FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH. OF WILLIAM H. SEWARD, ON THE ABROGATION OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE, IN THE KANSAS AND NEBRASKA BILLS. SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 17, 1854. WASHINGTON, D. C. BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS. 1854.
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SPEECH OF WILLIAM H. SEWARD. lantic side of the continent, while on the west, as on the east, only an ocean separates us from the nations of the old world. It is not in my way now to speculate on the question, how long we are to rest on these advanced positions. Slavery, before the Revolution,existed in all the thirteen Colonies, as it did also in nearly all the other European plantations in America. But it had been forced by British authority, for political and commercial ends, on the American People, against their own sagacious instincts of policy, and their stronger feelings of justice and humanity. They had protested and remonstrated against the system, earnestly, for forty years, and they ceased to protest and remonstrate against it only when they finally committed their entire cause of complaint to the arbitrament of arms. An earnest spirit of emancipation was abroad in the Colonies at the close of the Revolution, and all of them, except, perhaps, South Carolina and Georgia, anticipated, desired, and de-' signed an early removal of the system from the country. The suppression of the African slave trade, which was universally regarded as ancillary to that great measure, was not, without much reluctance, postponed until 1808. While there was no national power, and no claim or desire for national power, anywhere, to compel involuntary emancipation in the States where slavery existed, there was at the same time a very general desire and a strong purpose to prevent its introduction into new communities yet to be. formed, and into new States yet to be established. Mr. Jefferson proposed, as early as 1784, to exclude it from the national domain which should be constituted by cessions from the States to the United States. He recommended and urged the measure as ancillary, also, to the ultimate policy of emancipation. There seems to have been at first no very deep jealousy between the emancipating and the flon-emancipating States; and the policy of admitting new States was not disturbed by questions concerning slavery. Vermont, a non-slaveholding State, was admitted in 1793. Kentucky, a tramontane slaveholding community, having been detached from Virginia, was admitted, without being.questioned, about the same time. So, also, Tennessee, which was a similar community separated from North Carolina, was admitted in 1796, with a stipulation that the Ordinance which Mr. Jefferson had first proposed, and which had in the mean Mr. President : The United States, at the close of the Revolution, rested southward on the St. Mary’s, and westward on the Mississippi, and possessed a broad, unoccupied domain, circumscribed by those rivers, the Alleghany mountains, and the great Northern lakes. The Constitution anticipated the division of this, domain into States, to be admitted as members of the Union, but it neither provided for nor anticipated any enlargement of the national boundaries. The People, engaged in reorganising their Governments, improving their social system^, and establishing relations of commerce and friendship with other nations, remained many years content within their apparently ample limits. But it was already foreseen that the free navigation of the Mississippi would soon become an urgent public want. France, although she had lost Canada, in chivalrous battle, on the Heights of Abraham, in 1763, nevertheless, still retained her ancient territories on the western bank of the Mississippi. She had also, just before the •breaking out of her own fearful revolution, re-acquired, by a secret treaty, the possessions on the Gulf of Mexico, which, in a recent war, had been wrested from her by Spain. Her First Consul, among those brilliant achievements which proved him the first Statesman as well as the first Captain of Europe, sagaciously sold the whole of these possessions to the Untied States, for a liberal sum, and thus replenished his treasury, while he saved from his enemies, and transferred to a friendly Power, distant' and vast regions, which, for want of adequate naval force, he was unable to defend. This purchase of Louisiana from France, by the United States, involved a grave dispute concerning the western limits of that province; and that controversy, having remained open until 1819, was then adjusted by a treaty, in which they relinquished Texas to Spain, and accepted a cession of the early-discovered and long-inhabited provinces of East Florida and West Florida. The United States stipulated, in each of these cases, to admit the countries thus annexed into the Federal Union. The acquisitions of Oregon, by discovery and occupation, of Texas, by her voluntary annexation, and of New Mexico and California, including what is now called Utah, by war, completed Ihat rapid course of enlargement, at the close of which our frontier has been fixed near the centre of what was New Spain, on the At
4 time been adopted for the Territory northwest | of the Ohio, should not be held to apply within her limits. The same course was adopted in organizing Territorial Governments for Mississippi and Alabama, slaveholding communities which had been detached from South Carolina and Georgia. All these States and Territories were situated southwest of the Ohio river, all were more or less already peopled- by slaveholders with their slaves; and to have excluded slavery within their limits would have been a national act, not of preventing the introduction of slavery, but of abolishing slavery. In short, the region southwest of the Ohio river presented a field in which the policy of preventing the introduction of slavery was impracticable. Our forefathers never attempted what was impracticable. But the case was otherwise in that fair and broad region which stretched away from the banks of the Ohio, northward to the lakes, and westward to the Mississippi. It was yet free, or practically free, from the presence of slaves, and was nearly uninhabited, and quite unoccupied. There was then no Baltimore and Ohio railroad, no Erie railroad, no New York Central railroad, no Boston and Ogdensburgh railroad ; there was no railroad through Canada ; nor, indeed, any road around or