LETTER I.

West Newton, May 3, 1850.

To the Hon. James Richardson, I. Cleveland, and John Gardner, of Dedham; Hon. D. A. Simmons, John J. Clarke, Francis Hilliard, and George R. Russell, of Roxbury, &c., &c.

Gentlemen;

Having been called home on account of sickness in my family, I have just received, at this place, your kind invitation to meet and address my constituents of the 8th Congressional District, and to give them my “views and opinions upon the question of the immediate admission of California, and other questions now before Congress, arising out of the acquisition of territory by the treaty with Mexico.”

A request from so high a source has almost the force of a command. Yet I dare not promise to comply. I am liable at any moment to be recalled, and, instead of speaking here, to vote there, upon the questions to which you refer. I might be summoned to return on the day appointed for us to meet. The only alternative, therefore, which is left me, is to address you by letter. This I will do, if I can find time. I shall thus comply with your request, in substance, if not in form.

On many accounts, I have the extremest reluctance to appear before the public on the present occasion. My views, on some vital questions, differ most materially from those of gentlemen for whom I have felt the profoundest respect; and for some of whom I cherish the strongest personal attachment. But I feel, on the other hand, that my constituents, having intrusted to me some of their most precious interests, are entitledto know my “views and opinions” respecting the hopes and the dangers that encompass them. I shall not, therefore, take the responsibility of declining.

I will premise further, that my relations to political parties, for many years past, have left me as free from all partisan bias “as the lot of humanity will admit.” For twelve years I held an office whose duties required me to abstain from all active coöperation in political conflicts; and that duty was so religiously fulfilled, that, to my knowledge, I was never charged with its violation. During the Presidential contest of 1848, those obligations of neutrality still rested upon me. For a year afterwards, I was not called upon to do any official act displeasing to any party amongst us. This interval I employed in forming the best opinion I could of public men and measures, and their influence upon the moral and industrial interests of the country. I had long entertained most decided convictions in favor of protecting American labor, in favor of cheap postage, and of security to the lives and property of our fellow-citizens engaged in commerce. But a new question had arisen,—the great question of freedom or slavery in our recently acquired territories,—and this question I deemed, for the time being, to be, though not exclusive of others, yet paramount to them. Or rather, I saw that nothing could be so favorable to all the last-named interests, as the proper adjustment of the first. He who would provide for the welfare of mankind, must first provide for their liberty.

Sympathizing, then, on different points with different parties, but exclusively bound to none, I stood, in reference to the great question of territorial freedom or slavery, in the position of thetruemother in the litigation before Solomon, preferring that the object of my love should be spared in the hands of any one, rather than perish in my own.

Our present difficulties, which, as you well know,have arrested the gaze of the nation, and almost suspended the legislative functions of Congress, pertain to the destiny of freedom or of slavery, to which our new territories are to be devoted. After the acquisition of Louisiana, and Florida, and Texas, for the aggrandizement and security of the Slave-power; after the aboriginal occupants of the soil of the Southern States have been slaughtered, or driven from their homes, at an expense of not less than a hundred millions of dollars, and at the infinite expense of our national reputation for justice and humanity; and after the area of the slave states has been made almost double that of the free states, while the population of the free is about double that of the slave; the reasons seem so strong that they can hardly be made stronger, why the career of our government, as a slavery-extending power, should be arrested. On the other hand, the oligarchy who rule the south, seeing that, notwithstanding their rich and almost illimitable domain, they are rapidly falling behind the north in all the distinctive elements of civilization and well being,—industry, temperance, education, wealth,—not only defend the Upas that blasts their soil, as though it were the tree of life, but seek to transplant it to other lands. With but about three slaves to a square mile,—three millions of slaves to nearly a million of square miles,—they say they are too crowded; that they feel a sense of suffocation, and must have more room, when all their weakness and pain proceed, not from the limited quantity, but from the malignant quality of the atmosphere they breathe. Hence the war with Mexico, commenced and prosecuted to add slave territory and slave states to the southern section. Hence the refusal to accept propositions of peace, unless territorysouthof latitude 36° 30´, (the Missouri compromise line, so called,) should be ceded to us. Hence, when the Mexican negotiators proposed to insert a prohibition of slavery inthe treaty of cession, and declared that the inquisition would not be more odious to the American people than the reinstitution of slavery to them, our minister, Mr. Trist, told them he would not consent to such a prohibition though they would cover the soil a foot deep with gold. And hence, also, the determination of a portion of the southern members of Congress to stop the whole machinery of the government, to sacrifice all the great interests of the country, and assail even the Union itself, unless slavery shall be permitted to cross the Rio Grande and enter the vast regions of the west, as it heretofore, in its aggressive march, crossed the Mississippi and the Sabine.

Even in 1846, when the war against Mexico was declared, all men of sagacity foresaw the present conflict. Could that question have been decided on its merits, or could the institutions to be planted upon the territory we might acquire have been determined by the unbiased suffrages of the American people, no war would have been declared, and no territory acquired. But the great political leaders of the south expected to make up both for their numerical weakness and for the injustice of their cause, by connecting the question of slavery extension with that of future presidential elections and with the strife of parties. They promised themselves that they could draw over leading northern men to their support, by offering them the Tantalus cup of presidential honors; and then, by the force of party cohesion and discipline, insure the support of the vast descending scale of office expectants. Early in the present session of Congress, it was distinctly declared from a high southern source, that the south must do most for those northern men who would do most for them. A few words will make it apparent how faithfully this plan has been adhered to, and how successful it may become.

