It is proposed that the Rebel States shall be tempted to lay down their arms by recognition of Slavery in the Union, with new guaranties and assurances of protection. Slavery cannot exist, where it does not govern. Therefore must we beg Rebel slave-masters back to govern us. Such, in plain terms, is the surrender proposed. For one, I will never consent to any such intolerable rule.
The whole proposition is not less pernicious than that other form of surrender; nor is it less shameful. It is insulting to reason, and offensive to good morals.
1. I say nothing of the ignominy it would bring upon the Republic, but call attention at once to its character as a Compromise. In the dreary annals of Slavery it is by compromise that slave-masters have succeeded in warding off the blows of Liberty. It was a compromise by which that early condemnation of the slave-trade was excluded from the Declaration of Independence; it was a compromise which surrounded the slave-trade with protection in the National Constitution; it was a compromise which secured the admission of Missouri as a Slave State; and, without stopping to complete the list, it is enough to say that it was a compromise by which the atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill was fastened upon the country, and the Slave Power was installed in the National Government. And now, after the overthrow of the Slave Power at the ballot-box, followed by years of cruel war, another compromise, greatest of all, is proposed, by which belligerent Slavery, dripping with the blood of murdered fellow-citizens, shall be welcomed to more than its ancient supremacy. Where is national virtue, that such a surrender can be entertained? Where is national honor, that the criminal pettifoggers are not indignantly rebuked?
The proposition is specious in form as baleful in substance. It is said that Rebel slave-masters should have their “rights under the Constitution.” To this plausible language is added that other phrase, “the Constitution as it is.” All this means Slavery, and nothing else. For Slavery men resort to this odious duplicity. Thank God, the game is understood.
2. But any compromise recognizing Slavery in the Rebel States is impossible, even if you are disposed to accept it. Slavery, by the very act of rebellion, ceased to exist, legally or constitutionally. It ceased to exist according to principles of public law, and also according to just interpretation of the Constitution; and having once ceased to exist, it cannot be revived.[410]
When I say that it ceased to exist legally, I found myself on an unquestionable principle of public law, that Slavery is a peculiar local institution, without origin in natural right, and deriving support exclusively from the local government; but if this be true,—and it cannot be denied,—then Slavery must have fallen with that local government.
When I say that it ceased to exist constitutionally, I found myself on the principle that Slavery is of such a character that it cannot exist within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, as, for instance, in the National territories, and that therefore it died constitutionally, when, through disappearance of the local government, it fell within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution.
The consequences of these two principles are most important. Taken in conjunction with the rule, “Once free, always free,” they establish the impossibility of any surrender to belligerent Slavery in the Union.