The Middle Period, 1817-1858

by John William Burgess

At last the House had encroached upon the most essential part of the right of petition, the right to have the petition heard. The moderate men of the South and twenty-eight members from the North had given way before the radical men of the South, and had fallen into the ranks under their lead. The Southern radicals thought that they had won a great victory, but it was not so. They had only identified the denial of the right of petition with the interests of slavery. They had only demonstrated that slavery was a matter of national concern, since its interests required that limitations should be placed upon the well understood rights of the people in the non-slaveholding Commonwealths. They only made it manifest that, sooner or later, the nation must deal with the question. Their most violent enemies could not have wished them a more disastrous result.

The Abolition petitions in the Senate.

The proceedings in the Senate in regard to the Abolition petitions must be even more concisely stated. The course pursued and the result reached were similar to what has been described in the account of the experiences of the House. The Senate first received and heard the petitions, and voted immediately to deny their prayer. Then, when it became evident that this would not prevent anti-slavery agitation on the floor of the Senate, the body adopted the custom of hearing a motion not to receive a petition, and voting immediately to lay the motion not to receive, and along with it the petition itself, on the table. This practice was modified a little later, by a ruling of the presiding officer, to the effect that an objection to the petition by any member would raise the question of the reception of the petition without a formal motion. Mr. Calhoun had contended for this method of raising the question in regard to the reception of the petitions from the beginning of the struggle over the subject, in January of 1836. He seemed, however, to desire to dispose of them by simply voting not to receive them. In fact, he made a motion to this effect, at the very outset of the contest, but without success. While thus the Senate did not formally adopt the practice finally reached in the House of refusing to receive the petitions, it arrived at about the same result in practice. It is true that the presiding officer of the Senate allowed the petitions to be read before putting the motion upon their reception, which seems to have been an illogical practice indeed, and that any member might move to call up the motion not to receive, and with it the petition or petitions to which that motion referred; but the reading before the motion not to receive, or before the objection to receiving, was perfunctory, and there was no member of the Senate who desired to call up the tabled petitions or persisted in so doing. As a matter of fact, the public opinion which the Abolitionists succeeded in creating in the North concerning the attitude of the Senate toward the Abolition petitions was that the Senate had done the same violence to the people's constitutional right of petition that the House had done. It was held and believed throughout the North, in 1840, that the Congress of the United States, in both of its branches, had set the interests of slavery above the liberties of the people of the North.

There were two incidents which happened during the course of the proceedings in the Senate upon the subject to which brief reference should be made. One was the noted passage of words between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Rives, of Virginia, in regard to the morality of slavery, and the other was the petition from the legislature of Vermont for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun in regard to the morality of slavery.

The Abolitionists had assumed to have the ethical principle entirely upon their side, and this had not, down to 1836, been clearly disputed by the slaveholders. The slaveholders had, themselves, as we have so often seen, acknowledged slavery to be an evil, and had, therefore, defended it chiefly from the point of view of positive law. Of course so profound a thinker as Mr. Calhoun knew that positive law cannot permanently withstand the assaults of ethical principle. He knew that the moral arguments against slavery must be met upon moral grounds, as well as upon legal grounds. The discussion was carried over upon ethical premises by the remark of Mr. Rives that he, though a slaveholder, was not in favor of slavery in the abstract, and differed on that point with the gentleman from South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun immediately denied that he had expressed any opinion in regard to the question of slavery in the abstract, and said he had spoken of slavery only "as existing where two races of men, of different color, and striking dissimilarity in conformation, habits, and a thousand other particulars, were placed in immediate juxtaposition." Mr. Calhoun elaborated his argument in many directions, but the gist of it was that where a civilized race and a barbarous race, nearly equal numerically, must live together, the civilized race must, in the interests of the civilization of both races, control the barbarous race, through the relation of the slavery of the latter to the former, and that the only alternative to this would be the barbarizing of the whole society by the uncontrolled deeds and passions of the barbarous race, if the two races are left to themselves, or the establishment of a barbaric despotism over the civilized race, if the barbaric race be aided by successful interference from without. In contrast with either of these conditions, Mr. Calhoun contended that the slavery of the barbarous race to the civilized race was a moral good.

From a metaphysical point of view the only question between Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun was whether every departure from the perfect good must be considered an evil, or whether a nearer approximation to the perfect good may be called a good in contrast with a lower approximation. Mr. Rives was looking at the subject from an abstract, transcendental point of view, while Mr. Calhoun was regarding it from the historical point of view. Mr. Rives was with the Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but against them as to the time and means of applying it. Mr. Calhoun was not against the Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but the time of its possible application appeared to him so far distant, and the impropriety and unfairness of interference by outsiders in the matter and the disastrous consequences which must flow from such interference seemed to him so plain and so certain, that he almost lost sight of the abstract height upon which the Abolitionists stood behind the many intervening elevations, which must be first attained and traversed in order to reach their position.

The moral ground upon which Calhoun and the Abolitionists could have met.