“It is the passage of a law to say that California and New Mexico shall remain forever free. That is, fellow-citizens, undoubtedly an object of great and transcendent importance; for there is none who will deny that we should go up to the very limits of the constitution itself, and with the wisdom of the wisest, and zeal of the most zealous, should unite to accomplish this great object, and to defeat the always detested, and forever to be detested object of the dark ambition of that candidate of the Baltimore convention, (General Cass,) who has ventured to pledge himself in advance that he will veto the future law of freedom; and may God avert the madness of all those who hate slavery and love freedom, that would unite in putting him in the place where his thrice accursed pledge may be redeemed!... Is there a Whig upon this floor who doubts that the strength of the Whig party next March will insure freedom to California and New Mexico, if by the constitution they are entitled to freedom at all? Is there a member of Congress that would not vote for freedom? You know there is not one. Did not every Whig member of Congress from the free states vote at the last session for freedom? You know that every man of them returned home covered with the thanks of his constituents for that vote. Is there a single Whig constituency, in any free state in this country, that would return any man that would not vote for freedom? Do you believe that Daniel Webster himself could be returned if there was the least doubt upon the question?”
Mr. Choate then adds: “Upon this question alone, we always differ from those Whigs of the south; and on that one, we propose simply to vote them down.” Mr. Webster now says he will not join in voting them down.
Under such circumstances, is it frivolous or captious to ask for something more than a dogmatic assertion that slavery cannot impregnate these new regions, and cause them to breed monsters forever? On a subject of such infinite importance I cannot be satisfied with a dictum; I want a demonstration. I cannot accept the prophecy without inquiring what spirit inspired the prophet. As a revelation from Heaven, it would be most delightful; but, as it conflicts with all human experience, it requires at least one undoubted miracle to attest the divinity of its origin.
According to the last census, there were more than eight thousand persons of African blood in Massachusetts. Abolish the moral and religious convictions of our people, let slavery appear to be in their sight not only lawful and creditable, but desirable as a badge of aristocratic distinction, and as a “political, social, moral, and religious blessing,” and what obstacle would prevent these eight thousand persons from being turned into slaves, on any day, by the easy, cheap, and shorthand kidnapping of a legislative act? Africans can exist here, for the best of all reasons,—they do exist here. A state of slavery would not stop their respiration, nor cause them to vanish “into thin air.” Think, for a moment, of the complaints we constantly hear in certain circles, of the difficulty and vexatiousness of commanding domestic service. If no moral or religious objection existed against holding slaves, would not many of those respectable and opulent gentlemen who signed the letter of thanks to Mr. Webster, and hundreds of others indeed, instead of applying to intelligence offices, or visiting emigrant ships for “domestics,” as we call them, go at once to the auction room and buy a man or a woman with as little hesitancy or compunction as they now send to Brighton for beeves, or go to Tattersall’s for a horse? If the cold of the higher latitudes checks the flow of African blood, or benumbs African limbs, the slaveholder knows very well that a trifling extra expense for whips will make up for the difference.
But suppose a doubt could be reasonably entertained about the invasion of the new territories by slavery. Even suppose the chances to preponderate against it. What then? Are we to submit a question of human liberty over vast regions and for an indefinite extent of time, to the determination of chance? With all my faculties I say, No! Let me ask any man, let me respectfully ask Mr. Webster himself, if it were his own father and mother, and brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters, who were in peril of such a fate, whether he would abandon them to chance,—even to a favorable chance. Would he suffer their fate to be determined by dice or divination, when positive prohibition was in his power? And by what rule of Christian morality, or even of enlightened heathen morality, can we deal differently with the kindred of others from what we would with our own? He is not a Christian whose humanity is bounded by the legal degrees of blood, or by general types of feature.
