Part 227 (1/2)
The first of these clauses, relating to representation, confers on a slaveholding community additional political power for every slave held among them, and thus tempts them to continue to uphold the system: the second and the last, relating to insurrection and domestic violence, perfectly innocent in themselves--yet being made with the fact directly in view that slavery exists among us, do deliberately pledge the whole national force against the unhappy slave if he imitate our fathers and resist oppression--thus making us partners in the guilt of sustaining slavery: the third, relating to the slave-trade, disgraces the nation by a pledge not to abolish that traffic till after twenty years, _without obliging Congress to do so even then_, and thus the slave-trade may be legalized to-morrow if Congress choose: the fourth is a promise on the part of the whole Nation to return fugitive slaves to their masters, a deed which G.o.d's law expressly condemns and which every n.o.ble feeling of our nature repudiates with loathing and contempt.
These are the articles of the ”Compromise,” so much talked of, between the North and South.
We do not produce the extracts which make up these pages to show what is the meaning of the clauses above cited. For no man or party, of any authority in such matters, has ever pretended to doubt to what subject they all relate. If indeed they were ambiguous in their terms, a resort to the history of those times would set the matter at rest forever. A few persons, to be sure, of late years, to serve the purposes of a party, have tried to prove that the Const.i.tution makes no compromise with slavery. Notwithstanding the clear light of history;--the unanimous decision of all the courts in the land, both State and Federal;--the action of Congress and the State Legislature;--the constant practice of the Executive in all its branches;--and the deliberate acquiescence of the whole people for half a century, still they contend that the Nation does not know its own meaning, and that the Const.i.tution does not tolerate slavery!
Every candid mind, however, must acknowledge that the language of the Const.i.tution is clear and explicit.
Its terms are so broad, it is said, that they include many others beside slaves, and hence it is wisely (!) inferred that they cannot include the slaves themselves! Many persons besides slaves in this country doubtless are ”held to service and labor under the laws of the States,” but that does not at all show that slaves are not ”held to service;” many persons beside the slaves may take part ”in insurrections,” but that does not prove that when the slaves rise, the National Government is not bound to put them down by force. Such a thing has been heard of before as one description including a great variety of persons,--and this is the case in the present instance.
But granting that the terms of the Const.i.tution are ambiguous--that they are susceptible of two meanings, if the unanimous, concurrent, unbroken practice of every department of the Government, judicial, legislative, and executive, and the acquiescence of the whole people for fifty years do not prove which is the true construction, then how and where can such a question ever be settled? If the people and the Courts of the land do not know what they themselves mean, who has authority to settle their meaning for them?
If then the people and the Courts of a country are to be allowed to determine what their own laws mean, it follows that at this time and for the last half century, the Const.i.tution of the United States has been, and still is, a pro-slavery instrument, and that any one who swears to support it, swears to do pro-slavery acts, and violates his duty both as a man and an abolitionist. What the Const.i.tution may become a century hence, we know not; we speak of it _as it is_, and repudiate it _as it is_.
But the purpose, for which we have thrown these pages before the community, is this. Some men, finding the nation unanimously deciding that the Const.i.tution tolerates slavery, have tried to prove that this false construction, as they think it, has been foisted into the instrument by the corrupting influence of slavery itself, tainting all it touches. They a.s.sert that the known anti-slavery spirit of revolutionary times never _could_ have consented to so infamous a bargain as the Const.i.tution is represented to be, and has in its present hands become. Now these pages prove the melancholy fact, that willingly, with deliberate purpose, our fathers bartered honesty for gain, and became partners with tyrants, that they might share in the profits of their tyranny.
And in view of this fact, will it not require a very strong argument to make any candid man believe, that the bargain which the fathers tell us they meant to incorporate into the Const.i.tution, and which the sons have always thought they found there incorporated, does not exist there, after all? Forty of the shrewdest men and lawyers in the land a.s.semble to make a bargain, among other things, about slaves,--after months of anxious deliberation they put it into writing and sign their names to the instrument,--fifty years roll away, twenty millions, at least, of their children pa.s.s over the stage of life,--courts sit and pa.s.s judgment,--parties arise and struggle fiercely; still all concur in finding in the instrument just that meaning which the fathers tell us they intended to express:--must not he be a desperate man, who, after all this, sets out to prove that the fathers were bunglers and the sons fools, and that slavery is not referred to at all?
