If the "peace measures" have strengthened the bond of the Union, what mean all the meetings lately held to save the Union? Why is the tocsin now sounded by the very authors and friends of the measures? How comes it that, in Boston itself, the chairman of a Union meeting contradicts the exulting and jubilant shout of triumph uttered by the Secretary of State, and makes the following doleful announcement:—"The Union, and consequently the existence of this nation, is menaced, and unless there is a great and general effort in their support, we may soon behold the mighty fabric of our government trembling over our heads, and threatening by its fall to crush the prosperity which we have so long and happily enjoyed." So relaxed has become the bond of our Union, that one hundred gentlemen of property and standing in New York have, under the style and title of "The New York Union Committee of Safety," assumed the onerous task of taking it into their safe-keeping. "Committees of safety" are associated with times of peril and anarchy, and are never wanted when alarms have ceased, angry discussions ended, the Constitution fortified, and the bond of union strengthened.
In this universal panic, in this dread entertained, especially in Boston, by Mr. Webster's friends, of soon seeing the mighty fabric of our government trembling over their heads, it may, Sir, be consolatory to you and others to know how so dire a calamity may be averted. The chivalric Senator from Mississippi—the gentleman who threatens to hang one Senator if he dare place his foot on the soil of Mississippi, who draws a loaded pistol on another, and for a third bears a challenge to mortal combat—was lately in the city of New York. The Committee of Safety found him out, and lauded him for his fearless discharge of duty, and his fervor and devotion to the Union, and welcomed him to the commercial emporium in the name of all who appreciate the blessings we enjoy, and are willing to transmit them to their children. The worthy and conciliatory gentleman very appropriately communicated to the committee having the Union in charge the conditions on which alone it could be saved, notwithstanding its bond had so recently been strengthened. These conditions are, we learn, four in number.
1. "The Fugitive Slave Bill passed by Congress shall remain the law of the land, and be faithfully executed."
Both you and Mr. Webster admit that the Constitution permits a jury trial to the fugitive. Should Congress, in its wisdom, and in obedience to the wishes of the great mass of the Northern population, and in the exercise of its constitutional power, elevate property in a human being to the same level with that in a horse, and permit a jury to pass upon the title to it,—the Union must be dissolved.
2. "The Wilmot Proviso, that monstrous thing, shall not be revived." It was not courteous, certainly, in Mr. Foote thus to characterize Mr. Webster's thunder. The claim to this thunder was made in his speech, September, 1847, at the Springfield Convention, which nominated him for President; and the Convention, in his presence, thus declared their devotion to his missile. "The Whigs of Massachusetts now declare, and put this declaration of their purpose on record, that Massachusetts will never consent that Mexican territories, however acquired, shall become a part of the American Union, unless on the unalterable condition that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than in punishment for crime." The next year Mr. Webster launched his thunder over the Territory of Oregon, and thus in his speech (10th August, 1848) vindicated it from the character now given to it by Mr. Foote:—
"Gentlemen from the South declare that we invade their rights when we deprive them of a participation in the enjoyment of territories acquired by the common services and common exertions of all. Is this true? Of what do we deprive them? Why, they say that we deprive them of the privilege of carrying their slaves as slaves into the new territories. Well, Sir, what is the amount of that? They say, that in this way we deprive them of going into this acquired territory with their property. Their property! What do they mean by this 'property'? We certainly do not deprive them of the privilege of going into those newly acquired territories with all that, in the general estimate of human society and common and universal understanding of mankind, is esteemed property. Not at all. The truth is just this. They have in their own States peculiar laws which create property in persons.... The real meaning, then, of Southern gentlemen, in making this complaint, is, that they cannot go into the territories of the United States carrying with them their own peculiar law, a law which creates property in persons."
So the Wilmot Proviso was no monstrous thing at all, as applied to Oregon. When the question came up of applying this same Proviso to New Mexico and California, Mr. Webster discovered in these Territories a certain peculiarity of physical geography and Asiatic scenery which he had not discovered in Oregon, and which, he found, rendered it a physical impossibility for Southern gentlemen to carry there "a law which creates property in persons," and he therefore gave them full liberty to carry their law into those vast regions, if they could. But at the very moment of giving this liberty to Southern gentlemen, he courageously warned them that his thunder was good constitutional thunder, and would be used whenever necessary. "Wherever there is an inch of land to be stayed back from becoming slave territory, I am ready to insert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I am pledged to that from 1837,—pledged to it again and again, and I will perform those pledges." So, should we get another slice of Mexico, or annex Cuba or St. Domingo, Mr. Webster would revive the Wilmot Proviso, and then he will be the means, if he succeeds, of dissolving the Union!
3. The next condition announced to the Safety Committee is,—"No attempt shall be made in Congress to prohibit slavery in the District of Columbia."
Now it is the opinion of Mr. Webster, that Congress has the constitutional right, not merely to attempt, but actually to effect, the exclusion of slavery in all the Territories of the United States. The District of Columbia being placed by the Constitution expressly under "the exclusive jurisdiction" of Congress, the constitutional right to abolish slavery there has rarely been questioned; but it has been contended that good faith to the States which ceded the District forbids such an act of constitutional power. Hence, in 1838, a resolution was introduced into the Senate declaring that the abolition of slavery in the District would be "a violation of good faith," &c. What said Mr. Webster? "I do not know any matter of fact, or any ground of argument, on which this affirmation of plighted faith can stand. I see nothing in the act of cession, and nothing in the Constitution, and nothing in the transaction, implying any limitation on the authority of Congress."[5]