American Eloquence Volume II Part 2

OF MARYLAND. (BORN 1764, DIED 1822.)

ON THE MISSOURI QUESTION'--UNITED STATES

SENATE, FEBRUARY 15, 1820.

As I am not a very frequent speaker in this a.s.sembly, and have shown a desire, I trust, rather to listen to the wisdom of others than to lay claim to superior knowledge by undertaking to advise, even when advice, by being seasonable in point of time, might have some chance of being profitable, you will, perhaps, bear with me if I venture to trouble you once more on that eternal subject which has lingered here, until all its natural interest is exhausted, and every topic connected with it is literally worn to tatters. I shall, I a.s.sure you, sir, speak with laudable brevity--not merely on account of the feeble state of my health, and from some reverence for the laws of good taste which forbid me to speak otherwise, but also from a sense of justice to those who honor me with their attention. My single purpose, as I suggested yesterday, is to subject to a friendly, yet close examination, some portions of a speech, imposing, certainly, on account of the distinguished quarter from whence it came--not very imposing (if I may so say, without departing from that respect which I sincerely feel and intend to manifest for eminent abilities and long experience) for any other reason.

I confess to you, nevertheless, that some of the principles announced by the honorable gentleman from New York, with an explicitness that reflected the highest credit on his candor, did, when they were first presented, startle me not a little. They were not perhaps entirely new.

Perhaps I had seen them before in some shadowy and doubtful shape,

"If shape it might be called, that shape had none, Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb?"

But in the honorable gentleman's speech they were shadowy and doubtful no longer. He exhibited them in forms so boldly and accurately--with contours so distinctly traced--with features so p.r.o.nounced and striking that I was unconscious for a moment that they might be old acquaintances. I received them as a _novi hospites_ within these walls, and gazed upon them with astonishment and alarm. I have recovered, however, thank G.o.d, from this paroxysm of terror, although not from that of astonishment. I have sought and found tranquillity and courage in my former consolatory faith. My reliance is that these principles will obtain no general currency; for, if they should, it requires no gloomy imagination to sadden the perspective of the future. My reliance is upon the unsophisticated good sense and n.o.ble spirit of the American people.

I have what I may be allowed to call a proud and patriotic trust, that they will give countenance to no principles which, if followed out to their obvious consequences, will not only shake the goodly fabric of the Union to its foundations, but reduce it to a melancholy ruin. The people of this country, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as well as virtuous. They know the value of that federal a.s.sociation which is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive or alluring in their aspect.'

Sir, it was but the other day that we were forbidden, (properly forbidden I am sure, for the prohibition came from you,) to a.s.sume that there existed any intention to impose a prospective restraint on the domestic legislation of Missouri--a restraint to act upon it contemporaneously with its origin as a State, and to continue adhesive to it through all the stages of its political existence. We are now, however, permitted to know that it is determined by a sort of political surgery to amputate one of the limbs of its local sovereignty, and thus mangled and disparaged, and thus only, to receive it into the bosom of the Const.i.tution. It is now avowed that, while Maine is to be ushered into the Union with every possible demonstration of studious reverence on our part, and on hers, with colors flying, and all the other graceful accompaniments of honorable triumph, this ill-conditioned upstart of the West, this obscure foundling of a wilderness that was but yesterday the hunting-ground of the savage, is to find her way into the American family as she can, with an humiliating badge of remediless inferiority patched upon her garments, with the mark of recent, qualified manumission upon her, or rather with a brand upon her forehead to tell the stogy of her territorial va.s.salage, and to perpetuate the memory of her evil propensities. It is now avowed that, while the robust district of Maine is to be seated by the side of her truly respectable parent, co-ordinate in authority and honor, and is to be dandled into that power and dignity of which she does not stand in need, but which undoubtedly she deserves, the more infantine and feeble Missouri is to be repelled with harshness, and forbidden to come at all, unless with the iron collar of servitude about her neck, instead of the civic crown of republican freedom upon her brows, and is to be doomed forever to leading-strings, unless she will exchange those leading-strings for shackles.

