CHAPTER XXI.

ACTION IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Mr. Wilson's resolutions. Mr. Hillard's resolutions. Mr. Hopkins's resolutions.State mass convention at Faneuil Hall. - Address and resolutions reported by Richard H. Dana, Jr. Remarks by Palfrey, Wilson, Hopkins, Webb, Adams, Phillips, and Keyes. Hopkins's resolutions. - Branning's amendment. - Remarks of Schouler, Boutwell, Stone, Lawrence, Wilson, Kimball, and Earle. -Resolutions adopted by the House. Debate in the Senate. Resolutions amended and passed. Meeting in Faneuil Hall. Petitions to instruct Mr. Webster. Mr. Wilson's resolution. - Debate thereon. -Resolutions defeated.

THE exacting demands of Southern legislatures and journals, with the purposes and plans disclosed by Southern leaders in Congress, excited grave apprehensions. The friends of freedom saw the necessity of arousing the people to at once stimulate and sustain their representatives in the stern strife in which they found themselves already involved. On the 11th of January, Mr. Wilson of Natick introduced into the legislature of Massachusetts resolutions declaring slavery to be a crime against humanity and a sin against God, and that its immediate abolition was the first and highest duty of every government under which it existed. Slavery was declared a mere local institution; and Congress was invoked to repeal all laws which sanctioned it, and the Massachusetts Senators and Representatives were called upon to vote for all measures that would absolve the people from responsibility for its existence. They were referred to a joint committee. No report being made by that committee, Mr. Wilson, on the 4th of February, introduced an order instructing the Committee on the Judiciary to report forthwith a resolution declaring that Massachusetts was unalterably opposed to any compromise with slavery, and instructing her Senators in Congress to oppose the compromise resolutions, and any other proposition

that gave the sanction of the Federal government to slavery, or made the people of the free States responsible, in any degree, for its existence.

The resolutions gave rise to an animated debate. Among the speakers was Samuel Hoar of Concord, whose character, candor, and cogency of argument, always commanded attention. He specially counselled unity of action. They were advocated, too, by Mr. Barry, author of a history of Massachusetts, in a calm but earnest speech. Mr. Wilson said an emergency had arisen, and prompt action was demanded. The looked-for compromise had been introduced into the Senate by Mr. Clay, a compromise in direct hostility to the sentiments of Massachusetts, "sentiments recorded in her annals, and enthroned in the hearts of her people." Analyzing the compromise resolutions, Mr. Wilson pronounced them derogatory to the American name and American character, and he declared that now was the time for Massachusetts to utter her indignant No to a scheme which was intended to give further security and protection to slavery, by new contracts, agreements, and adjustments. On the 12th of February, Mr. Hillard, chairman of the Joint Special Committee, presented several resolutions. The report declared that the feeling against slavery was universal among the people of the New England States; that, by giving assent to the introduction of slavery into regions now free, "we should feel that we were guilty of a sin before God and man, for which there is no compensation and no equivalent. The sting of self-reproach would make our material prosperity of little value. The consciousness of wrong-doing would pursue us through all the path of life, and impair the flavor of our daily bread. If we are called upon to do wrong or suffer wrong, we prefer to suffer wrong." The report closed with the avowal that "we will not buy temporal blessings with the price of what we deem wrong-doing. We will endure the shadow of sorrow, but not the stain of guilt."

Deeming the resolutions not sufficiently explicit and adapted to the exigencies of the crisis, and declaring that the significance of speaking at that time consisted in "speaking to the

question," Erastus Hopkins of Northampton made a minority report. In it were reaffirmed the oft-proclaimed opinions which had received the almost universal assent of the people of the Commonwealth, faithfully characterized the position of the administration, pointed out the wide divergence of the two, and declared that Massachusetts could accept no compromise which involved any abandonment of principles so firmly held and so oft repeated. Although Mr. Hillard's report had received the indorsement of a caucus of the Whig members of the legislature, yet, when it came up for consideration in the House, Myron Lawrence, a leading member, objected to it as being too pointless, while that of the minority was perhaps too pointed; though with slight modifications he preferred the latter. A successful motion. to recommit was made; Mr. Hillard's resolutions were abandoned; the resolutions of Mr. Hopkins were, in substance, agreed to by the committee, and reported to the House.

