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 shield 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 shield of the Const.i.tution, and thus breaking down in the eyes of the nation the barrier between right and wrong; by so tenderly cherishing 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 shield 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.
Very respectfully, your friend,
FRANCIS JACKSON.
FROM MR. WEBSTER"S SPEECH AT NIBLO"S GARDENS.
"We have slavery, already, amongst us. The Const.i.tution found it among us; it recognized it and gave it SOLEMN GUARANTIES. To the full extent of these guaranties we are all bound, in honor, in justice, and by the Const.i.tution. All the stipulations, contained in the Const.i.tution, _in favor of the slaveholding States_ which are already in the Union, ought to be fulfilled, and so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fullness of their spirit, and to the exactness of their letter."!!!
EXTRACTS FROM JOHN Q. ADAMS"S ADDRESS
AT NORTH BRIDGEWATER, NOV. 6, 1844.
The benefits of the Const.i.tution of the United States, were the restoration of credit and reputation, to the country--the revival of commerce, navigation, and ship-building--the acquisition of the means of discharging the debts of the Revolution, and the protection and encouragement of the infant and drooping manufactures of the country. All this, however, as is now well ascertained, was insufficient to propitiate the rulers of the Southern States to the adoption of the Const.i.tution. What they specially wanted was _protection_.--Protection from the powerful and savage tribes of Indians within their borders, and who were hara.s.sing them with the most terrible of wars--and protection from their own negroes--protection from their insurrections--protection from their escape--protection even to the trade by which they were brought into the country--protection, shall I not blush to say, protection to the very bondage by which they were held. Yes! it cannot be denied--the slaveholding lords of the South prescribed, as a condition of their a.s.sent to the Const.i.tution, three special provisions to secure the perpetuity of their dominion over their slaves. The first was the immunity for twenty years of preserving the African slave-trade; the second was the stipulation to surrender fugitive slaves--an engagement positively prohibited by the laws of G.o.d, delivered from Sinai; and thirdly, the exaction fatal to the principles of popular representation, of a representation for slaves--for articles of merchandise, under the name of persons.
The reluctance with which the freemen of the North submitted to the dictation of these conditions, is attested by the awkward and ambiguous language in which they are expressed. The word slave is most cautiously and fastidiously excluded from the whole instrument.
A stranger, who should come from a foreign land, and read the Const.i.tution of the United States, would not believe that slavery or a slave existed within the borders of our country. There is not a word in the Const.i.tution _apparently_ bearing upon the condition of slavery, nor is there a provision but would be susceptible of practical execution, if there were not a slave in the land.
The delegates from South Carolina and Georgia distinctly avowed that, without this guarantee of protection to their property in slaves, they would not yield their a.s.sent to the Const.i.tution; and the freemen of the North, reduced to the alternative of departing from the vital principle of their liberty, or of forfeiting the Union itself, averted their faces, and with trembling hand subscribed the bond.
Twenty years pa.s.sed away--the slave markets of the South were saturated with the blood of African bondage, and from midnight of the 31st of December, 1807, not a slave from Africa was suffered ever more to be introduced upon our soil. But the internal traffic was still lawful, and the _breeding_ States soon reconciled themselves to a prohibition which gave them the monopoly of the interdicted trade, and they joined the full chorus of reprobation, to punish with death the slave-trader from Africa, while they cherished and shielded and enjoyed the precious profits of the American slave-trade exclusively to themselves.
Perhaps this unhappy result of their concession had not altogether escaped the foresight of the freemen of the North; but their intense anxiety for the preservation of the whole Union, and the habit already formed of yielding to the somewhat peremptory and overbearing tone which the relation of master and slave welds into the nature of the lord, prevailed with them to overlook this consideration, the internal slave-trade having scarcely existed while that with Africa had been allowed. But of one consequence which has followed from the slave representation, pervading the whole organic structure of the Const.i.tution, they certainly were not prescient; for if they had been, never--no, never would they have consented to it.
The representation, ostensibly of slaves, under the name of persons, was in its operation an exclusive grant of power to one cla.s.s of proprietors, owners of one species of property, to the detriment of all the rest of the community. This species of property was odious in its nature, held in direct violation of the natural and inalienable rights of man, and of the vital principles of Christianity; it was all acc.u.mulated in one geographical section of the country, and was all held by wealthy men, comparatively small in numbers, not amounting to a tenth part of the free white population of the States in which it was concentrated.
