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Page 57
Inconsistent and absurd, this effort is tyrannical also. The
responsibility for the recent Slave Act, and for slavery everywhere
within the jurisdiction of Congress, necessarily involves the right to
discuss them. To separate these is impossible. Like the twenty-fifth
rule of the House of Representatives against petitions on Slavery,--now
repealed and dishonored,--the Compromise, as explained and urged, is a
curtailment of the actual powers of legislation, and a perpetual
denial of the indisputable principle, that the right to deliberate is
coextensive with the responsibility for an act. To sustain Slavery it
is now proposed to trample on free speech. In any country this would be
grievous; but here, where the Constitution expressly provides against
abridging freedom of speech, it is a special outrage. In vain do we
condemn the despotisms of Europe, while we borrow the rigors with which
they repress Liberty, and guard their own uncertain power. For myself,
in no factious spirit, but solemnly and in loyalty to the Constitution,
as a Senator of the United States, representing a free Commonwealth, I
protest against this wrong.
On Slavery, as on every other subject, I claim the right to be heard.
That right I cannot, I will not abandon. "Give me the liberty to
know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above
all liberties"; these are glowing words, flashed from the soul of John
Milton in his struggles with English tyranny. With equal fervor they
could be echoed now by every American not already a slave.
But, Sir, this effort is impotent as tyrannical. Convictions of the
heart cannot be repressed. Utterances of conscience must be heard. They
break forth with irrepressible might. As well attempt to check the tides
of ocean, the currents of the Mississippi, or the rushing waters of
Niagara. The discussion of Slavery will proceed, wherever two or three
are gathered together,--by the fireside, on the highway, at the public
meeting, in the church. The movement against Slavery is from the
Everlasting Arm. Even now it is gathering its forces, soon to be
confessed everywhere. It may not be felt yet in the high places of
office and power, but all who can put their ears humbly to the ground
will hear and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread.
The relations of the National Government to Slavery, though plain and
obvious, are constantly misunderstood. A popular belief at this moment
makes Slavery a national institution, and of course renders its support
a national duty. The extravagance of this error can hardly be surpassed.
An institution which our fathers most carefully omitted to name in the
Constitution, which, according to the debates in the Convention,
they refused to cover with any "sanction," and which, at the original
organization of the Government, was merely sectional, existing nowhere
on the national territory, is now, above all other things, blazoned as
national. Its supporters pride themselves as national. The old political
parties, while upholding it, claim to be national. A National Whig
is simply a Slavery Whig, and a National Democrat is simply a Slavery
Democrat, in contradistinction to all who regard Slavery as a sectional
institution, within the exclusive control of the States and with which
the nation has nothing to do.
As Slavery assumes to be national, so, by an equally strange perversion,
Freedom is degraded to be sectional, and all who uphold it, under the
National Constitution, are made to share this same epithet. Honest
efforts to secure its blessings everywhere within the jurisdiction of
Congress are scouted as sectional; and this cause, which the founders
of our National Government had so much at heart, is called Sectionalism.
These terms, now belonging to the common places of political speech, are
adopted and misapplied by most persons without reflection. But here is
the power of Slavery. According to a curious tradition of the French
language, Louis XIV., the Grand Monarch, by an accidental error of
speech, among supple courtiers, changed the gender of a noun. But
slavery does more. It changes word for word. It teaches men to say
national instead of sectional, and sectional instead of national.
Slavery national! Sir, this is a mistake and absurdity, fit to have a
place in some new collection of Vulgar Errors, by some other Sir Thomas
Browne, with the ancient, but exploded stories, that the toad has a
gem in its head, and that ostriches digest iron. According to the true
spirit of the Constitution, and the sentiments of the Fathers, Slavery,
and not Freedom, is sectional, while Freedom, and not Slavery, is
national. On this unanswerable proposition I take my stand, and here
commences my argument.
The subject presents itself under two principal heads: _First, the true
relations of the National Government to Slavery_, wherein it will appear
that there is no national fountain from which Slavery can be derived,
and no national power, under the Constitution, by which it can be
supported. Enlightened by this general survey, we shall be prepared to
consider, _secondly, the true nature of the provision for the rendition
of fugitives from service_, and herein especially the unconstitutional
and offensive legislation of Congress in pursuance thereof.
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