The colonization scheme of Massachusetts, as we have said, excited alarm in Missouri. Its obvious design was to operate further than the mere prevention of the natural expansion of slavery. It was intended to narrow its existing limits,—to destroy all equilibrium of power between the North and the South, and leave the slaveholder at the will of a majority, ready to disregard constitutional obligations, and carry out to their bitter end the mandates of ignorance, prejudice and bigotry. Its success manifestly involved a radical change in our Federal Government, or its total overthrow. If Kansas could be thus abolitionized, every additional part of the present public domain hereafter opened to settlement, and every future accession of territory, would be the subject of similar experiments, and an exploded Wilmot Proviso thus virtually enforced throughout an extended domain still claimed as national, and still bearing on its military ensigns the stars and stripes of the Union. If the plan was constitutional and legal, it must be conceded that it was skillfully contrived, and admirably adapted to its ends. It was also eminently practicable, if no resistance was encountered, since the States adopting it contained a surplus population which could be bought up and shipped, whilst the South, which had an interest in resisting, had no such people among her white population. The Kansas-Nebraska law, too, which was so extremely hateful to the fanatics, and has constituted the principal theme of their recent denunciations, would be a dead letter, both as it regarded the two Territories for which it was particularly framed, and as a precedent to Congress for the opening of other districts to settlement. The old Missouri restriction could have done no more, and the whole purpose of the anti-slavery agitators, both in and out of Congress, was quietly accomplished. But the scheme failed—as it deserved to fail; and as the peace, prosperity, and union of our country required it should fail. It was a scheme totally at variance with the genius of our government, both State and Federal, and with the social institutions which these governments were designed to protect, and its success would have been as fatal to those who contrived it, as it could have been to those intended to be its victims.
The circumstance of novelty is entitled to its weight in politics as well as law. The abolition irruption upon Kansas is without precedent in our history. Seventy-nine years of our national life have rolled by; Territory after Territory has been annexed, or settled, and added to the galaxy of States, until from thirteen we have increased to thirty-two; yet it never before entered into the head of any statesman, North or South, to devise a plan of acquiring exclusive occupation of a Territory by State colonization. To Massachusetts belongs the honor of its invention, and we trust she will survive its defeat. But, she is not the Massachusetts, we must do justice to her past history to say, that she was in the times of her Adams', her Hancocks, and her Warrens; nor yet is she where she stood in more recent times, when her Websters, and Choates, and Winthrops, led the van of her statesmen. Her legislative halls are filled with ruthless fanatics, dead to the past and reckless to the future; her statute books are polluted with enactments purporting to annul the laws of Congress, passed in pursuance, and by reason of the special requirements of the Constitution; and her senatorial chairs at Washington are filled by a rhetorician and a bigot, one of whom studies to disguise in the drapery of a classic elocution, the most hideous and treasonable forms of fanaticism; whilst his colleague is pleased to harangue a city rabble with open and unadulterated disunionism, associated with the oracles of abolitionism and infidelity—a melancholy spectacle to the descendants of the compatriots of Benjamin Franklin!
No southern or slaveholding State has ever attempted to colonize a Territory. Our public lands have been left to the occupancy of such settlers as soil and climate invited. The South has sent no armies to force slave labor upon those who preferred free labor. Kentucky sprung from Virginia, as did Tennessee from North Carolina, and Kansas will from Missouri—from contiguity of territory, and similarity of climate. Emigration has followed the parallels of latitude and will continue to do so, unless diverted by such organizations as Emigrant Aid Societies and Kansas Leagues.
