The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

What a "glorious Union" this doctrine of Mr. Clay bequeaths to the people of the United States! We have been permitted to set up at our own expense, and on our own territory, two great sounding-boards called "Senate Chamber" and "Representatives' Hall," for the purpose of sending abroad "by authority" national echoes of state legislation! --permitted also to keep in our pay a corps of pliant national musicians, with peremptory instructions to sound on any line of the staff according as Virginia and Maryland may give the sovereign key note!

A careful analysis 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 assumption 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 passage. 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 Constitution; 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 Constitution, it impales upon the point of an alleged implication. And this is Mr. Clay's peace-offering, to the lust 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 constitutions and charters to geographical lines, or to bend them to the purposes of a political canvass. 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 constitutional 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 asserts, 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 asserts 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 illustrates 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 petition 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 modicum! 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. Glascock 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 emancipation 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 substitute 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 God 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 passively 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," analogy 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, "institution," 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 titles 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 passage 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 passage 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 petitioned 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 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.