The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

As soon as that appalling decision of the Supreme Court was enunciated, in the name of the Constitution, the people of the North should have risen en masse, if for no other cause, and declared the Union at an end; and they would have done so, if they had not lost their manhood, and their reverence for justice and liberty.

In the 4th Sect. of Art. IV., the United States guarantee to protect every State in the Union "against domestic violence." By the 8th Section of Article 1., congress is empowered "to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions." These provisions, however strictly they may apply to cases of disturbance among the white population, were adopted with special reference to the slave population, for the purpose of keeping them in their chains by the combined military force of the country; and were these repealed, and the South left to manage her slaves as best she could, a servile insurrection would ere long be the consequence, as general as it would unquestionably be successful. Says Mr. Madison, respecting these clauses:--

"On application of the legislature or executive, as the case may be, the militia of the other States are to be called to suppress domestic insurrections. Does this bar the States from calling forth their own militia? No; but it gives them a supplementary security to suppress insurrections and domestic violence."

The answer to Patrick Henry's objection, as urged against the constitution in the Virginia convention, that there was no power left to the States to quell an insurrection of slaves, as it was wholly vested in congress, George Nicholas asked:—

"Have they it now? If they have, does the constitution take it away? If it does, it must be in one of those clauses which have been mentioned by the worthy member. The first part gives the general government power to call them out when necessary. Does this take it away from the States? No! but it gives an additional security; for, beside the power in the State government to use their own militia, it will be the duty of the general government to aid them WITH THE STRENGTH OF THE UNION, when called for."

This solemn guaranty of security to the slave system, caps the climax of national barbarity, and stains with human blood the garments of all the people. In consequence of it, that system has multiplied its victims from five hundred thousand to nearly three millions—a vast amount of territory has been purchased, in order to give it extension and perpetuity—several new slave States have been admitted into the Union—the slave trade has been made one of the great branches of American commerce—the slave population, though over-worked, starved, lacerated, branded, maimed, and subjected to every form of deprivation and every species of torture, have been over awed and crushed,—or, whenever they have attempted to gain their liberty by revolt, they have been shot down and quelled by the strong arm of the national government; as, for example, in the case of Nat Turner's insurrection in Virginia, when the naval and military forces of the government were called into active service. Cuban bloodhounds have been purchased with the money of the people, and imported and used to hunt slave fugitives among the everglades of Florida. A merciless warfare has been waged for the extermination or expulsion of the Florida Indians, because they gave succor to those poor hunted fugitives—a warfare which has cost the nation several thousand lives, and forty millions of dollars. But the catalogue of enormities is too long to be recapitulated in the present address.

We have thus demonstrated that the compact between the North and the South embraces every variety of wrong and outrage,—is at war with God and man, cannot be innocently supported, and deserves to be immediately annulled. In behalf of the Society which we represent, we call upon all our fellow-citizens, who believe it is right to obey God rather than man, to declare themselves peaceful revolutionists, and to unite with us under the stainless banner of Liberty, having for its motto—"EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL—NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"

It is pleaded that the Constitution provides for its own amendment; and we ought to use the elective franchise to effect this object. True, there is such a proviso; but, until the amendment be made, that instrument is binding as it stands. Is it not to violate every moral instinct, and to sacrifice principle to expediency, to argue that we may swear to steal, oppress and murder by wholesale, because it may be necessary to do so only for the time being, and because there is some remote probability that the instrument which requires that we should be robbers, oppressors and murderers, may at some future day be amended in these particulars? Let us not palter with our consciences in this manner—let us not deny that the compact was conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity—let us not be so dishonest, even to promote a good object, as to interpret the Constitution in a manner utterly at variance with the intentions and arrangements of the contracting parties; but, confessing the guilt of the nation, acknowledging the dreadful specifications in the bond, washing our hands in the waters of repentance from all further participation in this criminal alliance, and resolving that we will sustain none other than a free and righteous government, let us glory in the name of revolutionists, unfurl the banner of disunion, and consecrate our talents and means to the overthrow of all that is tyrannical in the land,—to the establishment of all that is free, just, true and holy,—to the triumph of universal love and peace.

If, in utter disregard of the historical facts which have been cited, it is still asserted, that the Constitution needs no amendment to make it a free instrument, adapted to all the exigencies of a free people, and was never intended to give any strength or countenance to the slave system—the indignant spirit of insulted Liberty replies:—"What though the assertion be true? Of what avail is a mere piece of parchment? In itself, though it be written all over with words of truth and freedom—though its provisions be as impartial and just as words can express, or the imagination paint—though it be as pure as the gospel, and breathe only the spirit of Heaven—it is powerless; it has no executive vitality; it is a lifeless corpse, even though beautiful in death. I am famishing for lack of bread! How is my appetite relieved by holding up to my gaze a painted loaf? I am manacled, wounded, bleeding dying! What consolation is it to know, that they who are seeking to destroy my life, profess in words to be my friends?" If the liberties of the people have been betrayed—if judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off, and truth has fallen in the streets, and equality cannot enter—if the princes of the land are roaring lions, the judges evening wolves, the people light and treacherous persons, the priests covered with pollution—if we are living under a frightful despotism, which scoffs at all constitutional restraints, and wields the resources of the nation to promote its own bloody purposes—tell us not that the forms of freedom are still left to us! Would such tameness and submission have freighted the May-Flower for Plymouth Rock? Would it have resisted the Stamp Act, the Tea Tax, or any of those entering wedges of tyranny with which the British government sought to rive the liberties of America? The wheel of the Revolution would have rusted on its axle, if a spirit so weak had been the only power to give it motion. Did our fathers say, when their rights and liberties were infringed—"Why, what is done cannot be undone. That is the first thought." No, it was the last thing they thought of: or, rather, it never entered their minds at all. They sprang to the conclusion at once—"What is done SHALL be undone. That is our FIRST and ONLY thought."

"Is water running in our veins? Do we remember still
Old Plymouth Rock, and Lexington, and famous Bunker Hill?
The debt we owe our fathers' graves? and to the yet unborn,
Whose heritage ourselves must make a thing of pride or scorn?"

"Gray Plymouth Rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb;
And voices from our fathers' graves and from the future come:
They call on us to stand our ground—they charge us still to be
Not only free from chains ourselves, but foremost to make free!"