trade-which is piracy by the laws of my country-is approvingly advocated. (Great sensation.) A portion of the Massachusetts delegation here retired. Mr. stevens, of Massachusetts, said-I am not ready at this moment to cast the vote of Massachusetts, the delegation being in consultation as to their rights. The call proceeded, the chairman of each Convention making a speech on delivering the vote of his State; and Mr. Stevens finally stated that, although a portion of the Massachusetts delegation had withdrawn, he was instructed by his remaining colleagues to cast the entire vote of the State. tion of the Cincinnati Platform, that, during the existence tion, and this resolution was adopted, with only THE SECEDERS' CONVENTION. Mr. Russell, of New York, withdrew the name The delegates who had withdrawn from the of Horatio Seymour as a candidate. The fol- Convention at the Front-Street Theater, tolowing is the result of the ballotings for Presi-gether with the delegations from Louisiana and dent: Total.......1734 On the first ballot, Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, received a vote from Maryland; Bocock, of Va., received 1 vote from Virginia; Daniel S. Dickinson, vote from Virginia; and Horatio Seymour 1 vote from Pennsylvania. On the announcement of the first ballot, Mr. Church, of New-York, offered the following: Alabama, who were refused admission to that Convention, met at the Maryland Institute on Saturday the 28th of June. Twenty-one States were represented either by full or partial delegations. The States not represented at all were Connecticut. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New-Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. The Hon. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, was chosen to preside, assisted by vice-presidents and secretaries. The Convention adopted a rule requiring a vote of two-thirds of all the delegates present to nominate candidates for President and VicePresident; also that each delegate cast the vote to which he is entitled, and that each State cast only the number of votes to which it is entitled by its actual representation in the Convention. The delegates from South Carolina and Florida accredited to the Richmond Convention, were invited to take seats in this. A committee of five, of which Mr. Caleb Cushing was chairman, was appointed to address the Democracy of the Union upon the principles which have governed the Convention in making the nominations, and in vindication of the principles of the party. The Convention also decided that the next Democratic National Convention be held at Philadelphia. Mr. Avery, of N. C., chairman of Committee on Resolutions, reported, with the unanimous sanction of the Committee, the Platform reported by the majority of the Platform ComResolved unanimously, That Stephen A. Douglas, of inittee at Charleston, and rejected by the Conthe State of Illinois, having now received two-thirds of all the votes given in this Convention, is hereby declared, in ac-vention, (see page 30) which was unanimously cordance with the rules governing this body, and in accordance with the unitorm customs and rules of former Democratic National Conventions, the regular nominee of the Democratic party of the United States, for the office of President of the United States. Mr. Jones, of Pennsylvania, raised the point of order, that the resolution proposed practically to rescind a rule of the Convention (requiring two-thirds of a "ull Convention, 202 votes, to nominate), and could ot, under the rules, be adopted without one day's notice. The Chair ruled that the resolution was in order, and after a lengthy and animated debate it was withdrawn till after another ballot should be taken. When the result of the second ballot had been announced, Mr. Church's resolution was called up again and passed. Benj. Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, was nominated for Vice-President, receiving 198 votes, and Mr. William C. Alexander, of N. J., 1. [Mr. Fitzpatrick declined the nomination two days afterward, and the National Committee supplied the vacancy, by the nomination of Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia]. Gov. Wickliffe, of Louisiana, offered the following resolution as an addition to the Platform adopted at Charleston: Resolved, That it is in accordance with the true interpreta adopted. The Convention adopted a resolution in structing the National Committee not to issue tickets of admission to their next National Con vention in any case where there is a bona fuls A HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SLAVERY EXTENSION OR RESTRICTION. MAINLY BY DOCUMENTS. SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES. and the whole continent, North and South of the tropics, became a Slave-mart before the close of the sixteenth century. proaches of conscience and humanity behind a Papal bull, entered upon the new traffic more tardily; but its profits soon overbore all scruples, and British merchants were not proof against the glittering evidences of their success. But the first slave ship that ever entered a North American port for the sale of its human merchandise, was a Dutch trading-vessel which landed twenty negro bondmen at Jamestown, the nucleus of Virginia, almost simultaneously with the landing of the Pilgrims of the Mayflower on Plymouth Rock, December 22d, 1620. LUST of gold and power was the main impulse of Spanish migration to the regions beyond Holland, a comparatively new and Protestant the Atlantic. And the soft and timid Abori-State, unable to shelter itself from the regines of tropical America, especially of its islands, were first compelled to surrender whatever they possessed of the precious metals to the imperious and grasping strangers; next forced to disclose to those strangers the sources whence they were most readily