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 685 
 
 H164 
 
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F 685 KANSAS AND THE SUPREME COURT. 
 H164 
 
 copy * SPEECI 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN Vf HALE, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, 
 
 Delivered in the United States Senate, January 19 and 21, 18-58. 
 
 The Senate proceeded to the consideration of the motion 
 to refer so much of the President's message as relates to 
 Kansas affairs to the Committee on Territories. 
 
 Mr. HALE. Mr. President, in addressing my- 
 self to the Senate, on this occasion, permit me to 
 say that I am not one of those who think that the 
 introduction of this subject into the debates of 
 the Senate was either premature or ill-timed. I 
 believe that it was appropriately introduced ; that 
 its introduction was expected by the public ; and, 
 considering the extraordinary position of the 
 President of the United States, I should think 
 that those who differed from him widely upon the 
 measure which is so prominent would have been 
 derelict in their duty if they had failed to chal- 
 lenge at the very outset the doctrine promulgated 
 in his message. I may excuse myself — and I can 
 only speak for myself, though it is not impossible 
 that some friends who sympathize with me may 
 have been governed by the same motive — when I 
 say that thus far I have refrained from throwing 
 myself prominently before the Senate and before 
 the country on this question, for the reason that 
 I believed there was a greater curiosity in the 
 land to know what other men thought, and what 
 they would say, than there was to know what so 
 humble an individual as myself would say. 
 
 Amongst those gentlemen for the expression of 
 whose sentiments the public waited with deep 
 and earnest and anxious solicitude, prominent 
 stood the Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Douglas ;] 
 and however I may animadvert upon his po- 
 sition in some respects, I must do him the 
 credit to say that in that emergency he fully 
 met the public expectation, and frankly and ably 
 met the issue which the President had tendered 
 to him. So far I accord with him ; and as I 
 accord with him on one other point, I may 
 as well mention it at once, and then go on to the 
 divergence. I agree with him in opposing this 
 Lecompton Constitution, in opppsing the recom- 
 mendation of the President to force it on the 
 necks of an unwilling people ; I agree with him 
 there entirely and fully ; but I am not opposed to 
 the Lecompton Constitution, I am not opposed to 
 the President's attempt to force it on the necks 
 of that people, I am not opposed to this attempt 
 to substitute force for reason, because it is con- 
 trary to the principles and policy of the Nebraska 
 bill, but because it is in exact conformity with 
 them, part of the original programme, carrying it 
 out, if not in letter, in spirit exactly. Sir, if 
 there has been a controversy between that dis- 
 tinguished Senator and the President of ihe 
 United States, I think the palm of victory must 
 be awarded to the President, and that notwith- 
 standing he was out of the country, away over in 
 England, discharging the high diplomatic duties 
 which Lis country had devolved on him, I think 
 when he undertakes to bring in the Federal army to 
 force this Constitution on the people of Kansas, he 
 
 shows that he understands the Nebraska bill just 
 exactly as well as if he had been here, part and 
 parcel of it at the time it was passed. That is 
 the reason why I am opposed to this measure. 
 I was opposed to the bill ; I have been opposed 
 to it in its origin, in its progress, in its consum- 
 mation, and in its effects. I was opposed to the 
 planting of the seed, to its swelling and bursting 
 into life, to its spreading foliage, and I am opposed 
 to the ripe fruit which we are about to gather 
 from it. Having said that, I come back to s-ay 
 what the object of the bill was. 
 
 I have but one rule by which to judge of the 
 objects of a public act, and that is, by reading 
 it ; and thus seeing what its purport, meaning, 
 object, and intent is, as embodied in the bill it- 
 self. I do not go to the motives of individual 
 gentlemen who voted for the bill, and ask them 
 what it means ; and if I were in a court of law, 
 and the construction of the Kansas-Nebraska act 
 was up, and I could bring the affidavit of every 
 man thatrvoted for it, and they should swear that 
 it was not their intention to introduce Slavery 
 into any Territory or State, that would not be 
 received by the court ; it would not begin to raise 
 a presumption a3 to what the intention of the 
 act was. But, sir, you must look to- the act it- 
 self, to the history of the times in which it was 
 passed, and to the state of things to which it was 
 made to apply, in order to get at its object. 
 
 The Kansas-Nebraska bill on its face professes 
 to be a very harmless affair. The gist of it is 
 comprised in these few lines : 
 
 "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to 
 legislate Slavery into any Terriiory or Slate, nor to ex- 
 clude, it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof per- 
 fectly free to form and regulate their domestic institution-? 
 in tLeir own way, subject only to the Constitution of the 
 United Slates." 
 
 We begin to understand something of the great 
 popularity of this bill at the South. It is be- 
 cause Congress most graciously condescends to 
 inform the slave States that they do not mean 
 to abolish Slavery in those States — "it being 
 the true intent and meaning of this act not to" 
 " exclude Slavery from any State.'' The Repre- 
 sentatives of those States must have breathed 
 more freely, as Mr. Webster said on another oc- 
 casion, when they were assured that Congress 
 did not mean to abolish Slavery in their States. 
 We had said so individually, over and over again; 
 but I take it the public mind must have been 
 put at rest when it was embodied in a solemn 
 legislative enactment, that the Congress of the 
 United States did not mean to abolish Slavery 
 in any State. The act goes further, and assures 
 us of the free States that Congress did not mean 
 to legislate Slavery into our States. Sir, this 
 was gracious and gratuitous. I do not know 
 how gentlemen may receive it ; but I tell the 
 Congress of the United States, that when they 
 

 declare that they do not mean to legislate Sla- 
 very into New Hampshire, and when the Supreme 
 Court of the United States say they mean to ad- 
 judicate that it is there or is not there, I will 
 Ming it in their face, with the contempt that such 
 a gratuitous offer deserves. I shall have some- 
 thing to say about the Supreme Court by and 
 by ; and lest I should shock the sensibilities of 
 some men who look with great reverence on that 
 tribunal, I shall preface my remarks, in regard 
 to it, with some extracts from the writings of 
 Jefferson, as a sort of breaking-up plough, before 
 I come with a sub-soil one. I shall come to that, 
 however, presently. 
 
 I aver here that the object of the Nebraska 
 bill was to break down the barrier which sepa- 
 rated free territory from slave territory ; to let 
 Slavery into Kansas, and make another slave 
 State, legally and peacefully if you could, but a 
 slave State anyhow. I gather that from the his- 
 tory of the times, from the character of the bill, 
 from the measure, the great measure, the only 
 measure of any consequence in the bill, which 
 was the repeal of the Missouri restriction. I 
 know gentlemen say they did not mean it, but I 
 cannot deal with individuals. I must deal with 
 the act and with the Government ; I must deal 
 with the purport of the act, and the policy of 
 the Government in passing it. I know no other 
 rule by which to judge of an act, but to examine 
 .the natural and legitimate consequences that are 
 to follow from it. In discussing this matter, I 
 may say some things that have been said by 
 .others, and possibly some that have been said by 
 .myself before ; but the difficulty is, that these 
 obnoxious doctrines are pushed at us so fre- 
 quently that in meeting and resisting them, it 
 sometimes becomes necessary to travel over 
 ground which has been occupied before. 
 
 I say, then, sir, that the rula by which to judge 
 of the intent, the object, the purpose of an act, 
 .is to see what the act is calculated to do, what 
 its natural tendency is, what will in all human 
 probability be the effect. Before the passage of 
 the Kansas-Nebraska act, there stood upon your 
 . statute-book a law by which Slavery was pro- 
 hibited from going into any territory north of 
 - ,36° 30 / . The validity and constitutionality of 
 that law had been recognised by repeated de- 
 , cisions of the courts of the several States. If I 
 ..am not mistaken, I have a memorandum by me, 
 showing that it had been recognised by the 
 Supreme Co.urt of the State of Louisiana. So 
 far as. I know, the constitutionality of that en- 
 actment was unquestioned, and the country had 
 reposed in peace for more than a generation un- 
 der its operation. By and by, however, it was 
 discovered to be unconstitutional, and it was 
 .broken down. The instant it was broken down, 
 . Slavery went into Kansas ; but still, gentlemen 
 tell us they did not intend to let Slavery in ; that 
 was not the object. Let me illustrate this. Sup- 
 pose a farmer has a rich field, and a pasture ad- 
 joining, separated by a stone wall which his 
 fathers had erected there thirty years before. 
 The wall keeps out the cattle in the pasture, who 
 are exceedingly anxious to get into the field. 
 .Some modern reformer thinks that moral suasion 
 will keep them in the pasture, even if the wall 
 should be taken down, and he proceeds to take 
 it down. The result is, that the cattle go right 
 in ; the experiment fails. The philosopher says : 
 " Do not blame me ; that was not my intention ; 
 but it iB true, the effect has followed." I retort 
 
 upon him : " You knew the effect would follow ; 
 and, knowing that it would follow, you intended 
 that it should follow." 
 
 But, sir, we are not without the book on this 
 subject, if we are compelled to go to the avowed 
 declarations and sentiments of the gentlemen who 
 advocated the bill. An honorable Senator, who 
 usually sits before me, but who is not now in his 
 seat — I mean the Senator from South Carolina, 
 [Mr. Evans,] and I may say of him, what I would 
 not say if he were present, a man in whose heart 
 and in whose lips there is no guile and no de- 
 ceit, a man who could not utter a falsehood if 
 he tried -7- in 1856 delivered a speech on thia 
 question, in which he divulged and laid open, as 
 his own character is, the purpose he had in vo- 
 ting for the bill. He was speaking for the South, 
 and no man of all the South controverted him, 
 and said nay. I will tell you what he said — I 
 shall not use his very words, but I will state his 
 argument fairly. He referred to a declaration of 
 the honorable Senator from* Massachusetts, [Mr. 
 Wilson,] and said the Abolitionists had avowed 
 that it was their intention to abolish Slavery in 
 the Territories and in the District of Columbia, 
 and he apprehended that their purpose was to 
 abolish it everywhere when they could, and that 
 they would, when they got into power, abolish 
 Slavery, not only in this District and in the Ter- 
 ritories, but in the States. He said that that 
 consummation was to be reached by an amend- 
 ment to the Federal Constitution authorizing 
 Congress to do this, which requires the assent of 
 three-fourths of the States ; and in this view of 
 the controversy, one slave State was as good as 
 three free States ; and, therefore, as a guarantee 
 against the encroachments of the Anti-Slavery 
 spirit, they wanted Kansas for a slave State. 
 That is the argument of the honorable Senator 
 from South Carolina. It is the truth — no more 
 true after he said it than it was before ; no more 
 palpable to any man who would not see after the 
 avowal, than it was before. 
 
 That was the purpose ; but the bill itself says 
 its object was to leave the people "perfectly free." 
 It seemed to intimate that we had a kind of free- 
 dom in this country before, but it was an imper- 
 fect sort. They were mere tyros, those old men 
 of the Revolution, those gray-headed sages of the 
 Federal Convention, hoary and venerable with 
 age, ripe with experience, honored and venerated 
 for their lives of fidelity and of valor ; they had 
 but an imperfect notion of freedom. It was re- 
 served to the new lights of this latter day to dis- 
 cover and proclaim to the world what perfect 
 freedom was, and the illustration was to be 
 made in Kansas. I shall trace the history of it 
 presently. It seemed to be implied that there 
 never had been perfect freedom in the formation 
 of any Constitution before. I stand here, sir, 
 amid the representatives of thirty-one States, a 
 majority of whom, I think, have emerged from a 
 Territorial condition to one of State sovereignty ; 
 and I ask the Senators from each and every one, 
 if, in the formation of your State Constitutions, 
 your people did not enjoy perfect liberty ? Was 
 any restraint imposed upon you ? In the case 
 of California, it was said that her Constitution 
 was formed under the prestige of a military proc- 
 lamation issued by General ,Rlley ; but 1 ask 
 the Senators from California, called as that Con- 
 vention was, whether, when the delegates got 
 together, they did not exercise perfect freedom, 
 and form and submit to Congress just exactly 
 
the Constitution which the popular sense of the 
 State demanded ? I ask the Representatives of 
 those States carved out of the Northwestern Ter- 
 ritory, where the great ordinance of Freedom, 
 which is attempted to be stricken down, was in 
 force, whether, when they came to deliberate 
 upon the high question of the formation of a 
 State Constitution, preparatory to their admis- 
 sion into the Federal Union, they were not per- 
 fectly free ? Was any restraint imposed upon 
 Ohio, that giant State of the West ? Did she 
 inscribe Freedom upon her Constitution, con- 
 trary to the wishes of her people, at any one's 
 behest? Was it so in Illinois? Was it so in 
 Indiana? Has any State of this Union, any- 
 where, formed a Constitution, and presented it to 
 Congress, without the exercise of perfect free- 
 dom ? If there be any, let them speak. No, sir ; 
 it is not true. Our fathers knew what perfect 
 freedom was, and they exercised it. I have in- 
 quired as to the new States, aud no man gain- 
 says me. Now let me ask, how was it in the old 
 States? Were their Constitutions formed under 
 restraint, or were the people of each and every j 
 one of these confederated States perfectly free in j 
 the formation of their Constitutions ? No one 
 will deny that they enjoyed perfect freedom. 
 
 Having stated what I believe to have been the 
 object of the bill, I propose to inquire how per- 
 fect freedom has been carried out in Kansas. 
 Another term became popular about the same 
 time, about which I have a word to say, and I 
 will carry it along with perfect freedom — and that 
 is "popular sovereignty." What has been the 
 history of the application of "perfect freedom" 
 and " popular sovereignty " to Kansas ? The peo- 
 ple of Kansas were to have the real, the unadul- 
 terated, the genuine " perfect freedom." They 
 were to illustrate the great doctrine of popular 
 sovereignty as it never had been illustrated on 
 this continent before. What was the first step ? 
 In the first place, you made a code of laws for 
 these sovereigns. You would not let them begin 
 under their own laws. To start with, you piled 
 upon them every law that Congress, in its wis- 
 dom or folly, had ever made, from the beginning 
 of the Government to the passage of that act, 
 except, as Mr. Benton well said on another oc- 
 casion, a little short act, not as long as your fin- 
 ger, made expressly for them, and the only one 
 in the whole nine volumes that was made for 
 them, and that was one abolishing Slavery. That 
 act you excepted ; but you piled upon them every 
 other law you had passed, without distinction, 
 except those which were locally inapplicable. 
 You made a Governor for them ; you appointed 
 their marshals, their attorneys, and all their of- 
 ficers ; you made their laws, and sent the men to 
 administer them. Thus you started them on the 
 great career of developing and illustrating popu- 
 lar sovereignty. 
 
