them up. Thus it is that I am glad to hear the candor of those gentlemen on the other side, that they do up; comp'lain of these laws. The Senator from Geprgia [Mr. Iverson] himself tMd us that they had never suffered any injury, to his knowledge and belief, from those bills, and they cared nothing about them. The Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason] said the same thing; and 1 believe the Senator from Mississippi, [Mr. Brown.] You all, then, have given up this bone of contention, this matter of complaint which northern men have set forth as a griev ance more than anybody else. Mr. MASON. Will the Senator indulge me one moment? Mr. WADE. Certainly. Mr. MASON. I know he does not intend to misrepresent me or other gentlemen here. What I said was, that the repeal of those- laws would furnish no cause of satisfaction to the southern States. Our opinions of those laws we gave freely. We said the repeal of those laws would give no satisfaction. Mr. WADE. Mr. President,.! do not intend to misrepresent anything. I understood those gentlemen to suppose that they had not been injured by them. I understood the Senator from Virginia to believe that they were enacted in a spirit of hostility to the institutions of the South, and to object to them not because the acts themselves had done them any hurt, but because they were really a stamp of degradation upon southern men, or something like that—I do not quote his words. The other Senators that referred to it probably intended to be understood in the same way; but they did acquit these laws of having done them injury to their knowledge or belief. I do not believe that these laws were, as the Senator supposed, enacted with . view to exasperate the South, or to put them in a position of degradation. Why, sir, these laws against kidnapping are as old as the common law itself, as that Senator well knows. To take a freeman and forcibly carry him out of the jurisdiction of the State, has ever been, by all civilized countries, adjudged to be a great crime; and in most of them, wherever I have understood anything about it, they have penal laws to punish such an offence. I believe the State of Virginia has Mie to-day as stringent in all its provisions as almost any other of which you complain. I have not looked over the statute-books of the South; but I do not doubt that there will be found this species of legislation upon all your statute-books. Hero let me say, because the subject occurs to me right here, the Senator from Virginia seemed not so much to point out any specific acts that northern people had done injurious to your property, as what he took to be a dishonorand a degradation. I think I feel as sensitive upon that subject as any other man. If I know myself, I am the last man that would be the advocate of any law or any act that would humiliate or dishonor any section of this country, or any individual in it; and, on the other hand, let me tell these gentlemen I am exceedingly sensitive upon that same point, whatever they may think about it. I would rather sustain an injury than an insult or dishonor; and I would be as unwilling to inflict it upon others as I would be to submit to it myself. I never will do either the one or the- other if I know it. I have already said that these gentlemen who make these complaints have for a long series of years had this Government in their own keeping. They belong to the dominant majority. I may say that these same gentlemen who rise up on this floor and draw tiieir bill of indictment against us, have been the leaders of that dominant party for many years past. Therefore, if there is anything in the legislation of the Federal Government that is not right, you, and not we, are responsible for it; for we have never been invested with the power to modify or control the legislation of the country for an hour. I know that charges have been made and rung in our ears, and reiterated over and over again, that we have been unfaithful in the execution of your fugitive slave bill. Sir, that law is exceedingly odious to any free people. It deprives us of all the old guarantees of liberty that the Anglo- Saxon race everywhere have considered sacred—more sacred than anything else. Mr. GREEN. Will the Senator from Ohio allow me to say a word ? Mr. WADE. Certainly. Mr. GREEN. It is simply this: It has been said that the practical operation of the so-called liberty bills of the North has not affected anybody; but they do act as evidence of a public sentiment adverse to the execution of the Federal law to reclaim our slaves under the Constitution; and a repeal of those laws would not
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