obtained; and finally driven to toil and delve for more, wherever power and greed supposed they might most readily be obtained. From this point, the transition to general enslavement was ready and rapid. The gentle and indolent natives, unaccustomed to rugged, persistent toil, and revolting at the harsh and brutal severity of their Christian masters, had but one unfailing resource-death. Through privation, hardship, exposure, fatigue and despair, they drooped and died, until millions were reduced to a few miserable thousands within the first century of Spanish rule in America. A humane and observant priest (Las Casas,) witnessing these cruelties and sufferings, was moved by pity to devise a plan for their termination. He suggested and urged the policy of substituting for these feeble and perishing "Indians "the hardier natives of Western Af rica, whom their eternal wars and marauding invasions were constantly exposing to captivity and sale as prisoners of war, and who, as a race, might be said to be inured to the hardships and degradations of Slavery by an immemorial experience. The suggestion was unhappily approved, and the woes and miseries of the few remaining Aborigines of the islands known to us as "West Indies," were inconsiderably prolonged by exposing the whole continent for unnumbered generations to the evils and horrors of African Slavery. The author lived to perceive and deplore the consequences of his expedient. The sanction of the Pope having been obtained for the African Slave-trade by representations which invested it with a look of philanthropy, Spanish and Portuguese mercantile avarice was readily enlisted in its prosecution The Dutch slaver had chosen his market with sagacity. Virginia was settled by CAVALIERSgentlemen-adventurers aspiring to live by their own wits and other men's labor-with the necessary complement of followers and servitors. Few of her pioneers cherished any earnest liking for downright, persistent, muscular exertion; yet some exertion was urgently required to clear away the heavy forest which all but covered the soil of the infant colony, and grow the tobacco which early became its staple export, by means of which nearly everything required by its people but food was to be paid for in England. The slaves, therefore, found ready purchasers at satisfactory prices, and the success of the first venture induced others; until not only Virginia but every part of British America was supplied with African slaves. This traffic, with the bondage it involved, had no justification in British nor in the early colonial laws; but it proceeded, nevertheless, much as an importation of dromedaries to replace with presumed economy our horses and oxen might now do. Georgia was the first among the colonies to resist and condemn it in her original charter under the lead of her noble founder-governor, General Oglethorpe; but the evil was too formidable and inveterate for local extirpation, and a few years saw it estab lished, even in Georgia; first evading or defy ing, and at length molding and transforming the law. It is very common at this day to speak of our tions on emancipation: Maryland adopted both revolutionary struggle as commenced and hur- of these in 1783. North-Carolina, in 1786, deried forward by a union of Free and Slaveclared the introduction of slaves into that State colonies; but such is not the fact. However" of evil consequence, and highly impolitic," slender and dubious its legal basis, Slavery ex- and imposed a duty of £5 per head thereon. isted in each and all of the colonies that united New-York and New-Jersey followed the example to declare and maintain their independence. of Virginia and Maryland, including the domes Slaves were proportionately more numerous in tic in the same interdict with the foreign slavecertain portions of the South; but they were trade. Neither of these States, however, deheld with impunity throughout the North, ad-clared a general emancipation until many years vertised like dogs or horses, and sold at auction, thereafter, and Slavery did not wholly cease in or otherwise, as chattels. Vermont, then a ter-New-York until about 1830, nor in New-Jersey ritory in dispute between New-Hampshire and till a much later date. The distinction of Free New-York, and with very few civilized inhabi- and Slave States, with the kindred assumption tants, mainly on its Southern and Eastern bor- of a natural antagonism between the North and ders, is probably the only portion of the revolu- South, was utterly unknown to the men of the tionary confederation never polluted by the Revolution. tread of a slave. Before the Declaration of Independence, but The spirit of liberty, aroused or intensified during the intense ferment which preceded it, by the protracted struggle of the colonists and distracted public attention from everything against usurped and abused power in the else, Lord Mansfield had rendered his judgment mother country, soon found itself engaged in from the King's Bench, which expelled Slavery natural antagonism against the current form of from England, and ought to have destroyed it domestic despotism. "How shall we complain in the colonies as well. The plaintiff in this of arbitrary or unlimited power exerted over us, famous case was James Somerset, a native of while we exert a still more despotic and inex- Africa, carried to Virginia as a slave, taken cusable power over a dependent and benighted thence by his master to England, and there inrace?" was very fairly asked. Several suits cited to resist the claim of his master to his were brought in Massachusetts-where the fires services, and assert his right to liberty. In the of liberty burnt earliest and brightest-to test first recorded case, involving the legality of the legal right of slave-holding; and the lead- modern Slavery in England, it was held (1677) ing Whigs gave their