Against this power I have heard nothing which can be called argument. There are objections, originating chiefly in the baneful pretension of State Rights; but these objections are animated by prejudice rather than reason. Assuming the impeccability of a State, and openly declaring that States, like kings, can do no wrong, while, like kings, they wear “the round and top of sovereignty,” politicians treat them with most mistaken forbearance and tenderness, as if these Rebel corporations could be dandled into loyalty. At every suggestion of rigor, State Rights are invoked; and we are vehemently told not to destroy the States, when all that Congress proposes is simply to recognize the actual condition of the States, and undertake their temporary government by providing for the condition of political syncope into which they have fallen, and during this interval substitute its own constitutional powers for the unconstitutional powers of the Rebellion. Congress will blot no star from the flag, nor will it obliterate any State liabilities; but it will seek, according to its duty, in the best way, to maintain the great and real sovereignty of the Union, by upholding the flag unsullied, and by enforcing everywhere within its jurisdiction the supreme law of the Constitution.
At the close of an argument already too long drawn out, I shall not stop to array the considerations of reason and expediency in behalf of this jurisdiction; nor shall I dwell on the inevitable influence it must exercise over Slavery, which is the motive of the Rebellion. To my mind nothing can be clearer, as a proposition of Constitutional Law, than that everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government Slavery is impossible. The argument is as brief as it is unanswerable. Slavery is so odious that it can exist only by virtue of positive law, plain and unequivocal; but no such words can be found in the Constitution; therefore Slavery is impossible within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government. For many years I have had this conviction, and have constantly maintained it. I am glad to believe that it is implied, if not expressed, in the Chicago Platform. Mr. Chase, among our public men, is known to accept it sincerely. Thus Slavery in the Territories is unconstitutional; but if the Rebel territory falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government, then Slavery becomes impossible there. In a legal and constitutional sense, it must die at once. The air is too pure for a slave. I cannot doubt that this great triumph has been already won. The moment that the States fell, Slavery fell also; so that, even without any proclamation of the President, Slavery ceased to have legal and constitutional existence in every Rebel State.
Even if we hesitate to accept this important conclusion, which treats Slavery within the Rebel States as already dead in law and Constitution, it cannot be doubted that by the extension of Congressional jurisdiction, as now proposed, many difficulties will be removed. Holding every acre of soil and every inhabitant within its jurisdiction, Congress can easily do whatever is needful within Rebel limits to assure freedom and save society. The soil may be divided among patriot soldiers, poor whites, and freedmen; but above all things the inhabitants may be saved from harm. Those citizens in the Rebel States who throughout the darkness of the Rebellion have kept their faith will be protected, and the freedmen rescued from hands that threaten to cast them back into Slavery.
This jurisdiction, which is so completely practical, is grandly conservative also. Had it been early recognized that Slavery depends exclusively upon the local government, and falls with that government, who can doubt that every Rebel movement would have been checked? Tennessee and Virginia would never have stirred; Maryland and Kentucky would never have thought of stirring; there would have been no talk of neutrality between the Constitution and the Rebellion; and every Border State would have been fixed in loyalty. Let it be established in advance, as an inseparable incident to every Act of Secession, that it is not only impotent against the National Constitution, but that, on its occurrence, both soil and inhabitants lapse beneath the jurisdiction of Congress, and no State will ever again pretend to secede. The word “territory,” according to old and quaint etymology, is said to come from terreo, to terrify, because it was a bulwark against the enemy: Territorium est quidquid hostis terrendi causâ constitutum est,[210]—“A territory is anything established for the purpose of terrifying an enemy”; but I know of no way in which our Rebel enemy would have been more terrified than by being told that his course would inevitably precipitate his State into a territorial condition. Let this principle be adopted, and it will contribute essentially to that consolidation of the Union which was so near the heart of Washington.
The necessity of this principle is apparent as a restraint upon the lawless vindictiveness and inhumanity of the Rebel States, whether against Union men or against freedmen. Union men in Virginia already tremble at the thought of being delivered over to a State government wielded by original Rebels pretending to be patriots; but the freedmen, who have only recently gained their birthright, are justified in keener anxiety, lest it should be lost as soon as won. Mr. Saulsbury, a Senator from Delaware, with most instructive frankness, has announced in public debate what the restored State governments will do. Assuming that the local governments will be preserved, he predicts that in 1870 there will be more slaves in the United States than there were in 1860, and then unfolds the reason as follows, all of which will be found in the “Congressional Globe.”
“By your Acts you attempt to free the slaves. You will not have them among you. You leave them where they are. Then what is to be the result? I presume that local State governments will be preserved. If they are, if the people have a right to make their own laws and to govern themselves, they will not only reënslave every person that you attempt to set free, but they will reënslave the whole race.”[211]
Nor has the horrid menace of reënslavement proceeded from the Senator from Delaware alone. It has been uttered even by Mr. Willey, the mild Senator from Virginia, speaking in the name of State Rights. Newspapers have taken up and repeated the revolting strain. That is to say, no matter what may be done for Emancipation, whether by proclamation of the President, or by Congress even, the State, resuming its place in the Union, will, in the exercise of its sovereign power, reënslave every colored person within its jurisdiction; and this is the menace from Delaware, and even from regenerated Western Virginia! I am obliged to Senators for their frankness. If additional motive were needed for the urgency with which I assert the power of Congress, it would be found in the pretensions thus savagely proclaimed. In the name of Heaven, let us spare no effort to save the country from such shame, and an oppressed people from the additional outrage.
As I quote Mr. Willey, I desire his precise words should be understood, that the country may see the necessity of Congressional action. In opposing Emancipation in the District of Columbia, he depicted the unhappy fate of the freedman.