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Page 17
* * * * *
In a word, the whole amount of the argument on the other side is, that
you may refuse to admit a new State, and that therefore if you admit,
you may prescribe the terms.
The answer to that argument is--that even if you can refuse, you can
prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do.
You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would
make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it
stands, it would be. You can prescribe no terms which will make
the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially
different from that compact among the original States. You may admit, or
refuse to admit: but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense
of the Constitution--a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the
original parties: and it must be into this Union that you are to admit
it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing
Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and
effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference
to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort--the
energy of restraint and destruction.
* * * * *
One of the most signal errors with which the argument on the other side
has abounded, is this of considering the proposed restriction as if
levelled at the introduction or establishment of slavery. And hence the
vehement declamation, which, among other things, has informed us that
slavery originated in fraud or violence.
The truth is, that the restriction has no relation, real or pretended,
to the right of making slaves of those who are free, or of introducing
slavery where it does not already exist. It applies to those who are
admitted to be already slaves, and who (with their posterity) would
continue to be slaves if they should remain where they are at present;
and to a place where slavery already exists by the local law. Their
civil condition will not be altered by their removal from Virginia, or
Carolina, to Missouri. They will not be more slaves than they now are.
Their abode, indeed, will be different, but their bondage the same.
Their numbers may possibly be augmented by the diffusion, and I think
they will. But this can only happen because their hardships will be
mitigated, and their comforts increased. The checks to population,
which exist in the older States, will be diminished. The restriction,
therefore does not prevent the establishment of slavery, either with
reference to persons or place; but simply inhibits the removal from
place to place (the law in each being the same) of a slave, or make his
emancipation the consequence of that removal. It acts professedly merely
on slavery as it exists, and thus acting restrains its present lawful
effects. That slavery, like many other human institutions, originated
in fraud or violence, may be conceded: but, however it originated, it is
established among us, and no man seeks a further establishment of it
by new importations of freemen to be converted into slaves. On the
contrary, all are anxious to mitigate its evils, by all the means within
the reach of the appropriate authority, the domestic legislatures of the
different States.
* * * * *
Of the declaration of our independence, which has also been quoted in
support of the perilous doctrines now urged upon us, I need not now
speak at large. I have shown on a former occasion how idle it is to rely
upon that instrument for such a purpose, and I will not fatigue you by
mere repetition. The self-evident truths announced in the Declaration
of Independence are not truths at all, if taken literally; and the
practical conclusions contained in the same passage of that declaration
prove that they were never designed to be so received.
The articles of confederation contain nothing on the subject; whilst the
actual Constitution recognizes the legal existence of slavery by various
provisions. The power of prohibiting the slave trade is involved in that
of regulating commerce, but this is coupled with an express inhibition
to the exercise of it for twenty years. How then can that Constitution
which expressly permits the importation of slaves authorize the National
Government to set on foot a crusade against slavery?
The clause respecting fugitive slaves is affirmative and active in its
effects. It is a direct sanction and positive protection of the right of
the master to the services of his slave as derived under the local laws
of the States. The phraseology in which it is wrapped up still leaves
the intention clear, and the words, "persons held to service or labor
in one State under the laws thereof," have always been interpreted to
extend to the case of slaves, in the various acts of Congress which
have been passed to give efficacy to the provision, and in the judicial
application of those laws. So also in the clause prescribing the ratio
of representation--the phrase, "three-fifths of all other persons,"
is equivalent to slaves, or it means nothing. And yet we are told that
those who are acting under a Constitution which sanctions the existence
of slavery in those States which choose to tolerate it, are at liberty
to hold that no law can sanction its existence.
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