The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 21

The latter is, unquestionably, the true philosophy of history, but the former has its uses as well as its abuses. It contains those forces of mystical enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and reckless disregard of consequences so necessary, at times, to drag the world out of the ruts of materialism and the love of peace. Such was its mission in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century in American history.

[Sidenote: William Lloyd Garrison.]

If we must give a name, a date, and a place to the first open appearance of a movement which was a product of the age, that name is Garrison; the date, the beginning of the year 1831; and the place, Boston. The character of William Lloyd Garrison, whether n.o.ble or vulgar; his purposes, whether generous or selfish; and the motives which impelled him, whether narrow and personal or grandly humane, are not subjects for treatment in a work upon const.i.tutional history.

Const.i.tutional history has to do only with the doctrines of political ethics and public jurisprudence which he formulated, and with the means proposed by him, and those who thought and acted with him, for their realization; and the historian does neither him nor them any injustice in saying that, while those doctrines are to be justified from the point of view of an extreme idealism, the means for their realization, at first only indicated, but later boldly and rudely expressed, were revolutionary, almost anarchic.

[Sidenote: The civil status under the Const.i.tution of 1787.]

There is now certainly little question that the determination of the civil status of all persons is, from an ethical point of view, a matter of national concern, and that that status must be fixed, in general principle, by a national act. There is just as little question that {247} the denial of personal liberty to any human being of adult years does not comport with the civilization of the nineteenth century. In espousing these principles the Abolitionists were only prophets ahead of their time, and must be accorded the honor which belongs to such. On the other hand, it is entirely unquestionable that the Const.i.tution of the United States recognized to the Commonwealths, respectively, the exclusive control of the civil status of persons belonging within their several jurisdictions, and it is entirely improbable that the Const.i.tution of 1787 could ever have been established without the guarantees, expressed and implied in it, of such power to the Commonwealths. There is no question at all that the slavery or freedom of the negro race within the several Commonwealths was, under the Const.i.tution of 1787, not only left, as it had been before, a matter for each Commonwealth to determine for itself, but that the exclusive power of determination in regard to it was guaranteed by the Const.i.tution to the several Commonwealths. The Commonwealths in which slaveholding generally and extensively prevailed regarded the guarantee as the princ.i.p.al consideration for their a.s.sent to the "compact." The attempt to violate, or weaken, or even to cast doubt upon, these guarantees appeared to them to be an attack upon the fundamental covenants of the Union. The Const.i.tution might, indeed, be so amended as to withdraw these powers and guarantees from the Commonwealths, by the regular procedure provided in the Const.i.tution itself; and the general Government was vested by the Const.i.tution with the general powers of exclusive government in the Territories, the District of Columbia, and the places owned by the United States within Commonwealths and used by the general Government for {248} governmental purposes. But so long as the Const.i.tution remained what it was, there was no const.i.tutional power in the general Government to attack slavery in the Commonwealths; and the slaveholders could certainly claim that, in the exercise of its powers in the Territories, the District, and other places where those powers were exclusive, the general Government should act fairly toward all the members of the Union.

[Sidenote: Points at which slavery could be legally attacked.]

[Sidenote: Garrison's methods.]

Nevertheless, here were legal points of attack for the Abolitionists.

They might memorialize Congress for the abolition of slavery in the Territories and in the District, and for the initiation of an amendment which would abolish slavery in the Commonwealths or would give Congress the power to do so, and they might appeal to the legislatures of the Commonwealths to demand of Congress the calling of a const.i.tutional convention of the United States to initiate such an amendment. But Garrison would have nothing to do with the Const.i.tution, or with existing legal methods. He denounced the Const.i.tution, "as a covenant with death and an agreement with h.e.l.l,"

and declared that he wanted "no union with slaveholders." His violent language, his repudiation of vested rights and const.i.tutional agreements, and his fanatical disregard of other men's opinions and feelings, led the people both of the North and the South to believe that his methods were incendiary and his morals loose; that he and his co-workers were planning and plotting slave insurrection, and thereby the wholesale ma.s.sacre of slaveholders; and that he and they were endeavoring to attain, through violence and anarchy, a leaders.h.i.+p which they could not otherwise reach.

[Sidenote: The Southampton ma.s.sacre.]