No northern Democrat, opposed to slavery extension,could expect the support of the southern democracy. Hence, General Cass stepped promptly forward, and declared, in his Nicholson letter, that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories. This has been technically called his “bid,” or his “first bid.” It was deemed satisfactory by the south; for, according to their philosophy, the relation of master and slave is the natural or normal relation of mankind; and therefore, where no prohibition of it exists, slavery flows into free territory as water runs down hill. This avowal of General Cass was rendered more signal and valuable to the south, because, for the greater part of his political life, he had taken oaths, held offices, and administered laws, in undeniable contradiction to the declaration then made. The ordinance of 1787 was expressly recognized by the first Congress held under the constitution, [see ch. 8.] It was modified in part, and confirmed as to the rest; and in holding offices under this, General Cass had laid the foundation of his honors and his fortune. His declaration, therefore, against all interdiction of slavery, made under circumstances so extraordinary and in contradiction to the whole tenor of his past life, was hailed with acclamation by the south, and he was unanimously declared, at Baltimore, to be the accepted candidate of the democracy, for the office of President. The common notion is, that a man shows his love for a cause by the amount of sacrifice he will make for it; and as consistency, honor, and truth, are the most precious elements in character, he showed his devotion to the south by sacrificing them all.

To the honor of the Whig party be it said, there was not a northern man to be found, who, to gain the support of the south, would espouse its pro-slavery doctrines, or invent any new reading of the constitution to give them a semblance of law. Hence, at the Philadelphia Convention, no northern Whig received evenso much as a complimentary vote. The judicial eminence of Judge McLean, the military eminence of General Scott, were passed contemptuously by; and Mr. Webster, acknowledged to be the greatest statesman of the age, received but fourteen votes out of almost three hundred; and twelve of these were from Massachusetts. Mr. Webster had spoken more eloquent words for liberty than any other living man, and this distinguished neglect was doubtless intended to teach him the lesson, that the path to presidential honors did not lie through an advocacy of the rights of man. General Taylor was nominated and chosen. He was understood to take neutral ground. Discountenancing the veto power, if the House of Representatives, who are chosen directly from and by the people, and the Senate, who are chosen by the states, will pass a territorial bill, either with or without a prohibition of slavery, he will approve it. This is the common opinion, and I have no doubt of its correctness.

Under these circumstances, a most desperate effort was made at the close of the last Congress to provide a government for the territories with no prohibition of slavery. Had General Cass been elected, no such effort would have been necessary, for he was pledged to veto a prohibition. General Taylor was supposed to be pledged to an opposite course; and hence the struggle. The facts must be so fresh in the recollection of all, that they hardly need to be recounted. The House performed its duty to the country and to freedom, by sending territorial bills to the Senate containing the prohibitory clause. The Senate, equalling the northern by its southern votes, and far outnumbering the Whigs by its Democrats, left those bills to sleep the sleep of death upon its table. But during the closing hours of the session, it foisted a provision for the government of the territories into the general appropriation bill; and held out the menace that this bill shouldnot pass at all, unless the territorial clause should pass with it. The flagitiousness of this proceeding it is difficult to comprehend and impossible to describe. The appropriation bill is one on which the working, and even the continuance of the government, depend. Without it, the machinery of the state must cease to move. Contracts by the government to pay money must be violated. Officers cannot obtain their salaries. Families must be left without subsistence. If long continued, all judges would resign, and courts be broken up; and when justice should cease to be administered, violence, robbery, and every form of crime would run riot through the land.

Besides, an appropriation bill and a bill for the government of territories have no congruity with each other. They are not relevant. Neither is germane to the other. Every one knows it to be a common parliamentary rule that when a proposition is submitted which is susceptible of a division, anyonemember has a right to demand it. All bills, too, for raising revenue, must, by the constitution, originate in the House; and the House has as much right to interfere to prevent the Senate from ratifying a treaty, as the Senate has to obstruct the passage of a revenue bill by adding to it extraneous provisions. It was this effort on the part of the Senate to incorporate into the appropriation bill a provision most unrighteous in itself and most odious to the free sentiments of the north, which led to the protracted session on the night of the 3d of March, 1849. The course of the pro-slavery leaders, on that occasion, resembled that of a madman who should seize a torch and stand over the magazine of a ship, and proclaim that he would send men and vessel to destruction, unless they would steer for his port. A portion of the House confederated with the majority of the Senate in this unprincipled machination; but the larger number stood undaunted, and after perils, suchas so precious an interest never before encountered, the pro-slavery amendment was stricken out, and its champions were foiled. Through that memorable night the friends of freedom wrestled like Jacob with the angel of God, and though the session did not close until the sun of a Sabbath morning shone full into the windows of the capitol, yet a holier work never was done on that holy day.

It was with a joy such as no words can ever express, that I saw the territories rescued from the clutch of slavery by the expiration of the Thirtieth Congress. I felt confident that when the Thirty-first Congress should assemble, it would be under better auspices, and with a stronger phalanx on the side of freedom. In regard to California, those hopes have been fulfilled; but I proceed to state how they have been nearly extinguished in regard to the residue of the territory.