money and their legal that negroes, "being usually bought and sold services to support these actions, which were among merchants as merchandise, and also generally, on one ground or another, success-being infidels, there might be a property in them. ful. Efforts for an express law of emancipation, however, failed even in Massachusetts; the Legislature, doubtless, apprehending that such a measure, by alienating the slave-holders, would increase the number and power of the Tories; but in 1777, a privateer having brought a lot of captured slaves into Jamaica, and advertised them for sale, the General Court, as the Legislative Assembly was called, interfered and had them set at liberty. The first Continental Congress which resolved to resist the usurpations and oppressions of Great Britain by force, had already declared that our struggle would be "for the rights of human nature," which the Congress of 1776, under the lead of Thomas Jefferson, expanded into the noble affirmation of the right of "all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," contained in the immortal preamble to the Declaration of Independence. A like averment that "all men are born free and equal," was in 1780 inserted in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights; and the Supreme Court of that State, in 1783, on an indictment of a master for assault and battery, held this declaration a bar to slave-holding henceforth in the State. sufficient to maintain trover." But this was overruled by Chief Justice Holt from the King's Bench (1697,) ruling that "so soon as a negro lands in England, he is free;" and again, (1702) that "there is no such thing as a slave by the law of England." This judgment proving exceedingly troublesome to planters and merchants from slave-holding colonies visiting the mother country with their servants, the merchants concerned in the American trade, in 1729, procured from Yorke and Talbot, the Attorney General and Solicitor General of the Crown, a written opinion that negroes, legally enslaved elsewhere, might be held as slaves in England, and that even baptism was no bar to the mas ter's claim. This opinion was, in 1749, held to be sound law by Yorke (now Lord Hardwicke,) sitting as judge, on the ground that, if the con trary ruling of Lord Holt were upheld, it would abolish Slavery in Jamaica or Virginia as well as in England; British law being paramount in each. Thus the law stood until Lord Mansfield, in Somerset's case, reversed it with evident re luctance, and after having vainly endeavored to bring about an accommodation between the parties. When delay would serve no longer, and a judgment must be rendered, Mansfield declared it in these memorable words: ... A similar clause in the second Constitution of New-Hampshire was held by the courts of that State to secure Freedom to every child, born "We cannot direct the law: the law must directs. therein after its adoption. Pennsylvania, in The state of Slavery is of such a nature that it is 1780, passed an act prohibiting the further in- incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or troduction of slaves, and securing Freedom to political, but only by positive law, which preserves ite all persons born in that State thereafter. Con- whence it was created, is erased from the memory. It is force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself necticut and Rhode-Island passed similar acts so odious that nothing can be sufficient to support it but in 1784. Virginia, in 1778, on motion of Mr. positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may Jefferson, prohibited the further importation of allowed or approved by the law of England, and there follow from the decision, I cannot say that this case is slaves; and in 1782, removed all legal restric-fore the black must be discharged." The natural, if not necessary, effect of this decision on Slavery in these colonies had their connection with the mother country been continued, is sufficiently obvious. SLAVERY UNDER THE CONFEDERATION. The report of the committee was in the following words: THE JEFFERSONIAN ORDINANCE, 1784. Resolved, That the territory ceded, or to be ceded by individual States to the United States, whensoever the same shall have been purchased of the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale by the United States, shall be formed into additional States, bounded in the that is to say, northwardly and southwardly by parallels following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit. of latitude, so that each State shall comprehend from south to north, two degrees of latitude, beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees north of but any territory northwardly of the forty-seventh degree the equator; [the then southern boundary of the U. S.] shall make part of the State next below. And eastwardly and westwardly they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi, by that river on one side, and the meridian of the lowest point of the rapids of the Ohio on the other; and those adjoining on the east, by the same meridian on their western side, and on their eastern by Great Kanawha. And the territory eastward of this last the meridian of the western cape of the mouth of the meridian, between the Ohio, Lake Erie, and Pennsyl vania, shall be one State. That the settlers within the territory so to be pur The disposition or management of unpeopled territories, pertaining to the thirteen recent colonies now confederated as independent States, early became a subject of solicitude and of bickering among those States, and in Congress. By the terms of their charters, some of the colonies had an indefinite extension westwardly, and were only limited by the power of the grantor. Many of these charters con flicted with each other the same territory being included within the limits of two or more totally