The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 2 of 4

by American Anti-Slavery Society

4. The ascendency that Slavery has acquired, and exercises, in the administration of the government, and the apprehension now prevailing among the sober and intelligent, irrespective of party, that it will soon overmaster the Constitution itself, may be ranked among the events of the last two or three years that affect the course of abolitionists. The abolitionists regard the Constitution with unabated affection. They hold in no common veneration the memory of those who made it. They would be the last to brand Franklin and King and Morris and Wilson and Sherman and Hamilton with the ineffaceable infamy of attempting to ingraft on the Constitution, and therefore to perpetuate, a system of oppression in absolute antagonism to its high and professed objects, one which their own practice condemned,--and this, too, when they had scarcely wiped away the dust and sweat of the Revolution from their brows! Whilst abolitionists feel and speak thus of our Constitutional fathers, they do not justify the dereliction of principle into which they were betrayed, when they imparted to the work of their hands any power to contribute to the continuance of such a system. They can only palliate it, by supposing, that they thought, slavery was already a waning institution, destined soon to pass away. In their time, (1787) slaves were comparatively of little value--there being then no great slave-labor staple (as cotton is now) to make them profitable to their holders.[[A]] Had the circumstances of the country remained as they then were, slave-labor, always and every where the most expensive--would have disappeared before the competition of free labour. They had seen, too, the principle of universal liberty, on which the Revolution was justified, recognised and embodied in most of the State Constitutions; they had seen slavery utterly forbidden in that of Vermont--instantaneously abolished in that of Massachusetts--and laws enacted in the New-England States and in Pennsylvania, for its gradual abolition. Well might they have anticipated, that Justice and Humanity, now starting forth with fresh vigor, would, in their march, sweep away the whole system; more especially, as freedom of speech and of the press--the legitimate abolisher not only of the acknowledged vice of slavery, but of every other that time should reveal in our institutions or practices--had been fully secured to the people. Again; power was conferred on Congress to put a stop to the African slave-trade, without which it was thought, at that time, to be impossible to maintain slavery, as a system, on this continent,--so great was the havoc it committed on human life. Authority was also granted to Congress to prevent the transfer of slaves, as articles of commerce, from one State to another; and the introduction of slavery into the territories. All this was crowned by the power of refusing admission into the Union, to any new state, whose form of government was repugnant to the principles of liberty set forth in that of the United States. The faithful execution, by Congress, of these powers, it was reasonably enough supposed, would, at least, prevent the growth of slavery, if it did not entirely remove it. Congress did, at the set time, execute one of them--deemed, then, the most effectual of the whole; but, as it has turned out, the least so.

[Footnote [A]: The cultivation of cotton was almost unknown in the United States before 1787. It was not till two years afterward that it began to be raised or exported. (See Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Feb. 29, 1836.)--See Appendix, D.]

The effect of the interdiction of the African slave-trade was, not to diminish the trade itself, or greatly to mitigate its horrors; it only changed its name from African to American--transferred the seat of commerce from Africa to America--its profits from African princes to American farmers. Indeed, it is almost certain, if the African slave-trade had been left unrestrained, that slavery would not have covered so large a portion of our country as it does now. The cheap rate at which slaves might have been imported by the planters of the south, would have prevented the rearing of them for sale, by the farmers of Maryland, Virginia, and the other slave-selling states. If these states could be restrained from the commerce in slaves, slavery could not be supported by them for any length of time, or to any considerable extent. They could not maintain it, as an economical system, under the competition of free labor. It is owing to the non-user by Congress, or rather to their unfaithful application of their power to the other points, on which it was expected to act for the limitation or extermination of slavery, that the hopes of our fathers have not been realized; and that slavery has, at length, become so audacious, as openly to challenge the principles of 1776--to trample on the most precious rights secured to the citizen--to menace the integrity of the Union and the very existence of the government itself.

Slavery has advanced to its present position by steps that were, at first, gradual, and, for a long time, almost unnoticed; afterward, it made its way by intimidating or corrupting those who ought to have been forward to resist its pretensions. Up to the time of the "Missouri Compromise," by which the nation was wheedled out of its honor, slavery was looked on as an evil that was finally to yield to the expanding and ripening influences of our Constitutional principles and regulations. Why it has not yielded, we may easily see, by even a slight glance at some of the incidents in our history.

It has already been said, that we have been brought into our present condition by the unfaithfulness of Congress, in not exerting the power vested in it, to stop the domestic slave-trade, and in the abuse of the power of admitting "new states" into the Union. Kentucky made application in 1792, with a slave-holding Constitution in her hand.--With what a mere technicality Congress suffered itself to be drugged into torpor:--She was part of one of the "Original States"--and therefore entitled to all their privileges.

One precedent established, it was easy to make another. Tennessee was admitted in 1796, without scruple, on the same ground.

The next triumph of slavery was in 1803, in the purchase of Louisiana, acknowledged afterward, even by Mr. Jefferson who made it, to be unauthorized by the Constitution--and in the establishment of slavery throughout its vast limits, actually and substantially under the auspices of that instrument which declares its only objects to be--"to form a more perfect union, establish JUSTICE, insure DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of LIBERTY to ourselves and our posterity."[[A]]

[Footnote [A]: It may be replied, The colored people were held as property by the laws of Louisiana previously to the cession, and that Congress had no right to divest the newly acquired citizens of their property. This statement is evasive. It does not include, nor touch the question, which is this:--Had Congress, or the treaty-making power, a right to recognise, and, by recognising, to establish, in a territory that had no claim of privilege, on the ground of being part of one of the "Original States," a condition of things that it could not establish directly, because there was no grant in the constitution of power, direct or incidental, to do so--and because, to do so, was in downright oppugnancy to the principles of the Constitution itself? The question may be easily answered by stating the following case:--Suppose a law had existed in Louisiana, previous to the cession, by which the children--male and female--of all such parents as were not owners of real estate of the yearly value of $500, had been--no matter how long--held in slavery by their more wealthy land-holding neighbors:--would Congress, under the Constitution, have a right (by recognising) to establish, for ever, such a relation as one white person, under such a law, might hold to another? Surely not. And yet no substantial difference between the two cases can be pointed out.]

In this case, the violation of the Constitution was suffered to pass with but little opposition, except from Massachusetts, because we were content to receive in exchange, multiplied commercial benefits and enlarged territorial limits.

The next stride that slavery made over the Constitution was in the admission of the State of Louisiana into the Union. She could claim no favor as part of an "Original State." At this point, it might have been supposed, the friends of Freedom and of the Constitution according to its original intent, would have made a stand. But no: with the exception of Massachusetts, they hesitated and were persuaded to acquiesce, because the country was just about entering into a war with England, and the crisis was unpropitious for discussing questions that would create divisions between different sections of the Union. We must wait till the country was at peace. Thus it was that Louisiana was admitted without a controversy.