Our first disaster was the election of a most adroit, talented, and zealous pro-slavery speaker. A better organ for the accomplishment of their purposes the friends of slavery could not have found; nor the friends of freedom a more formidable opponent. Whilst the pro-slavery champions of the south, almost without distinction of party, exulted over this triumph, it has been the occasion of most lamentable criminations and recriminations at the north. Southern men abandon all distinctions of Whig or Democrat for the cause of slavery. Would to God we could do as much for the cause of freedom.

The choice of a pro-slavery speaker was immediately followed by the appointment of most ultra pro-slavery committees. Some Free-Soil members, it is true, were placed upon these committees; but in this, the speaker only carried out more fully his own purposes and those of his party, by putting, what they considered as insane men, into close custody, instead of letting them run at large. He showed, however, eithera want of courage in himself, or of confidence in his chosen guards; for, on the District of Columbia committee he detailed a file of five, on the judiciary committee a file of four, and on the territorial committee a file of six strong pro-slavery men, for the safe keeping of one Free-Soiler.

Within an hour after the House was organized, Mr. Root, of Ohio, submitted a resolution, instructing the committee on territories to report territorial bills prohibiting slavery. Many true friends to freedom believed this movement to be ill timed and unfortunate; and though the House then refused, by a handsome vote, to lay the resolution on the table, yet when it came up for consideration again, the first decision was reversed by about the same majority. There is abundant proof that the latter vote did not express the true sentiment of the House. Not a few voted against the resolution avowedly because of its paternity,—thus spiting a noble son on account of its obnoxious father. Others repented of their votes as soon as they came to reflect that the record would go where their explanation could not accompany it.

But unfortunately it was too late. There stands the record, to survive through all time and to be read of all men. The champions of slavery seized upon this vote as a propitious omen. They derided and scouted the proviso with a fierceness unknown before. They shouted their threats of disunion with a more defiant tone, should any attempt at what they called its resurrection, be made. A speech was delivered by Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, in which a massacre of a majority of the House was distinctly shadowed forth, so that not “a quorum should be left to do business.” The effect of that vote was almost as bad as though it meant what it said.

At a later day, when a bill for the admission of California was presented, the tactics of delay were resortedto, and midnight found us calling the yeas and nays, for more than the thirtieth time, on questions whose frivolousness and vexatiousness cannot be indicated by numbers.

The proceedings in the Senate, however, are those which now threaten the most disastrous consequences. Early in the session, in order to bring his northern friends up to the doctrine that it is unconstitutional to legislate against slavery in the territories, General Cass made a speech, in which he denies that Congress hasanypower, underanycircumstances, to passanylaw respecting their inhabitants. According to that speech, the United States stands in the relation of a foreign government to the people of its own territories; and if they set up a king or establish a religion, we cannot help it; for we have no more power or right to control them than we have the subjects of Great Britain or the citizens of France. It has been said that the doctrine of General Cass and that of General Taylor, on this subject, are identical; but there is this all-important difference between them:—General Taylor maintains the right of Congress to legislate for the territories, and will doubtless approve any bill for the prohibition of slavery in them; but General Cass, denying this right in Congress, would, if President, veto such a bill. He, therefore, would leave the territories open to be invaded and possessed by slavery; and in southern law and practice possession is more than nine points.

Next came Mr. Clay’s compromise resolutions, so called. By these, California was to be admitted as a state; the territories organized without any restriction upon slavery; the south-western boundary of Texas to be extended to the Rio Grande; a part of her ten or twelve million debt to be paid by the United States, on condition of her abandoning her claim to a part of New Mexico lying east of the Rio Grande; the abolitionof the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the inviolability of slavery in the District daring the good pleasure of Maryland and of the inhabitants of the District; more effectual provision for the restitution of fugitive slaves, and free traffic in slaves forever between the states, unless forbidden by themselves.

A compromise is a settlement of difficulties by mutual concessions. Let us examine the mutuality of the concessions which Mr. Clay’s resolutions propose.

In the first place, California is to be permitted to remain free if the territories of New Mexico and Utah may be opened to slavery. But California is free already; free by her own act; free without any concession of theirs, and without any grace but the grace of God. It is mainly occupied by a northern population, who do their own work with their own hands, or their own brains. Fifty hardy gold diggers from the north will never stand all day knee deep in water, shovel earth, rock washers, &c., under a broiling sun, and see a man with his fifty slaves standing under the shade of a tree, or having an umbrella held over his head, with whip in hand, and without wetting his dainty glove, or soiling his japanned boot, pocket as much at night as the whole of them together. Or, rather, they will never suffer institutions to exist which tolerate such unrighteousness. California, therefore, is free; as free as Massachusetts; and Mr. Clay might as well have said in terms, that whereas Massachusetts is free, therefore New Mexico and Utah shall be slave, or run the hazard of being so.

The next point of Mr. Clay’s compromise is, that Texas shall extend her south-western boundary from or near the Nueces to the Rio Grande, and shall receive, probably, some six or eight millions of dollars for withdrawing her claim to that part of New Mexico which lies east of the last-named river. Now, Texas has no rightful or plausible claim to a foot of all thisterritory. But suppose it to be a subject of doubt, and therefore of compromise. The mutuality, then, consists in dividing the whole territory claimed by Texas, and then giving her a valid title to one portion of it, and paying her for all the rest. Texas, or,—what in this connection is the same thing,—slavery surrenders absolutely nothing, gets a good title to some seventy thousand square miles of territory, and pay for as much more!

