The Federal Basis as a Precedent

artificial for it to think of departing from the principle that majorities must govern. There were two distinct races in the State, each entitled to its rights. In reflecting on their condition, it was necessary to conclude that numbers alone could not safely govern. Government by mere numbers would be obviously unjust.

The discussion of the basis of representation was not allowed to pass without a defence of the federal basis on the ground of its antiquity, it having been made the precedent for apportioning representation by the statesmen of the Revolutionary period. As a compromise then made it had secured the integrity of the Union. If that basis were disturbed, the Union would be shaken to its foundations. Because of its origin, it was worthy of application in the commonwealths. The antislavery agitation at the time of the Louisiana convention had a powerful effect upon its proceedings. All of its members who in any way criticised slavery, or who proposed any civil measure which did not strengthen slavery as an institution, were looked upon by their colleagues with suspicion. So, too, those who opposed the federal basis were accused of deriving their arguments from Garrison's Liberator, and as being disciples of Giddings and John Quincy Adams. Indeed, one member said that the first edition of the speech made by one of his colleagues had been delivered by Giddings in Congress at the time when that Representative from Ohio had opposed the bill for the annexation of Texas. Giddings had said that if each

freeman of Texas should hold five slaves, he would exercise the same influence in electing federal officers that would be exercised by four Northern freemen. If he held fifty slaves, he "would have an influence in electing federal officers equal to thirty-one hard-working, virtuous, and intelligent Democrats of New England or New York." Indeed, had not Giddings the advantage of the argument, because he was a constant opponent of slavery, while the delegate from West Feliciana was advocating a principle which he was not willing to apply himself? What was the justice in such a procedure? Could the people of Louisiana say with truth to their Northern brethren that they regarded the compromise principle in the federal constitution as wise and just, but deemed it odious and unjust when proposed for adoption in their own State constitution? For Louisiana to con. demn this principle would work a disastrous effect on the interests of slavery. It should not be forgotten that the makers of the new constitution for Louisiana not only represented its sovereignty as a distinct and independent commonwealth, but also represented the State as one of the American commonwealths, and therefore were vitally interested in upholding the basis of representation established by the federal constitution. The Northern Abolitionists attacked this principle of representation. Already one of the outworks protecting slavery had been carried by storm when Congress had opened the way for the admission of incendiary petitions for the abolition of slavery. How feeble

Massachusetts and Slave Representation

such an attack compared with the one on slavery by a sovereign State of the confederacy!*

Such an attack had already been made in a petition from the Legislature of Massachusetts, calling for the amendment of the Constitution of the United States on the apportionment of representation-that thenceforth slaves should not be included.t Should Louisiana join in this crusade against the rights of the South, involving not only a compromise of the Constitution, but the very existence of the Union? Should Louisiana adopt the arguments of Giddings and the principles advocated by Massachusetts? By refusing to apply this principle to Louisiana its people would virtually admit that it was unjust, and they would place themselves in a position of doing to others what they would not do to themselves. The foreigners of the North could close the lips of the Representatives of Louisiana in Congress by quoting the proceedings of the convention in its opposition to the federal basis. Either the Southern

* Until the civil war, the national government was spoken of as a Confederacy, or Confederation, North and South; oftentimes as the Union, but seldom as the National government. The Federal idea of the Union was always uppermost in Southern conventions (as in this of Louisiana), and generally uppermost in Northern conventions. Lincoln's Gettysburg oration gives a date to the time when the word "Nation" passed into common speech as descriptive of a new concept of the Union: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."- November 19, 1863.

+ Joint resolution of the Massachusetts Legislature, January 16, 1844.

States had no right to insist upon the maintenance of this basis in the Constitution of the Union, or they could not with justice and propriety object to its application in their domestic representation. There was, indeed, a stronger reason why the basis should be adopted in a slave-holding State than by the national government. The authority of the State to abolish slavery could not be questioned. The general government had no right to interfere with the domestic institutions of a State. If, therefore, there was no desire to protect slavery, and to protect it by incorporating this principle in the federal Constitution, was there not a greater necessity for its incorporation in a State constitution? If the people of Louisiana knew nothing of slavery, the arguments against the federal basis would be irresistible; but, for weal or woe, that institution existed among them, and they had no desire that it should cease. The very fact of its existence necessarily led to the modification of the laws of the State. Every motive of self-preservation required that the legislation of the State should be adjusted to the existence of slavery.

As the argument continued, some sought to show that the adoption of the federal basis would be a discrimination between the poor and the rich voters. To this it was replied that the poor man's vote was equal to that of the rich, even if slaves did enter into the basis of representation, for any basis which increased the representation of the parish would confer as much benefit upon its poor as upon its rich inhabitants. The federal basis

Efforts for the Equalization of Representation

would not diminish the representation of the poor. As an exact mathematical equality in representation was impossible, it was necessary to adopt a system approximately equal. Not only the unequal distribution of population over the State, but the division of its people racially as bond and free compelled the adoption of a system which would practically secure the equities of representation. It was true that the federal basis would have some tendency to increase the power of the country parishes. This increase in the representation of the country districts would be offset by the greater city representation made possible by the subdivision of the city into wards and districts. By such a subdivision there would be practically no fractions of unrepresented population in the city, and thus the city would have an advantage over the country. The city would have a solid representation, while in every country parish there would be an unrepresented fraction. The aggregate of these fractions in the country was politically an offset which compensated the people of the city for any loss incident to the federal basis.

The discussion of this basis brought out many opinions which now seem almost incompatible with the political conditions of the time. There were men in the convention who, though slaveholders and eager to secure as much power as possible for slave property, declared that they would never consent to put the black man on a footing with the white by making a slave-holder