4 very first set speech, if I mistake not, it was introduced by a member from a, slaveholding State, representing, as I suppose, a slaveholding constituency.. In this Congress it is the South that has thrown down the gauntlet. I said that, in my opinion, the gentleman from North Carolina was right in introducing the subject; and I am struck with the propriety of the title which he gives to his published remarks—The Political Aspect of the Slave Question. Sir, it is the great political question of the country, and has been from the beginning of this century, though not hitherto so prominent as now. It is the question which underlies all other great questions, and determines their solution. Sir, the gentleman tells me nothing when he says (page 8) that the free interest of this country is secure, because “the free States are in the ascendancy in all the branches of the Government; and their majority of more than fifty votes on this floor, and in the electoral colleges, is greater than they ever had in former times.” It is true, notwithstanding some singular facts, themselves growing out of the fact of the extension of slavery and of the slave power, under the forms of the Constitution, in a way never contemplated by the framers of that instrument. It is true, notwithstanding that Ohio and New York together have only 4 representatives in the other branch of the Legislature, 55 in this, and 59 in the electoral colleges, while fifteen slave States, (all except Virginia,) with an aggregate free population only about as large as the population of New York and Ohio together, have 30 votes in the other House, 78 in this, and 108 in the election of President and Vice President. What the gentleman says is true, notwithstanding this singular distribution of political power which the introduction of new slave States has brought about. But it is not all the truth. The gentleman did not intend to disguise anything; but some further facts, bearing on this point, did not suit the purpose of his argument. The free population of the United States, according to the census of 1840, amounted to not far from fifteen millions; the slaveholders, at a liberal estimate, were not more than three hundred thousand; fourteen millions and a half against three hundred thousand, a numerical preponderance among the free population, in the proportion of nearly fifty to one, in favor of the free: interest. * In the Presidential election of 1844 there were about three millions of voters; between one hundred and one hundred and fifty thousand of these voters were holders of slaves; that is, the majority of non-slaveholding voters, over slaveholding, was somewhere between two millions seven hundred thousand and three millions—a disproportion of twenty or thirty to one. * The probability is, that there are not so many as 300,000 slaveholders, and that the estimated proportion of 50 to 1 is quite within the truth. But is the gentleman to be told by me of the power which can be exerted by the concentrated energies of an active oligarchy, spread over a country, intent, on a single policy, and bound together by a common intelligence and a common, interest—how, with its ever-watchful ambition, it will take the lead of the busy and inert masses—-how it can intimidate and overawe the weak, beguile and conciliate the easy, and bribe the mercenary, among those who can influence the public voice? Fifteen years ago there was a great excitement in this country, and a powerful party was organized, against the institution of Free Masonry. The charge was, (I do not enter into the merits of the controversy,) that that, institution had been the cause of the ’death of a citizen, and that it was an irresponsible power, spread like net-work over the land, and compacted by oaths and symbols which gave it an omnipotent unity and secresy of action. But. how many more lives of citizens have been sacrificed to the masonry of the slaveholders, and how much more perfect is their mutual understanding, and their combination of power and of activity, than any system of oaths and symbols could create! Slavery exists but in half of the States of this Union. But. by the possession of the bulk of the property in those States, and by a virtual.. L
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