A careful a.n.a.lysis of Mr. Clay"s resolution and of the discussions upon it, will convince every fair mind that this is but the legitimate carrying out of the _principle_ pervading both. They proceed virtually upon the hypothesis that the will and pleasure of Virginia and Maryland are paramount to those of the Union. If the original design of setting apart a federal district had been for the sole accommodation of the south, there could hardly have been higher a.s.sumption or louder vaunting. The only object of _having_ such a District was in effect totally perverted in the resolution of Mr. Clay, and in the discussions of the entire southern delegation, upon its pa.s.sage. Instead of taking the ground, that the benefit of the whole Union was the sole _object_ of a federal district, and that it was to be legislated over _for this end_--the resolution proceeds upon an hypothesis totally the reverse. It takes a single point of _state_ policy, and exalts it above NATIONAL interests, utterly overshadowing them; abrogating national rights; making void a clause of the Const.i.tution; humbling the general government into a subject crouching for favors to a superior, and that too within its own exclusive jurisdiction. All the attributes of sovereignty vested in Congress by the Const.i.tution, it impales upon the point of an alleged _implication_. And this is Mr. Clay"s peace-offering, to the l.u.s.t of power and the ravenings of state encroachment! A "compromise," forsooth! that sinks the general government on _its own territory_, into a mere colony, with Virginia and Maryland for its "mother country!" It is refreshing to turn from these shallow, distorted constructions and servile cringings, to the high bearing of other southern men in other times; men, who as legislators and lawyers, scorned to accommodate their interpretations of const.i.tutions and charters to geographical lines, or to bend them to the purposes of a political canva.s.s. In the celebrated case of Cohens _vs._ the State of Virginia, Hon. William Pinkney, late of Baltimore, and Hon.
Walter Jones, of Washington city, with other eminent const.i.tutional lawyers, prepared an elaborate opinion, from which the following is an extract: "Nor is there any danger to be apprehended from allowing to Congressional legislation with regard to the District of Columbia, its FULLEST EFFECT. Congress is responsible to the States, and to the people for that legislation. It is in truth the legislation of the states over a district placed under their control FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT, not for that of the District, except as the prosperity of the District is involved, and _necessary to the general advantage_."--[Life of Pinkney, p. 612.]
This profound legal opinion a.s.serts, 1st, that Congressional legislation over the District, is "the legislation of the _states_ and the _people_." (not of _two_ states, and a mere _fraction_ of the people;) 2d. "Over a District placed under _their_ control," i.e. under the control of _all_ the States, not of _two twenty-sixths_ of them. 3d.
That it was thus put under their control "_for_ THEIR OWN _benefit_."
4th. It a.s.serts that the design of this exclusive control of Congress over the District was "not for the benefit of the _District_," except as that is _connected_ with, and _a means of promoting_ the _general_ advantage. If this is the case with the _District_, which is _directly_ concerned, it is pre-eminently so with Maryland and Virginia, which are but _indirectly_ interested. The argument of Mr. Madison in the Congress of "89, an extract from which has been given on a preceding page, lays down the same principle; that though any matter "_may be a local affair, yet if it involves national_ EXPENSE or SAFETY, _it becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government_."--Cong. Reg. vol. 1. p. 310.
But these are only the initiatory absurdities of this "good faith _implied_." Mr. Clay"s resolution aptly ill.u.s.trates the principle, that error not only conflicts with truth, but is generally at issue with itself: For if it would be a violation of "good faith" to Maryland and Virginia, for Congress to abolish slavery in the District, it would be _equally_ a violation for Congress to do it _with the consent_, or even at the unanimous pet.i.tion of the people of the District: yet for years it has been the southern doctrine, that if the people of the District demand of Congress relief in this respect, it has power, as their local legislature, to grant it, and by abolishing slavery there, carry out the will of the citizens. But now new light has broken in! The optics of Mr.
