CHAP. I. 1861. no further attempt to hold their meetings, but adjourned sine die, well knowing that the indignation excited by this outrage would be worth many conventions to the cause; and so, of course, it proved. But the spirit of compromise was still rampant, and the most abject propositions were urged for the conciliation of the seceding States and the maintenance of the Union with fresh guarantees for the protection of the Slave Power. In this the Republican leaders were conspicuous. In Congress, Charles Francis Adams, representing the Third Massachusetts District, Lib. 31:9. proposed the admission of New Mexico as a State, with or without slavery, and favored an amendment to the Constitution requiring that all subsequent amendments affecting slavery should be proposed by a slave State and ratified by all the States (instead of the customary threefourths). Mr. Seward, speaking in the U. S. Senate, favored the repeal of the Personal Liberty laws, and the amendment of the Constitution so as to prohibit Congress from ever abolishing or interfering with slavery in any State. Thomas Corwin of Ohio, a Republican Representative and the chairman of the Congressional Committee of Thirty-three to devise compromise measures, not only Lib. 31:26. urged the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, but declared it to be "the duty of every free State in the Union to suppress" any incendiary publications, especially of the "newspaper press," against slavery, and "to punish their authors." 2 Andrew G. Curtin, the Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, urged the Republican legislators of that State to defeat a resolution reaffirming their party's cardinal doctrine of the non-extension of Jan. 12, 1861; Lib. 31:10. MSS. E. W. Capron Irish to J. M. McKim, Jan. 29, 30, 1861. 1 He subsequently withdrew his propositions, on the ground that it was "of no use to propose as an adjustment that which has no prospect of being received as such by the other party"; and, as a member of the Committee of Thirty-three to consider the state of the country, he finally voted against making any proposition whatever (Lib. 31: 13; Wilson's 'Rise and Fall of the Slave Power,' 3: 106). 2 Speech of Thomas Corwin in the U. S. House of Representatives, Jan. 21, 1861; Appendix to Congressional Globe,' 36th Congress, 2d session, pp. 73, 74. See, also, the comments of Owen Lovejoy in his fearless speech two days later (ibid., p. 85). slavery, and appointed delegates to the so-called "Peace Congress" (convened in Washington in February) who were utterly subservient to the demands there made by the border slave States. Had the Senators and Representatives from the seceded States only retained their seats in Congress, they could easily have insured the adoption of the measures recommended by this "Peace Congress," and substantially embodied in the Compromise bill which bore the name of its author, Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky; and the guarantees thus secured to it would have given slavery a fresh lease of life and power. They included the admission of slavery to the Territories south of latitude 36° 30'; forbade Congress to abolish the institution in places under its exclusive jurisdiction, and made it virtually perpetual in the District of Columbia; prohibited interference with the inter-State slave trade; required the United States to compensate the owner of any fugitive slave rescued from his clutches "by violence or intimidation" in the free States; empowered them to sue the county in which the rescue occurred, and the county in turn to sue the individual rescuers; and forbade that any future amendment of the Constitution should modify these stipulations or affect the fugitive-slave and three-fifths representation clauses of the original instrument. Even without the votes of the seceding Senators, the Crittenden Compromise commanded 19 votes in the Senate to 20 in opposition; and the parallel propositions submitted by the "Peace Congress" having been also dismissed, the following amendment to the Constitution, proposed by Thomas Corwin, was adopted by the requisite two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, a large number of Republicans voting in its favor: 2 1 In the House the vote was more decisive, 113 Nays to 80 Yeas. 2 Senators Sumner, Wilson, Wade, and others in both houses of Congress were firm in resisting every step towards compromise; but even Senator Wilson spoke so apologetically concerning the Massachusetts Personal Liberty Law, in his speech of Feb. 21, in the U. S. Senate, that Mr. Garrison was compelled to criticise him sharply (Lib. 31 : 46). CHAP. I. 1861. Greeley's American Conflict, 1:376, 377, 399-402. Wilson's Rise and Power, 3: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will Fall of Slave authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." 104. The answer of the South to this last act of cowardice was the bombardment of Sumter, and Northern legislators were thus saved the humiliation of giving the amendment the ratification which would probably otherwise have been wrung from the larger number of them. "The South," MS. March wrote George Thompson to Mr. Garrison, "has reversed your motto, and has hoisted the banner of No Union with Non-Slaveholders!' Thank God for it!" 29, 1861. Jan. 12. Lib. 31: 10. Mr. Garrison's pen was never more active than during this critical period, and never more searching, faithful, and discriminating. Even from his sick room he sent forth, in January, a vigorous editorial in criticism of Mr. Seward's compromise speech in the Senate. After referring to the significance attached to it, on account of Mr. Seward's position in the Republican party and the admitted fact that he was to be Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of State, Mr. Garrison wrote: 66 Formerly, we entertained a high opinion of the statesmanlike qualities of Mr. Seward, and were ready to believe, in consequence of several acts performed by him in the service of an oppressed and despised race, that he was inspired by noble sentiments, lifting him above all personal considerations; but we have been forced, within the past year, to correct