Whatever contrariety of views obtained, and regardless of the conflicting opinions of the courts or judges as to the effect of the great Ordinance on the condition of the slaves in the Northwestern Territory, certain it is that the Ordinance operated to prevent, after its date, the legal importation of slaves into the Territory, and hence resulted in each of the States formed therefrom becoming free States. In the light of history it seems certain that at least Indiana and Illinois would have become slave States but for the Ordinance.(26)
This Ordinance contained a clause requiring the rendition of fugitives from "service or labor," and being applicable to only a part of the Territory of the United States, partook of the nature of a compromise on the slavery question,(27) and was the first of a series of compromises, some of which are found in the Federal Constitution, others in the Act of 1820 admitting Missouri as a State, and also the Compromise Measures of 1850, in which Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Seward, and others of the great statesmen of the Union participated, all of which were, however, ruthlessly overthrown by the Nebraska Act (1854), of which Douglas, of Illinois, was the author.
The slavery-restriction section of the Ordinance was copied into and became a part of the Act of 1848 organizing the Territory of Oregon, the champions of slavery, then in Congress, voting therefor; and three years after the enactment of the Compromise Measures of 1850, this provision of the Ordinance was again extended over the newly organized Territory of Washington by the concurrent votes of substantially the same persons who voted, a year later, that all such legislation was unconstitutional.
But neither origin, age, nor precedent then sanctified anything in the interest of freedom,—slavery only could appeal to such things for justification. The propagators of human slavery were on the track of this Ordinance; they overtook and overthrew it by Congressional legislation in 1854; then by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, as we shall soon see. But it reappeared in principle, in 1862, as we shall also see, and spread its wings of universal liberty (as was its great author's purpose in 1784) over all the territory belonging to the United States, to remain irrepealable through time, immortalized by the approval of President Lincoln, and endorsed by the just judgment of enlightened mankind.
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia each held territory not subject to the Ordinance of 1787.
North Carolina (December, 1789), in ceding her territory west of her present limits, provided that:
"No regulations made or to be made by Congress shall tend to emancipate slaves."
Thus Tennessee became a slave State.
A year later (1790) Virginia consented to relinquish her remaining territory; as Kentucky it was (June 1, 1792) admitted into the Union and became a slave State, without ever having a separate territorial organization.
Georgia, in 1802, ceded the territory on her west to the United States, and provided that the Ordinance of 1787 should extend to the ceded territory, "the article only excepted which forbids slavery." Thus, later, Alabama and Mississippi each became a slave State.(28)
(14) Jefferson'sWorks, vol. ix., 276.
(15) The authorship of the admirably-drawn Ordinance has been much in dispute. Thomas H. Benton, Gov. Edward Coles, and others attribute the authorship to Jefferson; Daniel Webster and others to Nathan Dane, while a son of Rufus King claimed him to be the author of the article prohibiting slavery. Wm. Frederick Poole, in a contribution to theNorth American Review, gives much of the credit of authorship to Mr. Dane, but the chief credit for the formation and the entire credit for the passage of the Ordinance to Dr. Manasseh Cutler,St. Clair Papers, vol. i, p. 122.
(16) On the continuing binding force of the Ordinance on States formed out of the Northwest Territory there has been some contrariety of opinion. In Ohio it was early held the Ordinance was more obligatory than the State Constitution, which might be amended by the people of the State, whereas the Ordinance could not. (5Ohio, 410, 416.) But see: 10 Howard (U. S.), 82, and 3 Howard, 589.
(17) Madison of Virginia, Rufus King of New York, Johnson of Connecticut, Blount and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, and Few of Georgia were members of both bodies.—Historical Ex., etc., Dred Scott Case (Benton), p. 37n.
The Ordinance was adopted July 13, 1787; the Constitution was adopted by the Convention September 17, 1787.
(18)St. Clair Papers, vol. i, p. 134.
(19) Dunn'sIndiana, p. 126.
(20)St. Clair Papers, vol. i, pp 120-1, note.Historical Ex., etc., Dred Scott Case, pp. 32-47, etc.Political Text Book, 1860 (McPherson), pp. 53-4.
(21) Not until 1844 did the highest court of Illinois decide (four to three) that a colored man, held as a slave by a descendant of an old French family, was free. Jarrot case (2 Gillman), 7Ill., 1.
(22)St. Clair Papers, vol. i., pp. 120, 206, and vol. ii, pp. 117-119, 318, 331.
(23) Much valuable information in relation to the legal history of slavery in the Northwest has been obtained from the manuscript of "An Unwritten Chapter of Illinois," by ex-U. S. Judge Blodgett, of Chicago.
(24) Statevs. Lasselle, 1Blatchford, 60.
(25) Cooley'sMichigan, pp. 136-7.
(26) For an exhaustive legal history of the slavery restriction clause of the Ordinance and its effect on slavery in the Northwest Territory, see Dunn'sIndiana, pp. 219-260.
(27)St. Clair Papers, vol. i., p. 122, note.
(28)Political Text-Book, 1860 (McPherson), p. 53.
The Convention to frame the Constitution met in Philadelphia (1787). George Washington was its President; it was composed of the leading statesmen of the new nation, sitting in a delegate capacity, but in voting on measures the rule of the then Congress was observed, which was to vote by States.
The majority of the thirteen States were then slave States, and all, save Massachusetts, still held slaves; and all the coast States indulged in the African slave trade.
Massachusetts provided for the abolition of slavery in 1780 by constitutional provision declaring that:
"All men are bornfree and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights," etc., by which declaration its highest judicial tribunal struck the shackles at once from every slave in the Commonwealth.
Connecticut provided in 1784 for freeing her slaves.
New Hampshire did not prohibit slavery by express law, but all persons born after her Constitution of 1776 were free; and slave importation was thereafter prohibited.
Pennsylvania, in 1780, by law provided for the gradual emancipation of slaves within her territory. To her German population and the Society of Friends the credit is mainly due for this act of justice. This Society had theretofore (1774) disowned, in its "yearly Meeting," all its members who trafficked in slaves; and later (1776) it resolved:
"That the owners of slaves, who refused to execute proper instruments for giving them their freedom, were to be disowned likewise."
New York adopted gradual emancipation in 1799, but final emancipation did not come until 1827.
Rhode Island, in the first year of the First Continental Congress (1774), enacted:
"That for the future no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into the colony . . . and that all previously enslaved persons on becoming residents of Rhode Island should obtain their freedom."