In August of 1831, a slave insurrection broke out in Southampton County, Va., under the leaders.h.i.+p of a {249} negro named Nat Turner, and more than sixty white persons, most of them women and children, were ma.s.sacred in cold blood. The Southerners said, no doubt believed, that the insurrection was incited by the Abolitionists in the North.

Governor Floyd, of Virginia, declared, in his message to the legislature upon the subject, that there was ample proof of it in the doc.u.ments accompanying the message. The great ma.s.s of the people at the North believed the same thing. The Abolitionist historians a.s.sert, on the contrary, that there was no connection between the work of the Abolitionists and this event. We shall probably never know whether there was or not. This much we can say, that the radical character of the Abolition doctrines and the violence of the language in which they were expressed--not so much before as after this event, indeed--produced the universal feeling, both in the North and in the South, that these doctrines and this event were in perfect harmony, and that the latter might very naturally be the outcome of the former.

The moral sentiment of the North was not prepared for the destruction of slavery by any such means. It considered these methods as containing ten times more evil and barbarism than slavery itself. It is just to say that what appeared to be the methods of the Abolitionists were revolting to the moral feelings of all the decent people of the North, and to ninety-nine one-hundredths of all the people of the North, while the Southerners saw in them nothing but the destruction of all law and order, the plunder of their property, the burning of their firesides, and the ma.s.sacre of their families. The p.r.o.nounced and determined manner in which the people of the North went about the work of suppressing the agitation occasioned by the Abolitionists is ample evidence to any sane mind that the indignation of a {250} righteous conscience was fully aroused, and not the fury of a guilty conscience.

[Sidenote: The attempt to suppress the Abolition movement at the North.]

The details of the breaking up of the Abolition meetings and of the destruction of the Abolition printing-presses by the citizens of the Northern Commonwealths, as well as those of the Southampton ma.s.sacre, may be pa.s.sed over, in a work like this, with a single remark that only one person, the Rev. Mr. Lovejoy, was murdered in these collisions; that this happened under circ.u.mstances of some aggravation; and that, if the excitement at the South over the ma.s.sacre of sixty-one innocent persons was out of proportion with the event, then not too much should be made out of the killing of a single person, who was not entirely guiltless on his part of giving provocation.

The things of importance to the student of const.i.tutional history in connection with these events are the increase of the Abolitionists in number, their organization into societies, the dissatisfaction of the Southerners with the unofficial, merely popular, way of dealing with the agitation at the North, and their demands upon the governments of the Northern Commonwealths to deal with the Abolitionists through the processes of their criminal law.

So long as men only talk and write, it is the impulse of our Anglo-Saxon character to place no further restraint upon them than the law of slander and libel of private character imposes, no matter what may be, or may be thought to be, the ultimate consequences of acting according to what they may say or write. To deny this privilege to anybody appears like a deprivation of the liberty of speech and of the press, appears like persecution. There is no country in the world in which the making of martyrs is an easier procedure than in {251} the United States. Persecution is the soil in which new movements grow best, no matter what may be the character of the movement.

[Sidenote: Growth of the Abolition movement.]

In a single year from the date of the first number of Garrison's newspaper, _The Liberator_, that is, in January of 1832, the New England Anti-slavery Society was formed, and in December of 1833 the American Anti-slavery Society was organized, which soon established branches in many quarters. The exaggerated demands of the Southerners, that the Northern Commonwealths should forbid Abolition agitation by law, thus identifying the interests of slavery with the denial of the freedom of speaking and writing in the Northern Commonwealths, helped greatly to swell the ranks of the Abolitionists, and to mollify public opinion in the North against them.

[Sidenote: The methods of the moderate Abolitionists.]

The new Abolitionists were naturally of a more moderate type than Garrison, and most of them would listen only to regular legal methods for the accomplishment of their purposes. The quickening of the public opinion in the North, the conviction of the slaveholders themselves of the error, if not the sin, of slavery, and the appeal to the Government to do all within its const.i.tutional powers against slavery, were the only means which many of them were willing to employ. Their pet.i.tions to Congress, and the transmission of their literature of Abolition to the Southerners through the United States mails, brought the whole question of their rights and purposes before the Government, and before the nation, for which that Government was bound to act with impartial justice to all its parts.

[Sidenote: The Abolition pet.i.tions.]

Pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia had been sent to Congress, generally from {252} Quaker sources, almost from the day that the capital of the country was established there, but they were not numerous and were not pushed by any anti-slavery organization. In the session of 1826-27, a pet.i.tion from citizens of Baltimore, probably instigated by Benjamin Lundy, was presented, which contained the same prayer; and in the session of 1827-28, one of like tenor from citizens of the District itself was presented. Such pet.i.tions were usually read and referred to the committee on the District. They were irritating to the slaveholders from the first, but it was not until after the excitement of the Southampton ma.s.sacre that they were angrily resented as an interference with the domestic inst.i.tutions of the slaveholding Commonwealths.

It was in the session of 1831-32, that the first mutterings of the pet.i.tion storm were heard. On December 12th, 1831, Mr. John Quincy Adams presented, in the House of Representatives, fifteen pet.i.tions from sundry inhabitants of Pennsylvania, the chief prayer of all of which was for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Adams said that he would give no countenance to that prayer, but that there was a prayer in the pet.i.tions for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District, which, he thought, might properly be considered, and he moved the reference of the pet.i.tions, for this purpose, to the regular committee of the House for the District.

There was in this little to indicate the terrible earnestness which Mr. Adams later displayed in behalf of the Abolition pet.i.tions. He seemed at this time to be annoyed at being asked to present them, and to feel that there were superior moral reasons why a slavery agitation should not be excited within the halls of Congress. But all this was soon to change. Mr. Adams's advance {253} toward radical Abolitionism is as marked a feature of the struggle over the right of pet.i.tion as Mr. Calhoun's declaration of the righteousness of slavery.

[Sidenote: The earlier method of dealing with the pet.i.tions.]

The committee on the District reported, on December 19th, that as the District was composed of cessions of territory from Maryland and Virginia, it would, in the opinion of the members of the committee, be unwise, if not unjust, for Congress to interfere in the question of the relation of slave to master in the District, until Virginia and Maryland should take steps to eradicate the evil from their respective territories. This report seemed to settle the question for the session, and no more pet.i.tions appeared in either House.

In the middle of the next session, Mr. Hiester, of Pennsylvania, presented a pet.i.tion to the House of Representatives from sundry citizens of Pennsylvania praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This was again a Quaker pet.i.tion, as were the pet.i.tions presented by Mr. Adams. Mr. Hiester moved to refer the pet.i.tion to the committee on the District, and Mr. Mason, of Virginia, rashly called for the yeas and nays, which opened the question to debate. Mr. Adams immediately pointed out this fact to Mr. Mason, and advised him to withdraw his motion, which advice Mr. Mason wisely adopted. The pet.i.tion went to the Committee, and nothing further was heard of it.

It was first in the session of 1833-34, that pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery in the District from others than Quakers, presumably from the members of the new anti-slavery societies, appeared in both Houses of Congress. Those presented in the Senate were referred to the committee of the Senate for the District, and nothing more was heard of them. Those presented in the House of Representatives were dealt with in the same manner.

{254} It was not until the session of 1834-35, that the first real note of the conflict was sounded. On January 26th, 1835, Mr. d.i.c.kson, of New York, presented several pet.i.tions praying for the abolition of the slave-trade and of slavery in the District. They were laid over until February 2nd, when Mr. d.i.c.kson called them up, made a rather irritating speech, in which he said that the committee on the District had smothered all such pet.i.tions referred to it, and moved the reference of those offered by him to a select committee.

Mr. Chinn, of Virginia, the chairman of the regular committee on the District, resented Mr. d.i.c.kson's rude a.s.sault, and moved to lay the pet.i.tions and Mr. d.i.c.kson's motion on the table. The House voted Mr.

Chinn's motion by a large majority.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the conflict over the Abolition pet.i.tions.]

At length, in the session of 1835-36, the storm broke in all its fury, in both the Senate and the House. It began in the House, December 16th, 1835, upon the presentation of a pet.i.tion, containing the usual prayer in regard to slavery in the District, by Mr. Fairfield, of Maine. Mr. Cramer, of New York, moved to lay the pet.i.tion on the table, and the motion was voted. Mr. Fairfield immediately presented another pet.i.tion of like purport, and himself moved that it be laid upon the table. Mr. Boon, of Indiana, asked that the pet.i.tion be read, which was done. Thereupon Mr. Slade, of Vermont, moved that it be printed. This meant, of course, that Mr. Slade was determined to have the slavery question agitated in Congress, if he could. Upon him rather than upon Mr. Adams rests the honor, or the blame, whichever it may be, of provoking the excitement over the Abolition pet.i.tions, and of upholding the right of pet.i.tion in the most extreme degree.