 What was the next chapter ? You left to them 
 on paper the poor privilege of voting ; and having 
 been nattered into the idea that they were a com- 
 munity of popular sovereigns, I suppose they 
 came together with high hopes of manifesting 
 that sovereignty at the first opportunity which 
 presented itself; and that was when an election 
 came off for members of the Territorial Legis- 
 lature. When that came, what did they find? 
 Did a mob go over from Missouri ? No, sir. I 
 will not do them that discredit. There was not 
 a mob, but an army there — an army with flags 
 flying, drums beating, with tents and all the par- 
 
 aphernalia and equipments of an army. They 
 went over, took possession of the Territory, drove 
 the popular sovereigns from the ballot-box, sub- 
 stituted the cartridge-box for the ballot-box, 
 elected their own men, and then went back over the 
 river, singing their songs of triumph, and pro- 
 claiming through the columns of the public papers 
 in the State of Missouri the great victory which 
 they, by their prowess, had achieved. This was 
 the second illustration of popular sovereignty in 
 the history of Kansas. 
 
 If I understand the history of the times, I am 
 not speaking of matters in regard to which there 
 is any dispute or controversy. About some 
 things there may have been some doubt, some 
 cavil, some controversy ; but I believe the truth 
 of the statement will not be disputed, that at the 
 first election in "Kansas for members of the Ter- 
 ritorial Legislature, the legal voters were forcibly 
 expelled, and illegal voters took possession of the 
 ballot-boxes. It is wide of my argument to say 
 in how many election precincts this was done. 
 If it was done in one, that is enough for my ar- 
 gument. I believe it was done in a majority of 
 them ; but if it was done in one, all that I en- 
 deavor to maintain is maintained by this argu- 
 ment. I believe the fact which I bave stated 
 will not be controverted. These men elected a 
 Legislature, and they elected their own friends, 
 as was natural. Having got possession of the 
 ballot-box, they were not going to elect their an- 
 tagonists. The Legislature came together, and 
 what did they do ? How did they carry out 
 " perfect freedom? " 
 
 It is said now, that the controversy was nar- 
 rowed down to the question whether they should 
 have domestic Slavery in Kansas or not. For 
 the purpose of my argument, I am willing to con- 
 cede that. How was " perfect freedom " illus- 
 trated on that question? The first Legislature 
 passed an act making it a penal offence, punish- 
 able by imprisonment in the penitentiary, for any 
 man to deny that it was right to hold slaves there. 
 This was a glorious chance for " perfect free- 
 dom " and " free discussion " — was it not? I can 
 imagine an assembly of the people called togeth- 
 er, and they are about discussing the question of 
 what policy shall be inaugurated there, what pol- 
 icy shall be started in their laws; and the great 
 question, which it is said is the only one that di- 
 vides them, is brought into consideration, and 
 one man gets up and argues in favor of Slavery. 
 He says that it is right; that it is a divine insti- 
 tution ; that it is one of those things which can 
 be proved by the Bible, and by the Constitution, 
 and by every other book that is worth quoting. 
 He delivers an eloquent, able, and forcible speech, 
 j demonstrating the propriety, the expediency, the 
 j policy, and the righteousness of Slavery. After 
 he has set down, having electrified the audience 
 J and convinced their understanding, some man on 
 \ the opposite side gets up. He says: " Mr. Pres- 
 ident, I do not believe that Slavery is right." His 
 antagonist gets up and calls on the marshal to ar- 
 rest him, and put him in custody, for he has com- 
 • mitted a State-prison offence the moment he openB 
 his mouth, because he has'denied that it is right 
 j to hold slaves in Kansas ; and that, by your au- 
 ; thority, by the Federal authority, is declared to 
 I be a penitentiary offence. 
 
 This Legislature undertake to regulate the right 
 
 of suffrage there, and they make the right of suf- 
 
 I frage dependent on the taking of a test oath to 
 
 I support acts which I think — as we are now satis- 
 
fied a majority of the people of that Territory 
 hold to be — wrong and abhorrent. But, sir, they 
 cannot exercise the poor right, not of a sovereign, 
 but of a citizen. They cannot go to the ballot- 
 box and deposit a ballot for any officer there un- 
 til they have taken these odious test oaths. That 
 is the third chapter of popular sovereignty and 
 perfect freedom in Kansas. I think the people 
 of Kansas, by their experience thus far, have be- 
 come convinced that they do not want any more 
 perfect freedom ; but they would like a little of 
 that imperfect kind which the people used to en- 
 joy before the passage of this act. 
 
 The Legislature thus imposed upon them by 
 the people of Missouri, against their will, was im- 
 posed by force, and not by fraud. I exempt them 
 from that. They were no vulgar rascals that 
 went over there. It was a conquering army. 
 Having gone over, and thus elected a Legislature, 
 and thus made a code of laws which made the 
 annunciation of the great and eternal principles 
 of Liberty a penitentiary offence, the Government 
 was set in motion. What was the history of that 
 Government ? One of lawless violence. Your 
 marshal, appointed by the President of the United 
 States, summoned together what he called a 
 posse — not from Kansas, but from Missouri, by 
 his written handbills sent over to Missouri — and 
 with that fosse goes into the city of Lawrence to 
 execuie some process. After the process is exe- 
 cuted, he turns over his posse — he got them to- 
 gether for a very innocent purpose— to Mr. Sher- 
 iff Jones, and then .the law is executed by rifling 
 the houses of Kansas ; robbing them even of the 
 clothing of females and children ; the Lawrence 
 hotel is sacked and plundered, the press taken 
 and thrown into the river, and the town set on 
 fire ; the inhabitants driven from their homes, 
 houseless wanderers at midnight, without a place 
 to lay their heads, and the flames of their burn- 
 ing dwellings literally painting hell on the sky. 
 These facts, just as notorious as the sun in the 
 heavens, were perpetrated in Kansas, all known 
 to you, sir ; all known to the President of the 
 United States ; all known to the friends of pop- 
 ular sovereignty and perfect freedom here, in this 
 body, and not a single one of them has a word 
 of condemnation for them. If there is one that 
 lisps a single syllable of blame, he pours out 
 twice as much condemnation upon the victims 
 as he does upon the perpetrators of this outrage. 
 Well, sir, we go on. This is but a specimen, 
 and is not the whole history. I have not time 
 to go over the whole of it. A second Legislature 
 is elected, under the operation of these test oaths, 
 and all these disqualifications. A second time 
 the farce of an election is gone over, and that 
 Legislature, that is to be elected, is about to take 
 the initiatory steps for forming a State Constitu- 
 tion ; and still, up to the second election, it is a 
 State-prison offence to deny that it is right to 
 Hold slaves in Kansas. A second election is had 
 under all these disqualifications, a second chap- 
 ter of "perfect freedom" and "popular sover- 
 eignty 1 " That Legislature met. They took 
 measures for calling a Convention of the people, 
 and, to their credit be it said, they repealed two 
 of the most obnoxious, the most odious, the most 
 indefensible of their statutes — the one that made 
 it a criminal offence to deny that it was right to 
 hold slaves in Kansas, and the other imposing 
 tesi oaths. Those, I believe, were all the altera- 
 tions mat were made. They make provision ac- 
 cording to law for taking the sense of the people 
 
 and calling a Convention. I must hurry over 
 these particulars. The Convention is called. 
 It meets in September to frame a Constitution. 
 Was it a Constitution that was to be framed and 
 imposed upon the people of Kansas without their 
 consent, and against their will? There were 
 some factious Abolitionists and Black Republi- 
 cans that did undertake to intimate such a 
 thing, that this Convention might form a Con- 
 stitution embodying Slavery in it ; and that it 
 might be forced on the necks of the people by 
 Federal power and Federal patronage without 
 their consent. But, sir, when that suggestion 
 was made, how was it met ? It was met on the 
 part of these gentlemen by an indignant denial. 
 I had not the pleasure of listening to the speech 
 made by the honorable Senator from Michigan 
 [Mr. Stuart] the other day; but I understand 
 that he embodied in his speech a written pledge, 
 which the leading gentlemen on that side of the 
 question published and signed their names to, 
 and sent it out to the country, denying the im- 
 putation, and pledging themselves that the Con- 
 stitution that they were about to form should be 
 submitted to a popular vote. 
 
 Under that pledge they were elected; but there 
 were certain preliminaries which were to be gone 
 through with — a census and a registry to be ta- 
 ken and made in the various counties — before 
 they were qualified to vote. The Territory of 
 Kansas was divided, if I am not mistaken, into 
 thirty -four counties; and we have the authority 
 of Governor Walker for saying — it has never 
 been controverted, and the honorable Senator 
 from Ohio [Mr. Pugh] called upon the President 
 for information on that fact, which was charged 
 by Governor Walker, and I have never heard it 
 denied — that in fifteen out of those thirty-four 
 counties, steps were not taken by the Govern- 
 ment, by which the people could come to the 
 polls. The census and registry were omitted. 
 So says Governor Walker in his letter. 
 
 Such as it was, the Convention came together, 
 elected under a pledge of many of its members 
 to submit the Constitution to the people. They 
 met in September. They took the initiative : 
 they appointed their committees ; they laid out 
 the work; and then they adjourned. I am not 
 disposed to deny that that was proper; I suppose 
 it was ; but there are some astonishing and cu- 
 rious coincidences about this Convention. They 
 adjourned to a period subsequent to the time 
 when the people of Kansas were to vote for the 
 election of a Territorial Legislature and a Dele- 
 gate to this Congress. They adjourned to No- 
 vember. The election took place in October; 
 and then, for the first time, as the test oaths had 
 been. repealed, the people of Kansas, without 
 distinction of parties, went to the polls ; and the 
 result was, that your Pro-Slavery Democracy 
 found themselves in a minority of less than one- 
 third. The people spoke, nay, they thundered 
 at the polls; and they returned, by an over- 
 whelming majority, a Free State Legislature and 
 a Free State Delegate to the Congress of the 
 United States. 
 
 After this expression of public opinion on be- 
 half of the people of Kansas, in November, this 
 Convention, which was pledged to submit their 
 Constitution to the people, had ascertained that, 
 if they did submit it to the people, the people 
 would reject it; and therefore, inasmuch as pop- 
 ular sovereignty and perfect freedom were very 
 good things to talk about, but very inconvenient 
 
when you come to submit them to a practical test 
 at the polls, by a people that had already pro- 
 nounced their opinions, it was thought that the 
 safest and most convenient way was to violate 
 their pledges, break their promises, and not sub- 
 mit it to the people. They did not have the 
 courage or manliness to do that right out, but 
 they adopted a subterfuge. They undertook to 
 adopt a mode by which the form3 of a submission 
 should be had, while the substance was wanting. 
 I will read to you an extract from a newspaper, 
 and I think that will show you how it was under- 
 stood by the friends of Slavery at that time. I 
 read an extract from a letter published in the 
 Mississippian of November 27th last, in which the 
 writer says : 
 
 "Thus you see that whilst, by submitting the question 
 in this form, they are bound to have a ratification of the 
 one or the other ; and that while it seems to be an elec- 
 tion between a Fiee State and Pro-Slavery Constitution, 
 it is. in fact, but a question of the future introduction of 
 Slivery th-it is in controversy ; and yet it furnishes our 
 friends in Congress a basis on which to rest their vindi- 
 cation of the ac mssion of Kansas as a State under it 
 into the Union, while they would not have it sent direct- 
 ly from the Convention. 
 
 " It is the very best proposition for making Kansas a 
 slave State, that was submitted for the consideration of 
 the Convention." 
 
 Yes, sir, that is what they thought in the slave 
 States ; that this Convention had adopted the 
 very best mode that could be possibly devised 
 for making a slave State of Kansas — and I agree 
 to his judgment that it was ; because there was 
 no legal way left by which a man could vote 
 against Slavery. He voted for the " Constitution 
 with Slavery," or the " Constitution without 
 Slavery." But there is one remarkable fact, and 
 I call the attention of the Senate to it, and it 
 may explain the vote that was given : if they 
 had adopted the Constitution without Slavery, it 
 would have been a more stringent Pro-Slavery 
 Constitution, than it would if they had voted for 
 the Constitution with Slavery ; and I will tell 
 you why. If they had voted for the Constitution 
 with Slavery, they would have left the seventh 
 article entire ; and the seventh article contains a 
 provision for the future emancipation of slaves. 
 This article says, in granting powers to the Leg- 
 islature, in regard to Slavery : 
 
 "They shall have power to pass laws to permit the 
 owner of slaves to emancipate them, saving the rights of 
 creditors, and preventing them from becoming a public 
 charge." 
 
 This seventh article, if that were voted in, gives 
 the Legislature a right to provide for the future 
 emancipation of slaves; but if that were voted out, 
 it left in the schedule the only provision on that 
 subject ; and in the schedule the provision is : 
 
 " If, upon such exnmination of said poll books, it shall 
 appear mat a majority of the legal votes cast at saiJ elec- 
 tion be in favor of t.ie 'Constitution with no Slavery,' 
 then the auicle providing for Slavery shall be stricken 
 from this C>> siituiion by ihe President of this Conven- 
 tion, and Slavery shall no longer exit in the State of 
 Kansas, (ex< • pi ihat the right of property in slaves now 
 in this Terriio y sluill in no manner be interfered with.") 
 
 If they had voted out the Slavery clause, this 
 provision, that the right of property in slaves 
 should in no manner be interfered with, was left 
 the permanent law. If they voted in the Slavery 
 article, they voted a provision by which the Leg- 
 islature might emancipate slaves ; and then 
 further in the schedule they have a provision, 
 that in all future alterations of their Constitution, 
 no alteration shall be made to affect the right of 
 property in slaves. That was the doing of this 
 Convention, and that is called by Mr. Buchanan 
 
 a submission to the people. Somehow, when I 
 come to speak of Mr. Buchanan, I almost invari- 
 ably call him Van Buren. I do not know why. 
 There must be something similar in their char- 
 acters. When you come to speak of it as Mr. 
 Buchanan does, it seems to me that you cannot 
 by any possibility vindicate it at all. 
 
