Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

Gentlemen, the perusal of the address and resolutions put forth by the Whig State Convention at Springfield, last week, brought me here. It seems to me that no true lover of human freedom can read that address and those resolutions intelligently, and understand their full scope and bearing, without being struck down by conviction, as suddenly as was St. Paul,—though the light and the voice come from an opposite quarter. Whatever the design of those papers may have been, their whole argument and office are to wheel the Whig party into line, to fight the battles of slavery.

Under these circumstances, I do not ask with a certain distinguished individual, on the prospective breaking up of parties, “Where am I to go?” I believe I do but echo the sentiments of thousands of as good and true Whigs as can be found in this commonwealth, (and there are none better any where,) when I say that, let others go where they will, here, here, on the old Whig platform of opposition to the extension of slavery, either into New Mexico or into New England; of freedom for the District of Columbia; and in favor of the old guaranties of habeas corpus and trial by jury,—here I remain.

Gentlemen, the Free Soil party, as the name imports, is the party of freedom. The cardinal principle of their creed is, that “all men are created free and equal,” and that they have an inalienable right to “life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.” Their faith consists in the assurance that, in the good providence of God, the day will yet come when the blessedness of their creed will be realized among men; and by their works they seek to hasten the advent of that glorious day.

A party of Freedom has existed in all ages of the world, but a mightier party of oppression has been arrayed against it. And though the lovers of human liberty have consisted of the greatest and best men who have ever lived, yet they have been overborne by violence, crushed and trampled upon by power, buried in dungeons, gibbeted on scaffolds, burnt at the stake! God, like the householder who sent servants to his vineyard from a far country, has, from age to age, sent great and mighty souls into the world to redeem it from oppression; but the oppressor has seized and mutilated and martyred them, with every form of ignominy towards the messengers themselves, and of impiety towards the Lord who sent them. The possessors of power and wealth seek to perpetuate these advantages in their families, their clan, or their caste; and over almost all the earth they have established dynasties for governments, landed or moneyed feudalisms for lords, and entails for individual families.

That we may see how fearful a thing this spirit of oppression is, not only for its cruelties, but for the tenacity of its malignant life, let it be remembered that the world had existed almost six thousand years before the principles of human liberty, civil and ecclesiastical, were clearly and fully set forth even on paper. This was first done by Mr. Jefferson, in 1776, in the Declaration of American Independence; and every body knows how intensely the same partisans who are now summoning their forces against the party of Freedom have hated him for his glorious efforts in favor of the freedom of man; how they pursued him with maledictions to his grave, and still break through the sanctity of the tomb to blacken his memory.

The immortal principles of the Declaration of Independence were partially embodied in the constitution of the United States. But, as the preëxisting metaphysics and mythology of the heathen nations mingled with the pure spirit of Christianity, and corrupted it, so the preëxisting laws and usages of oppression deformed to some extent the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, and stamped some hideous features upon the otherwise fair face of the federal constitution. But such a preponderance of good did that instrument contain, that it was adopted by all the states. It was adopted, however, with the universal understanding that the healing influence of time would purge away the virus of the disease; and with no apprehension of the now undeniable fact, that the disease would be allowed to spread, like a gangrene, over the healthy parts. Had our fathers foreseen that the pro-slavery clauses in the constitution would prove a curse to whole classes and races of men entitled to protection under it, that they would be a shame to its administrators, and an opprobrium, throughout the civilized world, to the name of Republic,—it would be impious towards their memories to say they would ever have ratified it. But instead of the sounder parts diffusing healthful influences, and gradually eradicating the disease, the diseased parts have shot their infection through all the veins and organs of the body politic, until, from the heart to the extremities, there is not now to be found an uncontaminated spot.

Or to leave metaphor for literal speech: The constitution of the United States gave the most comprehensive and fundamental guaranties in favor of freedom, with here and there only an exception in behalf of slavery. It allowed “persons” who were held to service or labor and who should escape into other states to be retaken, but it also secured the trial by jury to every “person” who should claim it on any question of life or liberty, and on all questions of property even down to the paltry sum of twenty dollars. Yet there is not now, in the United States, a single spot, from ocean to ocean, where a free man is free from danger of being kidnapped and carried into horrible bondage for himself and his posterity forever; or,—what is as keenly torturing to every mind penetrated by the spirit and amenable to the precepts of the gospel,—of being called upon, under penalty of fines and fetters, to surrender his soul to this accursed work.

Now, as a true disciple of Christ ought to feel if he saw the imbruting dogmas and Moloch rites of heathenism returning to invade Christendom and to extinguish the lights of the gospel, so should every lover of liberty feel when he sees the fell spirit of slavery regaining its lost empire over the institutions of freedom.

The analogy between the present condition of this country and that of Europe is too striking not to attract attention. In 1848, there was a great uprising of the friends of liberty in both hemispheres. Thousands and tens of thousands sought to redress the wrongs of humanity,—by the cartridge box there, and by the ballot box here. The phalanx of tyranny and of mammon was unprepared for so sudden an onset, and for a moment their ranks were broken by the violence of the shock. But despotism and wealth have almost inconceivable advantages in a contest with the honest and toiling millions. In Europe, they have the military force,—a soulless machine, always ready to be turned against the people who are made to maintain it. They have also the whole ecclesiastical power, which leans upon the government for support, and fights with spiritual weapons for the masters whose plunder it shares.

In this country, owing to our different institutions, the means of quelling the spirit of liberty have been different. The administration have an immense amount of patronage at their disposal. They give contracts to the amount of millions, and select the contractors. Directly, or indirectly, they appoint some thirty thousand office-holders; and, by a lamentable reduplication of the powers of evil, they control twice or four times that number who are aspirants for office. Their influence bought over the slave power, by surrendering all our new territories to the invasion of slavery, and by giving fifty thousand square miles of free New Mexican territory to be turned into Texan slave territory, thus adding to the already enormous size of that slave-begotten state. Ten millions of dollars of almost worthless Texan stock were raised to par value by the signature of Millard Fillmore. During the whole pendency of the compromise measures, agents and brokers, reputed to be interested in this stock, hovered about the purlieus of the national Capitol. The stock was transferred from hand to hand, without record and without daylight, so that, besides the accomplices, Heaven and Satan only know into whose possession it came. And, as though the means of patronage and seducement on so magnificent a scale were not sufficient, a private purse, almost up to the figure of fifty thousand dollars, was presented to the “foremost man of all this world” in his apostasy to the principles of human liberty. These, fellow-citizens, were among the agencies and seductions which caused the discomfiture of the friends of freedom in the national contest of 1850. The tyrants of Europe had no vacant lands, or Texas stocks, wherewith to put down humanity, and so they used gunpowder and bayonets. Our slave power and its northern allies, being debarred by the principles of our government from bullets and bayonets, accomplished their work by the Judas articles of scrip and “dotation.” To carry out these purposes, the generals Haynau and Radetsky were found there; the senators, Webster and Cass, here.