I shall confine myself mainly, and perhaps wholly, to Mr. Webster’s views, because he has argued the cause of the south with vastly more ability than it has been argued by any one among themselves. If his conclusions, then, be not tenable, their case is lost.[9]
Mr. Webster casts away the “Proviso” altogether. He says, “If a resolution or a law were now before us to provide a territorial government for New Mexico, I would not vote to put any prohibition into it whatever.” (p. 44.) The reason given is, that slavery is already excluded from “California and New Mexico” “by the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth.” (p. 42.) “California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep valleys.” (p. 43.)
Now, this is drawing moral conclusions from physical premises. It is arguing from physics to metaphysics. It is determining the law of the spirit by geographical phenomena. It is undertaking to settle by mountains and rivers, and not by the Ten Commandments, a great question of human duty. It abandons the second commandment of Christ and all bills of rights enacted in conformity thereto, and leaves our obligations to our “neighbor” to be determined by the accidents of earth and water and air. To ascertain whether a people will obey the Divine command, and do to others as they would be done by, it looks at the thermometer. What a problem would this be: “Required the height above the level of the sea at which the oppressor ‘will undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke,’—to be determined barometrically.” Alas! this cannot be done. Slavery depends, not upon climate, but upon conscience. Wherever the wicked passions of the human heart can go, there slavery can go. Slavery is an effect. Avarice, sloth, pride, and the love of domination, are its cause. In ascending mountain sides, at what altitude do men leave these passions behind them? Different vegetable growths are to be found at different heights, depending also upon the zone. This I can understand. There is the altitude of the palm, the altitude of the oak, the altitude of the pine, and, far above them all, the line of perpetual snow. But, in regard to innocence and guilt, where is the white line? How high up can a slaveholder go and not lose his free agency? At what elevation will the whip fall from the hand of the master, and the fetter from the limbs of the slave? There is no such point. Freedom and slavery on the one hand, and climate and geology on the other, are incommensurable quantities. We might as well attempt to determine a question in theology by the cube root, or a question in ethics by the black art. Slavery, being a crime founded upon human passions, can go wherever those passions are unrestrained. It has existed in Asia from the earliest ages, notwithstanding its “formation and scenery.” It labors and groans on the flanks of the Ural mountains now. There are to-day forty-eight millions of slaves in Russia, not one rood of which comes down so low as the northern boundary of California and New Mexico.
Had Mr. Webster’s philosophy been correct, then California was at superfluous pains when she incorporated the ordinance of 1787 into her constitution. Instead of saying that “slavery and involuntary servitude, (except for crime,) shall be forever prohibited,” she should have said, “Whereas, by a law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth,” “slavery cannot exist in California,” therefore we will not “reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reenact the will of God.”
Should it be said that slavery will not go into the new territories, because it is unprofitable; I ask, Where is it profitable? Where is ignorance so profitable as knowledge? Where is ungodliness gain, even for the things of this life? How little is the hand worth at one end of an arm, if there is not a brain at the other! Do not Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and other states, furnish witnesses by thousands and tens of thousands that slavery impoverishes? Yet with what enthusiasm they cherish it! Generally, ignorance is a necessary concomitant of slavery. Of white persons, over twenty years of age, unable to read and write, there were, according to the last census, 58,787 in Virginia, 56,609 in North Carolina, 58,513 in Tennessee, and so forth. I have a letter before me, received this morning, dated in Indiana, in which the writer says, he removed from North Carolina in 1802, when he was fourteen years old, and at that time he had never seen a newspaper in his life. Can there be genius, the inventive talent, or profitable labor, where ignorance is so dense? Can the oppression that tramples out voluntary industry, enterprise, intelligence, and the desire of independence, conduce to riches? Yet this is done wherever slavery exists, and is part and parcel of its working. Is any other form of robbery profitable? Yet individuals and communities have practised it and lived by it, and we may as well rely upon a “law of physical geography” to arrest the one as the other. It is not poetry, but literal truth, that the breath of the slave blasts vegetation, his tears poison the earth, and his groans strike it with sterility. It would be easy to show why the master does not abandon slavery, even amid the desolation with which it has surrounded him. There is a combination of poverty and pride, which slavery produces, on the doctrine of natural appetence, and which, therefore, it exactly fits. The helplessness of the master in regard to all personal wants seems to necessitate the slavery that has begotten it. All moral and religious principles are lowered till they conform to the daily practice. Custom blinds conscience, until, without any attempt to emancipate or ameliorate their victims, men can preach and pray and hold slaves, as Hamlet’s grave digger jests and sings while he turns up skulls.