But what renders it almost incredible that any man could soberly submit such a proposition and dare to call it a compromise, is this: All that part of New Mexico which Texas claims, and which lies between the parallels of 36° 30´ and 42°, is, by the resolutions of annexation, to be forever free. I shall consider the constitutionality of these resolutions by and by; I now treat them as valid. Now the compromise proposes to buy this territory, so secured to freedom, and annex it to New Mexico, which is to be left open to slavery. We are to peril all the broad region between 36° 30´ and 42°, and pay Texas some six or eight millions of dollars for the privilege of doing so! Mr. Clay is not less eminent for his statesmanship than for his waggery. Were he to succeed in playing off this practical joke upon the north, and were it not for the horrible consequences which it would involve, a roar of laughter, like afeu de joie, would run down the course of the ages. As it is, the laughter will be “elsewhere.”

The next point pertains to the abolition of the slave trade, and the perpetuity of slavery, in the District of Columbia. This District has an area of about fifty square miles; and Mr. Clay proposes, in consideration of transferring its slave marts to Alexandria, on the Virginia side, or to some convenient place in Montgomery or Prince George’s county, on the Maryland side, to divest Congress forever of its right of “exclusive legislation” over it. Should this plan prevail, theperpetuity of slavery in the District will be defended by more unassailable and impregnable barriers than any other institution in Christendom. The President has a veto upon Congress; but two thirds of both Houses may still pass any law, notwithstanding his dissent. Mr. Clay proposes to give, both to Maryland and to the citizens of the District, a veto on this subject;—an absolute veto, not a qualified one, like that of the President of the United States, but one that will control, not majorities merely, but an absolute unanimity in both branches of Congress. By his plan, therefore, three separate, independent powers are to have a veto upon the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. And not only so, but while it will require theirjointorconcurrentaction to abolish the institution, any one of them can preserve it. The laws of the Medes and Persians had no such guaranties for perpetuity as this.

Mr. Clay’s last point is really too facetious. So solemn a subject does not permit such long-continued levity, however it may be masked by sobriety of countenance. It is, that Congress shall make more effectual provision for the capture and delivery of fugitive slaves; and, as an equivalent for this, it shall bind itself never to interfere with the inter-state traffic in slaves. We are to catch the slaves of the South, and, as though this were a grateful privilege to us, we are to allow them free commerce in slaves, coastwise or inland. By this means, slaves can be transported to the mouth of the Rio Grande, and some hundreds of miles up that river, towards New Mexico, instead of being driven in coffles across the country. The compromise is, that for every slave we catch, we are to facilitate the passage of a hundred into New Mexico.

Such is the mutuality of Mr. Clay’s compromises. They are such compromises as the wolf offers to the lamb, or the vulture to the dove. They make therightful admission of California into the Union, with her free constitution, contingent upon opening the new territories to slavery; they ratify one part of the predatory claim of Texas, and propose to give her millions for the other part; they give an unconditional veto to the state of Maryland and to the citizens of the District of Columbia, over a unanimous vote of both Houses of Congress, even when approved by the President; in connection with Mr. Butler’s bill and Mr. Mason’s amendments, they expose our white citizens to grievous penalties and imprisonments for not doing what the Supreme Court of the United States has decided we are not bound to do, in relation to fugitive slaves, and they offer our colored citizens to be kidnapped and spirited away into bondage; and they foreclose, in favor of the south, the disputed question of the inter-state commerce in slaves. In one particular only do they appear to concede any thing to northern rights, or northern convictions, or northern feelings. They propose to transfer the District of Columbia slave trade across an ideal line into Virginia or into Maryland, so that the slave planter or slave trader, when he comes to our American Congo to replenish his stock of human cattle, shall be obliged to go a mile or two, to the slave marts, instead of walking down Pennsylvania Avenue. I deem this to be no concession. If it is honorable to produce corn and cotton, it is honorable to buy and sell them,—and if it is honorable to hold beings created in God’s image in slavery, it is honorable to stand between the producer and consumer, and to make merchandise of the bodies and the souls of men. Let this Light of the Age be set upon a hill, that all nations may behold it.

I will refer to Mr. Bell’s resolutions no further than to say, that they propose the formation of three slave states out of what is now claimed by Texas, one of which is to be admitted into the Union forthwith as an offset to California.

Mr. Buchanan has not regarded the movements of his rival, General Cass, with indifference. He has spent a considerable portion of the winter in Washington, and it is understood that he holds out the Missouri compromise line, from the western boundary of Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, as his lure to the south, for their favorable regards in the ensuing presidential contest.

In a chronological order, I must now consider some vitally important views, which have been submitted by some members in the House, and by Mr. Webster and others in the Senate. In mentioning the name of this great statesman, and in avowing that I am one among the many whom his recently expressed opinions have failed to convince, it is due to myself, however indifferent it may be to him or to his friends, that I should express my admiration of his powers, my gratitude for his past services, and the diffidence with which I dissented, at first, from his views. But I have pondered upon them long, and the longer I have pondered the more questionable they appear. I shall therefore venture upon the perilous task of inquiring into their correctness; and while I do it with the deference and respect which belong to his character, I shall do it also with that fidelity to conscience and to judgment that belong to mine. He is great, but truth is greater than us all.