But Mr. Webster would not “taunt” the south. Neither would I. I would not taunt any honorable man, much less a criminal. Still, when the most precious interests of humanity are in peril, I would not be timid. I would not stop too long to cull lovers’ phrases. Standing under the eye of God, in the forum of the world and before the august tribunal of posterity, when the litigants are freedom and tyranny, and human happiness and human misery the prize they contest, it should happen to the sworn advocate of liberty, as Quintilian says it did to Demosthenes, “not to speak and to plead, but to thunder and to lighten.” Mr. Webster would not taunt the south; and yet I say the south were never so insulted before as he has insulted them. Common scoffs, jeers, vilifications, are flattery and sycophancy compared with the indignities he heaped upon them. Look at the facts. The south waged war with Mexico from one, and only one, motive; for one, and only one, object,—the extension of slavery. They refused peace unless it surrendered territory. That territory must be south of the abhorred line of 36° 30´. The same President who abandoned the broad belt of country on our northern frontier, from 49° to 54° 40´, to which we had, in his own words, “an unquestionable title,” would allow no prohibition of slavery to be imposed upon the territory which Mexico ceded, though she would bury it a foot deep in gold. The Proviso had been resisted in all forms, from the beginning. Southern Whigs voted against the ratification of the treaty, foreseeing the struggle that was to follow. Desperate efforts had been made, at the close of the last session of Congress, to smuggle in an unrestricted territorial government, against all parliamentary rule and all constitutional implication. The whole south, as one man, claimed it as a “describable, weighable, estimable, tangible,” and most valuable “right” to carry slaves there. Calhoun, Berrien, Badger, Mason, Davis,—the whole southern phalanx, Whig and Democrat, pleaded for it, argued for it, and most of them declared themselves ready to fight for it; and yet Mr. Webster rises in his place, and tells them they are all moonstruck, hallucinated, fatuous; because “an ordinance of nature and the will of God” had settled this question against them from the beginning of the world. Mr. Calhoun said, immediately after this speech, “Give us free scope and time enough, and we will take care of the rest.”
Mr. Mason said,—
“We have heard here from various quarters, and from high quarters, and repeated on all hands,—repeated here again to-day by the honorable senator from Illinois, [Mr. Shields,] that there is a law of nature which excludes the southern people from every portion of the state of California. I know of no such law of nature,—none whatever; but I do know the contrary, that if California had been organized with a territorial form of government only, and for which, at the last two sessions of Congress, she has obtained the entire southern vote, the people of the Southern States would have gone there freely, and have taken their slaves there in great numbers. They would have done so, because the value of the labor of that class would have been augmented to them many hundred fold. Why, in the debates which took place in the convention in California which formed the constitution, and which any senator can now read for himself, after the provision excluding slavery was agreed upon, it was proposed to prohibit the African race altogether, free as well as bond. A debate arose upon it, and the ground was distinctly taken, as shown in those debates, that if the entire African race was not excluded, their labor would be found so valuable that the owners of slaves would bring them there, even though slavery were prohibited, under a contract to manumit them in two or three years. And it required very little reasoning, on the part of those opposed to this class of population, to show that the productiveness of their labor would be such as to cause that result. An estimate was gone into with reference to the value of the labor of this class of people, showing that it would be increased to such an extent in the mines of California, that they could not be kept out. It was agreed that the labor of a slave in any one of the states from which they would be taken, was not worth more than one hundred or one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and that in California it would be worth from four to six thousand dollars. They would work themselves free in one or two years, and thus the country would be filled by a class of free blacks, and their former owners have an excellent bargain in taking them there.”
Yet Mr. Webster stands up before all this array, and says, “Gentlemen, you are beside yourselves. You have eaten ‘of the insane root.’ You would look more in character should you put on the ‘cap and bells.’ In sober sense, in seeing his object clearly and in pursuing it directly, Don Quixote was Doctor Franklin, compared with you. The dog in the fable, who dropped his meat to snap at his shadow, is no allegory in your case. I see two classes around me,—wise men and fools; you do not belong to the former. The chancellor, who keeps the king’s idiots, should have custody of you.” Such is a faithful abstract of what Mr. Webster said to southern senators, and, through them, to all the south.
Here certainly was a reflection upon the understanding and intelligence of the south, such as never was cast upon them before. But the balm went with the sting. They bore the affront to their judgments, because it was so grateful to their politics and pockets. I think it no injustice to those senators to say, that they would have nearly torn Mr. Webster in pieces for such a collective insult, had it not promised to add, what Mr. Mason called “many hundred fold,” to their individual property, and to secure and perpetuate their political ascendency.