I am told that you have the power to establish this odious and revolting distinction, and I am referred for the proofs of that power to various parts of the Const.i.tution, but princ.i.p.ally to that part of it which authorizes the admission of new States into the Union. I am myself of opinion that it is in that part only that the advocates for this restriction can, with any hope of success, apply for a license to impose it; and that the efforts which have been made to find it in other portions of that instrument, are too desperate to require to be encountered. I shall, however, examine those other portions before I have done, lest it should be supposed by those who have relied upon them, that what I omit to answer I believe to be unanswerable.

The clause of the Const.i.tution which relates to the admission of new States is in these words: "The Congress may admit new States into this Union," etc., and the advocates for restriction maintain that the use of the word "may" imports discretion to admit or to reject; and that in this discretion is wrapped up another--that of prescribing the terms and conditions of admission in case you are willing to admit: "_Cujus est dare ejus est disponere_." I will not for the present inquire whether this involved discretion to dictate the terms of admission belongs to you or not. It is fit that I should first look to the nature and extent of it.

I think I may a.s.sume that if such a power be anything but nominal, it is much more than adequate to the present object--that it is a power of vast expansion, to which human sagacity can a.s.sign no reasonable limits--that it is a capacious reservoir of authority, from which you may take, in all time to come, as occasion may serve, the means of oppression as well as of benefaction. I know that it professes at this moment to be the chosen instrument of protecting mercy, and would win upon us by its benignant smiles; but I know, too, it can frown and play the tyrant, if it be so disposed. Notwithstanding the softness which it now a.s.sumes, and the care with which it conceals its giant proportions beneath the deceitful drapery of sentiment, when it next appears before you it may show itself with a sterner countenance and in more awful dimensions. It is, to speak the truth, sir, a power of colossal size--if indeed it be not an abuse of language to call it by the gentle name of a power. Sir, it is a wilderness of power, of which fancy in her happiest mood is unable to perceive the far distant and shadowy boundary. Armed with such a power, with religion in one hand and philanthropy in the other, and followed with a goodly train of public and private virtues, you may achieve more conquests over sovereignties not your own than falls to the common lot of even uncommon ambition. By the aid of such a power, skilfully employed, you may "bridge your way" over the h.e.l.lespont that separates State legislation from that of Congress; and you may do so for pretty much the same purpose with which Xerxes once bridged his way across the h.e.l.lespont that separates Asia from Europe. He did so, in the language of Milton, "the liberties of Greece to yoke." You may do so for the a.n.a.logous purpose of subjugating and reducing the sovereignties of States, as your taste or convenience may suggest, and fashioning them to your imperial will. There are those in this House who appear to think, and I doubt not sincerely, that the particular restraint now under consideration is wise, and benevolent, and good; wise as respects the Union--good as respects Missouri--benevolent as respects the unhappy victims whom with a novel kindness it would incarcerate in the south, and bless by decay and extirpation. Let all such beware, lest in their desire for the effect which they believe the restriction will produce, they are too easily satisfied that they have the right to impose it.

The moral beauty of the present purpose, or even its political recommendations (whatever they may be), can do nothing for a power like this, which claims to prescribe conditions _ad libitum_, and to be competent to this purpose, because it is competent to all. This restriction, if it be not smothered in its birth, will be but a small part of the progeny of the prolific power. It teems with a mighty brood, of which this may be ent.i.tled to the distinction of comeliness as well as of primogeniture. The rest may want the boasted loveliness of their predecessor, and be even uglier than "Lapland witches".

I would not discourage authorized legislation upon those kindly, generous, and n.o.ble feelings which Providence has given to us for the best of purposes; but when power to act is under discussion, I will not look to the end in view, lest I should become indifferent to the lawfulness of the means. Let us discard from this high const.i.tutional question all those extrinsic considerations which have been forced into its discussion. Let us endeavor to approach it with a philosophic impartiality of temper--with a sincere desire to ascertain the boundaries of our authority, and a determination to keep our wishes in subjection to our allegiance to the Const.i.tution.