I shall confine myself mainly, and perhaps wholly, to Mr. Webster’s views, because he has argued the cause of the south with vastly more ability than it has been argued by any one among themselves. If his conclusions, then, be not tenable, their case is lost.[9]

Mr. Webster casts away the “Proviso” altogether.He says, “If a resolution or a law were now before us to provide a territorial government for New Mexico, I would not vote to put any prohibition into it whatever.” (p. 44.) The reason given is, that slavery is already excluded from “California and New Mexico” “by the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth.” (p. 42.) “California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep valleys.” (p. 43.)

Now, this is drawing moral conclusions from physical premises. It is arguing from physics to metaphysics. It is determining the law of the spirit by geographical phenomena. It is undertaking to settle by mountains and rivers, and not by the Ten Commandments, a great question of human duty. It abandons the second commandment of Christ and all bills of rights enacted in conformity thereto, and leaves our obligations to our “neighbor” to be determined by the accidents of earth and water and air. To ascertain whether a people will obey the Divine command, and do to others as they would be done by, it looks at the thermometer. What a problem would this be: “Required the height above the level of the sea at which the oppressor ‘will undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke,’—to be determined barometrically.” Alas! this cannot be done. Slavery depends, not upon climate, but upon conscience. Wherever the wicked passions of the human heart can go, there slavery can go. Slavery is an effect. Avarice, sloth, pride, and the love of domination, are its cause. In ascending mountain sides, at what altitude do men leave these passions behind them? Different vegetable growths are to be found at different heights, depending also upon the zone. This I can understand. There is thealtitude of the palm, the altitude of the oak, the altitude of the pine, and, far above them all, the line of perpetual snow. But, in regard to innocence and guilt, where is thewhite line? How high up can a slaveholder go and not lose his free agency? At what elevation will the whip fall from the hand of the master, and the fetter from the limbs of the slave? There is no such point. Freedom and slavery on the one hand, and climate and geology on the other, are incommensurable quantities. We might as well attempt to determine a question in theology by the cube root, or a question in ethics by the black art. Slavery, being a crime founded upon human passions, can go wherever those passions are unrestrained. It has existed in Asia from the earliest ages, notwithstanding its “formation and scenery.” It labors and groans on the flanks of the Ural mountains now. There are to-day forty-eight millions of slaves in Russia, not one rood of which comes down so low as the northern boundary of California and New Mexico.

Had Mr. Webster’s philosophy been correct, then California was at superfluous pains when she incorporated the ordinance of 1787 into her constitution. Instead of saying that “slavery and involuntary servitude, (except for crime,) shall be forever prohibited,” she should have said, “Whereas, by a law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth,” “slavery cannot exist in California,” therefore we will not “reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reenact the will of God.”

Should it be said that slavery will not go into the new territories, because it is unprofitable; I ask, Where is it profitable? Where is ignorance so profitable as knowledge? Where is ungodliness gain, even for the things of this life? How little is the hand worth at one end of an arm, if there is not a brain at the other! Do not Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and otherstates, furnish witnesses by thousands and tens of thousands that slavery impoverishes? Yet with what enthusiasm they cherish it! Generally, ignorance is a necessary concomitant of slavery. Of white persons, over twenty years of age, unable to read and write, there were, according to the last census, 58,787 in Virginia, 56,609 in North Carolina, 58,513 in Tennessee, and so forth. I have a letter before me, received this morning, dated in Indiana, in which the writer says, he removed from North Carolina in 1802, when he was fourteen years old, and at that time he had never seen a newspaper in his life. Can there be genius, the inventive talent, or profitable labor, where ignorance is so dense? Can the oppression that tramples out voluntary industry, enterprise, intelligence, and the desire of independence, conduce to riches? Yet this is done wherever slavery exists, and is part and parcel of its working. Is any other form of robbery profitable? Yet individuals and communities have practised it and lived by it, and we may as well rely upon a “law of physical geography” to arrest the one as the other. It is not poetry, but literal truth, that the breath of the slave blasts vegetation, his tears poison the earth, and his groans strike it with sterility. It would be easy to show why the master does not abandon slavery, even amid the desolation with which it has surrounded him. There is a combination of poverty and pride, which slavery produces,on the doctrine of natural appetence, and which, therefore, it exactly fits. The helplessness of the master in regard to all personal wants seems to necessitate the slavery that has begotten it. All moral and religious principles are lowered till they conform to the daily practice. Custom blinds conscience, until, without any attempt to emancipate or ameliorate their victims, men can preach and pray and hold slaves, as Hamlet’s grave digger jests and sings while he turns up skulls.

