Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:
If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could
better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth
year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident
promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of
that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly
augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have
been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house
to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest
the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its
advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all
the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let anyone who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal
combination -- piece of machinery, so to speak -- compounded of the Nebraska
doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only what
work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let
him study the history of its construction and trace, if he can, or rather
fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action
among its chief architects, from the beginning.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states
by state constitutions and from most of the national territory by congressional
prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing
that congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory
to slavery and was the first point gained.
But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an endorsement by the
people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already
gained and give chance for more.
This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as
well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," other-wise
called "sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though
expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted
in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one
man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed
to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself,
in the language which follows:
It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate
slavery into an territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to
leave the people there-of perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the
United States.
Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty"
and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition members,
"let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the
territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure;
and down they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving
the question of a Negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily
taken him first into a free state and then into a territory covered by
the congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time
in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the district
of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision
in the same month of May 1854. The Negro's name was Dred Scott, which
name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the
then next presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued
in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was
deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator
Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of
the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter
answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the endorsement, such
as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The endorsement,
however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly 400,000 votes,
and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The
outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible
echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the endorsement.
The Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered
a reargument.
The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the Court;
but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted
the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be.
Then, in a few days, came the decision.
The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make
a speech at this capital endorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently
denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to endorse and strongly construe that
decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had
ever been entertained!
At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of
the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas;
and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote
for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down
or voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares
not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other
than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public
mind -- the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much and
is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle!
If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle
is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine.
Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of
existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mold at the
foundry, served through one blast and fell back into loose sand; helped
to carry an election and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint
struggle with the Republicans against the Lecompton constitution involves
nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a
point -- the right of a people to make their own constitution -- upon
which he and the Republicans have never differed.
The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator
Douglas' "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its present
state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points
of that machinery are:
First, that no Negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant
of such slave can ever be a citizen of any state in the sense of that
term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made
in order to deprive the Negro, in every possible event, of the benefit
of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that
"the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several states."
Second, that, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither
Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United
States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may
fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as
property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution
through all the future.
Third, that whether the holding a Negro in actual slavery in a free state
makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not
decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state
the Negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to
be pressed immediately but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently
endorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion
that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the
free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other
one, or 1,000 slaves, in Illinois or in any other free state.
Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion,
at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted
down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially,
also, whither we are tending.
It will throw additional light on the latter to go back and run the mind
over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will
now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring.
The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution."
What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see.
Plainly enough, now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott
decision to afterward come in and declare the perfect freedom of the people
to be just no freedom at all.
Why was the amendment expressly declaring the right of the people voted
down? Plainly enough, now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche
for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the Court decision held up? Why even
a senator's individual opinion withheld till after the presidential election?
Plainly enough, now, the speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly
free" argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing
President's felicitation on the endorsement? Why the delay of a reargument?
Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision?
These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited
horse preparatory to mounting him when it is dreaded that he may give
the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-endorsement of the decision
by the President and others?
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result
of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions
of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and
by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance
-- and when we see these timbers joined together and see they exactly
make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly
fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few,
not omitting even scaffolding, or, if a single piece be lacking, we see
the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece
in -- in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen
and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning,
and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow
was struck.
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