Slavery, we are told in many a pamphlet, memorial, and speech, with which the press has lately groaned, is a foul blot upon our otherwise immaculate reputation. Let this be conceded--yet you are no nearer than before to the conclusion that you possess power which may deal with other subjects as effectually as with this. Slavery, we are further told, with some pomp of metaphor, is a canker at the root of all that is excellent in this republican empire, a pestilent disease that is s.n.a.t.c.hing the youthful bloom from its cheek, prostrating its honor and withering its strength. Be it so--yet if you have power to medicine to it in the way proposed, and in virtue of the diploma which you claim, you have also power in the distribution of your political alexipharmics to present the deadliest drugs to every territory that would become a State, and bid it drink or remain a colony forever. Slavery, we are also told, is now "rolling onward with a rapid tide towards the boundless regions of the West," threatening to doom them to sterility and sorrow, unless some potent voice can say to it,thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. Slavery engenders pride and indolence in him who commands, and inflicts intellectual and moral degradation on him who serves. Slavery, in fine, is unchristian and abominable. Sir, I shall not stop to deny that slavery is all this and more; but I shall not think myself the less authorized to deny that it is for you to stay the course of this dark torrent, by opposing to it a mound raised up by the labors of this portentous discretion on the domain of others--a mound which you cannot erect but through the instrumentality of a trespa.s.s of no ordinary kind--not the comparatively innocent trespa.s.s that beats down a few blades of gra.s.s which the first kind sun or the next refreshing shower may cause to spring again--but that which levels with the ground the lordliest trees of the forest, and claims immortality for the destruction which it inflicts.

I shall not, I am sure, be told that I exaggerate this power. It has been admitted here and elsewhere that I do not. But I want no such concession. It is manifest that as a discretionary power it is everything or nothing--that its head is in the clouds, or that it is a mere figment of enthusiastic speculation--that it has no existence, or that it is an alarming vortex ready to swallow up all such portions of the sovereignty of an infant State as you may think fit to cast into it as preparatory to the introduction into the union of the miserable residue. No man can contradict me when I say, that if you have this power, you may squeeze down a new-born sovereign State to the size of a pigmy, and then taking it between finger and thumb, stick it into some niche of the Union, and still continue by way of mockery to call it a State in the sense of the Const.i.tution. You may waste it to a shadow, and then introduce it into the society of flesh and blood an object of scorn and derision. You may sweat and reduce it to a thing of skin and bone, and then place the ominous skeleton beside the ruddy and healthful members of the Union, that it may have leisure to mourn the lamentable difference between itself and its companions, to brood over its disastrous promotion, and to seek in justifiable discontent an opportunity for separation, and insurrection, and rebellion. What may you not do by dexterity and perseverance with this terrific power? You may give to a new State, in the form of terms which it cannot refuse, (as I shall show you hereafter,) a statute book of a thousand volumes--providing not for ordinary cases only, but even for possibilities; you may lay the yoke, no matter whether light or heavy, upon the necks of the latest posterity; you may send this searching power into every hamlet for centuries to come, by laws enacted in the spirit of prophecy, and regulating all those dear relations of domestic concern which belong to local legislation, and which even local legislation touches with a delicate and sparing hand. This is the first inroad. But will it be the last? This provision is but a pioneer for others of a more desolating aspect. It is that fatal bridge of which Milton speaks, and when once firmly built, what shall hinder you to pa.s.s it when you please for the purpose of plundering power after power at the expense of new States, as you will still continue to call them, and raising up prospective codes irrevocable and immortal, which shall leave to those States the empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, and convert them into petty pageants, in themselves contemptible, but rendered infinitely more so by the contrast of their humble faculties with the proud and admitted pretensions of those who having doomed them to the inferiority of va.s.sals, have condescended to take them into their society and under their protection?

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." It is objected that the word "may" imports power, not obligation--a right to decide--a discretion to grant or refuse.

To this it might be answered that power is duty on many occasions. But let it be conceded that it is discretionary. What consequence follows?

A power to refuse, in a case like this, does not necessarily involve a power to exact terms. You must look to the result which is the declared object of the power. Whether you will arrive at it, or not, may depend on your will; but you cannot compromise with the result intended and professed.