New Jersey in 1778, through Governor Livingstone, made an attempt at emancipation which failed; it was not until 1804 that she prohibited slavery in what proved a qualified way, and it seems she held slaves at each census, including that of 1860, and possibly in some form human slavery was abolished there by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The census of 1790 showed slaves in all the original States save Massachusetts alone; Vermont was admitted into the Union in 1790; her Constitution prohibited slavery, but she returned at that census seventeen slaves.
The first census under the Constitution, however, showed, in the Northern States, 40,370 slaves, and in the Southern States, 657,572; there being in Virginia alone 293,427, nearly one half of all.
The Convention closed its work September 17, 1787, and on the same date George Washington, its President, by letter submitted the "Constitution to the consideration of the United States in Congress assembled," saying:
"It is obviously impracticable in the Federal Government of these States to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and yet provide for the interest and safety of all. . . . In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American,the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety; perhaps our national existence."
This Constitution by its preamble showed it was, in many things, to supersede and become paramount to State authority. It was to become acharter of freedomfor the people collectively, and in some sense individually. Its preamble runs thus:
"We, thepeopleof the United States, in order to form amoreperfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Nine States were, by its seventh article, necessary to ratify it before it went into effect.
The ratification of the Constitution, on various grounds, was fiercely opposed by many patriotic men, Patrick Henry among the number. Some thought it did not contain sufficient guarantees for individual freedom, others that private rights of property were not adequately secured, and still others that States were curtailed or abridged of their governmental authority and too much power was taken from the people and centered in the Federal Government. Mason, of Virginia, a member of the Convention that framed it, led a party who opposed it on the ground, among others, that it authorized Congress to levy duties on imports and to thus encourage home industries and manufactories, promotive of free labor, inimical and dangerous to human slavery. The best efforts and influence of Washington and other friends of the Constitution would not have been sufficient to secure its ratification had they not placated many of its enemies by promising to adopt, promptly on its going into effect, the amendments numbered one to ten inclusive. (The First Congress, September 25, 1789, submitted those ten amendments according to the agreement, and they were shortly thereafter ratified and became a part of the Constitution.)
By a resolution of the Old Congress, of September 13, 1788, March 4, 1789, was fixed as the time for commencing proceedings under the Constitution. At the date of this resolution eleven of the thirteen States had ratified it. North Carolina ratified it November 21, 1789, and Rhode Island, the last, on May 29, 1790.
Vermont, not of the original thirteen States, ratified the ConstitutionJanuary 10, 1791, over a month prior to her admission into theUnion. This latter event occurred February 18, 1791.
Thus fourteen States became, almost at the same time, members of the Union under the Constitution, and each and all of which then held or had theretofore held slaves.
Notwithstanding all this, there were many of the framers of the Constitution and its warmest friends who sincerely desired to provide for the early abolition of slavery, some by gradual emancipation, others by heroic measures; and there were many from the South who favored emancipation, while by no means all the leading and influential citizens of the Northern States desired it.
It may, however, be assumed, in the light of authentic history, that the majority of the framers of the Constitution, and a majority of its friends in the States, hoped and believed that slavery would not be permanent under it. In this belief it was framed. Slavery was not affirmatively recognized in it, though there was much discussion as to it in the Constitutional Convention. There was no attempt to abolish it; such an attempt would have failed in the Convention, and the Constitution, so necessary to the new nation, had it even provided for gradual emancipation, would not have been ratified by the States.
It can hardly be said that the Constitution was framed on the line of compromise as to the preservation of human slavery, though it was necessary, in some occult ways, to recognize its existence. This was in the nature, however, of a concession to it; the wordslaveorslaverywas not used in it.
The Supreme Court of the United States, however, early interpreted the third clause of Section IV., Article 2, as providing for the return from one State to another of fugitive slaves. This interpretation has been, on high authority, and with much reason, in the light of history, stoutly denied. The clause reads:
"No personheld to service or laborin one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor is due."
The "service or labor" here referred to, it is claimed, was that owing by persons who were under indentures of some kind, growing out of contracts for transportation into the colonies of persons from the Old World, and possibly growing out of other contract obligations wherein they had agreed, for a long or short term, to perform "service or labor." Many such obligations then existed.
Slaves were not then nor since regarded by their owners as "persons" merely "held to service or labor," but they were held as personal chattels, owing no duty to their masters distinguishable from that owing by an ox, a horse, or an ass.
But the supreme judiciary and the executive and legislative departments of the government came soon to treat this as a fugitive- slave clause. It is only now interesting to examine its peculiar phraseology and the history and surrounding circumstances under which it became a part of the Constitution, to demonstrate the great care and desire of the eminent and liberty-loving framers of the Constitution to avoid the direct recognition of African slavery.
The only other clause in which the adherents of slavery claimed it was recognized is paragraph 3, Section 2, Article I., which provided that:
"Representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States . . . according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed,three fifths of all other persons."
The "other persons" referred to here, if only slaves, are very delicately described. But this clause, too, came to be recognized by all the departments of the government as referring to slaves. It is quite sure that if the good and plain men of the Revolutionary period had been dealing with a subject not shocking to their consciences, sense of justice, and humanity, they would have dealt with it in plain words, of direct and not doubtful import.
The clause of the Constitution giving representation in the House of Representative of Congress and in the Electoral College in the choice of President and Vice-President, came soon to be regarded as unjust to the free States. Three fifths of all slaves were counted to give representation to free persons of the South; that is, three fifths of allslave propertywas counted numerically, and thus, in many Congressional districts, the vote of one slaveholder was more than equal to two votes in a free State. For example, in 1850, the number of free inhabitants in the slave States was 6,412,605, and in the free States, 13,434,686, more than double. The representation in Congress from the slave States was 90 members, from the free States 144. Three fifths of the slaves were 1,920,182, giving the South 20 (a fraction more) members, the ratio of representation then being 93,420. If the 234 representatives had been apportioned equally, according to free inhabitants, the North would have had 159 and the South 75, a gain of fifteen to the free and a loss of that number to the slave States, a gain of 30 to the North.
The same injustice was shown in levying direct taxes. (All this, however, has been changed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.)
The same discriminating language is used (Sec. 9, Art. I.) when obviously referring to the African slave trade. A strong sentiment existed in favor of putting an end at once to the traffic in human being; the Christian consciences of our forefathers revolted at its wickedness, and there was then beginning a general movement throughout the civilized world against it. Some European countries had denounced it as piracy.