The House first voted to lay the pet.i.tion on the table. {255} The Speaker, Mr. James K. Polk, then put Mr. Slade's motion to print.

Whereupon Mr. Slade attempted to debate the whole question of slavery in the District under the motion. The Speaker ruled that the contents of the pet.i.tion could not be debated under the motion to print. Mr.

Vanderpoel, of New York, then moved to lay Mr. Slade's motion on the table, and the House voted to do so by a large majority.

[Sidenote: Mr. Hammond's motion involving the denial of the right of pet.i.tion.]

Two days later the play was on again. Mr. Jackson, of Ma.s.sachusetts, presented a pet.i.tion from sundry citizens of Ma.s.sachusetts, containing the usual prayer, and moved its reference to a select committee.

Whereupon Mr. Hammond, South Carolina, moved that the pet.i.tion should not be received. This was the ultra-Southern position in regard to the anti-slavery pet.i.tions, and Mr. Hammond's enunciation of it in the House antedates Mr. Calhoun's in the Senate by more than a fortnight.

The Const.i.tution guarantees the right of the people to a.s.semble peaceably and pet.i.tion the Government for redress of grievances. The right to pet.i.tion certainly includes the right to have the pet.i.tions heard by the body pet.i.tioned. If the body refuses to receive the pet.i.tion, it prevents its being heard, and by preventing its being heard it makes the right itself a mockery. On the other hand, the Const.i.tution vests in each House of Congress the power to make its own rules of procedure. This power must, of course, be so used as not to violate any other clause of the Const.i.tution. Under this power, however, each House may and should protect itself against all obstacles thrown by outsiders in the way of the discharge of its duties in legislating for the country. If any number of people undertake, by an abuse of the right of pet.i.tion, to obstruct the legitimate work of the Congress for the whole people, each House {256} certainly has the right to meet this attempt in any way which will not deny the right of pet.i.tion, the right of any one or any number of the people to be heard in asking for a redress of grievances.

[Sidenote: The new method for dealing with pet.i.tions in the House of Representatives.]

Down to 1834, the custom of procedure in Congress had been to receive, hear, and refer all pet.i.tions. That was going one step farther than was required by the const.i.tutional right of pet.i.tion; still it was the regular course, and such men as Mr. Adams thought it unwise to depart from the custom in the case of the Abolition pet.i.tions. At any rate, Mr. Hammond's motion was a new proposition. The Speaker said that he was "not aware that such a motion had ever been sustained by the former practice of the House," and appeared to rule Mr. Hammond's motion out of order. A confused wrangle ensued over the att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the Speaker, during which Mr. Hammond made a motion to reject the pet.i.tion, and the Speaker, becoming confused by the two motions, the one not to receive, and the other to reject, and knowing that the House could of course reject the prayer of a pet.i.tion, yielded to the representations of Mr. Hammond, and put Mr. Hammond's motion not to _receive_ the pet.i.tion to the House. The House voted not to refuse to receive the pet.i.tion, but the ruling of the Speaker in putting the motion implied that the House possessed the power to refuse to receive, that is, to refuse to hear, a pet.i.tion. Another confused wrangle ensued over the question whether the House had voted merely not to refuse to receive the pet.i.tion, or had voted to consider its contents at once. After a day of heated debate and three days of adjournment, during which excited feelings were somewhat calmed, the House reversed all former action, and voted to lay the pet.i.tion and all the motions relating to it on the table.

{257} [Sidenote: True view of the right of pet.i.tion.]

Another pet.i.tion, which, during this wrangle had been inadvertently referred to the committee on the District, was now recalled by a motion to reconsider the vote of reference. It was upon this motion that Mr. Adams made his first great appeal for the right of pet.i.tion.

As we have seen, his view before this was that pet.i.tions must be received, heard, and referred. In this speech, however, he indicated that there should be a report from the committee, and a vote upon the report. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, met Mr. Adams' a.s.sertions quite successfully, and showed conclusively that, if the right of pet.i.tion should be interpreted to reach any farther than the right to have the pet.i.tion received and heard, it would so modify the const.i.tutional right of the House to establish its own rules of procedure as to put it in the power of a few determined obstructionists outside the House, acting with a single member of the House, to prevent the House from doing anything but consider pet.i.tions upon a single subject, sacrificing thus the interests of the whole people to the obstinacy of a small number of the people.

