Within the limits of the proposed territory of New Mexico, it is said, on the authority of Humboldt, that that powerful and comparatively civilized people, the Aztecs, once resided. Can any person for a moment believe that the Aztecs ever grew to opulence and power, in any such sterile and desolate region, as Mr. Webster’s “diligent reading” portrays?
But what must satisfy every man whose blindness is not of the soul rather than of the senses, is the fact that the people of New Mexico, in the constitution which they have just framed, have embodied a prohibition of slavery in their fundamental law. Had slavery been forbidden there by any “Asiatic scenery,” or by any “law of physical geography,” who should know it better than they? They have had slavery amongst them heretofore, and therefore they know it can invade them again, and therefore they forbid it; and in the choice of senators to Congress under the new organization, should any candidate put forward the vagary, the phantasm, the fatuity, that slavery cannot exist among them, they would doubtless deem him a less fit subject for the Senate of the United States than for sanitary treatment.
How stands the evidence, then, on the question, whether “California and New Mexico,” from their geology, their geography, or their Asiatic scenery, are inaccessible or not, to the invasion of slavery? It is well known that the war with Mexico was provoked, and violently precipitated upon the country, in order to extend the domain and the power of slavery. In negotiating for the cession of California and New Mexico, the Mexican commissioners strove to introduce a prohibition against slavery into the treaty. This demonstrates that they thought slavery could exist there. Our minister declared that he would assent to no such stipulation, though they would cover all the land a foot thick with gold. This shows the tenacity with which Mr. Polk’s administration, and all its southern friends, adhered to their original purpose of obtaining new territory for slavery. In view of this, the House of Representatives again and again voted to apply the proviso to whatever territory should be obtained. When the treaty was ratified, many of the leading senators voted against the clause for acquisition, foreseeing the present controversy, and hoping to avert it. Even after the treaty was ratified, leading southern Whigs in the House voted against paying the first instalment under it, still clinging to the hope that the territory might be restored to Mexico, and this cause of dissension withdrawn. During all this period, fourteen of the northern legislatures, many of them again and again, voted that the proviso should be applied. The present six months’ contest, in the Senate and House, between the north and the south, is conducted solely on the conviction that slavery may exist in the territories; and that it will or will not exist there, according as the law allows or forbids it. Otherwise it would be the most nonsensical and nugatory discussion ever engaged in out of a lunatic asylum. Once make it as clear as any law of physical nature, that slavery can never transgress the bounds of the new territories, and there is not a man so demented that he would any longer contend either for the proviso, or against it. Mr. Webster was always of the same opinion, and has declared it a hundred times. In his Marshfield speech, September 1, 1848, he said, “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 [of slavery] as to these new territories.” Up to the 7th of March, 1850, then, when he abandoned all the doctrines and sentiments he had ever before advocated on this subject, and when he incurred the public, hearty approval and encomiums of Mr. Calhoun, by his moral agility in springing, at one leap, from Massachusetts to South Carolina;—until this time, Mr. Webster had always held, that slavery would invade the new territories if not barred out of them by positive law. And what would be still more remarkable, if the doctrines of the 7th of March speech had the least shadow of soundness in them, is, that they have now been before the public for more than four months, and, so far as I know, not a single southern man has been converted by them. Are not Mr. Benton, Mr. Mason, Colonel Davis, and thousands of others, individually, as good judges, or as good witnesses, as he is? Since the speech, the people of New Mexico have prohibited slavery in their constitution, because they knew it to be possible among them. Before the speech, California did the same, and for the same reason. The Nashville convention has just resolved, “That California is peculiarly adapted for slave labor, and that if the tenure of slave property was by recognition of this kind secured in that part of the country south of 36° 30´, it would in a short time form one or more slaveholding states, to swell the number and power of those already in existence.” Even those who seek to apologize for Mr. Webster, avow, at the same time, their disbelief in his doctrine. Such is the evidence, on the one side and on the other, as to the possibility or impossibility of slavery in the territories. Mr. Webster is against the whole world, and the whole world is against him, and this, too, on a question already settled by history and experience. He is just as much to be believed, as a man who looks up into the clear midnight sky, and denies the existence of the heavenly host, while all the stars of the firmament are shining down into his eyes.
To increase the overwhelming proof against Mr. Webster, I add the following:—
House of Representatives, June 1, 1850.
Hon. S. R. Thurston, Delegate from Oregon.
Dear Sir; In a speech delivered by you, in the House of Representatives, in March last, I understood you to say that you had been in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and that you were acquainted, from personal observation, with a large part of the territory of California. Will you be so good as to give me your opinion, and the reasons for entertaining it, of the probability or improbability of the introduction of slave labor into any part of the territory recently acquired by the United States from Mexico; provided such introduction be not prohibited by law.
I wish to obtain your opinion in regard to other kinds of labor, as well as agricultural; because, as it seems to me, a most unwarrantable, if not a most disingenuous attempt has been made, to lead the public to believe that no form of slave labor will ever be introduced there, because, possibly, or probably, it may not be introduced for agricultural purposes.
A reply at your earliest convenience will much oblige
Yours, very truly,
HORACE MANN.