Clay have pierced the millstone with a deeper insight, and discoveries thicken faster than they can be telegraphed! Congress has no power, O no, not a modic.u.m! to help the slaveholders of the District, however loudly they may clamor for it. The southern doctrine, that Congress is to the District a mere local Legislature to do its pleasure, is tumbled from the genitive into the vocative! Hard fate--and that too at the hands of those who begat it! The reasonings of Messrs. Pinckney and Wise, are now found to be wholly at fault, and the chanticleer rhetoric of Messrs. Glasc.o.c.k and Garland stalks featherless and crest-fallen. For the resolution sweeps by the board all those stereotyped common-places, such as "Congress a local Legislature," "consent of the District,"
"bound to consult the wishes of the District," with other catch phrases, which for the last two sessions of Congress have served to eke out scanty supplies. It declares, that as slavery existed in _Maryland and Virginia at the time of the cession, and as_ it still continues _in both those states_, it could not be abolished in the District without a violation of "that good faith," &c.
But let us see where this principle will lead us. If "implied faith" to Maryland and Virginia _restrains_ Congress from the abolition of slavery in the District, because those states have not abolished _their_ slavery, it _requires_ Congress to do in the District what those states have done within their own limits, i.e., restrain _others_ from abolishing it. Upon the same principle Congress is _bound_ to _prohibit emanc.i.p.ation_ within the District. There is no _stopping place_ for this plighted "faith." Congress must not only refrain from laying violent hands on slavery, and see to it that the slaveholders themselves do not, but it is bound to keep the system up to the Maryland and Virginia standard of vigor!
Again, if the good faith of Congress to Virginia and Maryland requires that slavery should exist in the District, while it exists in those states, it requires that it should exist there as it exists in those states. If to abolish _every_ form of slavery in the District would violate good faith, to abolish _the_ form existing in those states, and to subst.i.tute a different one, would also violate it. The Congressional "good faith" is to be kept not only with _slavery_, but with the _Maryland and Virginia systems_ of slavery. The faith of those states being not that Congress would maintain a system, but _their_ system; otherwise instead of _sustaining_, Congress would counteract their policy--principles would be brought into action there conflicting with their system, and thus the true sprit of the "implied" pledge would be violated. On this principle, so long as slaves are "chattels personal"
in Virginia and Maryland, Congress could not make them _real estate_ in the District, as they are in Louisiana; nor could it permit slaves to read, nor to worship G.o.d according to conscience; nor could it grant them trial by jury, nor legalize marriage; nor require the master to give sufficient food and clothing; nor prohibit the violent sundering of families--because such provisions would conflict with the existing slave laws of Virginia and Maryland, and thus violate the "good faith implied," &c. So the principle of the resolution binds Congress in all these particulars: 1st. Not to abolish slavery in the District _until_ Virginia and Maryland abolish. 2d. Not to abolish any _part_ of it that exists in those states. 3d. Not to abolish any _form_ or _appendage_ of it still existing in those states. 4th. To _abolish_ when they do. 5th.
To increase or abate its rigors _when, how,_ and _as_ the same are modified by those states. In a word, Congressional action in the District is to float pa.s.sively in the wake of legislative action on the subject in those states.
But here comes a dilemma. Suppose the legislation of those states should steer different courses--then there would be _two_ wakes! Can Congress float in both? Yea, verily! Nothing is too hard for it! Its obsequiousness equals its "power of legislation in _all_ cases whatsoever." It can float _up_ on the Virginia tide, and ebb down on the Maryland. What Maryland does, Congress will do in the Maryland part.
What Virginia does, Congress will do in the Virginia part. Though it might not always be able to run at the bidding of both _at once_, especially in different directions, yet if it obeyed orders cheerfully, and "kept in its place," according to its "good faith implied,"
impossibilities might not be rigidly exacted. True, we have the highest sanction for the maxim that no _man_ can serve two masters--but if "corporations have no souls," a.n.a.logy would absolve Congress on that score, or at most give it only a _very small soul_--not large enough to be at all in the way, as an exception to the universal rule laid down in the maxim!
