A 
 
 Jtr 6 ° " • • <^ 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 •> 
 
 
 V *> 
 
 ^ C* 
 
 *b V 1 
 
 
 A«* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^0^ 
 
 
 
 
 % -r 4 ^ 
 
 38 /A 
 
 
 ^ ^V 
 
 
 *b 
 
 A 
 
 »;•. v ^ .* 
 
 t 0^ 
 
 £■" 
 
 ri- • ti 
 
 O 'o 
 
 '^v *^ ■<* „' 
 
 *bv* 
 
 K 
 
 
 vv 
 
 o 
 
 y~ o a 
 
 ■Jw* 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 ** 
 
 O * -^T&*« 
 
 
 *** ^ 
 
 
 
 
 snsx : : ^ 
 
 
 * o , 
 
 • * A <^ - 
 
 
 « V 6 • - • « <$^ 
 
 
 A t - 
 
 
 o 
 
 V 
 
 > 
 
 "V \flpv j 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 % °. 
 
o. * 
 
 rw, 
 
 
 .0 V * 
 
 
 
 1 •!. , °- > V »•"' 
 
 
 G 
 
 J» ^> *• . * * A 
 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 
 * 6 °* 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4^ v c » " • • ^ o V v • k '-* - o 
 
 
 
 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 .tames Mcdowell of Virginia, 
 
 WILMOT PROVISO. 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1850. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL CLOBE OFFICE. 
 
 1850. 
 
* 
 
 * f\ rv 
 
TTTE WILMOT PROVISO. 
 
 This hill, together with several proposed amendments 
 thereto, including one for the imposition of^the " VVilmot 
 proviso" upon the territorial Governments of Utah and New 
 Mexico, being under consideration — 
 
 Mr. McDOWELL saW, that at this late 
 hour of legislative proceedings upon the mat- 
 ters before the House, when the House and 
 the country bothV were weary of any further 
 discussion upon them, and were impatient for 
 immediate decision, he felt that notwithstanding 
 his own almost habitual forbearance of debate, 
 he was now pushing his rights of speech to 
 the very verge of offensiveness and intrusion. 
 So strong, indeed, was this feeling, that much as 
 he had intended and desired to discuss the Senate 
 bills when they were first reported to the House, 
 and have given to this and some others of them 
 such support as he was able, he had relinquished 
 his intention to do so, and but for the attempt to 
 fasten the " Wilmot proviso" upon the territorial 
 governments, he would not, at this moment, have 
 risen to offer a thought to this House. But that 
 proviso is in itself so hateful and hated — so revolt- 
 ing to the sense of constitutional equality and 
 right amongst his own constituents and those of 
 every other southern Representative — so filled with 
 capabilities and issues of national commotion, and 
 it may even be of national conflict and ruin — that 
 he considers it his duty, as long as it is here, and 
 is deliberately pressed upon this body for adop- 
 tion, to do all that he can to resist and to put 
 it down. Hence he has risen now. But before 
 he proceeds to the general remarks upon this and 
 its associate subjects which he desires to submit, 
 and in order to disembarrass them from any con- 
 nection with a topic so unimportant to the House 
 and to the public as himself individually, and to 
 which he is somewhat constrained to refer, he 
 considers it proper to say at the outset, that 
 it was his fortune, eighteen or twenty years 
 ago, when a member of the House of Dele- 
 gates of Virginia, to make a speech in that body 
 upon the institution of slavery, in which he in- 
 quired into and exposed its nature, claims, and 
 consequences, with the fearlessness and freedom 
 which became him, as he believed, in his double 
 capacity of citizen and delegate. Portions of his 
 speech have, again and again, during the present 
 and past sessions of Congress, been referred to by 
 gentlemen in the other wing of the Capitol as well 
 
 as in this, always, so far as he has noticed, with 
 overwrought compliment, but almost always, too, 
 with the apparent purpose of finding in them some- 
 thing to justify their own opinions and course, and 
 to control or tocondemn his. Whatever that speech 
 is, Mr. Speaker, (said Mr. McD.) I mean to leave it 
 to itself, unrevoked, unchanged, and undefended. 
 Whether its sentiments be true or false, wise or 
 foolish, it is at least, undeniable that they were 
 spoken at the right place, to the right audience, 
 and invoked action of the right parties. They 
 were addressed to the people of Virginia, through 
 their Legislature; to those who had established by 
 their laws the institution spoken of, and who, and 
 who only, within the limits of their State, had any 
 rightful authority to modify, abolish, or maintain 
 it. If the relation of Congress to this subject, in 
 authority or in any other respect, were the same 
 with that of the Legislature of Virginia, it would 
 be obviously fair and just in that case, but in that 
 only, that my opinions and course upon it in that 
 body should be held up for acknowledgment or dis- 
 avowal in this. 
 
 Whatever the opinions I have expressed or en- 
 tertain upon the institution of slavery in the ab- 
 stract, I have never doubted for a moment, thataa 
 the white and the black/aces now live together in 
 the southern States, iu4 an indispensable institu- 
 tion for them both. Physical amalgamation be- 
 tween them is impossible, and would be ruinous if 
 it were possible. Political and civil amalgama- 
 tion, allowing an equality of power in the govern- 
 ment, and of rights under it, is just as impossible; 
 and though thought of and attempted in a few of 
 the States, where the number of blacks, instead of 
 being equal to or greater than the whites, as in some 
 of the southern States, amounts to but a small per 
 cent, of the whole, has even there been rejected 
 as inadmissible and improper. Emancipation, with 
 
 ^rights of residence arid proptrty, but exclusion 
 from social, civil, and political equality, would 
 conduct, sooner or later, thtough the irrepressible 
 heart-burnings and passions of human nature, to a 
 war of colors, the bloodiest and cruelest of all wars, 
 because founded upon an ineffaceable distinction, 
 and therefore only capable of being stopped by 
 
 •1 the extermination of one or other of its parties. 
 Regarding this as the dreadful, but inevitsHe fa- 
 tality of giving freedom to the southern slaves 
 without removing them to some other land, I can- 
 
not and do not doubt but that their present condi- 
 tion is the only happy and suitable one for them- 
 selves or their masters, as long as they lire together in 
 the same community; and thai melancholy, in some 
 of its aspects, as it may be, theirs ia a case in which 
 the restraint by the power of one man over the 
 rights and liberty of another is a wise and benefi- 
 cent one for the safety, the prosperity, and the life 
 of both. 
 
 The public policy in regard to this institution 
 (said Mr. McD.) which is strikingly inculcated by 
 its development and progress, is just that which 
 every rational and temperate consideration of it 
 will confirm, and that is, simply, to let it alone. 
 Though it entered, in some sense, into our Confed- 
 eration, and makes up some of the fundamental 
 guarantees in our present Constitution, yet during 
 the whole existence of our Government, for sixty- 
 five or severity years, it has never been the occa- 
 sion of any national disturbance, except when it 
 has been made the subject of aggression for politi- 
 cal ends. On the contrary, it has coexisted through- 
 out the whole of that time with a growth in public 
 •wealth, power, and greatness, and with an indi- 
 vidual happiness, safety, and prosperity, neither 
 of which, it may be confidently said, has any equal 
 in any other country or age. Then let it alone; 
 leave it with every responsibility it may impose, 
 every remedy it may demand, every pressure of 
 difficulty or danger it may reach, — leave it, with all 
 of its consequences, to the wisdom, interest, and 
 conscience of those upon whom the providence of 
 God and the Constitution of the country have cast 
 it-/ 
 
 'Be assured that until it is competent for Con- 
 gress to go with its power into the slaveholding 
 States, and exert it there over master and slave, 
 all its tamperings with slavery in the Territories, 
 or in this District, in order to weaken, discourage, 
 or break up the institution, will never be effectual 
 for anything but mischief, wrong, and disaster. If 
 it is an ordinance of Heaven, as some suppose it 
 to be, it is, in that case, the wisest philosophy and 
 religion to leave its development and solution to 
 the power that ordained it/"*But if an ordinance 
 of man only, then, too, it is wisest and best to 
 leave it to those who are identified with its inter- 
 ests and dangers, and not to others who are dis- 
 connected from both. t 
 
 Mr. McD. then said, that in addressing himself 
 to the " proviso," as he would now do, he would 
 discuss it in a few of its leading aspects only. And 
 first, he objected to it that it was not only an un- 
 constitutional, and, as to the free Slates, an un- 
 necessary measure, (points that he had, in some 
 degree, examined on a former occasion in this 
 House,) but that it was a harsh, offensive, and 
 dangerous violation of the equal rights of the States, 
 and of th^cilizens of the .States. 
 
 The/nrspgreat political effect of it is to establish 
 a principle which will not only give to the free 
 States all the territory that now belongs to" the 
 Union, but all that may ever belong to it hereafter. 
 Whatever territory, in the vicissitudes of our na- 
 tional career, may be acquired by war, diplomacy, 
 annexation, or other act of Government — all of it, 
 under this principle, is to pass into the hands of 
 thejBorthern or free States-, whilst the southern — 
 nolhatttr what their contributions of means, tal- 
 ents, exertions, or anything else, to secure it — no 
 matter though they stood in the front rank of sac- 
 
 rifice and of service in the day of acquisition — yet 
 must they fall back into the rear-rank in the day 
 of remembrance ami reward, and there, disowned, 
 mortified, and thrust out from their associates, 
 look for their share of the national wealth in 
 the honor of their copartnership connection, and 
 in the burdens, buffetings, hmises, and wound- 
 ings of spirit which that copartnership may im- 
 pose. Fasten your proviso upon the territorial 
 bill before us, with fflf UVlXVat, upon your part, 
 that it is the beginning of your system of " eternal 
 non-extension" a gain st slaver y and sluveholdiiij; 
 States, and what is it bur the Jirect division ot our 
 
 ™S~tuies into two great classes, one of which only is 
 never to advance in numbers or extent, and both of 
 which are to become more and more offensively dis- 
 tinguished from one another every day by deepen- 
 ing hostilitiesof sympathy and interest? Whatisit, 
 in truth, but a clear, direct, deliberate disunion act, 
 not conceived, as Mr. McD. believed, in a disunion 
 spirit, nor looking to a disunion object, but capa- 
 ble of working out no other result, and pressed 
 upon us, too, at a moment when everything which 
 wisdom can suggest or patience and patriotism 
 can bear, will not be more than enough to keep 
 the Union together? "If the position of North and 
 South, in the matters now pending between them, 
 had been reversed — if the South had stood in the 
 place of the North, having twice its territory, twice 
 its population, and all the majorities which our 
 political system admits of, and thereby having the 
 absolute control of the Government in its own 
 hands, and entertaining withal the most unap- 
 peasable hatred of its anti-slavery institutions of 
 labor and society — if the South, being thus sit- 
 uated, had not only proposed to bind the North 
 hand and foot to the territorial limits which it now 
 occupied, and to exert every power of the Gov- 
 ernment to prevent, as much ns the breadth of its 
 little finger, from being stretched beyond the walls 
 of its territorial prison, but to exert the same power 
 
 , to take to herself all the territory now held by the 
 United States, and all it may ever hold, for the 
 purpose of establishing an endless multiplication 
 of slaveholding States upon it, — had the South 
 made such a proposition for such a purpose, and 
 followed it up by a relentless assault at this spot 
 for months together upon the tastes, morals, 
 habits, and institutions of the North, could you, 
 who repiesent her, in candor say that your con- 
 fidence in the equity and equitable intentions of 
 the South wns not shaken ? Nay, would not your 
 indignation and resentment have boiled over upon 
 her? Would you not at once have told her that 
 her proposition was not only inadmissible but in- 
 sufferable — not only inequitable but insolent, and 
 made in utter contempt of those covenant rela- 
 
 ■' tionships of which it was the utter destruction? 
 And so thinking of it, would your people have had 
 no tongue to speak out the thought? Would they 
 have laid silently and passively by, and permitted 
 a great anticipated wrong to be pushed on to its 
 worst before they would have risen up to remon- 
 strate and resist? Would Faneuil Hull have been 
 voiceless and dumb, whilst measures were going 
 forwurd in this body directly calculated, if not de- 
 signed, to impair the rights, interests, and power 
 
 | of Massachusetts? No, Mr. Speaker; if the South 
 had but made this proposition, (which is just that 
 of the North to her,) and pressed it with every 
 
 11 influence and power she could have commanded, 
 
there is not a spot of New England that would not 
 have glowed like a living coal. Nor is there a 
 single spot in the far and the free West where the 
 people would not have risen up instantly and indig- 
 nantly to resist and resent as coming from the South, 
 but affecting them, the very measures which they 
 have for years past been striving so strenuously 
 and anxiously to fixand fasten upon her. 
 
