Such are the views, Mr. Chairman, and such the example of our forefathers when they framed the Constitution. I take those examples of our forefathers, and their legislative action under it, for my precedents. I care not what their private opinions may have been; I want to know what their legislative conduct was when they were acting on oath, for they were men who regarded their oaths. They were men, sir, who did not believe that the Constitution they framed would be contrary to the higher law, and that it would be consistent with their oath of office to violate it.
Well, Mr. Chairman, what further was the action of the fathers under the Constitution of the United States. I will refer back to one memorable example which goes behind that instrument. In the treaty with the British Government it was stipulated that the British should not carry away any negroes or other property of the American citizens. John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin signed that treaty; and this, sir, was the language they used:
The British “shall not carry away the negroes or other property belonging to the people of the United States.”
Yet we are told that, according to the doctrine of our forefathers, there can be no such thing as property in man. The language I have quoted occurs first in the preliminary articles in 1782, and again in the treaty of peace which was signed in 1783.
Kentucky was admitted into the Union as a slave State, without objection, on the 4th of February, 1791. Now, if you had the right to exclude Missouri because she tolerated slavery, why did you not have the same right to exclude Kentucky? Why were conscientious scruples abandoned in the case of Kentucky, and the Territory of Virginia given, by the detaching of Kentucky, four Senators in the Senate of the United States, instead of two? Our forefathers—yours and mine—voted for the admission of Kentucky as a slave State. It will not do to say that slavery already existed in Kentucky; because, if slavery be a sin and a crime and a curse, then, according to your doctrine, it ought not to have been extended by giving the slave States additional representation and power in the Senate of the United States.
Why, sir, if it would have been bad faith to have excluded Kentucky, was it not bad faith to exclude Missouri? Because in the ordinance establishing the territorial government of Missouri, in 1812, there was no Wilmot proviso, no prohibition of slavery? But slavery was permitted, as we ask it shall be permitted now; it was protected by the courts, and no complaint was urged within the Territory of Missouri, in regard to this question of slavery until she applied for admission into the Union. If your anti-slavery party, which I charge is the cause of all the evils with which this country is afflicted, was right then in excluding Missouri, because she did not abolish slavery, your forefathers were wrong in admitting Kentucky. Either they were wrong and you are right, or you are wrong and they were right. Between the two I have no hesitation in my choice. Regarded as patriots, regarded as intelligent men, considered as men who regarded their oaths, I have no hesitation in saying I believe they were equally as honest as the Republican party of the present day.
In 1793 they gave us the fugitive slave law, there being only seven votes in opposition to it, and some of those were from the South, I think—a law, which if we attempt to enforce in the northern States we are met by mobs, and bloodshed frequently follows. No southern man dares go into some portions of the northern States and attempt to execute this law, except at the peril of his life.
Such was the action of the founders of the republic, whose example we are constantly called upon to imitate. Tennessee was admitted in 1796, with slavery. The Territory of Mississippi was organized in 1798, by the application of the ordinance of 1787 to that Territory, and the restriction as to slavery removed. That was legislation under the Constitution. These are the precedents we are to follow; and we are not to go behind the Constitution and follow the precedent of 1787, when the relation of the States to each other was entirely different from what it is now under the Constitution.
Ah! but you say, Mr. Jefferson thought slavery was a great wrong. But the acquisition of Louisiana in 1804 was a great right. Mr. Jefferson was then President of the republic. He represented the people of the free States, and he represented the people of the slave States; and no matter what his private opinion might have been upon the question of slavery, or upon the question of religion, or upon any other question, we, as legislators sitting in this Hall, acting under oath, as he did, have nothing to do with your private opinions upon the subject; but we have something to do with your legislative action; and I call upon you, acting under oath, as Jefferson did, to imitate his example. He acquired Louisiana through the instrumentality of Livingston and Monroe, who signed the treaty. Slavery existed in the Territory of Louisiana by the treaty by which she was acquired, and by that her inhabitants were guarantied their rights of property.
Louisiana was admitted into the Union, in 1812, as a slave State. I know that specious objections are made in these cases. The objection has been made that in Tennessee, in Kentucky, and in Mississippi, slavery already existed; but, acting upon the principle upon which gentlemen here propose to legislate, that whatever is wrong and evil can produce nothing but evil—and you must follow it to its results, no matter where it leads you—no question of policy can be entertained. Why did these eminent opponents of slavery, as they are called, and to whose opinions we are constantly referred, increase the slave power, and encourage slavery aggression, as you term it? The only aggression slaveholders have ever made upon the free States is a demand that they should let this matter alone. Why do not members of Congress, assembled within these Halls, imitate the legislation of these men? I assure you, there was no such restrictive legislation in the Constitution, nor under the Constitution, up to 1820; for in 1813, under the administration of Madison, I believe, slaves were recognized as property, and taxed by the Government; and in 1814, in the treaty of peace with Great Britain, it is again expressly stipulated that all slaves and other private property—I use the very language of the treaty—in the possession of either of the belligerent parties, should be returned to the other, which shows that they had no constitutional or conscientious scruples against protecting slave property.