Volume IV Part 11 (1/2)
Thus by merely adverting but briefly to the theory and the practical effect of this clause of the Const.i.tution, that I have sworn to support, it is seen that it throws the political power of the nation into the hands of the slaveholders; a body of men, which, however it may be regarded by the Const.i.tution as ”persons,” is in fact and practical effect, a vast moneyed corporation, bound together by an indissoluble unity of interest, by a common sense of a common danger; counselling at all times for its common protection; wielding the whole power, and controlling the destiny of the nation.
If we look into the legislative halls, slavery is seen in the chair of the presiding officer of each, and controlling the action of both.
Slavery occupies, by prescriptive right, the Presidential chair. The paramount voice that comes from the temple of national justice, issues from the lips of slavery. The army is in the hands of slavery, and at her bidding, must encamp in the everglades of Florida, or march from the Missouri to the borders of Mexico, to look after her interests in Texas.
The navy, even that part that is cruising off the coast of Africa, to suppress the foreign slave trade, is in the hands of slavery.
Freemen of the North, who have even dared to lift up their voice against slavery, cannot travel through the slave States, but at the peril of their lives.
The representatives of freemen are forbidden, on the floor of Congress, to remonstrate against the encroachments of slavery, or to pray that she would let her poor victims go.
I renounce my allegiance to a Const.i.tution that enthrones such a power, wielded for the purpose of depriving me of my rights, of robbing my countrymen of their liberties, and of securing its own protection, support and perpetuation.
Pa.s.sing by that clause of the Const.i.tution, which restricted Congress for twenty years, from pa.s.sing any law against the African slave trade, and which gave authority to raise a revenue on the stolen sons of Africa, I come to that part of the fourth article, which guarantees protection against ”_domestic violence_,” and which pledges to the South the military force of the country, to protect the masters against their insurgent slaves: binds us, and our children, to shoot down our fellow-countrymen, who may rise, in emulation of our revolutionary fathers, to vindicate their inalienable ”right to life, _liberty_ and the pursuit of happiness,”--this clause of the Const.i.tution, I say distinctly, I never will support.
That part of the Const.i.tution which provides for the surrender of fugitive slaves, I never have supported and never will. I will join in no slave-hunt. My door shall stand open, as it has long stood, for the panting and trembling victim of the slave-hunter. When I shut it against him, may G.o.d shut the door of his mercy against me! Under this clause of the Const.i.tution, and designed to carry it into effect, slavery has demanded that laws should be pa.s.sed, and of such a character, as have left the free citizen of the North without protection for his own liberty. The question, whether a man seized in a free State as a slave, _is_ a slave or not, the law of Congress does not allow a jury to determine: but refers it to the decision of a Judge of a United States' Court, or even of the humblest State magistrate, it may be, upon the testimony or affidavit of the party most deeply interested to support the claim. By virtue of this law, freemen have been seized and dragged into perpetual slavery--and should I be seized by a slave-hunter in any part of the country where I am not personally known, neither the Const.i.tution nor laws of the United States would s.h.i.+eld me from the same destiny.
These, sir, are the specific parts of the Const.i.tution of the United States, which in my opinion are essentially vicious, hostile at once to the liberty and to the morals of the nation. And these are the princ.i.p.al reasons of my refusal any longer to acknowledge my allegiance to it, and of my determination to revoke my oath to support it. I cannot, in order to keep the law of man, break the law of G.o.d, or solemnly call him to witness my promise that I will break it.
It is true that the Const.i.tution provides for its own amendment, and that by this process, all the guarantees of Slavery may be expunged.
But it will be time enough to swear to support it when this is done.
It cannot be right to do so, until these amendments are made.
It is also true that the framers of the Const.i.tution did studiously keep the words ”Slave” and ”Slavery” from its face. But to do our const.i.tutional fathers justice, while they forebore--from very shame--to give the word ”Slavery” a place in the Const.i.tution, they did not forbear--again to do them justice--to give place in it to the _thing_. They were careful to wrap up the idea, and the substance of Slavery, in the clause for the surrender of the fugitive, though they sacrificed justice in doing so.
There is abundant evidence that this clause touching ”persons held to service or labor,” not only operates practically, under the judicial construction, for the protection of the slave interest; but that it was intended so to operate by the framers of the Const.i.tution. The highest judicial authorities--Chief Justice Shaw, of the Supreme Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, in the Latimer case, and Mr. Justice Story, in the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of _Prigg_ vs. _The State of Pennsylvania_,--tell us, I know not on what evidence, that without this ”compromise,” this security for Southern slaveholders, ”the Union could not have been formed.”
