A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention / For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861

by L. E. Chittenden

The South asks the right to use and occupy a portion of the common territory of the country. As a northern man I will accept the compromise, and I believe a large majority of the people will agree with me. You, gentlemen of the South, have asked that the arrangement may be extended to territory hereafter to be acquired. New Jersey has voted in this Convention against interference with slavery in the territory, present or future, and she is the only northern State that has cast her vote in favor of your demand. Her representatives have been told somewhat sneeringly, that while slaveholding States voted against this proposition, New Jersey was the only free State that voted for it. Well, we accept the responsibility, and will bear it. New Jersey has made up her record. There it stands, and there let it stand forever. We are proud of it. If civil war is to come, if this land is to be deluged with fraternal blood, when that time comes there will not be a northern State represented here that would not give untold millions to be placed upon that record by the side of New Jersey.

The fact is, sir, we have acquired our liberties too cheaply. Had we purchased them at the cost our fathers did, by coloring the snows of winter by our blood tracks, and by passing the summers in the unhealthy morass, we should have learned to prize them more highly; we should be more patriotic and less proud, more sensible and less sensitive.

A word further on the subject of extending this provision to territory hereafter acquired. Gentlemen, you do not want that provision; you do not need any provision as to future acquisitions. You are better off without it. No present rights are involved in it. You are providing for a contingency which may never, and probably never will happen. Would it not be inconsistent for a nation to commit suicide because a constitution is not made to meet an improbable contingency? You have territory enough for the next two hundred years. You say you require it to maintain your honor, to preserve your fair equality, to maintain your lawful rights. Permit me to say you have no rights in territory which we never owned, and I hope never may. This is no question of honor or equality. But if we should acquire territory and should then exclude you from it, will it not then be time enough to resort to the expedient of national suicide as a remedy for the wrong? Nor do you require it for any particular purpose. You have within your States room for all the increase of a century. Your interest is to retain your sons at home and develop the wealth and advance the prosperity of your States, and not to send them to the western wilderness where one-half die in the process of acclimation. The fact that you are all in favor of placing in the Constitution new restrictions as to the acquisition of territory, proves you do not consider you need more territory. I heard it said, the other day, by a gentleman from Virginia, that the South wanted the provision for a finality, to end forever this dispute about slavery. With all my heart I sympathize with him in his desire to end this discussion forever. You think you have suffered from these discussions at the South; so have we at the North. It has separated families and neighborhoods; it has broken up and scattered Christian churches; it has severed every benevolent society of the land; it has destroyed parties; it broke up the good old Whig party, and more recently sapped the strength and vigor from the Herculean Democracy. It now threatens the dissolution of the Union. Let us crush the head of the monster forever. Let us do it by restricting and defining its limits in existing territory.

Suppose the word "future" had been inserted. You do not wish to destroy all probability of the adoption of this proposition at the North. These proposals could not pass Congress, with the word "future," by the requisite vote; and if it passed Congress, there is no hope that twenty-five out of twenty-eight States would have adopted it. With it you would have given great strength to the opposition at the North. It would have created a more powerful anti-slavery party than ever before existed. No, you are better off by confining the provisions of this compromise to present territory—you having, as well as the North, in the contemplated amendment a veto on the acquisition of territory.

The North will want new territory before you will desire it. They will demand Mexico and Cuba for the advantages of trade. You then, having the veto power, can say to them—No, gentlemen, we will not agree to it unless our particular institution is there respected; or, if you please, you may go further and say, We will not acquiesce unless this territory comes in as a slave State so as to restore measurably the balance of power in the Government. With this veto power you would have the North in your hands, and could make your own terms. You make the provision more of a finality by letting it stand as it is.

But gentlemen say, they want the amendment for another purpose, in order that they may induce States that have gone out to return. Here, again, I sympathize with you. I had rather bring back South Carolina than to secure the annexation of both the Canadas. I would give more for one American than for a regiment of John Bulls. Ungenerous as South Carolina has been, I would receive her home again. I desire the States to return. Let their place at the Federal Board remain vacant for them. Let the stars of their sovereignty on our nation's ensign remain unobliterated and without further dishonor. We are ready to receive them. But this provision as to future territory is not necessary for their return. The same considerations to which I have alluded, and which, will satisfy you that such provision is not requisite, will satisfy them. The guarantees which the North are ready to give as to the representation, taxation, and return of property, and the compromise as to the existing territory, will do much to satisfy them. To effect a compromise, you of the South must demand as little as you can render satisfactory to your people, and we of the North must give as much as our people will approve, and both parties must consent to avoid all objectionable phraseology.

Now, a few words to my friends of the North. There is resting upon us a grave responsibility. We are bound to settle this question finally in this Convention. Talk about a convention of the people! We who have no constitution, we who are tied up to no technicalities, must settle it. We of the North may meet political death; but let political death come, it is enough to have lived for, if we can settle this question.

But one asks, Will you strike hands with treason, and enter into compacts with rebels and traitors? Yes, sir! I will strike hands with just such rebels and traitors as I see around me; and I would give them what they ask as cheerfully and as freely as I would give a glass of water to a soldier returning wounded and weary from the field of battle.

But it is said we must first see whether we have a Government. We must try the strength of the Government. We must know whether the Government can assert its supremacy and compel obedience to its laws. Sir, that is just what I do not want to try. What, try the strength of the Government! and do so at the end of an administration in which corruption and treason and every evil principle have been contending for the mastery, when our ships are all away beyond sea, when our arms and our fortifications are out of our hands, when our treasury is bankrupt, our people divided, insolvency and ruin threatening our country, and all the Gulf States defying the authority of the Government? No, sir! this is no time to try the strength of the Government. When we do that, let us select some more auspicious period.

But another says these proposals of amendment contravene the Chicago platform. What if they do? Is the Chicago platform a law to us? Is it a law to any one? It was passed upon ten minutes' consideration in a convention of five thousand people. If it was a law, the convention should have been perpetual and never dissolved, in order that the law might have been subject to requisite modifications without a change of circumstances. A strange manner in which to enact such a law! But things have changed since the Chicago Convention. In fifty days, fifty years of history have transpired. This is enough to release us from the obligation, if any existed. It is not a law; it is a doctrine, the spirit, the policy of the party that it undertakes to enunciate. It is not a law, because a majority of the people have never given it their sanction. Mr. Lincoln was elected by less than a majority. And in his vote how many old Whigs and Democrats may be counted who did not support him because he stood upon the Chicago platform, but because they preferred him to either of the opposing candidates. And even if it is a law, I call upon the North to support the proposals of amendment here submitted. Let us, as Republicans, be honest, and when the opportunity offers are we not bound so to change the Constitution that three-fourths of all our present territory, now open to slavery, shall be consecrated to freedom? Yes, we are bound to relieve that three-fourths from slavery. All we need to do to secure this, is not to carry slavery where it is not, but to secure it where it is. I can go home to the Republicans of New Jersey with a clear conscience and say to them, that by our action here we have not carried slavery one inch farther than it was before. If they are not satisfied with that, they must be dissatisfied.