across the mountains; no imperial Erie canal, no Wel- land canal, no lockages around the rapids and the falls of the St. Lawrence, the Mohawk, and ‘the Niagara rivers, and no steam navigation on the lakes or on the Hudson, or on the Missis- ' sippi. There, in that remote and secluded region, the prevention of the introduction of slavery was possible; and there our forefathers, who left no possible national good unattempted, did prevent it. It makes one’s heart bound with joy and gratitude, and lift itself up with mingled pride and veneration, to read the history of that great transaction. Discarding the trite and common forms of expressing the national will, they did not merely “ vote,” or “ resolve,” or “enact,” as on other occasions, but they “ ordained,” in language marked at once with precision, amplification, solemnity, and emphasis, that there “ shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than 'in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” And they further ordained and declared that this law should be considered a compact between the original States and the People and States of said Territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent. The Ordinance was agreed to unanimously. Virginia, in re-affirming her cession of the territory, ratified it, and the first Congress held under the Constitution solemnly renewed and confitmed it. In pursuance of this Ordinance, the several Territorial Governments successively established in the Northwest Territory were organized with a prohibition of the introduction of slavery, and in due time, though at successive periods, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois', Michigan, and Wisconsin, States erected within that Territory, have come into the Union with Constitutions in their hands forever prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, except fdr.the punishment of crime. They are yet young; but, nevertheless, who has ever seen elsewhere such States as they are! There are gathered the young, the vigorous, the active, the enlightened sons of every State? the flower and choice of every State in this broad Union; and there the emigrant for conscience sake, and for freedom’s sake, from every land in Europe, from proud and all-conquering Britain, from heartbroken Ireland, from sunny Italy, from mercurial France, froin spiritual Germany, from chivalrous Hungary, and from honest and brave old Sweden and Norway. Thence are already coming ample supplies of corn and wheat and wine for the manufacturers of the East, for the planters of the tropics, and even for the artisans and the armies of Europe; and thence will continue to come in long succession, as they have already begun to come, statesmen and legislators for this continent. Thus it appears, Mr. President, that it. was the policy of our fathers, in regard to the original domain of the United States, to prevent the introduction of slavery, wherever it was practicable. This policy encountered greater diffi- culites when it came under consideration with a view to its establishment in regions not,included within our original domain. While slavery had been actually abolished already, by some of the emancipating States, several of them, owing to a great change in the relative value of the productions of slave labor, had fallen off into the class of non-emancipating States; and now the whole family of States was divided and classified as slaveholding or slave States, and non-slaveholding or free States. A rivalry for political ascendency wai soon developed; and, besides the motives of interest and philanthropy which had before existed, there was now on each side a desire to increase, from among the candidates for admission into the Union, the number of States in their respective classes, and so their relative weight and influence in the Federal Councils. The country which had been acquired from France was, in 1804, organized in two Territories, one of which, including New Orleans as its capital, was called Orleans, and the other, having St. Louis for its chief town, was called Louisiana. In 1812, the Territory of Orleans was admitted as a new State, under the name of Louisiana. It had been an old slaveholding colony of France, and the prevention of slavery within it would have been a simple act of abolition. At the same time, the Territory of Louisiana, by authority of Congress, took the name of Missouri; and, in 1819, the portion thereof which now constitutes the State of Arkansas was detached, and beame a Territory,
5 under that name. In 1819, Missouri, which was then but thinly peopled, and had an inconsiderable number of slaves, applied for admission into the Union, and her application brought the question of extending the policy of the Ordinance of 1787 to that State, and to other new States in the region acquired from France, to a. direct issue. The House of Representatives insisted on a prohibition against1 the further introduction of slavery in the State; as a condition of her admission. The Senate disagreed with the House in that demand. The non-slaveholding States sustained the House, and the slaveholding States sustained the Senate.' The difference was radical, and tended towards revolution. One party maintained that the condition demanded was constitutional, the other that it was unconstitutional. The public mind became intensely excited, and-painful apprehensions of disunion and civil war began to prevail in the country. . In this crisis, a majority of both Houses agreed upon a plan for the adjustment of the controversy. By this plan, Maine, a rion- slaveholding State, was to be admitted; Missouri was to be admitted without submitting to the condition, before mentioned ; and in all that part of the Territory acquired *from France, which was north of the line of 36 deg. 30 min. of north latitude,’ slavery was to be forever prohibited. Louisiana, which was a part of that Territory, had been admitted as a slave State eight years before; and now, not only was Missouri to be admitted as a slave State, but Arkansas, which was south of that line, by strong implication, was also to be admitted as a slaveholding State. I need not indicate what were the equivalents which the respective parties were to receive in this arrangement, further than to say that the slaveholdin^ States practically were to receive slavehold initiates, the free States to receive a desert, a solitude, in which they might, if they could, plant the germs of future free States. This measure was adopted. It was a