“This clause was the subject of a great diversity of sentiment in the convention; as the system was reported by the Committee of Detail, the provision was general, that such importation should not be prohibited, without confining it to any particular period. This was rejected by eight States; Georgia, South Carolina, and I think North Carolina, voting for it.
“We were then told by the delegates of the two first of those States, that their States would never agree to a system which put it in the power of the General Government to prevent the importation of slaves, and that they, as delegates from those States, must withhold their assent from such a system.
“A committee of one member from each State was chosen by ballot to take this part of the system under their consideration, and to endeavor to agree upon some report which should reconcile those States; to this committee also was referred the following proposition, which had been reported by the Committee of Detail, namely: ‘No navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two-thirds of the members present in each House;’ a proposition which the staple and commercial States were solicitous to retain, lest their commerce should be placed too much under the power of the eastern States, but which these last States were as anxious to reject. This committee, of which also I had the honor to be a member, met and took under their consideration the subjects committed to them. I found the eastern States, notwithstanding their aversion to slavery, were very willing to indulge the southern States at least with temporary liberty to prosecute the slave trade, provided the southern States would in their turn gratify them, by laying no restriction on navigation acts, and after a very little time, the committee, by a great majority, agreed on a report, by which the General Government was to be prohibited from preventing the importation of slaves for a limited time, and the restrictive clause relative to navigation acts was to be omitted.”
Mr. LANDRUM. Now, Mr. Chairman, we are asked to legislate to exclude slavery from the Territories, because slavery is a moral wrong, because it is a sin against God, and because it is a crime against humanity. And we are invoked to adopt that legislation by the example of our forefathers.
Now, what precedent do they furnish us in this clause of the Constitution? The Constitution of the United States did make regulations in regard to the slavery question. One of those regulations was to permit the African slave trade until the year 1808. Now, sir, was there anything so morally wrong in the African slave trade; was it any such crime against humanity as to deter the ancestors of those gentlemen from coming into a Union which permitted the African slave trade? Why, sir, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, voted to extend the limitation against the prohibition of that traffic from 1800 to 1808. Does the honorable chairman of this committee (Mr. Buffington) blush for his ancestors because they knew so little of the primary truths of common morality, as expounded by the gentleman from Connecticut, (Mr. Ferry,) in the commencement of this debate, soon after the organization of this House, in voting such a provision as that?
The State of Massachusetts was a sovereign State before she entered into this Confederacy, unabridged by any limitation. She could have prevented her citizens then, as the United States does now, from participating in the slave trade even between foreign ports in foreign nations; and yet your ancestors not only voted with South Carolina and Georgia, who refused to come into the Union unless the African slave trade was permitted so long as they desired it, but in coming into that Union, it gave to the citizens of Massachusetts, too, a like authority to engage in that trade.
What a sin against God, what a crime against humanity, did these Massachusetts legislators vote to perpetuate! And yet, I imagine, the honorable Chairman is proud of his ancestors; and we are told now that because we will not join you in the hue-and-cry against slavery, and do not legislate to exclude slavery from the Territories, we are the authors of the evils with which the country is afflicted. You are not satisfied with our silence, our inaction; you say that we want to perpetuate a crime against humanity, and have departed from the lesson of wisdom inculcated by our ancestors.
Sir, I believe in the teachings of the ancient patriots. I take their precedents, and although not now in favor of the reopening of the African slave trade, because it is inexpedient, (though, as I do not consider the question before the country, I confess I have not studied it,) yet I venerate those legislators who sacrificed their prejudices in order that they might get South Carolina and Georgia into the Union, who refused to come in without it.
The gentleman from Connecticut, who first opened this debate, and who, I believe, is not now in his seat, remarked in his speech, that evil, disguised in whatever form it might be, would only produce evil; and therefore you must first lay down a moral code, and no matter what results it apparently leads you to, you must never violate it. Sir, his ancestors told a different tale. They said, in admitting South Carolina and Georgia into the Union, that, although they objected to the slave trade, more good would be accomplished than by prohibiting the slave trade and losing those two States.
That is the policy which guided our ancestors; and now, what do we ask? What does the Democratic party ask? Do we ask this Government to legislate slavery into the Territories? We have never made any such demand. We have never yet asked anything of this Government but to let it alone. And I assure you, that New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, voted to perpetuate the slave trade, and to give her citizens the right to engage in it from 1800 to 1808, by that clause in the Constitution which gives the citizens of each State the rights of the citizens of every other State. She relinquished the power which they had to forbid her own citizens from participating in the slave trade, and opened the door to them. That is what your ancestors did in the Constitution under which this Government was formed, and which is the basis of all its legislation. And yet, you can give no legislative encouragement to slavery; you must exclude it wherever you have the power to exclude it, not as a matter of policy—at least that is not the ground upon which you base your action—but because it is a moral wrong, and a crime against humanity.