that opinion, and to change that belief. His intellectual ability is unquestionably of the first order; he writes and speaks with remarkable perspicuity, and often with great rhetorical beauty; nothing with him is hastily done; his caution is immense; he aims to be axiomatic and oracular. But it is evident that his moral nature is quite subordinate to his intellect, so as to taint his philosophy of action, and prevent him from rising to a higher level than that of an expedientist and compromiser. The key to his public life is contained in this very speech. Here it is: "If, in the expression of these views, I have not proposed what is desired or expected by many others, they will do me the justice to believe that I am as far from having suggested what, in many respects, would have been in harmony with cherished convictions of my own. I learned early from Jefferson that, in political affairs, we cannot always do what seems to be absolutely best. Those with whom we must necessarily act, entertaining different views, have the power and right of carrying them into practice. We must be content to lead when we can, and to follow when we cannot lead; and if we cannot at any time do for our country all the good that we would wish, we must be satisfied with doing for her all the good that we can.' "Now, a declaration like this, expressed in such carefully considered language, carries upon its face nothing startling or objectionable; because it is the merest truism to say, that where there are many minds of conflicting views to be reconciled, mutual concessions must be made to secure the desired unity of action. And where no moral principle, no sacrifice of justice, is involved, a course like this is the dictate of common sense; otherwise, the state of society would be chaotic, and an efficient administration of public concerns impossible. But in the sentence, 'In political affairs we cannot always do what seems to be absolutely best,' there is to be found the germ of all political profligacy, and the nest-egg of all those sinful compromises which have cursed this nation since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. There is no position in which men may place themselves, or be placed by others, where they can be justified, whether to reach a consummation devoutly to be wished,' or to avoid formidable danger or great suffering, in violating their consciences, or conniving at what their moral sense condemns. Personal integrity and straightforward regard for the right can allow no temptation to make them swerve a hair's-breadth from the line of duty; for they are of more consequence than all the compacts and constitutions ever made. Disregardful of this, the doctrine that the end sanctifies the means,' or that ' we cannot always do what seems to be absolutely best,' becomes the doctrine of devils. Mr. Seward means just this: a compromise of principle to propitiate the perverse wrongdoers of the South or his language is a mockery in this emergency. He is dealing, not with a material question of dollars and cents, but with the most momentous moral question ever presented to the worldnot with well-meaning but deluded men, but with sagacious desperadoes and remorseless men-stealers. All his talk of adhering to old compromises, and making additional ones to appease the ferocious and despotic South, relates to slavery, 'the sum of all villany'- and to nothing else. Hence, he is for continuing to slaveholders the inhuman privilege of hunting CHAP. I. 1861. CHAP. I. 1861. S. C., Miss., their fugitive slaves in any part of the North. Hence, he is willing to vote for an amendment of the Constitution, declaring that under no circumstances shall Congress have the power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any State. Hence, his readiness to enact laws subjecting future John Browns to the punishment of death for seeking to deliver the slaves BunkerHill fashion, and after the example of Lafayette, Kosciusko, Pulaski, and DeKalb, as pertaining to our own Revolutionary struggle. Yet, in another speech delivered at Madison, Wisconsin, not long since, Mr. Seward solemnly declares: "By no word, no act, no combination into which I might enter, shall any one human being of all the generations to which I belong, much less of any class of human beings of any race or kindred be oppressed, or kept down in the least degree in their efforts to rise to a higher state of liberty and happiness. ... Whenever the Constitution of the United States requires of me that this hand shall keep down the humblest of the human race, then I will lay down power, place, position, fame, everything, rather than adopt such a construction or such a rule.' "What shall we think of the consistency or veracity of Mr. Seward in this matter of freedom? He knows, he concedes, in the speech we are criticising, that, under the United States Constitution, the fugitive slave is not entitled to safety or protection in any Northern State; and those who rush to the rescue of the enslaved millions at the South, as John Brown and his associates did, he is for hanging as felons under that same Constitution. It is time for him to lay down power, place, and position! "Look at the present state of the country! The old Union breaking up daily, its columns falling in every direction — four Southern States already out of it, and all the others busily and openly preparing to follow-the national Government paralyzed through indecision, cowardice, or perfidy - the national flag trampled upon and discarded by the traitors, and a murderous endeavor on their part, by firing heavy shot, to sink a Star of the Government vessel entering the harbor of Charleston upon a lawful errand, compelling her to flee in disgrace and to avoid certain destruction - treason and traitors everywhere, in every slave State, in every free State, at the seat of Government, in both houses of Congress, in the army and navy, in the Executive department, at the head of the press, audacious, defiant, diabolical-the United States arsenals and fortifications already seized, or rapidly falling into the hands of the Southern conspirators, through the blackest perfidy - every movement con West. Jan. 9, 1861. |