 But I wish to speak of this provision in the 
 Constitution, that no amendment shall be made 
 in reference to slaves. I know we are living in 
 a day of new lights. New doctrines are con- 
 stantly propounded, and some rampant Demo- 
 crats of the new-light order laugh at such a con- 
 stitutional provision as that. They say, no mat- 
 ter if it be in there ; it is idle ; a majority of the 
 people can come together and alter the Constitu- 
 tion just as they please, or form a new one, not- 
 withstanding that provision. I am not going to 
 controvert that doctrine ; but I will say that the 
 State which I have the honor in part to repre- 
 sent used to be considered tolerably good Dem- 
 ocratic authority ; and in our State we have 
 never believed, and have never acted upon the 
 belief, that a mere majority could come together 
 and amend our State Constitution ; because our 
 fathers inserted in the old Constitution a pro- 
 vision that it should require a vote of two-thirds 
 to amend it. The doctrine that a mere majority 
 can alter the Constitution, never found favor 
 there. We had, a few years ago, a Convention 
 called to revise our Constitution, and the late 
 President of the United States presided over it. 
 They submitted a great many amendments, and 
 the people voted on them and rejected them all. 
 They then met together again, and submitted two 
 specific amendments. The people came together, 
 and, by a two-third3 vote, agreed to adopt one 
 of those amendments ; and thereupon it was 
 adopted, and is part of our Constitution. As to 
 the other provision, the people voted by an im- 
 mense majority, lacking a few hundred only of 
 two-thirds, to adopt the amendment; but it was 
 not adopted, and forms no part of the Constitu- 
 tion. So, sir, Democratic as we have been, we 
 have never held in our State, and never believed, 
 and we have never had a man there who con- 
 tended, that a mere democracy of numbers could 
 uproot and overturn and eradicate and destroy 
 the fundamental principle of our Constitution. 
 
 Let me call your attention to another illustra- 
 tion. We have a provision in the Constitution 
 of the United States, by which an equal vote is 
 secured on this floor to every State. Delaware 
 with her ninety thousand people, and New Hamp- 
 shire with her three hundred thousand, stand 
 here voting equally with New York, with her 
 three millions, and with Ohio and Pennsylvania 
 with their two millionsi each. It may be that 
 these little States do not send such able men as 
 those great ones. All the preponderance which 
 Pennsylvania or New York can claim, on account 
 of the pre-eminent talent of the gentlemen whom 
 they send to represent them, they are entitled to; 
 but when we come to the sober matter of voting, 
 our little States, with our handful of men, stand 
 equal with the great Empire State of the Union ; 
 and our fathers, in their wisdom, or their folly — 
 I do not know what modern Democracy will call 
 it — have provided, that in that feature the Con- 
 stitution never shall be amended. Now, sir, I 
 put it to you — I ask you if a mere democracy of 
 numbers came together, in these United States, 
 and undertook to make a new Constitution, and 
 to strike out that great, radical, fundamental 
 
6 
 
 principle, securing the equality of the States on 
 this floor, if this Union would survive that act a 
 day ? No, sir ; not a day. This Federal Con- 
 gress never will assemble after that amendment 
 to the Constitution shall be made. Do not talk 
 to me about what numbers can do. There are 
 some things numbers can do, and some things 
 they cannot do. They cannot amend the Con- 
 stitution of the United States in that behalf 
 in which its framers said it should never be 
 amended. Our fathers thought the equality of 
 States on this floor was the great fundamental 
 principle on which the Constitution should rest, 
 and therefore they have said, that in that respect 
 it shall never be amended. The framers of the 
 Lecompton Constitution, in their wisdom, have 
 thought that Slavery is the great corner-stone 
 on which they can best erect an edifice of re- 
 publican Government, and they have said, that 
 in that respect it shall never be altered and 
 never be amended. Now, sir, if a mere democ- 
 racy of numbers may come together and blot out 
 that feature of this State Constitution, I stand 
 here in behalf of one of the smallest States of the 
 Union, and I ask you what security, what guar- 
 antee have we, that that same mad spirit, mis- 
 called reform, will not undertake to strike down 
 also this great fundamental principle of the Fed- 
 eral Constitution ? I profess to be a good deal 
 of a Democrat myself, and I am willing to carry 
 out the Democratic principle as far as anybody ; 
 but I believe that even Democracy itself, some- 
 times, on extraordinary occasions, requires a lit- 
 tle check. The fathers of the Federal Constitu- 
 tion thought so. They thought equality of States 
 was the great vital point which the hand of 
 amendment should not touch. The framers of 
 the Lecompton Constitution thought that their 
 great fundamental corner-stone was Slavery, and 
 they said that it should not be touched. With 
 this I leave that point. 
 
 Now, sir, what had the people of Kansas — 
 sent into the wilderness to build themselves new 
 homes, to subdue the forest, to carry the arts of 
 civilization, of science, of learning and religion, 
 and found and build there a new empire, under 
 the guarantee of perfect freedom — a right to ex-, 
 pect ? Had they not a right to expect, that when 
 a Constitution was formed, they were to be heard 
 upon it? Had they not a right expect it, when 
 the delegates whom they elected had pledged 
 themselves that they should have it ; when the 
 President had sent out his Governor with instruc- 
 tions that they should have it ; and when, as the 
 President of the United States says, he and all 
 his friends were pledged to it? 
 
 I will read from his message : 
 
 "The act of the Territorial Legislature had omitted to 
 provide for submitting to the people the Constitution 
 ■which might be framed by the Convention; and, in Die 
 excited state of public feeling throughout Kansas, an ap- 
 prehension extensively prevailed that a design existed to 
 force upon them a Constitution in relation to Slavery 
 againit their will. In this emergency, it became my 
 duty, as it was my unquestionable right — having in view 
 the union of all good citizens in support of the Territorial 
 laws— t express an opinion on the true construction of 
 the provisions concerning Slaver? contained in the 
 organic act of Congress of the 30th May, 1854. Con- 
 gress declared it to lie 'the true intent and meaning of 
 this act, not to legislate Slavery into any Territory or 
 State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the peo- 
 ple thereof perf-ctly free to form and regulate their do 
 mestic institutions i their own way.' Under it, Kansas, 
 ' when admitted :is a State,' was to ' be received into the 
 Union, with or without Slavery, as their Constitution may 
 prescribe at the time of their admission.' 
 
 ''Did Congress mean by this language that the dele- 
 gates elected to frame a Constitution should have author- 
 
 ity finally to decide the question of Slavery; or did they 
 intend, by leaving it to the people, that the people o( Kan- 
 sas themselves should decide this question by a direct 
 vote? On this subject, I confess I had never^entertained 
 a serious doubt; and. therefore, in my instructions to 
 Gov. Walker, of the 23th of March last, I merely said, 
 that when ' a Constitution shall be submitted to the peo- 
 ple of the Territory, they must be protected in the exer- 
 cise oftheir right of voting for or against that instrument, 
 and the fair expression of the popular will must not be 
 interrupted by fraud or violence.' " 
 
 I will not read much longer, but I wish to read 
 this extract : 
 
 " The friends and supporters of the Nebraska and Kan- 
 sas act, when struggling on a recent occasion to sustain 
 its wise provisions before the great tribunal of the Ameri- 
 ca" people, never differed about its true meaning on this 
 subject. Everywhere throughout the Union, they publicly 
 pledged their faith and their honor that they would cheer- 
 fully submit the question of Slaverv to the decision of the 
 bona fide people of Kansas, without any restriction or 
 qualification whatever." 
 
 Then the President, after this avowal, goes on 
 to say that that has been fairly done. Sir, it 
 would be insulting to the intelligence of the Sen- 
 ate and of the country, to argue the question 
 whether it has been fairly done, any longer. 
 This omission to submit the Constitution to the 
 people of Kansas is not accidental. I am sorry 
 to find, as I have found out this session, that the 
 omission to put it in the original bill was not ac- 
 cidental. We have a little light on this subject 
 from a gentleman who always sheds light when 
 he speaks to the Senate — I mean the honorable 
 Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Bigler.] He 
 says that this was not accidental, by any means. 
 He has spoken once or twice about a meeting that 
 was held in the private parlor of a private gen- 
 tleman. There was a good deal of inquiry and 
 anxiety to know what sort of a meeting that was. 
 The gentleman who owns the house said he did 
 not know anything about it. That is not strange. 
 The hospitable man let his guests have the use 
 of any room they chose. The honorable Senator 
 from Pennsylvania said this meeting was " semi- 
 official." I do not know what kind of a meeting 
 that was. I have heard of a semi-barbarous, a 
 semi-civilized, and a semi-savage people ; I have 
 heard of a semi-annual, and semi-weekly ; but 
 when you come to semi-official, I declare it both- 
 ers me. What sort of a meeting was it ? Was 
 it an official meeting? No. Was it an unofficial 
 meeting? No. What was it? Semi-official. 
 
 I have never met anything analogous to it but 
 once in in my life, and that I will mention by way 
 of illustration. A trader in my town, before the 
 day of railroads, had taken a large bank bill, and 
 he was a little doubtful whether it was genuine 
 or not. He concluded to give it to the stage- 
 driver, and send it down to the bank to inquire 
 of the cashier whether it was a genuine bill. The 
 driver took it, and promised to attend to it. He 
 went down the first day, but he had so many 
 other errands that he forgot it, and he said he 
 would certainly attend to it the next day. The 
 next day he forgot it, and the third day he forgot 
 it ; but he said, " to-morrow I will do it, if I do 
 nothing else ; I will ascertain whether the bill is 
 genuine or not." He went the fourth day, with 
 a like result ; he forgot it; and when he came 
 home, he saw the nervous, anxious trader, want- 
 ing to know whether it was genuine or not ; and 
 he was ashamed to tell him he had forgotten it, 
 and he thought he would lie it through. Said 
 the trader to him, "Did you call at the bank?" 
 " Yes." " Did the cashier say it was a genuine 
 bill ? " " No, he did not." " Did he say it was 
 abadone?" "No." "Well, what did he say ?" 
 
" He said it was about middling — semi-genuine." 
 I have never learned to this day whether that was 
 a good or a bad bill. They used to say, in Gen- 
 eral Jackson's time, that he had a kitchen cabi- 
 net as well as a regular one. This could not be 
 a meeting of the kitchen cabinet, because it sat 
 in a parlor. It was semi-official in its character 
 also. 
 
 Again, sir, there is another thing remarkable 
 about this meeting. The Senator says : "It was 
 semi-official, and called " — it was a called meet- 
 ing ; it was not a mere accidental gathering of a 
 few gentlemen, coming in to pay their respects to 
 the distinguished Senator in his hospitable man- 
 sion ; it was "semi-official, and called." For 
 what? "Called to promote the public good." 
 Yes, sir ; a semi-official meeting, called to pro- 
 mote the public good. And what did it do ? The 
 honorable Senator from Pennsylvania says : 
 
 " My recollection was clear, that I left the conference 
 under the impression tha* it had been deemed besi to 
 adopt measure* to admit Kansas as a State, through the 
 agency of one po^ul^r election, aid that for delegates to 
 the Convention. This impression was the stronger, be- 
 cause I thought the spirit of the bill infringed upon the 
 doctrin* of non-intervention, to which ! had great aver- 
 sion ; but with the hope of accomplishing a great good" — 
 [the meeting was called for the "public good"]— "and as 
 no movement had been made in that direction in the Ter- 
 ritory, I waived thia objection, ai d concluded to support 
 the measure. I have a few items of testimony as to the 
 correctness of these impressions, and with their submis- 
 sion I shall he content." 
 
 Then he goes on to say : 
 
 "I have beore me the bill reported by the Senator from 
 Illinois, on the 7tn of March, IS .6, providing for the ad- 
 mi?s ; on of Kansas as a State; the third section of which 
 reads as follows : 
 
 '• ' That ihe following propositions be, and the same ar» 
 hereby, offered to the said Convention of the people of 
 Kansas, when formed, for their free acceptance or rejec- 
 tion; which, if" accepted by the Convention, and raiified 
 by the people at the election for the adoption of the Con- 
 stitution, shall be obligatory upon the United States and 
 tne said State of Kansas ' 
 
 " The bill read in place by the Senator from Georgia, 
 on the 25th of June, and referred to the Committee on 
 Territories, contained the same section, word for word 
 Both the«e bills were under consideration at the confer- 
 ence referred to;" — [two bills under consideration at 
 this semi-official meeting I] — "but, sir. when the Senator 
 from Illinois reported the Toombs bill to the Senate, with 
 amendments, the next morning it did not contain that 
 portion of the thrid section which indicated to the Con- 
 vention that the Constitution should be approved by the 
 people." 
 
 The result of this semi-official meeting, called 
 for the public good, was, that the bills came into 
 the Senate the next morning minus the clause 
 submitting the Constitution to the people. It 
 wa3 stricken out ; but the honorable Senator does 
 not impugn anybody, nor his motives, because he 
 say3 : 
 
 "Who struck the words out, or for what purpose they 
 were omitted, is not for me to answer." 
 
 If it is not for him, it is not for me ; but I thought 
 he had given a clue to the reason why they were 
 struck out when he said the meeting was called 
 for the public good. Undoubtedly they were 
 struck out for the public good. Who struck them 
 out seems to be a mooted question, as uncertain 
 of an answer as that old question, " Who killed 
 cock-robin?" I did not see the Senator when 
 he delivered the speech. If I had, I should have 
 watched him closely ; and it is possible that by 
 some gesture, or some shake of the head, he would 
 have determined who that "who" was ; but we 
 are left in the dark. We do not know who it was. 
 You see, then, that this was not accidental. A 
 semi-official set of patriots, friends of popular 
 sovereignty, and disciples of perfect freedom, 
 called for the public good, in a private room, met 
 
 together, and for peculiar reasons — that is what 
 the Senator said — they determined to strike out 
 of their bill the only redeeming feature in it, and 
 that was the submission to the people of the ques- 
 tion whether they would have Slavery in the Con- 
 stitution or not. In that secret conclave, that 
 semi-official meeting for the public good, these 
 patriots put their heads together to strangle at 
 the birth the only thing there was in their bill 
 which ought to commend it to the real genuine 
 friends of perfect freedom and popular sovereign- 
 tv. Well, sir, I am learning something every day ; 
 but I did not know, till that speech was made, 
 that when we met here in official meeting, and 
 matured hills and put them in shape, they were 
 to be committed to the tender mercies of a semi- 
 official meeting, to strangle and choke out of them 
 everything that was worth the keeping the breath 
 of life in. They struck down, then, that great 
 principle of popular sovereignty— a principle in- 
 estimable to freemen, formidable only to — semi- 
 official patriots. [Laughter.] So that this was 
 not accidental; it was purposely done ; and this, 
 too, was done in the name of popular sovereignty ! 
 
 Mr. President, I wish to say a word ahout that 
 subject. Popular sovereignty, according to the 
 idea of some gentlemen, if it ever existed in this 
 country, had been in a state of catalepsy, until 
 the Nebraska bill brought it into life. I have 
 seen some specimens which I thought were gen- 
 uine popular sovereignty, and some that I thought 
 were spurious. I will tell you one. In January, 
 1775, the people of that little State, of which I 
 have the honor to be one of the representatives 
 on this floor, met together — not in a private par- 
 lor, but in a public hall— and they inaugurated 
 liberty and law in the shape of a written Consti- 
 tution, in which they ignored the existence of 
 the King of Great Britain and his Parliament, 
 and formed a Constitution for that State, in de- 
 fiance of legal authority, eighteen months before 
 the Declaration of American Independence, and 
 before any other State on this continent had a 
 Constitution. I have heard that honor claimed 
 for Virginia. I have heard it claimed for South 
 Carolina. Anybody who will read the history 
 of the times, will find, that in January, 1775, 
 eighteen months before the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, the people of the State of New Hamp- 
 shire, in the exercise of a real, genuine, unadul- 
 terated popular sovereignty, came together, ig- 
 nored both the King and the Parliament, and 
 spoke out, in the form of a written Constitution, 
 the great doctrines of popular liberty regulated 
 by a written. Constitution. That I call of the 
 genuine kind. 
 