distinct colonies. As the expenses of the Revolutionary struggle began to bear heavily on the resources of the States, it was keenly felt by some that their share in the advantages of the expected triumph would be chased and offered for sale shall, either on their own less than that of others. Massachusetts, Con-petition or on the order of Congress, receive authority necticut, New-York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, laid claim to spacious dominions outside of their proper boundaries; while NewHampshire (save in Vermont), Rhode Island, New-Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and South Carolina, possessed no such boasted resources to meet the war-debts constantly augmenting. They urged, therefore, with obvious justice, that these unequal advantages ought to be surrendered, and all the lands included within the territorial limits of the Union, but outside of the proper and natural boundaries of the several States, respectively, should be ceded to, and held by, Congress, in trust for the common benefit of all the States, and their proceeds em2. That in their persons, property, and territory, ployed in satisfaction of the debts and liabilities they shall be subject to the Government of the United of the Confederation. This reasonable requisi-States in Congress assembled, and to the Articles of tion was ultimately, but with some reservations, Confederation in all those cases in which the original responded to. from them, with appointments of time and place, for their free males of full age to meet together for the purpose of establishing a temporary government, to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of these States, so that such laws nevertheless shall be subject to alteration by their ordinary Legislature, and to erect, subject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the election of members for their Legislature. That such temporary government shall only continue in force in any State until it shall have acquired twenty thou sand free inhabitants, when, giving due proof thereof to Congress, they shall receive from them authority, with appointments of time and place, to call a convention of representatives to establish a permanent constitution and government for themselves: Provided, That both the temporary and permanent governments be established on these principles as their basis: 1. That they shall forever remain a part of the United States of America. States shall be so subject. 3. That they shall be subject to pay a part of the The IXth Continental Congress, under the Ar- Federal debts, contracted or to be contracted, to be ticles of Confederation, assembled at Philadel-apportioned on them by Congress, according to the same common rule and measure by which apportionments phia, Nov. 3, 1783, but adjourned next day to thereof shall be made on the other States. Annapolis, Md. The House was soon left without 4. That their respective governments shall be in a quorum, and so continued most of the time-republican forms, and shall admit no person to be a of course, doing no business-till the 1st of citizen who holds a hereditary title. 5. That after the year 1800 of the Christian era, March, 1784, when the delegates from Virginia, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi in pursuance of instructions from the Legisla-tude in any of the said States, otherwise than in ture of that State, signed the conditional deed punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty. of cession to the Confederation of her claims to That whenever any of the said States shall have, of territory northwest of the Ohio River. New free inhabitants, as many as shall then be in any one of York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had al- the least numerous of the thirteen original States, such State shall be admitted, by its Delegates, into the Conready made similar concessions to the Confede-gress of the United States, on an equal footing with the ration of their respective claims to territory said original States; after which the assent of two-thirds of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be westward of their present limits. Congress requisite in all those cases wherein, by the Confederation, hereupon appointed Messrs. Jefferson of Vir- the assent of nine States is now required, provided the ginia, Chase of Maryland, and Howell of Rhode consent of nine States to such admission may be obIsland, a Select Committee to report a Plan of tained according to the eleventh of the Articles of Confederation. Until such admission by their Delegates Government for the Western Territory. This into Congress, any of the said States, after the establishplan, drawn up by Thomas Jefferson, provided ment of their temporary government, shall have authofor the government of all the Western terri-rity to keep a sitting member in Congress, with a right of debating, but not of voting. tory, including that portion which had not yet been, but which, it was reasonably expected, would be, surrendered to the Confederation by the States of North Carolina and Georgia (and which now forms the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi), as well as that which had already been conceded by the more northern States That the territory northward of the forty-fifth degree, that is to say, of the completion of forty-five deg ees from the equator, and extending to the Lake of the under the forty-fifth and forty-fourth degress, that which Woods, shall be called Sylvania; that of the territory lies westward of Lake Michigan, shall be called Michi gania; and that which is eastward thereof, within the peninsula formed by the lakes and waters of Michigan, Huron, St. Clair, and E.ie, shall be called Chersonesus, and shall include any part of the peninsula which may Congress." The Ordinance, thus depleted, after undergoing some further