was exhibiting. Goings was acquitted and allowed the poor boon of staying on Indiana soil, not because he was a man, not because it was wrong to restrain him of his liberty, but because he was an Indian. Illinois, like Indiana, had been largely settled from the slave States. Many of its early settlers were in favor of making the new State of their adoption the home of the same system of servitude that had so deeply cursed the old States they had left behind; while others, opposed to that, were in favor of laws that would bar the colored man from the State or keep him in a degraded condition in it. And such, indeed, was much of the special legislation of Illinois upon the subject. The spirit of caste, that ostracized the colored population in society and discriminated against it even in the sacred precincts of the church, pervaded the legislature and increased rather than modified the rigors of its legislation. Thus, as late as 1853 she enacted a new law making it a misdemeanor for a free colored person to come into the State with the intention of residing there, and enacted that such persons might be prosecuted, fined, and sold for a time, to pay the fine and costs. It forbade, too, the entrance of slaves, though it meanly provided that the owners of slaves might take them in transitu through the State. In 1851, Iowa also prohibited such immigration, and enacted that free colored persons should not give testimony in cases in which a white man was a party. In like manner and with similar intent was the legislation of other States and Territories. In 1849, Oregon enacted that negroes should not be admitted as settlers or inhabitants. New Mexico passed an act, in 1851, recognizing and establishing peonage. Utah provided, in 1852, that persons coming into that Territory, bringing slaves, should be entitled to their services. In 1852, California enacted that slaves which had been brought into that State when a Territory might be held as slaves and taken out of it; indeed, that the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act might be applied to them, that they might be arrested, and, when arrested, might be denied the privilege of testifying in their own behalf. In the presence of results like these, a record so dark and indefensible, involving inconsistencies so flagrant, and recreancy to principle so marked, reflecting men could not but ask for some adequate cause; for they saw, as never before, that there must be some malignant and potent agency at work, that could accomplish such results and give such a character to the nation's history. They called it the Slave Power. Though it had no "local habitation," it had a "name" that was a growing terror and alarm. They saw that there existed a commanding power in the land, which made its infiuence everywhere felt, by which all other influences were greatly modified, and before which all other interests were compelled in greater or less degree to bend. It was as if somewhere some imperious autocrat or secret conclave held court or council, in which slavery's every interest, necessity, and demand were considered and cared for, and from which were issued its stern and inexorable decrees. Committed to ready servitors, these decrees were executed with fearful fidelity, and at any cost, sacrifice, or hazard. As if endowed with a kind of omniscience, or served by agents always and everywhere watchful, it seemed fully to comprehend whatever was needful for its purposes. As if conscious, too, of its essential vileness, and of the weakness which wickedness begets, it seemed always on the alert, lest some one should inflict injury, and it should suffer detriment from those forces of nature and Providence, of matter and mind, against which it seemed to be forever conscious of being at war. It snuffed danger from afar, and was eagle-eyed to detect whatever threatened injury or promised help. If it did not say, Milton's fiend, "All good to me is lost; with it did seem to be oblivious of all distinctions of right and wrong, and indifferent to the moral character of any meas ure its necessities required. With vast resources at its command, with no scruples of conscience, and with none of the ordinary sensibilities of humanity, it sought to subordinate and subsidize everything to its behests. Patriotism, philan thropy, and piety were things of naught if they questioned its supremacy and came in competition or conflict with its exacting demands. It entered the conventions of parties and the councils of leaders, and dictated both the men and the measures they were allowed to support. It lorded it with almost unquestioned authority in the halls of legislation, while judges and juries, with hardly a show of independence, consulted its decrees in the opinions they gave and the verdicts they rendered. It forced its hateful presence into religious assemblies, and took its seat in the associations of churches and at the boards of missions. Editors wrote and clergymen preached in fear of