 Again, when the delegates of these thirteen 
 old States met together in conclave, and on the 
 4th of July published their ever-memorable and 
 immortal Declaration, in which they avowed that 
 they held the people of Great Britain, as they 
 held the rest of mankind, "enemies in war, and 
 in peace friends," there was popular sovereignty 
 of the genuine and the real kind. It was a pop- 
 ular sovereignty to which those men pledged 
 their lives, their fortunes, and their honor, to 
 sustain ; and for the sincerity of their convictions, 
 and the intensity of their devotion, they shed 
 their blood like water, and never gave over until 
 that great doctrine was embodied and made per- 
 petual in the organized form of a written Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 There is another instance of popular sover- 
 eignty in the history of the country from which 
 
■r^ rcme, that I have always looked upon with 
 admiration the most profound. I refer to the 
 revolution which brought Charles I to the block. 
 The Commons of England, by a resolution, blot- 
 ted out the House of Lords, and resolved that the 
 Commons of England had the right of sovereignty 
 in them, Kings and Lords to the contrary not- 
 withstanding ; and they determined to bring 
 Charles I to trial. Passing by all the organized 
 forms of law, ignoring the House of Lords, ig- 
 noring all the organized forms in which justice 
 had been accustomed to speak in her established 
 tribunals, the old Commons of England came to- 
 gether, and resolved that they, and they only, 
 were the sovereigns of England; that the House 
 of Lords was a useless appendage ; that the 
 machinery of their judicial tribunals was not 
 made for such an occasion, nor fitted for such an 
 emergency, and they resolved themselves into a 
 great high court, and they determined, in the 
 exercise of that sovereignty thus organized, to 
 summon before their bar the King on his throne. 
 Yes, sir, they said that the King on his throne 
 should come down from his high estate, from his 
 elevation of regal sovereignty, and, face to face, 
 before the assembled Commons of England, he 
 should plead like a criminal to the popular sov- 
 ereignty of England. I have here a sketch of 
 the address that the old President read to the 
 King when he came in. They were assembled 
 in the great hall. Old President Bradshaw 
 with his crimson robes sat on his high seat, and 
 around him were the Commons. At last the 
 great doors of the hall were thrown open, and in 
 marched the King of England. No hat was ta- 
 ken from the head ; no man rose to do him rev- 
 erence. There was no indication that anything 
 but a common criminal stood before a high court. 
 The old President rose and said : 
 
 ■'Charles Stuart, King of England, the Commons of 
 England, assembled in Parliament, being depply sensi- 
 ble of the calamities that have been brought upon this 
 nation, (which is fixed upon you as the principal author 
 of it.) have resolved to make inquisition for blood ; and. 
 according to that debt and duty which they owe to jus- 
 tice, to God, the kingdom, and themselves, and accord 
 itig to the fundamental power that rests in themselves. 
 they lave resolved to bring you to trial and judgment ; 
 and for that pu-pose have constituted this high court of 
 justice before which you are brought." 
 
 Oh, sir, that was judgment; there was nothing 
 semi about that. The King undertook to cavil 
 with them, and ask them by what authority they 
 tried him; and the President replied, "By the 
 authority of the people of England." The King 
 cavilled for several days. He undertook to play 
 the king; he undertook to set off regal sover- 
 eignty against popular sovereignty ; and anybody 
 that reads Hume's History of England, and takes 
 it for the truth, will read that the King main- 
 tained that to the last. It was not so. When 
 regal sovereignty and popular sovereignty thus 
 came in conflict in England, the King endeavored 
 to play the king for a little while, but at last he 
 cowered and quailed, and became a poor sup- 
 pliant criminal before the Commons of England. 
 They tried him ; and at last they came to a con- 
 clusion, and pronounced a sentence on him, which 
 I will read, for it is very brief. After reciting the 
 charges that the people of England had brought 
 against him, the President said : 
 
 " Fo^ all which treasons and crimes this eourt'doth ad- 
 judge that h», the said Charles Stuart as a tyrant, traitor, 
 and murderer, and a publie enemy, shall be put to deathj 
 by the severing of his head from his body." 
 
 And they carried it out. They carried it out 
 right speedily, too ; for I think in about three 
 
 days the proud King of England, the successor 
 of the imperious Elizabeth, of the bloody Mary, 
 of the cruel and tyrannical Henry VIII, of the 
 lion-hearted Richard, of the Norman conqueror 
 William, the descendant of that long line of 
 Kings, bowed his head upon the scaffold ; and it 
 was severed from his body in vindication of the 
 great doctrine of popular sovereignty in England. 
 The shadow of that great event has rested upon 
 the British throne ever since. God bless those 
 old Commons for it. Liberty is safer to-day in 
 the country from which we came, and the coun- 
 try in which we are, on account of the fidelity 
 with which those old Commoners maintained, 
 carried out, vindicated, and executed, the great 
 doctrine of popular sovereignty. Sir, they wrote 
 it in the blood of Kings on the eternal page of 
 history, where all nations may read it; and as 
 long as English history lasts, all time will not 
 efface it. 
 
 When I contemplate that sublime exhibition 
 of popular sovereignty, and compare it with 
 your poor, pitiful bantling, the Kansas-Nebras- 
 ka act, the only object of which was to oppress 
 the weak and hold the humble in subjection to 
 their masters, I confess, sir, Young America 
 notwithstanding, I prefer that old popular sov- 
 ereignty of the Commons of England, two hun- 
 dred years old, to the modern specimen which 
 you are to-day illustrating in Kansas. Let me 
 hear no more of popular sovereignty until we 
 get something of the genuine about it. 
 
 It was not my fortune to be in the Senate the 
 other day, when the honorable Senator from Cal- 
 ifornia [Mr. Broderick] spoke. I believe he 
 joins with me in repudiating this attempt. I 
 think that he is in error in one thing, and he will 
 pardon me for telling him so. He lays it to Mr. 
 Buchanan, and he says Mr. Buchanan is the guilty 
 cause of it. Sir, I speak of Mr. Buchanan, as I 
 am going to do, under a sense of duty. I have 
 no unkind feelings towards him, certainly. In 
 the course of my duty, as I performed it accord- 
 ing to my convictions, I had occasion in the last 
 Congress to say something of General Pierce, 
 not unkindly I hope. I told him what he did 
 not believe at the time, but what he has since 
 found out to be true. I told him that you were 
 using him, and that when you had used him, you. 
 would throw him away ; that you had no more 
 idea of again making a President of him, than 
 you had of one of those pages. He did not be- 
 lieve me. I think he does now. I thought you 
 would be a little more generous to him than yon 
 were. I thought you would go to the Conven- 
 tion, and resolve to have a majority of two-thirds 
 to nominate, and that you would pay him the 
 poor compliment of running him u p to a majority 
 of one ; but the fact was, you felt so awfully 
 doubtful, whether, if you undertook to run him 
 up to a majority, he might not get the requisite 
 vote, and be nominated, that you said, it is a 
 dangerous experiment, and we will not try it ; 
 and Pierce went without even that empty com- 
 pliment. I told him this on the floor of the 
 Senate, and he and his friends had no more 
 sense than to get offended at it. 
 
 Now, what I am about to say of Mr. Buchanan, 
 I hope he will not get offend ed at. I shall be 
 sorry if he does ; but I tell j'ou, Mr. Buchanan 
 is not to blame. Mr. Buchanan is not a man to 
 shape events ; he is not a man to control the cur- 
 rent of public opinion — he nor Pierce either, 
 nor both together. They are not the men to give 
 
9 
 
 direction to the current of human events. They 
 are mere vanes, placed on high places, showing the 
 direction and the strength of that current which 
 is bearing our national ship to her destiny — that 
 is all. The policy which Mr. Van Buren is carrying 
 out — there it is again — I mean Mr. Buchanan — 
 was indicated in this country long ago. I have 
 before me a document published in 1844, con- 
 taining the correspondence in relation to the an- 
 nexation of Texas. Our Secretary of State, Mr. 
 Upshur, in a letter to Mr. Murphy, our minister in 
 Texas, said : 
 
 "The establishment, in the very midst of our slavehold- 
 ing States, of an independent Government, forbidding- the 
 existence of Slavery, and by a people born, for the most 
 
 fiart, among us, reared up in our habits, and speaking our 
 anguage, could not fail to produce the most unhappy ef- 
 fect? upon both parties." 
 
 That is the policy ; the establishment of a free 
 State is a calamity ; it produces unhappy effects ! 
 That was said in reference to Texas. In no sense 
 can Texas be said to be in the midst of our slave- 
 holding States, that will not apply with equal or 
 greater force to Kansas. You have the doctrine, 
 then, that the establishment of a free State, pro- 
 hibiting the existence of Slavery, produces un- 
 happy effects ; and to that policy, that the estab- 
 lishment of a free State is an evil, the Government 
 has adhered with a tenacity like death, and with 
 a directness of purpose that is not equalled by 
 the mode in which the needle points to the pole. 
 There is no variation of the needle there to be 
 calculated. The means by which this policy was 
 to be effected, was indicated by an article in the 
 Richmond Enquirer, which said that the desert- 
 ing Democrat who opposed the Administration on 
 this vital measure would have nothing to expect. 
 There is a simple policy, and a simple mode of 
 carrying it out. A free State is an evil, and the 
 public patronage is to be used to prevent it! 
 That is it; it is very simple ; and anybody who 
 wants to get the true clue to this whole matter, 
 anybody who wants to get hold of the thread to 
 lead him out of the labyrinth in which we are 
 now lost, will find it in this simple avowal of 
 policy, that a free State produces unhappy ef- 
 fects, and that the Federal patronage must be 
 used to prevent it. In other words, the repre- 
 sentatives of the people are to be paid with the 
 people's money to prevent the establishment of 
 free States. That is a fair and honest transla- 
 tion of it. 
 
 This brings me to another part of my subject, 
 in answer to a question which the honorable Sen- 
 ator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] propounded, 
 when he asked if he was to be read out of the 
 party for a difference on this point. I have great 
 regard for the sagacity of that honorable Senator, 
 but I confess it was a little shaken when he asked 
 that question ; is a man to be read out of the 
 party for departing from the President on this 
 great cardinal point ? Why, sir, he asks, is a man 
 who differs from the President on the Pacific 
 railroad to go out of the party? Oh no, he may 
 stay. If he differs on Central America, very 
 good ; take the first seat if you please. You may 
 differ with the President on anything and every- 
 thing but one, and that is this sentiment, which 
 I shall read ; Mr. Buchanan shall speak his own 
 creed. On the 19th of August, 1842, in the Sen- 
 ate, Mr. Buchanan used this language : 
 
 "I might here repeat what I have said on a former oc- 
 casion''— [you see it was so important he must repeat 
 it] — "that all Christendom" — [mark the words] — "is 
 leagued against the South upon this question of domestic 
 Slavery." 
 
 All Christendom includes a great many people. 
 If that be true, and if you have got any allies, it 
 is manifest they must be outside of Christendom, 
 because Mr. Buchanan says all Christendom is 
 against you ; but still he leaves you some allies, 
 and you will see — it is as plain as demonstration 
 can make it — that your allies are not included in 
 Christendom. Where are the allies ? I will 
 read the next sentence : 
 
 "They have no other allies to sustain their constitu- 
 tional rights except the Democracy of the North " 
 
 There is a fight for you : all Christendom on 
 one side, and the Democracy of the North on the 
 other. That is not my version ; it is Mr. Bu- 
 chanan's. That is the way he backs his friends ; 
 for he went on, after having made this avowal, 
 to claim peculiar consideration from Southern 
 gentlemen, and intimated that he might speak a 
 little more freely, having previously endorsed 
 them so highly as this. Well, sir, when all Chris- 
 tendom was on one side, and the Democracy of 
 the North on the other, and the Democracy of 
 the North growing less and less every day — a 
 small minority in the New England States — how 
 could the Senator from Illinois be so unkind, or 
 how could he doubt, if, on this vital question, he 
 deserted the Democracy and went over to Chris- 
 tendom, as to how the question would be an- 
 swered whether he was to be read out of the 
 party ? Read out, sir I That question was set- 
 tled long ago. On this great vital question he is 
 out of the party. 
 
 I would not say anything unkind to that Sen- 
 ator, nor would I say anything uncourteous in 
 the world ; but my experience in the country life 
 of New England does present to my mind an il- 
 lustration which I know he will excuse me if I 
 give it. A neighbor of mine had very valuable 
 horse. The horse was taken sick, and he tried 
 all the ways in the world to cure him, but it was 
 of no avail. The horse grew worse daily. At 
 last, one of his neighbors said: "What are you 
 going to do with the horse?" "I do not know," 
 was the reply; "but I think I shall have to kill 
 him." " Well," said the other, " he'does not want 
 much killing." You see, in ordinary times, and 
 on ordinary questions, a little wavering might 
 be indulged; but when it is on one ques- 
 tion, and a great vital question, and all Chris- 
 tendom is on the one side, and the Northern De- 
 mocracy on the other, to gro over from the ranks 
 of the Democracy to swell the swollen ranks of 
 Christendom, and then ask if he is to be read 
 out 1 I leave that point. 
 
