11 Away with such logic. There is no guaranty in the Constitution of the United States for such a position as that. Our safety, Mr. Pres ident consists in keeping close to the Constitution. Whatever we claim, let us find the direct warrant for it there, or the necessary implication to carry out some other power that is manifestly granted. The moment we go astray from this, we are in the fog; we are in dispute; we endanger the harmony of our action, and it is done in. this instance. In this great departure from the early principles of this Government, you have involved portions of the nation in almost irretrievable hostility to each other. Let us go back to the Constitution, and follow it. Mr. President, I will notice one other position. Waiving all constitutional law on this subject — for we are not compelled to do all that we have a constitutional right to do—I will suppose, for the purposes of this argument, that you have authority to take your slaves into a Territory, and hold .them there; still, is it expedient, is it just and proper to do it ? This brings up a question which has been incidentally debated during this session several times. Originally, it now stands confessed here; the framers of our institutions, the fathers of the Republic, all, I believe, without a dissenting voice, (if there were any, I do not know it,) held that slaveholding was against common right, was against natural right, was wrong in itself, and therefore should not be cherished or encouraged. Now, Senators say here, that the slaveholding States have reconsidered this subject with great deliberation, and they have found that this old view was wrong ; that slavery is a normal condition; that it is a blessing to society; that it is the best state and condition that a man can be in, and therefore ought to be extended. 'J'hat is the only issue which I wish to draw in upon this subject with any party, because I know that your determination now to extend slavery into the Territories arises from this new philosophy of yours. If you are right upon that, I will go with you. If you are right, let us extend slavery to the four winds of heaven ; let us employ missionaries to preach the glories of slavery, and induce the whole world to divide itself, and one half become slaveholders, and the other half slaves. Sir, I am glad to see this great question placed at last upon a solid foundation ; for every man knows that no political principle can be based permanently on anything short of eternal justice and right. Now, I do not care for what the Senator from Georgia and others have told us, that slaveholding was the basis upon which society had been founded for thirty centuries. We, at least, have discovered that it is a sandy foundation. It is fast washing- away; and in exact proportion to the advance of man kind hi civilization and in knowledge, on all hands this old principle is deemed /barbarous, sovereignty is invaded; that where the Senator lives, or that where the negroes live? Can anybody tell me ? State equality, they say, is not preserved. But the State equality of which State ? Illinois, where the slaves are. owned, is her sovereignty hewed down, or the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi, where the negroes hoe the Senator’s corn and pick his cotton? There never has been a respectable argument for any such position as that. May not the same ground be applied to other cases? Suppose we had annexed—as I presume we shall ultimately annex—the Fejee Islands to this nation. In those islands, the people not only enslave each other, but they actually kill and eat each other. Now, suppose a Senator from the State of Fejee should appear in this body; suppose that he should claim the right of his constituents to bring with them their chattels into any of our Territories, and claim the right of the law in that country to practice cannibalism upon them, that he might roast and boil them as well as enslave them. He would claim, if you did not permit this to be done, “ that the State of Fejee ‘ has not equal rights with the other States of ‘ this Union; a gentleman owns his property; ‘ it is an undoubted law of my State that we ‘ may fatten men for the roast, and we have a ‘ right to bring them here for the same pur- ‘ pose; and if you do not permit us to do so, ‘ we will pull down the columns of the Pepub- ‘ lie, laying it outspread in one universal ruin.” [Laughter.] I suppose the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] would say, “The Territo- ‘ ries have a perfect right to vote cannibalism ‘ in or to vote it out; I do not care whether ‘ they vote it up or down ; but they have the 1 right, and shall be perfectly free to do it.” [Laughter.] Another Senator would arise, and say the people of Fejee not only have the right to bring them in, but they have the right to be protected in doing so there under the laws of Congress. Another one. says that Congress has no power to pass laws on that subject whatever ; but the courts, which are now omnipotent in all things, may, without law, declare what the law is, and we must all bow down to it. There is a difference even on the other side as to these shades or colors of Congressional authority; but, nevertheless, you are all in for spreading slavery to the ends of the earth. Take another case—one that is likely to occur a Irttle sooner, perhaps. Suppose Brigham Young should come from the State of Utah, when it is a State, into Kansas, or any other Territory, and bring with him his forty wives, and the Territory has a law that a man shall have but one wife. Brigham says, “ These ‘ are my property; yea, more than my prop- ‘ erty; yea, they are forty ribs taken out of my ‘ body while I slept; I must bring them in ‘ here, or the State of Utah will not be on an ‘ equal footing with the other States of this ‘ Union.”
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