“But I am bound to say, however, if the south persist in uniting to demand the entrance of slavery into our free territories, I, for one, must conform to what are, at the same time, the views of my constituents and the convictions of my own judgment; and if I am driven to the alternative, I shall not hesitate to vote for the proviso.”—App. to Cong. Globe, 1st Sess. 31st Congress, p. 401.
“While I desire to do every thing which may protect the rights of property which are guarantied to citizens of the slave states, I cannot consent to sacrifice the rights of liberty which belong to the citizens of the free states. To secure both these ends, I see no other mode than to have those rights settled before legal tribunals, by the verdicts of juries and the judgments of courts.... When a colored man is seized in Massachusetts upon a claim that he is the property of a citizen of a slave state, and he claims to be a citizen of Massachusetts, and invokes the protection of the laws of Massachusetts, is it to be said he may be summarily sent away by the decree of any one magistrate without the privilege of vindicating his title to his citizenship before a jury of the country? Why, sir, it could not be done in the case of a horse escaped from one state to another, and found in the possession of a citizen. It could not be taken by strong hand,—by force. The claimant must resort to process of law. He must sue out his writ of replevin, and the title of the defendant must be tried where he lives. That defendant may be a negro; and surely, if without a trial by jury you may not take that which he claims to be his property, you can hardly claim to seize the man himself, and carry him away, before his title to freedom has been tested by a tribunal, as respectable, at least, and as safe, as that which settles a title to his horse.”—Ib. p. 399.
And another of my colleagues, [Mr. Duncan,] even as late as the 7th of June last, emphatically declared, in the House of Representatives, as follows:—
“If territorial bills are presented for the government of New Mexico and Utah, I shall vote for the exclusion of slavery from those territories.
Let me fortify these citations by another from one of the acknowledged leaders of the Whig party,—the Hon. Rufus Choate:—
“On all the great questions of the day, but just slavery; on executive power, on internal improvement, on the protection of labor, on peace, and the constitution, we mean to remain the same party of Whigs, one and indivisible, from Maine to Louisiana,—one vast incorporation of consentaneous feeling throughout the land; and upon this question alone we always differ from the Whigs of the south; and on that one we propose simply to vote them down.”[17]
I will quote a passage also from a recent letter of the Hon. Zeno Scudder, late a Whig president of the Massachusetts Senate, and now a candidate of the Whig party for Congress, in District No. 10:—
“I was at the Springfield convention when Mr. Webster said, ‘Not another inch of slave territory; no, not one inch!’ By the aid of his remarks on that occasion, I was confirmed in the views which I had before entertained, and have as yet seen no reason to change them.
“In 1847, I had the honor and pleasure of recording my ‘yea’ in favor of the resolves ‘concerning the existence and extension of slavery within the jurisdiction of the United States,’ and ‘concerning the Mexican war and the institution of slavery,’ which passed the legislature of last year; and had I been a member of that body at its last session, I should have given my support to the resolve ‘concerning slavery,’ which was then passed.
“When I recorded my ‘yea,’ and advocated the resolves of 1847, I did not suppose them to be idle words, written out to be bandied about and declaimed upon in Massachusetts, and be laid snugly away, if ever I should depart the jurisdiction. I supposed them to involve great principles of human freedom, which were to be applied throughout the length and breadth of our country, whenever and wherever the time and place might present legitimate opportunities therefor.”