But slavery cannot go into California or New Mexico, because their staple productions are not “tobacco, corn, cotton, or rice.” (p. 44.) These are agricultural products. But is slave labor confined to agriculture? Suppose that predial slavery will not become common in the new territories. Cannot menial? If slaves cannot do field work, cannot they do house work? There is an opening for a hundred thousand slaves to-day in the new territories, for purposes of domestic labor. And beyond this, let me ask, who possesses any such geologic vision that, at a distance of a thousand miles, he can penetrate the valleys and gorges of New Mexico, and say that gold will not yet be found there as it is in California,—not in sand and gravel only, but in forty-eight-pounders and fifty-sixes? This is the very kind of labor on which slaves, in all time, have been so extensively employed,—the very labor on which a million of slaves in Hispaniola lost their lives, within a few years after its discovery by Columbus. Gold deposits are now worked within twenty-five miles of Santa Fe. The last account which I have seen, of a company of emigrants passing from Santa Fe to California by the River Gila, announces rich discoveries of gold upon that river. A fellow-citizen of mine has just returned home, who says he saw a slave sold at the mines in California, in September last. As yet, the distant regions of the Gila and the Colorado cannot be worked, because of the Apaches, the Utahs, and other tribes of Indians. But admit slavery there, and the power of the government will be invoked to exterminate these Indians, as it was before to exterminate the Cherokees and Seminoles,—not to drive them beyond the Mississippi, but beyond the Styx. A few days since a letter was published in the papers, dated on board a steamer descending the Mississippi, which stated that a considerable number of slaves were on board, bound for California,under an agreement with their masters that they should be free after serving two years at the mines. We know, too, that the reason assigned for incorporating a provision in the constitution of California, authorizing its legislature to pass laws for the exclusion of free blacks from the state, was, that slaves would be brought there under this very form of agreement, and by and by the country would be overspread by people of color who had bought their freedom. The sagacious men who framed the California constitution came from all parts of the territory, and, being collected on the spot, having surveyed all its mountains, having breathed its air at all temperatures, and turned up its golden soil,—these men had never discovered any “law of physical geography” which the fell spirit of slavery could not transgress. Slaves were carried into Oregon, ten degrees of latitude higher up. Its colonists reënacted the ordinance of 1787 before Congress gave them a territorial government. In the territorial government that was given them, the prohibition was inserted; and President Polk signed the bill, with an express protest, that he ratified this exclusion of slavery only because the country lay north of the Missouri compromise line; but declared that, had it embraced the very region in question, he would have vetoed the bill.

General Cass never took the ground that slaverycould notexist in the new territories; and no inconsiderable part of the opposition made to him in Massachusetts and in other free states, was placed expressly upon the ground that he would not prohibit it. Mr. Webster, in his Marshfield speech, September 1, 1848, opposed the election of General Cass, because, through his recreancy to northern principles, slavery would invade the territories. This was expressed with his usual clearness and force, as follows:—

“He, [GeneralCass,] will surely have the Senate; and with the patronage of the government, with every interest that he,as a northern man, can bring to bear, coöperating with every interest that the south can bring to bear, we cry safety before we are out of the woods,if we feel that there is no danger as to these new territories.”

Yet Mr. Webster now says, that to support the “Proviso,” would “do disgrace to his own understanding.” (p. 46.)

During the same campaign, also, the Hon. Rufus Choate, one of the most eloquent men in New England, and known to be the personal friend of Mr. Webster, delivered a speech at Salem, in which the following passage occurs:—

“It is the passage of a law to say that California and New Mexico shall remain forever free. That is, fellow-citizens, undoubtedly an object of great and transcendent importance; for there is none who will deny that we should go up to the very limits of the constitution itself, and with the wisdom of the wisest, and zeal of the most zealous, should unite to accomplish this great object, and to defeat the always detested, and forever to be detested object of the dark ambition of that candidate of the Baltimore convention, (GeneralCass,) who has ventured to pledge himself in advance that he will veto the future law of freedom; and may God avert the madness of all those who hate slavery and love freedom, that would unite in putting him in the place where his thrice accursed pledge may be redeemed!... Is there a Whig upon this floor who doubts that the strength of the Whig party next March will insure freedom to California and New Mexico, if by the constitution they are entitled to freedom at all? Is there a member of Congress that would not vote for freedom? You know there is not one. Did not every Whig member of Congress from the free states vote at the last session for freedom? You know that every man of them returned home covered with the thanks of his constituents for that vote. Is there a single Whig constituency, in any free state in this country, that would return any man that would not vote for freedom?Do you believe that Daniel Webster himself could be returned if there was the least doubt upon the question?”

Mr. Choate then adds: “Upon this question alone, we always differ from those Whigs of the south; and on that one, wepropose simply to vote them down.” Mr. Webster now says he will not join in voting them down.

Under such circumstances, is it frivolous or captious to ask for something more than a dogmatic assertion that slavery cannot impregnate these new regions, and cause them to breed monsters forever? On a subject of such infinite importance I cannot be satisfied with a dictum; I want a demonstration. I cannot accept the prophecy without inquiring what spirit inspired the prophet. As a revelation from Heaven, it would be most delightful; but, as it conflicts with all human experience, it requires at least one undoubted miracle to attest the divinity of its origin.

According to the last census, there were more than eight thousand persons of African blood in Massachusetts. Abolish the moral and religious convictions of our people, let slavery appear to be in their sight not only lawful and creditable, but desirable as a badge of aristocratic distinction, and as a “political, social, moral, and religious blessing,” and what obstacle would prevent these eight thousand persons from being turned into slaves, on any day, by the easy, cheap, and shorthand kidnapping of a legislative act? Africans can exist here, for the best of all reasons,—they do exist here. A state of slavery would not stop their respiration, nor cause them to vanish “into thin air.” Think, for a moment, of the complaints we constantly hear in certain circles, of the difficulty and vexatiousness of commanding domestic service. If no moral or religious objection existed against holding slaves, would not many of those respectable and opulent gentlemen who signed the letter of thanks to Mr. Webster, and hundreds of others indeed, instead of applying to intelligence offices, or visiting emigrant ships for “domestics,”as we call them, go at once to the auction room and buy a man or a woman with as little hesitancy or compunction as they now send to Brighton for beeves, or go to Tattersall’s for a horse? If the cold of the higher latitudes checks the flow of African blood, or benumbs African limbs, the slaveholder knows very well that a trifling extra expense for whips will make up for the difference.