In some of the ancient, and in some modern republics, extraordinary political power and privileges have been invested in the owners of horses; but then these privileges and these powers have been granted for the equivalent of extraordinary duties and services to the community, required of the favoured cla.s.s. The Roman knights const.i.tuted the cavalry of their armies, and the bushels of rings gathered by Hannibal from their dead bodies, after the battle of Cannae, amply prove that the special powers conferred upon them were no gratuitous grants. But in the Const.i.tution of the United States, the political power invested in the owners of slaves is entirely gratuitous. No extraordinary service is required of them; they are, on the contrary, themselves grievous burdens upon the community, always threatened with the danger of insurrections, to be smothered in the blood of both parties, master and slave, and always depressing the condition of the poor free laborer, by compet.i.tion with the labor of the slave. The property in horses was the gift of G.o.d to man, at the creation of the world; the property in slaves is property acquired and held by crimes, differing in no moral aspect from the pillage of a freebooter, and to which no lapse of time can give a prescriptive right. You are told that this is no concern of yours, and that the question of freedom and slavery is exclusively reserved to the consideration of the separate States. But if it be so, as to the mere question of right between master and slave, it is of tremendous concern to you that this little cl.u.s.ter of slave-owners should possess, besides their own share in the representative hall of the nation, the exclusive privilege of appointing two-fifths of the whole number of the representatives of the people. This is now your condition, under that delusive ambiguity of language and of principle, which begins by declaring the representation in the popular branch of the legislature a representation of persons, and then provides that one cla.s.s of persons shall have neither part not lot in the choice of their representatives; but their elective franchise shall be transferred to their masters, and the oppressors shall represent the oppressed. The same perversion of the representative principle pollutes the composition of the colleges of electors of President and Vice President of the United States, and every department of the government of the Union is thus tainted at its source by the gangrene of slavery.
Fellow-citizens,--with a body of men thus composed, for legislators and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been your legislation? The numbers of freemen const.i.tuting your nation are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free.
You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union.
Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the government ought to be in the proportion of three to two.--But how stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers, here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a representation nominally of persons, but really of property, ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of supplementary power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the compact, CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.
From the time of the adoption of the Const.i.tution of the United States, the inst.i.tution of domestic slavery has been becoming more and more the abhorrence of the civilized world. But in proportion as it has been growing odious to all the rest of mankind, it has been sinking deeper and deeper into the affections of the holders of slaves themselves. The cultivation of cotton and of sugar, unknown in the Union at the establishment of the Const.i.tution, has added largely to the pecuniary value of the slave. And the suppression of the African slave-trade as piracy upon pain of death, by securing the benefit of a monopoly to the virtuous slaveholders of the ancient dominion, has turned her heroic tyrannicides into a community of slave-breeders for sale, and converted the land of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson, into a great barrac.o.o.n--a cattle-show of human beings, an emporium, of which the staple articles of merchandise are the flesh and blood, the bones and sinews of immortal man.
Of the increasing abomination of slavery in the unbought hearts of men at the time when the Const.i.tution of the United States was formed, what clearer proof could be desired, than that the very same year in which that charter of the land was issued, the Congress of the Confederation, with not a t.i.the of the powers given by the people to the Congress of the new compact, actually abolished slavery for ever throughout the whole Northwestern territory, without a remonstrance or a murmur. But in the articles of confederation, there was no guaranty for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation could purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Const.i.tution of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert the first principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority of numbers shall rule the land. By means of the double representation, the minority command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW AND PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY. To acquire this superiority of a large majority of freemen, a persevering system of engrossing nearly all the seats of power and place, is constantly for a long series of years pursued, and you have seen, in a period of fifty-six years, the Chief-magistracy of the Union held, during forty-four of them, by the owners of slaves. The Executive departments, the Army and Navy, the Supreme Judicial Court and diplomatic missions abroad, all present the same spectacle:--an immense majority of power in the hands of a very small minority of the people--millions made for a fraction of a few thousands.
From that day (1830), SLAVERY, SLAVEHOLDING, SLAVE-BREEDING AND SLAVE-TRADING, HAVE FORMED THE WHOLE FOUNDATION OF THE POLICY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and of the slaveholding States, at home and abroad; and at the very time when a new census has exhibited a large increase upon the superior numbers of the free States, it has presented the portentous evidence of increased influence and ascendancy of the slaveholding power.
Of the prevalence of that power, you have had continual and conclusive evidence in the suppression for the s.p.a.ce of ten years of the right of pet.i.tion, guarantied, if there could be a guarantee against slavery, by the first article amendatory of the Const.i.tution.
No. 13.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.
ON THE CONDITION OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR IN THE UNITED STATES.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, NO. 143 Na.s.sAU STREET.
1839.
This No. contains 1-1/2 sheet.--Postage, under 100 miles, 2-1/2 cts. over 100, 3 cts.
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