 I have said nearly as much as I propose to say 
 on this part of the subject, and I come now to 
 another branch of it. The tribunal which holds 
 its session under us, seeing the unequal nature 
 of this contest — seeing all Christendom on one 
 side, and the Democracy on the other, with a 
 magnanimity and chivalry which is uncalculating 
 and generous — have thrown themselves into the 
 breach on the side of the Democracy. I mean 
 the Supreme Court of the United States. I be- 
 lieve they have a rule in that court — and my 
 honorable friend from Kentucky [Mr. Critten- 
 den] will correct me if I am wrong in it — by 
 which they will not allow anybody arguing a 
 case before them to speak disrespectfully of any 
 other branch of the Government. That is so. I 
 believe we have not got any such rule here, and 
 I am going to say of the Supreme Court that 
 which truth and justice demand of me to say. 
 I shall hold them as our fathers held the King of 
 
10 
 
 Great Britain — "enemies in war, and in peace, 
 friends." I was brought up with a hereditary re- 
 spect for courts, but I have got rid of it. I began 
 to get rid of it before I came here, but the pro- 
 cess has been going on very fast ever since. The 
 Supreme Court of the United States, in a decis- 
 ion which they have ^recently made, have come 
 down from their place, and thrown themselves 
 into the political arena, and have attempted to 
 throw the sanction of their names in support of 
 doctrines that can neither be sustained by au- 
 thority nor by history ; and I propose to show it. 
 To prove that I do not speak altogether without 
 the book on this subject, I wish to read to you 
 from the opinions of Thomas Jefferson on this 
 very Supreme Court, to show you that I am not 
 the first man who has entertained doubts upon this 
 point. Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Judge Roane, 
 dated Poplar Forest, September 6, 1819, says : 
 
 'In denying the right they usurp of exclusively ex- 
 plaining ihe Constitution,! «o further than you do, if I 
 understand rightly your quotation from the Fedircdist, of 
 an opinion that L tliejudiciary is the last resort in relation 
 to the other departments of the Government, but not in rela- 
 tion to the rights of the parties to the compact under 
 which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, 
 then, indeed, is our Constitution a. complete felodese. For 
 intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and 
 independent, that they might check and balance one 
 another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of 
 them alone the right to prescribe rules for the govern- 
 ment of the others, and to that one, too, which is une'cct 
 ed by, and independent of. the nation. ***** 
 
 "The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing- 
 of wax. in the hands of the judiciary, which they may 
 twist and shape into any form they please. It should be 
 remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that 
 whatever power in any Government is independent is 
 absolute also; in theory only at first, while the spirit of 
 the people is up. but in practice as fast as that relaxes 
 Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the peo- 
 ple in mass. They are inherently independent of all but 
 moral law. My construction of the Constitution is very 
 different from that you quote. It is, that each department 
 is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right 
 to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitu 
 tion in the cases submitted to its action, and especially 
 where it is to act ultimately and without appeal. I will 
 explain myself by examples, which, having occurred 
 while I was in office, are better known to me, and the 
 principles which governed them." 
 
 Again, on the 28th September, 1820, in wri- 
 ting to Mr. Jarvis, from Monticello, he says : 
 
 " You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges 
 as the. ultimate nrb.ters of all constitutional questions— a 
 very dangerous do'itrine indeed, and one which would 
 place us under the despotism of an oligarch) . Our judges 
 ate as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, 
 with others, the same passions for party, for power, and 
 the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is, ' bon? judicis 
 est ompliare jurisdictionem. 1 and their power the more 
 dangerous, as they are in office for life, and not responsi- 
 ble, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. 
 The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, 
 knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the cor- 
 ruptions of time and party, its members would become 
 despots." 
 
 Again, writing to Thomas Ritchie, on the 25th 
 of December, 1820, he says : 
 
 a The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps 
 of sappers and miners constantly working under ground 
 to undermine (he foundations of our confederated fabric. 
 They are construing our Constitution from a co-ordination 
 of a general and special Government to a general and 
 Rnpreme one alone." 
 
 Again, in a letter to Archibald Thweat, dated 
 Monticello, January 19, 1821, he says : 
 
 ''The legislative and executive branches may some- 
 times err. but elections and dependence will bring them 
 to rights. The judiciary branch is the instrument which, 
 working like gravity, without intermission, is to press us 
 at last inlo one consolidated mass." 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Hammond, dated the 18th of 
 August, 1821, Mr. Jefferson says : 
 
 ',' It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have 
 never shrunk from its expression, (although I do not 
 
 choose to put it into a newspaner, nor, like a Priam in 
 armor, offer myself its champion,) that the germ of disso 
 lution of our Federal Goverrment is in the Constitution 
 of the Federal judiciary — an irresponsible body, (for im- 
 peachment i« scarcely a scare-crow,) working like grav- 
 ity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a liv 
 tie. to-morrow, and advancins its noiseless s'ep, like a 
 Ihief. over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall ba 
 usurped from the States, and the Government of all be 
 consolidated into one." 
 
 I might stand here and read to you for a long 
 time extracts from Jefferson, of the same charac 
 ter. Indeed, I have marked some others, which 
 I may possibly, if I have this speech printed, em- 
 body in it. 
 
 I have another authority, which, I have no 
 doubt, will sound with more force to some, as 
 Mr. Jefferson does not belong to Young America, 
 This is in the same book, and the extract is to 
 be found in the Appendix to the Congressional 
 Globe, vol. 29, page 347. Mr. Toombs said : 
 
 " The only difficulty on this point has arisen from some 
 decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. It 
 is true, they have talked vaguely about the doctrine of 
 the general sovereignty of the Federal Government. I 
 attach but little importance to'the political views of that 
 tribunal. It is a safe depository of personal rights; but 
 I believe there has been no assumption of political power 
 by this Government which it has not vindicated and 
 found somewhere." 
 
 It was the opinion of that distinguished Sena- 
 tor, that no assumption of political power by this 
 Government had ever occurred which the Su- 
 preme Court had not vindicated and found some- 
 where. I think, if thiit honorable Senator were 
 to review this subject now, with the increasing 
 light of history, he would find, at least, one exer- 
 cise of power by this Government which the 
 Supreme Court of the United States have not 
 vindicated, and have not found somewhere, 
 though I think almost anybody else can find it 
 everywhere ; and that is the power which was 
 exercised prior to the Constitution, and under 
 the Constitution down to the present time, and 
 in force while I speak, on your statute-book, to 
 prohibit Slavery in the Territories. That is an 
 assumption of political power which the Supreme 
 Court of the United States have not found any- 
 where. While, as the distinguished Senator 
 from Georgia says, there is no assumption of po- 
 litical power by the Government which that 
 Court have not vindicated, I tell him, whenever 
 this Government has undertaken to act in the 
 slightest degree in the exercise of its constitu- 
 tional authority to limit or restrain Slavery, the 
 Supreme Court have not found a place any- 
 where where it could be vindicated or sustained. 
 
 Mr. TOOMBS. That was true when uttered, 
 but it is not so now. 
 
 Mr. HALE. The honorable Senator says it 
 was historically true when it was uttered, brit it 
 is not true now. Well, it was not uttered a 
 great while ago. They must have had a very 
 sudden conversion, for the speech is not three 
 years old. 
 
 Mr. TOOMBS. The Dred Scott decision has 
 been made since that. 
 
 Mr. HALE. The Senator admits everything I 
 said. I have not put before the Senate the posi- 
 tion of these two illustrious names, one dead and 
 the other living — Jefferson and Toombs — be- 
 cause I want to invoke the sanction of their 
 names to cover my opinion ; but I want to throw 
 them out, so that those who are not advised 
 upon the matter may not think that I am the 
 first man who has ever attempted to lift that sil- 
 ver veil with which this "veiled prophet" — the 
 Supreme Court — hides the hideousness of its 
 
11 
 
 features. Having said thus much, I come to the 
 work. It is v that very Dred Scot case that I am 
 coming to. 
 
 There are two positions, and but two, in this 
 decision, which I am going to examine. The 
 Supreme Court of the United States have declared 
 that the right to hold slaves, and to trade in 
 slaves, was universally recognised in England 
 and this country at the time of the American 
 Revolution and the adoption of the Federal Con- 
 stitution. That matter is so distinctly set forth, 
 that I will send to the Chair an extract, and ask 
 the Secretary to read it. 
 
 The Secretary read it, as follows : 
 
 "In the opinion of the couit, the legislation and histo 
 riesofthe times, and the language used in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, show that neither the class of per- 
 sons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descend- 
 ants, whether they had become free or not, were then ac- 
 knowledged as a part of the people, norin'ended to be in 
 eluded in the general /words used in that memorable in 
 strument. 
 
 "It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public 
 opinion, in relation to that unfortunate race, which pre- 
 vailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the 
 world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, 
 and when the Constitution of the United States was 
 framed and adopted. But the public history of every 
 European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be 
 mistaken. 
 
 •' They had for more than a century before been regard- 
 ed as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to 
 associate with the white race, either in social or politi- 
 cal relations ; and so far inferior, that they had no rights 
 which the white man was bound to respect; and that 
 the negro .niyht justly and lawfully be reduced to sla- 
 very for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated 
 aa an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, when- 
 ever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at 
 that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of 
 the -white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals, 
 as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, 
 or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every 
 grade and position in society daily and habitually acted 
 upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of 
 public concern, without doubting for a moment the cor- 
 rectnessof this opinion. 
 
 " And in no nation was this opinion more firmly fixed 
 or more uniformly acted upon than by the English Gov- 
 ernment and English people. They not only seized them 
 on the coast of Africa, and sold them or held them in sla- 
 very for their own use, but they took them as ordinary 
 articles of merchandise to every country where they could 
 make a profit on them, and were far m°re extensively en- 
 gaged in this commerce than any other nation in the 
 world. 
 
 '•The opinion thus entertained and acted upon in Eng- 
 land, was naturally impressed upon the colonies they 
 founded on this side of the Atlantic. And, accordingly. 
 a negro of the African race was regarded by them as an 
 article of property, and held and bought and sold as such. 
 in every one of the thirteen colonies which united in the 
 Declaration of Independence, and afterwards formed the 
 Consticution of the United States. The slaves were more 
 or less numerous in the different colonies, as slave labor 
 was found more or less profitable ; but no one seems to 
 have doubted the correctness of the prevailing opinion of 
 the time." 
 
 Mr. President, in the remaining remarks which 
 I propose to submit to the Senate, I shall con- 
 fine myself to two points or positions assumed in 
 a paper which I hold in my hand, called " A re- 
 port of the decision of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, and the opinions of the Judges 
 thereof, in the case of Dred Scot versus John F. 
 A. Sandford," protesting, however, that I refrain 
 from an examination of any more at this period, 
 solely for the want of time. The first of these 
 points is the affirmation by the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, that property in slaves is of 
 the same right as all other property. The other 
 is, that the right to hold and to traffic in this 
 property, at the time of the American Revolution, 
 and at the time of the adoption of the Federal 
 Constitution, was so universally acknowledged 
 and recognised in the country from which we 
 came, and in this country, that no man thought 
 
 of disputing it. An extract to that effect, from 
 the opinion of the Court, has already been read 
 from the desk by the Clerk. To these two points 
 I shall confine my remarks, contending, in the 
 first place, that the legal proposition asserted by 
 the court is unsound and untrue, and not sup- 
 ported by principle or authority ; and that what 
 purports to be a statement of facts, is not sup- 
 ported by the truth of history. 
 
 The first proposition to which I have alluded 
 is more distinctly and more fully expressed in 
 the Constitution which has been framed by the 
 Lecompton Convention, and I will read the state- 
 ment as it is there expressed : 
 
 "The right of property is before and hisher than any 
 constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a 
 slave to such slave and its increase, is thp same and as 
 inviolable as the right of the owner of any property what- 
 ever." 
 
 I think the Lecompton Convention have the 
 advantage of the Supreme Court in one respect ; 
 they are a little more explicit. I have a higher 
 respect for the Lecompton Convention than I 
 have for the Supreme Court ; because the Le- 
 compton Convention have placed this principle 
 distinctly on paper, and there is no mistaking 
 what they mean, while the Supreme Court have 
 decided the same thing, but have not quite so 
 explicitly expressed it to the apprehension of the 
 common ear. Now, sir, I undertake to maintain 
 that the principle thus asserted is not true ; and 
 on this point I shall ask the attention of the Sen- 
 ate to some authorities ; but, before coming to 
 the authorities, let me state what I believe on 
 this subject. 
 
 I do not stand here to decide that legally there 
 is such a thing as property in slaves. I am not 
 discussing the moral question, but the legal one ; 
 and I do not stand here to deny that there is, in 
 the States tolerating Slavery, legal property in 
 slaves ; for, in the free States, we have a qual- 
 ified property in the labor of human beings. In 
 the State in which I live, criminals, if tried and 
 found guilty, are sent to the penitentiary for the 
 public good, and any individual may contract 
 with the warden having the custody of the pris- 
 oners for their labor ; and, if the Legislature see 
 fit, he may take the prisoners anywhere within 
 the jurisdiction of the State, and his right in the 
 labor of those convicts is recognised, and will be 
 protected by the State and by its authorities. 
 But, if the man thus using the labor of convicts 
 in the State of New Hampshire should cro33 
 over the Connecticut river, and undertake to quarry mar- 
 ble in the Green Mountains of Vermont, he would find 
 that his property ceased the moment he got over the river, 
 and that the right which he had acquired in New Hamp- 
 shire would not extend beyond the territorial li nits of the 
 State imposing the servitude. Just exactly and precisely 
 that is the right which the owner of a slave has to his 
 property. He has a right to the property within the juris- 
 diction which imposes the servitude; but the moment the 
 slave goes beyond that, he is free. I do not rest this on 
 my own assertion. 
 
 There is another right of property — a general property — 
 and that is a property in inanimate things, and in the 
 brute creation. A man has a property in ahnrsr — ahorse 
 in Maryland, for instance ; he goes with that horse from 
 Maryland to Virginia, to Delaware, to any and to every 
 State in the Union, traversing the Confederacy from one 
 end to the o ther, and wherever and whenever he arrives 
 in any one of the States, his right to property in the horse 
 is recogni sed universally. More than that, sir: he may 
 go outside the limits of the Union; he may to into the 
 British, the Mexican, or the South American, possessions 
 on this continent; he may go into the possessions of the 
 savage tribes; and wherever he finds a cemmunity of 
 men, civilized or savage, there his right of property in the 
 horse will be recognised. Nay, sir, he may take lhat 
 horse across the Atlantic, he may traverse all the king- 
 doms of Europe, civilized and savage and semi-savage, 
 and everywhere he will find his right of property recog- 
 
12 
 
 nised. He may go, if he pleases, to the frozen regions of 
 the north pole and may come down from there till he 
 pants beneath the vertical rays of the tropical sun, and 
 the horse is his ; and the-tribunals of ihe countries ■where 
 he goes wi 1 vindicate his right. Why? Is it because 
 each and every of these States has a statute, declaring 
 that a man shall have property in a horse? No, sir. I 
 apprehend there is no such statute in anyone of Ihem. 
 The reason is, because, by the universal consent of man- 
 kind, a horse is ihe subject of property; and when the 
 horse was made he was made to be property, and man 
 was made to own him. It rests upon no statute, and upon 
 no speculation of philosophy. It goes back to the earliest 
 period of recorded time. When the Almigiity created 
 this broad earth, and gave it to man for a home, Ke gave 
 it to him to cultivate ; He fill'd the land with cattle, and 
 the sea with fish, and the air with fowls ; then He made 
 man, and He (rave him this commission : " Have thru do- 
 minion over the fish of ihe sea, and the fowls of the air, 
 and the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creeps 
 on the earth." But man, sir. immortal man-made in the 
 image of God — He never said, " have thou dominion over 
 him." No ; He reserved that last great work, man, for 
 His own peculiar worship. 
 
