Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

Delivered in the United States House of Representatives. February 15, 1850, on the Subject of Slavery in the Territories, and the Consequences of a Dissolution of the Union.

Mr. Chairman;

Ever since the organization of this House,—before its organization, and even in a preliminary caucus that preceded the commencement of the session, southern gentlemen have pressed the cause, not only of human slavery, but of slavery extension, upon us. From motives of forbearance, and not from any question as to our rights, we of the north have maintained an unbroken silence. The time has surely come when the voice of freedom should find an utterance. Would to God that on the present occasion it might find an abler defender than myself, although if my ability to defend it were equal to the love I bear it, it could ask no stronger champion.

I wish to premise a few words respecting the propriety and true significance of some of the epithets by which the parties to this discussion are characterized. The term “Free Soiler” is perpetually used upon this floor as a term of ignominy and reproach; yet I maintain that in its original and legitimate sense, as denoting an advocate of the doctrine that all our territorial possessions should be consecrated to freedom, there is no language that can supply a more honorable appellation. It expresses a determination on the part of its disciples to keep free the territory that is now free; to stand upon its frontiers as the cherubim stood at the gates of Paradise, with a flaming sword to turn every way, to keep the sin of slavery from crossing its borders. If, in any instance, the original advocates of Free Soil have abandoned their integrity, and have courted allies who had no sympathy with their principles, but were only eager to join them in a struggle for mere political ascendency, then, in my judgment, they have lost infinitely more in moral power than they have gained in numbers. They have ceased to be genuine and single-hearted Free Soilers, whom I love, and have become partisans, whom I condemn. For myself, I will engage in any honorable measure most likely to secure freedom to the new territories. I will resist any and every measure that proposes to abandon them to slavery. The epithet “Free Soiler,” therefore, when rightly understood and correctly applied, implies both political and moral worth; and I covet the honor of its application to myself. But what does its opposite mean? What does the term “Slave Soiler” signify? It signifies one who desires and designs that all soil should be made to bear slaves. Its dreadful significancy is, that, after Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, in Great Britain, and after the Declaration of Independence, in this country, we should cast aside with scorn, not only the teachings of Christianity, but the clearest principles of natural religion and of natural law, and should retrograde from our boasted civilization, into the Dark Ages,—ay, into periods that the dark ages might have called dark. It means that this Republic, as we call it, formed to establish freedom, should enlist in a crusade against freedom.

And again; those of us at the north who resist slavery extension, who mean to withstand its spread beyond the limits where it now exists, are denounced as Abolitionists. This epithet is applied to us as a term of reproach and obloquy; as a brand and stigma upon our characters and principles. No distinction is made between those few individuals among us who desire to abolish the constitution of the United States, and that great body of the people, who, while their allegiance to this constitution is unshaken, mean also to maintain their allegiance to truth and to duty, in withstanding the hitherto onward march of slavery. Among the latter class, Mr. Collamer, the postmaster-general, is called an Abolitionist. Mr. John Quincy Adams was denounced as an arch-Abolitionist. Every man who advocates the Jefferson proviso, against the spread of slavery, is so called; and if an unspeakable abhorrence of this institution, and the belief that it is the second greatest enormity which the oppressor, in his power, ever committed against the oppressed, in his weakness,—being inferior only to that ecclesiastical domination which has trampled upon the religious freedom of man,—I say, if this abhorrence of slavery, and this belief in its criminality, entitle a man to be denominated an Abolitionist, then I rejoice in my unquestionable right to the name.

In my apprehension, sir, before we can decide upon the honor or the infamy of the term “Abolitionist,” we must know what things they are which he proposes to abolish. We of the north, you say, are Abolitionists; but abolitionists of what? Are we abolitionists of the inalienable, indefeasible, indestructible rights of man? Are we abolitionists of knowledge, abolitionists of virtue, of education, and of human culture? Do we seek to abolish the glorious moral and intellectual attributes which God has given to his children, and thus, as far as it lies in our power, make the facts of slavery conform to the law of slavery, by obliterating the distinction between a man and a beast?