great national transaction—- | the first of a class of transactions which have since come to be thoroughly defined and well- understood, under the name of compromises. I My own opinions concerning them are well I known, and are not in question here. According to the general understanding, they are marked i by peculiar circumstances and features, viz: First, there is a division of opinion upon some vital national question between the two Houses of Congress, which division is irreconcilable, except by mutual concessions of interests and opinions, which the Houses deem constitutional and just. Secondly, they are rendered necessary by impending calamities, to result from the failure of legislation, and to be no otherwise averted than by such mutual concessions, or sacrifices. Thirdly, such concessions are mutual and equal, or fere accepted as such, and so become conditions of the mutual arrangement. Fourthly, by this mutual exchange of conditions, the transaction takes on the nature and character of a contract, compact, or treaty, between the parties represented; and so, according to well-settled principles of morality and public law, the statute which embodies it is understood, by those who uphold this system of legislation, to be irrevocable and irrepeala- ble, except by the mutual consent of both, or of all the parties concerned. Not, indeed, that it is absolutely irrepealable, but that it cannot be repealed without a violation of honor, justice, and good faith, which it is presumed will not be committed. Such was the Compromise of 1820. Missouri came into the Union immediately as a slaveholding State, and Arkansas came in as a slaveholding State, sixteen years afterward. Nebraska, the part of the Territory reserved exclusively for free Territories and free States, has remained a wilderness ever since. And now it is proposed here to abrogate, not, indeed,, the whole Compromise, but only that part of it which saved Nebraska as free terri tory, to be afterwards divided into non-slave holding States, which should be admitted in to the Union. And this is proposed, notwithstanding an universal acquiescence in the Compromise, by both parties, for thirty years, and its confirmation, over and over again, by many acts of successive Congresses, and notwithstanding that the slaveholding States have peaceably enjoyed, ever since it was made, all their equivalents, while, owing to circumstances which will hereafter appear, the non-slaveholding States have not practically enjoyed those guarantied to them. This is the question now before the Senate of the United States of America. . It is a question of transcendent importance. The proviso of 1820, to be abrogated in Nebraska, is the Ordinance of the Continental Congress of 1787, extended over a new part of the national domain, acquired under our present Constitution. It is rendered venerable by its antiquity, and sacred by the memory of that Congress, which, in surrendering its trust, after establishing the Ordinance, enjoined it upon posterity, always to remember that the cause of the United States was the cause of Humdn Nature. The question involves an issue of public faith, and national morality and honor. It will be a sad day for this Republic, when such •a question shall be deemed unworthy of grave discussion and shall fail to excite intense interest. Even if it were certain that the inhibition of slavery in the region concerned was unnecessary, and if the question was thus reduced to a mere abstraction, yet even that abstraction would involve the testimony of the^United States on the expediency^wisdom, morality, and justice, ot the system of human bondage, with which this and other portions of the world have been
6 so long afflicted ; and it will be a melancholy- day for the Republic and for mankind, when her decision on even such an abstraction shall command' no respect, and inspire no hope into the hearts of the oppressed. But it is no such abstraction. It was no unnecessary dispute, no mere contest of blind passion, that brought that Compromise into being. Slavery and Freedom were active antagonists, then seeking for ascendency in this Union. Both Slavery and Freedom are more vigorous, active, and self-aggrandizing now, than they were then, or ever were before or since that period. The contest between them has been only protracted, not decided. It is a great feature in our national Hereafter. So the question of adhering to or abrogating this Compromise is no unmeaning issue, and no contest of mere blind passion now. To adhere, is to secure the occupation by freemen, with free labor, of a region in the very centre of the continent, capable of sustaining, and in that event destined, though it may be only after a far-distant period, to sustain ten, twenty, thirty, forty millions of people and their successive generations forever! To abrogate, is to resign all that vast region to chances which mortal vision cannot fully foresee; perhaps to the sovereignty of such stinted and short-lived communities as those ®f which Mexico and South America and the West India Islands present us with examples ; perhaps to convert that region into the scene of long and desolating conflicts between not merely races,.but castes, to end, like a similar conflict in Egypt, in a convulsive exodus of the oppressed people, d.espoiling their superiors ; perhaps, like one not dissimilar in Spain, in the forcible, expulsion of the inferior race, exhausting the State by the sudden and complete suppression of a great resource of national wealth and labor; perhaps in the disastrous expulsion, even of the superior race itself, by a people too suddenly raised from slavery to liberty, as-in St. Domingo. To adhere, is to secure forever the presence here, after some lapse of time, of two, four, ten, twenty, or more Senators, and of Representatives in larger proportions, to uphold the policy and interests of the non-slaveholding States, and balance that ever-increasing representation of slaveholding States, which past experience, and the decay of the Spanish American States, admonish us has only just begun; to save what the nonslaveholding States have in mints, navy yards, the military academy and fortifications, to balance against the capital and federal institutions in the slaveholding States; to save against any danger from adverse or hostile policy, the culture, the manufactures, and the commerce, as well as the just influence and weight of the national principles and sentiments of the slaveholding States. To adhere, is