But slavery cannot go into California or New Mexico, because their staple productions are not “tobacco, corn, cotton, or rice.” (p. 44.) These are agricultural products. But is slave labor confined to agriculture? Suppose that predial slavery will not become common in the new territories. Cannot menial? If slaves cannot do field work, cannot they do house work? There is an opening for a hundred thousand slaves to-day in the new territories, for purposes of domestic labor. And beyond this, let me ask, who possesses any such geologic vision that, at a distance of a thousand miles, he can penetrate the valleys and gorges of New Mexico, and say that gold will not yet be found there as it is in California,—not in sand and gravel only, but in forty-eight-pounders and fifty-sixes? This is the very kind of labor on which slaves, in all time, have been so extensively employed,—the very labor on which a million of slaves in Hispaniola lost their lives, within a few years after its discovery by Columbus. Gold deposits are now worked within twenty-five miles of Santa Fe. The last account which I have seen, of a company of emigrants passing from Santa Fe to California by the River Gila, announces rich discoveries of gold upon that river. A fellow-citizen of mine has just returned home, who says he saw a slave sold at the mines in California, in September last. As yet, the distant regions of the Gila and the Colorado cannot be worked, because of the Apaches, the Utahs, and other tribes of Indians. But admit slavery there, and the power of the government will be invoked to exterminate these Indians, as it was before to exterminate the Cherokees and Seminoles,—not to drive them beyond the Mississippi, but beyond the Styx. A few days since a letter was published in the papers, dated on board a steamer descending the Mississippi, which stated that a considerable number of slaves were on board, bound for California, under an agreement with their masters that they should be free after serving two years at the mines. We know, too, that the reason assigned for incorporating a provision in the constitution of California, authorizing its legislature to pass laws for the exclusion of free blacks from the state, was, that slaves would be brought there under this very form of agreement, and by and by the country would be overspread by people of color who had bought their freedom. The sagacious men who framed the California constitution came from all parts of the territory, and, being collected on the spot, having surveyed all its mountains, having breathed its air at all temperatures, and turned up its golden soil,—these men had never discovered any “law of physical geography” which the fell spirit of slavery could not transgress. Slaves were carried into Oregon, ten degrees of latitude higher up. Its colonists reënacted the ordinance of 1787 before Congress gave them a territorial government. In the territorial government that was given them, the prohibition was inserted; and President Polk signed the bill, with an express protest, that he ratified this exclusion of slavery only because the country lay north of the Missouri compromise line; but declared that, had it embraced the very region in question, he would have vetoed the bill.
General Cass never took the ground that slavery could not exist in the new territories; and no inconsiderable part of the opposition made to him in Massachusetts and in other free states, was placed expressly upon the ground that he would not prohibit it. Mr. Webster, in his Marshfield speech, September 1, 1848, opposed the election of General Cass, because, through his recreancy to northern principles, slavery would invade the territories. This was expressed with his usual clearness and force, as follows:—
“He, [General Cass,] will surely have the Senate; and with the patronage of the government, with every interest that he, as a northern man, can bring to bear, coöperating with every interest that the south can bring to bear, we cry safety before we are out of the woods, if we feel that there is no danger as to these new territories.”
Yet Mr. Webster now says, that to support the “Proviso,” would “do disgrace to his own understanding.” (p. 46.)
During the same campaign, also, the Hon. Rufus Choate, one of the most eloquent men in New England, and known to be the personal friend of Mr. Webster, delivered a speech at Salem, in which the following passage occurs:—