In following out the absurdities of this "implied good faith," it will be seen at once that the doctrine of Mr. Clay"s Resolution extends to _all the subjects of legislation_ existing in Maryland and Virginia, which exist also within the District. Every system, "inst.i.tution," law, and established usage there, is placed beyond Congressional control equally with slavery, and by the same "implied faith." The abolition of the lottery system in the District as an immorality, was a flagrant breach of this "good faith" to Maryland and Virginia, as the system "still continued in those states." So to abolish imprisonment for debt, or capital punishment, to remodel the bank system, the power of corporations, the militia law, laws of limitation, &c., in the District, _unless Virginia and Maryland took the lead,_ would violate the "good faith implied in the cession."
That in the acts of cession no such "good faith" was "implied" by Virginia and Maryland as is claimed in the Resolution, we argue from the fact, that in 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States all her north-west territory, with the special proviso that her citizens inhabiting that territory should "have their _possessions_ and _t.i.tles_ confirmed to them, and be _protected_ in the enjoyment of their _rights_ and liberties." (See Journals of Congress, vol. 9, p. 63.) The cession was made in the form of a deed, and signed by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee, and James Munroe. Many of these inhabitants _held slaves._ Three years after the cession, the Virginia delegation in Congress _proposed_ the pa.s.sage of an ordinance which should abolish slavery, in that territory, and declare that it should never thereafter exist there. All the members of Congress from Virginia and Maryland voted for this ordinance. Suppose some member of Congress had during the pa.s.sage of the ordinance introduced the following resolution: "Resolved, that when the northwest territory was ceded by Virginia to the United States, domestic slavery existed in that State, including the ceded territory, and as it still continues in that State, it could not be abolished within the territory without a violation of that good faith, which was implied in the cession and in the acceptance of the territory." What would have been the indignant response of Grayson, Griffin, Madison, and the Lees, in the Congress of "87, to such a resolution, and of Carrington, Chairman of the Committee, who reported the ratification of the ordinance in the Congress of "89, and of Page and Parker, who with every other member of the Virginia delegation supported it?
But to enumerate all the absurdities into which those interested for this resolution have plunged themselves, would be to make a quarto inventory. We decline the task; and in conclusion merely add, that Mr.
Clay, in presenting it, and each of the thirty-six Senators who voted for it, entered on the records of the Senate, and proclaimed to the world, a most unworthy accusation against the millions of American citizens who have during nearly half a century pet.i.tioned the national legislature to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia,--charging them either with the ignorance or the impiety of praying the nation to violate its "Plighted Faith." The resolution virtually indicts at the bar of public opinion, and brands with odium, all the early Manumission Societies, the _first_ pet.i.tioners for the abolition of slavery in the District, and for a long time the only ones, pet.i.tioning from year to year through evil report and good report, still pet.i.tioning, by individual societies and in their national conventions.
But as if it were not enough to table the charge against such men as Benjamin Rush, William Rawle, John Sergeant, Roberts Vaux, Cadwallader Colden, and Peter A. Jay,--to whom we may add Rufus King, James Hillhouse, William Pinkney, Thomas Addis Emmett, Daniel D. Tompkins, De Witt Clinton, James Kent, and Daniel Webster, besides eleven hundred citizens of the District itself, headed by their Chief Justice and Judges--even the sovereign States of Pennsylvania, New-York, Ma.s.sachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut, whose legislatures have either memorialized Congress to abolish slavery in the District, or instructed their Senators to move such a measure, must be gravely informed by Messrs. Clay, Norvell, Niles, Smith, Pierce, Benton, Black, Tipton, and other honorable Senators, either that their perception is so dull, they know not whereof they affirm, or that their moral sense is so blunted they can demand without compunction a violation of the nation"s faith!
We have spoken already of the concessions unwittingly made in this resolution to the true doctrine of Congressional power over the District. For that concession, important as it is; we have small thanks to render. That such a resolution, pa.s.sed with such an _intent_, and pressing at a thousand points on relations and interests vital to the free states, should be hailed, as it has been, by a portion of the northern press as a "compromise" originating in deference to northern interests, and to be received by us as a free-will offering of disinterested benevolence, demanding our grat.i.tude to the mover,--may well cover us with shame. We deserve the humiliation and have well earned the mockery. Let it come!