But suppose a doubt could be reasonably entertained about the invasion of the new territories by slavery. Even suppose the chances to preponderate against it. What then? Are we to submit a question of human liberty over vast regions and for an indefinite extent of time, to the determination of chance? With all my faculties I say,No!Let me ask any man, let me respectfully ask Mr. Webster himself, if it were his own father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters, who were in peril of such a fate, whether he would abandon them to chance,—even to a favorable chance. Would he suffer their fate to be determined by dice or divination, when positive prohibition was in his power? And by what rule of Christian morality, or even of enlightened heathen morality, can we deal differently with the kindred of others from what we would with our own? He is not a Christian whose humanity is bounded by the legal degrees of blood, or by general types of feature.

But Mr. Webster would not “taunt” the south. Neither would I. I would not taunt any honorable man, much less a criminal. Still, when the most precious interests of humanity are in peril, I would not be timid. I would not stop too long to cull lovers’ phrases. Standing under the eye of God, in the forum of the world and before the august tribunal of posterity, when the litigants are freedom and tyranny, and human happiness and human misery the prize they contest, it should happen to the sworn advocate of liberty, as Quintiliansays it did to Demosthenes, “not to speak and to plead, but to thunder and to lighten.” Mr. Webster would not taunt the south; and yet I say the south were never so insulted before as he has insulted them. Common scoffs, jeers, vilifications, are flattery and sycophancy compared with the indignities he heaped upon them. Look at the facts. The south waged war with Mexico from one, and only one, motive; for one, and only one, object,—the extension of slavery. They refused peace unless it surrendered territory. That territory must be south of the abhorred line of 36° 30´. The same President who abandoned the broad belt of country on our northern frontier, from 49° to 54° 40´, to which we had, in his own words, “an unquestionable title,” would allow no prohibition of slavery to be imposed upon the territory which Mexico ceded, though she would bury it a foot deep in gold. The Proviso had been resisted in all forms, from the beginning. Southern Whigs voted against the ratification of the treaty, foreseeing the struggle that was to follow. Desperate efforts had been made, at the close of the last session of Congress, to smuggle in an unrestricted territorial government, against all parliamentary rule and all constitutional implication. The whole south, as one man, claimed it as a “describable, weighable, estimable, tangible,” and most valuable “right” to carry slaves there. Calhoun, Berrien, Badger, Mason, Davis,—the whole southern phalanx, Whig and Democrat, pleaded for it, argued for it, and most of them declared themselves ready to fight for it; and yet Mr. Webster rises in his place, and tells them they are all moonstruck, hallucinated, fatuous; because “an ordinance of nature and the will of God” had settled this question against them from the beginning of the world. Mr. Calhoun said, immediately after this speech, “Give us free scope and time enough, and we will take care of the rest.”

Mr. Masonsaid,—

“We have heard here from various quarters, and from high quarters, and repeated on all hands,—repeated here again to-day by the honorable senator from Illinois, [Mr.Shields,] that there is a law of nature which excludes the southern people from every portion of the state of California. I know of no such law of nature,—none whatever; but I do know the contrary, that if California had been organized with a territorial form of government only, and for which, at the last two sessions of Congress, she has obtained the entire southern vote, the people of the Southern States would have gone there freely, and have taken their slaves there in great numbers. They would have done so, because the value of the labor of that class would have been augmented to them many hundred fold. Why, in the debates which took place in the convention in California which formed the constitution, and which any senator can now read for himself, after the provision excluding slavery was agreed upon, it was proposed to prohibit the African race altogether, free as well as bond. A debate arose upon it, and the ground was distinctly taken, as shown in those debates, that if the entire African race was not excluded, their labor would be found so valuable that the owners of slaves would bring them there, even though slavery were prohibited, under a contract to manumit them in two or three years. And it required very little reasoning, on the part of those opposed to this class of population, to show that the productiveness of their labor would be such as to cause that result. An estimate was gone into with reference to the value of the labor of this class of people, showing that it would be increased to such an extent in the mines of California, that they could not be kept out. It was agreed that the labor of a slave in any one of the states from which they would be taken, was not worth more than one hundred or one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and that in California it would be worth from four to six thousand dollars. They would work themselves free in one or two years, and thus the country would be filled by a class of free blacks, and their former owners have an excellent bargain in taking them there.”

Yet Mr. Webster stands up before all this array, andsays, “Gentlemen, you are beside yourselves. You have eaten ‘of the insane root.’ You would look more in character should you put on the ‘cap and bells.’ In sober sense, in seeing his object clearly and in pursuing it directly, Don Quixote was Doctor Franklin, compared withyou. The dog in the fable, who dropped his meat to snap at his shadow, is no allegory in your case. I see two classes around me,—wise men and fools;youdo not belong to the former. The chancellor, who keeps the king’s idiots, should have custody of you.” Such is a faithful abstract of what Mr. Webster said to southern senators, and, through them, to all the south.

