THE MISSOURI SENATORS. 605 Parliament, in 1776, suggests a new meaning to the words of Mason, and others: that the Government, like the Confederation of 1781, had failed to meet the wants of the country. Let those States which were satisfied with it, continue to support it; the slaveholding States were going to abandon it. It was folly then to expect Congress to preserve the Union. This startling fact appeared, whatever the source of the remedy. The Union consisted of three zones of States, extending east and west, preserving, to this late day, the three zones of settlement authorized under the charter of James I. The three zones, now, were the free States; the border States, and the cotton States. Though the border States were slaveholding, they were not for secession. Green, of Missouri, offered a resolution, on the fifth, providing for a border police that should prevent invasion of States by citizens of another, and efficiently execute the fugitive slave laws. Davis promptly pronounced it a quack remedy; a device to set up a military despotism; a means of coercing a State. His colleague, Brown, also saw in it a new engine of attack upon the South. But the Missouri Senator, though wholly out of sympathy with Northern ideas, declared that the Constitution was good enough for the Union. Public opinion there might re-act. What if power was soon to pass to an opposition President? "I do not stop to consider it," continued Green. "I will give him as much power to enforce the Federal Constitution and protect the rights of the people as I would anybody else; and I will hold him just as responsible for the manner in which he exercises it. Do you say that that gives him power to overawe the States? I say it does not. He cannot invade a single State; but he can prevent States from being invaded. He cannot take one article of your property; but he can protect your prop 606 JUDAH P. BENJAMIN. erty from being taken by others." And this, we now know, was substantially the position which President Lincoln claimed for himself in his inaugural.2 Green plainly defined the purposes of Iverson, Davis, Mason and Wigfall. Right or wrong they were going out of the Union. They did not wish to preserve it, and every attempt to preserve it they called an attempt to set up a military despotism. Benjamin, of Louisiana, who for fifteen years had been meditating on a Southern Confederacy, asked King, of New York, whether the party which had elected Lincoln intended to use physical force against a State which might think proper to withdraw from the Union; to which King replied, that the sentiment of the great body of the people of New York was that the Union "must and shall be preserved." Evidently, the party of secession was determined to make much of prospective coercion and to use any sign of it as a sufficient excuse for disunion.1 But the cotton States wished the border States to go out with them. The reasons for this, and the terrible fear that impelled secession were plainly put by Iverson, after reviewing the history of slavery, under the Constitution, and the various compromises and laws for its security. It had been customary among Southern men for nearly twenty years to complain that the personal liberty bills of some of the Northern States had prevented the execution of the fugitive slave law. Iverson went to the bottom of the matter when he said, that it was not these personal 1 Id., p. 31. 2 Lincoln's Works, II, 1, 2. 8 See my Constitutional History of the American People, 17761850, I, 425, 489. 4 This conclusion is drawn from the speeches of the secession leaders, and especially that of Davis, quoted later, to which Trumbull replied, see p. 629. liberty laws, but public sentiment at the North which had prevented the execution of the law. This sentiment was stronger than the law, therefore, the fugitive was not reclaimed. He scorned the idea that the law imposed damages on those who secreted or refused to deliver up slaves, and his scorn was logical, for he believed that a State was a sovereign power and could not be sued. As he expressed it, there was no way of making the State of Massachusetts liable, if its people seized a thousand slaves and refused to surrender them; hence his first conclusion, that a stricter fugitive slave law would be valueless. It had been proposed, in order to appease the South, that the doctrine should be made a law that Congress must protect slavery in the territories. But the Republican party was a unit against any such legislation. They had fought the recent bill on that issue and had won, and the principle that slavery should never advance one inch beyond its existing boundary and never plant a foot on the United States, was at the basis of their organization, therefore, legislation of the protective kind indicated, was impossible. Moreover, many Northern Democrats opposed the doctrine, of whom those constituting "The Douglasnon-interference-squatter-sovereignty-party" would equal the Republicans in opposing the doctrine. It was futile, therefore, for the South to get congressional protection for its slave property by law, and yet the Southern people would never be satisfied with anything else. The Wilmot proviso, non-interference and squatter sovereignty, would lead to the total and eternal exclusion of the Southern people from their share of the territory of the United States, a deprivation and wrong to which they would never submit. The object and ultimate end of all anti-slavery restriction was to circumscribe the area of slavery and compel the South to get rid of its slaves. As soon as the 606 JUDAH P. BENJAMIN. erty from being taken by others." And this, we now know, was substantially the position which President Lincoln claimed for himself in his inaugural.2 Green plainly defined the purposes of Iverson, Davis, Mason and Wigfall. Right or wrong they were going out of the Union. They did not wish to preserve it, and every attempt to preserve it they called an attempt to set up a military despotism. Benjamin, of Louisiana, who for fifteen years had been meditating on a Southern Confederacy, asked King, of New York, whether the party which had elected Lincoln intended to use physical force against a State which might think proper to withdraw from the Union; to which King replied, that the sentiment of the great body of the people of New York was that the Union "must and shall be preserved." Evidently, the party of secession was determined to make much of prospective coercion and to use any sign of it as a sufficient excuse for disunion.1 But the cotton States wished the border States to go out with them. The reasons for this, and the terrible fear that impelled secession were plainly put by Iverson, after reviewing the history of slavery, under the Constitution, and the various compromises and laws for its security. It had been customary among Southern men for nearly twenty years to complain that the personal liberty bills of some of the Northern States had prevented the execution of the fugitive slave law. Iverson went to the bottom of the matter when he said, that it was not these personal 1 Id., p. 31. 2 Lincoln's Works, II, 1, 2. 3 See my Constitutional History of the American People, 17761850, I, 425, 489. + This conclusion is drawn from the speeches of the secession leaders, and especially that of Davis, quoted later, to which Trumbull replied, see p. 629. liberty laws, but public sentiment at the North which had prevented the execution of the law. This sentiment was stronger than the law, therefore, the fugitive was not reclaimed. He scorned the idea that the law imposed damages on those who secreted or refused to deliver up slaves, and his scorn was logical, for he believed that a State was a sovereign power and could not be sued. As he expressed it, there was no way of making the State of Massachusetts liable, if its people seized a thousand slaves and refused to surrender them; hence his first conclusion, that a stricter fugitive slave law would be valueless. It had been proposed, in order to appease the South, that the doctrine should be made a law that Congress must protect slavery in the territories. But the Republican party was a unit against any such legislation. They had fought the recent bill on that issue and had won, and the principle that slavery should never advance one inch beyond its existing boundary and never plant a foot on the United States, was at the basis of their organization, therefore, legislation of the protective kind indicated, was impossible. Moreover, many Northern Democrats opposed the doctrine, of whom those constituting "The Douglasnon-interference-squatter-sovereignty-party" would equal the Republicans in opposing the doctrine. It was futile, therefore, for the South to get congressional protection for its slave property by law, and yet the Southern people would never be satisfied with anything else. The Wilmot proviso, non-interference and squatter sovereignty, would lead to the total and eternal exclusion of the Southern people from their share of the territory of the United States, a deprivation and wrong to which they would never submit. The object and ultimate end of all anti-slavery restriction was to circumscribe the area of slavery and compel the South to get rid of its slaves. As soon as the |