The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

The first of these clauses, relating to representation, confers on a slaveholding community additional political power for every slave held among them, and thus tempts them to continue to uphold the system: the second and the last, relating to insurrection and domestic violence, perfectly innocent in themselves—yet being made with the fact directly in view that slavery exists among us, do deliberately pledge the whole national force against the unhappy slave if he imitate our fathers and resist oppression—thus making us partners in the guilt of sustaining slavery: the third, relating to the slave trade, disgraces the nation by a pledge not to abolish that traffic till after twenty years, without obliging Congress to do so even then, and thus the slave trade may be legalized to-morrow if Congress choose: the fourth is a promise on the part of the whole Nation to return fugitive slaves to their masters, a deed which God's law expressly condemns and which every noble feeling of our nature repudiates with loathing and contempt.

These are the articles of the "Compromise," so much talked of, between the North and South.

We do not produce the extracts which make up these pages to show what is the meaning of the clauses above cited. For no man or party, of any authority in such matters, has ever pretended to doubt to what subject they all relate. If indeed they were ambiguous in their terms, a resort to the history of those times would set the matter at rest for ever. A few persons, to be sure, of late years, to serve the purposes of a party, have tried to prove that the Constitution makes no compromise with slavery. Notwithstanding the clear light of history;—the unanimous decision of all the courts in the land, both State and Federal;—the action of Congress and the State Legislature;—the constant practice of the Executive in all its branches;—and the deliberate acquiescence of the whole people for half a century, still they contend that the Nation does not know its own meaning, and that the Constitution does not tolerate slavery! Every candid mind however must acknowledge that the language of the Constitution is clear and explicit.

Its terms are so broad, it is said, that they include many others beside slaves, and hence it is wisely (!) inferred that they cannot include the slaves themselves! Many persons beside slaves in this country doubtless are "held to service and labor under the laws of the States," but that does not at all show that slaves are not "held to service;" many persons beside the slaves may take part "in insurrections," but that does not prove that when the slaves rise, the National government is not bound to put them down by force. Such a thing has been heard of before as one description including a great variety of persons,—and this is the case in the present instance.

But granting that the terms of the Constitution are ambiguous—that they are susceptible of two meanings, if the unanimous, concurrent, unbroken practice of every department of the Government, judicial, legislative, and executive, and the acquiescence of the whole people for fifty years do not prove which is the true construction, then how and where can such a question ever be settled? If the people and the Courts of the land do not know what they themselves mean, who has authority to settle their meaning for them?

If then the people and the Courts of a country are to be allowed to determine what their own laws mean, it follows that at this time and for the last half century, the Constitution of the United States, has been, and still is, a pro-slavery instrument, and that any one who swears to support it, swears to do pro-slavery acts, and violates his duty both as a man and an abolitionist. What the Constitution may become a century hence, we know not; we speak of it as it is, and repudiate it as it is.

But the purpose, for which we have thrown these pages before the community, is this. Some men, finding the nation unanimously deciding that the Constitution tolerates slavery, have tried to prove that this false construction, as they think it, has been foisted in upon the instrument by the corrupting influence of slavery itself, tainting all it touches. They assert that the known anti-slavery spirit of revolutionary times never could have consented to so infamous a bargain as the Constitution is represented to be, and has in its present hands become. Now these pages prove the melancholy fact that willingly, with deliberate purpose, our fathers bartered honesty for gain and became partners with tyrants that they might share in the profits of their tyranny.

And in view of this fact, will it not require a very strong argument to make any candid man believe, that the bargain which the fathers tell us they meant to incorporate into the Constitution, and which the sons have always thought they found there incorporated, does not exist there after all? Forty of the shrewdest men and lawyers in the land assemble to make a bargain, among other things, about slaves,—after months of anxious deliberation they put it into writing and sign their names to the instrument,—fifty years roll away, twenty millions at least of their children pass over the stage of life,—courts sit and pass judgment,—parties arise and struggle fiercely; still all concur in finding in the Instrument just that meaning which the fathers tell us they intended to express:—must not he be a desperate man, who, after all this, sets out to prove that the fathers were bunglers and the sons fools, and that slavery is not referred to at all?

Besides, the advocates of this new theory of the Anti-slavery character of the Constitution, quote some portions of the Madison Papers in support of their views,—and this makes it proper that the community should hear all that these Debates have to say on the subject. The further we explore them, the clearer becomes the fact that the Constitution was meant to be, what it has always been esteemed, a compromise between slavery and freedom.

If then the Constitution be, what these Debates show that our fathers intended to make it, and what, too, their descendants, this nation, say they did make it and agree to uphold,—then we affirm that it is a "covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and ought to be immediately annulled.