Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do / Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio

by Cydnor Bailey Tompkins

I have shown that slavery was regarded as a political, moral, and social evil, by the founders of this Republic, and by able Southern statesmen within thirty years; that their anxious query has been, "what is to be done with it?" We are now asked to discredit those men, and give ear to a modern creed, that slavery is not only necessary, but beneficent—a divine ordinance—and that Southern non-slaveholders, even, are prosperous and elevated just in proportion to the number of slaves owned by their neighbors.

Not such, sir, were the "speculations" of the fathers of the Republic; nor is the world to be deceived by such assumptions. Decree and carry out what non-intercourse you will; surround yourselves with barriers as impassable as the Chinese wall, or the great gulf between Dives and Lazarus, still the evidences of your condition will exist on the imperishable pages of history, in the records left by the mighty and venerated dead; and the attempt to establish the belief that slavery is a universal blessing will be received but as an aggression upon the credulity of mankind.

Forty years ago, a slave Territory applied for admission to the Union as a State. The friends of freedom objected that its reception would be contrary to the policy of our Government. "Admit it," it was urged, "with its present Constitution, and we will consent to a line of demarkation, north of which slavery shall never pass." This was solemnly agreed to before the whole world; and this compact, forced upon the country by the slave power, was claimed by it as a great triumph of slavery. Men at the North felt that this was a great aggression, a great outrage upon freedom; yet, to give quiet and restore harmony, they submitted, consoled by the national pledge that slavery should be extended no further, and believing that the nation might joyously look forward to long years of happiness and repose. But despotism is ever restless and grasping; but twenty-five years rolled by—a very short period in the life of a nation—ere Texas was admitted to the Union, that slavery propagandists could have a wider field for their operations. As everybody foresaw, war ensued; and the best blood of the nation fattened the soil of Mexico. More than two hundred millions of treasure were expended, and many thousand valuable lives sacrificed. All over this land, "the sky was hung with blackness;" "mourning was spread over the mountain tops." Territory enough was obtained to make four large States, well adapted to the productive labor of human chattels, and this territory was blackened over with slavery. Such a triumph ought to have satisfied the most grasping of the friends of this "peculiar institution;" but the world should have known that nothing short of universal dominion would satisfy the slave owner and slave breeder. Less than ten years after the annexation of Texas, it was discovered by Southern men that there was a Territory west of Missouri, wherein the peculiar institution of the South could be made profitable; but by a solemn league and covenant this land had been, for more than a third of a century, consecrated to freedom. This bond of national faith, this pledge of national honor, stood in the road of their ambition.

But men whose lives are but a series violations of the dearest rights that God has bestowed on man cannot be expected to be bound by pledges of national faith and national honor. This time-honored compact was annulled, the barrier between freedom and slavery broken down. The whole country was astounded at the perfidy of the act.

But the climax was not reached. The Territory was overrun with desperadoes; ruffians from adjoining States usurped the rights of actual settlers, stuffed ballot-boxes with illegal votes, and elected members of their own lawless bands to the Legislature, to enact laws by which every friend of freedom might be driven from the country.

Innocent and unoffending men were murdered in cold blood, houses were consumed with fire, hamlets laid in smoking ruins, homeless and houseless innocents, women and tender children, were driven forth, exposed to the winds and storms of heaven.

All these wrongs, all these outrages, all these crimes of blood and deeds of horror, were committed to plant the accursed institution on the soil that had been, by a great national act, dedicated to freedom. But violence and arson, bloodshed and murder, failed. The black banner of slavery is trailing in the dust. The stars and stripes wave triumphantly over a free and joyous people. The heretofore invincible is conquered. I have borrowed the word "aggression" to express the conduct of the South toward the North. I do not intend to make the charge without the specifications.

1. I charge upon slavery, that the enforcement of the Missouri compromise was an aggression upon the North.

2. I charge the annexation of Texas, whereby the Mexican war was brought upon the country, more than two hundred millions of money were spent, and many thousand lives sacrificed, as an aggression.

3. I charge that the adoption of the fugitive slave law, with many of its odious and obnoxious provisions, was an aggression upon the people of the North.