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Page 29
Mr. President, the thirteen colonies, which on the 4th of July, 1776,
asserted their independence, were British colonies, governed by British
laws. Our ancestors in their emigration to this country brought with
them the common law of England as their birthright. They adopted its
principles for their government so far as it was not incompatible with
the peculiarities of their situation in a rude and unsettled country.
Great Britain then having the sovereignty over the colonies, possessed
undoubted power to regulate their institutions, to control their
commerce, and to give laws to their intercourse, both with the mother
and the other nations of the earth. If I can show, as I hope to be able
to establish to the satisfaction of the Senate, that the nation thus
exercising sovereign power over these thirteen colonies did establish
slavery in them, did maintain and protect the institution, did originate
and carry on the slave trade, did support and foster that trade, that
it forbade the colonies permission either to emancipate or export their
slaves, that it prohibited them from inaugurating any legislation in
diminution or discouragement of the institution--nay, sir, more, if, at
the date of our Revolution I can show that African slavery existed in
England as it did on this continent, if I can show that slaves were sold
upon the slave mart, in the Exchange and other public places of resort
in the city of London as they were on this continent, then I shall not
hazard too much in the assertion that slavery was the common law of the
thirteen States of the Confederacy at the time they burst the bonds that
united them to the mother country.
* * * * *
This legislation, Mr. President, as I have said before, emanating from
the mother country, fixed the institution upon the colonies. They could
not resist it. All their right was limited to petition, to remonstrance,
and to attempts at legislation at home to diminish the evil. Every
such attempt was sternly repressed by the British Crown. In 1760, South
Carolina passed an act prohibiting the further importation of African
slaves. The act was rejected by the Crown; the Governor was reprimanded;
and a circular was sent to all the Governors of all the colonies,
warning them against presuming to countenance such legislation. In
1765, a similar bill was twice read in the Assembly of Jamaica. The news
reached Great Britain before its final passage. Instructions were sent
out to the royal Governor; he called the House of Assembly before him,
communicated his instructions, and forbade any further progress of the
bill. In 1774, in spite of this discountenancing action of the mother
Government, two bills passed the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica; and
the Earl of Dartmouth, then Secretary of State, wrote to Sir Basil
Keith, the Governor of the colony, that "these measures had created
alarm to the merchants of Great Britain engaged in that branch of
commerce;" and forbidding him, "on pain of removal from his Government,
to assent to such laws."
Finally, in 1775--mark the date--1775--after the revolutionary struggle
had commenced, whilst the Continental Congress was in session, after
armies had been levied, after Crown Point and Ticonderoga had been taken
possession of by the insurgent colonists, and after the first blood
shed in the Revolution had reddened the spring sod upon the green at
Lexington, this same Earl of Dartmouth, in remonstrance from the agent
of the colonies, replied:
"We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a
traffic so beneficial to the nation."
I say, then, that down to the very moment when our independence was won,
slavery, by the statute law of England, was the common law of the old
thirteen colonies. But, sir, my task does not end here. I desire to show
you that by her jurisprudence, that by the decisions of her judges, and
the answers of her lawyers to questions from the Crown and from public
bodies, this same institution was declared to be recognized by the
common law of England; and slaves were declared to be, in their
language, merchandise, chattels, just as much private property as any
other merchandise or any other chattel.
A short time prior to the year 1713, a contract had been formed between
Spain and a certain company, called the Royal Guinea Company, that had
been established in France. This contract was technically called in
those days an _assiento_. By the treaty of Utrecht of the 11th of April,
1713, Great Britain, through her diplomatists, obtained a transfer of
that contract. She yielded considerations for it. The obtaining of that
contract was greeted in England with shouts of joy. It was considered
a triumph of diplomacy. It was followed in the month of May, 1713, by a
new contract in form, by which the British Government undertook, for
the term of thirty years then next to come, to transport annually
4800 slaves to the Spanish American colonies, at a fixed price. Almost
immediately after this new contract, a question arose in the English
Council as to what was the true legal character of the slaves thus to be
exported to the Spanish American colonies; and, according to the forms
of the British constitution, the question was submitted by the Crown in
council to the twelve judges of England. I have their answer here; it is
in these words:
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