 You cannot wonder, then, that she, who has a 
 "pulse to riot and a blood to glow" as well as 
 yourselves, should have had her feelings moved to 
 their innermost depths at the dishonoring and de- 
 spoiling schemes which have been maturing against 
 her, or that, being so moved, she should here and 
 there have poured out those feelings in terms of 
 exasperation, bitterness, and defiance. But pass- 
 ing from this aspect of the subject before us, 
 (which, in truth, said Mr. McD., is rather too ex- 
 citing for the perfect calmness that it was his wish 
 and purpose to maintain,) he would say of the 
 proviso, in the next place, that it puts the South 
 in a situation which makes it certain, that do as 
 she will in regard to it, she is sure to be a sufferer. 
 If her citizens, in order to get their share of a com - 
 rTJon estate, go into the Territaries^heymus^TunTle Y 
 ftllg proviso, leave tn eir slaves behind them, an d 
 tr Ki'iby incrCase TIW actual or tending over-propor - 
 ti on ot blacks to wintes, in the slaveholding States, 
 which is an increasing evil in the system of slavery 
 that has always been felt and known as the most 
 threatening and irrepressible of any other. But 
 as this evil, in the natural progress of population, 
 is of gradual and slow development, it carries 
 along with it its own means of mitigation and re- 
 lief. The operation o f that prnirior^ however, 
 going to the removal of the master and the reten- 
 tion of the slave in his place, takes away all such 
 means of mitigation and relief, and brings on this 
 evil of an over numbe r of blacks instantly and ir- 
 reparably.* And this" it does, not simply by chan- 
 ging the relative number of the two races and thus 
 the basis of increase, but by enabling the black 
 race, as the result of this increased disproportion, 
 to absorb into itself all the common and all the 
 _^ handi craft labors both of the field and tjhejiliop, 
 anH thereby compel whole nTasses of laboring 
 white people to seek for employment and subsist- 
 ence in other States. Every emigration, therefore, 
 which can take place from the South, under the 
 proviso, can have no other effect upon it than that 
 tfffrippling and exhausting it in its highest capaci- 
 ties of well being, by stripping it of its best popu- 
 lation, and leaving its worst behind. Thus opera- 
 ting, the alternative which is held out to the South 
 by the proviso is just this: either that her citizens 
 shall notgo under it to the Territories at all, and so 
 the South have no_ more direct pa^hcipation in 
 them than if they had never been acquire!, or that 
 if they do go, it shall be upon terms onerous, per- 
 haps, to themselves, and certainly disastrous to 
 their States. 
 
 Look at the consequences of this proviso meas- 
 ure as they affect the property and security, and 
 go to unsettle, in vital respects, the whole social 
 structure of the slaveholding States: and does it 
 riot occur to gentlemen here, that its enactment 
 would be virtually the exercise, by the General 
 Government, of high powers of legislation within 
 the borders and upon the affairs exclusively be- 
 longing to State jurisdiction? But if this is denied, 
 carf it be said of this Government, when it exer- 
 
 cises its power over a public property in such way 
 as to render its use easy and advantageous to a 
 portion of the States, but inconvenient and even 
 disastrous to another portion, that it is honestly 
 and equitably fulfilling it3 high trust of applying 
 its powers for the common honor and interests of 
 a common country ? 
 
 There is yet another objection, Mr. Speaker, to 
 this "proviso," which Mr. McD. said was so 
 especiaTTyoffensive to the judgment and feelings 
 of southern people, that though often commented 
 on, he could not pass over without a remark or 
 two; and that is, that it destr oys all individual 
 equality between the citizens 3f the slaveholding 
 and the citizens of the free_£!tates, in the use and 
 enjoyment of a common, property. Is that so? 
 But first, Mr. Speaker, the South is told, that 
 whatever the effect of this proviso or restriction 
 upon slavery, she has on two solemn occasions 
 agreed to it heretofore — once in the ordinance 
 of 1787, and then in the Missouri compromise of 
 1819 — and is thus estopped by her own acts from 
 making any objections to it now. It is true that 
 on the occasions mentioned, which were those of 
 great national exigency and trial, the South, acting, 
 as it is believed, upon the principle that the public 
 safety is the supreme law, did agree to this restric- 
 tion. And this agreement is an estoppel to objec- 
 tions! Take this idea in the abstract, and will 
 any one say that it is sound and satisfactory logic 
 to infer, that because one of two great parties 
 agreed, in a case of extreme international difficulty, 
 and as a special provision to meet and relieve it, 
 to take less than its full rights would entitle it to, 
 that therefore these rights are extinct and can 
 never be set up or maintained by that party again? 
 Take this idea as a practical one, and who is there 
 that will not say that this double relinquishment 
 of a part of its rights by one great geographical 
 party of the United" States for the benefit of the 
 whole, is not. merely enough to discharge it from 
 all further demands of a like kind , but enough also 
 to lay all other geographical parties under the 
 clearest obligations of reciprocity and of honor to 
 perform kindred services for the country, when- 
 ever kindred occasions should exist to require 
 them ? If such acts of national generosity nobly 
 rendered, to protect and to save a people at their 
 hour of utmost need, are to be followed up by ex- 
 j actions and outlawry upon the rights and feelings 
 of those who perform them, then will the strong 
 spirit of a nation's ultimate reliance be stricken 
 down and broken. 
 
 As to the ordinance of '87, a word or two may 
 be offered. / 
 
 Before the*North western Territory was ceded by 
 Virginia to the United States, and whilst it re- 
 mained as a component part of her domain, it will 
 not be denied that it was competent to that Slate, 
 as sovereign proprietor, to establish or to refuse the 
 establishment of slavery upon it. Nor will it be 
 ! denied that it was just as competent to her to 
 i do the very same thing by conditions of cession, 
 j when ceding away her proprietorship to another. 
 These are equivalent acts of the same authority. 
 The only question of power in the case is, not 
 I whether Virginia had the power of creating or pro- 
 I hibiting the institution of slavery over the North- 
 western Territory, (for of that there is no ques- 
 tion,) but whether Congress, controlled by the 
 I terms of the Federal Constitution and acting under 
 
 *hp*Ud&. 
 
f> 
 
 them, had the power of binding itself to take und 
 hold the territory under any conditions whatsoever 
 upon the subject of that institution ? There is no 
 express grant of such authority , unless it is to be 
 found in the first clause of the sixth article of the 
 Constitution, in which it is declared that " all debts 
 contracted and engagements entered into, before 
 the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid 
 against the United Sintes under this Constitution 
 as under the Confederation;" and here, accord- 
 ingly, the direct authority is commonly believed to 
 be found. The deed of cession for this territory 
 having been made under the Confederation, is pre- 
 cisely one of those "engagements" which, it is 
 thought, this article of the Constitution was in- 
 tended to recognize and provide for. Suppose it 
 to be so, what then? To be valid under the new 
 Constitution, it must first have been so under the 
 Confederation. This is ihe precedent condition in 
 the case — " as valid against the United Stales uuder 
 this Constitution as under the Confederation" are 
 the terms. What was not valid, then, as an " en- 
 gagement" under the Confederation, was never 
 made so by those terms. 
 
 Now, it is well known to the members of this 
 House, that Mr. Madison, in one of the numbers 
 of the Federalist, (33:h,) expressly affirms of this 
 cession of the Northwestern Territory, that it 
 rested upon the necessity of the case alone, and 
 was entered into by the Congress of the Confeder- 
 ation " without the shadow of constitutional sanc- 
 tion." Mr. Madison does not give the reasons for 
 this opinion, as he need not have done, for no one 
 can read the Articles of Confederation without see- 
 ing them. 
 
 The compact for the cession of the North west- 
 ern Territory, providing 'or the perpetual exclusion 
 of slavery from its limits, having been made by 
 Congress, in the opinion of this statesman, without 
 even the "shadow of constitutional sanction," 
 and, therefore, incapable of becoming one of the 
 valid " engagements" recognized by the present 
 Constitution of 'til), it follows, that that territory 
 was made free by the act of Virginia alone, and that 
 whatever the blessings are which have resulted to 
 it and its citizens on that account, and which have 
 so often and so ardently been discoursed upon here, 
 are to be referred back to her as the legitimate and 
 parent source of them all. 
 
 But quitting this digression, Mr. Sneaker, and 
 going back to the objection stated to the " pro- 
 viso," that it destroys all equality between the 
 citizens of the slaveholding ami of the free States 
 in the use and enjoyment of a common property. 
 la this objection a true oner . 
 
 Appreciating the per ft <t familiarity of the 
 II iuse with this point, Mr. l\dcD would make 
 out the case it presents as briefly as he could. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that a citizen of Massa- 
 chusetts desires to emigrate to, and settle noon, 
 some part of our Mexic in territory. He accord" 
 ingly goes there, buys a piece of land where ii is 
 most agreeable to him, andimmi diately fixes him- 
 self upon U with all the pi iperty which he pos- 
 or which he beliei best for t he im- 
 
 provement and comfi rl A 
 
 citizen of Virginia i to emigrate to, 
 
 this ame I 1 1 itory 
 II , too, goes there, buys land and prepan to" 
 :•■, and improve it with s I the property, i n 
 eluding slaves, which he can command; but when 
 
 in the very act, as you may suppose, of seating 
 himself in, and enjoying his new home, he is, for the 
 first time, told by his Massachusetts neighboi that 
 he cannot do so until he shall dispose of his 
 slaves. " What !" is the natural exclamation, " is 
 not this the land of the United States?" " Cer- 
 tainly." " And are we not equally the citizens of 
 the United States and equally entitled, as such, to 
 own it and reside upon it with every lawful property 
 that belongs to us and that we want to employ P 
 " Certainly — every properly Out slaves; they only 
 are prohibited. And in this prohibition no differ- 
 ence is made between us; for it is no more allow- 
 able for a Massachusetts man than it is for a Vir- 
 ginian to bring a slave into this territory with him. 
 
 i Therefore, we are equals under this prohibitory 
 law, though at first sight it may seem otherwise 
 to you." Is not this statement a sophism ? Both 
 of these emigrants are citizens of the same coun- 
 try; both seek a home upon the common property 
 Of that country; one of them with, the other 
 
 ;i without slaves. 
 