 That is the distinction. It is a distinction that has been 
 recognised by every writer who has ever written upon 
 the subject. It has been acknowledged by every cou t 
 where civilization has instituted courts. It has been ac- 
 knowledged by no States more freely, more readily more 
 decisively, than by the slaveholdin? States of this Union. 
 as I shall show by reference to decisions in Virginia' 
 Maryland, and Louisiana. More, sir: the doctrines of 
 the locality of Slavery, and the distinction between slave 
 property and other property, has been recognised, with- 
 out a dissenting voice, by the unanimous, uncontradicted 
 concurrence of every member of that court called the 
 Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
 The first authority to which I ask the attention of the 
 Senate on this point, is the opinion of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, in the somewhat famous case of 
 Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to be 
 found in 16 Peters. 594 ; 14 Curtis, 421. The court say : 
 
 "By the general law of nations, no nation is bound to 
 recognise the state of Slavery as found within its territo- 
 rial dominions, where it is in opposition to its own policy 
 and institutions, in favor of the subjects of other nations 
 where Slavery is organized. If it does it, it is as a matter of 
 comity, and not as a matter of international right. The 
 state of Slavery is deemed to be a mere mun : cipal regula- 
 tion, founded upon and limited to the range of the territo- 
 rial laws." 
 
 The court then proceed to quote several cases recogni- 
 sing this principle. Judge McLean, in his opinion in the 
 Dred Scott case, 19 Howard, 140, after quoting that 
 authority, proceeds to say: 
 
 "There was some contrariety of opinion among the 
 judges on certain points ruled in Prigg's cas», but there 
 was none in regard to the great principle, that Slavery is 
 limited to the range of the laws under which it is sanc- 
 tioned." 
 
 That, then, was the deliberate, solemn opinion of the 
 court, collectively and indiv'dually. The same doctrine 
 is recognised in Jon^s vs. Vanzandt, 2 McLean, Circuit 
 Court reports, page 596, where the learned Judge says : 
 
 "Slavery is local in its character. It depends upon the 
 municipal law of the States where it is established ; and 
 if a person held to Slavery go beyond the jurisdiction 
 where he is so held, and into another sovereignty where 
 Slavery is not tolerated, he becomes free ; and this would 
 be the law of these States, had the Constitution of the 
 United States adopted no regulation upon the subject." 
 
 This would have been the law of the States, had there 
 been no regulation in the Constitution of the United States 
 to the contrary; and more than that, the framers of the 
 Constitution, each and every one of them, so understood 
 the law. They understood the law to be, at the time of 
 the adoption of the Federal Constitution, that a person 
 held to service or labor by virtue of the local law of the 
 State in which he was held, and going into another State, 
 became free ; and to prevent the operation of that gener- 
 al pri' ciple, they inserted this provision : 
 
 "That no person held to service or labor in one State, 
 under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in 
 consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharg- 
 ed from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up 
 on claim of the party to whom such service or labor is 
 due." 
 
 Why this negative introduced into the Constitution, de- 
 claring thit a man should not be free by going from one 
 State to another, if the men who framed that instrument 
 had not understood that the law was so? Then, here is 
 the decision of tne Supreme Court of the United States, 
 and the decision of the Circuit Court, over which Judge 
 McLean presides. I will now read a decision from Mar 
 tin's Louisiana Reports. In Lunsford vs. Coquillon, 2 
 Martin, u^w series, 401, the Supreme Court of Louisiana 
 decided, according to the head note : 
 
 " If the owner of a slave remove her from Kentucky to 
 Ohio, animo morandi, she becomes free, ipso facto." 1 
 In the course of the. opinion, ihe court say: 
 
 " We conclude that the Constitution of the State of 
 Ohio emancipates, ipso /ado. such slaves whose owners 
 remove them into that State wiih the intention of residing 
 ihere; that the plaintiff having been voluntarily removed 
 into that State by her then owner, the latter s ubmils him- 
 self, with every member of his family, white and black, 
 and every part of the property brought with him, to the 
 operation of the Constitution »nd laws of the State ; and 
 that, as according to them. Slavery could not exist in his 
 house — Slavery did not exist, there, and the plaintiff was 
 accordingly as effectually emancipated, by the operation 
 of the Constitution, as if by the act and deed of her former 
 owner." 
 
 The same doctrine is also found in another opinion of 
 that same court — the SupremeCourt of the Stateof Louisi- 
 ana— only that tl is case is a ereat deal stronger. I read 
 the case of Mary Louise us. William C. Marot et al. The 
 abstract of the case is : 
 
 "The fact of a slave being taken to the Kingdom of 
 France, or other country, by the owner, where slavery or 
 other involuntary servitude is not t-lera'e'', operates on 
 the condition of the slave, and produces immediate eman- 
 cipation." 
 
 The court held, in that decision, that, by 'aking a slave 
 from Louisiana to France, where Slavery was prohibited 
 by law, the slave, ipso fnelo, became free ; and when he 
 came back into Louisiaua, the master could not reduce 
 the slave again to Slavery. In aii"tner part of a recent 
 decision, the Supreme Court' of the United States have un- 
 dertaken to say that the condition of Slavery was only in 
 a state of catalepsy while the slave was in a state of lib- 
 erty; and that when he came back to a slave State, he 
 could be again reduced to Slavery ; but such is not the 
 doctrine of the court of Louisiana, and such has not been 
 the doctrine of other courts. 
 
 I have also a case from the Court of Appeals of the 
 State of Maryland, (4 Harris and McHenry, 418,) where 
 it appears that the petitioner stated his claim to freedom 
 to arise under the laws of the State of Pennsylvania for 
 the abolition of Slavey ; and in that case the court of 
 Maryland held, that by taking a slave out of Maryland, 
 and carrying him into Pennsylvania, he became free. He 
 came back and resided in Maryland, but the court gave 
 validity to the abolition of Slavery by the fact of his mas- 
 ter carrying him into Pennsylvania, and he became free. 
 All these decisions proceed on the assumption that Sla- 
 very is local in its character. 
 
 Now, sir, I have a case from the State of Virginia, 
 which I think is stronger than any of those which I have 
 read. In Hunter vs. Fulcher, (1 Leigh, 171.) I find this 
 decision : 
 
 "By statute of Maryland cf 1796, all slaves brought into 
 that State to reside are declared free. A Virginia-born 
 slave is carried by his master to Maryland; the master 
 settles there, and keeps the slave there in bondage for 
 twelve months, the statute in force all the time; then he 
 brings him as a slave to Virginia, and sells him here. Ad- 
 judged, in an action brought by the man against the 
 purchaser, that he is free " 
 
 So that you will see it is not the free States who alone 
 have offended in this matter by abolishing your title to 
 slaves when they come into their territory ; but as long 
 ago as 1796, the State of Maryland manumitted the slsve 
 of every man who came to reside there with his master. 
 A planter went from Virginia into Maryland, and resided 
 there with his slave until the slave became free ; and then 
 went back into Virgiuia, and understook to reduce the 
 slave to his possession again; but the highest court in 
 Virginia held that by going into Maryland, the slave be- 
 came free, and by going back to Virginia he did not 
 again return to a state of servitude Tuat is the doctrine 
 of Virginia. 
 
 Let me state one other authority. I have a still stronger 
 case. It is Fulton vs. Lewis, 3 Harris and Johnson, a 
 case in the Court of Appeals in Maryland : 
 
 " At the trial, the following facts were admitted in evi- 
 dence : John Levant, a married man. being a native and 
 resident of the Island of St. Domingo, removed from that 
 place in July, 1793, flying from disturbances which then 
 existed there, endangering the 1 ves and property of the 
 inhabitants, and brought with him into this State three 
 negroes, of whom the petitioner (now appellee) is one, 
 who he then and before owned as a slave. That in May, 
 1794, he sold the petitioner, as a slave, to William Clemm, 
 who sold him as such to the defendant, (the appellant ) 
 That said Levant arrived at Baltimore in August, 1793, 
 and continued to reside there until some time in 1796. 
 when he returned to the West Indies. The defendant 
 thereupon prayed the direction of the court to the jury, 
 that if they believed the facts, the petitioner was not en- 
 titled to his freedom. This opinion the court [Scott, C. J.] 
 refused to give, but directed the jury that upon these facts 
 the petitioner ■was free. The defendant excepted ; and 
 the verdict and judgment being against him, he appealed 
 
13 
 
 to this court, where, the case was argued before Chase, 
 Chief Justice, and Buchanan, Nicholson, Earle, Johnson, 
 and Martin, Justices. 
 
 "Glenn, for the appellant, contended that the act of 
 1783, chapter 23, under which the petitioner claimed his 
 freedom, meant only a voluntary importation of slaves, 
 ajid not an lu.porlaiiou arising from absolute necessity, 
 produced by causes over which the owner, as in this case, 
 had and could have no control/' 
 
 But the judgment was atlirmed,and the slave went free. 
 Notwithstanding he came inio Maryland by a tempest, by 
 the act of Providence, and not by the voluntary act of his 
 master, so stringently did the State of Maryland construe 
 this right ol property in slaves as a local right, that they 
 determined that even when the act of God, contrary to 
 the consent of hit master, brought the slave there, he be- 
 came iree ; and so they gave him his freedom. 
 
 In the opinion delivered by Judge Curtis, in the Dred 
 Sect ease, he read a dissenting opinion from the late 
 ru.ing in the Slate of Missouri. That dissenting opinion 
 was pronounced by Judge Gamble, who said : 
 
 '•In this State [Missouri] it has been recognised, from 
 the beginning of the Goveri nient, as a correct position in 
 law, that trie master who takes his slave to reside in a 
 S'ate or Territory where Slavery is prohibited, thereby 
 emancipates his slave." 
 
 Judge Curtis goes on to say : 
 
 '♦Chief Justice Gamble has also examined the decisions 
 of the courts of other Stales ia which slavery is establish- 
 ed, and finds them in accorduuee with these preceding 
 decisions of the Supreme Couit of Missouri to which he 
 refers. 
 
 •■ It would be a useless paiade of learning for me to go 
 over the ground which he has so fully and ably occu- 
 pied ." 
 
 In ihe opinion delivered by Judge McLean, in the Dred 
 Scott case, he declares : 
 
 ■• i'here is no nation in Europe which considers itself 
 bound to return to his master's fugitive slave, under the 
 civil law or the law of nations. On the contrary, the slave 
 is held to be iiee where there is no treaty obligation, or 
 coapact in some other form, to return him to his master. 
 The Roman law did not allow freedom to be sold. An 
 ambassador, or any other public functionary, could not 
 take a slave to France. Spain, or any oilier country of 
 Europe, without emancipating him. A number ot slaves 
 escaped from a Florida plantation, ai;d were received on 
 board of ship by Admiral Cochrane j by the King's Bench 
 they were held to be free.'' 
 
 He mentions, also, a case that was decided as late, I 
 think, as lb'23, in the Court of King's Bench, which is 
 found m 3 Bowling and Ryland, page 679— Forbes «s. 
 Cochrane. Cord Chief Justice Best, in delivering ihe 
 opinion in thai ease, says: 
 
 •the righl of Slavery is not a general right; it is a 
 local right: it is spoken of by every writer that has ever 
 written upon the subject as a local right/' 
 
 Judge Best had not lead the Eecompton Constitution, 
 noi the Dred Scott decision. He could not say now what 
 he said then, thai every writer that had ever written on 
 this subject had treated it as a local right. In the same 
 opinion, says the learned judge : 
 
 il Slavery is ;> local law; and if a man wishes to pre- 
 setve uis sraves, let him attach them to himself by ties of 
 affection, or make last the oars of iheir prison ; for ihe 
 moment they get beyond his local limits, they have broken 
 their chains and lone recovered their liberty." 
 
 That same judge poes further, and says : 
 
 •■1 go tunher : if a slave, acting upon his newly-acquir- 
 ed rights of a free man, I ad determined to vindicate the 
 rights of his nature, and, had said, I will not be forced 
 back mio a stale oi slavery,' anu his death had ensued 
 upon his resistance, it would have been murder in every 
 individual who h-jd contributed to that deatn." 
 
 The same judge, speaking of the slave, says: 
 
 '•Whatever he may owe to the local law is got rid of 
 the in menl he gets beyond the local limit." 
 
 Speaking of an assertion that Mansfield was said to 
 have made, that an action might be maintained on a con- 
 tract lor the sale of a slave m England, Chief Justice 
 Best says : 
 
 •'1 can only say that I have searched with all the in- 
 dustry of which 1 am master, and that I can find no sucn 
 decision." 
 
 This was a suit brought for the recovery cf certain 
 slaves that escaped from Florida to Admiral Cochrane, 
 and the judge expressed some doubts, or, at least, said it 
 was not proved mat Slavery existed in Florida; but he 
 says : 
 
 •• If it did prevail there, it is a local law ; it is an anli- 
 Chiistian law, ai.d it cannot be extended beyond the 
 limits of its own Stale, nor be recognised in a country 
 like this, where the courts of justice are regulated accord- 
 ing to the law of nature and the revealed law of God." 
 
 That was the opinion of the Court of King's Bench, in 
 England, as late as 1822. I have shown you, by these 
 quotations and these opinions, that up to the rendering of 
 the opinion in the DreU Scott case, it was the law of these 
 
 States severally, it was the law of the Supreme Court of 
 the United Slates, it was the law of the highest judicial 
 tribunal in England, that the moment a slave escapes 
 ftom the territorial limits of the jurisdiction which im- 
 poses the stale of servitude upon him, that moment he 
 becomes free; and that in the exercise of ihe rights of 
 freedom which he acquires by stepping out from beyond 
 ihe local limits of the jurisdiction which impose slavery 
 upon him, he is a man — to all intents and purposes a 
 man ; and if an thempt is made by anybody claiming the 
 right to reduce him to slavery, to take nim, and he resists 
 aiid dies, the death of that slave is murder in every man 
 who contributed to bring about lhat result. 
 
 Sir. these are ihe great settled principles of the law, 
 and they are not to be shaken to-day by any judicial as- 
 sumption or any legal quackery on this subject. They 
 stand immovable and immutable as the eternal founda- 
 iions of truth. While civilized society maintains its tri- 
 bunals and its organization, these principles will stand, 
 and the Supreme Court of the United Stales will find that, 
 like the waves of ihe ocean, they loss themselves against 
 the rock-bound shores ; but they t ss themselves in vain, 
 only to fall back whence they came. These are positions 
 which cannot be shaken. They rest not only upon law, 
 but upon humanity, upon reason, upon every conviction 
 which belongs to human nature and to a common man- 
 hood. 
 
