The resolution was adopted. Subsequently Mr. Creswell moved the printing of a bill, introduced by him at the preceding session, to protect children of African descent from being enslaved in violation of the Constitution of the United States.
February 20th, Mr. Poland, from the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom this bill had been referred, reported that its object was accomplished by the Civil Rights and the Habeas Corpus Acts, and that no further legislation was needed. In a conversation that ensued, Mr. Sumner said:—
It strikes me the practical question is, whether recent incidents have not admonished us that there is a disposition to evade the statute, and under the protection of State laws——
Mr. Trumbull [of Illinois]. That is the very thing the statute guards against.
Mr. Sumner. But the statute was not effective to prevent those incidents.
Mr. Trumbull. Will any statute, if it is not executed?
Mr. Sumner. But when apprised of an evasion, I ask whether it is not expedient to counteract that evasion specifically and precisely, so that there shall be no possible excuse? Liberty is won by these anxious trials. Those who represent her are accustomed to take case by case and difficulty by difficulty,—overcoming them, if they can. Secure first the general principle, as in the Constitutional Amendment,—then legislation as extensive or minute as the occasion requires. Let it be “precept upon precept, line upon line,” so long as any such outrage can be shown.
I would not seem pertinacious, though I do not know that I can err by any pertinacity on a question of Human Liberty. I feel that we are painfully admonished, by incidents occurring under our very eyes, that we ought to do something to tighten that great Constitutional Amendment. It contains in its text words which I regret. I regretted them at the time; I proposed to strike them out; and now they return to plague the inventor. There should have been no recognition in the Constitutional Amendment of any possibility of Slavery. The reply is, that the Amendment, if properly interpreted, does not recognize the possibility of Slavery being legal in any just sense. But it is misinterpreted,—has been so in an adjoining State; and who can tell that it will not be so now in every one of the Southern States? I am sorry that the Committee has not reported the bill.
The Senate last night passed a bill, on the report of my colleague, to prohibit slavery and peonage in New Mexico. Under the Constitutional Amendment, I take it, that bill was unnecessary, it was superfluous. But we have found a difficulty in that Territory. There has been outrage; slavery in some form exists there; and consequently my colleague was right, when he brought his Committee to the conclusion that they must meet it by specific enactment. Where the abuse appears, we must root it out. That is Radicalism. So long as a human being is held as a slave anywhere under this flag, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, there is occasion for your powerful intervention; and if there is ambiguity or failure in existing statutes, then you must supply another statute.