 The emigrant who has no slaves, who never 
 had any, who never, perhaps, desired to bane, 
 arry, and who never had the right to have any. 
 
 1 under the constitution and laws of the. State fiom 
 w-b+ch he came, goes into the territory, buy-e, 
 
 I builds, and settles where.-he pleases, without a 
 word or question or a moment of delay. But the 
 other emigrant who has slaves — who has always 
 
 i had them, and who has always had the right to 
 
 ; have them under the constitution and laws of his 
 Slate — is not permitted to settle in the same way, 
 but is first required to give up his slaves, no mat- 
 
 ! ter what thfi~inconvenience, or wha-t the sacrifice 
 ! of interest or of feeling, even to the slaves them- 
 selves, which it may produce. Can you say that 
 
 j these two citizens stand, in all that is essential to 
 
 ! the use and enjoyment of a caiwmoa right, upon a 
 
 ! footing of perfect equality with one another? Can 
 
 you say that they have the same facilities and en- 
 
 ;l couragements to seek for and possess themselves 
 
 , of a common property ? Is not one of them dis- 
 couraged, incommoded, and hindered in this ob- 
 ject? And is not every hindrance to its whole 
 
 ; extent, be it little or much, jus! so far an abridge- 
 ment of right ? Why, the whole legal idea of a 
 right is, that it is one which can be enjoyed un- 
 molested, undiminished, and freely. An obstruc- 
 
 ; tion thrown "in the way of such enjoyment, if 
 done by an individual, is ah offence for which he 
 
 ) is liable to action of law and payment of damages. 
 If done by a government, it is in the very nature 
 of confiscation, and is just as allowable in prin- 
 ciple, though it is less lawless in degree! when for- 
 bidding the removal of a slave into a Territory, 
 than the removal of his master. 
 
 In the ease nut of the emigrants from Massa- 
 chusetts and Virginia, is not one of those hindered 
 and embarrassed by conditions of settlement which 
 are very oni rous to bun, but not in the least so to 
 the other? Is not that one required, before he is 
 allowed to settle upon one single acre of the land 
 which belongs, individually, as much to him as to 
 anyb »dy else, that he shall first give up another 
 rigln of his own which he holds under the consti- 
 ite, and under the guarantees of 
 thai which we profess to administer here? Is he 
 not required n> abandon one. right as the condition 
 of using another, whilst no kindred condition, nor 
 one of any kind at all, is required of the other 
 
 . «\j.-.tv 
 
How, then, can you say that these emigrants are 
 ecjUal — that no difference is made between them jj 
 in the use of a property which they hold alike, 
 and by the act of a Government which is bound to 
 treat them alike? How can you say this, and ! 
 think this, when the contrary is so obviously the 
 case ? 
 
 No doubt many are misled upon this point by 
 the idea, that because all persons, after going into i 
 the Territory, are under the operation of the same 
 anti-slavery law, therefore, there is no inequality 
 amongst them. This is true after they become 
 citizens of the Territory. But the inequality whic h ! 
 this " provi so" produces ts established against th£ 
 Blav^ho'ldlhg citizen before he goes in it. It is put j 
 upon him as the precedent condition of his going 
 there at all. It is in our original position of citi- ji 
 zens — citizens of the respective States, and before 
 our entrance into the Territories is attained, that 
 this anti-slavery scheme makes the distinction of ' 
 rights which we complain of. It is here in this 
 position chat this scheme assails us — assails us by 
 proposing to you, who hold the Territories only 
 as a trustee for the benefit of all the States, the 
 passing of a law which shall deprive every slave- 
 holder in America of any personal participation in 
 them, except upon the surrender of rights which 
 he holds under the recognition of both the Federal 
 and State Constitutions, but which law, at the 
 same time, shall throw them wide open to all the 
 rest of mankind, without question, condition, or 
 restraint. If this would not be inequality amongst 
 equals in the administration of an equal right, it is 
 impossible for the human understanding to con- 
 ceive, or for human government to enact what 
 would be. 
 
 Still, there are those amongst us who consider 
 the passing of such a law right and proper. But if 
 it is right and proper — if it is constitutional and 
 just to regulate the rights of settlement in the Ter- 
 ritories on the slaveholding principle, is it not 
 equally so to regulate the appropriation of the 
 moneys which arise from the sale of these territo- 
 ries upon the same principle? What is the differ- 
 ence between refusing to a citizen of Florida the 
 right of settling upon your territory of New Mex- 
 ico, except upon the surrender of his slaves, and 
 refusing to appropriate a single dollar for which 
 that territory may be sold for the uses of Florida, 
 except upon thesurrender by her of hgr slavehold- 
 ing system ? T nere seems to be no good* reason 
 why you may not just as well demand of a south- 
 ern State that she shall give up her slavehoTding 
 rights s as the condition of appropriating any part 
 of the land proceeds to her benefit, as demand of a 
 southern citizen that he shall give up his share of 
 these rights as the condition of allowing to him an 
 acre of the land itself. 
 
 In fact, this whole plan of restriction upon a , 
 particular property is a plan of inequality amongst 
 emigrants; and nothing else can be made of it, as 
 long as it is agreed that the territories are the com- ' 
 mon property of the United States, and Congress 
 the common Government of the States and the 
 people to administer it. If the territories are, in- 
 deed, common property, then the exclusion from 
 their use of any part of the people by conditions 
 not affecting all of them alike, is clearly and offen- 
 sively unequal. And are they not common prop- 
 erty ? Many of them are made so by actual stipu- 
 lation to that effect, and the rest of them are no .! 
 
 less so by necessary operation of the constitutional 
 provisions under which they have been acquired, 
 and can only be held. Those that were relin- 
 quished by the several States that claimed them, 
 were so relinquished by deeds of cession which set 
 forth, with scarcely any variation of language, that 
 they were to be held for " the common use and ben- 
 efit" of the United States, the ceding State in- 
 cluded. The tenure of those is thus fixed by com- 
 pact. And without resorting to any analysis of 
 the Constitution to show that the tenure of all the 
 territories is obliged to be the same with those — for 
 the common use and benefit — it would be more 
 conclusive, perhaps, to prove,«from the records of 
 the Government, that such has been the judgment 
 and action of our ancestors concerning them. 
 
 When Virginia, responding to certain overtures 
 from Congress upon the subject of her western 
 territories, proposed, in 1781, to make a cession of 
 the northwestern portion of them upon the several 
 conditions which Congress had suggested, but 
 with a superadded one of her own, her proposition 
 was so hateful to several of her sister States that 
 they frequently and indignantly remonstrated 
 against it;, and not only that, but refused, on ac- 
 count of it, to sign the Articles of Confederation; 
 and so continued to refuse until the Confederation 
 itself was in danger of falling to pieces. They 
 boldly declared the territories to be the common 
 property of all the States; and as such, belonging 
 to them, not qualifiedly and conditionally, but ab- 
 solutely and of right; not for the aggrandizement 
 of any one or a few, but for the common use and 
 benefit of them all. Though lying within the 
 chartered limits of Virginia, they nevertheless re- 
 garded these territories as being, in fact, the Crown 
 lands of the King of England, as thereby put into 
 issue by the war of independence, and thus falling 
 to the confederated parties generally, as the spoil 
 of successful revolution. 
 
 " We cannot be silent, (says New Jersey, in her 
 •legislative remonstrance upon this subject, of 
 ' June, 1783,) when viewing one State aggrandizing 
 ' hefcelf by the unjust detention of that property 
 ' which has been procured by the common blood 
 ' and treasure of the whole; and which, on every 
 ' principle of reason and justice, is vested in Con- 
 ' gress for the use and general benefit of the Union 
 ' they represent." 
 
 If these clear and strong terms by which New" — 
 Jersey describes the territorial acquisitions of the 
 Revolution (supposing the territories to be really 
 Crown lands) are the right ones, and if her deduc- 
 tion is also right, that as these acquisitions were 
 made by the common blood and treasure of the 
 whole, that, therefore, they vested, in every prin- 
 ciple of reason and justice, in Congress for the gen- 
 eral benefit of the Union it represented: are they 
 not just as truly the terms, and the only terms by 
 which the war acquisitions of this day can be de- 
 scribed ? And do these acquisitions not belong just 
 as certainly, on the same principles of reason and 
 justice, to Congress, as the common and representa- 
 tive government of the States and the people, and 
 so belong to it for their general benefit? How 
 else can our war acquisitions, and the rights which 
 proceed from them, be more accurately described 
 and defined? Are they not made now, as then, 
 by the common blood and treasure of all? and 
 what are they, therefore, but the common property 
 of all ? and how can they vest but in the common 
 

 government of all, by virtue of whose authority 
 they were made ? and to what end can they be ap- 
 plied, but to the common use and benefit of all? 
 Upon this sound view of (he revolutionary case, 
 New Jersey, and her associates, demanded that 
 there should be no withholding by one of the 
 States, nor, consequently, by any fractional num- 
 ber of them, of the acquired territory; but a full 
 and unconditional surrender of every part of it to 
 the whole of the States, that the whole of them 
 might share in its uses and advantages ulike. And 
 this, because of its indisputable justice and expe- 
 diency both, there is much reason to believe, was 
 the very ground on which Virginia, impelled, also, 
 by her habitual generosity, ultimately abandoned 
 the condition complained of, and gave up her terri- 
 torial domain precisely in the way that Coneress 
 
 8 ___ 
 
 they may choose, excepting only the slave prop- 
 erty of the South, carry along with it no prejudice 
 to the claims of the South .'—claims to have her 
 property rights, and the property rights of her cit- 
 izens, protected and respected ? — claims which are 
 fundamental to every well-governed State? Does 
 such repudiation of the property of a State, affect- 
 ing its uses and its value, create no prejudice against 
 the claims of that Slate? If it does do so, as it 
 obviously does, then is it interdicted by this pro- 
 hibitory clause of the Constitution, and ought to 
 be abandoned. 
 
 Besides, is it forgotten that whenever, under one 
 system of double constitutions, one for federal 
 and one for local purposes, a citizen has any inter* 
 est lying without the cognizance or jurisdictional " 
 'imits of his State, but within those of the Federal 
 
 had desired. Her claim to the territory as a strictly ' Government, he has the very same ri"ht to call 
 legal one, was believed, by those who directed her 
 councils and were entitled to her confidence, to be 
 perfectly valid. Mr. Jefferson 3aid it was. Mr. 
 Madison said it was, and called the opposition 
 which was made to it in Congress, (as will be seen 
 in his published letters,) "a factious and unprinci- 
 pled opposition" — words of unparallele/f harsh- 
 ness for him. And since their day, the Supreme 
 Court of the United States has sanctioned their 
 opinion, in a case in which the chartered limits, or 
 territorial rights of Virginia were put in contest. 
 
