The Senate has a veto on every law; and as one half of that body are slaveholders, it follows, of course, that no law can be passed without their consent. Nor has any bill passed the Senate, since the organization of the government, but by the votes of slaveholders. It is idle, therefore, for them to impute their depressed condition to unjust and partial legislation, since they have from the very first controlled the action of Congress. Not a law has been passed, not a treaty ratified, but by their votes.
Nor is this all. Appointments under the federal government are made by the President, with the consent of the Senate, and of course the slaveholders have, and always have had, a veto on every appointment. There is not an officer of the federal government to whose appointment slaveholding members of the Senate have not consented. Yet all this gives but an inadequate idea of the political influence exercised by the people of the slave States in the election of President, and consequently over the policy of his administration. In consequence of the peculiar apportionment of Presidential Electors among the States, and the operation of the rule of federal numbers—whereby, for the purpose of estimating the representative population, five slaves are counted as three white men—most extraordinary results are exhibited at every election of President. In the election of 1848, the Electors chosen were 290: of these 169 were from the free, and 121 from the slave States.
The popular vote in the free States was 2,029,551
or one elector to 12,007 voters.
The popular vote in the slave States was 845,050
or one elector to 7,545 voters.[14]
Even this disproportion, enormous as it is, is greatly aggravated in regard to particular States.
[ [14] South Carolina had 9 electors, chosen by the Legislature. These are deducted in the calculation.
| New York | gave 455,761 votes, and had 36 electors. |
| Virginia Maryland N. Carolina | gave 242,547 " " 36 " |
| Ohio | gave 328,489 " " 28 " |
| Delaware Georgia Louisiana Alabama Arkansas Florida Texas | gave 237,811 " " 38 " |
These facts address themselves to the understanding of all, and prove, beyond cavil, that the slave States have a most unfair and unreasonable representation in Congress, and a very disproportionate share in the election of President.
Nor can these States complain that they are stinted in the distribution of the patronage of the national government. The rule of federal numbers, confined by the Constitution to the apportionment of representatives, has been extended, by the influence of the slaveholders, to other and very different subjects. Thus, the distribution among the States of the surplus revenue, and of the proceeds of the public lands, was made according to this same iniquitous rule.