It was, however, profitable, and much capital was invested in it, and there was even then an increased demand for slaves in the cotton, rice, and tobacco States.
It was feared so radical a measure as the immediate stoppage of this trade would endanger the Constitution, and as to this, also, it was deemed wise to compromise; so Congress was prohibited from legislating to prevent it prior to the year 1808. This trade was not only then carried on by our own people, but, through ships of other countries, slaves were imported into the United States. Each State was left free to prohibit the importation of slaves within its limits.
We have now referred to all the clauses of the Constitution as originally adopted relating, by construction or possibility, to slavery or slave labor.
The Republic, under thisgreat charter, set out upon the career of a nation, properly aspiring to become of the first among the powers of the earth, and succeeding in the higher sense in this ambition, it yet remains to be told how near our Republic came, in time, to the brink of that engulfing chasm which in past ages has swallowed up other nations for their wicked oppression and enslavement of man.
Slavery, thus delicately treated in our Constitution, brought that Republic, in less than three quarters of a century, to the throes of death, as we shall see.
It may be well here, before speaking of slavery in its legislative history under the Constitution, to refer briefly to some of the more important causes of its growth and extension, other than political.
First in importance was cotton. It required cheap labor to cultivate it with profit, and even then, at first, it was not profitable. The invention by Whitney of the cotton-gin, in 1793, was the most important single invention up to that time in agriculture, if not the most important of any time, and especially is this true as affecting cotton planters.
Cotton was indigenous to America; the soil and climate of the South were well adapted to its growth. Its culture from the seed was there very easy, but the separation of the seed from the fibre was so slow that it required an average hand one day to secure one pound.
Whitney's cotton-gin, however, at once increased the amount from one to fifty pounds.
This invention came at a most opportune time for slavery in the United States, as the cheapness of rice, indigo, and other staples of the South were such as to prevent their large and profitable production even with the labor of slaves. Cotton was not, in 1794, the date of Jay's treaty with Great Britain, known to him as an article of export. Soon, by the use of the cotton-gin, cotton became the principal article of export from the United States; cotton plantations rapidly increased in size and number, and their owners multiplied their slaves and grew rich. Cotton production increased from 1793 to 1860 one thousand fold.
It is highly probably that Eli Whitney's cotton-gin operated to prevent the much-hoped-for early emancipation of slaves in America, and that thus the inventive genius of man was instrumental in forging the fetters of man.
Other products, such as rice and sugar, were successfully produced in the South, but the demand for them was limited by competition in other countries, in some of which slave labor was employed. The ease of producing cotton stimulated its common use throughout the world, and it soon became a necessary commodity in all civilized countries. "Cotton is king" was the cry of the slaveholder and the exporter. Southern aristocracy rested on it. In the more northern of the slave States, where cotton, on account of the climate, could not be successfully grown, the breeding of slaves with which to supply the cotton planters with the requisite number of hands became a source of great profit; and the slave trade was revived to aid in supplying the same great demand.
Tobacco and some of the cereals were also produced by slave labor, but they could be produced by free labor North as well as South. Of the above 3,000,000 slaves in the United States in 1850, it has been estimated that 1,800,000 were employed in the growth and preservation of cotton alone, and its value that year was $105,600,000, while the sugar product was valued, the same year, at only $12,400,000, and rice at $3,000,000. The total domestic exports for the year ending 1850 were $137,000,000, of which cotton reached $72,000,000, and all breadstuffs and provisions only $26,000,000.(29)
(29) DeBow'sResource, etc., vol. iii., p. 388.
Contemporaneous with the cotton-gin came, in 1793, the first fugitive- slave law.
The Constitution was not self-executing, if it really contained, as we have seen, a clause requiring escaped slaves to be surrendered from one State to their masters in another.
The Governor of the State of Virginia refused the rendition of three kidnappers of a free negro, on the requisition of the Governor of Pennsylvania, from which State he had been kidnapped, on the sole ground that no law required the surrender of fugitive slaves from Virginia. The controversy thus arising was called to the attention of President Washington and by him to Congress, and it ended by the passage of the first fugitive-slave act. It was for a time tolerably satisfactory to the different sections of the country, though in itself the most flagrant attempt to violate state-rights, judged from the more modern secession, state-rights standpoint, ever attempted by Federal authority.
It requiredstate magistrates, who owed their offices solely to state law, to sit in judgment in fugitive-slave cases, and to aid in returning to slavery negroes claimed as slaves by masters from foreign States. The act provided for the return of fugitive apprentices as well as fugitive slaves.
In time the Northern States became free, and the public conscience in them became so changed that the magistrates were deterred or unwilling to act in execution of the law. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania each passed a law making it penal for any of their officers to perform any duties or to take cognizance of any case under the fugitive-slave law. Other States, through their judiciary, pronounced it unconstitutional, even some of the Federal judges doubted its consonance with the Constitution, but, such as it was, it lasted until 1850. It did not provide for a jury trial. The scenes enacted in its execution shocked the moral sense of mankind, and even the slaveholder often shrank from attempting its execution.
But it was not until about the time of the excitement of the fugitive- slave law of 1850 that the highest excitement prevailed in the North over its enforcement, and of this we shall speak hereafter.
In the English Parliament, in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, the first motion was made towards the abolition of the slave trade, long theretofore fostered by English kings and queens, but not until 1807 did the British moral sense rise high enough to pass, at Lord Granville's instance, the famous act for "the Abolition of the Slave Trade." As early as 1794 the United States prohibited their subjects from trading in slaves to foreign countries; and in 1807, they prohibited the importation of slaves into any of the States, to take effect at the beginning of 1808, the earliest time possible, as we have seen, under the Constitution. But it was not until 1820 that slave-traders were declared pirates, punishable as such.
The prohibition of the slave trade by law did not effectually end it, nor was the law declaring it piracy wholly effectual, though the latter did much, through the co-operation of other nations, to restrict it.
