Before the new President was inaugurated, in the winter of 1848-49, the struggle began in Congress, which led to the delivery of the 7th of March speech by Mr. Webster in the following year. At this point, therefore, it becomes necessary to turn back and review briefly and rapidly Mr. Webster's course in regard to the question of slavery.
His first important utterance on this momentous question was in 1819, when the land was distracted with the conflict which had suddenly arisen over the admission of Missouri. Massachusetts was strongly in favor of the exclusion of slavery from the new States, and utterly averse to any compromise. A meeting was held in the state-house at Boston, and a committee was appointed to draft a memorial to Congress, on the subject of the prohibition of slavery in the territories. This memorial,—which was afterwards adopted,—was drawn by Mr. Webster, as chairman of the committee. It set forth, first, the belief of its signers that Congress had the constitutional power "to make such a prohibition a condition on the admission of a new State into the Union, and that it is just and proper that they should exercise that power." Then came an argument on the constitutional question, and then the reasons for the exercise of the power as a general policy. The first point was that it would prevent further inequality of representation, such as existed under the Constitution in the old States, but which could not be increased without danger. The next argument went straight to the merits of the question, as involved in slavery as a system. After pointing out the value of the ordinance of 1787 to the Northwest, the memorial continued:—
"We appeal to the justice and the wisdom of the national councils to prevent the further progress of a great and serious evil. We appeal to those who look forward to the remote consequences of their measures, and who cannot balance a temporary or trifling convenience, if there were such, against a permanent growing and desolating evil.
"… The Missouri territory is a new country. If its extensive and fertile fields shall be opened as a market for slaves, the government will seem to become a party to a traffic, which in so many acts, through so many years, it has denounced as impolitic, unchristian, and inhuman…. The laws of the United States have denounced heavy penalties against the traffic in slaves, because such traffic is deemed unjust and inhuman. We appeal to the spirit of these laws; we appeal to this justice and humanity; we ask whether they ought not to operate, on the present occasion, with all their force? We have a strong feeling of the injustice of any toleration of slavery. Circumstances have entailed it on a portion of our community, which cannot be immediately relieved from it without consequences more injurious than the suffering of the evil. But to permit it in a new country, where yet no habits are formed which render it indispensable, what is it but to encourage that rapacity and fraud and violence against which we have so long pointed the denunciation of our penal code? What is it but to tarnish the proud fame of the country? What is it but to render questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of humanity and the liberties of mankind."
A year later Mr. Webster again spoke on one portion of this subject, and in the same tone of deep hostility and reproach. This second instance was that famous and much quoted passage of his Plymouth oration in which he denounced the African slave-trade. Every one remembers the ringing words:—
"I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who, by stealth and at midnight, labor in this work of hell,—foul and dark as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the Christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it."
This is directed against the African slave-trade, the most hideous feature, perhaps, in the system. But there was no real distinction between slavers plying from one American port to another and those which crossed the ocean for the same purpose. There was no essential difference between slaves raised for the market in Virginia—whence they were exported and sold—and those kidnapped for the same object on the Guinea coast. The physical suffering of a land journey might be less than that of a long sea-voyage, but the anguish of separation between mother and child was the same in all cases. The chains which clanked on the limbs of the wretched creatures, driven from the auction block along the road which passed beneath the national capitol, and the fetters of the captured fugitive were no softer or lighter than those forged for the cargo of the slave-ships. Yet the man who so magnificently denounced the one in 1820, found no cause to repeat the denunciation in 1850, when only domestic traffic was in question. The memorial of 1819 and the oration of 1820 place the African slave-trade and the domestic branch of the business on precisely the same ground of infamy and cruelty. In 1850 Mr. Webster seems to have discovered that there was a wide gulf fixed between them, for the latter wholly failed to excite the stern condemnation poured forth by the memorialist of 1819 and the orator of 1820. The Fugitive Slave Law, more inhuman than either of the forms of traffic, was defended in 1850 on good constitutional grounds; but the eloquent invective of the early days against an evil which constitutions might necessitate but could not alter or justify, does not go hand in hand with the legal argument.
The next occasion after the Missouri Compromise, on which slavery made its influence strongly felt at Washington, was when Mr. Adams's scheme of the Panama mission aroused such bitter and unexpected resistance in Congress. Mr. Webster defended the policy of the President with great ability, but he confined himself to the international and constitutional questions which it involved, and did not discuss the underlying motive and true source of the opposition. The debate on Foote's resolution in 1830, in the wide range which it took, of course included slavery, and Mr. Hayne had a good deal to say on that subject, which lay at the bottom of the tariff agitation, as it did at that of every Southern movement of any real importance. In his reply, Mr. Webster said that he had made no attack upon this sensitive institution, that he had simply stated that the Northwest had been greatly benefited by the exclusion of slavery, and that it would have been better for Kentucky if she had come within the scope of the ordinance of 1787. The weight of his remarks was directed to showing that the complaint of Northern attacks on slavery as existing in the Southern States, or of Northern schemes to compel the abolition of slavery, was utterly groundless and fallacious. At the same time he pointed out the way in which slavery was continually used to unite the South against the North.
"This feeling," he said, "always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine. There is not and never has been a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests of the South. Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been in any way attempted. The slavery of the South has always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy left with the States themselves, and with which the Federal government had nothing to do. Certainly, sir, I am and ever have been of that opinion. The gentleman, indeed, argues that slavery, in the abstract, is no evil. Most assuredly, I need not say I differ with him altogether and most widely on that point. I regard domestic slavery as one of the greatest evils, both moral and political."
His position is here clearly defined. He admits fully that slavery within the States cannot be interfered with by the general government, under the Constitution. But he also insists that it is a great evil, and the obvious conclusion is, that its extension, over which the government does have control, must and should be checked. This is the attitude of the memorial and the oration. Nothing has yet changed. There is less fervor in the denunciation of slavery, but that may be fairly attributed to circumstances which made the maintenance of the general government and the enforcement of the revenue laws the main points in issue.