The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery / Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860

by Joseph K. Edgerton

And yet it is for bringing the slavery agitation to this result—a result of which the men of the South upon their own principles cannot complain, and of which their best men do not complain, and of which the North has no reason to complain, but rather to rejoice, that Stephen A. Douglas, the ablest statesman of whom this nation can boast since the mighty intellect of Webster ceased to speak in words of power, has been covered all over with the vilest and bitterest denunciation—denunciation that would seem to be more the outpouring of personal malignity than the voice of mere partisan hostility. It is for this result that Douglas has been outlawed by a professedly Democratic administration, and the Democratic party itself broken up by Southern disunionists, aided by that same administration. But a nation's returning justice will yet lift aloft her scale, and Stephen A. Douglas can afford to abide his time.

I have thus, I fear tediously to you, brought you to the last act of the great national drama of slavery agitation.

Let us now briefly review the ground, sum up the points, and see how we stand for the final struggle near at hand.

These are the propositions I have aimed to establish:

1. Slavery existed in all the States of the Union when it was formed, and no power was conceded to Congress, under the Confederation to interfere with it.

2. The Jefferson ordinance of 1784, the first act of Congress relating to the territory of the United States, conceded to the people of the territories as inchoate States, full power of internal legislation, and did not prohibit slavery.

3. The Dane ordinance of 1787, applied only to territory not adapted to negro slave labor; it was adopted under an implied power, if any, in the Congress of the Confederation. Viewed on strict constitutional grounds, it was a usurpation, like many other powers exercised by the old Congress, but it was in terms a compact more than a legislative act, and as such by consent of all the States concerned, became binding on the government and the States under the Constitution. It is, therefore, no precedent for mere legislative acts of Congress, prohibiting or permitting slavery in any territory.

4. The Constitution, like the Union itself, is the result, as declared by its framers, of "a spirit of amity and of mutual deference and concession." It recognizes slavery as a lawful institution under local law, in the basis of representation and taxation—in the right to continue the African slave trade until 1808, and in the right to reclaim fugitive slaves; but it concedes to Congress no express power to establish, or to prohibit, or abolish slavery in the States.

5. The territory acquired by the Federal government, has been acquired under the power to admit new States. The end of acquisition was to make new States, not colonies nor provinces. Hence, whether the power in Congress to govern such territory is derived from the power to make needful rules and regulations concerning the territory or other property of the United States, or the power to admit new States, or any other express power, the power must be exercised with reference to its only legitimate end, the formation and admission of new States, in all respects of internal sovereignty equal to the original States; and the Constitution rightfully interpreted therefore, requires Congress to do no more as to legislation for the territories than to provide for territorial governments, through which the people may form and regulate their own internal affairs, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and to admit them as States whenever ripe for that event. The object of providing territorial governments is to enable the territorial people to exercise self-government, and if fit for it as to one class of domestic institutions, they are fit for it as to another; if fit to define the relations and rights of husband and wife, of parent and child, of guardian and ward, they are equally fit to define them as to master and servant.

6. If there be precedents in the action of Congress for prohibiting slavery, there are equal precedents for permitting it or extending it. Slavery was extended by acquiring Louisiana and Florida; it was extended by admitting Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida and Texas as Slave States; and the history of the Federal government in regard to slavery shows that the power of Congress to prohibit slavery has been exercised as to territory not adapted to slave labor, and the power to permit it has been exercised as to territory adapted to negro slave labor, and the criterion by which the question of prohibition or permission has been determined, has been the wants and consequent wishes of the white people of the territories. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into the consent or non-consent of the local authority; and herein lies the absurdity of both extreme sectional dogmas of Congressional power to prohibit and Congressional power to permit, both conceding ultimate power in the State legislatures to establish or prohibit slavery, and denying it to the territorial legislatures, in the face of the admitted fact that it is not the Congress, but the local authority that must ultimately decide.