MR. BADGER’S REPLY.
To the Editors of the National Intelligencer;
A communication in your paper of yesterday, from the Hon. Horace Mann, of the House of Representatives, seems to require a brief notice from me.
The honorable gentleman accuses me of having treated him with gross injustice in a recent speech, in which I referred to the closing paragraph of a speech of his, and made some comments thereupon.
Now, in what consists the injustice? I quoted that paragraph from his speech, and he does not deny that it was quoted truly. There is not a word or syllable attributed to him, not a word or syllable alleged or insinuated to have been spoken by him, except that paragraph, and that he admits was spoken and printed by him just as I quoted it. Then, in the statement of his language, I have done him no injustice.
In my comments, I gave “in other words,”—in my own words,—what I deemed a true interpretation of his; and, as I attributed to him no language which he did not use; as every thing to which he objects is, and upon the face of my remarks plainly purports to be, merely my own commentary upon the single quotation correctly taken from the gentleman’s speech, it is very obvious that I have “fabricated” nothing. Whether the interpretation given to the honorable gentleman’s language be correct or incorrect, a just carrying of it out to its true results, or an unfair exaggeration, intelligent men will be able to decide from the reading of my speech, which presents together both the text and the commentary, and to them I am willing to leave it.
But the gentleman says that in his speech he “discussed the question of extending slavery over our territories,” and that “no more slave territories and no more slave states was the exact ground” he took. And what has that to do with the matter of his complaint against me? I referred not to his discussion, or the grounds taken in it. I was not considering the course or validity of his reasoning, but the conclusion at which he arrived. That was set down in his speech in these words:—
“In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding conviction of the character of slavery, that, under a full sense of my responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion,—better a civil or a servile war,—better any thing that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.”
Here is no reference to any particular degree, kind, or manner of extending slavery. He speaks not of the “proposed or desired extension,” of “extension into our territories,” or even of “the extension,” but he speaks of “an extension of the bounds of slavery,” without a reference to any thing in the speech or elsewhere by which the generality of his language might be modified or explained. To refer, therefore, to the speech in order to understand the import of this general conclusion, is idle. If the reasoning in the speech be particular, and the deduction general, there would be the logical defect of a conclusion too large for the premises, but the meanings of the conclusion would remain, and the want of reasoning to support it would not abate aught of its unmitigated and sweeping generality.
It is evident, then, that, whether supported by any reasoning, particular or general, the gentleman’s conclusion remains, that disunion, civil war, servile war, with certain undefined judgments of Heaven besides, are preferable to “an extension of the bounds of slavery;” but the indefinite article “an” is here exactly equivalent to “any,” and therefore whatever amounts to “any extension,” however small,—a square mile, or acre, or foot,—is strictly within the meaning of the language which he has thought proper deliberately to retain in his printed speech.