Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

When several of these measures were passed, and particularly when one of the most obnoxious and criminal of them all was passed,—I mean the Fugitive Slave bill,—this House was not a deliberative body. Deliberation was silenced. Those who knew they could not meet our arguments, choked their utterance. The previous question, which was originally devised to curb the abuse of too much debate, was perverted to stop all debate. The floor was assigned to a known friend of the bill, who after a brief speech in palliation of its enormities, moved the previous question; and thus we were silenced by force, instead of being overcome by argument. For, sir, I aver, without fear of contradiction, that the bill never could have become a law, had its opponents been allowed to debate it, or to propose amendments to it. For the honor of the country, therefore, at the present time, and for the cause of truth hereafter, it is important that the hideous features of that bill, which were then masked, should be now unmasked. The arguments which I then desired and designed to offer against it, I mean to offer now. Those arguments have lost nothing of their weight by this enforced delay, and I have lost nothing of my right to present them.

Mr. Chairman, I feel none the less inclined to discuss this question, because an order has gone forth that it shall not be discussed. Discussion has been denounced as agitation, and then it has been dictatorially proclaimed that “agitation must be put down.” Sir, humble as I am, I submit to no such dictation, come from what quarter or from what numbers it may. If such a prohibition is intended to be laid upon me personally, I repel it. If intended to silence me as the representative of the convictions and feelings of my constituents, I repel it all the more vehemently. In this government, it is not tolerable for any man, however high, or for any body of men, however large, to prescribe what subjects may be agitated, and what may not be agitated. Such prescription is at best but a species of lynch law against free speech. It is as hateful as any other form of that execrable code; and I do but express the common sentiment of all generous minds, when I say that for one, I am all the more disposed to use my privilege of speech, when imperious men, and the sycophants of imperious men, attempt to ban or constrain me. In Italy, the pope decides what books may be read; in Austria, the emperor decides what books may be written; but we are more degraded than the subject of pontiff or Cæsar, if we are to be told what topics we may discuss. If the subjects of a despotic government are bound to be jealous even of the poor privileges which they possess, how sensitive, how “tremblingly alive all o’er” ought we to be at these threatened encroachments upon freedom of speech and freedom of thought. I think that those who say so much about recalling us to a sense of our constitutional obligations, would do well to remember, that the very first article of the amendments to the constitution secures the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. By the common consent of this country, manifested in all forms for more than half a century, the old alien and sedition law has been condemned. Has that law been condemned for fifty years in order to make our shame more conspicuous by its revival under circumstances of intolerable aggravation? Sir, I hold treason against this government to be an enormous crime; but great as it is, I hold treason against free speech and free thought to be a crime incomparably greater.

If it be just and heroic to rebel against all arbitrary invasions of free thought and free expression, then is it not proportionably base and dastardly to utter menaces, or threaten social or political disabilities for the unconstrained exercise of these birthrights of freemen? On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it. He convicts himself of wrong who refuses to hear the arguments of his opponent. It was well said by Montesquieu, that “the enjoyment of liberty, and even its support and preservation, consists in every man’s being allowed to speak his thoughts and lay open his sentiments.” Wherefore, then, in a country hitherto reputed to be free, are we told that discussion must be stopped, and agitation must be put down? It seems as if, when a freeman debases his soul by lending himself to the defence of slavery, God punishes him on the spot by demoralizing his own nature with that spirit of tyranny which belongs to slavery. Wherein consists the advantage of a republican government over a despotism, if the freedom of speech and of the press, which can be strangled in the one by arbitrary command, can be stifled in the other by obloquy and denunciation?

It is remarkable, too, that of all the “agitators” in the country, there are none more violent than those who are agitating against agitation. Throughout the north, that portion of the public press which volunteers its influence to extend the domain of slavery, and to maintain it by extra-constitutional laws, is constantly provoking the agitation it denounces. What are these so-called Union meetings in northern cities but an extensive apparatus of agitation,—a piece of machinery to manufacture and send abroad the very articles which its managers declare to be contraband? Through public assemblies, through the public press, and by correspondence designed for the public eye, they are shaking the common air to keep it calm; they are agonizing and in convulsions for repose; they are vociferating to maintain silence. In the most clamorous days of anti-slavery, there never was half so much said and written against the institution as is now said and written for it. Sir, is the right of agitation to be monopolized by those who denounce it? Is free speech to be only on one side; and is it one of the offices of free speech to silence the sentiments it dislikes? I think this is the second time in the history of this country, that an attempt has been boldly and unblushingly made to stifle free discussion; and I do not believe the fate of those who are now laboring to accomplish so nefarious a purpose will be historically more enviable than that of their prototypes, who passed the far-famed law against seditious speeches and writings.

Is it not extraordinary, too, that this interdict on discussion should be applied to a subject which touches the highest interests of man, and calls into fervid action all the noblest faculties of his nature; which, more than any thing else, tests the question whether a man is man? We may discuss the question of bank or sub-treasury, of tariff or free trade; but the only subject too sacred to be approached, is slavery and its aggrandizements. This is a free country, except when a man wishes to vindicate the claims of freedom. All other parts of the temple may be entered, but slavery is the ark of the covenant, and whoso lays his profane hands thereon must perish.