There were active movements in 1852 and 1858, in the South, to revive the African slave trade, and especially was there fierce opposition to the "piracy act." Jefferson Davis, at a convention in Mississippi, July, 1858, advocated the repeal of the latter act, but doubted the practicability then of abrogating the law prohibiting slave traffic.(30)
It is worthy of mention here that April 20th, eight days after Sumter was fired upon, Commander Alfred Taylor, commanding the United States naval shipSaratoga, in the port of Kabenda, Africa, captured theNightingale of Boston, flying American colors, with a cargo of 961 recently captured, stolen, or purchased African negroes, destined to be carried to some American part and there sold into slavery. This human cargo was sent to the humane Rev. John Seys, at Monrovia, Liberia, to be provided for. One hundred and sixty died on a fourteen-days' sea-voyage, from ship-fever and confinement, though the utmost care was taken by Lieutenant Guthrie and the crew of the slaver for their comfort.(31)
The laws abolishing the foreign slave trade and prohibiting the introduction of African slaves (after 1807) into the United States even helped to rivet slavery more firmly therein. They more than doubled the value of a slave, and, therefore, incited slave-breeding to supply the increasing demand in the cotton States, and in time this proved so profitable that the South sought new territory whence slavery could be extended, and out of which slave States could be formed.
The "Declaration against the Slave Trade" of the world, signed by the representatives of the "Powers" at the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, and repeated at the Congress of Paris at the end of the Napoleonic wars, was potential enough to abate but not to end this most inhuman and sinful trade.(32)
Even as late as 1816, English merchants, supported by the corporations of London and Liverpool, through mercantile jealousy, and pretending to believe that the very existence of commerce on the seas and their own existence depended on the continuance of the slave trade, not only opposed the abolition of the black slave traffic, but they opposed the abolition ofwhite slaveryin Algiers.(33)
This nefarious traffic did not cease in the United States, although at the Treaty of Ghent (1815) it was declared that: "Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice," and the two countries (Great Britain and the United States) therein stipulated to use their best endeavors to abolish it.
The revival of the slave trade was openly advocated by leading Southern politicians, and the illicit traffic greatly increased immediately after the admission into the Union of Texas as a State and the aggressions on Mexico for more slave territory, and especially just after the discussions over the Compromise measures of 1850 and the Nebraska Act of 1854, followed by the Dred Scott decision in 1857. It was principally carried on under the United States flag, the ships carrying it denying the right of search to foreign vessels engaged in suppressing the trade. British officials claimed in June, 1850, "that at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade was carried on under the American flag." The fitting out of slavers centred at New York city; Boston and New Orleans being good seconds. Twenty-one of twenty-two slavers taken by British cruisers in 1857-58 were from New York, Boston, and New Orleans.
"During eighteen months of the years 1859-60 eighty-five slavers are reported to have fitted out in New York harbor, and these alone transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually to America."(34)
The greed of man for gain has smothered and will ever smother the human conscience. The slave trade, under the denunciation of piracy, still exists, and will exist until African slavery ceases throughout the world. So long as there is a demand, at good prices, this wicked traffic will go on, and in the jungles of Africa there will be found stealers of human beings.
(30) Rhode'sHist. United States, vol. ii., p. 372.
(31) Official Records, etc.,Navies of the War of the Rebellion, vol. i., p. 11.
(32) It stands to the eternal credit of Napoleon that on his return from Elba to Paris (1815) he decreed for France the total abolition of the slave-trade. This decree was confirmed by the Bourbon dynasty in 1818.Suppression of African Slave Trade U. S.(DuBois), p. 247.
(33) Osler'sLife of Exmouth, p. 303;Slavery, Letters, etc., Horace Mann, p. 276.
(34)Sup. of African Slave Trade(DuBois) pp. 135, 178-9.
In 1803, Napoleon, fearing that he could not hold his distant American possession, known as the Louisiana Province, acquired from Spain, and which by treaty was to be re-ceded to Spain and not disposed of to any other nation, put aside all scruples and good faith, and for 60,000,000 francs, on April 30th signed a treaty of cession of the vast territory, then mostly uninhabited, to the United States. This was in Jefferson's administration.
The United States bought this domain and its people just as they might buy unoccupied lands with animals on it.
It was early claimed as slave territory. There were only a few slaves within its limits when purchased, though slavery was recognized there. This purchase was a most important one, although at the time it was not so regarded.
The Louisiana Purchase was much greater, territorially speaking, than all the States then in the Union, with all its other possessions.(35)
It comprised what are now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, nearly all of Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, large parts of Colorado and the Indian Territory, and a portion of Idaho. These States and Territories in 1890 contained 11,804,101 inhabitants.
At the time of this great acquisition a conviction prevailed that slavery was rapidly diminishing. Adams and Jefferson, each, while President, entertained the belief that slavery would, ere long, come to a peaceful end. It might then have been possible, by law of Congress, to devote this new region to freedom, but, as slavery existed at and around New Orleans in 1812 when the State of Louisiana was admitted into the Union, it became a slave State. This fate was largely due to the claim of its original inhabitants that they were secured the right to hold slaves by the treaty of cession from France.
Later on, the provision of this treaty, under which it was claimed slavery was perpetuated, was a subject of much discussion, and on it was founded the most absurd arguments on behalf of the slave power.
Its third article was the sole one referred to as fastening forever the institution of slavery on the inhabitants of this vast empire. There are those yet living who deny that, even under the present Constitution of the United States or the constitutions of the States since erected therein, slavery islawfullyexcluded therefrom.
This article reads:
"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty,property, and the religion they profess."
Justice Catron, of the United States Supreme Court, speaking in the Dred Scott case, for the majority of the court and of this article, says:
"Louisiana was a province where slavery was not only lawful, but where property in slaves was the most valuable of all personal property. The province was ceded as aunit, with an equal right pertaining to all its inhabitants, in every part thereof, to own slaves."
He and others of the concurring justices held that the inhabitants at the time of the purchase, also all immigrants after the cession, were protected in the right to hold slaves in the entire purchase.
Near the close of his opinion, still speaking of this article and the acquired territory, he says:
"The right of the United States in or over it depends on the contract of cession, which operates to incorporate as well the Territory as its inhabitants into the Union.
"My opinion is that the third article of the treaty of 1803, ceding Louisiana to the United States, stands protected by the Constitution, and cannot be repealed by Congress."
This view was heroically combatted by a minority of the court, especially by Justices McLean and Curtis. The latter, in his opinion, said
"That a treaty with a foreign nation cannot deprive Congress of any part of its legislative power conferred by the people, so that it no longer can legislate as it is empowered by the Constitution."