to save, to the non-slaveholding States, as well as to the slaveholding States, always, and in every event, a right of way and free communication across the continent, to and with the States on the Pacific coasts, and .with the rising States on the islands in the South Sea, and with all the eastern nations on the vast continent of Asia. To abrogate, on the contrary, is to commit all these precious interests to the chances and hazards of embarrassment and injury by legislation, under the influence of social, political, and commercial jealousy and rivalry; and in the event of the secession of the slaveholding States, which is so often threatened in their name, but I thank God without their authority, to give to a servile population a La Vendee at the very sources of the Mississippi, and in the very recesses of the Rocky Mountains. Nor is this last a contingency against which a statesman, when engaged in giving a Constitution for such a Territory, so situated, must veil his eyes. It is a statesman’s province and duty to look before as well as after. I know, indeed, the present loyalty of the American People, North and South, and East and West. I know that it is a sentiment stronger than any sectional interest or ambition, and stronger than eventhe love of equality in the non-slaveholding States; and stronger, I doubt not, than the love of slavery in the slaveholding States. But I do not know, and no mortal sagacity does know, the seductions of interest and ambition, and the influences of passion, which are yet to be matured in every region. I know this, however : that this Union is safe now, and that it will be safe so long as impartial political equality shall constitute the basis of society, as it has heretofore done, in even half of these States, and they shall thus maintain a just equilibrium against the slaveholding States. But I am well assured, also, on the other hand, that if ever the slaveholding States shall multiply themselves, and extend their sphere, so that they cwfld, without association with the nonslaveholding States, constitute of themselves a commercial republic, from that day their rule, through the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative powers of this Government, will be such as will be hard for the non-slaveholding States to bear; and their pride and ambition, since they are congregations of men, and are moved by human passions, will consent to no Union in which they shall not so rule. The slaveholding Slates already possess the mouths of the Mississippi, and their territory reaches far. northward along its banks, on one side to the Ohio, and on the other even to the confluence of the Missouri. They stretch their dominion now from the banks of the Delaware, quite around bay, headland, and promontory, to the Rio Grande. They will not stop, although they now think they may, on the summit of the Sierra Nevada; nay, their armed pioneers are already in Sonora, and their eyes are already fixed, never to be taken off, on the island of Cuba, the Queen of the Antilles. If we of the non-slaveholding States surrender to
7 fully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid.’ “ Under this section, as in the cash of the Mexican law in New Mexico and Utah, it is a disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in the Nebraska country by valid enactment. The decision of this question involves the constitutional power of Congress to pass laws prescribing and regulating the domestic institutions of the various Territories of the Union, In the opin.on of those eminent statesmen who hold that Congress is invested with no rightful authority to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the Territories, the 8th section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri is null and void; while the prevailing sentment in large portions of the Union sustains the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen an inalienable right to move into any of the Territories with his property, of whatever kind and description, and to hold and enjoy the same under the sanction of law. Your Committee do not feel themselves called upon to enter into the discussion of these controverted questions. They involve the same grave issues which produced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 1850. As Congress deemed it wise and prudent to refrain from deciding the matters in controversy then, either by affirming or repealing the Mexican laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of the Con- stitut on, and the extent of the protection afforded by it to slave property in the Territories, to your Committee are not prepared now to recommend a departure from the course pursued on that memorable occasion, either by affirming or repealing the 8th section of the Missouri act, or by any-act declaratory of. the meaning of the Constitution in respect to the legal points in dispute.” This report gives us the deliberate judgment of the Committee on two important points. First, that the Compromise of 1850 diej not, by its letter or by its spirit, repeal, or render necessary, or even propose, the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise ; and, secondly, that the Missouri Compromise ought not now to be abrogated. And now, sir, what do we next hear from this Committee ? First, two similar and kindred bills, actually abrogating the Missouri Compromise, which, in their report, they had told us ought not to be abrogated at all. Secondly, these bills declare on their face, in substance, that that Compromise was already abrogated by the spirit of that very Compromise of 1850, which, in their report they had just shown us, left the Compromise of 1820 absolutely unaffected and unimpaired. Thirdly, the' Committee favor us, by their chairman, with an oral explanation, that the amended bills abrogating the Missouri Compromise are identical with their previous bill, which did not abrogate it, and are only made to differ in phraseology, to the end that the provisions contained in their previous, and now discarded, bill, shall be absolutely clear and certain. I entertain great respect for the Committee itself, but I must take leave to say that the inconsistencies and self-contradictions contained in the papers it has given us, have destroyed; all claims, on the part of those documents, to. respect, here or elsewhere. The recital of the effect of the Compromise of 1850 upon the Compromise of 1820, as finally revised, corrected, and amended, here in the them now