Sir, how comes it to pass that an institution which even the enlightened heathen of old pronounced to be iniquitous, and which eighteen added centuries of Christian illumination have proved to be the sum of offences against God and man, should now be protected, not merely by constitutions and laws; but that a general warfare should be waged against all those who would restrain it within its present limits, and keep it from arming itself with new weapons of oppression? How comes it to pass that this should be done, not in the despotisms of Austria and of Russia, but in republican America? Sir, it is not to be done, and cannot be done. Almighty God has so constituted the human soul, that while wrong exists upon the face of the earth, all the noblest impulses of that soul will war against it. The order of nature will war against it. “The stars in their courses” will war against it. Discussion, or agitation, if you so please to call it, is one of the Heaven-appointed means by which truth is to be spread until it covers the face of the earth, as the waters cover the sea. It was by discussion and by agitation, in synagogue and in temple, in distant cities and in different empires, that Christianity was carried from its cradle in Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Did not the disciples of Jesus Christ go “agitating” from city to city, from Palestine to Greece, and from Greece to Rome, notwithstanding they were imprisoned and scourged, flayed alive, and burnt, and persecuted as incendiaries and fanatics, by scribe, and Pharisee, and high priest? The very accusation brought against the Savior was, “He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.” The subject on which anti-slavery men now “agitate” is inferior only in importance to that on which Christ and his disciples “agitated.” Nay, the only cause why Christianity has not prospered as it ought during the last eighteen centuries, and why it has not already overspread the whole earth with its blessings, is, that LIBERTY has not been given it as a sphere to work in. It is because SLAVERY has existed among men; and Christianity never will and never can pervade the earth until the barriers of slavery are first overthrown. It was by discussion and agitation that the prevailing religion of this country,—the Protestant religion,—broke through the double phalanx of civil and sacerdotal power, and triumphed throughout the leading nations of Europe, under the indomitable energy of that old hero of Wittemburg, who did not heed nor fear that prince of the slave power, the incarnate devil himself. It was by discussion and agitation that the first glowing sparks of liberty in the bosom of the Adamses, of Hancock, and of Franklin, of Thomas Jefferson and of Patrick Henry, were fanned into a flame that consumed the hosts of the tyrant,—that tyrant who sought to put down this dreadful agitation by means not a whit more reprehensible in his day, than those by which certain leading men are striving to silence it now. Where was there ever written or published a more incendiary and fanatical document than the Declaration of Independence?—a torch to set the world on fire. In the present century, what but discussion and agitation, through all the realms of Great Britain and in this country, could have sufficed to extinguish the slave trade,—that foulest blot upon modern civilization? No, sir; agitation is a part of the sublime order of nature. In thunder, it shakes the stagnant air, which would otherwise breed pestilence. In tempests, it purifies the deep, which would otherwise exhale miasma and death. And in the immortal thoughts of duty, of humanity, and of liberty, it so rouses the hearts of men that they think themselves inspired of God; and not the mercenary clamor of the market-place, nor the outcries of politicians, clutching at the prizes of ambition, can suppress the utterances which true men believe themselves Heaven-commissioned to declare.

The President’s message tells us that the compromise measures of the last session are “FINAL.” I take the liberty to say of that declaration in the message, with all due respect to the high source from which it comes, that I adopt the sentiment, that those measures are final, in one sense only. Their substance and object were, in an extreme degree, pro-slavery and anti-liberty. They marked the passage of this government through another long stage in the gloomy highway of oppression. They furnished another argument for those who despair of human nature; and they supply the misanthrope with a plausible reason for hating mankind. They affixed another stain upon the country, and set in deeper shade the contrast between the theory of our government and its practice. They belied still another time the gospel of love and human brotherhood. Once again they defied the vengeance of God, who is no respecter of persons, and who will bring the sinner to judgment. If such measures are to be “final,” in this sense only do I accept the proposition,—that they are to be the last of their kind; that here, at this point, the career of this iniquity is to be stayed; that here, the confederated powers of ambition and of wealth,—of those who aspire to office and those who lust for gold, have won their last victory. In this sense only do I accept the President’s declaration, that the action of the last Congress on this subject is to be deemed final;—that, in all future conflicts, the right shall not be trampled under foot, but the victims of oppression shall triumph. Base as human nature often proves itself to be, it sometimes manifests a divine resilience by which it springs with recuperative energy from its guilty fall.

I draw no augury of despair from the calamity that has befallen us. It teaches whatever there is of virtue and of principle in mankind, the task which has been set them to do, and whose accomplishment God will require at their hands.

It has been said by the Secretary of State, in a late speech, that if this subject be reöpened in Congress, the friends of freedom will be found in a “lean and miserable minority.” What cares my conscience, sir, whether I am in a minority or a majority, if I am right? Has any great and glorious cause ever been started upon earth, that did not find itself, at the outset, in a minority? Did Clarkson and Wilberforce open their twenty years’ contest with a majority? or were not all the office-seekers and mammon-worshippers opposed to them? Did the resistance of the revolutionary patriots to the government of Great Britain start with a majority on its side? Did the Pilgrim fathers resist conformity to ecclesiastical oppression because they were a majority of the people? Did the glorious band of reformers count on majorities, when they defied the racks and the flames of Rome? What would now be our condition if the prophets and heroes of olden days, if the warriors for truth and the martyrs of liberty, all over the earth, had yielded to so base an argument as this, and had followed the multitude to do evil, instead of battling for the truth, though it were solitary and alone? I can conceive of but one effect which such a sentiment must produce upon all noble and truth-loving men. It is to make them labor for the right with a zeal commensurate with the infinite baseness of the appeal by which they are urged to abandon it.

But I come now, Mr. Chairman, to the main topic of my remarks, which is a consideration of the character of the Fugitive Slave law, passed on the 18th day of September last.