Also, that if the treaty expressly prohibited (as it did not) the exclusion of slavery from the ceded territory the "court could not declare that an act of Congress excluding it was void by force of the treaty. . . . A refusal to execute such a stipulation would not be a judicial, but a political and legislative question. . . . It would belong to diplomacy and legislation, and not to the administration of existing laws."(36)
Plainly no part of the treaty of cession fastened slavery, or any other institution of France, on the territory ceded to the United States. If its provisions were violated by the United States, France, internationally, or the inhabitants at the date of the treaty, might have complained and had redress. Obviously the treaty had no bearing on the question of slavery in the United States, but its provisions were seized upon, as was every possible pretext, by the votaries of slavery to maintain and extend it.
It was also, by a majority of the court, held in this memorable case (hereafter to be mentioned) that under the third article of the cession slaves could be taken from any State into any part of the Louisiana Purchase during its territorial state, and there held, and hence that the Missouri Compromise, of 1820, forbidding slavery in the territory north of 36° 30´, was in violation of the treaty and was unconstitutional, as were all other acts of Congress excluding slavery from United States territory. This was in the heyday (1857) of the slave power, and when it aspired, practically, to make slavery national.
This aggressive policy, as we shall see when we come to consider the Nebraska Act of 1854 relating to a principal part of the Louisiana Purchase, led to a great uprising of the friends of freedom, the political overthrow of the advocates of slavery in most branches of the Union; then to secession; then to war, whence came, with peace, universal freedom, and slavery in the Republic forever dead.
(35) For map showing territory acquired by the U. S., by each treaty, etc., seeHistory Ready Ref., vol. v., p. 3286, andLouisiana Purchase(Hermann, Com. Gen. Land Office). The original thirteen States and Territories comprised 8,927,844 sq. mi. The Louisiana Purchase, 1,171,931, sq. mi.
(36) Dred Scott Case, 19 Howard, 393, etc.
Florida did not become a slave colony even on being taken possession of by the English in 1763, nor on its re-conquest by Spain in 1781.
By the treaty of peace at the end of the war of the Revolution (1783) Great Britain recognized as part of the southern boundary of the United States a line due east from the Mississippi at 31° of latitude; and at the same time, by a separate treaty, she ceded to Spain the then two Floridas. Florida became a refuge for fugitive slaves from Georgia and South Carolina.
"Georgians could never forget that thefugitiveslaves were roaming about the Everglades of Florida."(37)
The Seminole Indians welcomed to their wild freedom the escaped negro from the lash of the overseer, and consequently the long and bloody Florida Indian wars were literally a slave hunt. The wild tribes of Indians knew no fugitive-slave law.
In the War of 1812, Spain permitted the English to occupy, for their purposes, some points in Florida. When the war ended they abandoned a fort on the Appalachicola, about fifteen miles above its mouth, with a large amount of arms and ammunition. This fort the fugitive negroes seized and held for aboutthree yearsas a refuge for escaped slaves, and, consequently, as a menace to slavery. It was during this time called "Negro Fort." At the instigation of slave owners, it was attacked by General Gaines of the United States Army.
"A hot shot penetrated one of the magazines, and the whole fort was blown to pieces, July 27, 1816. There were 300 negro men, women, and children, and 20 Choctaws in the fort; 270 were killed. Only three came out unhurt, and these were killed by the allied Indians."
Thus slavery established and maintained itself, through individual and national crime and blood, until the day when God's retributive justice should come. And we shall see how thoroughly His justice was meted out; how "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," measure of blood for measure of blood, anguish for anguish, came to the dominating white race!
It was not until February, 1821, that notice of the ratification of a treaty, made two years before, was received, by which Spain ceded Florida to the United States in consideration of their paying $5,000,000 in satisfaction of American claims against Spain.
This was not all the Republic paid for Florida. A second Seminole war (1835-43) ensued, the bloodiest and most costly of all our Indian wars, in which the Indians were assisted by fugitive slaves and their descendants, in whom the negro blood was admixed, often with the white blood of former masters, and again with the Indian.(38)
At the end of eight years, after many valuable lives had been lost, and $30,000,000 had been expended, but not until after the great Seminole leader (Osceola (39)) had been, by deliberate treachery and bad faith, captured, and the Indians had been worn out rather than conquered, Florida became an American province, and two years thereafter (1845) a slave State in the Union.
The extinction of the brave Seminole Indians left norace-friend of the poor enslaved negro. Untutored as they were, they knew what freedom was, and, until 1861, they were the only people on the American continent to furnish an asylum and to shed their blood for the wronged African.
Florida, as a slave State, was a factor in establishing a balance of power, politically, between the North and South.
As the war between the United States and Great Britain (1812-15) did not grow out of slavery, nor was it waged to acquire more slave territory, nor did it directly tend to perpetuate slavery where established, we pass it over.
(37) W. G. Summer'sAndrew Jackson, ch. iii.
(38) In 1821 at Indian Springs, Florida, a forced treaty was negotiated with the Creek Indians for part of their lands by which the United States agreed to apply $109,000 of the purchase price as compensation to Georgia claimants for escaped slaves, and $141,000 for "the offsprings which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage."—Rise and Fall of Slavery(Wilson), vol. i, 132,454.
(39)Osceola, orAs-Se-He-Ho-Lar(black drink), was the son of Wm. Powell, an English Indian-trader, born in Georgia, 1804, of a daughter of a Seminole chief. His mother took him early to Florida. He rose rapidly to be head war-chief, and married a daughter of a fugitive slave who was treacherously stolen from him, as a slave, while he was on a visit to Fort King. When he demanded of General Thompson, the Indian agent, her release, he was put in irons, but released after six days. A little later, December, 1835, he avenged himself by killing Thompson and four others outside of the fort, thus inaugurating the second Seminole war. He hated the white race, and his ambition was to furnish a safe asylum for fugitive slaves.
Surprises and massacres ensued for two years, Osceola showing great bravery and skill, andnotexcelling his white adversaries in treachery. He fought Generals Clinch, Gaines, Taylor and Jesup, of the U. S. A. Jesup induced him (Oct. 21, 1837) under a flag of truce to hold a parley near St. Augustine, where Jesup treacherously caused him to be seized, and the U. S. authorities (treating him as England treated Napoleon) immured him in captivity for life, hopelessly, at Fort Moultrie. His free spirit could not endure this, and he died of a broken heart three months later (January 30, 1838), at thirty-four years of age. His body lies buried on Sullivan's Island, afterwards the scene of a larger struggle for human freedom.
The remains of thecivilizedstatesman-champion of perpetualhumanslavery, Calhoun, and the remains of the savage, untutored SeminoleChief, Oscoeola, the champion ofhuman liberty, lie buried near Charleston, S. C. Let the ages judge each—kindly!