While the subject thus lingered in the legislature, there was a growing uneasiness among the people, lest the golden moment of timely protest and effective action should pass by unimproved, and the voice of Massachusetts be silent, or, at best, speak with bated breath. A call was therefore issued the Free Soil Central Committee for a mass convention, to be held in Faneuil Hall on the 27th of February. The committee called upon the people to "throng" to the convention. from all portions of the State, for they alone, it said, could "avert the timid action of their representatives, and reassure the opponents of slavery extension."

The convention was called to order by Mr. Wilson, chairman of the committee, and Mr. Palfrey was made president. On taking the chair, the latter addressed the convention at length. Referring to the rumor, then rife, that Mr. Webster had prepared a compromise which Southern Senators had approved, he said: "There is no name among contemporaries, there is no name in history, so great, so illustrious, so potent, that it will not wither, like Jonah's gourd, under the influence of such an act as is now supposed to be performed." Recurring to the early history of Massachusetts and to Thomas

Hutchinson, whom he designated "the Daniel Webster of his day in ability and station, superiority and influence," he asked: "Who knows anything of him now?" He said that history had hardly preserved his name, that he did not live in the hearts of the people, because, when the trial came, he was not true to Massachusetts. But Adams and Hancock and Warren, the men who had struggled for liberty, were "embalmed in the idea of patriotism," and will "live in the affections of posterity."

The Committee on Resolutions consisted of Richard H. Dana, Jr., Stephen C. Phillips, Samuel Hoar, John G. Whittier, Charles Sumner, and Milton M. Fisher. Mr. Wilson addressed the convention, congratulating it upon the character and numbers of those who had assembled at the call of patriotism, and reminded it of the pressing necessities which demanded immediate and decisive action. He said that every breeze from the South came freighted with the threats of the arrogant advocates of bondage to dissolve the Union, and to plunge the country into civil war, unless permitted to extend over the new Territories a system abhorred of man and accursed of God. Intelligence had come that Northern representatives were hesitating, faltering, either intimidated by the clamor and threats or seduced by the blandishments of power. "Rumors are rife," he said, "that there are Achans in the camp of Massachusetts, that her principles, her honor, and her name all are to be laid, a votive offering, on the unhallowed shrine of the Slave Power, to appease the wrath of traitors to humanity, to the country, and to God. But whatever others may do, come what may come, our path of duty is as clear as the track of the sun across the heavens. Union or no union, peace or no peace, compromises or no compromises, let us march boldly up to the extreme verge of our constitutional rights in resistance to the extension of human bondage over the Territories of the Republic."

Mr. Hopkins spoke strongly against all compromises. He said that the antagonism that existed was an antagonism between right and wrong, and that no compromise was allowable and no compromise was possible. Seth Webb, Jr., said he would

say to the representatives of Massachusetts in Congress that we remain immovable; that so long as we live we have but one plan, and that plan is, "no more slavery on the continent of America, at all hazards, under all circumstances, and without reference to a line of latitude or a line of longitude. That is our principle. It is not accommodated to executive or legislative influence. It does not bend to meet Mr. Clay's plan, or Mr. Webster's plan, or anybody's plan. It is as straight as a straight line. It is as even as a principle of eternal justice." He would say to the representatives of Massachusetts that the first symptom of vacillation, of uncertainty, of faltering, seals their political death-warrant for time, if not for eternity.

The address and resolution, reported by Mr. Dana, traced with great clearness the action of Massachusetts, and enjoined upon its members of Congress to adhere to the principle, "No more slave States, no more slave territory." Mr. Adams said that political opposition to slavery had grown from small beginnings, though steadily and stubbornly resisted by material interests, until it attracted the attention and occupied the thoughts of the country. It had a principle of vitality which defied all attempts to destroy it, and bore a charmed life. He thought the supporters of the administration had reached that condition where the remark of Mr. Webster, levelled against the Democratic party four years before, was applicable then, that "the predictions of the last year's almanac respecting the state of the weather were as reliable as any prediction he could make of the course of that party on the question of slavery for a month at a time." In reply to the allegation that what they insisted upon, but were asked to sacrifice, was only a "sentiment," he said that all the principles of morals and religion which ennoble human life were abstract sentiments. "When, therefore, I am asked," he said, "as in this instance, to sign and seal a bond to my own shame, by surrendering a portion of that which distinguishes mankind from the brutes that perish, the sense of right and wrong in action, this is the moment for me to come forward and reiterate an everlasting No." He