6 was an irrepressible love of personal freedom, as one of the inherent, indestructible rights of all human beings unconvicted of crime, is proved. And, sir, I declare it here, as the truth of history, that so long as this great truth was cherished, and practically recognised by the federal government, in all matters within the legitimate cognizance of its several departments, there was never manifested any dangerous indication of disloyalty to the union. No, sir, disunion is the whelp of the spirit of slavery propagandism; and since that evil spirit has possessed southern politicians, and their alliance has been perfected with our northern slave democracy, there has been no peace for the union ; and, in the providence of God, there never can, and never ought to be, any “ peace to the wicked,” either in union, or out of it. But, Mr. Chairman, having proven the allied forces of the slavery propagandists of the south and the "slave democracy of the free states to be hostile to the only enduring element of union, liberty I as received and understood by our fathers “ in the times that tried men’s souls,” I proceed now to show, that the same allies are equally hostile to the same essential element of union under the constitution of the United States. Mr. Chairman, I first call the attention of the committee to the preamble to the constitution. Hear it: “We, the people of the United States, in order ‘ to form a more perfect union, establish justice, 1 insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the com- ‘ mon defence, promote the general welfare, and 1 secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and ‘ our posterity, do ordain and establish this con- ‘ stitution for the United States of America.” There, Mr. Chairman, whoever, after reading that declaration of the objects and purposes for which the constitution of the United States, was framed and adopted by the people of the United States, shall assert, that the extension and perpetuation of slavery, or the exaltation of slavery into a “ domestic institution,” to be placed side by side with the institution of husband and wife, parent and child, &c., as is attempted by the slave democracy in and by the Nebraska bill, and as is asserted in every alternate breath, by each slaveholder and slave democrat in congress and out of it—I say, sir, every such person charges the men who framed, and the people who adopted the constitution, with deliberate and wicked lying, or else with a stupidity so nearly absolute, as to relieve them of moral responsibility for what they did assert. Our fathers set this preamble at the threshold of the constitution as a lamp, as well to dispel darkness from the minds of those who should attempt to enter this great edifice of free government, as to cast its cheering light through all the compartments of that edifice. They did it, that whoever might hope to find in the constitution a guarantee of slavery, or any form of injustice, might, at the commencement of his search, meet only—“ liberty and justice.” It was done to take all excuse from that perverse ingenuity which, from the infirmities of human language, might attempt to use the constitution as the slave democracy in congress, and out of it, are now using it, viz : as an instrument for the extension of slavery into free territory, and as a justification of their pretence, that the constitution propria vigore, carries slavery into all the territories of the United States ; or that slavery and liberty are twin brethren, and must be brought, as such, simultaneously into the union, or not be born at all; or that other piece of stupidity or perverseness, that the territories are the common property of the people of all the states, and therefore the slaveholder has the right to enter all or any of the federal territories with his slaves—or that other, and last for the present, assertion, that there exists a certain equality among all the states, which authorizes the people of the slave states to take their slaves, as property, into the territories, but does not authorize the people of the free states to enter the territories and exclude slavery therefrom—a sort of equality of states, which warrants the establishment of nuisances and social curses in the territories, but takes from the people the power to abate such nuisances. Another design of the preamble to the constitution was, to enable the people to detect that class of demagogues who, under the cloak of devotion to the union, are trying to force or cheat the people of the free states, into “carrying the flag and keeping step to the music of the coffle gang,” as it pursues its dead march from the old and slave-cursed states, to make its halt in the now free territories, there to leave forever the mildew of its blighting nature. But the preamble to the constitution, is not the constitution. This must speak with its own voice, but it must nevertheless speak in the spirit of its preamble, otherwise both preamble and constitution are a hypocrisy and a delusion. The constitution as framed by the convention, gave no power to any department of the government to make a slave of a free man, or to convert free territory into slave territory. The federal government, under the constitution, prior to the amendments, was utterly impotent, either to make . or hold a slave, or to give authority to others to make or hold slaves. The unamended constitution was precisely that, neither more nor less than its authors made it; but they did not make it a slave constitution. They did not omit a clause in that instrument, authorizing slaveholding by accident, but by design. Mr. Madison, one of the ; chief artificers of the constitution, assures us that they did not intend that the constitution should even disclose the shameful fact, that there existed such a crime and disgrace in the United States as j slavery. But to “make assurance doubly sure,” and as it were, “ to take a bond of fate,” those great and good men, for the vindication of their own fame as the friends of liberty and justice, and jealous lest, through the degeneracy of after times, and almost as if foreseeing the apostacy of the slave democracy of the present day, immediately on the adoption of the constitution, as framed by the convention, the first congress assembled under it, proposed divers amendments, the chief objects of which were, to negative all power in congress, which bad men might claim to be implied in the original constitution, to make
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