Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

Just nine days (January 24, 1848) before the treaty of peace (Guadalupe Hidalgo), John A. Sutter, a Swiss by parentage, German by birth (Baden), American by residence and naturalization (Missouri), Mexican in turn, by residence and naturalization, together with James A. Marshall, a Jerseyman wheelwright in Sutter's employ, while the latter was walking in a newly-constructed and recently flooded saw-mill tail-race, in the small valley of Coloma, about forty-five miles from Sacramento (then Sutter's Fort), in the foot- hills of the Sierras, picked up some small, shining yellow particles, which proved to be free gold.(62)

"The accursed thirst for gold" was now soon to outrun the accursed greed for more slave territory. The race was unequal. The whole world joined in the race for gold. The hunger for wealth seized all alike, the common laborer, the small farmer, the merchant, the mechanic, the politician, the lawyer and the clergyman, the soldier and the sailor from the army and navy; from all countries and climes came the gold seeker; only the slaveholder with his slaves alone were left behind. There was no place for the latter with freemen who themselves swung the pick and rocked the cradle in search of the precious metal.

California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona still give up their gold and their silver to the free miner; and the financial condition and prosperity of the civilized countries of the world have been favorably affected by these productions, but of this we are not here to speak. Slavery is our text, and we must not stray too far from it.

Turning back to the negotiations for the first treaty with Mexico, we find, to her everlasting credit, though compelled to part with her possessions, she still desired they should continue to be free.

Slavery, as has already been shown, did not exist in Mexico by law; and California and New Mexico held no slaves, so, during the negotiations, the Mexican representatives begged for the incorporation of an article providing that slavery should be prohibited in all the territory to be ceded. N. P. Trist, the American Commissioner, promptly and fiercely resented the bare mention of the subject. He replied that if the territory to be acquired were tenfold more valuable, and covered a foot thick with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery was to be excluded therefrom, the proposition would not be for a moment entertained, nor even communicated to the President.(63)

Though the invocation was in behalf of humanity, the "invincible Anglo-Saxon race" (so cried Senator Preston in 1836) "could not listen to the prayer of superstitious Catholicism, goaded on by a miserable priesthood."

Now that California and New Mexico were United States territory, how was it to be devoted to slavery to reward the friends of its acquisition?

As slavery was prohibited under Mexican law, this territory must by the law of nations remain free until slavery was, by positive enactment, authorized therein. This ancient and universal law, however, was soon to be disregarded or denied by the advocates of the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States spread itself over territories, and, by force of it, legalized human slavery therein, and guaranteed to citizens of a State the right to carry their property—human slaves included—into United States territory and there hold it, by force of and protected by the Constitution, in defiance of unfriendly territorial or Congressional legislation. This novel claim also sprung from the brain of Calhoun, and was met with the true view of slavery, to wit: That it was a creature solely of law; that it existed nowhere of natural right; that whenever a slave was taken from a jurisdiction where slaves could be held by law, to one where no law made him a slave, his shackles fell off and he became a free man. The soundness of the rule that a citizen of a State could carry his personal property from his State to a Territory was admitted, but it was claimed he could not hold it there if it were not such as the laws of the Territory recognized as property. In other words, he might transfer his property from a State to a Territory, but he could not take with him the law of his State authorizing him to hold it as property. The law of the situs is of universal application governing property.

It remains to briefly note the effort to extend and interpret the Constitution, with the sole view to establish and perpetuate human slavery.

Near the close of the session of Congress (1848-49), Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, at the instigation of Calhoun moved, as a rider on an appropriation bill, a section providing a temporary government for such Territories, including a provision to "extend the Constitution of the United States to the Territories." This astounding proposition was defended by Calhoun, and, with his characteristic straightforwardness, he avowed the true object of the amendment was to override the anti-slavery laws of the Territories, and plant the institution of slavery therein, beyond the reach of Congressional or territorial law.