[Sidenote: The power of Congress over slavery in the District of Columbia.]

Mr. Jones' argument was so sound and rational that it would probably have settled the minds of almost all of the members in regard to the complicated questions of the right of pet.i.tion, and the powers of the House over its rules of procedure, had not Mr. Granger, of New York, and Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, thrown another firebrand into the House during this debate, in the form of an intimation that Congress had the const.i.tutional power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The Southerners now advanced to the position of denying that power to Congress, and Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in a long and violent speech, demanded that Congress {258} should pa.s.s a resolution disclaiming the possession of any such power. Mr. Slade immediately accepted the challenge of Mr. Wise, and delivered an anti-slavery speech in reply, such as had never before been heard upon the floors of Congress. He not only vindicated the power of Congress over the question of slavery in the District, but he discussed the whole question of slavery upon its merits. His words were simply a declaration of relentless war upon slavery in the halls of Congress.

They created indescribable consternation in all parts of the House, and roused the resentment and anger of the slaveholders to a veritable fury. In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Garland, of Virginia, gained the Speaker's recognition, and made a good argument against some of Mr. Slade's more radical statements. So soon as he had finished, Mr.

Mann, of New York, moved to stop the debate with the previous question. This was voted, and the Speaker then put the motion for the reconsideration of the reference of the pet.i.tion, under which motion this debate had proceeded. This was voted, and immediately the motion was made to lay the recalled pet.i.tion, with the reconsidered motion to refer it, on the table. This was voted by a majority of more than two to one.

Evidently the House thought that, in receiving and hearing the pet.i.tions and then laying them on the table, it had found the solution of the question, which neither violated the right of pet.i.tion in the people, nor encroached upon the power of the House over its rules of procedure, nor opened the way for anti-slavery agitation in Congress.

[Sidenote: Mr. Polk's fatal error in regard to the right of pet.i.tion.]

It would have been wise for the slaveholders to have left this solution of the question undisturbed, but they did not see it so. On January 4th, 1836, Mr. Adams presented a pet.i.tion from sundry citizens of {259} Ma.s.sachusetts containing the usual prayer, and said that "in conformity with the course heretofore adopted, he should move that the pet.i.tion, without reading, be laid on the table." Mr. Patton interrupted Mr. Adams with an inquiry addressed to the Speaker as to whether the pet.i.tion had been received by the House, and the Speaker replied that it had not. He said that, upon looking up the authorities, he "had formed the opinion that the first question to be decided, upon the motion of a member, was whether the pet.i.tion be received or not." The Speaker, Mr. Polk, had now come out of his uncertainty about the right of pet.i.tion including the reception of the pet.i.tion by the House, as a const.i.tutional obligation, and now definitely denied that the right of pet.i.tion included the right to have the pet.i.tion received by the House. This was a fatal move, a fatal mistake upon his part. The object professedly sought by all parties, except such Abolitionists as Mr. Slade, was the prevention of agitation upon the slavery question in the halls of Congress. Whether all were sincere in this profession is questionable. It had been insinuated that there were agitators upon this question from both sections of the country, who were disingenuously claiming to be cla.s.sed with the maintainers of peace. It does really seem that the innuendo was justified as to certain of the Southerners by the position now a.s.sumed by Mr. Patton and Mr. Polk, and then by Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k, who, immediately after the ruling of the Speaker, moved that this pet.i.tion be not received. While Mr. Adams, who sincerely believed that reference as well as reception was a necessary consequence of the right of pet.i.tion, had accommodated himself to the decision which the House had made a fortnight before, these Southern gentlemen were now proposing to drive the House from {260} the solid middle ground, then occupied, toward a position which the majority considered to be an encroachment upon the const.i.tutional right of pet.i.tion, a movement upon their part which was certain, and known by all to be certain, to provoke an excited debate upon the question of slavery. It may be that they thought the refusal to receive one of these anti-slavery pet.i.tions would prevent any more from being presented, and that it was better to have it out once for all than to be continually receiving, and listening to the reading of, these pet.i.tions. If so, they were wofully mistaken.