 The prominent position of New Jersey in this 
 matter of the territory is referred to, not only be- 
 cause it is exactly in point, but because it is hoped 
 
 upon that Government to protect it that he would 
 have to call upon the State to do so, if it were em- 
 braced by its authority? Of this nature is the 
 interest which every citizen of Virginia has in the 
 Territories, and his right to go to them and live in 
 them as he chooses; and this interest and right of 
 his, it is as much the duty and business of the 
 Federal Government lo muke good to him, and 
 that without hindrance or disadvantage of any 
 kind, as it would be that of Virginia if the Terri- 
 tories were hers. 1 
 
 Relying upon these and other grounds, which 
 he had no time at present to submit, Mr. McD. 
 appealed with earnestness and with confidence- 
 
 that her present representatives will not repudiate to Congress to maintain all the immunities of the 
 
 and disown its wisdom, but will cheerfully give 
 their voice to reavow and confirm it. 
 
 We of the South, with even clearer justice, stand 
 this day upon the former ground of New Jersey, 
 and demand, as she did, that there shall be no 
 holding back of anything that is due; no distinc- 
 tion of rights amongst parties that are equal; no 
 endowments of some and disfranchisements of 
 others; but full protection and perfect equity to all 
 in their use, enjoyment, and appropriation of a 
 common estate. Can you give her less than ahis, 
 
 Constitution, and so relieve the South from the 
 flagitious wrong which the " proviso'' threatens 
 against her. We of the South have bated nothing, 
 but borne to the uttermost with others every sacri- 
 fice and burden which our territorial acquisitions 
 occasioned. We demand, therefore, to have meas- 
 ure for measure — to share to the uttermost with 
 others also in the benefits which these acquisitions 
 have brought. Above all things do we hope to 
 be spared the indignity of being asked to submit 
 to conditions in their use, which neither our rights 
 
 and yet fulfill the Constitution, and do the justice ,' nor our feelings can warrant— conditions, too, 
 
 it intends ? 
 
 None knew better than the framers of that in- 
 strument, many of whom were lawyers of the 
 highest national eminence, how possible it was for 
 it* general objects to be sacrificed by plausible but 
 perverted views of particular parts. In order, 
 therefore, to prevent this, and to make the Gov- 
 ernment correspond in its action with what it was 
 
 which we are almost the only people in the world to 
 be insulted by, and yet the only one who areas fully 
 entitled as you who threaten us, to be shielded 
 and exonerated from. 
 
 The felons who are annually disgorged upon 
 our shfTres from Europea n dungeons; the foulest 
 and most unwashed oi that vTlst tiiuliitude which 
 
 (ToT 
 
 comes upon us, Throng after throng, I mm the 
 intended to be, they declared, in the most emphatic ' whole earth — " Parthians, Medes and Elamites, 
 
 and auihoritative manner, that " nothing contained 
 
 • in the Constitution should be so construed as to 
 
 * prejudice any of the claim* of the United States, 
 •or of any particular Stale." In this they provi- 
 ded a practical, simple, and comprehensive test by 
 which to judge of and to restrain the evils of con- 
 struction, and to secure the Constitution in the 
 fulfillment of its object*. No matter how clearly 
 at first view any proposed msseure might seem to 
 lie within the range of constitutional sunt tion, yet, 
 if at IbhI it was leer) to involve in any of its bear- 
 ing! even the smallest prejudice lo the United 
 Stolen, or tO any particular State, it Itood, ipwfacto, 
 inadmissible anil forbidden. Howie il with the 
 
 ," when tried by this lesi < Does not the 
 permission which it gives to emigrant* to introduce 
 into the Territories every kind of property which 
 
 Jews, proselytes, Cretes, and Arabians,'' no mat- 
 ter who or what they are, — all — all are invited to 
 go in upon this property, pick, choose, and live 
 upon it where they please, excepting only the 
 southern citizens who have given of their money, 
 labor, and life to attain il! They only are to have 
 the door slammed in their faces, and to be required 
 to stand back until they produce their ticket of 
 admission. 
 
 AVhi n our right to the restoration of our fugitive 
 slaves ie'practioally denied us; when our unfortu- 
 nate citizen* who go into your States to prosecute 
 it, relying in good faith upon (he Constitution and 
 laws of the Republic upon that subject to aid them, 
 and are there received as outlaws themselves, har- 
 assed by your officer* of justice and pursued and 
 ovcrwhtlmcd by mobs of your people with re- 
 
9 
 
 proach, insult, violence, and sometimes even with 
 death — when this takes place, we feel ourselves 
 wronged, aggrieved and outraged — literally and 
 abusively stripped of a right which you who 
 offend and we who suffer both know to have been 
 so fundamental to the Union that it never could 
 have b^en formed without a guarantee to maintain 
 it. "We remonstrate against this conduct — we do 
 it angrily and indignantly; we consider it a willful 
 abandonment of yourconstitutional obligations and 
 a grievous injury to our public as well as private 
 interests. But we do not feel that it dishonors us. 
 Aggrieved by it we are, but it does not wound us 
 in that keenest, quickest and most delicate sense so 
 characteristic of us as individuals and as a people, 
 the proud, unconquerable, exultant sense of every 
 American heart — that of absolute and inviolable 
 personal equality. This you cannot assail with- 
 out producing a pang. And yet this is the very 
 sense which the "proviso" does assail — which it 
 wounds causelessly and deeply, and hence, for the 
 most part, the convulsions which you see. We 
 could not claim to be Americans, and we would 
 not be Americans, if we did not resist, as alike in- 
 suiting and injurious, any exercise, especially any 
 deliberate and systematic exercise of the powers i 
 of this Government by which the rights of i 
 it, in any matter whatever, were to be dispensed to 
 the South upon terms of inferiority to others. 
 Such distinctions cannot be endured. Yet such is ! 
 that which your proviso involves — a distinction ; 
 utterly alien to the relationships and the interests \ 
 of the parties, and portending, if imposed, a hateful 
 future of strife, hostility, and rupture between 
 them. 
 
 Asa Representative from Virginia, then, he (Mr. 
 McD.) invoked the House to threaten that State 
 with t his measure no longer, but to abandon j t 
 nftw ana rorever . Irlaving mentioned trie State of 
 Virginia, Mr. "McD. was thereby reminded of the 
 frequency with which it had been the pleasure of 
 gentlemen here to taunt that State with the decay 
 of her political fortunes, reproaching her with the 
 difference between what she is and what she was, 
 and with the difference also, in material wealth, 
 between her and some of the younger and thriftier 
 States that have sprung up around her. In all 
 this he did not think that that Commonwealth had 
 suffered in any way or to any extent whatsoever 
 that called, under existing circumstances, for retal- 
 iation or defence at the hands of herRepresentatives. 
 Indeed, it would bea very false estimate of the value 
 of these reproaches, to deny them the generous im- 
 punity of the legal maxim, " de minimis non curat 
 itar." They have done no harm and left no sting; 
 and, though they glared for a moment with signs of 
 disaster to the "Old Dominion," yet they have 
 fallen upon -her as the meteoric lights which, 
 rising up from regions of swamp and disease, float 
 and gleam for a while, and then explode upon the 
 earth without jarring, jostling, or disturbing 
 for an instant its onward and its massive move- 
 ment. Whenever the blow is struck that is hard 
 enough to hurt, it will be time enough then to 
 defend. 
 
 Meanwhile, I commend to the Representatives 
 of Virginia, that they lay their heads calmly 
 down upon the pillow of her renown, and enjoy in 
 quiet their fortunate birthright in a Common wealth 
 whose long annals exhibit her in many a patriotic 
 and proud association with duty and achieve- 
 
 ment, but in no solitary one of improbity or dis- 
 honor. 1 commend also to ourassuilants the culture 
 of a kindlier temper, and the selection* of a more 
 manageable subject. And may I be pardoned for 
 adding that the kindliest spirit is the only suitable 
 and wise one for us all. No other one at such an 
 hour of difficulty as the present can go so far, or 
 do so much to settle it aright. The more perfect 
 our personal intercourse and union with one an- 
 other, the more hearty and triumphant will be our 
 labors for that national one which is in danger. 
 And till that preservation is complete, and that uan- 
 gergone — till we shall stand on theothershoreofthe 
 Red sea, safely delivered from all the perils of its 
 passage, with our precious burden uninjured in our 
 arms — till that is accomplished wc should belong, 
 soul, spirit, and body, to it, without division and 
 without distraction win anything else. It is an ob- 
 ject large and grand, and dear enough to absorb 
 every faculty that we have, in itself — to shut out 
 every alienating and prejudiced passion from the 
 heart, and bind us up in a sense of brotherhood so 
 real and so consecrating as to make each of us feel 
 that he whodoeth the best for the greatest interest of 
 that brotherhood — he who doeth, at this hour, the 
 work of the Union in righteousness and in justice — 
 he it is who embodies the most precious of all re- 
 lations into one, and is our " mother, and brother, 
 and sister." 
 
 In the early and magnificent day of the fortunes 
 of Virginia, when her will was almost the law of 
 the country, and her arm almost its defence, no 
 emergency ever arose in its affairs in which she was 
 not ready and willing to do or to suffer, to serve or 
 to sacrifice, in any way which that emergency de- 
 manded, or which the loftiest standard, not of na- 
 tional duty merely, but of national magnanimity, 
 could call for. If asked for contributions to the 
 general good, she gave them in no faltering, hesi- 
 tating, truckling spirit— trimming, clipping, and 
 paring them down to the meaerest and most mi- 
 serly minimum that might suffice — but laying a 
 bold and a free hand upon the best of her means, 
 she would draw them forth without stint, and, put- 
 ting them in the hands of the nation, with a bless- 
 ing upon them, would say, as she did so, " There, 
 take that; and if more is necessary, you shall have 
 it." When the country was convulsed with dis- 
 sensions upon the subject of the Northwestern 
 Territory, (the first of our great territorial con- 
 tests,) and the Confederacy was tottering to disso- 
 lution on account of it, she gave the whole of 
 that territory up, without the reservation of a sin- 
 gle acre, except for the satisfaction of the revolu- 
 tionary officers and soldiers whom she had gener- 
 ously employed in the common cause, upon pledges 
 of bounties, pensions, and wages, to be paid by 
 herself. Nay, more than this: she not only gave 
 up her property in the soil, but she gave up, in a 
 great degree, also her share in its common use, by 
 stamping it forever with a domestic policy which 
 was not her own. Thus she made it the inex- 
 haustible dowry of" free labor and free soil;" and 
 thus she rocked the cradle, and sheltered the head, 
 and nourished the manhood, of many a one who 
 has risen up even in this Hall, not to recall the 
 beneficence which had blessed him, but to mock at 
 the wasted condition which that very beneficence 
 had helped to produce. Unlike the Roman 
 daughter who gave her own virgin bosom to sus- 
 tain°the life of her sinking and famishing parent, 
 
10 
 
 some of our daughter Commonwealths of America 
 decry and deride their parent Commonwealth, for 
 the weakened condition which her gifts of life, 
 and strength, and power to them have occasioned. 
 