And there is still higher evidence, not only that the framers of the Const.i.tution meant by this clause to protect slavery, but that they did this, knowing that slavery was wrong. Mr. Madison[95] informs us that the clause in question, as it came out of the hands of Dr.
Johnson, the chairman of the ”committee on style,” read thus: ”No person legally held to service, or labor, in one State, escaping into another, shall,” &c., and that the word ”legally” was struck out, and the words ”under the laws thereof” inserted after the word ”State,” in compliance with the wish of some, who thought the term _legal_ equivocal, and favoring the idea that slavery was legal ”_in a moral view_.” A conclusive proof that, although future generations might apply that clause to other kinds of ”service or labor,” when slavery should have died out, or been killed off by the young spirit of liberty, which was _then_ awake and at work in the land; still, slavery was what they were wrapping up in ”equivocal” words; and wrapping it up for its protection and safe keeping: a conclusive proof that the framers of the Const.i.tution were more careful to protect themselves in the judgment of coming generations, from the charge of ignorance, than of sin; a conclusive proof that they knew that slavery was _not_ ”legal in a moral view,” that it was a violation of the moral law of G.o.d; and yet knowing and confessing its immorality, they dared to make this stipulation for its support and defence.
[Footnote 95: Madison Papers, p. 1589]
This language may sound harsh to the ears of those who think it a part of their duty, as citizens, to maintain that whatever the patriots of the Revolution did, was right; and who hold that we are bound to _do_ all the iniquity that they covenanted for us that we _should_ do. But the claims of truth and right are paramount to all other claims.
With all our veneration for our const.i.tutional fathers, we must admit,--for they have left on record their own confession of it,--that in this part of their work they intended to hold the s.h.i.+eld of their protection over a wrong, knowing that it was a wrong. They made a ”compromise” which they had no right to make--a compromise of moral principle for the sake of what they probably regarded as ”political expediency.” I am sure they did not know--no man could know, or can now measure, the extent, or the consequences of the wrong, that they were doing. In the strong language of John Quincy Adams,[96] in relation to the article fixing the basis of representation, ”Little did the members of the Convention, from the free States, imagine or foresee what a sacrifice to Moloch was hidden under the mask of this concession.”
[Footnote 96: See his Report on the Ma.s.sachusetts Resolutions.]
I verily believe that, giving all due consideration to the benefits conferred upon this nation by the Const.i.tution, its national unity, its swelling ma.s.ses of wealth, its power, and the external prosperity of its multiplying millions; yet the _moral_ injury that has been done, by the countenance shown to slavery by holding over that tremendous sin the s.h.i.+eld of the Const.i.tution, and thus breaking down in the eyes of the nation the barrier between right and wrong; by so tenderly cheris.h.i.+ng slavery as, in less than the life of man, to multiply her children from half a million to nearly three millions; by exacting oaths from those who occupy prominent stations in society, that they will violate at once the rights of man and the law of G.o.d; by subst.i.tuting itself as a rule of right, in place of the moral laws of the universe;--thus in effect, dethroning the Almighty in the hearts of this people and setting up another sovereign in his stead--more than outweighs it all. A melancholy and monitory lesson this, to all timeserving and temporising statesmen! A striking ill.u.s.tration of the _impolicy_ of sacrificing _right_ to any considerations of expediency! Yet, what better than the evil effects that we have seen, could the authors of the Const.i.tution have reasonably expected, from the sacrifice of right, in the concessions they made to slavery? Was it reasonable in them to expect that after they had introduced a vicious element into the very Const.i.tution of the body politic which they were calling into life, it would not exert its vicious energies? Was it reasonable in them to expect that, after slavery had been corrupting the public morals for a whole generation, their children would have too much virtue to _use_ for the defence of slavery, a power which they themselves had not too much virtue to _give_? It is dangerous for the sovereign power of a State to license immorality; to hold the s.h.i.+eld of its protection over any thing that is not ”legal in a moral view.” Bring into your house a benumbed viper, and lay it down upon your warm hearth, and soon it will not ask you into which room it may crawl. Let Slavery once lean upon the supporting arm, and bask in the fostering smile of the State, and you will soon see, as we now see, both her minions and her victims multiply apace till the politics, the morals, the liberties, even the religion of the nation, are brought completely under her control.
To me, it appears that the virus of slavery, introduced into the Const.i.tution of our body politic, by a few slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of our National Government, that literally there is no health in it. The only remedy that I can see for the disease, is to be found in the _dissolution of the patient_.
The Const.i.tution of the United States, both in theory and practice, is so utterly broken down by the influence and effects of slavery, so imbecile for the highest good of the nation, and so powerful for evil, that I can give no voluntary a.s.sistance in holding it up any longer.
Henceforth it is dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it, and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly declaring, that while I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no compact, which helps to rob any other man of his.