 Having disposed of that part of the case — and I think 
 I have gone tar enough, so lhat any schoolboy in the free 
 States, who has been to our common schools long enough 
 to read, may confute and relute and conf. und forever 
 the gros assumption of this court — 1 now p.oceed to the 
 other point to which I proposed to address a few remarks; 
 and that was, lhat at the lime of the adoption of the fed- 
 eral Constitution, Slavery was so universally acknowl- 
 edged and practiced upon, that nobody thought of ques- 
 tioning it. The Supreme Court say : 
 
 '■ It was regarded as an axiom in morals, as well as in 
 politics, which no one thought of d.sputmg, or supposed 
 to be open to dispute ; and men in every grade and posi- 
 tion in society daily and habitually acted upon n in their 
 private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, 
 without doubling for a moment the correctness of this 
 opinion." 
 
 The "opinion" here alluded to was, " that the negro 
 might justly mid lawfully be reduced to slavery for his 
 benefit; " and they add : 
 
 "And in no nation was this opinion more firmly fixed, 
 or more unifoimly acted upon, than by the English Gov- 
 ernment and English people." 
 
 How is that? I Relieve the Supreme Court have not 
 decided that ihe Revolution did not take place in 1776 or 
 lhat the Declaration of Independence w^s not made about 
 that same time ; but at the commencement of the eight- 
 eenth century, abou' the year 1704, this opinion was Ten- 
 derer by Lord Holt, in the case of Smith vs. Gould, re- 
 ported in 2 Lord Raymond's Reports, U74. whinh was an 
 action of trover for a negro. Lord Holt, speaking for the 
 whole court, says: 
 
 " This action does not lie for a negro more than for any 
 other mar, for the common law takes no notice ofntgrces 
 being different from other men." 
 
 And in Salkeld's report of the same case, (2 Salkeld, 
 666.) the same learned judge say s ; 
 
 "Men may be the owners of property, and therefore 
 cannot themselves be the subject of property. 
 
 That was one hundred and fifty years ago. Then we 
 come down to 1772, and we find Lord Chief Justice 
 Mansfield deciding the Somerset case. 1 will read that 
 decision : 
 
 •' The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is in- 
 capable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or 
 political, but only by posiiive law, which preserves ils 
 lorce long after the reason, occasion, and time itself, from 
 whence it was created, is erased trom the memory. It 
 is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but 
 positive law. Whatever i .convenience s. therefore may 
 follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allow- 
 ed or approved by the laws of Englard. and therefore the 
 black must be discharged." 
 
 Tnat was the law of England in 1772. Going back to 
 the commencement of the. century, and coming down to 
 1772. we find the same doctrine held. In the opinion I 
 have already read of Chief Justice Best, he say*, that 
 with the best industry he could give to the sul ject, he had 
 never found that a contract for the sale of a slave was 
 allowed in England. These were the doctrines of the 
 courts. 1 have another aulhoiity, which I do net propose 
 to put in as a judicial authority, but I propose to put it in 
 to answer that pari of Ihe opinion of the Supreme Court 
 in which they say this docirine has never been question- 
 ed by anybody. I show you that it had been questioned 
 by the judicial tribunals; it had been questioned by Lord 
 Holt ; it had been questioned by Lord M'iisfi»ld : and in 
 179U, immediately after the adoption of the Federal Con- 
 stitution, the great orator of Ireland. (John Fhilpot Cur- 
 ran.) speaking before a British court, said : 
 
 " I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes 
 
14 
 
 liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the 
 British, soil ; which proclaims, even to the stranger and 
 the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British 
 earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and 
 consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No 
 mailer in what language his doom may have been pro- 
 nounced ; no matter what complexion incompatible with 
 freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burnt 
 upon him. ; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty 
 may have been eleven down ; no matter with what so 
 lemnitie- he may have been devoted upon the altar of Sla- 
 very ; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Brit- 
 ain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust j his 
 soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; his body swells 
 beyond the measure ot his chains that burst from around 
 him, ? nd he lands redeemed, regenerated, and disen- 
 thi ailed, by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emanci- 
 pation " 
 
 And yet, sir, in the face of these glowing declarations, 
 of these sublime enunciations, of these eloqueiit tributes 
 to the great principle of Liberty, your Supreme Court 
 have come down from their bench, gone into the political 
 arena and commenced their career by declaring that the 
 right to hold and to Irade in slaves, at the time of the 
 adoption of oar Constitution, was so universally recog- 
 nised a.id practiced upon, that no man thought of ques- 
 tioning it. I hive shown you that it was questioned in 
 England ; that there were men high in position there, oc 
 cupying exalted piaces in the kingdom of Great Britain, 
 who had questioned the rightfulness of the traffic inslaves, 
 and the right to hold slaves. I beg Senators to bear in 
 mind the exact question which I am arguing. I am not 
 introducing these instai ces here for idle declamation. I 
 am no. int.'oducing them as part of an Anti-slavery' dis- 
 course; but I am introducing them to prove to the ten- 
 ate, to the country, ai.d to the world, that when they un- 
 dertake to say that the right to hold _nd to traffic in slaves 
 was unquestioned, they state that which cannot be sus- 
 tained by history. 
 
 Now, sir, how was it in this country? The Supreme 
 Court say that this right was so well understood in this 
 country, so universally acceded to, that even the great 
 and sub ime truths which are embodied in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, which, if tney were uttered to-day, 
 would be held to embrace ali mankind, did not embrace 
 them at that time, because the opposite sentiment, that it 
 was right to hold slaves, was so universal, so unques- 
 tioned, and so unquestionable, that nobody thought of 
 questioning it. I have been at some little pains to ascer 
 tain what the views of some of the men in this ci uulry, 
 about the time of the Revolution, and about the time of 
 the adoption of the Federal Constitution, were. I begin 
 ■with North Carolina. I took that State first, because a 
 distinguished senator fiom that State [Mr. Biggs] was in 
 the chair yesterday, and I did not know but that he 
 would be to-day; and I wanted to compliment him by 
 putting his own State first. The first Provincial Congress 
 of North Carolina, iseld atNewbern on the 24lh of August, 
 1774, resolved— 
 
 "That we will not import any slave or slaves, or 
 purchase any slave or slaves imported or brought into 
 this province by others, from any part of the world, after 
 the 1st day of November next." 
 
 That authority is to be found in ihe American A r chives, 
 fourth series, first volume, page 735. Again, the Con- 
 tinental Congress of the United States, October 20, 1774, 
 formed an association or agreement, consisting of four- 
 teen articles ; the second article of which is: 
 
 " That we will neither import nor purchase any slave 
 imported after Hie 1st day of December next, after which 
 time we will wholly discontinue tne slave trade, and will 
 neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we htreour 
 vessels, nor sell our commodities nor manufactures, to 
 those who are concerned in it." 
 
 By the fourteenth article, they resolved : 
 
 " And we do further agree and resolve, that we will 
 have no trade, commerce, dealings, or intercourse what- 
 soever, with any colony or province in North America 
 which suall not accede to, or which shall hereafter vio- 
 late this association, Out will hold them as unworthy of 
 the rights of freeman, and as inimical to the liberties of 
 this country." 
 
 'ihat is to be found in the same volume, on page 915. 
 Those men who would not agree that they would neither 
 import nor purchase any s.ave after the 1st day of Decem- 
 ber, were not worthy of social or business intercourse, 
 and unworthy of the rights of freemen, and inimical to 
 the liberties of the country. That agreement, or conven- 
 tion, a? it is called, of the Continental Congress, made in 
 1774, was signed by all the members, including George 
 Washington and Patrick Henry, from Virginia, and two 
 Rulledges from South Ctrolina. 
 
 I come now to another State, Georgia. The Provincial 
 Congress of Georgia, held at Savannah, on the 18lh of 
 January, 1775, resolved : 
 
 ''That we will neither import nor purchase any slave 
 imported from Africa, or elsewhere, after the 15th day of 
 March next." 
 
 George "Washington, in a letter to Charles Pinckney, 
 Governor of Sjutn Carolina, on the 17th of March, 1792, 
 says : 
 
 '• I must say that I lament the decision of your Legisla- 
 ture upon the question of imponing slaves after March, 
 1793. I was in hopes that motives of policy, as well as 
 other good reasons, supported by the direful effects of* 
 Slavery, which at this moment are presented, would have 
 operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation 
 of slaves, whenever the question came to be agitated in 
 any State that might be interested in the measure." 
 
 In a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9, 1786, 
 George Washington says : 
 
 "1 never mean, unless some particular circumstances 
 should compel me to it, to possess another slave by pur- 
 chase, it being among my first wislies to see some plan 
 adopted by which Slavery in this country may be abolish- 
 ed by law." — Sparks's Life of Washington, vol. 9, p. 159. — 
 Note. 
 
 In a letter to Robert Morris, dated April 12. 1786, he 
 says : 
 
 " I hope it will not be conceived from these observa- 
 tions that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people who 
 are the subject of this letter in Slavery. I can only say, 
 that there is not a man living, wno wishes more sincere- 
 ly than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it; 
 but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which 
 it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authori- 
 ty ; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be 
 wanted.' 1 — Sparks's Writings of Washington, vol. 9, p. 159. 
 
 In a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, of the date of 
 April 5, 1783, i.e says : 
 
 •'The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose ax 
 a precedent, to encourage the emancipation of the black 
 people in this country from the state of bondage in which 
 they are held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence 
 of your Heart. I shall be happy to join you in so laudable 
 a work ; but will defer going into a detail of the business ^ 
 until I have the pleasure of seeing you." — Sparks's Wri- 
 tings of Washington, vol. 8, p. 4 14, 415. 
 
 I have Some other authorities. In the Convention 
 which framed the Constitution of the United Slates, Col. 
 Mason, of Virginia, an illustrious name in an illustrious 
 Commonwealth, then and now, said : 
 
 " Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The 
 poor despise labtr when performed by slaves. They 
 prevent the emigration of whites, who really enrich and 
 strengthen a country. They produce the most pernicious 
 effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a 
 petty train. They bring thejudgment of Heaven on a 
 country." 
 
 Again, Mr. Mason is reported to have said : 
 
 "He h Id it essential, in eve<y point of view, that the 
 General Government should have power to prevent the 
 increase of Slavery." 
 
 That is to be found in the third volume of the Madison 
 Papers, page 139L. Again, Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, 
 afterwards Vice President of the United Slates, (page 
 1394 of the same volume.) said : 
 
 " He thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of 
 the Stales as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to 
 give any sanction to it." 
 
 Mr. Madison (page 1429) "thought it wrong to admit 
 in the Constitution the idea that there could be property 
 in men " 
 
 But there is another very important fact in the history 
 of that Convention. They finally adjourned on the 17th 
 day of September, 1787. On the 13th day of September, 
 1787, after the discussions in the Convention had been 
 listened to, after the sugges'ious of Colonel Mason, of 
 Virginia, of Madison, and of othe* men of that day, who 
 thought Slavery ought hot to be countenance! and allow- 
 ed in the Consti ution, there came up the clause fixing the 
 enumeration that was to be made to establish tie ratio 
 on which. Representatives were to be chosen. As it read 
 then, it fixed the number and said, " including those bound 
 lo servitude." You will find on page 1569 of the third 
 volume of the Madison Papers, that Mr. Randolph, of 
 Virginia, moved to strike out the word " servitude," and 
 insert "service" in its stead; and it was done unani- 
 mously, said Mr. Madison, because the word " servitude " 
 impli d the condition of slaves, and "service" described 
 the obligations of free persons. So you find that those 
 held to service are described in the Constitution, because 
 the Convention unanimously thought that did not describe 
 the condition of Slavery; and, therefore, they put -ser- 
 vice. " instead of " servitude." These were the opinions 
 of some of the men who were in the Convention that 
 framed the Constitution. 
 
 At the risk of being tedious, for I am not here to-day to 
 make myself popular, but instructive, [laughter,] I will 
 read a somewhat extended extract from another Southern 
 author. I would send it to the Secretary to read, but I 
 At? afraid he would not emphasize it properly, [laughter,] 
 and I will read it myself. I read from Jefferson's Notes 
 on Virginia, in which he treats on Slavery. It is a very 
 curious coincidence, that when Jeff rson comes to speak 
 of Slavery, he speaks of it in the same relation that Col. 
 
15 
 
 Mason did; and the whole article on Slavery is put in 
 under the head of "manners." I am not going to be 
 drawn oil' into that field. Mr. Jefferson says : 
 
 '•There must, doubtless, be an unhappy influence on 
 the manners of our people produced by the existence of 
 Slavery among us. The whole commerce between mas- 
 ter and sia/e is a perpetual exercise of the most boister- 
 ous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one 
 part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our chii- 
 • dren see this, and learn to imitate it; lor man is an im- 
 itative animal. This quality is the germ of all education 
 in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do 
 what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive 
 either in his philanthropy or his self-love lor restraining 
 the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should 
 always be a sufficient one that his child was present. 
 But generally it is not sufficient. The parent siorms ; 
 the child looks on ; catches the lineaments of wrath ; puis 
 on lue same airs in the circle of smaller slaves ; gives a 
 loose rein to Ins worst of passions; and thus nursed, edu- 
 cated, and daiiy exercised in tyranny, cam ot bui be 
 stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must 
 be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals 
 uudepraveu by such circumstances. And with what ex- 
 ecration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting 
 one half the ci.izens lo trample on the rigins ot the other, 
 transforms those into despots, and these 111(0 enemies, 
 destroys Hie morals of the one pail, and the amor yatiice. 
 of ihe oilier, tor, it a slave can have a country 111 this 
 ■world, it must he any otuerin preference to that 111 which 
 he is bom to live and labor for another; in which he 
 must loc-k up the faculties of his naiure, coiuribule as far 
 as depends on his individual endeavors to ihe evanish- 
 ment ol the human race, or entail his own miserable con- 
 dition on the endless generations proceeding from linn. 
 