 Again, too, when our Federal Constitution had 
 been wrought out to itspresent form in all material 
 points, except in the representativesiructureof the 
 Senate, and whin the contests upon that — whether 
 it should rest upon numbers or upon States — were 
 pressed to an extremity that threatened the instant 
 and inevitable defeat of the whole scheme of the 
 Constitution, and the probable dissolution of the 
 Confederacy itself — when this came to be the case, 
 and there was v.o remedy for it but in the conces- 
 sion, by the larger or the smaller States, of the 
 ground of Straggle between them, then it was that 
 Virginia, though the first in political importance — 
 the rir$t in the number and the renown of her pub- 
 lic men — the first in territory and in population, 
 and in all the capabilities and calculations of a 
 progressive and powerful future — yet renounced 
 them all for the common good, and generously 
 making the concession which the case required, 
 abandoned the principle of numbers for that of 
 equality in the Senate, and determined, thereafter, 
 to rely upon her equals there for that justice to her 
 rights which her own power, upon the principle 
 abandoned, would have been so perfectly sufficient 
 to ha\e enforced for herself. 
 
 For all this she neither expects nor desires any 
 special requital; she is no beggar for the gratitude 
 or the compassion or the help of communities who 
 have grown rich and great upon her spirit and her 
 acts; she makes no suppliant appeal to them nor 
 to any other portion of this earth for "a penny to 
 blind Beliearius." She asks for nothing and wants 
 nothing from her associates but that simplest and 
 slightest justice which Governments, or which in- 
 dividuals can show to one another — that of immu- 
 nity from wrong. This she is entitled to demand, 
 and docs demand. Is it too much? Is a demand 
 so small, yet so righteous and so needful to the 
 restored peace 'if an agitated and contending coun- 
 try, too much for the North cheerfully and freely 
 to grant to her early friend and ally of the South ? 
 
 This South has been the intimate political part- 
 ner of you of the North for more than seventy 
 riali; you have grown up from feebleness to 
 maturity together, aiding, comforting, sustaining 
 one another at every turn in the career of national 
 life, with every resource of means, counsel, and 
 arms which either had to give. You of the North 
 have found her true and steadfast in every scene 
 and every hour that could try her; making your 
 friends her friends, your enemies her enemies, 
 maintaining your honor as her own, and ever 
 ready to bat k you with her life in every conflict 
 of power to whii h jroo have been called by the 
 
 ftawiotti and the acts of others. Togethei you 
 aid the i'. undalion of your political Union; together 
 you worked upon, watched over, and advanced it; 
 snap' , interlocked, and clamped all of 
 
 its par:* in) I IT) iv« '.'.hole by mu- 
 
 tual counsels for mutual ends: together you bore 
 it onward day by day, and M il grew under your 
 
 form ar d reatei tnd 
 
 onto i pace, and towered up by little 
 
 Olid little into Still loftier height and larger dimen- 
 sions, until at Is li hi ad gleamed in the 
 sun, and it Htood forth upon these ends of eiva- 
 tion, the praise und the glory of the whole earth; 
 
 you still labored upon it, through all this, as at 
 first, with one object, one heart, one common and 
 fervent invocation to the Father of all, that he 
 would prosper, preserve, and perpetuate it forever. 
 Whatever that Union or country is; whatever 
 the peace it has bestowed; whatever the develop- 
 ments of energy and happiness it has encouraged; 
 whutever the radiance it has shed upon the princi- 
 ples of human government; whatever the power 
 of organization and defence it has given to the 
 spirit and the hope of freedom amongst the masses 
 of mankind ; whatever the throbbing love of liber- 
 ty which it has lit up in the heart of the world; 
 whatever in these and all things else that country 
 is, it is the common offspring of the cares, contri- 
 butions, counsels, and labors of you both. 
 
 That true and faithful partner — your co-laborer 
 and co-equal, unaltered in her domestic condition 
 from what she waa when you first knew and cov- 
 enanted with each other — that partner, the South, 
 stands here to-day, in the persons of her sons, and 
 asks through them, with the profoundest con- 
 sciousness of its necessity and justice to you both, 
 that no cause of disaffection and of quarrel be al- 
 lowed to grow up and mature between you; that 
 in adjusting your mutual interests, no wrong be 
 meditated or inflicted upon such as are peculiar to 
 herself; that no cup of bitterness be pressed to her 
 lips, no immedicable wound be given to her affec- 
 tions. Nay, she stops not here, but goes still fur- 
 ther, and adjures you by the memories of the past, 
 by t*e sympathies of your long and happy con- 
 nection with each other; by all that you have or 
 that you hope for, in the glories of your land; by 
 your own, and by your children's good, that you 
 strive with her to' extinguish at once, and forever, 
 every ungenerous, and every separating purpose or » 
 passion between you, and go on peacefully and hag- • 
 pily to the complete fulfillment of t|je destiny you. 
 have begun ; turning the labors and wisdom of your 
 oast into a still wiser and grander future, and bear- 
 ing forward to its utmost perfection a Government 
 which has no equal upon earth, by a fidelity to 
 one another, which nothing upon earth can weaken 
 or destroy. Do this, and when centuries shall 
 have come and gone, the fire upon your altar, the 
 light of your example will shine forth as radiantly 
 and cheerily as now, and your spirit — that of your 
 Union and Constitution and laws, be made the 
 guiding and renovating spirit of every age and of 
 every clime, so that when that mysterious and 
 dread succession which limits all human things, 
 and crowds nations as well as individuals into the 
 tomb, shall sweep us off, our principles and our 
 blessings i-hall survive, and though,this loved tem- 
 ple of ours be cast to the ground, and all its pil- 
 lars lie broken and buried in the dust, yet like the 
 bones of the buried prophet, the nation that touches 
 them, though it were dead, yet will it quicken into 
 life. 
 
 It is (said Mr. McD.) with something of revul- 
 sion that I turn from this idea of a prospered 
 and perpetu ited people, to that ill-omened and ob- 
 noxious measure for the Territories which I have 
 been examining, and winch has hung with its 
 "Shadows, clouds, and darkness," so long over 
 the fortunes of the country. What, I ask, is 
 ths necessity whieh calls lor its adoption? Is 
 there any necessity ; — any so supreme in its con- 
 nection with the public security or public peace, 
 a8 to override and frown down all probable and 
 
11 
 
 contingent consequences, and make it a matter of jj 
 absolute and imperative duty to adopt it? No, I 
 sir; there is no such necessity nor anything akin 
 to it, either existing or expected. Apart from the 
 strong but false ground of sectional advantage upon 
 which it rests, tlie other considerations upon which 
 it is supported are the abstract ones — that it is more ; 
 compatible than its opposite measure, with the i 
 genius of our Government — that it better consists [ 
 with morals and religion, with the laws of nature ; 
 and of general liberty, and with all that is sound, 
 or just, or admissible in the composition and : 
 structure of civil society. These, with their cor- 
 relatives, make up the considerations — the justify- j 
 ing and impelling considerations — upon which J 
 this measure is to be driven on and driven through, i 
 no matter what the sectional wounds it may deal, j 
 or what the general convulsion to the States it i 
 may endanger. 
 
 For the purpose of securing to every portion of j 
 the people a practical government, the best suited 
 that could be to their protection and their interests, i 
 our Republic, not consolidated into one, was kept i 
 divided into separate and smaller Republics or j 
 States, each one of which within its own particu- 
 lar limits was assumed to be, and made to be the 
 judge of whatever legislative act was most agree- 
 able to itself, and best suited, in his opinion, to its ! 
 affairs. 'Of the thirty States into which we are J 
 now divided, fourteen have already come up here 
 with their protestations and remonstrances against 
 this measure of restriction; declaring it to be, in 
 their judgment, not only wholly inadmissible to 
 them, but so offensive and so subversive of their 
 local rights, that some of them have averred, again 
 and again, that rather than submit to it, " they 
 would resist it at all hazards, and to the last ex- 
 tremity." 
 
 Here, then, under the regular action of our sys- 
 tem, we have the opinions of those who are the 
 recognised and absolute judges of their local inter- 
 ests; and having these, can we doubt — nay, do 
 we not know, that this measure, even before its 
 passage, stands, and must continue to stand in un- 
 compromising and dangerous hostility with the 
 judgment and tranquillity of near one entire half of 
 this Union ? 
 
 Now, therefore, as the Government of that 
 Union, bound by the strongest obligations of honor 
 and of duty to execute its high trusts with refer- 
 ence to the good of all, and not to the good alone 
 of any particular parts, — bound so to execute these 
 trusts as " to promote the common defence and 
 the general welfare," and "to establish amongst 
 the people and the States an intimate and perfect 
 union with one another," — can we, looking on the 
 one hand to the clear conditions upon which our 
 trusts are to be performed, and on the other to the 
 wide-spread and intense execration with which this 
 proposed measure has been received, — can we say, 
 deliberately, that it is an expedient one which ought 
 to be passed, and shall be passed? Can we say, that 
 it is expedient for the "general welfare," when half 
 the country for which it is intended rises up in ad- 
 vance of its adoption, to denounce it as insupporta- 
 ble ? Can we say that it goes to promote a closerand 
 kindlier union amongst the people and the States, 
 and in that respect to fulfill a declared purpose of 
 the Constitution, when we all see and know that 
 the whole power of its action is to embitter them 
 with, and perad venture to sever them from one 
 
 another? Can we say that any measure is expe- 
 dient which admits, by possibility even, the sup- 
 position that its want of acceptability may be such 
 as to compel the executive in the end to enforce it 
 by the sword ? Gentlemen cannot surely forget, 
 that whilst nep.rly all other governments are but 
 modifications of the principle of force, and very 
 naturally, therefore, depend upon it for support; 
 ours, on the contrary, in all its parts, is a govern- 
 ment of consent, depending not upon the power of 
 arms, but upon that of general approbation to 
 maintain it. Whenever, then, in any given case, the 
 measures of this Governmental so opposed to pub- 
 lic approbation as to require a resort to arms to en- 
 force them, that resort, if undertaken, is in its whole 
 nature monstrous, revolutionary, and incapable of 
 resulting in anything else but evil and disaster to 
 the country. Why, then, insist upon any one 
 which portends such a course and such results? 
 Why, especially, should the North push this meas- 
 ure of the proviso to extremity upon the South, 
 and so push it in the very wantonness of its nu- 
 merical strength in this body, as if it was resolved, 
 vindictively and at all hazards, to force her into an 
 ignominious retreat from her declarations about it 
 or into open and ruinous conflicts with the Gov- 
 ernment ? And whether it be the one or the other, 
 it is a purpose only for passion, and not for reason, 
 patriotism, or statesmanship, to pursue or desire. 
 The high functions which it is ours to execute are 
 for the prosperity, the defence, the satisfaction, and 
 the happiness of every part of the Republic, and 
 not for any particular part of it. They are na- 
 tional means for national ends;, they make up the 
 power of all for the good of all, and that power 
 could not be perverted from its proper purposes 
 more inexcusably or more grossly than when ex- 
 erted to foster into maturity a state of public affairs 
 or public feeling prejudicial to the Union, which it 
 was solely given to establish and to maintain. 
 Looking at the unsatisfiable importunity with 
 which the proviso has been urged upon Congress, 
 in perfect defiance of its hostile, if not fatal effect 
 upon the Union, a southern man cannot but ask in 
 amazement, Why is this? Is it done to try the 
 strength of our political system, and to see from 
 actual proof what the agencies are that can trar it 
 apart ? Nothing so irrational can be charged. Does 
 the North suspect the loyalty of the South ? and is 
 not this measure a reckless experiment upon it? 
 Is it not meant as the experimentum cruets of our 
 southern attachment to the Union? And are not 
 the fine and subtle, but strong chords of that at- 
 tachment to be operated upon like so many coarse 
 strands of water-rotted Kentucky or Illinois hemp, 
 subjected to extremity of trial for some object of 
 naval equipment, and therefore to be strained and 
 stretched by weight after weight until its utmost 
 power of tension shall be discovered ? To us it 
 seems as if this was the very spirit and purpose 
 with which this hated proviso is so insatiably and 
 so cruelly pressed upon us. If its injustice is less 
 obvious to the North than it is to us, its hostility 
 to the continued and prosperous union of them 
 is, at this day, too palpable to all sections and to 
 all eyes, to be overlooked or denied. Define it as 
 you please, it is really and substantially, in its op- 
 erations and effects, a first measure for the disso- 
 lution of the Union. So I regard it, and hence, to 
 a great degree, the unrelaxing opposition with 
 which I consider it my duty, and the duty of every 
 