In pursuance of the policy of trying to balance, politically, freedom and slavery, and to deal tenderly with the latter, and not offend its champions, new States were admitted into the Union in pairs, one free and one slave.
Thus Vermont and Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana, Mississippi and Illinois were coupled, preserving in the Senate an exact balance of power.(40)
When Missouri had framed a Constitution (1819) and applied for admission into the Union, Alabama was on the point of admission as a slave State, and was admitted the same year, and thus the usage required the admission of Missouri as a free State. In 1790 the two sections were nearly equal in population, but in 1820 the North had nearly 700,000 more inhabitants than the South.
Missouri was a part of the Louisiana Purchase, and she had in 1820 above 10,000 slaves.
The usual form of a bill was prepared admitting her, with slavery, on an equal footing with other States. It came up for consideration in the House during the session of 1818-1819, and Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, precipitated a controversy, which was participated in by all the great statesmen, North and South, who were then on the political stage.
He offered to amend the bill so as to prohibit the further introduction of slaves into Missouri, and providing that all children born in the State after its admission should be free at twenty-five years of age.
This amendment was a signal for the fiercest opposition. Clay and Webster, Wm. Pinckney of Maryland, and Rufus King of New York, John Randolph of Roanoke, Fisher Ames, and others, who were in the early prime of their manhood, were heard in the fray. In it the first real threats of disunion, if slavery were interfered with, were heard. It is more than possible those threats pierced the ears of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who still survived,(41) and caused them to despair of the Republic.
It is worthy of note that none of the great statesmen engaged in this first memorable combat in which the Union was threatened in slavery's cause, lived to confront disunion in fact, face to face.
Clay, then Speaker of the House, and possessed of great influence, spoke first in opposition to the amendment. Though his speech, like others of that time, was not reported, we know he denied the power of Congress to impose conditions upon a new State after its admission to the Union. He maintained the sovereign right of each State to be slave or free. He did not profess to be an advocate of slavery. He, however, vehemently asserted that a restriction of slavery was cruel to the slaves already held. While their numbers would be the same, it would so crowd them in narrow limits as to expose them "in the old, exhausted States to destitution, and even to lean and haggard starvation, instead of allowing them to share the fat plenty of the new West."(42) (What an argument in favor of perpetuating an immoral thing! So spread it over the world as to make it thin, yet fatten it!)
Clay's arguments were the most specious and weighty of those made against the amendment. And they did not fail to claim the amendment was in violation of the third article of the cession of Louisiana, already, in another connection, referred to.
The Missouri delegate denounced the amendment as a shameful discrimination against Missouri and slavery, which would endanger the Union; in this latter cry a member from Georgia joined.
The friends of the amendment fearlessly answered Clay's speech and the speeches of others. The House was reminded that the great Ordinance of 1787, passed contemporaneous with the adoption of the Constitution, and approved and enforced by its framers (some of whom were also then members of the Continental Congress) imposed an absolute inhibition on slavery forever, precedent to the admission of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the other States to be formed from the Northwest Territory; they showed the treaty with France did not profess to perpetuate slavery in the ceded Territory; they denounced slavery as an evil, unnatural, cruel, opposed to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that it had only been tolerated, not approved, by the Constitution; and Mr. Talmadge closed the debate by characterizing slavery as a "scourge of the human race," certain to bring on "dire calamities to the human race"; ending by boldly defying those who threatened, if slavery were restricted, to dissolve the Union of the States. This amendment passed the House, 87 to 76, but was beaten, the same session, in the Senate, 22 to 16; one Senator from Massachusetts, one from Pennsylvania, and two from Illinois voted with the South. Again the too often easily frightened Northern statesmen struck their colors just when the battle was won.
In January (1820) of the succeeding Congress the measure was again under consideration in the Senate, then composed of only forty-four members. It was then that Rufus King and Wm. Pinckney, the former for, the latter against, the slavery restriction amendment, displayed their eloquence. Pinckney, a lawyer of much general learning, paraphrased a passage of Burke to the effect that "the spirit of liberty was more high and haughty in the slaveholding colonies than in those to the northward." He also planted himself, with others from the South, on state-sovereignty, afterwards more commonly called "state-rights," and in time tortured into a doctrine which led to nullification—Secession—War.
All these speeches were answered in both Houses by able opponents of slavery extension, but meantime a matter arose which did much to favor the admission of Missouri as a slave State.
Maine, but recently separated from Massachusetts, applied for statehood, and could not be refused.
A Senator from Illinois (Mr. Thomas) introduced a proviso which prohibited slavery north of 36° 30´ in the Louisiana acquisition, except in Missouri.
Here, again, at the expense of freedom, was an opportunity forcompromise. It was promptly seized upon. It was agreed that Maine, where by no possibility slavery would or could go, should come into the Union as a free State; Missouri as a slave State, and the proviso limiting slavery in the remaining territory south of 36° 30´ should be adopted. This compromise was adopted in the Senate, and later, after close votes on amendments, the House also agreed to it. John Randolph and thirty-seven Southern members voted against it, and, but for weak-kneed Northern members, it would have failed. This compromise Randolph said was a "dirty bargain," and the Northern members who supported it he denounced as "doughfaces,"—a coined phrase still known to our political vocabulary.
Missouri, however, did not become a State until August, 1821.Thus, for the time only was this question settled.
Of it Jefferson wrote, as if in prophecy:
"This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union."(43)
Clay wrote of the height to which the heated debate arose:
"The words civil war and disunion are uttered almost without emotion."(44)
(40) Later, Arkansas and Michigan (1836-7), Florida and Iowa (March 3, 1845) and Maine and Missouri were, in pairs—slave and free— admitted as States.
(41) Both died July 4, 1826.
(42) Hildreth, vol. vi., p. 664.
(43) Jefferson'sWorks, vol. vii., p. 159.
(44) Clay'sPriv. Cor., p. 61.
A debate arose in the United States Senate over a resolution of Senator Foote of Connecticut proposing to limit the sale of the public lands, which took a wide range. Hayne of South Carolina elaborately set forth the doctrine of nullification, claiming it inhered in each State under the Constitution. He boldly announced that the Union formed was only aleagueor acompact. This called forth from Webster his celebrated "Reply to Hayne," of January 26, 1830, in which he assailed and apparently overthrew the then new doctrine of nullification. He denounced its exercise as incompatible with a loyal adherence to the Constitution, and showed historically that the government formed under it was not a mere "compact" or "league" between sovereign or independent States terminable at will. He then asserted that any attempt of any State to act on the theory of nullification would inevitably entail civil war or a dissolution of the Union.
