The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

We are told, again, that those States would not have ceded the District if they had supposed the constitution gave Congress power to abolish slavery in it.

This comes with an ill grace from Maryland and Virginia. They knew the constitution. They were parties to it. They had sifted it clause by clause, in their State conventions. They had weighed its words in the balance—they had tested them as by fire; and finally, after long pondering, they adopted the constitution. And afterward, self-moved, they ceded the ten miles square, and declared the cession made "in pursuance of" that oft-cited clause, "Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District." And now verily "they would not have ceded if they had supposed!" &c. Cede it they did, and in "full and absolute right both of soil and persons." Congress accepted the cession—state power over the District ceased, and congressional power over it commenced—and now, the sole question to be settled is, the amount of power over the District, lodged in Congress by the constitution. The constitution—THE CONSTITUTION—that is the point. Maryland and Virginia "suppositions" must be potent suppositions to abrogate a clause of the United States' Constitution! That clause either gives Congress power to abolish slavery in the District, or it does not—and that point is to be settled, not by state "suppositions," nor state usages, nor state legislation, but by the terms of the clause themselves.

Southern members of Congress, in the recent discussions, have conceded the power of a contingent abolition in the District, by suspending it upon the consent of the people. Such a doctrine from declaimers like Messrs. Alford, of Georgia, and Walker, of Mississippi, would excite no surprise; but that it should be honored with the endorsement of such men as Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun, is quite unaccountable. Are attributes of sovereignty mere creatures of contingency? Is delegated authority mere conditional permission? Is a constitutional power to be exercised by those who hold it, only by popular sufferance? Must it lie helpless at the pool of public sentiment, waiting the gracious troubling of its waters? Is it a lifeless corpse, save only when popular "consent" deigns to puff breath into its nostrils? Besides, if the consent of the people of the District be necessary, the consent of the whole people must be had—not that of a majority, however large. Majorities, to be authoritative, must be legal—and a legal majority without legislative power, or right of representation, or even the electoral franchise, would be truly an anomaly! In the District of Columbia, such a thing as a majority in a legal sense is unknown to law. To talk of the power of a majority, or the will of a majority there, is mere mouthing. A majority? Then it has an authoritative will—and an organ to make it known—and an executive to carry it into effect—Where are they? We repeat it—if the consent of the people of the District be necessary, the consent of every one is necessary—and universal consent will come only with the Greek Kalends and a "perpetual motion." A single individual might thus perpetuate slavery in defiance of the expressed will of a whole people. The most common form of this fallacy is given by Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in his speech, February 16, 1835, in which he denied the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, unless the inhabitants owning slaves petitioned for it!! Southern members of Congress at the present session ring changes almost daily upon the same fallacy. What! pray Congress to use a power which it has not? "It is required of a man according to what he hath," saith the Scripture. I commend Mr. Wise to Paul for his ethics. Would that he had got his logic of him! If Congress does not possess the power, why taunt it with its weakness, by asking its exercise? Why mock it by demanding impossibilities? Petitioning, according to Mr. Wise, is, in matters of legislation, omnipotence itself; the very source of all constitutional power; for, asking Congress to do what it cannot do, gives it the power—to pray the exercise of a power that is not, creates it. A beautiful theory! Let us work it both ways. If to petition for the exercise of a power that is not, creates it—to petition against the exercise of a power that is, annihilates it. As southern gentlemen are partial to summary processes, pray, sirs, try the virtue of your own recipe on "exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever;" a better subject for experiment and test of the prescription could not be had. But if the petitions of the citizens of the District give Congress the right to abolish slavery, they impose the duty; if they confer constitutional authority, they create constitutional obligation. If Congress may abolish because of an expression of their will, it must abolish at the bidding of that will. If the people of the District are a source of power to Congress, their expressed will has the force of a constitutional provision, and has the same binding power upon the National Legislature. To make Congress dependent on the District for authority, is to make it a subject of its authority, restraining the exercise of its own discretion, and sinking it into a mere organ of the District's will. We proceed to another objection.

"The southern states would not have ratified the constitution, if they had supposed that it gave this power." It is a sufficient answer to this objection, that the northern states would not have ratified it, if they had supposed that it withheld the power. If "suppositions" are to take the place of the constitution—coming from both sides, they neutralize each other. To argue a constitutional question by guessing at the "suppositions" that might have been made by the parties to it, would find small favor in a court of law. But even a desperate shift is some easement when sorely pushed. If this question is to be settled by "suppositions" suppositions shall be forthcoming, and that without stint.

First, then, I affirm that the North ratified the constitution, "supposing" that slavery had begun to wax old, and would speedily vanish away, and especially that the abolition of the slave trade, which by the constitution was to be surrendered to Congress after twenty years, would cast it headlong.

Would the North have adopted the constitution, giving three-fifths of the "slave property" a representation, if it had "supposed" that the slaves would have increased from half a million to two millions and a half by 1838—and that the census of 1840 would give to the slave states thirty representatives of "slave property?"

If they had "supposed" that this representation would have controlled the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every question vital to its interests, would Hamilton, Franklin, Sherman, Gerry, Livingston, Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to sign the constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to ratify it? Every self-preserving instinct would have shrieked at such an infatuate immolation. At the adoption of the United States constitution, slavery was regarded as a fast waning system. This conviction was universal. Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Grayson, Tucker, Madison, Wythe, Pendleton, Lee, Blair, Mason, Page, Parker, Randolph, Iredell, Spaight, Ramsey, Pinkney, Martin, McHenry, Chase, and nearly all the illustrious names south of the Potomac, proclaimed it before the sun. A reason urged in the convention that formed the United States constitution, why the word slave should not be used in it, was, that when slavery should cease, there might remain upon the National Charter no record that it had ever been. (See speech of Mr. Burrill, of R.I., on the Missouri question.)

I now proceed to show by testimony, that at the date of the United States constitution, and for several years before and after that period, slavery was rapidly on the wane; that the American Revolution with the great events preceding, accompanying, and following it, had wrought an immense and almost universal change in the public sentiment of the nation on the subject, powerfully impelling it toward the entire abolition of the system—and that it was the general belief that measures for its abolition throughout the Union, would be commenced by the individual States generally before the lapse of many years. A great mass of testimony establishing this position might be presented, but narrow space, and the importance of speedy publication, counsel brevity. Let the following proofs suffice. First, a few dates as points of observation.

The first general Congress met in 1774. The revolutionary war commenced in '75. Independence was declared in '76. The articles of confederation were adopted by the thirteen states in '78. Independence acknowledged in '83. The convention for forming the U.S. constitution was held in '87, the state conventions for considering it in '87, and '88. The first Congress under the constitution in '89.

Dr. Rush, of Pennsylvania, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, in a letter to Granville Sharpe, May 1, 1773, says "A spirit of humanity and religion begins to awaken in several of the colonies in favor of the poor negroes. Great events have been brought about by small beginnings. Anthony Benezet stood alone a few years ago in opposing negro slavery in Philadelphia, and NOW THREE-FOURTHS OF THE PROVINCE AS WELL AS OF THE CITY CRY OUT AGAINST IT."—[Stuart's Life of Sharpe, p. 21.]