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Page 12
* * * * *
It ought not to be forgotten that the first and main object of the
negotiation which led to the acquisition of Louisiana, was the free
navigation of the Mississippi, a river that forms the sole passage from
the western States to the ocean. This navigation, although of general
benefit, has been always valued and desired, as of peculiar advantage
to the Western States, whose demands to obtain it were neither equivocal
nor unreasonable. But with the river Mississippi, by a sort of coercion,
we acquired, by good or ill fortune, as our future measures shall
determine, the whole province of Louisiana. As this acquisition was made
at the common expense, it is very fairly urged that the advantages to be
derived from it should also be common. This, it is said, will not happen
if slavery be excluded from Missouri, as the citizens of the States
where slavery is permitted will be shut out, and none but citizens of
States where slavery is prohibited, can become inhabitants of Missouri.
But this consequence will not arise from the proposed exclusion of
slavery. The citizens of States in which slavery is allowed, like all
other citizens, will be free to become inhabitants of Missouri, in like
manner as they have become inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
in which slavery is forbidden. The exclusion of slaves from Missouri
will not, therefore, operate unequally among the citizens of the United
States. The Constitution provides, "that the citizens of each State
shall be entitled to enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of
the several States"; every citizen may, therefore, remove from one
to another State, and there enjoy the rights and immunities of its
citizens. The proposed provision excludes slaves, not citizens, whose
rights it will not, and cannot impair.
Besides there is nothing new or peculiar in a provision for the
exclusion of slavery; it has been established in the States north-west
of the river Ohio, and has existed from the beginning in the old States
where slavery is forbidden. The citizens of States where slavery is
allowed, may become inhabitants of Missouri, but cannot hold slaves
there, nor in any other State where slavery is prohibited. As well might
the laws prohibiting slavery in the old States become the subject of
complaint, as the proposed exclusion of slavery in Missouri; but there
is no foundation for such complaint in either case. It is further urged,
that the admission of slaves into Missouri would be limited to the
slaves who are already within the United States; that their health and
comfort would be promoted by their dispersion, and that their numbers
would be the same whether they remain confined to the States where
slavery exists, or are dispersed over the new States that may be
admitted into the Union.
That none but domestic slaves would be introduced into Missouri, and the
other new and frontier States, is most fully disproved by the thousands
of fresh slaves, which, in violation of our laws, are annually imported
into Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
We may renew our efforts, and enact new laws with heavier penalties
against the importation of slaves: the revenue cutters may more
diligently watch our shores, and the naval force may be employed on
the coast of Africa, and on the ocean, to break up the slave trade--but
these means will not put an end to it; so long as markets are open for
the purchase of slaves, so long they will be supplied;--and so long as
we permit the existence of slavery in our new and frontier States,
so long slave markets will exist. The plea of humanity is equally
inadmissible, since no one who has ever witnessed the experiment will
believe that the condition of slaves is made better by the breaking
up, and separation of their families, nor by their removal from the old
States to the new ones; and the objection to the provision of the bill,
excluding slavery from Missouri, is equally applicable to the like
prohibitions of the old States: these should be revoked, in order that
the slaves now confined to certain States, may, for their health and
comfort, and multiplication, be spread over the whole Union.
Slavery cannot exist in Missouri without the consent of Congress; the
question may therefore be considered, in certain lights, as a new one,
it being the first instance in which an inquiry respecting slavery, in a
case so free from the influence of the ancient laws, usages, and manners
of the country, has come before the Senate.
The territory of Missouri is beyond our ancient limits, and the inquiry
whether slavery shall exist there, is open to many of the arguments that
might be employed, had slavery never existed within the United States.
It is a question of no ordinary importance. Freedom and slavery are the
parties which stand this day before the Senate; and upon its decision
the empire of the one or the other will be established in the new State
which we are about to admit into the Union.
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