What then is the professed result? To admit a State into this Union.

What is that Union? A confederation of States equal in sovereignty--capable of everything which the Const.i.tution does not forbid, or authorize Congress to forbid. It is an equal union, between parties equally sovereign. They were sovereign independently of the Union. The object of the Union was common protection for the exercise of already existing sovereignty. The parties gave up a portion of that sovereignty to insure the remainder. As far as they gave it up by the common compact they have ceased to be sovereign. The Union provides the means of defending the residue; and it is into that Union that a new State is to come. By acceding to it, the new State is placed on the same footing with the original States. It accedes for the same purpose, i.e., protection for their unsurrendered sovereignty. If it comes in shorn of its beams--crippled and disparaged beyond the original States, it is not into the original Union that it comes. For it is a different sort of Union. The first was Union _inter pares_. This is a Union between "_disparates_"--between giants and a dwarf--between power and feebleness--between full proportioned sovereignties and a miserable image of power--a thing which that very Union has shrunk and shrivelled from its just size, instead of preserving it in its true dimensions.

It is into this Union, i. e., the Union of the Federal Const.i.tution, that you are to admit, or refuse to admit. You can admit into no other.

You cannot make the Union, as to the new State, what it is not as to the old; for then it is not this Union that you open for the entrance of a new party. If you make it enter into a new and additional compact, is it any longer the same Union?

We are told that admitting a State into the Union is a compact. Yes, but what sort of a compact? A compact that it shall be a member of the Union, as the Const.i.tution has made it. You cannot new fashion it. You may make a compact to admit, but when admitted the original compact prevails. The Union is a compact, with a provision of political power and agents for the accomplishment of its objects. Vary that compact as to a new State--give new energy to that political power so as to make it act with more force upon a new State than upon the old--make the will of those agents more effectually the arbiter of the fate of a new State than of the old, and it may be confidently said that the new State has not entered into this Union, but into another Union. How far the Union has been varied is another question. But that it has been varied is clear.

If I am told that by the bill relative to Missouri, you do not legislate upon a new State, I answer that you do; and I answer further that it is immaterial whether you do or not. But it is upon Missouri, as a State, that your terms and conditions are to act. Until Missouri is a State, the terms and conditions are nothing. You legislate in the shape of terms and conditions, prospectively--and you so legislate upon it that when it comes into the Union it is to be bound by a contract degrading and diminishing its sovereignty--and is to be stripped of rights which the original parties to the Union did not consent to abandon, and which that Union (so far as depends upon it) takes under its protection and guarantee.

Is the right to hold slaves a right which Ma.s.sachusetts enjoys? If it is, Ma.s.sachusetts is under this Union in a different character from Missouri. The compact of Union for it, is different from the same compact of Union for Missouri. The power of Congress is different--everything which depends upon the Union is, in that respect, different.

But it is immaterial whether you legislate for Missouri as a State or not. The effect of your legislation is to bring it into the Union with a portion of its sovereignty taken away.

But it is a State which you are to admit. What is a State in the sense of the Const.i.tution? It is not a State in the general--but a State as you find it in the Const.i.tution. A State, generally, is a body politic or independent political society of men. But the State which you are to admit must be more or less than this political ent.i.ty. What must it be?

Ask the const.i.tution. It shows what it means by a State by reference to the parties to it. It must be such a State as Ma.s.sachusetts, Virginia, and the other members of the American confederacy--a State with full sovereignty except as the const.i.tution restricts it.

In a word, the whole amount of the argument on the other side is, that you may refuse to admit a new State, and that therefore if you admit, you may prescribe the terms.

The answer to that argument is--that even if you can refuse, you can prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do.

You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it stands, it would be. You can prescribe no terms which will make the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially different from that compact among the original States. You may admit, or refuse to admit: but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense of the Const.i.tution--a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the original parties: and it must be into this Union that you are to admit it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort--the energy of restraint and destruction.