It has been said that the citizens of Massachusetts have an undoubted right to emigrate to Kansas; that this right may be exercised individually, or in families, or in larger private associations; and that associated enterprise, under the sanction of legislative enactments, is but another and equally justifiable form of emigration. Political actions, like those of individuals, must be judged by their motives and effects. Unquestionably, emigration, both individual and collective, from the free States to the South, and, vice versa, from the slave States to the North, has been progressing from the foundation of our government to the present day, without comment and without objection. It is not pretended that such emigration, even if fostered by State patronage, would be illegal, or in any respect objectionable. The wide expanse of the fertile West, and the deserted wastes of the sunny South, invite occupation; and no man, from the southern extremity of Florida to the northern boundary of Missouri, has ever objected to an emigrant simply because he was from the North, and preferred free labor to that of slaves. Upon this subject he is allowed to consult his own taste, convenience, and conscience; and it is expected that he will permit his neighbors to exercise the same privilege. But, no one can fail to distinguish between an honest, bona fide emigration, prompted by choice or necessity, and an organized colonization with offensive purposes upon the institutions of the country proposed to be settled. Nor can there be any doubt in which class to place the movements of Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Societies and Kansas Leagues. Their motives have been candidly avowed, and their objects boldly proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of the land. Were this not the case, it would still be impossible to mistake them. Why, we might well enquire, if simple emigration was in view, are these extraordinary efforts confined to the Territory of Kansas? Is Nebraska, which was opened to settlement by the same law, less desirable, less inviting to northern adventurers, than Kansas? Are Iowa, and Washington, and Oregon, and Minnesota, and Illinois and Michigan, filled up with population—their lands all occupied, and furnishing no room for Massachusetts emigrants? Is Massachusetts herself overrun with population—obliged to rid herself of paupers whom she cannot feed at home? Or, is Kansas, as eastern orators have insinuated, a newly discovered paradise—a modern El Dorado, where gold and precious stones can be gathered at pleasure; or an Arcadia, where nature is so bountiful as not to need the aid of man, and fruits and vegetables of every desirable description spontaneously spring up?
There can be but one answer to these questions, and that answer shows conclusively the spirit and intent of this miscalled and pretended emigration. It is an anti-slavery movement. As such it was organized and put in motion by an anti-slavery legislature; as such, the organized army was equipped in Massachusetts, and transported to Kansas; and, as such, it was met there and defeated.
If further illustration was needed of the illegality of these movements upon Kansas, we might extend our observations to the probable reception of similar movements upon a State. If the Massachusetts legislature, or that of any other State, have the right to send an army of abolitionists into Kansas, they have the same right to transport them to Missouri. We are not apprised of any provisions in the constitutions or laws of the States, which in this respect distinguishes their condition from that of a territory. We have no laws, and we presume no slaveholding State has, which forbids the emigration of non-slaveholders. Such laws, if passed, would clearly conflict with the Federal Constitution. The southern and south-western slaveholding States are as open to emigration from non-slaveholding States as Kansas. They differ only in the price of land and the density of population. Let us suppose, then, that Massachusetts should turn her attention to Texas, and should ascertain that the population of that State was nearly divided between those who favored and those who opposed slavery, and that one thousand votes would turn the scale in favor of emancipation, and, acting in accordance with her world-wide philanthropy, she should resolve to transport the thousand voters necessary to abolish slavery in Texas, how would such a movement be received there? Or, to reverse the proposition, let it be supposed that South Carolina, with her large slaveholding population, should undertake to transport a thousand slaveholders to Delaware, with a view to turn the scale in that State, now understood to be rapidly passing over to the list of free States, would the gallant sons of that ancient State, small as she is territorially, submit to such interference? Now, the institutions of Kansas are as much fixed and as solemnly guaranteed by statute, as those of Delaware or Texas. The laws of Kansas Territory may be abrogated by succeeding legislatures; but, so also may the laws, and even the constitutions, of Texas and Delaware. Kansas only differs from their condition in her limited resources, her small population, and her large amount of marketable lands. There is no difference in principle between the cases supposed; if justifiable and legal in the one, it is equally so in the other. They differ only in point of practicability and expediency; the one would be an outrage, easily perceived, promptly met, and speedily repelled; the other is disguised under the forms of emigration, and meets with no populous and organized community to resent it. We are apprised that it is said, that the Kansas legislature was elected by fraud, and constitute no fair representation of the opinions of the people of the Territory. This is evidently the excuse of the losing party, to stimulate renewed efforts among their friends at home; but even this is refuted by the record. The Territorial Governor of Kansas, a gentleman not suspected of, or charged with partiality to slavery or to its advocates, has solemnly certified under his official seal, that the statement is false; that a large majority of the legislature were duly and legally elected. Even in the districts where Governor Reeder set aside the elections for illegality, the subsequent returns of the special elections ordered by him, produced the same result, except in a single district. There is, then, no pretext left, and it is apparent, that to send an army of abolitionists to Kansas to destroy slavery existing there, and recognized by her laws, is no more to be justified on the part of the Massachusetts legislature, than it would be to send a like force to Missouri, with the like purposes. The object might be more easily and safely accomplished in the one case than in the other, but in both cases it is equally repugnant to every principle of international comity, and likely to prove equally fatal to the harmony and peace of the Union.
