CHAPTER XXXIV. PROPOSED SUPPLEMENTARY LEGISLATION TO THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT. Rigorous execution of the Fugitive Slave Act. Indignant protests. — Counter legislation. Toucey's bill. Its real purpose. Characterization by its opposers. - By its advocates. Not a question for argument. - General Antislavery speech of Mr. Gillette. debate. Proslavery speeches of Jones Speech of Mr. Wilson. - Speech of Mr. Wade. Too confident Speeches of Mr. Seward and Mr. Sumner. It could never be said of the Fugitive Slave Act, as of some laws, that it was enacted" for show rather than use." From the first it was executed with inexorable pertinacity of purpose and with merciless severity. Cruel as were its cunningly devised and carefully considered provisions, its practical administration was still more cruel. Like slavery itself, it seemed to poison everything it touched, to communicate the venom with which it was so thoroughly infused to nearly every person who undertook its execution, and impel the far larger number, at least, from the judge on the bench to the humblest deputy or turnkey, wantonly to wound and needlessly to outrage the sensibilities and religious convictions of the community. This naturally and necessarily intensified the indignation and alarm that pervaded the free States, and found expression in the earnest protests of the pulpit and press, in the resolutions and speeches of public meetings, in the action of ecclesiastical bodies, but more significantly still in the formal and authoritative enactments of Northern legislatures. The personal-liberty bills and other laws, enacted in some States, and sought to be enacted in others, revealed the deep impression which this iniquitous measure had made upon the public mind. This drift of Northern sentiment and action alarmed the slaveholders, who determined though on the heel of the closing session of the XXXIIId Congress, with its accumulated press of business-to introduce and force through a measure which should in reality supplement the Fugitive Slave Act, and circumvent, if possible, this unfriendly legislation of the Northern States. A Northern member was sought, and readily found, to introduce into the Senate a measure to render still more oppressive the law, more humiliating Northern vassalage, and, though coming from men loudest in their advocacy of State rights, to ignore more completely than ever before the authority of State laws, and to limit the jurisdiction of State courts. Mr. Toucey of Connecticut, in February, introduced a bill "to protect officers and other persons acting under the authority of the United States." Neither in the bill itself, nor in his remarks on its introduction, did he allude to the Fugitive Slave Act. With seeming innocence of all ulterior purposes, he expressed the conviction that no one who " acknowledges that this government has judicial power" could "take any valid exception to it"; his purpose being, not " to enter upon any discussion of this bill, but merely to state its operation and effect." The discussion, however, to which it gave rise, afforded abundant evidence that it was not regarded, by friend or foe, the harmless measure it was represented by its mover. Not only did the Free Soil members tear off the covering of legislative phraseology, showing that under the garb of parliamentary and general language it had a specific purpose that was anything but general, but its supporters showed that it meant still aggressive warfare, and nothing less. Indeed, the debate, though short and sharp, revealed-better than any of the session, perhaps not only the depth of feeling and purpose which animated and impelled the contestants, but also the stage in the great conflict which they had reached. Mr. Chase was the first to speak, and to note the promptness with which the bill was taken up, as only a new proof of the favor with which every proposition in the behalf of slavery was received, "no matter with what prejudice to the public business and the public interests." The same thought was felici tously presented by Mr. Seward. Alluding to the coincidence that he arose at the same time with the mover of the bill, with a proposition in his hand for the erection of a monument to Thomas Jefferson, he said: "The success which the honorable Senator from Connecticut obtained over me when the floor was assigned to him was ominous. The Senate of the United States will erect no monument to the memory of Jefferson, who declared that, in the unequal contest between slavery and freedom, the Almighty had no attribute which could take part with the oppressor; but the Senate will, on the other hand, promptly comply with the demand to raise another bulwark around the institution of slavery." Concerning the proposed bill, Mr. Chase said: "It is framed in the interests of the ruling class. Its object is to secure the stringent execution of the Fugitive Slave Act. . . . . It is a bill for the overthrow of State rights, to establish a great central, consolidated, Federal government, a step, a stride rather, toward despotism; . . . . this further legislation, necessary to the complete humiliation of the States." Alluding to the same point, Mr. Seward said: "You demand a further and a more stringent law. The Federal government must be armed with new powers, subversive of public liberty, to enforce the obnoxious statute. This bill before us supplies those new powers." Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts, who had just entered the Senate, said: "I believe the bill is intended to enforce an unconstitutional and arbitrary law, and for no other purpose whatever, and to prevent, if possible, the influences now at work in the free States for the protection of the liberties of their own citizens." Mr. Fessenden, always moderate and conservative on questions concerning slavery, said he understood its object, how it had come there, and why it had come there. "It is admitted," he said, "there is no dispute about it, that it is intended. solely and simply to deprive the courts of the several States of any and all power on any question arising under the Fugitive Slave Act." He said also that "it had been brought in for a single purpose, brought in at the close of the session, and sprung upon us to be carried through by party machinery." James Cooper of Pennsylvania, who had been a conservative He Whig and never identified with the antislavery cause, spoke briefly but decidedly in condemnation of the measure. said it reflected "unjustly upon the integrity of the State tribunals," and he enumerated several particulars in which it would "violate the rights of the citizens of the States in a most essential manner." On the part of the supporters of the bill there was little or no attempt to conceal its purpose. Mr. Douglas admitted its alleged object, and expressed surprise that any one should deem it an objection that it was designed to aid in the execution of the laws of the United States. Referring to the objections made to the Fugitive Slave Act on the score of humanity, he cited the clause of the Constitution requiring persons held to service to be delivered up, and said that if a person desired to be faithful to the Constitution, he must regard this requirement. "The moment," continued he, " my conscience will not allow me to be faithful to the Constitution, I will refuse to degrade myself or perjure my soul by coming here, and, for the sake of a seat in the Senate, swearing I will be faithful to the Constitution, when I intend to violate and repudiate it.” Mr. Benjamin, after referring, at some length and with some minuteness of detail, to the course of events in the Northern States, declared that they were "directing their legislation," and that their courts of justice were perverting their jurisprudence," against the Constitution and the rights of the States; that the idea of nullification had changed its locality; and that "South Carolina is now taken into the arms and affectionately caressed by Ohio, Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Connecticut." "The whole course of Northern legislation for the past few months," he said, "has been a course of direct war with the South, and the bill now before the Senate is a measure, not of aggression, but of defence." Mr. Bayard of Delaware from the committee which reported the bill, besides defending the constitutionality of the proposed law, argued in its favor, because he "believed the necessity for it had arisen in consequence of the action of several States of the Union, unless we were prepared to abandon the enforcement of the laws of the United States." Besides this general character ization of the bill by those who opposed and those who advocated its passage, there was little of argument for or against it. Nor could there well be; for it was not a question which admitted of much argument, other than the argument of force. It was, in fact, a simple matter of might, to be forced through the forms of legislation by "the machinery of party"; and the only questions considered by the authors of the measure were whether the exigencies of slavery required it and whether they could dragoon Congress into its support. The debate therefore naturally widened into a general discussion of slavery in some of its various forms and aspects, and in that view was exceedingly earnest and able. Mr. Gillette made a very elaborately prepared and eloquent antislavery speech. Sketching the history of the proslavery legislation of the government in its successive acts from the start, he quoted from Caleb Cushing an expression of the historic fact that in its industrial, financial, and political relations slavery is at the bottom of all the action of Congress." He also cited the language of John Quincy Adams, that "slavery constitutes the very axle around which the administration of the national government revolves. All its measures of foreign or domestic policy are but radiations from that centre." He quoted from the slave code of the District of Columbia, and noted some of its more barbarous statutes, and spoke of the moral influence of the general government thrown around slavery by such exercise of national authority in its behalf. He spoke of a law, which the slave was forbidden to read, but which condemned him, if guilty of its violation, to have his hand cut off, be hung, beheaded, and quartered, and to have each fragment of his body hung in the most conspicuous places"; for stealing five shillings' worth of goods he should suffer death without benefit of clergy; for striking a blow, even in defence of life or chastity, to have his or her ear "cropt"; and for giving false testimony against a white person, to have "both ears cropt and thirty-nine stripes on the bare back." Alluding to the firing of cannon north of the Capitol, on the night of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, he said "it heralded the resurrection of Liberty from her in |