Besides, the advocates of this new theory of the Anti-slavery character of the Const.i.tution, quote some portions of the Madison Papers in support of their views,--and this makes it proper that the community should hear _all_ that these Debates have to say on the subject. The further we explore them, the clearer becomes the fact, that the Const.i.tution was meant to be, what it has always been esteemed, a compromise between slavery and freedom.
If then the Const.i.tution be, what these Debates show that our fathers intended to make it, and what, too, their descendants, this nation, say they did make it and agree to uphold,--then we affirm that it is a ”covenant with death and an agreement with h.e.l.l,” and ought to be immediately annulled. No abolitionist can consistently take office under it, or swear to support it.
But if, on the contrary, our fathers failed in their purpose, and the Const.i.tution is all pure and untouched by slavery,--then, Union itself is impossible, without guilt. For it is undeniable that the fifty years pa.s.sed under this (anti-slavery) Const.i.tution, show us the slaves trebling in numbers;--slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government;--prost.i.tuting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere;--trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years with the best of men and the best of Const.i.tutions, on this supposition, only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. We dare not prolong the experiment, and with double earnestness we repeat our demand upon every honest man to join in the outcry of the American Anti-Slavery Society,--
NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!
THE CONSt.i.tUTION
A PRO-SLAVERY COMPACT.
_Extracts from Debates in the Congress of Confederation, preserved by Thomas Jefferson, 1776._
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, * * *
The clause too reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out, in compliance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of Slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.--p. 18.
On Friday, the twelfth of July, 1776, the committee appointed to draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and on the twenty-second, the House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the thirtieth and thirty-first of that month, and the first of the ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the proportion or quota of money which each State should furnish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting in Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the original draught in these words:--
”Article 11. All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States a.s.sembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several Colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, s.e.x and duality, except Indians not paying taxes, in each Colony, a true account of which, distinguis.h.i.+ng the white inhabitants, shall be triennially taken and transmitted to the a.s.sembly of the United States.”
Mr. CHASE (of Maryland) moved, that the quotas should be paid, not by the number of inhabitants of every condition but by that of the ”white inhabitants.” He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property; that this was in theory the true rule, but that from a variety of difficulties it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice. The value of the property in every State could never be estimated justly and equally. Some other measure for the wealth of the State must therefore be devised, some standard referred to which would be more simple. He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained. He therefore thought it the best mode we could adopt, with one exception only. He observed that negroes are property, and as such cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those States where there are few slaves. That the surplus of profit which a Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c.; whereas, a Southern farmer lays out that same surplus in slaves. There is no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern States on the farmer's head and on his slave's head, than the Northern ones on their farmers' heads and the heads of their cattle. That the method proposed would therefore tax the Southern States according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers only: that negroes in fact should not be considered as members of the State, more than cattle, and that they have no more interest in it.
Mr. John Adams (of Ma.s.sachusetts) observed, that the numbers of people were taken by this article as an index of the wealth of the State and not as subjects of taxation. That as to this matter it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves. That in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves: but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand? The ten laborers add as much wealth annually to the State, increase its exports as much, in the one case as the other. Certainly five hundred freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of taxes, than five hundred slaves.
Therefore the State in which are the laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that in which are those called slaves. Suppose, by any extraordinary operation of nature or of law, one half the laborers of a State could in the course of one night be transformed into slaves,--would the State be made the poorer, or the less able to pay taxes? That the condition of the laboring poor in most countries,--that of the fishermen, particularly, of the Northern States,--is as abject as that of slaves. It is the number of laborers which produces the surplus for taxation; and numbers, therefore, indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth. That it is the use of the word ”property” here, and its application to some of the people of the State, which produces the fallacy. How does the Southern farmer procure slaves? Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor. If he imports a slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay taxes; if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of a laborer from one farm to another, which does not change the annual produce of the State, and therefore should not change its tax; that if a Northern farmer works ten laborers on his farm, he can, it is true, invest the surplus of ten men's labor in cattle; but so may the Southern farmer working ten slaves. That a State of one hundred thousand freemen can maintain no more cattle than one of one hundred thousand slaves; therefore they have no more of that kind of property.
That a slave may, indeed, from the custom of speech, be more properly called the wealth of his master, than the free laborer might be called the wealth of his employer: but as to the State, both were equally its wealth, and should therefore equally add to the quota of its tax.
Mr. HARRISON (of Virginia) proposed, as a compromise, that two slaves should be counted as one freeman. He affirmed that slaves did not do as much work as freemen, and doubted if two effected more than one.