12 
 
 member h«-re, representatively and individually, to |j 
 expose and to resist it. J 
 
 Suppose the southern attachment to the Union, 
 which you gentlemen of tlie northern Stales think 
 proper to distrust, shou'd sink overpowered under 
 the cruel and ceaseless tests which you are prepar- 
 ing f<>i it in your "promio," what public pood will 
 you have accomplished a%the price of its sacrifice? 
 What greater or better addition will you have " 
 made to yourselves, to your country, or to man- 
 kind, in the measure you will have carried, than 
 you had in the attachment, support, and national 
 peace you will have lost? You will, indeed, have 
 gotten your proviso— thai will be safe; but the moral 
 and social, if not the political unity of your coun- 
 try will be broken up and destroyed. You will 
 have thus gotten comparatively about as much as ' 
 Adam and Eve did after their obedience had been 
 abandoned. They got the beguiling serpent and the ' 
 forbidden fruit as the reward of thetr experiment, ' 
 but their peace with Heaven and their paradise on 
 earth were swept away. 
 
 Without looking, however, to that extreme and 
 incomprehensible aggregate of national and indi- 
 vidualevil — the breaking up of our Federal Union— 
 than are other associated evils which are only 
 short of this one, and only less to be dreaded and 
 avoided because they contain the causes and ele- 
 ments that involve it. 
 
 Inallofourreflectionsupon thisUnion, and upon H 
 the innumerable influences that go to affect it, we 
 are never to forget that the highest of its high pow- '' 
 ers — that only one which renders it supreme, and 
 which truly entitles it to the epithet of " glorious," 
 with which it is our pleasure and our habit to 
 speak of it— that only " higher power" is a moral 
 one. It is not to be found in your table of statis- 
 tics. It does not exist in the number nor in the 
 muscle of your sons — in your armies nor your na- 
 vies—in your iron nor gold — your weapons of war 
 nor your hoards of wealth— in your continents of 
 land nor of sea — but in the boundless confidence, in- 
 terest, attachment, love, and hope of your people; 
 in the mys'eriousand exultant feeling which warms 
 the heart of every American from the hour of his 
 birth, and goes with him from his cradle to his 
 grave as the invisible, but the cherished and cheer- 
 ing companion of his life, that God, in his mercy, 
 never gave such a Government or such a country 
 toman before, and never will give such another 
 again. 
 
 Let us beware, then, how this feeling is dis- 
 turbed. If kept unimpaired as the inspiring and 
 the common one of our whole people, our Union 
 can never be anything else than "glorious," and 
 must even become progressively more and more 
 so every day. But, strong as this feeling is, it 
 
 must be fostered to be preserved; it is not too 
 
 strong, though it is infinitely too precious and too 
 
 l or destroyed. As long as 
 
 the Constitution, which is the written and cove- 
 
 l of the (Tnion, shall be carried out with 
 
 perfect fidelity in all its purposes and provisions; 
 
 aaloi hall have but one object, one II 
 
 ■, one law ol universal equity and kindness to 
 
 i of the country in the i cerci i of its ' 
 
 law--: . Q | Qg we m „ v |, e mi,-,, ^al 
 
 nion will continue to be, what ii oughl to bi , 
 
 and what it has been, the one supreme objeel of 
 
 tru t, nod love, ami hope to every emy/m Within I 
 it— the humc of his loyalty ar.d the habitation ol 
 
 his peace. But if the contrary course of action be 
 pursued — the Constitution fulfilled in part and de- 
 nied in part, and the Government willfully and 
 willingly perverted to objects of sectional legisla- 
 tion, and portions of the country outraged by acts 
 of injury and wrong — if this be so, we all feel and 
 know that the great power spoken of, the moral 
 power of this Union, will be gone, and that the 
 Union itself, when it ceases to be the .source of 
 common blessings, will rapidly degenerate into 
 nothing better than an unnatural bond of mutual 
 discord, contest, and hatred to all of its parties. 
 
 Why, then, insist upon a measure (your " pro- 
 viso") whose entire tendency is to this very re- 
 sult? Is any one of you ready to say, whatever 
 be the consequences to this Union from the pas- 
 sage of that measure, whether they be those of 
 instant conflict, or of corroding, undermining, de- 
 stroying discontent, whatever tho form of the 
 consequences — whatever the fate they may in- 
 volve, come what may of it, give me — give me the 
 "proviso." Are any of you ready to say this, 
 and to say it in this spirit of reckless and utter 
 daring? If so, all history, perhaps, can furnish 
 but a single case of analogy for a more infatuated 
 or more undoing desperation. When the hardened 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem gathered around the cross 
 and resolved to take upon themselves the blood of 
 the crucifixion, they cried out with one, voice, 
 " Loose unto us Barrabas"*-=give us the rioter 
 and the murderer, but let the Lord of life, the 
 Saviour of us all, let him hang upon the tree. 
 
 Infatuated and irrational under any state of na- 
 tional circumstances as it would be to risk the 
 stability or the peace of our Union upon the pas- 
 sage of any measure of untried and conjectured 
 advantage, how much more so would it be for 
 you, who advocate the proviso, to insist upon its 
 adoption by Congress at all hazards, in the very 
 face of the California example ? There it has been 
 quietly and willingly adopted by a community 
 composed, in part, of a slaveholding people, and 
 so adopted, without any enactment, intervention, 
 or influence of Congress. Why, then, not leave 
 this whole matter of the proviso to be disposed of 
 in like manner by the remaining communities 
 whom it may concern, according to their own will, 
 and without any intervention, or influence of any 
 kind, first or last, from this body ; 
 
 We of the South, for the most part, are content 
 with this; and why not you also, who have already 
 profited by it in so marked a case? We are con- 
 tent with this plan of non-intervention, because in 
 our judgment it has principle, expediency, and jus- 
 tice to support it, and because, too, it furnishes 
 not a temporary rule only, but a sound and a per- 
 manent one, through all time, for the sa'isfactotw 
 settlement of this agitating and |] ject. 
 
 The Territories are so many emlu yo States, which 
 i' would best consist, both with our national peace 
 and with the general spirit of our federative sys- 
 tem, to withdraw as early and as much 98 pos- 
 sible from the shaping and fashioning hands of 
 Congress, and admit as early and as tolly to the 
 functions of States bi their circumstances will, in 
 
 anywise, allow. Happily lot them, their ulti- 
 mate association with our family of States is 
 i upon a ruh which it is easy, in North 
 America at least, to comply with. That rule, tho 
 fundamental one, with all the States, is, that the 
 Constitution of each shall be republican. That 
 
13 
 
 it shall be so, is the only condition which our Con- 
 stitution puts upon the otherwise perfect liberty of 
 the Territories, when organizing themselves for 
 States, to adopt any kind of government they 
 please, or which it puts upon their after admission 
 into the Union; and hence the only authority which 
 the Constitution gives to Congress to look into the 
 government of the States, is the mere authority to 
 see that this condition is complied with, and that 
 the republican form of government required has 
 been actually and fully secured. We — all of us — 
 hold it to have been right, and wise, and proper, 
 on the part of our original States, and well worthy 
 of everything it cost them, to have formed their 
 own constitutions and systems of government 
 according to their own will and pleasure; and, in 
 what can it be considered less wise, or just, or 
 proper, that our Territories should exercise the 
 very same right of self-government when they are 
 in a situation to do it? 
 
 Instead of Congress, then, undertaking to pro- 
 vide complete systems of government for the Ter- 
 ritories, and thus, really , to act in suspension of one 
 of the most precious and vital of all the rights 
 which a community can enjoy — the right of gov- 
 erning itself, — instead of this, how much more just 
 and wise would it be for that body to restrict its 
 authority over the Territories to the exercise of 
 only so much as their protection may demand, and 
 leave all else — the whole problem of their muni- 
 cipal rights and institutions, to be regulated and 
 determined by themselves, whenever their wishes 
 or condition may require it? 
 
 The Congress of 1787, instead of acting thus, 
 and leaving the Territories of that day to provide 
 for their own government, as each one of the States 
 had just done for itself, even at the extreme ex- 
 pense of war and revolution, was the first to set the 
 example — the unwise and misleading example — of 
 subjecting them to the supreme supervision and 
 control of Congress. Although peculiar necessities 
 for this act were believed, at that time, to exist, 
 and were urged in justification of it, yet the act 
 itself, and the celebrated ordinance which forms a 
 part of it, have never ceased to be plead from that 
 day to this as constituting a sort of common and 
 consecrate law, by which all of our Territories, 
 no matter how circumstanced, ought to be gov- 
 erned. So true is this, in relation to the very 
 Territories of which those that now engage our 
 deliberations are a part, that the main feature of 
 that ordinance was attempted to be ingrafted upon 
 them, in both Houses of Congress, even before the 
 acquisition of them had been fully completed ! 
 The result of it all has been, to leave the Terri- 
 tories without any regular territorial government 
 at all — to distract our national councils with agita- 
 tion, and to bring the different sections of our 
 quiet Union into an inflamed and dangerous state 
 of irritation and contest with each other. 
 
 Such, in truth, is the condition of affairs which 
 our wrangles on the subject of the Territories have 
 brought about, that it is now evident to every one, 
 that there can be no healthy administration of the 
 Government, and no repose — perhaps even no se- 
 curity to the country — until both of them, both 
 Government and country are extricated, and effect- 
 ually extricated from the harassments and dan- 
 gers of that condition. Happily, it is yet possible 
 for this to be done, and to be done, too, without 
 diffiulty , if we have but the spirit and the virtue to 
 
 practice a little forbearance of power, and to stand 
 by the general principles of our system. Try the 
 efficacy for this purpose, of simple non interven- 
 tion. Keep the schemes and the theories — the 
 plots, passions, and interests of ambitious politi- 
 cians from all legislative connection with the Terri- 
 tories; let there be no constitution-making by Congress 
 for them, but let that be reserved as an essen- 
 tial first right, to be exercised when need be, by 
 themselves, — forbear the exercise of congressional 
 power just to this extent, and if no gend should 
 come of it, you will, at least, have the satisfaction 
 of knowing that you were acting for good, and 
 upon a reasonable plan of securing it. 
 
