To help our conceptions in regard to Mr. Webster’s course on this subject, let us imagine a parallel case,—or, rather, an approximate one, for there can be no parallel. Suppose a contest between the north and the south, on the subject of the tariff, to have been raging for years. The sober blood of the north is heated to the fever point. The newspapers treat of nothing else. Public meetings and private conversations discuss no other theme. Hundreds of delegates wait upon Congress to add, if it be but a feather’s weight, to the scale which holds their interests. Petitions flow in, in thousands and tens of thousands. It is announced that Mr. Calhoun will pour out his great mind on the subject. Expectation is on tiptoe. All eyes, from all sides of the country, are turned towards Washington, as the Moslem’s to Mecca. The senate chamber is packed, and the illustrious senator rises. After an historic sketch of existing difficulties, after reading from the speeches which he made in 1832 and in 1846, he proceeds to say that he withdraws all opposition to a tariff,—to any tariff! He will not offend the delicate nerves of northern manufacturers by further hostility. Were a bill then before him, he would not oppose it. “Take the schedules,” says he, scornfully, to northern senators, “and fill up the blanks from A to Z with what per centages you please. For ad valorem rates, put in minimums and maximums at your pleasure. I will ‘taunt’ you no longer. I am for peace and the glorious Union. I have discovered an irrepealable and irreversible law of nature, which overrules all the devices of men. You cannot make one yard of woollens or cottons in New England. There, water has no gravity, steam has no force, and wheels will not revolve. In Vermont and New York, wool will not grow on sheep’s backs. I have penetrated the geology of Pennsylvania, and through all its stratifications there is not a thimble full of coal, nor an ounce of iron ore; and, if there were, combustion would not help to forge it; for oxygen and carbon are divorced. As Massachusetts contributed one third of the men and one third of the money to carry on the revolutionary war, I am willing to compensate her for her lost blood and treasure to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, with which she may fertilize the barrenness of her genius, and indulge her insane love for churches and schools.” Had the great southern senator spoken thus, I think that even idolatrous, man-worshipping South Carolina,—a state which Mr. Calhoun has ruled and moved for the last twenty-five years, as a puppet showman plays Punch and Judy,—would have sent forth, through all her organs, a voice of unanimous dissent.
As much as freedom is higher than tariff, so much stronger than their dissent should be ours.
Mr. Webster’s averment that he would not “reäffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reënact the will of God,” (p. 44,) has been commented on more pungently than I am able or willing to do. It has been well said that all law and all volition must be in harmony with the will of the Good Spirit, or with that of the evil one; and if we will not reënact the will of the former, then, either all legislation ceases, or we must register the decrees of the latter. But one important and pertinent consideration belongs to this subject, which I have nowhere seen developed. It is this: Endless doubts and contradictions exist among men, as to what is the will of God; and on no subject is there a wider diversity of opinion than on this very subject of slavery. Whose law was reënacted by the ordinance of 1787? whose, when the African slave trade was prohibited? whose, when it was declared piracy? True, it is useless to put upon our statute books an astronomical law, regulating sunrise, or high tides; but that is physical and beyond the jurisdiction of man, while slavery belongs to morals, and is within the jurisdiction of man. Cease to transcribe upon the statute book what our wisest and best men believe to be the will of God in regard to our worldly affairs, and the passions which we think appropriate to devils will soon take possession of society. In regard to slavery, piracy, and so forth, there are multitudes of men whose fear of the penal sanctions of another life is very much aided by a little salutary fine and imprisonment in this. Look at that noble array of principles which is contained in the Declaration of Rights in the constitution of Massachusetts. Is it not a most grand and beautiful exposition of “the will of God,”—a transcript, as it were, from the Book of Life? So of the amendments to the constitution of the United States. Yet our fathers thought it no tampering with holy things to enact them; and, in times of struggle and peril, they have been to many a tempted man as an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast.
I approach Mr. Webster’s treatment of the Texas question with no ordinary anxiety. Having been accustomed from my very boyhood to regard him as the almost infallible expounder of constitutional law, it is impossible to describe the struggle, the revulsion of mind, with which I have passed from an instructed and joyous acquiescence in his former opinions to unhesitating dissent from his present ones.
I must premise that I cannot see any necessary or beneficial connection between the subject of new Texan states and the admission of California and the government of the territories. The former refers to some indefinite future, when, from its fruitful womb of slavery, Texas shall seek to cast forth an untimely birth. In this excited state of the country, at this critical juncture of our affairs, when there is sober talk of massacring a majority of the House of Representatives on their own floor, and a senator, instead of merely threatening to hang a brother senator on the highest tree, provided he could catch him in his own state, now draws a revolver of six barrels on another brother senator, on the floor of the Senate, in mid-session; at such a time, I say, when, however few Abels there may be at work in the political field, there are Cains more than enough, would it not have been well to have acted upon the precept, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”?
As the basis of his argument, Mr. Webster quotes the following resolution for the admission of Texas, passed March 1, 1845:—
“New states of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of the said state, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution. And such states as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of 36° 30´ north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri compromise line, shall be admitted into the Union with or without slavery, as the people of each state asking admission may desire; and in such state or states as shall be formed out of said territory north of said Missouri compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude, (except for crime,) shall be prohibited.”
Note here, first, that only “four” states are to be admitted in “addition to said state of Texas;” and second, that “such state or states,” (in the plural,) as shall be formed from territory north of 36° 30´, shall be free. If two, or only one free state is to exist on the north side of the line, then how many will be left for the south side? I should expose myself to ridicule were I to set it down arithmetically, four minus one, equal to three. Yet Mr. Webster says, “The guaranty is, that new states shall be made out of it, [the Texan territory,] and that such states as are formed out of that portion of Texas lying south of 36° 30´, may come in as slave states, to the number of FOUR, in addition to the state then in existence, and admitted at that time by these resolutions.” (p. 29.)
Here Mr. Webster gives outright to the south and to slavery, one more state than was contracted for,—assuming the contract to be valid. He makes a donation, a gratuity, of an entire slave state, larger than many a European principality. He transfers a whole state, with all its beating hearts, present and future; with all its infinite susceptibilities of weal and woe, from the side of freedom to that of slavery, in the ledger book of humanity. What a bridal gift for the harlot of bondage!
Was not the bargain hard enough, according to its terms? Must we fulfil it, and go beyond it? Is a slave state, which dooms our brethren of the human race, perhaps interminably, to the vassal’s fate, so insignificant a trifle, that it may be flung in, as small change on the settlement of an account? Has the south been so generous a copartner as to deserve this distinguished token of our gratitude?