The first real attempt, however, at nullification, or the first attempt of a State to declare laws of Congress nugatory and of no binding force when not approved by the State, was made in South Carolina in 1832, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, then Vice-President of the United States, and hitherto a statesman of so much just renown, and esteemed so moderate and patriotic in his views on all national questions as to have been looked upon, with the special approval of the North, as eminently qualified for the Presidency. He hopefully aspired to it until he quarrelled with President Jackson; he had been in favor of a protective tariff.
Cotton was, as we have seen, the principal article of export, and the slaveholding cotton planters conceived the idea that to secure a market for it there must be no duties on imports, and that home manufactures of needed articles for consumption would restrict the foreign demand for the raw material. Besides, the South with its slave labor could not indulge in manufacturing. A tariff on imports meant protection to home industries and to free white labor, both inimical to slavery. Some leading Southern statesmen, adherents of slavery, had vehemently opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1787, on the ground that as it empowered Congress to levy import duties, it would encourage and build up home industries, with free labor; and they prophesied that with them slavery would eventually become unprofitable and therefore unpopular, hence would die. This idea never left the Southern mind, so, when the Confederacy of 1861 was formed, its Constitution (framed at Montgomery, Alabama) prohibited such duties for the express reason that no branch of industry was to be promoted in the new slave government, using this language:
"Nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry."(45)
This was then supposed to be the highest bulwark of slavery. Its votaries understood its strength and weakness. Independent, well- paid free labor and industries (46) would ennoble the men of toil, bring wealth and power, build up populous towns and cities, and consequently overwhelm, politically and otherwise, the institution of slavery, or draw into successful social competition with plantation life wealthy inhabitants who knew not slavery and its demoralizing influences.
Already, in 1832, the effects of protection on the prosperity of our country were manifest, especially since the Tariff Act of 1828, which levied a duty equivalent to 45 per cent. ad valorem. The Act of 1832 made a small reduction in the duties, but because it was claimed it did not distribute them equally, nullification was determined on as the remedy.
It was agreed by the strict constructionists of that day that a State Legislature could not declare a law of the United States void, but to do this thepeoplemust speak through a convention. Such a convention met in South Carolina, in November, 1832, and passed a Nullification Ordinance, declaring the tariff acts "null and void," not binding on the State, and that under them no duties should be paid in the State after February 1, 1833.
Immediately thereafter medals were struck, inscribed "John C. Calhoun, first President of the Southern Confederacy." Nullification, thus proclaimed, was the legitimate forerunner of secession.
President Jackson, with his heroic love of the Union, regarded the movement as onlytreason;he called it that in his proclamations; he prepared to collect the duties in Charleston or to confiscate the cargoes; he warned the nullifiers by the presence of General Scott there that he would be promptly used to coerce the State into loyalty; and he seemed eager to find an excuse for arresting, condemning for treason, and hanging Calhoun, who then went to Washington as a Senator, resigning the Vice-Presidency.(47)
Jackson tersely said:
"To say that any State may, at pleasure, secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation."
The situation was too imminent for Calhoun's nerves. To confront an indignant nation, led by a fearless, never doubting President, was a different thing then from what it was in 1860-61 with Buchanan as President, surrounded as he was by traitors in his Cabinet. Calhoun and his State backed down, and import duties continued to be collected in South Carolina, although a gradual reduction of them was made an excuse for Calhoun and his friends in Congress, in 1833, to vote for a protective tariff act, so recently before by them declared unconstitutional.(48)
On a "Force Bill" and a new tariff act being passed (March 15, 1833) the Nullification Ordinance was repealed in South Carolina. The next Ordinance of Secession of this State (1860) was based on the principles of the first one and the doctrines of Calhoun, slavery being the direct, as it had been the indirect, cause of their first enunciation. We must not anticipate here.
In the debate, in 1833, between Webster and Calhoun, the former, as in his great reply to Hayne,(49) expounded the Constitution as a "Charter of Union for all the States."
"The Constitution does not provide for events that must be preceded by its own destruction.
"That the Constitution is not a league, confederacy, or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacity, but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and creating direct relations between itself and individuals. That no State authority has power to dissolve these relations. That as to certain purposes the people of the United States are one people."
Nullification, attempted first on account of a protective tariff to foster home and young industries and for needed revenue to carry on the Federal government, was in two years, by its author, Calhoun, transferred, for a new cause on which to attempt to justify it— from the tariff to domestic slavery. Calhoun soon discovered and admitted that the South could not be united against the North and fordisunionon opposition to a protective tariff. He therefore promptly sought an opportunity to bring forward in Congress the slavery question, and to attack the "agitators" and opponents of slavery extension in the North, and to threaten disunion if the institution of slavery was not permitted to dictate the political policy of the Republic.
The exact method of reviving in Congress the whole subject of slavery so soon after nullification had been so signally suppressed by Jackson is worth briefly stating.
President Jackson, in his Annual Message, December, 1835, called attention to attempts to use the mails to circulate matter calculated to excite slaves to insurrection, but he did not recommend any legislation to prevent it. Mr. Calhoun moved in the Senate that so much of the message relating to mail transportation of incendiary publications be referred to a select committee of five.
He was made chairman of this committee, and, on his request, three others from the South, with but one from the North, were put on the committee, and he promptly made an elaborate and carefully- prepared report, going into the whole doctrine of states-rights and nullification.
In it he said:
"That the States which form our Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, bound together by a constitutionalcompact, and are possessed of all the powers belonging to distinct and separate States, etc.
"The Compact itself expressly provides that all powers not delegated are reserved to the States and the people. . . . On returning to the Constitution, it will be seen that, while the power of defending the country againstexternaldanger is found among the enumerated, the instrument is wholly silent as to the power of defending theinternalpeace and security of the States: and of course reserves to the States this important power, etc.
"It belongs to slave-holding States, whose institutions are in danger, and not toCongress, as is supposed by the message, to determine what papers are incendiary and intended to excite insurrection among the slaves, etc.
"It has already been stated that the States which comprise our Federal Union are sovereign and independent communities, united by a constitutional compact. Among its members the laws of nations are in full force and obligation, except as altered or modified by the compact, etc.