the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the very sources of the Mississippi, what territory will be secure, what territory can be secured hereafter, for the creation and organization of free States, within our ocean-bound domain 1 What territories on this continent will remain unappropriated and unoccupied, for us to annex'? What territories^ even if we are. able to buy or conquer them from Great Britain or Russia, will the slaveholding States suffer, much less aid, us to annex, to restore the equilibrium which .by this unnecessary measure we shall have so unwisely, sb hurriedly, so suicidally subverted? Nor aw I to be told that only a few slaves will enter into this vast region. One slaveholder in a new Territory, with access to the Executive ear at Washington, exercises more political influence than five hundred freemen. It is not necessary that all or a majority of the citizens of a State shall be slaveholders, to constitute a slaveholding State. Delaware has only 2,000 slaves, against 91,000 freemen ; and yet Delaware is a slaveholding State. The proportion is not substantially different in Maryland and in Missouri; and yet they are slaveholding States. These, sir, are the stakes in this legislative game, in which I lament to see, that while the representatives of the slaveholding States are unanimously and earnestly playing to win, so many of the representatives of the ' non-sIaveholding'States are with even greater zeal and diligence playing to lose. Mr. President, the Committee who have recommended these twin bills for the organization of the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas hold the affirmative in the argument upon their passage. What is the case they present to the Senate I and the country ? ■They have submitted a report; but that report, brought in before they had introduced or I even conceived this bold and daring measure of abrogating the Missouri Compromise, directs all1 its arguments against it. The Committee say, in their report: “ Such being the character of the controversy, in respect to the territory acquired from Mexico, a similar question has arisen in regard to the right to hold slaves in the proposed Territory of Nebraska., when the Indian laws shall be withdrawn, and the country thrown open to emigration and settlement. By the Sth section of ‘ an act to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a Constitution-and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, and to prohibit Slavery in certain Territories,’approved March 6, 1820, it was provided: ‘ That in all that Territory ceded by France to the United States underthe name of Louisiana, which lies north ofthir- •ty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude,' otherwise than in ths punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, shall be, and is hereby, forever prohibitedProvided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Terri- | tory of the Ux.it.d States, such fugitive may be law
8 ace of the Senate, means after all substantially what that recital meant as it stood before it was perfected, or else it means nothing tangible or worthy of consideration at all. What if the spirit, or even the letter, of the Compromise laws of 1850 did conflict with the Compromise of 1820? 1 he Compromise of 1820 was, by its very nature, a Compromise irfepealable and unchangeable, without a violation of honor, justice, and good faith. The Compromise of 1850, if it impaired the previous Compromise to the extent of the loss to free labor of one acre of the Territory of Nebraska, was either absolutely void, or ought, in all subse- qent legislation, to be deemed and held void. What if the spirit or the letter of the Com promise was a violation of the Compromise of 1820? Then, inasmuch as the Compromise of 1820 was inviolable, the attempted violation of it shows that the so-called Compromise of 1850 was to that extent not a Compromise at all, but a factitious, spurious, and pretented Compromise. What if the letter or the spirit of the Compromise of 1850 did supersede or impair, or fn any way, in any degree, conflict with the Compromise of 1820? Then that is a reason for abrogating, not the irrepealable and inviolable Compromise of 1820, but the spurious and pretended Compromise of 1850. Mr. President, why is this reason for the proposed abrogation of the Compromise of 1820 assigned in these bills at all? It is unnecessary. The assignment of a reason adds nothing to the force or Weight of the abrogation itself. Either the fact alleged as a reason is true or it is not true. If it be untrue, your asserting it here will not make it true. If it be true, it is apparent in the text of the law of 1850, without the aid of legislative exposition now. It is unusual. It is unparliamentary. The language of the lawgiver, whether the sovereign be Democratic, Republican, or Despotic, is always the same. It is mandatory, imperative. If the lawgiver explains at all in a statute the reason for it, the reason is that it is his pleasure—sic volo,'sic jubeo. Look at the Compromise of 1820. Does it plead an excuse for its commands? Look at the Compromise of 1850, drawn by the master-hand of our American Chatham. Does that bespeak your favor by a quibbling or shuffling apology ? Look at your own, now rejected, first Nebraska bill, which, by conclusive implication, saved the effect of the Missouri Compromise. Look at any other bill ever reported by the Committee on Territories. Look at any other bill now on your calendar. Examine all the laws on your statute books. Do you find any one bill or statute which ever came bowing, stooping, and wriggling into the Senate, pleading an excuse for its clear and explicit declaration of the sovereign and irresistible will of the American People? The departure from this habit in this solitary case betrays self-distrust, and an at tempt on the part of the bill to divert the public attention, to raise complex and immaterial issues, to perplex and bewilder and com- found the People by whom this transaction is to be reviewed. Look again at the vacillation, betrayed in the frequent changes of the structure of this apology. At first the recital told us- that the eighth section of the Compromise act of 1820 was superseded by the principles of the Comprbmise laws of 1850—as if any one had ever heard of a supersedeas of one local law by the mere principles of another local law, enacted for an altogether different region, thirty years afterwards. On another day we were told, by an amendment of the recital, that