 "Wiih the morals of the people, their industry also is 
 destroyed, lor, in a warm climate, no man wnl labor for 
 himselt who can make another labor for him. This is so 
 true, that 01 the proprietors of slaves a very small propor- 
 tion indeed are ever .-ecu lo labor. And can the liberties 
 of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed 
 their only firm oasis — a conviction in the minds of the 
 people thai these liberties ate the gift of God? — that they 
 are not lo be violated but wiih his wrath? Indeed,! 
 tremble lor my country, when 1 reflect that God is jusi; 
 toat his justice cannot sleep lorever; thai, cousideiing 
 numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution 01 
 the wheel of loilui.e, an exchange of situation, is among 
 possible evcnls ; thai it may become probable by supernat- 
 ural interference "Tne Aimigiuy has no atinouie which 
 can lake sine with us in such a contest " 
 
 So says Mr. Jetteison ; and yet ihe supreme Court say 
 that 11 was unquestioned, and nobody thought of question- 
 ing it at tne nine ol ihe American Kevofllou, and of the 
 adoption of ihe Federal Constitution. These Motes ol 
 Jellersou on Virginia, by the way, were first published, 
 1 think, m t/bU or 17s2, during the Revolution, and before 
 the adoption ol ihe Federal Constitution. The record 
 coes not slop there. Mr. Jefferson was not the only man 
 who entertained these sentiments on this subject at that 
 lime and subsequently. 1 wilt reud an extract Irom ihe 
 preamble ol ihe aci of the Legislature of Fenusylvania 
 Which abolished Slavery in 17«0, and you will find lhat 
 that is not "semi" on the subject. The Legislature 01 
 Pennsylvania, in i76U, declare : 
 
 '•And whereas ihe condition of those persons who have 
 heretoiore been denominated negro and mulalo slaves 
 has been attended with circumstances which not only 
 deprived them ol the common blessing ihey were by 
 naiure entitled 10, but has cast ihem 11110 me deepest afflic- 
 tions, by an unnatural separation and sale of husband and 
 ■wife from each oilier and from their children ; an injury . 
 the greatness 01 which can only be conceived by suppo- 
 sing tnat we Wire in ihe same unhappy case. Injustice 
 therefore, 10 persjns so unhappily circumstanced, and 
 who, having no prospect before ihrm wherein they may 
 resl iheir soirows and iheir hopes, have 110 reasonable 
 inducement lo render ihe service lo society which lhey 
 otherwise might, and also in grateful commemoration ol 
 our own hap.jy deliverance irom lhat stale of uncondi- 
 tional submission 10 winch we were doomed by the tyran- 
 ny of Brilaiu : He it t7iacitd, That no child hereafter bom 
 snail be a slave,'' &c. 
 
 Patrick Henry, in a letter to Robert Pleasants, dated 
 January 18, 1773, says : — 
 
 "I believe a time will come, when an opportunity will 
 be offered 10 abolish this lamentable evil Kverylhing 
 we can do, is 10 improve it, if it happens in our day ; if 
 not, let us transmit to our descendants, logeiher with ou 
 slaves, a pity for th- ir unhappy lot, and our abhonence 
 for Slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished for reform- 
 ation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with 
 lenity. It is ih-r furthermost advance we can make to 
 wards justice ; it is a debt we owe to the purity of our re- 
 ligion, to snow that it i« at variance with that law which 
 warrants Slaveiy. I know not wfcere to stop. I could 
 
 say many things on the subject, a serious view of which 
 gives a gloomy perspective to future times " 
 
 Again, John Jay— (of whom Webster sa ; !, that when 
 ihe ermine fell on him, it touched nothing less pure lhan 
 itself,) whose name and whose principles live to-day, in 
 the second and third generations, son i-.nd gra dson, and, 
 I believe, even to the fourth also, maintaining, in their 
 purity, the same principles which illustrated ihe life of 
 iheir illustrious ancestor; individuals whom it is my 
 prido to number amongst my personal and dearest 
 friends— said : 
 
 '• The State of New Vork is rarely out of my mind or 
 heart, and 1 am often disposed to write much respecting 
 iis affairs; but T have so liule information as 10 its pres- 
 ent political objects and operations, that I am afraid to 
 attempt it. All excellent law might be made out of the 
 Pennsylvania one, for the gradual abolition of Slavery. 
 Till America comes into this measure, her prayers to 
 Heaven will be impious. This is a strong expression, but 
 it is just."' 
 
 Joint Jay siid, in 17^0, Fat until America comes into 
 tins measure for the abolition o; Slavery, shs cannot, in 
 ihe penitence cf he-- stricken soul, look . p to Heaven, and 
 say. ' Our Father," wit,, outbting guilty of impiety. Such 
 was the opi: io 1 of John Jay. 
 
 The recor 1 does rot stop there. WillUm Pinkney, of 
 Maryland, in 17^9, the very ye:T of the adoption of the 
 Federal Constitution, wnen the Supreme Court say there 
 « s such a perfect Dead Sea in the public heart and 
 public morals on this subject, in a speech in the Maiy- 
 Ln 1 House cf D legates, said : 
 
 ■■ Sir, iniquitous and magidishonorable to Maryland is 
 that dreary system of *^Hh bondages which her laws 
 have, hitherto supported, with a solicitud ■ worthy of a 
 better object, and her citizens by iheir practice counte- 
 nanced. 
 
 •■ Founded in a disgraceful truffle, to which the parent 
 country lent her-fostering aid from motives of interest, 
 but whFh ev»n she would have disdained lo encourage, 
 had Ehiglend been the destined mart of such inhuman 
 merchandise, its continuance is as shameful as its ori- 
 gin. 
 
 *" Wher fore should we confine the edsje of censure to 
 our ancestors, or th se from whom they purchased! Are 
 notwt equally guilty * They strewed around the seeds 
 of Slavery; we cherish and sustain the growth. They 
 introduced the system ; we enlarge, invigorate, and con- 
 firm it." 
 
 1 i-hall not detain the Senate longer by reading from the 
 ecords and from our history what were Ihe opinions of 
 the men of that day; and yet ihis Supreme Court have 
 solemnly decided all this history out of being; have judi- 
 cially declared— no sir, not judicially, but politically. 
 I'hey have decided that Slavery and the slave trade, in 
 the very day and lime that Pinkney, and Jay, and Jef- 
 ferson, and Madison, and a 1 the great men who illustrate 
 and adorn and embellish our history, were pouring forth 
 imprecations and denunciations against the system, was 
 sn unquestioned and unquestionable, that nobody thought 
 of qu stioning it. The Supreme Court go further— I could 
 forgive them almost ;nything else— and, as I understand 
 i>, they heap reproach on our revolution sry history and 
 our revolutionary men. The Chief Justice, speaking of 
 the Declaration of Independence, says : 
 
 " It then proceeds to say : ' We hold these truths to be 
 s-lf-evid, nt: that all men are created equal; that they 
 are endowed b> their Creator with certain inalienable 
 rights; thet among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness; that to secure ihese rights, Governments 
 are instituted, deriving their just powers from the con- 
 sent oft :e governed.' 
 
 " The general words above quoted would seem to em- 
 brace the whole human fam'ly, and, if they were used in 
 a similar instrument at this ay, wou : d be so understood, 
 '•'ut it is tco clear for dispute, that the en laved A:rican 
 race were not i tended to be included, and formed no 
 p>r, cf the people who framed and adopted th s Declara- 
 tion " 
 
 Sir, the men who framed the Declaraiion of Independ- 
 ence, the men who fought the battles of Liberty, and the 
 men who wrote our Constitution, understood the meaning 
 of language quite as well as the Supreme Court; and if 
 I weie put on oath, I should say a little better They 
 knew the circumstances in which they were placed; 
 they knew the crisis in which they were called to live 
 and to act; they knew that the experiments which had 
 been m de from the beginning of lime up to that day, of 
 free government, had been a failure; lhey knew that 
 every effort and every attempt that oppressed man had 
 made had failed ; and they felt lhat to them, at that time, 
 and at that day, was committed, by t' e Arb.ter of nation- 
 al destiny, the great question, 10 solve for themselves, for 
 t eir posterity, for all coming limr, the great problem 
 • hether man was capable of self-g«veri ment. They 
 went into that contest, fully understanding the character 
 of the strife by which their position was to be maintain- 
 ed ; fully sensible of the character of the contest upon 
 
16 
 
 which they had entered. They went into it, as has been 
 well said on another occasion, poor in everything but 
 faith and courage They were without arms, without 
 wealth, without even a name amongst the nations of the 
 earth, rebel provinces; but they were strong in faith, 
 strong in hope, strong in patriot c impulse, and strong in 
 their reliance on the Most High J and they went, taking 
 their lives, their fortunes, and their honors, in their hand. 
 Tney threw themselves into the world's Thermopylae of 
 that day, and they decl-ired that they held certain great 
 truths to be self-evjdent, and ihat among these truths 
 was, that all men were, entitled to life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness. Why? Not because it was writ- 
 ten in the musty folios of speculating philosophers ; not 
 because it was found in the writings of patriots of other 
 days ; not because their fathers had vindicated on the 
 field of battle their right to be free; not because the old 
 British Commoners had brought King Charles to the 
 block; r;ot because tneir old Puritan anctstry, on the 
 battle-field: ofNa^eby and ofMarston Moor, had written 
 in their own blood, on their own country's soil, their de- 
 termination to be free. No, sir, none of all these ; but .hey 
 said that man was entitled to be fres, because he was 
 endowed by his Creator with that right. They stopped 
 nothing short of the throne of eternity. They ignored all 
 human reasons, all human, platforms,, and all human au- 
 thority, and with uncloud' d eye fixed their gaze upon 
 the eiexnal throne, and laid the foundation of the institu- 
 tions which they were to build, unon the eternal jus ice of 
 God. 
 
 That, sir, is what the revolutionary fathers did; and 
 when the contist was ever, w' 'tie dust and the blcod 
 of battle ha"d disappeared, anu ^ory stood upon the 
 flagstaff c.f their banner, these old men issued a Declara- 
 tion to the world. It was issued in 1783, the very year the 
 war was over. " Let it be remembered," say they, " final- 
 ly, that it has ever bees the pride and boast of America, 
 that the rights for which she contended were the rights 
 of human nature." They contended for no class, no con- 
 dition. They contended for humanity. No matter, in 
 the language of the Irish oraior, what complexion, in- 
 compatibie with liberty, an Indian or an African sun 
 may have burned upon him, when he standi erect in the 
 image of his Maker, a man, then say the fathers of the 
 Revoluion, " There stands one for v;"hom we have fought ; 
 there stands a man who was involved in the great issues 
 which led to the revolutionary war, and which we have 
 vindicated with our blood." Tney continue, further : 
 
 " If justice, good faith, honor, gratituce. and ail (he other 
 qualities which ennoble the character of a nat on, ant 
 fulfill the ends of Government, be the fruits of our estab- 
 lishments, tiie cause >jf .Liberty will acquire a digi.ity and 
 lustre which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example 
 will be set which cannos but have the most favorable in 
 flueiice on ihe rights of mankind. " 
 
 There is the idea; true to vheir principles, true to the 
 avowals of public sentiment with which they went into 
 that contest. Peace came in 1783; and in 17S4 Thomas 
 Jefferson, the immortal author of that immortal Declara- 
 tion, began his labors in the Continental Congress, mov- 
 ing that all the territory we then owned, and all the ter- 
 ritory that we might thereafter acquire, should be forever 
 free from what he considered the contaminating and 
 blighting influences of Human Slavery. Those who are 
 laboring with me in this great contest may take courage 
 from the perse vtrarce with which Jefferson adhered to 
 his policy. In 1783- ? 84-'85, and '86, the measure failed, 
 but finally, in 17s7, it partially succeeded, and the ordi- 
 nance was passed prohibiting Slavery from all the terri- 
 tory which we then owned. Yet, sir, in view of all this 
 history, written as with a sunbeam upon the very w^lls 
 of the room in which this tribunal now assemble, they 
 stand up in 1857, to declare to the world that the slave 
 trade and Slavery were so universally recognised and 
 
 acknowledged, that nobody questioned the rightfulness 
 of the traffic, and nobody supposed it capable of being 
 questioned. Not content with overturning the whole line 
 of judicial authority to be found in eveiy nation of Eu- 
 rope, and in every State of this Union, and of their own 
 solemn recorded decision, they go on to make the avow- 
 al; and then go further, and undertake to tesr from that 
 chaplet which adorns the brows of the men of the Revo- 
 lution the prouc 1 est and fairest of their ornamen.s; and 
 that was the sincerity of the professions which they made 
 in regard to the rights of human nature. It is true, the 
 court in their charity undertake to throw the mantle of 
 ignorance over these men. and say they did not under- 
 stand what they meant. Sir, they did understand it, and 
 the country understood it. There was a jealousy on the 
 suiject of Liberty and Slavery, at that time, of which we 
 are little prepared to judge at the present day. It is 
 found beaming out on the pages of the writings of all 
 these men. 
 
 If the opinions of the Supreme Court are true, they put 
 these men in the worst position of any men who are to be 
 found on the pages of our history. If the opinion of the 
 Supreme Court be true, it makes the immortal authors of 
 the Declaration of Independence liars before God and 
 hypocntes before the world ; for they lay down their sen- 
 timents broad, full, and explicit, and then they say that 
 they appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the 
 rectitude of their intentions ; but, if you believe the Su- 
 preme Court, they were 'merely quibbling on words. 
 They went into the courts of the Most High, and pledged 
 fidelity to their principles as the price they would pay for 
 success; and now it is attempted to cheat them out of 
 the poor boon of integrity; and it is said that they did 
 not mean so ; and that when they said all men, they meant 
 all white men ; and when they said that the contest they 
 waged was for the right of ma- kind, the Supreme Court 
 of the United States would have you believe that they 
 meant it was to establish Slavery. Against that I protest, 
 here, now, and everywhere ; and I tell the Supreme Court 
 that these things are so impregnably fixed in the hearts 
 of the people, on the page of history, in the recollections 
 and traditions of men, that it will require mightier efforts 
 than they have made or can make to overturn or to 
 shake these settled convictions of the popular understand- 
 ing and of the popular heart. 
 
 Sir, you are now proposing to carry out this Dred Scott 
 decision by forcing upon the people of Kansas a Constitu- 
 tion against which they have remonstrated, and to which 
 there can be no shadow of doubt a very large portion of 
 them are opposed. Will it succeed? I do not know; it 
 is not for me to say ; but I will say this : if you fort« 
 that — if you persevere in that attempt— I think, 1 hope, the 
 men of Kansas will fight. I hope they will resist to blood 
 and to death the attempt to force them to a submission 
 against which their fathers contended, and to which they 
 never would ha^ submitted. Let me tell you, sir, ' I 
 stand not here to use the language of intimidation or of 
 menace; but you kindle the fires of c ; vil war in that 
 country by an attempt to force that Constitution on the 
 necks of an unwilling people; and you will light a fire 
 ihat all Democracy cannot quench — »ye, sir, there will 
 come up many another Peter the Hermit, that will go 
 through the length and the breadth of this land, telling the 
 story of your wrongs and your outrages ; and they will 
 stir the public heart ; they will raise a feeling in this 
 country such as has never yet been raised; and the men 
 of this country will go forth, as they did of olden time, in 
 another crusade ; out it will not be a crusade to redeem 
 the deid sepulchre where the body of the Crucified had 
 lain from the profanation of the infidel, but to redeem this 
 fair^and, whLeh God has given to lie the abode of freemen, 
 from the desecration of a despotism sought to be imposed 
 u^on tham in the name of "perfect freedom " and ''pop- 
 ular sovereignty." 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 BUBLL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS, 
 1858. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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