Here certainly was a reflection upon the understanding and intelligence of the south, such as never was cast upon them before. But the balm went with the sting. They bore the affront to their judgments, because it was so grateful to their politics and pockets. I think it no injustice to those senators to say, that they would have nearly torn Mr. Webster in pieces for such a collective insult, had it not promised to add, what Mr. Mason called “many hundred fold,” to their individual property, and to secure and perpetuate their political ascendency.

To help our conceptions in regard to Mr. Webster’s course on this subject, let us imagine a parallel case,—or, rather, an approximate one, for there can be no parallel. Suppose a contest between the north and the south, on the subject of the tariff, to have been raging for years. The sober blood of the north is heated to the fever point. The newspapers treat of nothing else. Public meetings and private conversations discuss no other theme. Hundreds of delegates wait upon Congress to add, if it be but a feather’s weight, to the scale which holds their interests. Petitions flow in, in thousands and tens of thousands. It is announced that Mr. Calhoun will pour out his great mind on thesubject. Expectation is on tiptoe. All eyes, from all sides of the country, are turned towards Washington, as the Moslem’s to Mecca. The senate chamber is packed, and the illustrious senator rises. After an historic sketch of existing difficulties, after reading from the speeches which he made in 1832 and in 1846, he proceeds to say that he withdraws all opposition to a tariff,—to any tariff! He will not offend the delicate nerves of northern manufacturers by further hostility. Were a bill then before him, he would not oppose it. “Take the schedules,” says he, scornfully, to northern senators, “and fill up the blanks from A to Z with what per centages you please. Forad valoremrates, put in minimums and maximums at your pleasure. I will ‘taunt’ you no longer. I am for peace and the glorious Union. I have discovered an irrepealable and irreversible law of nature, which overrules all the devices of men. You cannot make one yard of woollens or cottons in New England. There, water has no gravity, steam has no force, and wheels will not revolve. In Vermont and New York, wool will not grow on sheep’s backs. I have penetrated the geology of Pennsylvania, and through all its stratifications there is not a thimble full of coal, nor an ounce of iron ore; and, if there were, combustion would not help to forge it; for oxygen and carbon are divorced. As Massachusetts contributed one third of the men and one third of the money to carry on the revolutionary war, I am willing to compensate her for her lost blood and treasure to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, with which she may fertilize the barrenness of her genius, and indulge her insane love for churches and schools.” Had the great southern senator spoken thus, I think that even idolatrous, man-worshipping South Carolina,—a state which Mr. Calhoun has ruled and moved for the last twenty-five years, as a puppet showman plays Punch and Judy,—wouldhave sent forth, through all her organs, a voice of unanimous dissent.

As much as freedom is higher than tariff, so much stronger than their dissent should be ours.

Mr. Webster’s averment that he would not “reäffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reënact the will of God,” (p. 44,) has been commented on more pungently than I am able or willing to do. It has been well said that all law and all volition must be in harmony with the will of the Good Spirit, or with that of the evil one; and if we will not reënact the will of the former, then, either all legislation ceases, or we must register the decrees of the latter. But one important and pertinent consideration belongs to this subject, which I have nowhere seen developed. It is this: Endless doubts and contradictions exist among men, as to what is the will of God; and on no subject is there a wider diversity of opinion than on this very subject of slavery. Whose law was reënacted by the ordinance of 1787? whose, when the African slave trade was prohibited? whose, when it was declared piracy? True, it is useless to put upon our statute books an astronomical law, regulating sunrise, or high tides; but that is physical and beyond the jurisdiction of man, while slavery belongs to morals, and is within the jurisdiction of man. Cease to transcribe upon the statute book what our wisest and best men believe to be the will of God in regard to our worldly affairs, and the passions which we think appropriate to devils will soon take possession of society. In regard to slavery, piracy, and so forth, there are multitudes of men whose fear of the penal sanctions of another life is very much aided by a little salutary fine and imprisonment in this. Look at that noble array of principles which is contained in the Declaration of Rights in the constitution of Massachusetts. Is it not a most grand and beautiful exposition of “the will of God,”—a transcript, as it were, fromthe Book of Life? So of the amendments to the constitution of the United States. Yet our fathers thought it no tampering with holy things to enact them; and, in times of struggle and peril, they have been to many a tempted man as an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast.

I approach Mr. Webster’s treatment of the Texas question with no ordinary anxiety. Having been accustomed from my very boyhood to regard him as the almost infallible expounder of constitutional law, it is impossible to describe the struggle, the revulsion of mind, with which I have passed from an instructed and joyous acquiescence in his former opinions to unhesitating dissent from his present ones.

I must premise that I cannot see any necessary or beneficial connection between the subject of new Texan states and the admission of California and the government of the territories. The former refers to some indefinite future, when, from its fruitful womb of slavery, Texas shall seek to cast forth an untimely birth. In this excited state of the country, at this critical juncture of our affairs, when there is sober talk of massacring a majority of the House of Representatives on their own floor, and a senator, instead of merely threatening to hang a brother senator on the highest tree, provided he could catch him in his own state, now draws a revolver of six barrels on another brother senator, on the floor of the Senate, in mid-session; at such a time, I say, when, however few Abels there may be at work in the political field, there are Cains more than enough, would it not have been well to have acted upon the precept, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”?

As the basis of his argument, Mr. Webster quotes the following resolution for the admission of Texas, passed March 1, 1845:—

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