But all this is tedious and superfluous. I have gone into this detail, because I understand the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bayly] to have denied this adoption and these recognitions of the ordinance. I hazard nothing in saying that the ordinance of 1787 has been expressly referred to as valid, or expressly or impliedly reënacted, a dozen times, by the Congress of the United States; and, in the state courts of Ohio, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri, it has been adjudged to be constitutional. How, then, is it possible for any mind, amenable to legal rules for the decision of legal questions, to say that Congress cannot legislate, or has not legislated, (except once or twice inadvertently,) on the subject of slavery in the territories?
On this part of the argument, I have only a concluding remark to submit. The position I am contesting affirms generally that Congress cannot legislate upon the subject of slavery in the territories. The inexpediency of so legislating is further advocated on the ground that it is repugnant to democratical principles to debar the inhabitants of the territories from governing themselves. Must the free men of the territories, it is asked, have laws made for them by others? No! It is anti-democratic, monarchical, intolerable. All men have the right of self-government; and this principle holds true with regard to the inhabitants of territories, as well as the inhabitants of states.
Now, if these declarations were a sincere and honest affirmation of human rights, I should respect them and honor their authors. Did this doctrine grow out of a jealousy for the rights of man, a fear of usurpation, an assertion of the principle of self-government, I should sympathize with it, while I denied its legality. But, sir, it is the most painful aspect of this whole case, that the very object and purpose of claiming these ample and sovereign rights for the inhabitants of the territories is, that they may deny all rights to a portion of their fellow-beings within them. Enlarge, aggrandize, the rights of the territorial settlers! And why? Because, by so doing, you enable them to abolish all rights for a whole class of human beings. This claim, then, is not made for the purpose of making freemen more free, but for making slaves more enslaved. The reason for denying to Congress the power to legislate for the territories, is the fear that Congress will prevent slavery in them. The reason for claiming the supreme right of legislation for the territorial inhabitants, is the hope that they will establish slavery within their borders. Must not that democracy be false which begets slavery as its natural offspring?
If it has now been demonstrated that Congress has uniformly legislated, and can legislate, on the subject of slavery in the territories, I proceed to consider the next question. Is it expedient to exclude slavery from them?
Here, on the threshold, we are confronted with the claim that the gates shall be thrown wide open to the admission of slavery into the broad western world; because, otherwise, the southern or slave states would be debarred from enjoying their share of the common property of the Union.
I meet this claim with a counter-claim. If, on the one hand, the consecration of this soil to freedom will exclude the slaveholders of the south, it is just as true, on the other hand, that the desecration of it to slavery will exclude the freemen of the north. We, at the north, know too well the foundations of worldly prosperity and happiness; we know too well the sources of social and moral welfare, ever voluntarily to blend our fortunes with those of a community where slavery is tolerated. If our demand for free territory, then, excludes them, their demand for slave territory excludes us. Not one in five hundred of the freemen of the north could ever be induced to take his family and domicile himself in a territory where slavery exists. They know that the institution would impoverish their estate, demoralize their children, and harrow their own consciences with an ever-present sense of guilt, until those consciences, by force of habit and induration, should pass into that callous and more deplorable state, where continuous crime could be committed without the feeling of remorse.
Sir, let me read a passage from Dr. Channing, written in 1798,—fifty years ago,—when, at the early age of nineteen, he lived for some time in Richmond, Virginia, as a tutor in a private family. While there, he wrote a letter, of which the following is an extract:—
“There is one object here which always depresses me. It is slavery. This alone would prevent me from ever settling in Virginia. Language cannot express my detestation of it. Master and slave! Nature never made such a distinction, or established such a relation. Man, when forced to substitute the will of another for his own, ceases to be a moral agent; his title to the name of man is extinguished; he becomes a mere machine in the hands of his oppressor. No empire is so valuable as the empire of one’s self. No right is so inseparable from humanity, and so necessary to the improvement of our species, as the right of exerting the powers which nature has given us in the pursuit of any and of every good which we can obtain without doing injury to others. Should you desire it, I will give you some idea of the situation and character of the negroes in Virginia. It is a subject so degrading to humanity, that I cannot dwell on it with pleasure. I should be obliged to show you every vice, heightened by every meanness, and added to every misery. The influence of slavery on the whites is almost as fatal as on the blacks themselves.”
This was written fifty years ago, by a young man from New England, only nineteen years old. I know that, on all subjects of philanthropy and ethics, Dr. Channing was half a century in advance of his age. But the sentiments he expressed on this subject, at the close of the last century, are now the prevalent, deep-seated feelings of northern men, excepting, perhaps, a few cases where these feelings have been corrupted by interest.