There is the Bell faction, the Breckinridge faction, and the Douglas faction, all three Invertebrates, declaring that the Union is in danger, and asking your votes in order to save it. That is, they ask you to abandon cherished convictions, and to allow Slavery, with all its Barbarism, to enter the outlying Territories of the Republic, simply because certain Slave-Masters threaten disunion. Instead of opposing the treason which is threatened, Freedom-loving voters of the North are summoned to surrender. Instead of scorning the violence which is menaced, we are asked to cringe before it. I ask you if this is not the special point of every appeal by any speaker representing either of these factions? No man so audacious here in Massachusetts as to argue for Slavery openly. He knows that his argument would be scouted. It is therefore by appeal for the Union that people are deluded. In this way the weak are cajoled, the timeserving are seduced, and the timid are frightened; and people professing opposition to Slavery gravely come forward as supporters of these Proslavery factions.
The unknown is apt to be exaggerated; so that, if these threats of disunion were now heard for the first time, we might, perhaps, pardon men who yield to their influence. But since this is not the first time such cries are heard,—since, indeed, they have been long sounding in our ears, so that their exact value is perfectly understood from the very beginning,—there seems no longer excuse or apology for hearkening to them. They are to be treated as threats, and nothing more. Look at them from the outset, and you will see their constant recurrence as weapons of political warfare.
Even while the Constitution was under discussion in the National Convention, the threats began. Georgia and South Carolina announced that they would not come into the Union, unless the African Slave-Trade, so dear in their sight, was allowed for twenty years under the Constitution; and the North ignominiously yielded this barbarous privilege, thus consenting to piracy. The cry from these States was then, “We will not come in.” Ever since it has been, “We will not stay in.”
One of the earliest and most characteristic outcries was on the ratification of Jay’s Treaty in 1795. This famous treaty, negotiated by John Jay, at that time Chief Justice of the United States, under the instructions of Washington, provided for the surrender of the Western posts by Great Britain, and indemnity to our merchants for spoliations on their commerce, and also the adjustment of claims of British merchants upon our citizens. In the opposition which it encountered we meet the following threat of disunion in Virginia, published in Davis’s Gazette, at Richmond.
“Notice is hereby given, that, in case the treaty entered into by that d—d arch-traitor, J—n J—y, with the British tyrant should be ratified, a petition will be presented to the General Assembly of Virginia, at their next session, praying that the said State may recede [such was the word in that early day] from the Union, and be left under the government and protection of one hundred thousand free and independent Virginians.
“P. S.—As it is the wish of the people of the said State to enter into a treaty of amity and commerce and navigation with any other State or States of the present Union who are averse to returning again under the galling yoke of Great Britain, the printers of the (at present) United States are requested to publish the above notification.”[18]
Thus early was this menace tried. But the treaty was ratified.
The menace was employed with more effect to secure the adoption of the Missouri Compromise. This was in 1820. Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a Slaveholding State. Her admission was opposed by the North on the declared ground that it was not right to give any such sanction to Slavery. Thus the whole Slave Question was opened; and it was discussed with much thoroughness and ability, under the lead of Rufus King, once an eminent representative of Massachusetts, but at that time a venerable Senator from New York. Overthrown in argument, the Slave-Masters resorted to threats of disunion. The Union was pronounced in danger, and under this cry a compromise, first suggested in the House by Louis McLane, a Representative from Delaware, and in the Senate by William Pinkney, a Senator from Maryland, was adopted, by virtue of which Missouri was admitted as a Slave State, while Slavery was prohibited in the remaining territory north of 36° 30´, at that time trodden only by Indians. The special operative gain to the Slave-Masters was the admission of Missouri as a Slave State, with two new slaveholding Senators to confirm their predominance in the Senate; and this was notoriously secured under threats of disunion, by which weak men at the North were intimidated.