the Compromise of 1820 was not superseded by the Compromise of 1850 at all, but was only “inconsistent with” it — as if a local act which was irrepealable was now to be abrogated, because it was inconsistent with a subsequent enactment, which had no. application whatever within the region to which the first enactment was confined. On a third day the meaning ,of the recital was further and finally elucidated by an amendment, which declared that the first irrepealable act protecting Nebraska from'slavery was now declared “inoperative and void,” because it was inconsistent with the present purposes of Congress not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, But take this apology in whatever form it may be expressed, and test its logic by a simple process. The Jaw of 1820 secured free institutions in the regions acquired from France in 1803, by the wise and prudent foresight of the Congress of the United States. The law of 1850, on the contrary, committed the choice between free and slave institutions in New Mexico and Utah—Territories acquired from Mexico nearly fifty years afterward—to the interested cupidity or the caprice of their earliest and accidental occupants. Free Institutions and Slave Institutions are equal, but the interested cupidity of the pioneer is a wiser arbiter, and his judgment a surer safeguard, than the collective wisdom of the American People and the most solemn and time-honored statute of the American Congress. Therefore, let the law of freedom in the territory acquired from France be now annulled and abrogated, and let the fortunes and fate of Freedom and Slavery, in the region acquired from France, be, henceforward and forever, determined by the votes of some seven hundred camp followers around Fort Leavenworth, and the still smaller number of trappers, Government schoolmasters, and mechanics, who attend the Indians in their seasons of rest from hunting in the passes of the Rocky Mountains.' Sir, this syllogism may satisfy you and1 other Senators; but as for me, I must be content to adhere to the earlier system. Stare super antiquas vias. There is yet another difficulty in this new theory. Let it be granted that, in order to
9 carry out a new principle recently adopted in New Mexico, yo^ can supplant a compromise in Nebraska, yet there is a maxim of public law which forbids you from supplanting ..that compromise, and establishing a new system there, until you first restore the parties in interest there to their statu quo before the compromise to be supplanted was established. First, then, remand Missouri and Arkansas back to the unsettled condition, in regard to slavery, which they held before the Compromise of 1820 was enacted, and then we will hear you talk of rescinding that Compromise. You cannot do this. You ought not to do it, if you could; and because you cannot and ought not to do it, you cannot, without ‘violating law, justice, equity, and honor, abrogate the guarantee of freedom in Nebraska. There is still iinother and not less serious difficulty. You call the Slavery laws of 1850 a compromise between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. For the purposes of this argument, let it be granted that they were 'such a compromise. It was nevertheless a compromise concerning slavery in the Territories acquired from. Mexico, and by the letter of the compromise it extended no further. Can you now, by an act which is not a compromise between the same parties, but a mere ordinary law, extend the force and obligation of the principles of that Compromise of 1850 into regions not'only excluded from it, but absolutely protected from your intervention there by a solemn Compromise of thirty years’ duration, and invested with a sanctity scarcely inferior to that which hallows the Constitution itself? < Can the Compromise of 1850, by a mere ordinary act of legislation, be extended beyond the plain, known, fixed intent and understanding of the parties at the time that contract was made, and yet be binding on the parties to it, not merely legally, but in honor and conscience? Can you abrogate a compromise by passing any law of less dignity than a compromise ? If so, of what value is any one or the whole of the Compromises? Thus you see that these bills violate both of the Compromises—not more that of 1820 than that of 1850. Will you maintain in argument that it was understood by the parties interested throughout the country, or by either of them, or by any representative of either, in either House of Congress, that the principle then established should extend beyond the limits of the territories acquired from Mexico, «in to the territories acquired nearly fifty years before, from France, and then reposing under the guarantee of the Compromise of 1820? I know not how Senators may vote, but I do know what they will say. I appeal to the honorable Senator from Michigan, [Mr. Cass,] than whom none performed a more distinguished part in establishing the Compromise of 1850, whether he so intended or understood. I appeal to the honorable and distinguished Senator, the senior representative from Tennessee, [Mr. Bell,] who performed a-distinguished part also. Did he so understand the Compromise of 1850? He is silent. I appeal to the gallant Senator from Illinois? [Mr. Shields.] He, too, is silent. I now thro^v my gauntlet at the feet of every Senator now here, who was in the Senate in 1850, and challenge him to say that he then knew, or thought, or dreamed, that, by enacting the Compromise of 1850, he was directly or indirectly abrogating, or in any degree impairing, the Missouri Compromise ? No one takes it up. I appeal to that very distinguished—nay, sir, that expression falls short of his eminence—that illustrious man, the Senator from Missouri, who led the opposition here to the Compromise of 1850. Did he understand that that Compromise in any way overreached or impaired the Compromise of 1820? Sir, that distinguished person, while opposing the combination of the several laws on the subject of California and the Territories, and Slavery, together, in one bill, so as to constitute a Compromise, nevertheless voted for each one of those bills, severally; and in that way, and that way only, they were passed. Had he known or understood that any one of 'them overreached and impaired the Missouri Compromise, we all know he would have perished before he would have given it his support. Sir, if it was not irreverent, I would dare to call up the author of both of the Compromises in question, from his