Do our laws and our institutions seek to blot out and abolish the image of God in the human soul? Do we abolish the marriage covenant; and instead of saying, with the apostle, that wives shall submit themselves to their husbands, command them to submit themselves to any body, and to their master as husband over all? Do we ruthlessly tear asunder the sacred ties of affection by which God has bound the parent to the child and the child to the parent? Do we seek to abolish all those noble instincts of the human soul, by which it yearns for improvement and progress; and do we quench its sublime aspirations after knowledge and virtue? A stranger would suppose, from hearing the epithets of contumely that are heaped upon us, that we were abolitionists of all truth, purity, knowledge, improvement, civilization, happiness, and holiness. On this subject, perversion of language and of idea has been reduced to a system, and the falsehoods of our calumniators exclude truth with the exactness of a science.

But if the word “Abolitionist” is to be used in a reproachful and contumelious sense, does it not more properly belong to those who would extend a system which in its very nature abolishes freedom, justice, equity, and a sense of human brotherhood? Does it not belong to those who would abolish not only all social and political, but all natural rights; who would abolish “liberty and the pursuit of happiness;” who would close up all the avenues to knowledge; who would render freedom of thought and liberty of conscience impossible, by crushing out the faculties by which alone we can think and decide; who would rob a fellow-man of his parental rights, and innocent children of the tenderness and joys of a filial love; who would introduce a foul concubinage in place of the institution of marriage, and who would remorselessly trample upon all the tenderest and holiest affections which the human soul is capable of feeling? After Mr. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, had enumerated a few oppressive deeds of the British king towards his American colonists, he denominated him “a prince whose character was marked by every act that could define a tyrant.” There are now as many slaves in this country as there were colonists in 1776. Compare the condition of these three million slaves with the condition of the three million colonists. The conduct of that sovereign who was denounced before earth and heaven as having committed all the atrocities that could “define a tyrant,” was mercy and loving-kindness compared with the wrongs and privations of three millions of our fellow-beings, now existing among us. If the word “Abolitionist,” then, is to be used in a reproachful sense, let it be applied to those who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in defiance of all the lights of the age, would extend the horrors of an institution which, by one all-comprehending crime towards a helpless race, makes it impossible to commit any new crime against them,—unless it be to enlarge the area of their bondage, and to multiply the number of their victims.

If we are abolitionists, then, we are abolitionists of human bondage; while those who oppose us are abolitionists of human liberty. We would prevent the extension of one of the greatest wrongs that man ever suffered upon earth; they would carry bodily chains and mental chains,—chains in a literal and chains in a figurative sense,—into realms where even the half-civilized descendants of the Spaniard and the Indian have silenced their clanking. We would avert the impending night of ignorance and superstition; they would abolish the glorious liberty wherewith God maketh his children free. In using this word, therefore, to calumniate us, they put darkness for light, and light for darkness; good for evil, and evil for good.

The constitutional right of Congress to legislate for the territories is still debated. Having presented my views on this subject before, I shall now treat it with brevity. In a speech, by General Cass, which has lately been published, that distinguished senator, in order to prove that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject of slavery in the territories, has attempted to prove that it has no right to legislate for the territories at all. I refer to the senator from Michigan, because he now stands before the country in the twofold character of being the head of the Democratic party, which goes for the “largest liberty,” and also of the extreme pro-slavery party, which goes for the largest bondage. He would sever all diplomatic relations between this country and Austria, because she has robbed the Hungarians of a part of their liberties, while he is drawing closer the political ties which bind him to the south, which has despoiled three millions of the African race of all their liberties, and is now intent on propagating other millions for new despoliations. He claims, as the great bequest of the barons of Runnymede, that the inhabitants of the territories, under all circumstances of infancy, or poverty, or weakness, shall have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, when the practical result of this doctrine, so nicely timed, would be, that one part of those inhabitants would be crowned with power like so many King Johns, to lord it over their vassals. Under the name of liberty, he enters a path that terminates in bondage. Southern gentlemen had all admitted the power of Congress to legislate for the territories, though they denied the special inference, deducible from the general power, that they could legislate to prohibit slavery in them. But, seeing that the right to legislate on the subject of slavery flows irresistibly from the right to legislate on all other subjects, because no rule of interpretation, which concedes the power to make laws respecting political franchises, courts, crimes, officers, and the militia, can stop short at the subject of slavery;—seeing all this, General Cass denies both inference and premises, and places the general government in the relation of a foreign power to the territories which it owns, and of which it possesses the acknowledged sovereignty. He reminds one of the man who denied the existence of future punishment, and, when pressed with arguments drawn from the deserts of men, and from the justice of God, he suddenly arrested his antagonist by denying the existence of a God!