The dominant power which the Constitution gives to the slave interest, as thus seen and exercised in the Legislative Halls of our nation, is equally obvious and obtrusive in every other department of the National government.
In the Electoral colleges, the same cause produces the same effect—the same power is wielded for the same purpose, as in the Halls of Congress. Even the preliminary nominating conventions, before they dare name a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the people, must ask of the Genius of slavery, to what votary she will show herself propitious. This very year, we see both the great political parties doing homage to the slave power, by nominating each a slaveholder for the chair of State. The candidate of one party declares, "I should have opposed, and would continue to oppose, any scheme whatever of emancipation, either gradual or immediate;" and adds, "It is not true, and I rejoice that it is not true, that either of the two great parties of this country has any design or aim at abolition. I should deeply lament it, if it were true."[[12]]
[Footnote [12]: Henry Clay's speech in the United States Senate in 1839, and confirmed at Raleigh, N.C. 1844.]
The other party nominates a man who says, "I have no hesitation in declaring that I am in favor of the immediate re-annexation of Texas to the territory and government of the United States."
Thus both the political parties, and the candidates of both, vie with each other, in offering allegiance to the slave power, as a condition precedent to any hope of success in the struggle for the executive chair; a seat that, for more than three-fourths of the existence of our constitutional government, has been occupied by a slaveholder.
The same stern despotism overshadows even the sanctuaries of justice. Of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, five are slaveholders, and of course, must be faithless to their own interest, as well as recreant to the power that gives them place, or must, so far as they are concerned, give both to law and constitution such a construction as shall justify the language of John Quincy Adams, when he says—"The legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, are all in their hands—for the preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of the black code of slavery. Every law of the legislature becomes a link in the chain of the slave; every executive act a rivet to his hapless fate; every judicial decision a perversion of the human intellect to the justification of wrong."
Thus by merely adverting but briefly to the theory and the practical effect of this clause of the Constitution, that I have sworn to support, it is seen that it throws the political power of the nation into the hands of the slaveholders; a body of men, which, however it may be regarded by the Constitution as "persons," is in fact and practical effect, a vast moneyed corporation, bound together by an indissoluble unity of interest, by a common sense of a common danger; counselling at all times for its common protection; wielding the whole power, and controlling the destiny of the nation.
If we look into the legislative halls, slavery is seen in the chair of the presiding officer of each; and controlling the action of both. Slavery occupies, by prescriptive right, the Presidential chair. The paramount voice that comes from the temple of national justice, issues from the lips of slavery. The army is in the hands of slavery, and at her bidding, must encamp in the everglades of Florida, or march from the Missouri to the borders of Mexico, to look after her interests in Texas.
The navy, even that part that is cruising off the coast of Africa, to suppress the foreign slave trade, is in the hands of slavery.
Freemen of the North, who have even dared to lift up their voice against slavery, cannot travel through the slave States, but at the peril of their lives.