system of slavery, by the aid of the money, the power and the influence of the nation at large : then we ask, and ask sincerely too, for a division.”

Mr. Kennedy, of Maryland, offered a resolution, declaring that all such petitions should thereafter be deemed offensive, and the member presenting them liable to censure. The resolution, however, was not received. For quite a different act, however, Mr. Giddings, at a later period of the session, incurred a formal censure of the house.

In October, 1841, the brig Creole left Richmond for New Orleans, with a cargo consisting principally of tobacco and slaves, about 135 in number. On the 7th of November, the slaves rose upon the crew, killed a man on board named Hewell, part owner of the negroes, and severely wounded the captain and two of the crew. Having obtained command of the vessel they directed her to be taken into the port of Nassau, in the British island of New Providence, where she arrived on the 9th. An investigation was made by British magistrates, and an examination by the American consul. Nineteen of the negroes were imprisoned by the local authorities as having been concerned in the mutiny and murder. Their surrender to the consul, to be sent to the United States for trial

[ocr errors]
[graphic]

a

was refused, until the advice of the government of England could be had. A part of the remaining slaves were liberated and suffered to go beyond the control of the master of the vessel and the consul.

Mr. Webster, secretary of state, in a letter dated January 29th, 1842, instructed Mr. Everett, our minister at London, to present the case to the British government, “ with a distinct declaration, that, if the facts turn out as stated, this government think it a clear case for indemnification;" and, in support of such a claim, he refers to an opinion said to have been expressed by his majesty's government in other and similar cases, that the rule by which these claims should be decided, was, that the claimants must be entitled to compensation who were lawfully in possession of their slaves within the British territory, and who were disturbed in their legal possession of those slaves, by the functionaries of the British government. This admission, Mr. Webster thought to be broad enough to cover the case of the Creole. “But,” he says, “ it does not extend to what we consider the true doctrine according to the laws and usages of nations; and therefore can not be acquiesced in as the exactly correct general rule. It appears to this government, that, not only is no unfriendly interference by the local authorities to be allowed, but that aid and succor should be extended in these as in other cases which may arise, affecting the interests of citizens of friendly states." None except the mutineers having come voluntarily within British territory, the laws of England affecting and regulating the conditions of persons could properly act upon them. It was not complained that English law should decide the condition of persons incorporated with British population ; but in the case of the Creole, the colored persons were still on board an American vessel forcibly put out of the course of her voyage by mutiny ; the master desiring to resume it, and calling upon the consul of his government and upon the local authorities to enable him to do so. The vessel must be considered as still on her voyage, and entitled to the succor due in other cases of distress. This view, he said, was evident from the awkward position of the British government in regard to the mutineers still imprisoned. What was to be done with them ? How were they to be punished ? That government probably would not undertake to try or punish them; and of what use would it be to send them to the United States, separated from their ship, and at a period so late as that, if before proceedings could be instituted against them, the witnesses might be scattered over half the globe? And thus one of the highest offenses known to human laws would be likely to go unpunished.

Lord Palmerston had said on a former occasion, “ that slavery being now abolished throughout the British empire, there can be no wellfounded claim for compensation in respect of slaves who, under any circumstances, may come into the British colonies, any more than there would be with respect to slaves who might be brought into the kingdom.” Our government, Mr. W. said, saw no ground for any distinction founded on an alteration of British law in the colonies. The question did not depend on the state of British law. “It is not that in such cases the active agency of British law is invoked and refused; it is, that unfriendly interference is deprecated, and those good offices and friendly assistances expected which a government usually affords to citizens of a friendly power when instances occur of disaster and distress. All that the United States require, in these cases, they would expect in the ports of England, as well as in those of her colonies. Surely, the influence of local law cannot affect the relations of nations in any such matter as this. Suppose an American vessel, with slaves lawfully on board, were to be captured by a British cruiser, as belonging to some belligerent, while the United States were at peace; suppose such prize carried into England, and the neutrality of the vessel fully made out in the proceedings in admiralty, and a restoration consequently decreed-in such case, must not the slaves be restored exactly in the condition in which they were when the capture was made ? Would any one contend that the fact of their having been carried into England by force set them free ?"

A different view of the question was taken by Great Britain. Lord Brougham stated in the house of lords, others concurring and none dissenting, that “the only treaty by which England or America could claim any refugees, either from the other, related exclusively to murderers, forgers, and fraudulent bankrupts; and even that treaty had expired. There was no international law by which they could claim, or we give up, the parties who had taken possession of the Creole; and those persons must stand or fall by British laws only.” All agreed that there was no authority to surrender the fugitives, nor hold in custody the mutineers; and it was stated that orders had been sent for their liberation.

On the 21st of March, 1842, Mr. Giddings submitted a series of resolutions on a subject which, he said, had excited some interest in the other end of the capitol, and in the nation, and which he wished to lay before the country. These resolutions declared jurisdiction over slavery to belong exclusively to the states; that by the 8th section of the 1st article of the constitution, the states had surrendered to the federal gorernment jurisdiction over commerce and navigation upon the high seas; that slavery, being an abridgment of the natural rights of man, can exist only by force of positive municipal law, and is necessarily confined to the territorial jurisdiction of the power creating it; that when the brig Creole left the territorial jurisdiction of Virginia, the slave laws of that

« PreviousContinue »