If, after having been set up at auction in the public sales-room of the nation, and for thirty years, and by each of a score of "compromises,"
treacherously knocked off to the lowest bidder, and that without money and without price, the North, plundered and betrayed, _will not_, in this her accepted time, consider the things that belong to her peace before they are hidden from her eyes, then let her eat of the fruit of her own way, and be filled with her own devices! Let the shorn and blinded giant grind in the prison-house of the Philistines, till taught by weariness and pain the folly of entrusting to Delilahs the secret and the custody of his strength.
Have the free States bound themselves by an oath never to profit by the lessons of experience? If lost to reason, are they dead to _instinct_ also? Can nothing rouse them to cast about for self preservation? And shall a life of tame surrenders be terminated by suicidal sacrifice?
A "COMPROMISE!" Bitter irony! Is the plucked and hoodwinked North to be wheedled by the sorcery of another Missouri compromise? A compromise in which the South gained all, and the North lost all, and lost it forever.
A compromise which embargoed the free laborer of the North and West, and, clutched at the staff he leaned upon, to turn it into a bludgeon and fell him with its stroke. A compromise which wrested from liberty her boundless birthright domain, stretching westward to the sunset, while it gave to slavery loose reins and a free coa.r.s.e, from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
The resolution, as it finally pa.s.sed, is here inserted.
"Resolved, That the interference by the citizens of any of the states, with the view to the abolition of slavery in the District, is endangering the rights and security of the people of the District; and that any act or measure of Congress designed to abolish slavery in the District, would be a violation of the faith implied in the cessions by the states of Virginia and Maryland, a just cause of alarm to the people of the slaveholding states, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to disturb and endanger the Union."
The vote upon the resolution stood as follows:
_Yeas_.--Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Buchanan, Brown, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Lumpkin, Lyon, Nicholas. Niles, Norvell, Pierce, Preston, Rives, Roane, Robinson, Sevier, Smith, of Connecticut, Strange, Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, White, Williams, Wright, Young--36.
_Nays_.--Messrs. DAVIS, KNIGHT, McKEAN, MORRIS, PRENTISS, RUGGLES, SMITH, of Indiana, SWIFT, WEBSTER--9.
ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER. NO. 6.
NARRATIVE OF JAMES WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE.
ONE DOLLAR PER 100] [143 Na.s.sAU ST. N.Y.
PREFACE.
"American Slavery," said the celebrated John Wesley, "is the _vilest_ beneath the sun!" Of the truth of this emphatic remark, no other proof is required, than an examination of the statute books of the American slave states. Tested by its own laws, in all that facilitates and protects the hateful process of converting a man into a "_chattel personal_;" in all that stamps the law-maker, and law-upholder with meanness and hypocrisy, it certainly has no present rival of its "bad eminence," and we may search in vain the history of a world"s despotism for a parallel. The civil code of Justinian never acknowledged, with that of our democratic despotisms, the essential equality of man. The dreamer in the gardens of Epicurus recognized neither in himself, nor in the slave who ministered to his luxury, the immortality of the spiritual nature. Neither Solon nor Lycurgus taught the inalienability of human rights. The Barons of the Feudal System, whose maxim was emphatically that of Wordsworth"s robber,
"That he should take who had the power, And he should keep who can."