One of the most signal errors with which the argument on the other side has abounded, is this of considering the proposed restriction as if levelled at the introduction or establishment of slavery. And hence the vehement declamation, which, among other things, has informed us that slavery originated in fraud or violence.

The truth is, that the restriction has no relation, real or pretended, to the right of making slaves of those who are free, or of introducing slavery where it does not already exist. It applies to those who are admitted to be already slaves, and who (with their posterity) would continue to be slaves if they should remain where they are at present; and to a place where slavery already exists by the local law. Their civil condition will not be altered by their removal from Virginia, or Carolina, to Missouri. They will not be more slaves than they now are.

Their abode, indeed, will be different, but their bondage the same.

Their numbers may possibly be augmented by the diffusion, and I think they will. But this can only happen because their hardships will be mitigated, and their comforts increased. The checks to population, which exist in the older States, will be diminished. The restriction, therefore does not prevent the establishment of slavery, either with reference to persons or place; but simply inhibits the removal from place to place (the law in each being the same) of a slave, or make his emanc.i.p.ation the consequence of that removal. It acts professedly merely on slavery as it exists, and thus acting restrains its present lawful effects. That slavery, like many other human inst.i.tutions, originated in fraud or violence, may be conceded: but, however it originated, it is established among us, and no man seeks a further establishment of it by new importations of freemen to be converted into slaves. On the contrary, all are anxious to mitigate its evils, by all the means within the reach of the appropriate authority, the domestic legislatures of the different States.

Of the declaration of our independence, which has also been quoted in support of the perilous doctrines now urged upon us, I need not now speak at large. I have shown on a former occasion how idle it is to rely upon that instrument for such a purpose, and I will not fatigue you by mere repet.i.tion. The self-evident truths announced in the Declaration of Independence are not truths at all, if taken literally; and the practical conclusions contained in the same pa.s.sage of that declaration prove that they were never designed to be so received.

The articles of confederation contain nothing on the subject; whilst the actual Const.i.tution recognizes the legal existence of slavery by various provisions. The power of prohibiting the slave trade is involved in that of regulating commerce, but this is coupled with an express inhibition to the exercise of it for twenty years. How then can that Const.i.tution which expressly permits the importation of slaves authorize the National Government to set on foot a crusade against slavery?

The clause respecting fugitive slaves is affirmative and active in its effects. It is a direct sanction and positive protection of the right of the master to the services of his slave as derived under the local laws of the States. The phraseology in which it is wrapped up still leaves the intention clear, and the words, "persons held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof," have always been interpreted to extend to the case of slaves, in the various acts of Congress which have been pa.s.sed to give efficacy to the provision, and in the judicial application of those laws. So also in the clause prescribing the ratio of representation--the phrase, "three-fifths of all other persons,"

is equivalent to slaves, or it means nothing. And yet we are told that those who are acting under a Const.i.tution which sanctions the existence of slavery in those States which choose to tolerate it, are at liberty to hold that no law can sanction its existence.

It is idle to make the rightfulness of an act the measure of sovereign power. The distinction between sovereign power and the moral right to exercise it has always been recognized. All political power may be abused, but is it to stop where abuse may begin? The power of declaring war is a power of vast capacity for mischief, and capable of inflicting the most wide-spread desolation. But it is given to Congress without stint and without measure. Is a citizen, or are the courts of justice to inquire whether that, or any other law, is just, before they obey or execute it? And are there any degrees of injustice which will withdraw from sovereign power the capacity of making a given law?

The power is "to admit new States into this Union," and it may be safely conceded that here is discretion to admit or refuse. The question is, what must we do if we do anything? What must we admit, and into what?

The answer is a State--and into this Union.

The distinction between Federal rights and local rights, is an idle distinction. Because the new State acquires Federal rights, it is not, therefore, in this Union. The Union is a compact; and is it an equal party to that compact, because it has equal Federal rights?

How is the Union formed? By equal contributions of power. Make one member sacrifice more than another, and it becomes unequal. The compact is of two parts:

1. The thing obtained--Federal rights. 2. The price paid--local sovereignty.

You may disturb the balance of the Union, either by diminishing the thing acquired, or increasing the sacrifice paid.