 Whatever our course of action on this subject 
 may be, or ought to be, it is certain that our pres- 
 ent one must be changed. We have now been gov- 
 ernment-making, and trying to government-m.ike 
 for the Territories until, without effecting anything 
 valuable for them, we are like to bring the utmost 
 injury and ruin upon ourselves. Under such cir- 
 cumstances to persist in the same course of self- 
 sacrificing efforts, would be as wicked as it would 
 be foolish, and is, in no sort, allowable in the exe- 
 cution of a national trust. Admonished, then, of 
 the evil ofinterferencein this matter, let Congress at 
 once abandon it, and try the benefit of the contrary 
 course. Nothing could be simpler than that con- 
 trary course — nothing freer from every species of 
 embarrassment — nothing in more perfect keeping 
 with the principles and the structure of our sys- 
 tem, general and local — and nothing more auspi- 
 cious for the settlement of all questions concerning 
 the institution of slavery in the Territories, and in 
 the States growing out of them, without aggita- 
 tion, offence, or complaint of any kind, or in any 
 quarter whatsoever. We are invoked to the work 
 of deliverance and security by every considera- 
 tion which reason, justice, necessity, and love of 
 country can supply. Let us venture upon it, then, 
 in the manner suggested, in good faith, and in 
 good earnest, and fear not to trust the issues of our 
 action to time and Providence. 
 
 Let us now, Mr. Speaker, (said Mr. McD.,) 
 consider for a moment or two some of the grounds 
 upon which the Texas boundary bill, with the ten 
 millions of dollars therewith connected, ought or 
 ought not to be supported. 
 
 This bill comes to us with the approval of the 
 Senate. Is it also entitled to ours ? 
 
 A consideration standing in the foreground of 
 all others in this case is, that if this, or some 
 kindred act of legislation is not adopted by Con- 
 gress, and adopted without delay, a conflict of 
 arms between the United States Government and 
 that of Texas, is apparently inevitable. The 
 President has advised Congress, by message, of 
 his determination to take and maintain for the 
 United States, by the sword, if necessary, the act- 
 ual possession of all the territory of New Mex- 
 ico, which was relinquished to the UnilcrT States 
 by the late treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. On the 
 other hand, the GovemoTof Texas is preparing, 
 under an act of the Legislature of Texas, to es- 
 ] tablish the jurisdiction "of that State over a con- 
 ] siderable portion of this very same territory. 
 Each of these executive officers in this matter 
 is acting under a sense of official obligation, from 
 which Neither one of them, doubtless, considers 
 himself as having the slightest liberty to depart; 
 arid hence a collision, which may speedily draw 
 
14 
 
 the whole Union into its vortex, is apparently in- > 
 evitable, unless Congress, that has the necessary 
 power in the matters of difference between them, 
 shall s<» adjust them as to make collision impos- 
 sible. Without going into any exposition of the 
 constitutional doctrines of Executive power and 
 duty which the President has laid down in his late 
 message upon this subjpet, (and which it would 
 require a good deal of time properly to do,) Mr. 
 Mi D. can only say of them, in passing, thai his .' 
 impressions are against them. 
 
 Whatever else may be thought of the adjust- 
 ment of those differences which is now o tiered 
 in the boundary bill before us, it will hardly 
 be denied that it is a well-timed and a reasona- | 
 ble effort on the part of Congress to discharge 
 its duties in the premises, and to protect the 
 country from the causes and calamities of civil 
 war. Should this bill have the effect of pre- 
 venting any bloodshed between the Federal and 
 the State authorities, and have no other, it 
 would for that one alone be well worthy of the 
 wisdom and patriotism of Congress to pass it, — 
 for no one can disguise from himself the fact, that 
 a blow struck, or a musket fired between the par- 
 ties, in the present distempered condition of the 
 public feeling, would, in all probability, convert 
 the whole Union into a battle-field, and thus 
 plunge it, and all in it, into a depth and duration of 
 ruin and woe which the mind shudders even to 
 think upon. 
 
 That it would, and must, have this one good 
 effect cannot be doubted. 'But this is not all. It 
 commends itself to our sanction in other aspects 
 also. Indeed, if it be taken as a whole, if the 
 many delicate and disputed points which it em- 
 braces and provides for be candidly considered, it 
 will be found to contain, at least, the main ele- 
 ments of a sound and equitable settlement of them 
 all — a settlement which violates no right of Federal 
 or of State Government, which wrongs no section, 
 which cooperates with no partisan purposes, and 
 which thus comes up to and satisfies the obliga- 
 tions of national impartiality and national justice. 
 80 far as the interests, the policy, or the duty of 
 Texas are affected by this bill, they may be safely 
 confided to thcguardianshipof Texasherself, with- 
 out any enlightenment or discussion from us. 
 She is the constitutional judge of all such matters, 
 and is, no doubt, as competent in fact, as she is 
 in law, to dispose of them justly and wisely. Her 
 absolute and perfect right to decide upon them as 
 she pleases, is a fundamental part of the bill, and 
 herein the great principle of State sovereignty is 
 kept intact and inviolate. 
 
 Air. McD. has always been of the opinion that 
 the claim of Texas to the whole of the country 
 of the EUo Grande, from its mouth to the 
 northern limit of the United States, was a sound 
 one, and Ought to be allowed by Congress. But he 
 is, at the-samc time, not insensible to the strength 
 of the argument against that opinion, nor is he 
 unaware of the profound conviction with which 
 that contrary opinion to his own is relied upon 
 By members of eminent ability in both Houses; 
 and hence he cannot resist the conclusion, that 
 the adjustment of that claim which is provided for 
 in the bill, is, upon the whole, a just and proper 
 one, and as near the exact right of the case as 
 cith' r of the parties — the Government and people 
 of U.t Union on one Bide, or the government and 
 
 people of Texas on the other — could ever have any 
 reason to expect. It ought, therefore, as he thinks, 
 to be received, and carried through as satisfactory 
 by both. According to a careful examination 
 which was made into this subject by one of the 
 officers of the Land Office at the request of Mr. 
 M< !>•, it appears that the boundary line of the 
 bill will give to Texas more, by some twenty odd 
 thousand square miles, than that of the " omnibus 
 compromise" would have done, but less by eighty- 
 eight thousand square miles than her whole claim 
 amounts to. In other words, the bill cuts off and 
 leaves out of Texas eighty-eight thousand square 
 miles of the Mexican country lying cast or the 
 RioGrande. Of this eighty eight thousand square 
 miles, about one half (|) lies north of 3G° 30' 
 north latitude, (the Missouri line,) and the other 
 half south of it. It seems, Mr. Speaker, that the 
 ultimate situation of this excluded territory of 
 eighty-eight thousand square miles — whether it 
 shall be slaveholding or tree — has taken stronger 
 hold of the anxieties of this House than any other 
 po'rtion of the bill, or even the whole bill itself. 
 On one side we are told that an unfounded and 
 worthless claim of a slave State to a large amount 
 of the national domain is notonly to be sanctioned, 
 but to be paid for out of the public Treasury, with 
 an immense sum of money, in order to enlarge 
 the extent of the slaveholding empire. On the 
 other hand, it is said that this claim is a perfectly 
 sound claim, which no one would think of re- 
 fusing to Texas, but that she is a slave State, 
 and that the ten millions of dollars which it is 
 proposed to give her for it is nothing but a de- 
 vice to get her territory out of her hands, in order 
 to convert it into free soil. Judging from these and 
 like suggestions, which we hear on all sides around 
 us, it would seem that our whole action here is a 
 deceptive one, and that our real object in this 
 boundary bill is so to shape it as to turn it into an 
 act for the ultimate benefit of free soil or of sla- 
 very. What may be the ultimate effect of it in 
 either of these respects, it would notonly be ex- 
 tremely difficult for any one to say, but almost idle 
 for any one even to conjecture. One thing about 
 it, however, seems to be pretty clear, and that is, 
 that its instrumentality for these purposes is not 
 likely to be much either way, and certainly not 
 so much as to afford, other matters considered, 
 any reasonable or sufficient ground for its rejec- 
 tion. What that ultimate effect may be, m;:y, 
 perhaps, be conjectured with some plausibility 
 when Congress shall settle upon the territorial 
 government of New Mexico — that community 
 which is to receive, by this boundary bill if it 
 passes, all the territory east of the Rio Grande 
 which is refused to, or which is taken from off, the 
 State of Texas. 
 
 As thing3 now stand, all the country which this 
 bill may take from Texas above 3G° 3U' it abso- 
 lutely free soil by the terms of Annexation, so that 
 things continuing as at present, the slavery and 
 free-soil contest can relate only to the country 
 I which was el limed by Texas but refused by this 
 bill, below 30° 3U'. Irthat country were now made 
 a component part of Texas, and put under her 
 juri diction and laws, it is not to be doubted that 
 I the chances of establishing slavery upon it when it 
 1 shall hereafter be divided off from Texas, and be 
 J formed into a State, or part of a Stale, by itself 
 i are far greater lhan if the contrury course be 
 
15 
 
 adopted, of now cutting it off altogether from the 
 dominion of Texas and making it a permanent 
 part of New Mexico. In this aspect of the case, 
 then, free-soil would seem to triumph; and so it 
 would, in fact, if there were no counter considera- 
 tions bearing upon it. Recollect, then, that Texas 
 is not the owner, but the claimant only of the 
 country spoken of; and that her claim, which is one 
 of perplexity and doubt, if tried before the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, might, peradventure, 
 be decided against her. But be that claim what it 
 may, it is by this bill, made good for ten millions 
 of dollars to her and to the maintenance and ex- 
 tension of slavery within the vast boundaries pro- 
 Eosed to be left to, and to be established for her — 
 oundaries which include an area of 237,321 
 square miles, four times the size of Virginia, and 
 capable of being finally divided into four States be- 
 sides herself, or into five in all, of more than 40,000 
 oijuarc miles each. Weighing those offsetting; 
 parts of the case with one another, and consider- 
 ing more especially the peace-giving character of 
 the bill, it is not easy to see why this harassing 
 dispute about slave soil and free soil, as connected 
 with this bill, should be continued any longer, or 
 be permitted to prejudice and defeat its passage. 
 Let us, at least, wash our hands of it for the 
 present, as we may well be allowed to do, having 
 had our share, and more than our share of it al- 
 ready, and dismissing it from this Hall, let us, if 
 possible, commit it to other tribunals and to other 
 times. 
 