amendments, was finally ap proved April 23d-all the delegates, but those from South Carolina, voting in the affirmative. In 1787, the last Continental Congress, sitting in New-York simultaneously with the Convention at Philadelphia which framed our Federal Constitution, took up the subject of the government of the Western Territory, raising a Committee thereon, of which Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, was Chairman. That Committee reported (July 11th), "An Ordinance for the government of the Territories of the United States, Northwest of the Ohio"-the larger area contemplated by Mr. Jefferson's bill not having been ceded by the Southern States claiming dominion over it. This bill embodied many of the provisions originally drafted and reported by Mr. Jefferson, but with some modifications, and concludes with six unalterable articles of perpetual compact, the last of them as follows: extend above the forty-fifth degree. Of the territory | taining his views of "non-intervention by under the forty-third and forty-second degrees, that to the westward, through which the Assenisipi or Rock River runs, shall be called Assenisipia; and that to the eastward, in which are the fountains of the Muskingum, the two Miamies of the Ohio, the Wabash, the Illinois, the Miami of the Lake, and the Sandusky rivers, shall be called Metropotamia. Of the territory which lies under the forty-first and fortieth degrees, the western, through which the river Illinois runs, shall be called Illinoid; that next adjoining to the eastward, Saratoga; and that between this last and Pennsylvania, and extending from the Ohio to Lake Erie, shall be called Washington. Of the territory which lies under the thirty-ninth and thirty-eighth degrees, to which shall be added so much of the point of land within the fork of the Ohio and Mississippi as lies under the thirty-seventh degree; that to the westward, within and adjacent to which are the confluences of the rivers Wabash, Shawanee, Tanisee, Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri, shall be called Polypotamia; and that to the eastward, further up the Ohio, otherwise called the Pelisipi, shall be called Pelisipia. That all the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter of compact, shall be duly executed by the President of the United States, in Congress assembled, under his hand and the seal of the United States, shall be promulgated, and shall stand as fundamental conditions between the thirteen original States and those newly described, unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States, in Congress assembled, and of the particular State within which such alteration is proposed to be made. April 19, this reported plan came up for consideration in Congress. Mr. Spaight of N. C. moved that the 5th proposition (prohibiting Slavery after the year 1800) be stricken out of the plan of ordinance, and Mr. Read of S. C. seconded the motion. The question was put in this form: "Shall the words moved to be stricken out stand?" and on this question the Ayes and Noes were taken, and resulted as follows: N. HAMPSHIRE..... Mr. Foster, Mr. Blanchard,. MASSACHUSETTS.... Mr. Gerry,. Mr. Partridge, RHODE ISLAND..... Mr. Ellery,. Ay. ay .....ay .......ay Ay. ......ay ay Ay. Mr. Howell,. ay CONNECTICUT.... Mr. Sherman, .ay Mr. Wadsworth,. Ay. ay NEW-YORK.... Mr. De Witt,.. ay Mr. Paine,. Ay. .ay NEW-JERSEY Mr. Dick,. PENNSYLVANIA Mr. Mifflin,. .ay Mr. Montgomery,. Mr. Hand,. .ay ..ayAy. No. ..no ........no Mr. Mercer,. ..no .......no No. Here we find the votes sixteen in favor of Mr. Jefferson's restriction to barely seven against it, and the States divided six in favor to three against it. But the Articles of Confederation (Art. IX.) required an affirmative vote of a majority of all the States-that is, a vote of seven States-to carry a proposition; so this clause was defeated through the absence of one delegate from New-Jersey, in spite of a vote of more than two to one in its favor. Had the New-Jersey delegation been full, it must, to a moral certainty, have prevailed; had Delaware then been represented, it would probably have been carried, even without New-Jersey. Yet, it is this vote, so given and recorded, that Mr. Douglas in his "Harper" essay claims as sus * No quorum. servitude, in the said Territory, otherwise than in "There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall be duly convicted." To this was added, prior to its passage, the stipulation for the delivery of fugitives from labor or service, soon after embodied in the Federal Constitution; and in this shape, the entire ordinance was adopted (July 13th) by a unanimous vote, Georgia and the Carolinas concurring. UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. The old Articles of Confederation having proved inadequate to the creation and maintenance of a capable and efficient national or central authority, a Convention of Delegates from the several States, was legally assembled in Philadelphia, in 1787-George Washington, President; and the result of its labors was our present Federal Constitution, though some amendments mainly of the nature of restrictions on Federal power, were proposed by the several State Conventions assembled to pass upon that Constitution, and adopted. The following are all the provisions of that instrument, which are presumed to bear upon the subject of Slavery: (Preamble): We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. be vested in a Congress of the United States, which apportioned among the several States which may be § 9. The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808; but a tax or duty may be imposed, not exceeding ten dollars on each person. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. No bill of attainder or ex post facto laws shall be passed. Art. III. § 8. Treason against the United States |