MASSACHUSETTS ON ADMITTING TEXAS.

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any compromise whatever, that may have been, or that hereafter may be, entered into by persons in the Government of the United States," inconsistently with this declaration. This seems to be a sort of guarded rebellion, in words. It was not a rendering to Caesar the things that are Cæsar's. Besides, it annulled, so far as it could annul, the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Texas, however, having gained its footing in the Union, though by a clearly unconstitutional procedure of Congress, the legislature took breath for one succeeding year. But the war with Mexico having then become flagrant, finally it adopted the following resolution, which was approved February 27th, 1847:

Resolved, That the people of Massachusetts will strenuously resist the annexation of any new territory to this Union in which the institution of slavery is to be tolerated or established; and the Legislature, in behalf of the people of the Commonwealth, do hereby solemnly protest against the acquisition of any additional territory, without an express provision by Congress, that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in such territory otherwise than for the punishment of crime.

At the same session-to conclude this recapitulation of sectional remonstrances-by another series, approved April 26th, 1847, the legislature

* * *

Resolved, That the present war with Mexico has its primary origin in the unconstitutional annexation to the United States of the foreign State of Texas * * that it must be regarded as a war against freedom, against humanity, against justice, against the Union, against the Constitution, against the free States. that a regard for the fair fame of our country, for the principles of morals, and for that righteousness which exalteth a nation, sanctions and requires all constitutional efforts for the destruction of the unjust influence of the slave power, and for the abolition of slavery within the limits of the United States.

The resolutions also contained a general declaration, to the effect, that all the high and imperative motives above suggested called upon the country to retire from the position of aggression which it then occupied towards the sister republic of Mexico.1 It does not appear whether Mexico de

1 Mexico, with which power we were at war, is amiably spoken of as a "sister republic;" while Texas, which had then been a member of the Union

rived any encouragement from this particular set of resolves, passed by one of the legislative bodies of a country with which she was then at war. It is certain, however, in spite of the whole series, so earnestly promulgated for so many successive sessions, that at the election of President the very next year (1848), the people of Massachusetts chose electors for General Taylor, a slaveholder and a citizen of a slaveholding State, and a victorious commander in the war just so eloquently denounced; a war, too, which had itself been the result of the admission of the slave State of Texas into the Union.'

The question naturally arises here: Had the Legislature of Massachusetts, therefore, been absolutely insincere in its deliberate and repeated manifestoes on this subject? Or had it, through misapprehension, or, as Governor Marcy remarked to the New York Legislature, on "some less justifiable principle," so singularly misrepresented the sentiments of the people? Unquestionably, not a little of the fervor exhibited by both the Democratic and Whig politicians of the State, in the cause of antislavery, is to be attributed to the peculiar condition and relations of the several parties in Massachusetts, at the period in question. The "third party” was, in fact, the field of their operation, and its intermediate position furnishes the key to their legislative action. The policy of the Whigs and Democrats alike was, to detach adherents from the ranks of the Liberty men, if possible, in order to swell their own respective numbers, and to settle for that one which should be most successful in the political game the party supremacy, which was somewhat tremulously balanced between the two.

To effect this object, it was essential to concede some

for a year and a half, and revolted from Mexico for the maintenance of its republican institutions, when Mexico became subject to a dictator, is referred to as if in its former condition of a foreign state."

The popular vote in Massachusetts stood: for Taylor (Whig), 61,072; for Cass (Democratic), 35,284; for Van Buren (Liberty party), 38,133. Not long afterwards, the Democrats of Massachusetts coalesced with the Liberty party to break down the Whigs.

THE LIBERTY PARTY ALWAYS SECTIONAL.

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thing of political principle, for the occasion, in favor of the professed moral principle of those whom they sought to conciliate; but who, it can hardly be imagined, were more really conscientious than themselves. For this third party had discarded the chimerical theories of the earlier abolitionists, who supposed that they could remove slavery from the lan by the ingenious method of flooding the section in which it existed with denunciatory and vituperative pamphlets, intended to work favorably upon the sympathies of the slaveholders, by informing them how utterly devoid they were of all claim to human and Christian communion with their fellow creatures. On the contrary, the Liberty party had originated the unqualifiedly sectional idea. It had conceived the plan of finally erecting a gigantic antislavery power in the North, which should compel the unwilling submission of the South to its purposes, and it proposed to carry out this plan by political agencies. Their antislavery sentiment was an offshoot, or the bequest of the old Puritan intolerant spirit, self-conscious of no blemish of its own, but uneasily seeking for some spot elsewhere, upon which it might fasten itself and scrub it up into cleanliness, or a sore. It could not bear the thought of letting the wheat and the tares grow together unto the appointed day. That its proceedings were prompted by no emotions of humanity, is evinced by its utter indifference to the actual fate of the negro. If it ever cared at all for him as a slave, the whole subsequent conduct of itself and its inheritors has shown that it cared nothing for him as a man. It was selfishness and not philanthropy which boiled over at the springs of its action. For how could philanthropy persistently and relentlessly urge on

1 History is said to repeat itself. Thus, in the year 1566, the Protestants of the Netherlands conceived that a shipment of thirty thousand Calvinistic tracts to Seville, for the conversion of the Spanish Catholics, would help them to withstand the formidable power of Philip II.

2 Eventually, it proved that they had to a large extent abandoned religion and found a substitute in fanaticism; or, the latter unclean spirit, entering into the house, had devoured its original tenant.

measures, which it was evident could lead only to that most fearful of all human calamities, civil war? And this, too, with the frightful prospect staring the philanthropist in the face, that servile war must also, in all probability, add its unspeakable horrors to the revolting spectacle of cruelty and terror presented by an internecine strife?

It could have been only party lust of power and the incidents of power, which thus made hair-brained men and unsexed women its tools, and brought philanthropy, sentimentality, disordered minds and hearts of wax, loose reasoning and incapacity to reason, infidelity, and all the countless forms of restless radicalism, likely to run rampant in demoralized popular institutions, into its insatiable service. For, surely, they can never be rationally thought of as the "friends of enlightened humanity," who, with whatever motive for seeking questionable good by means of certain evil, could contemplate unmoved, and could even excite the causes, which must inevitably inflict upon their native land calamities the most direful and irreparable in the harshest catalogue of deplorable human experiences.

CHAPTER VI.

The Whig Party and Democratic Party compete with each other for Liberty Party Votes. "The Higher Law."-The "Slave Power."-The Uniformly Superior Physical Power of the North.-Mr. Cass and Mr. Seward in the Senate.-President Taylor.Condition of Slavery.-National Greatness does not consist in the Extent of Population, or any mere Physical Causes.

If politics were, indeed, strictly identical with the science of morals, then political parties would be bound to frame their organizations with distinct reference to the clearest theory of moral sentiments; and then, too, religion might bear a controlling part in it, and exercise that power which it has often employed, when a sect, in the name of religion, has swayed the councils of the State. But though by no means inconsistent with the theory or practice of the highest morality, this is not the object of politics, which is the science of government; and in the United States, that government was based upon certain definite principles established by its Constitution. With those principles the moral notions of the Liberty party were inconsistent; and they finally pretended to justify themselves upon the theory of "a higher law," imagined for themselves; the dictates of which were repugnant not merely to the casual legislation, but to the fundamental law of the land. The consequences were seen in the seditious acts and outrages which finally marked the progress of these licentious doctrines.

At length, in Massachusetts and elsewhere at the North, it became a contest between the leading parties, as to which should go farthest in pursuit of the common object, and outdo the others in the warmth and strength of the expres