 We are not to forget, Mr. Speaker, in the midst 
 of our contestations with one another upon smaller 
 matters of policy or of duty, that there is one 
 great, solemn, and overawing duty belonging to 
 this body, which comprehends all others, and by 
 which the adjustment of all others must, more or 
 less, be controlled — that, namely, of restoring 
 peace to an agitated and contending country. 
 Ours, in a peculiar and eminent degree, is the high 
 duty of replacing and maintaining the Union in 
 which that country, as a whole, consists, not upon 
 the hesitating consent — not upon the broken con- 
 fidence — not upon the discontented but quelled 
 spirit, and not upon the surrendered safety of any 
 of its parts, but upon the honorable conciliation, 
 the responding faith, and the cordial agreement of 
 them all. In the approbation and consent of the 
 people and of the States, we have the foundation 
 of the Union; and in that Union — in the concentra- 
 tion and the hostility of power it involves — we 
 have at one and the same time, both the strength 
 and the weakness of our system. It is the vital 
 point, therefore, which every effort of wisdom and 
 patriotism should be habitually put forth to defend. 
 If we are to judge either from the general princi- 
 ciples of national intercourse and action, or from 
 the ordinary, well-understood, and unchangeable 
 passions of the human heart, no event in the prog- 
 ress of public things is more probable, or more 
 certain even, than this, that whenever our Federal 
 Union is dissolved, whether violently or by con- 
 sent, and its several States are rearranged into 
 new confederacies, or remain independent and 
 alone, their present peaceful, prosperous, and 
 happy relations with one another will be gradually, 
 if not instantly, changed into relations of jealousy, 
 enmity, altercation, and war. Look at their im- 
 mense inequalities of geographical advantage and 
 physical power — at the dangerous and tempting vi- 
 
 cinity of the weak to the strong — at their long lines of 
 border-connection and the perpetuul provocations 
 and facilities which those will afford to every spe- 
 cies of jurisdictional trespass and border feud. 
 Look at the lakes, bays, and rivers intervening 
 among the States, the noble bonds at present of 
 mutual peace because of mutual prosperity and 
 interest, but if separated, the never-failing sources 
 of quarrel, because of contested rights, privileges, 
 and purposes of navigation. Besides these there 
 are the radical and disaffecting differences which 
 attach to their different texture and habits of so- 
 ciety, — and then also the vindictive and revengeful 
 passions which all ruptured intimacies, national or 
 personal, are sure to excite; take all together, and 
 we have in them a mass of materials, which, 
 however'providentially harmonized under our Fed- 
 eral head, could lead so certainly to nothing else 
 amongst separated States as to jealousies, di fty, ; 
 aggressions, and bloodshed. When aggrest 
 any other of the thousand cause! of war, w.. .i* 
 national folly and national wrong are always at 
 hand to supply — when this or any cause shall 
 bring two or more of these separate States 
 into actual conflict with one another, then the evil 
 hour of them all will have come, and their after 
 fortunes will be no better than mere spasmodic 
 struggles to keep alive. But if war comes, or is 
 threatened, or is expected, then all the muniments 
 and resources of war must be had; levies of men and 
 levies of money must be made; garrisons and 
 armies, and navies provided, and that, too, themore 
 lavishly because of the proximity of the parties 
 and their innumerable accessibilities to mutual and 
 vital attack. And all these again will be followed 
 here, as they have been in like cases everywhere, 
 also by standing armies, and by a new and more 
 powerful organization of executive authority to 
 raise and command them. But with standing ar- 
 mies and suprerr e executives, nothing of our birlh- 
 rights'will be left to contend for. Cast off, then, 
 your national bond, rearrange the separated 
 States into any new combinations that you please, 
 violently or peaceably, and your vast strength of 
 influence and of power, foreign and domestic, is 
 gone; your lofty mission of deliverance and of 
 liberty to the na.ions is gone; the example, which 
 fell, like the shadow of Saint Peter, with healing and 
 hope upon the despairing and the diseased , is gone; 
 that master spirit which was bringing the whole 
 world into communion with itself, rousing and re- 
 generating its millions, and bearing all things on- 
 ward for good by the resistless energy and might 
 of its own beneficent and profound progression — 
 that spirit, too, will be gone. State after State will 
 sink under conflicts with each other, and all will 
 be swayed by the law of the sword, until some 
 American Maximin, or American Alexander, con- 
 queringTall, shall again consolidate all, and stamp 
 his fooT upon the bold and the free heart, which 
 throbs at this hour with so strong a sense of hu- 
 man liberty and so rich a hope of renovating the 
 o-overnments and people of the world. 
 ° But the range and the horrors of such a catas- 
 trophe do not terminate with ourselves. They ex- 
 tend also to other lands than 0ur own, whose 
 hopes, interests and freedom are deeply compli- 
 cated with ours. Indeed, our whole position as a 
 people, the unparalleled physical and moral capa- 
 bilities into which we have been wrought up for 
 our own welfare and for auspicious action upon the 
 
16 
 
 welfare of others, is, itself, hardly less than a mir- 
 acle in human story; and in the whole course of 
 that story litis never, in any other case, been real- 
 ized so providentially or bo responsibly before. 
 From the empire of Nebuchadnezzar to that of Na- 
 poleon, how immense the distance, how stupend- 
 ous the revolutions that have intervened, how in- 
 tense the fiery contests which have burned over 
 continents and age--, changing their theatre and their 
 instruments, and leaving upon the whole surface 
 of the globe scarce a spot unstained by their deso- 
 lating and bloody track; and yet no national off* 
 spring lias sprung from them all so fitted as our 
 own united America, to redeem for the world the 
 agonie.s they have cost it. Whatever, in that long 
 period, other nations may have risen up to be, and 
 however truly and illustriously a few of them may 
 ha-; prolonged (heir day and advanced the civili- 
 ze ' \ ami the wisdom of themselves and the world, 
 
 venti ., lias ever embodied such an ug- . 
 
 g'.b§ate of national happiness or political truth as 
 our°own Republic, and none like it has ever ful- 
 filled the ultimate problem of all government, that, 
 namely, of making the utmosufreedom of the citi- j 
 zen and the utmost power of the State the coexist- 
 ing and the upholding conditions of one another. 
 
 With a freedom only inferior to that of Rome in 
 the worst qualities of hers, those of aggression and 
 conquest; and superior to that of Greece in its 
 best, these of civilization and defence; with noth- 
 ing but this freedom, its story and its triumphs, 
 our Republic has become confederate alike with 
 the liberty sentiment of the world; and with the 
 majestic power of human sympathy to propa- 
 gate itself, and hence its flag is destined to wave 
 not onlv over an empire of illimitable means, but 
 over the illimitable empires of reborn and self- 
 governing man. 
 
 And now that this Republic of freedom, happi- 
 ness, and power, is a heritage of ours, who that has 
 shared as we have done in the countless blessings 
 that belong to it — who that knows it, as we do, to be 
 the heritage of every good which human nature 
 can enj iy, or human government secure — who, so 
 situated, could make it or could see it the sport 
 of violent, selfish or parricidal passions ? Who of 
 us, without putting forth every faculty of soul and 
 body to prevent it, could see it go down — down 
 under some monstrous struggle of brother with 
 brother, an eternal crush upon > Ives, an eter- 
 nal example for the shuddering, the admonition, 
 the horror and the curse of universal man ? 
 
 There have been those who, impelled only by 
 their own noble and generous nature, have rushed 
 forward on the field of battle, and given their own 
 bosom 10 the blow of death, that, thereby, some 
 loved comrade or commander might be spared, or 
 some patriotic purpose vindicated and secured. 
 There have been those who have, gone into the 
 dungeons of misfortune and of guilt, and worn out 
 the days and years of their own lives that they 
 mi"ht alleviate the disease or the despair of their 
 wr etrhed . -""I. "< least, kindle ud for 
 
 oroth'-r world the aspirations and hopes which 
 wrr , it this. And there have been 
 
 0( |, , , have companioned with the pes 
 
 tilencc, and have walked, day by day, in its. silent 
 and horrid footsteps, that they might learn in 
 what way to encounter its power, and bo be en- 
 
 abled, reverently, to lift up from crushed and an- 
 guished communities the too-heavy pressing of 
 the hand of the Almighty. And are we, who hold 
 the sublimest political trust ever committed to the 
 hands of any other people — are we alone to be in- 
 capable of any and every dedication of ourselves 
 which that trust requires? Can we stand calmly, 
 helplessly, and faithlessly by, and allow it to be 
 wrecked and lost? 
 
 In this hour of danger, this eventful hour of the 
 age — this hour, which is all in all to us and to mil- 
 lions besides, those oppressed millions of other 
 lands who are ruled by irresponsible power, and 
 who, as they lie upon the earth, overwhelmed 
 and crushed by the weight of altars or of thrones, 
 stfll look to us for hope, and pour out their hearts 
 in sobbings and in prayer to Heaven that ours may 
 be the radiant and the steady light which shall 
 never bewilder or betray — in this hour, so full. of 
 interest, our mo.her country comes into our very 
 midst, and, taking each by the hand, says to each, 
 " Son, give me, give me thy heart." And will we 
 not, can we not do it ? Can we not give it — freely, 
 proudly give it all .'—keeping no part of it back for 
 any end or any passion of our own, though dear, it 
 may be, as a right eyeor a right arm ? If any of U3 
 cannot— if there is any lingering, denying, clinging 
 feeling which the heart will not, or cannot deliver 
 over at such a moment, let us tear that heart from 
 our bosom if we can, and lift up our supplications 
 to the Father above that He would send us another 
 in its place, better fitted for the sight of Heaven, 
 and for the service and fellowship of man. 
 
 Gjve us in our duties here but something of the 
 spirit of the Roman father who delivered up his 
 son to the axe of justice, because he loved his 
 country better than his blood; or that of the gal- 
 lant young officer of the Revolution who was de- 
 tected and executed, whilst performing, under the 
 orders of his immortal chief, the service of a spy, 
 [Lieutenant Hale.] When led to the spot of exe- 
 cution, as he stood upon it, and looked forth, for 
 the last time, upon the smile of day, and upon the 
 bright and benignant sun of heaven as it beamed 
 upon him, and felt the agony that all— all was 
 gone, his young and hopeful and joyous nature 
 involuntarily shrank, and he is said to have cried 
 out, with impassioned exclamation, "Oh, it is a 
 bitter, bitter thing to die, and how bitter, too, to 
 know that 1 have but one life wbich I can give to 
 
 ! my country!" Give us only this spirit for our 
 work here, doubt not but that it will be approved 
 of by our land, and be crowned with a long fu- 
 turity of thankfulness and rejoicing. 
 
 [Mr. McDowell considers it his duty to say 
 that this speech, from page 10, second column be- 
 ginning with the words " Do this," to the end, was 
 nol actually delivered by him in the House of Repre- 
 
 | sentatives, but was prepared to be delivered in the 
 same manner as the part of it which was spoken, 
 
 1 and would have been but for the want of time. 
 Hi regards it as a necessary part, and therefore 
 
 I takes the liberty of adding it. This he feels him- 
 
 ' self the freer to do, as the House was almost 
 unanimous (one or two only dissenting) in its call 
 upon him to "go on " when his noiirhad expired.] 
 
 H 286 79 
 
'•-W. ; /\ 'WM : ^« 
 
 
 »°-v 
 
 *, * 
 
 • • ••* > V »L!nL' 
 
 
 
 
 *• ^ 
 
 o v 
 
 ■0.' vC. 
 
 
 
 ,\ 
 
 ^ 
 
 <^r 
 
 9 . V°' > V 
 
 
 ^ *'...* ,0 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 $ .'••. " 
 
 *r* o.v "ct. 
 
 
 ^^. 
 
 
 ,* . . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^^r 
 
 
 ** 
 
<r < 
 
 c ♦ 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 .* rV 
 
 
 
 % •• 
 
 ^* • Jl^fR^ 6 
 
 v^ /^te\ "W .•Sa&to *«,,♦♦ .*£& V* .•" 
 
 • ♦ * * «♦ 
 
 VV 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 ^9' 
 
 .•^•> ^\-^x ^*£®kS yv^k-^