while trampling on the necks of their va.s.sals, and counting the life of a man as of less value than that of a wild beast, never appealed to G.o.d for the sincerity of their belief, that all men were created equal. It was reserved for American slave-holders to present to the world the hideous anomaly of a code of laws, beginning with the emphatic declaration of the inalienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and closing with a deliberate and systematic denial of those rights, in respect to a large portion of their countrymen; engrossing on the same parchment the antagonist laws of liberty and tyranny. The very nature of this unnatural combination has rendered it necessary that American slavery, in law and in practice, should exceed every other in severity and cool atrocity. The masters of Greece and Rome permitted their slaves to read and write and worship the G.o.ds of paganism in peace and security, for there was nothing in the laws, literature, or religion of the age to awaken in the soul of the bondman a just sense of his rights as a man. But the American slaveholder cannot be thus lenient. In the excess of his benevolence, as a political propagandist, he has kindled a fire for the oppressed of the old world to gaze at with hope, and for crowned heads and dynasties to tremble at; but a due regard to the safety of his "peculiar inst.i.tution," compels him to put out the eyes of his own people, lest they too should see it. Calling on all the world to shake off the fetters of oppression, and wade through the blood of tyrants to freedom, he has been compelled to smother, in darkness and silence, the minds of his own bondmen, lest they too should hear and obey the summons, by putting the knife to his own throat.--Proclaiming the truths of Divine Revelation, and sending the Scriptures to the four quarters of the earth, he has found it necessary to maintain heathenism at home by special enactments; and to make the second offence of teaching his slaves the message of salvation punishable with _death_!
What marvel then that American slavery even on the _statute book_ a.s.sumes the right to transform moral beings into brutes:[A] that it legalizes man"s usurpation of Divine authority; the subst.i.tution of the will of the master, for the moral government of G.o.d: that it annihilates the rights of conscience; debars from the enjoyment of religious rights and privileges by specific enactments; and enjoins disobedience to the Divine lawgiver: that it discourages purity and chast.i.ty, encourages crime, legalizes concubinage; and, while it places the slave entirely in the hands of his master, provides no real protection for his life or his person.
[Footnote A: The _cardinal principle_ of slavery, that a slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things, as an article of property, a chattel personal, obtains as undoubted law, in all the slave states. (Judge Stroud"s Sketch of Slave Laws, p. 22.)]
But it may be said, that these laws afford no certain evidence of the actual condition of the slaves: that, in judging the system by its code, no allowance is made for the humanity of individual masters. It was a just remark of the celebrated Priestley, that "_no people ever were found to be better than their laws, though many have been known to be worse._" All history and common experience confirm this. Besides, admitting that the legal severity of a system may be softened in the practice of the humane, may it not also be aggravated by that of the avaricious and cruel?
But what are the testimony and admissions of slaveholders themselves on this point? In an Essay published in Charleston, S.C., in 1822, and ent.i.tled "A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States," by the late Edwin C. Holland, Esq., it is stated, that "all slaveholders have laid down non-resistance, and perfect and uniform _obedience_ to their orders as fundamental principles in the government of their slaves:" that this is "a _necessary_ result of the relation," and "_unavoidable_." Robert J. Turnbull, Esq., of South Carolina, in remarking upon the management of slaves, says, "The only principle upon which may authority over them, (the slaves,) can be maintained is _fear_, and he who denies this has little knowledge of them." To this may be added the testimony of Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, as quoted in Wheeler"s Law of Slavery, p. 217. "The slave, to remain a slave, must feel that there is _no appeal from his master_. No man can antic.i.p.ate the provocations which the slave would give, nor the consequent wrath of the master, prompting him to b.l.o.o.d.y VENGEANCE on the turbulent traitor, a vengeance _generally_ practised with impunity by reason of its _privacy_."
In an Essay on the "improvement of negroes on plantations," by Rev.
Thomas S. Clay, a slaveholder of Bryan county, Georgia, and Printed at the request of the Georgia Presbytery, in 1833, we are told "that the present economy of the slave system is _to get all you can_ from the slave, and give him in return _as little as will barely support him in a working condition_!" Here, in a few words, the whole enormity of slavery is exposed to view: "to _get all you can_ from the slave"--by means of whips and forks and irons--by every device for torturing the body, without destroying its capability of labor; and in return give him as little of his coa.r.s.e fare as will keep him, like a mere beast of burden, in a "_working condition_;" this is slavery, as explained by the slaveholder himself. Mr. Clay further says: "_Offences against the master_ are more severely punished than violations of the law of G.o.d, a fault which affects the slave"s personal character a good deal. As examples we may notice, that _running away_ is more severely punished than adultery." "He (the slave) only knows his master as lawgiver and executioner, and the _sole object of punishment_ held up to his view, is to make him _a more obedient and profitable slave_."
