Such, fellow-citizens, is the Popular Sovereignty of the Declaration of Independence, drawing its life, first, from the inalienable Rights of Man, and then, by positive words, restrained to what is Right. And this is the Popular Sovereignty which, lifting the down-trodden and trampling on tyrants,—now gentle as Charity, and then terrible as an army with banners,—is destined to make the tour of the world, rendering Slavery everywhere impossible.
Of this Popular Sovereignty I have spoken on another occasion,[27] and I refrain with difficulty from repeating now what I said then, partly because I believe so completely in its truth and rejoice in its utterance, but more because I learn that it has been wrested from its place to cover the Popular Tyranny, misnamed Popular Sovereignty, which Mr. Thayer so ardently vindicates.
How strange that words which hail the Angel of Human Liberation, with Liberty and Equality in her glorious train, should be invoked in support of a wicked tyranny, which, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, makes merchandise of our fellow-man! Face to face against this wretched pretension I put the true Popular Sovereignty, with Liberty and Equality for all, guarded and surrounded by the impassable limitation of Right, which is the god Terminus, never to be overthrown. Within these great precincts there can be no Slavery, nor can there be any denial of Equal Rights. How, then, can any man, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, vote another to be a slave? How, then, can any man, in this name, assert property in his fellow-man? By what excuse, with what reason, on what argument can any such thing be done, without first denying all that is true and sacred? Liberty, which is the active principle of Popular Sovereignty,—Equality, which is twin sister of Liberty,—and Justice, which sets bounds to all that men do on earth,—these are the irresistible enemies of Slavery, each and all of which must be trampled out by any rule under which man can be made a slave. But these, each and all, constitute that Popular Sovereignty which is the glory of our institutions. Anything else calling itself by this great name is a mockery and a sham, fit only for hissing and scorn.
The Declaration of Independence gave dignity to our Revolutionary contest, and made it a landmark of human progress. Here, at last, the rights of man were proclaimed, and a government was organized in subjection to the sovereign rule of Right. The people, while lifting themselves to the duties of sovereignty, bowed before that overruling sovereignty whose seat is the bosom of God. Such an example became at once a guide to mankind. It was copied in France, under the lead of Lafayette; and there is no people struggling for Right in either hemisphere who have not felt its inspiration. And yet this Declaration, standing highest among the historic landmarks of our country, is now assailed and dishonored.
It is assailed and dishonored, first, by denial of these natural rights which it so gloriously declares. This is done often with a jeer. Forgetful that these rights were divinely established at the very Creation, when God said, “Let us make man in our image,” and then again in the Gospel, when it was said, “God hath made of one blood all nations of men,”—forgetful that these rights are stamped by Nature on all who wear the human form,—forgetful also that they belong to those self-evident truths, sometimes called axioms, which are universal in their application, as the axiom in arithmetic that two and two make four, and the axiom in geometry that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points,—forgetful of the true glory of our country, these primal truths are sometimes scouted as “absurd,” sometimes as “splendid generalities,” and sometimes as a “self-evident lie.” This assault, though proceeding from various voices, originated with Mr. Calhoun. He is its first author.
And now, secondly, the Declaration is assailed and dishonored by the claim, that men, in the exercise of sovereignty derived from the Declaration, may set up on an auction-block their fellow-men, if to them it seems fit, and that this power is an incident of Popular Sovereignty. This pretension, first put forth by General Cass, in 1847, when a Presidential candidate,[28] and now revived by Mr. Douglas, who peddles it throughout the country, is also practically adopted by Mr. Thayer, as part of his peculiar Territorial policy. Such a pretension is hardly less degrading to the Declaration than the open mockery of its primal truths by Mr. Calhoun. The latter, as is well known, denied the sovereignty of the people in the Territories, but he agreed, heart and soul, in the pretension that the right to enslave a fellow-man is an incident of sovereignty, wherever it exists.
Thus do these two assaults upon the Declaration practically proceed from one source. In their essential ideas they are Calhounism.
On the other side is arrayed a name illustrious for various public service, and for unsurpassed championship of Freedom: I mean John Quincy Adams. Entering the House of Representatives after a long life, at home and abroad, as Senator, as Minister, as Secretary of State, and finally as President, he added to all these titles by the ability and constancy with which he upheld the Rights of Man. Mr. Calhoun was at this time in the Senate; but Mr. Adams incessantly met all his assumptions for Slavery,—exposing its hateful character, insisting upon its prohibition in the Territories, and especially vindicating the Declaration of Independence. Never has the recent pretension, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, been more completely anticipated and exposed. And now, that this argument may not stand entirely upon my words, I quote from him. Says John Quincy Adams, in his oration on the Fourth of July, 1831, at Quincy:—
“Unlimited power belongs not to the nature of man, and rotten will be the foundation of every government leaning upon such a maxim for its support.… The pretence of an absolute, irresistible, despotic power existing in every government somewhere is incompatible with the first principle of natural right.… The sovereignty which would arrogate to itself absolute, unlimited power must appeal for its sanction to those illustrious expounders of Human Rights, Pharaoh of Egypt and Herod the Great of Judea.”[29]
In another passage of the same oration, the patriot statesman says, in words which answer a portion of Mr. Thayer’s arguments:—