honored, though yet scarcely grass-covered grave, and challenge any advocate of this measure to confront that imperious shade, and say that, in making the Compromise of 1850, he intended or dreamed that he was subverting, or preparing the way for a subversion of, his greater work of 1820. Sir, if that eagle spirit is yet lingering here over the scene of his mortal labors, and watching over the welfare of the Republic he loved so well, his heart is now moved with more than human indignation against those who are perverting his last great’public act from its legitimate uses, not merely to subvert the column, but to wrench from its very bed the base of the column that perpetuates his fame. And that other proud and dominating Senator, who, sacrificing himself, gave the aid without which the Compromise of 1850 could not have been established—the Statesman of New England, and the Orator of America— who dare assert here, where his memory is yet fresh, though his unfettered spirit may be wandering in spheres far hence, that he intended to abrogate, or dreamed that, by virtue of or in consequence of that transaction, the Missouri Compromise would or could ever be abrogated ? The portion of the Missouri Compromise you propose to abrogate is the Ordinance of 1787 extended to Nebraska. Hear what Daniel Webster said of that Ordinance
10 itself, in 1830, in this very place, in reply to one who had undervalued it and its author: “ I spoke, sir, of the Ordinance of 1787, which prohibits slavery, in all future time, northwest of the Ohio, as a measure of great wisdom and forethought, and one which has been attended'with highly beneficial and permanent consequences.” And now hear what he said here, when advocating the Compromise of 1850: “ I now say, sir, as the proposition upon which I stand this day, and upon the truth and firmness of wnich I intend to act until it is overthrown, that there is not at this moment in the United States, or any Territory of the United States, one sing e foot of land, the character of which, in regard to its bqing free territory or slave territory, is not fixed by some law, and some irrepealable law beyond the power of the action of this Government.” What irrepealable law, or what law of any kind, fixed the character of Nebraska as free or slave territory, except the Missouri Compromise act ? And now . hear what Daniel Webster said when vindicating the Compromise of 1850, at Buffalo, in 1851 : “ My opinion remains unchanged, that it was not within the original scope or design of the Constitution to admit new States out of foreign territory; and for one, whatever may7 be said at the Syracuse Convention or any other assemblage of insane persons, I never would consent, and never have consented, that there should be one foot of slave territory beyond what the old thirteen States had at the time of the formation of the Union ! Never! Never! “ The man cannot show his face to me and say he can prove that I ever departed from that doctrine. He would sneak away, and slink away, or hire a mer-' cenary press to cry out. What an apostate from Liberty Daniel Webster has become! But he knows himself to bo a hypocrite and a falsifier.” That Compromise was forced upon the slaveholding States and upon the non-slaveholding States as a mutual exchange of equivalents. The equivalents were accurately defined, and carefully scrutinized and weighed by the respective parties, through a period of eight months. The equivalents offered to the non- slaveholding States were : 1st, the admission of California; 2d, the abolition of the public slave trade in the District of Columbia. These, and these only, were the boons offered to them, hnd the only sacrifices which the slaveholding States were required to make. The waiver of the Wilmot Proviso in the incorporation of New Mexico and Utah, and a new fugitive ■slave law, were the only boons proposed to the slaveholding States, and the only sacrifices exaeted-'Of the non-slaveholding States. No other questions between them were agitated, except those which were involved in the gain or loss of more or less of free territory or of slave territory in the determination of the boundary between Texas and New Mexico, by a line that was at last arbitrarily made, expressly saving, even in those Territories, to the respective parties, their respective shares of- free soil and slave soil, according to the articles of annexation of the Republic of Texas. Again: There were alleged to be five open, bleeding wounds in the Federal system, and no more, which needed surgery, and to which the Compromise of 1850 was to be a cataplasm. We all know what they tv ere : California without a Constitution; New Mexico in the grasp of military power ; Utah neglected ; the District of Columbia dishonored; and the rendition of fugitives denied. Nebraska was not even thought of in this catalogue of national ills. And now, sir, did the Nashville Cbnvention of secessionists understand that, besides the enumerated boons offered to the slaveholding States, they were to have also the obliteration of the Missouri Compromise line of 1820? If they did, why did they reject and scorn and scout at the Compromise of 1850? Did the Legislatures and public assemblies of the nonslaveholding States, whomade your table groan with their remonstrances, understand that Nebraska was an additional wound to be healed by the Compromise of 1850? If they did, why did they omit to remonstrate against the healing of that, too, as well as of the other five, by the cataplasm, the application of which they resisted so long? Again: Had it been then known that the Missouri Compromise was to be abolished, directly or indirectly, by the Compromise of 1850, what Representative from a non-slaveholding State would, at that day, have voted fpr it ? Not one. What Senator from a slaveholding State would not have voted for it ? ‘ Not one. So entirely was it then unthought of that the new Compromise was to repeal the Missouri Compromise line of 36 deg. 30 min., in the region acquired from France, that one half of that long debate was spent on propositions made by Representatives from slave- holding States, to extend the line further on through the new territory we had acquired so recently from Mexico, until it should disappear in the waves of the Pacific.Ocean, so as to secure actual toleration of slavery in all of this new'territory that should be south of that line; and these propositions were resisted strenuously and successfully to the last by the Representatives of the non-slaveholding States, in order, if it were possible, to save the whole of those regions for the theatre of free labor. I admit that these are only negative proofs, although they are pregnant with conviction. But here is one which is not only affirmative, but positive, and not more positive than conclusive: In the fifth section of the Texas Boundary bill, one of the acts constituting the Compromise of 1850, are these words: “Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to -impair or qualify anything contained in the third article of the second section of the joint resolution for annexing Texas to rhe United States, approved March 1, 1845, either as regards the number of States that may hereaiter be formed out of the 'State of Texas, or otherwise.” What was that third article of the second