"Within their limits, the rights of the slave-holding States are as full to demand of the States within whose limits and jurisdiction their peace is assailed, to adopt the measures necessary to prevent the same, and, if refused or neglected,to resort to means to protect themselves, as if they were separate and independent communities."
Here, perhaps, was the clearest statement yet made, not only of the independence of States from Federal interference and of their right, on their own whim, to break the "compact," but of the right of the slaveholding States to dictate to the other States legislation on the subject of slavery.
It was at once a declaration of independence for the Southern States, and a declaration of their right to hold all the Northern States so far subject to them as to be obliged, on demand, to pass and enforce any prescribed law in the interest of slavery. The South was to be the sole judge of what law on this subject was requisite for slavery's purposes.
No duty was demanded on this question of the Federal Government; and Southern States, according to Calhoun, owed it none where slavery was concerned.
Calhoun and his committee could discover no power in the SouthernStates to enforce their demands save to act as separate andindependent communities—that is, by setting up for themselves.This led logically to disunion, the result intended.
There was much in this report setting forth and professing to believe that it was the purpose of the North to emancipate the slaves, and through the agencies of organized anti-slavery societies bring about slave insurrections. The fanaticism of the North was descanted on, and the character of slavery and its wisdom as a social institution upheld.
He further said:
"He who regards slavery in those States simply under the relation of master and slave, as important as that relation is, viewed merely as a question of property to the slave-holding section of the Union, has a very imperfect conception of the institution, and the impossibility of abolishing it without disasters unexampled in the history of the world. To understand its nature and importance fully, it must be borne in mind that slavery, as it exists in the Southern States, involvesnot only the relation of master and slave, but also the social and political relation of the two races, of nearly equal numbers, from different quarters of the globe, and the most opposite of all others in every particular that distinguishes one race of men from another."
The whole report was replete with accusations against the North, and full of warning as to what the South would do should its demands not be complied with. The bill brought in by the committee was more remarkable than the report itself, and wholly inconsistent with its doctrine.
The bill provided high penalties for any postmaster who should knowingly receive and put into the mail any publication or picturetouching the subject of slavery, to go into any State or Territory in which its circulationwas forbidden by state law.
The report concluded:
"Should such be your decision, by refusing to pass this bill, I shall say to the people of the South, look to yourselves.
"But I must tell the Senate, be your decision what it may, the South will never abandon the principles of this bill. . . . We have a remedy in our own hands."
Clay, Webster, Benton, and others ably and effectually combated both the report and the bill, and the latter failed (25 to 19) in the Senate.
Besides denying the doctrine of the report, they showed the evil was not in mailing, but in taking from the mails and circulating by their own citizens the supposed objectionable publications.
Benton, himself a slaveholder, then and in subsequent years assailed and pronounced the doctrine of this report as the "birth of disunion." He has also shown that Calhoun delighted over the agitation of slavery more than he deprecated it; that he profoundly hoped that on the slavery question the South would be united and a Slave-Confederacy formed.(50)
In support of this Mr. Benton quotes from a letter of Mr. Calhoun to a gentleman in Alabama (1847) in which he says:
"I am much gratified with the tone and views of your letter, and concur entirely in the opinion you express, that instead of shunning, we ought to court the issue with the North on the slavery question. I would even go one step further and add that it is our dutyto force the issueon the North. We are now stronger relatively than we shall be hereafter, politically and morally. Unless we bring on the issue, delay to us will be dangerous indeed. . . . Something of the kind was indispensable to the South. On the contrary, if we should not meet it as we ought, I fear, greatly fear, ourdoomwill be fixed."(51)
Comment is unnecessary, but the letter, almost exultantly, mentions as fortunate that the Wilmot Proviso was offered, as it gave an opportunity to unite the South.
It proceeds:
"With this impression, I would regard any compromise or adjustment of the proviso,or even its defeat, without meeting the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate for us.
"This brings up the question, how can it be so met, without resorting to the dissolution of the Union.
"There is and can be but one remedy short of disunion, and that is to retaliate on our part by refusing to fulfill the stipulations in their (other States) favor, or such as we may select, as the most efficient."
The letter, still proceeding to discuss modes of dissolution or retaliation against Northern States, declares a convention of Southern States indispensable, and their co-operation absolutely essential to success, and says:
"Let that be called, and let it adopt measures to bring about the co-operation, and I would underwrite for the rest. The non- slaveholding States would be compelled to observe the stipulations of the Constitutionin our favor, or abandon their trade with us,or to take measures to coerce us, which would throw on them the responsibility of dissolving the Union. Their unbounded avarice would in the end control them."(52)
It is certain that President Jackson's heroic proclamation of December, 1832, aborted the project of nullification under the South Carolina Ordinance, and certain it is, also, that the disappointed leaders of it turned from a protective tariff as a ground for it, to what they regarded as a better excuse, to wit: A slavery agitation, generated out of false alarms in the slave States.
After the tariff compromise of 1833, in which Calhoun sullenly acquiesced, he returned home and immediately announced that the South would never unite against the North on the tariff question, —"That the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep her out,—and consequently the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the slave question," which was then accordingly done.(53)
Jackson, discussing nullification, is reported to have said:
"It was thetariffthis time; next time it will be thenegro."
This new and dangerous departure was not overlooked. The report and bill of 1835 relating to the use of the mails was only a chapter in execution of the new plan.
The observing friends of the Union did not overlook or misunderstand the movement. They at once took alarm. Mr. Clay, in May, 1833, wrote a letter to Mr. Madison expressing his apprehensions of the new danger, which brought from him a prompt response.
Mr. Madison in his letter said:
"It is painful to see the unceasing efforts to alarm the South by imputations against the North of unconstitutional designs on the subject of the slaves. You are right. I have no doubt that no such intermeddling disposition exists in the body of our Northern brethren. Their good faith is sufficiently guaranteed by the interest they have as merchants, ship-owners, and as manufacturers, in preserving a union with the slave-holding states. On the other hand, what madness in the South to look for greater safety indisunion."(54)
What Clay and Madison saw in 1833 as the real starting-point for ultimate secession proved true to history. From that time dates the machinations which led, through the steps that successively followed, to actual dissolution of the Union in 1860-61; then to coercion—War; then to the eradication of slavery. It was Southern madness that hastened the destruction of American slavery. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The excuse for even this much significance given to "nullification" is, that in less than thirty years, under a new name—"state-rights" —it worked secession—disunion, and lit up the whole country with the flames and frenzy of internal war that did not die down for four years more; and then only when slavery was consumed.