Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

The present nondescript hood, giving the statue crowning the dome its appearance, in some views, of a wild Indian, was substituted for the Liberty cap.

XXVIII SLAVERY PROHIBITED IN THE TERRITORIES—1862

Growing out of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the question was raised by Lovejoy of Illinois and others as to the duty of Congress to declare freedom national and slavery sectional; and also to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the Union.

A bill was passed, which (June 19, 1862) was approved by the President, and became the last general law of Congress on the subject of slavery in the Territories. It reads:

"That from and after the passage of this act there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the Territories of the United States, now existing, or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

By this act the principles of the Ordinance of 1787 (sixth section) were applied universally to all existing and to be acquired territory of the United States.

It was only, in effect, Jefferson's Ordinance of 1784, defeated by one vote in the old Congress, the loss of which he deplored so much. His benign purpose to restrict slavery was delayed seventy- eight years—until blood flowed to sanction it.

XXIX BENTON'S SUMMARY

We close this already too long history of human slavery in the United States with Thomas H. Benton's summary of the "cardinal points" in the aggressive policy of the impetuous South in pushing forward slavery as a cause for disunion. He wrote, four years anterior to the Rebellion of 1861, with a prophetic pen, nibbed by the experience of a Senator for thirty years, and as a slaveholder. He had actively participated in most of the events of which he speaks, and was personally familiar with all of them.(123)

"But I am not now writing the history of the present slavery agitation—a history which the young have not learnt, and the old have forgotten, and which every American ought to understand. I only indicate cardinal points to show its character; and of these a main one remains to be stated. Up to Mr. Pierce's administration the plan had been defensive—that is to say, to make the secession of the South a measure of self-defence against the abolition encroachments, aggressions, and crusades of the North. In the time of Mr. Pierce, the plan became offensive—that is to say, to commence the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of territory to spread it over, so as to overpower the North with new slave States, and drive them out of the Union. In this change of tactics originated the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, the attempt to purchase one half of Mexico, and the actual purchase of a large part; the design to take Cuba; the encouragement to Kinney and to Walker in Central America; the quarrels with Great Britain for outlandish coasts and islands; the designs upon the Tehuantepec, the Nicaragua, the Panama, and the Darien routes; and the scheme to get a foothold in the Island of San Domingo. The rising in the free States in consequence of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise checked these schemes, and limited the success of the disunionists to the revival of the agitation which enables them to wield the South against the North in all the Federal elections and Federal legislation. Accidents and events have given this part a strange pre-eminence— under Jackson's administration proclaimed for treason; since, at the head of the government and of the Democratic party. The death of Harrison, and the accession of Tyler, was their first great lift; the election of Mr. Pierce was their culminating point. It not only gave them the government, but power to pass themselves for the Union party, and for democrats; and to stigmatize all who refused to go with them as disunionists and abolitionists. And to keep up this classification is the object of the eleven pages of the message which calls for this Review—unhappily assisted in that object by the conduct of a few real abolitionists (not five per centum of the population of the free States); but made to stand, in the eyes of the South, for the whole."