Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do Part 2

If the slaveholder is permitted to go into the Territories, and take his slave laws, habits, and customs, the people of the free States are to a great extent excluded therefrom, and deprived of all rights therein.

But slaveholders say they will go; they will take their slaves, and their slave code; they will establish there such a despotism as reigns in some of the slave States; they will poison the air that surrounds the fertile plains of the West, until freedom shall sicken and die; and we are constantly told, that if we do not yield to their unreasonable demands, this Union shall be dissolved.

But these threats do not move or alarm me, and for the best of all possible reasons; I do not believe that the gentlemen who make these threats intend to leave their places on this floor--nor, if they should, would the country suffer any loss. The section they represent would still remain under the Const.i.tution and laws of the United States, and our glorious flag would still wave over its fertile plains and lofty mountains, its woody dells and shelving rocks, its gurgling fountains and rippling rills. Good, loyal, and patriotic men would come here to fill the vacant places, ready and able to discharge their duty to the country, and to the whole country.

Notwithstanding these threats of disunion from the Democratic party, we hear much holy horror expressed in regard to a sectional party, and much laudation of a national, conservative party. The nationality of the Democratic party consists in devoting all the energies and power of the Federal Government to advancing the interests, aims, and ends, of about one hundred thousand men. Its conservatism consists in its avowed determination to dissolve the Union, should a majority of our people, in the exercise of their legal and const.i.tutional rights, elect a President not acceptable to that party.

There are, I presume, not more than one hundred thousand men in this country who feel any desire to extend the boundaries of slavery, or who would, had they the power, add one other slave State to the Union. Yet the whole power of this Government is devoted to that one object; its entire strength concentrated in one spasmodic effort to extend slavery.

The agricultural, the manufacturing, the great commercial interests of this country, are entirely ignored, neglected, and forgotten, that the interests of one hundred thousand slaveholders may be advanced. The great pursuits by which twenty-five million people live, are not considered worthy the attention of this Democratic party; while one hundred thousand aristocrats require its entire services. Yet this is the great national party! While so determined upon rule is it, that if a majority of the people should decide against it, and discharge its members from places of trust and honor, they threaten to destroy this Government. Such is the conservative party commended to our most favorable consideration.

The slavery party is constantly complaining that the free States enact personal-liberty laws, and that they do not fulfil their const.i.tutional obligations. Whatever acts may be pa.s.sed by our Legislatures, so that they do not interfere with the Const.i.tution of the United States, you have no right to complain. But if you think that Const.i.tution violated, you have your remedy. Send your attorneys into the free States; commence your suits in the Federal courts, and try the validity of our statutes.

We pledge ourselves that your agents shall be kindly treated, and shall have a fair hearing. We will not follow your example; we will not pa.s.s laws in plain and palpable violation of your rights, and in palpable violation of the Const.i.tution, and then drive out, by threats or violence, any man who may come into the State to test the validity of such enactments.

Before you complain of us, go home and seize and hang the pirates who are hovering around your sh.o.r.es, engaged in the slave trade. You may say a jury will not convict them. Why not? Because the community sustains them in their unholy traffic and in their violation of the laws. But if you really desired to punish those men, you could easily devise the ways and means--a whipping on the bare back with a raw-hide, a coat of tar and feathers, or some other corrective that you are in the habit of using. I would not advise these punishments; in a free State they would not be practicable; but in States where such things are in constant use, it is rather surprising that some person has not thought of thus applying them. Men who commit acts declared by the whole civilized world to be piracy, you permit to escape, while you say you will hang the man who circulates Helper's book. Before you complain of the free States, arrest and punish the scoundrels who so cruelly treated the Irishman at Columbia, South Carolina, for no offence but saying that slavery was detrimental to free labor.

Take from place and power the men whose hands and faces are reeking and smoking with the blood of our people in Kansas, and put them to death.

Punish the thousands of others who have committed acts of violence against free-State men, and are yet unwhipped of justice. These things you must do, before you complain of us. I take no pleasure in these criminations and recriminations. I know that all the States are a part of my country; but when I hear of the wrongs and outrages perpetrated on men merely because they will not subscribe to the doctrines you hold, and hear you complain of us for not doing our duty as citizens, I will let you know that you, too, "are made of penetrable stuff." I have

"Learned to deride your fierce decree, And break you on the wheel you meant for me."

I do not mean to interfere with any man's legal or const.i.tutional rights. The people of the slave States have the right to continue slavery there if they desire so to do. I have no right to interfere with it. But I intend to maintain my own rights.

To draw an impa.s.sable line around slavery, and confine it within its present limits; an absolute abolition of the African slave trade; the Territories to be kept free for homes for free men--these measures I regard as absolutely essential to the perpetuation of this Government, and to the highest development of the Anglo-Saxon race. I have endeavored to show what slavery is, what it has done, and what it intends to do. I have also endeavored to show what are the aims and objects of the Republican party; and if they cannot be tolerated--if such principles cannot be sustained by the people of any section of this country--it is the misfortune of that people. They are the principles that ought to be sustained by all people that are fitted for civil liberty; they are the principles on which this Government was founded; they were baptized in the best blood of this nation; they were cherished by the greatest names that adorn the brightest pages of the history of our country during its patriotic and virtuous and heroic age. They were emblazoned on every banner that waved over our army in every battle-field of the Revolution; during the storm and darkness, they were the bright "signet on the bosom of the cloud," the rainbow of promise and of hope.