its powers, and with no attempt to conceal their anxiety to propitiate its favor. It entered the precincts of learning, and, in the presence of all that is pure in science, profound in philosophy, and sacred in theology, surrounded, too, by the teachings of the ages, it proclaimed its great, gigantic lie, and subjected the teachers of those schools to the humiliating vassalage of accepting and advocating its unfounded pretensions. Nor was its power exhausted on leaders. Its spirit permeated the masses. The people learned its sophistries and joined with alacrity in carrying out its hateful purposes. Men who never saw a slave lent their ready aid to keep him in chains, and, as if moved by a common inspiration, they joined in unreasoning hostility against all efforts to ameliorate his condition or secure his emancipation. Such was the Slave Power of America. CHAPTER XVII. SLAVERY DEBATES OF THE XXXTH CONGRESS. -SOUTHERN CAUCUS. Speeches by New aspect of the slavery issue presented by the Mexican war. Proslavery views of Northern - Caucus of members, Thompson, Brown. - Effective speech of McDowell. Southern members. - Address. Position of Northern members. - Eloquent speeches by Palfrey, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Mann, and James Wilson. THE Mexican war and its proposed result - the acquisition of territory to strengthen and extend the system of slavery— was a marked era in the history of the Slave Power. It inaugurated and gave the national indorsement to the new purpose of slavery extension. No longer content with the theory of simple conservation, for which they had hitherto so successfully and too logically pleaded the compromises of the Constitution, the slave-masters had succeeded in dragooning the government into the practical adoption of an entirely different, more dangerous, and more disgraceful policy. If it had not formally adopted Mr. Calhoun's newly discovered or newly invented theory, that the Constitution carried slavery wherever it went, it revealed the alarming fact that the nation was on the high-road to such a conclusion. This war was not only an outrage upon Mexico, upon every principle of humanity and moral rectitude, but it was a public proclamation by the slaveholding oligarchy that it was its determination to commit the nation, unequivocally and irreparably, to its purposes and plans. There were not a few who comprehended the drift of things, and who took alarm, not so much at the extravagance of these claims as at the growing disposition of the nation to yield to them. Consequently the subject of slavery in the abstract was a topic of frequent discussion in the XXXth Congress. Its sinfulness, its wrongs, its deleterious influ ences, its power over the government and the people, were perhaps more fully discussed in that than in any previous Congress. Early in the first session, Mr. Clingman of North Carolina led off in a speech on both the moral and the political aspects of slavery. He had been somewhat distinguished for his moderation and candor. He had resisted the action of the South on the right of petition, as also the extreme views of nullification propounded by Mr. Calhoun and his followers. But his speech, which was very long, eloquent, and evidently well considered, showed him to be not only an advocate of slavery, and deeply imbittered against the Abolitionists, but fully impressed with the conviction of the inferiority of the negro race. He went largely into the history of slavery; coptended that it was a normal, providential, and wisely arranged condition of the inferior races; and he revealed the fact, too, that even his moderation and defence of the right of petition had been mainly strategical, because he admitted that, by denying the right, they were preserving a rule which was of "no practical use in itself, so that we were losing ground," he said," and the Abolitionists gaining thereby." The Southern Whigs found, too, a voice for the expression of their views in that of Alexander H. Stephens, who spoke near the close of the first session. Though his speech was brief, it presented, in vigorous language and compact form, the sentiments of those who, equally committed to slavery, were not quite prepared to adopt the extreme and violent course marked out by the administration. Its particular theme was the "Compromise bill," though he proposed to confine himself to the simple organization of Territorial governments in New Mexico and California. The speech embraced and elaborated the following propositions: the reference of the whole subject of slavery in those Territories to the judiciary; the fact that the Constitution protected slavery wherever it existed, but could not establish it where it did not exist; these territories being acquired from Mexico by conquest, all Mexican laws existing at the time of the conquest not incompatible with the Constitution of the United States, and not abrogated by the treaty, were still in force; as slavery did not exist there |