The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

But to enumerate all the absurdities into which the thirty-six Senators have plunged themselves, would be to make a quarto inventory. We decline the task; and in conclusion, merely add that Mr. Clay in presenting this resolution, 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 petitioned the national legislature to abolish slavery in the District of Colombia,—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 Manumission Societies, the first petitioners for the abolition of slavery in the District, and for a long time the only ones, petitioning from year to year through evil report and good report, still petitioning, 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, Robert 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, Massachusetts, and Vermont, 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, passed 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 gratitude 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 the folly of intrusting 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 hood-winked 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 for ever. 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 course, from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

The resolution, as it finally passed, is here inserted. The original Resolution, as moved by Mr. Clay, was inserted at the head of this postscript with the impression that it was the amended form. It will be seen however, that it underwent no material modification.

"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.