11 section of the joint resolution for annexing Texas ? Here it is : “ New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in numberjin addition to said State of Texas, having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution. And such States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of 36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, comm' nly known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into, the Union with or without Slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may desire And in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of said Missouri Compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.” This article saved the Compromise of 1820, in express terms, overcoming any implication of its abrogation, which might, by accident or otherwise, have crept into the Compromise of! 1850; and any inferences to that effect, that might be drawn from any such circumstance as that of drawing the boundary line of Utah so as to trespass on the Territory of Nebraska, dwelt upon by the Senator from Illinois. The proposition to abrogate the Missouri Compromise, being thus stripped of the pretence that it is only a reiteration or a reaffirmation of a similar abrogation in the Compromise of 1850, or a necessary consequence of that measure, stands before us now upon its own merits, whatever they may be. But here the Senator from Illinois challenges the assailants of these bills, on the ground that they were all opponents of the Compromise of 1850, and even of that of 1820. Sir, it is not my purpose to answer in person to this challenge. The necessity, reasonableness, justice, and wisdom of those Compromises, are not in question here now. My own opinions on them were, at a proper time, fully made known. I abide the judgment of my country and man- . kind upon them. For the present, I meet the Committee who have brought this measure forward, on the field they themselves have chosen, and the controversy is reduced to two questions : 1st. Whether, by letter or spirit, the Compromise of 1820 abrogated or involved a future abrogation of the Compromise of 1820'? 2d. "Whether this abrogation can now be made consistently with honor justice, and good faith? As to my right, or that of any other Senator, to enter these lists, the credentials filed in the Secretary’s office settle that question. Mine bear a seal, as broad and as firmly fixed there as any other, by a people as wise, as free, and as great, as any one of all the thirty-one Republics represented here. But I will take leave to say, that an argument merely ad personam, seldom amounts to anything, more than an argument ad capt'an- duin. A life of approval of compromises, and of devotion to them, only enhances the obligation faithfully to fulfil them. A life of disapprobation of the policy of compromises only renders one more earnest in exacting fulfilment of them, when good and cherished interests secured by them. Thus much for the report and the bills of the Committee, and for the positions of the parties in this debate. A measure so bold, so unlooked for, so startling, and yet so pregnant as this, should have some plea of necessity. Is there any such necessity ? On the contrary, it is not necessary now, even if it be altogether wise, to establish Territorial Governments in Nebraska. Not less than eighteen tribes ot Indians occupy that vast tract, fourteen of which, I am informed, have been removed there by our own act, and invested with a fee simple to enjoys secure and perpetual home, safe from the intrusion and the annoyance, and even from the presence of the white man, and under the paternal care of the Government, and with the ■instruction of. its teachers and mechanics, to acquire the arts of civilization and the habits of social life. I will not say that this was done to prevent that Territory, because denied to slavery, from being occupied by free white men, and cultivated with free white labor; but I will say, that this removal of the Indians there, under such guarantees, has had that effect. The Territory cannot be occupied now, any more than heretofore, by savages and white men, with or without slaves, together. Our experience and our Indian policy alike remove all dispute from this point. Either these preserved ranges must still temain to the Indians hereafter, or the Indians, whatever temporary resistance against removal they may make, must retire. Where shall they go? Will you bring them back again across the Mississippi ? There is no room for Indians here. Will you send them northward, beyond your Territory of Nebraska, towards the British border? That is already occupied by Indians; there is no room there. Will you turn them loose upon Texas and New Mexico ? There is no room there. Will you drive them over the Rocky mountains? They will meet a tide of immigration there flowing into California from Europe and from Asia. Whither, then, shall they, the dispossessed, unpitied heirs of this vast continent, go ? The answer is, nowhere. If they remain in Nebraska, of what use are your Charters ? Of what harm is the Missouri Compromise in Nebraska, in that case? Whom doth it oppress ? No one. Who, indeed, demands territorial organization in Nebraska at all? The Indians? No. It is to them the consummation of a long-apprehended doom. Practically, no one demands it. I am told that the whole white population, scattered here and there throughout these broad regions, exceeding in extent the whole of the inhabited part of the United States at the time of the Revolution, is less than fifteen hundred, and that these are chiefly trappers, missionaries, and a few mechanics and agents
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