Representative Arthur Livermore Argues Against Extending Slavery
The following selections illustrate the debate in Congress over the Missouri question. The first speech is by Congressman Arthur Livermore of New Hampshire against the extension of slavery.
I propose to show what slavery is, and to mention a few of the many evils which follow in its train; and I hope to evince that we are not bound to tolerate the existence of so disgraceful a state of things beyond its present extent, and that it would be impolitic and very unjust to let it spread over the whole face of our Western territory. Slavery in the United States is the condition of man subjected to the will of a master who can make any disposition of him short of taking away his life. In those States where it is tolerated, laws are enacted making it penal to instruct slaves in the art of reading, and they are not permitted to attend public worship or to hear the Gospel preached.
Thus the light of science and of religion is utterly excluded from the mind, that the body may be more easily bowed down to servitude. The bodies of slaves may, with impunity, be prostituted to any purpose and deformed in any manner by their owners. The sympathies of nature in slaves are disregarded; mothers and children are sold and separated; the children wring their little hands and expire in agonies of grief, while the bereft mothers commit suicide in despair. How long will the desire of wealth render us blind to the sin of holding both the bodies and souls of our fellow-men in chains!
But, sir, I am admonished of the Constitution, and told that we cannot emancipate slaves. I know we may not infringe that instrument, and therefore do not propose to emancipate slaves. The proposition before us goes only to prevent our citizens from making slaves of such as have a right to freedom. In the present slaveholding States let slavery continue, for our boasted Constitution connives at it; but do not, for the sake of cotton and tobacco, let it be told to future ages that, while pretending to love liberty, we have purchased an extensive country to disgrace it with the foulest reproach of nations.
Our Constitution requires no such thing of us. The ends for which that supreme law was made are succinctly stated in its preface. They are, first, to form a more perfect union and insure domestic tranquility. Will slavery effect this? Can we, sir, by mingling bond with free, black spirits with white, like Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth, form a more perfect union and insure domestic tranquility? Secondly, to establish justice. Is justice to be established by subjecting half mankind to the will of the other half? Justice, sir, is blind to colors, and weighs in equal scales the rights of all men, whether white or black. Thirdly, to provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty. Does slavery add anything to the common defense? Sir, the strength of a republic is in the arm of freedom. But, above all things, do the blessings of liberty consist in slavery?