We conclude, then, that this irruption upon Kansas by Emigrant Aid Societies and Kansas Leagues, under the patronage of the Massachusetts legislature, is to be regarded in no other light than a new phase of abolitionism, more practical in its aims, and therefore more dangerous than any form it has yet assumed. We have shown it to be at variance with the true intent of the act of Congress, by which the Territory was opened to settlement; at variance with the spirit of the Constitution of the United States, and with the institutions of the Territory, already recognized by law; totally destructive of that fellowship and good feeling which should exist among citizens of confederated States; ruinous to the security, peace and prosperity of a neighboring State; unprecedented in our political annals up to this date, and pregnant with the most disastrous consequences to the harmony and stability of the Union. Thus far its purposes have been defeated; but renewed efforts are threatened. Political conventions at the north and north-west have declared for the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska law, and, anticipating a failure in this direction, are stimulating the anti-slavery sentiment to fresh exertions, for abolitionizing Kansas after the Massachusetts fashion. We have discharged our duty in declaring the light in which such demonstrations are viewed here, and our firm belief of the spirit by which they will be met. If civil war and ultimate disunion are desired, a renewal of these efforts will be admirably adapted to such purposes. Missouri has taken her position in the resolutions adopted by the Lexington Convention, and from that position she will not be likely to recede. It is based upon the Constitution—upon justice, and equality of rights among the States. What she has done, and what she is still prepared to do, is in self-defence and for self-preservation; and from these duties she will hardly be expected to shrink. With her, everything is at stake; the security of a large slave property, the prosperity of her citizens, and their exemption from perpetual agitation and border feuds; whilst the emissaries of abolition are pursuing a phantom—an abstraction, which, if realized, could add nothing to their possessions or happiness, and would be productive of decided injury to the race for whose benefit they profess to labor. If slavery is an evil, and it is conceded that Congress cannot interfere with it in the States, it is most manifest that its diffusion through a new territory, where land is valueless and labor productive, tends greatly to ameliorate the condition of the slaves. Opposition to the extension of slavery is not, then, founded upon any philanthropic views, or upon any love for the slave. It is a mere grasp for political power, beyond what the Constitution of the United States concedes; and it is so understood by the leaders of the movement. And this additional power is not desired for constitutional purposes—for the advancement of the general welfare, or the national reputation. For such purposes the majority in the North is already sufficient, and no future events are likely to diminish it. The slaveholding States are in a minority, but so far, a minority which has commanded respect in the national councils. It has answered, and we hope will continue to subserve the purposes of self-protection. Conservative men from other quarters have come up to the rescue, when the rights of the South have been seriously threatened. But it is essential to the purposes of self-preservation, that this minority should not be materially weakened; it is essential to the preservation of our present form of government, that the slave States should retain sufficient power to make effectual resistance against outward aggression upon an institution peculiar to them alone. Parchment guarantees, as all history shows, avail nothing against an overwhelming public clamor. The fate of the Fugitive Slave Law affords an instructive warning on the subject, and shows that the most solemn constitutional obligations will be evaded or scorned, where popular prejudice resists their execution. The South must rely on herself for protection, and to this end her strength in the Federal Government cannot be safely diminished.
If indeed it be true, as public men at the North have declared, and political assemblages have endorsed, that a determination has been reached in that quarter to refuse admission to any more slave States, there is an end to all argument on the subject. To reject Kansas, or any other Territory from the Union, simply and solely because slavery is recognized within her limits, would be regarded here, and, we presume, throughout the South and South-west, as an open repudiation of the Constitution—a distinct and unequivocal step towards a dissolution of the Union. We presume it would be so regarded everywhere, North and South. Taken in connexion with the abrogation of that provision of the Constitution which enforces the rights of the owners of slaves in all the States of the Union, into which they might escape, which has been effected practically throughout nearly all the free States, and more formally by solemn legislative enactments in a portion of them, the rejection of Kansas on account of slavery would be disunion in a form of grossest insult to the sixteen slave States now comprehended in the nation. It would be a declaration that slavery was incompatible with republican government, in the face of at least two formal recognitions of its legality, in terms, by the Federal Constitution.
We trust that such counsels have not the remotest prospect of prevailing in our National Legislature, and will not dwell upon the consequence of their adoption. We prefer to anticipate a returning fidelity to national obligations—a faithful adherance to the Constitutional guarantees, and the consequent prospect—cheering to the patriot of this and other lands—of a continued and perpetual UNION.
WM. B. NAPTON, Chairman.
STERLING PRICE,
M. OLIVER,
S. H. WOODSON.