Hon. W.B. Seabrook, in an address before the Agricultural Society of St.
John"s, Colleton, published by order of the Society, at Charleston, in 1834, after stating that "as Slavery exists in South Carolina, the action of the citizens should rigidly conform to that state of things:"
and, that "no _abstract opinions of the rights of man_ should be allowed in any instance to modify the _police system of a plantation_," proceeds as follows. "_He_ (the slave) _should be practically treated as a slave_; and thoroughly taught the true cardinal principle on which our peculiar inst.i.tutions are founded, viz.; that to his owner he is bound by the law of G.o.d and man; and that no human authority can sever the link which unites them. The great aim of the slaveholder, then, should be to keep his people in strict _subordination_. In this, it may in truth be said, lies his _entire duty_." Again, in speaking of the punishments of slaves, he remarks: "If to our army the disuse of THE LASH has been prejudicial, to the slaveholder it would operate to deprive him of the MAIN SUPPORT of his authority. For the first cla.s.s of offences, I consider imprisonment in THE STOCKS[A] at night, with or without hard labor by day, as a powerful auxiliary in the cause of _good_ government." "_Experience_ has convinced me that there is no punishment to which the slave looks with more horror, than that upon which I am commenting, (the stocks,) and none which has been attended with happier results."
[Footnote A: Of the nature of this punishment in the stocks, something may be learned by the following extract of a letter from a gentleman in Tallaha.s.see, Florida, to the editor of the Ohio Atlas, dated June 9, 1835: "A planter, a professer of religion, in conversing upon the universality of whipping, remarked, that a planter in G____, who had whipped a great deal, at length got tired of it, and invented the following _excellent_ method of punishment, which I saw practised while I was paying him a visit. The negro was placed in a sitting position, with his hands made fast above his head, and his feet in the stocks, so that he could not move any part of the body. The master retired, intending to leave him till morning, but we were awakened in the night by the groans of the negro, which were so doleful that we feared he was dying. We went to him, and found him covered with a cold sweat, and almost gone. He could not have lived an hour longer. Mr. ---- found the "stocks" such an effective punishment, that it almost superseded the whip."]
There is yet another cla.s.s of testimony quite as pertinent as the foregoing, which may at any time be gleaned from the newspapers of the slave states--the advertis.e.m.e.nts of masters for their runaway slaves, and casual paragraphs coldly relating cruelties, which would disgrace a land of Heathenism. Let the following suffice for a specimen:
To the Editors of the Const.i.tutionalist.
_Aiken, S.C., Dec._ 20, 1836.
I have just returned from an inquest I held over the dead body of a negro man, a runaway, that was shot near the South Edisto, in this district, (Barnwell,) on Sat.u.r.day morning last. He came to his death by his own recklessness. He refused to be taken alive; and said that other attempts to take him had been made, and he was determined that he would not be taken. When taken he was nearly naked--had a large dirk or knife and a heavy club. He was at first, (when those who were in pursuit of him found it absolutely necessary,) shot at with small shot, with the intention of merely crippling him. He was shot at several times, and at last he was so disabled as to be compelled to surrender. He kept in the run of a creek in a very dense swamp all the time that the neighbors were in pursuit of him. As soon as the negro was taken, the best medical aid was procured, but he died on the same evening. One of the witnesses at the inquisition stated that the negro boy said that he was from Mississippi, and belonged to so many persons he did not know who his master was; but again he said his master"s name was _Brown_. He said his own name was Sam; and when asked by another witness who his master was, he muttered something like Augusta or Augustine. The boy was apparently above 35 or 40 years of age--about six feet high--slightly yellow in the face--very long beard or whiskers--and very stout built, and a stern countenance; and appeared to have been run away a long time.