Position of parties and abuses of power. Speech of Hon. Reuben E. Fenton, of New York. Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 16, 1860

X

POSITION OF PARTIES AND ABUSES OF POWER,

SPEECH

OF

HON. REUBEN E. FENTON,

OF NEW YORK.

Delivered in the Hcmse of Representatives, February 16, 1860.

Mr. FENTON obtained the floor.

Mr. MAYNAKD. Will the gentleman from
New York yield to a motion for the Committee
to rise?

Mr. FENTON. I prefer to speak now. It
seems most proper to reply at this time to the
gentleman from Missouri, [Mr. Anderson,] who
has just concluded.

Mr. ELY. I hope my colleague will be per-
mitted to proceed.

Mr. FENTON. Mr. Chairman, I had very little
right, and less desire, to engage in a discussion
of the politics of the country prior to the organ-
ization of the House. The purpose of m
and those with whom I acted, during the eight
weeks' contest, was first to organize, provide for
the creditors of the Government — some of whom
were on the verge of bankruptcy — and dispatch
the public business ; and while thus, out of re-
gard for the public good, and in submission to
parliamentary propriety, for other purposes, we
were manacled, handcuffed, and tongue-tied,
gentlemen on the other side of this Hall made
onset with violent disunion and secession speech-
es, and with daily perversions of our principles
and motives. Our object was peace aud frater-
nal feeling; and we were opposed by disorder,
acrimony, and menace.

I would not complain alone of disunion blus-
ter, since what has been perhaps must be ; and
since, moreover, it has become almost as neces-
sary to the country, from early introduction and
periodical use down through our history, as the
blight and frost of the season, or the yearly
circuit of the menagerie.

At one time, the Union was to be destroyed
by the right of search ; at another, by the United
States Bank; then again by the tariff; by the
election of Fremont in 185G ; and finally its
doom was irrevocably sealed the other day. by
the late John Brown, and Helper's Impending
Crisis. It is not this that calls for reply, and it
is not to this I speak, but to repel unjust and
unfounded assaults upon my constituents and
my party; and to vindicate, as well as 1 can,
my country and its history. I blush with indig-
nation at the misrepresentations and perversions
which gentlemen on the other side of this Hall
have indulged in ; and did I not reflect that un-
fairness and wrong on the part of intelligent
men are the expedient of conscious weakness
and error, I should suppose they had been touch-

ed as with the spear of Ithuriel, which made
them start forth into the deformity tevealed du-
ring this controversy.

The gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Curry]
endeavored, in his usual aide and ingenious
manner, to place this controversy on vantage
grounds from! philosophical and logical deduc-
tions, disclaiming, however, the desire, and dis-
carding the attempt of his associates, to hold
the Republican party responsible for the acts or
excesses of individuals, or as affording evidence
of the position and principles of our party.

But he asserts that a great change upon the
subject of slavery has " come o'er the spirit of
our dream ; " that the cloud, which was no bigger
than a man's hand, now covers the whole North-
ern horizon ; and that our people have really,
within the last few years, become an intensely
anti-slavery people, with aims at once aggressive
and alarming to the safety of the South — the
logical result of all which is the ultimate ex-
tinction of their favorite institution. If the ba-
sis of his argument be correct, possibly the result
indicated would follow ; in this instance, how-
ever, I must think the honorable gentleman has
been singularly infelicitous in his statement in
respect to public sentiment and his study of po-
litical history. May be he prefers for himself
and his friends to " repose in the vagueness of a
fallacy, rather than to be tormented wjth the
precision of a logical definition.

The sentiment of the North upon this question
has undergone no change ; it is the same now,
with a few exceptions of extreme ultraism for and
against slavery, that it was in the earlier and
better days of the Republic. The people of the
North, at an early day, believed, with all your
early statesmen, that slavery was a political, mor-
al, and social evil, and in time they rid them-
selves of it, in harmony with their better con-
victions of duty. But it is true, that not until
recently has this great and fixed anti-slavery
sentiment, ever existing with the Northern masses,
found it important, yea, necessary, to take the
form of political organization. But a few years
since, the men who now make up this great Re-
publican party were mainly classified as 'Whigs
and .Democrats; and were they not then, as ?ioto,
moved by the same hatred of this curse to free
labor and to free men, and by the same deep-
seated opposition to its extension over the free
soil of this continent? Look over the record of

public men and public bodies, and there see the
almost universal testimony ; see, still farther in
the retrospect, that your fathers and our fathers
proclaimed that men were created with equal,
natural rights, and that the enslavement of man,
of whatever color, was an invasion of these nat-
ural rights, and a violation of the spirit and
genius of our free institutions. They held it to
be an opprobrium to civilization ; hence they
sought to circumscribe it — to preserve soil then
free, forever free, from its dark and blighting
tread. They pushed it aside, with all possible
haste, from a majority of the original thirteen
States ; they provided, as was supposed, for its
gradual decay, by cutting off the foreign supply ;
and in every way they sought to build up and
around it a cordon of free territory, and free
States, and free sentiment, that should exhale
an atmosphere of liberty that slavery must
breathe or die. And do gentlemen ask, why,
therefore, this Republican party is commissioned
with these great and sacred purposes of the
founders of the Republic ? I will tell them why.
It is because they have violated these first cove-
nants ; because they have mocked at the faith
of the fathers ; because they have sought to
desecrate the rightful heritage of free labor. It
was not until after all this, and not until they
had taken possession of a great party, and turn-
ed it into an instrument of aggression, a sort of
Zouave force, ready and eager for work of car-
nage and slaughter, that this Northern fixed and
unyielding sentiment clothed itself with the pre-
rogatives of organization.

No, Mr. Chairman, it was not until after Texas
had been annexed for the concealed purpose of
extending slavery at the hazard of its pendant, a
war with Mexico ; not until after a law had been
forced upon the North for the recapture of their
fugitive slaves, odious in its details, repulsive in
its main features to the enlightened judgment of
our people, and violative of the rights of man in
a trial for his liberty ; and not until, still further
on, this controlling interest in the affairs of the
Government, this sapping and mining power, had,
in exultant joy, destroyed the restriction against
slavery north of 36° 30' north latitude, and upon
that soil, once musical with the notes of freedom,
revelled in despotic triumph upon the rights, the
traditions, the franchises, and the dearest interests
of our people, prostituting the ballot-box, driving
from the polls rightful citizens, following by day
and murdering by night men whose only crime
was the uttering of sentiments which they had
drank in among the hills and valleys of their
former homes in the free North. We could wait
no longer ; it would not do to wait until the slave
power had so interwoven itself into the very web
of o.ir political fabric that the integrity of our
institutions was fatally imperilled.

The people of the North were reluctant to break
away from their ancient party associations : for a
long time alter the South had wantonly sported
with their rights, they reposed in the confidence
of returning justice and the security of their
pledges. But when at last these fond hopes
were dispelled in their tearing the diadem from
the biow of freedom in the northern half of the

old Louisiana purchase, the people of the North,
from necessity, in vindication and maintenance
of their principles and the principles of their
ancestors, sprang at one bound into this organi-
zation, which, like a mighty army, swept along,
extending its column from the early and con-
stant home of freedom in the East to the scatter-
ed settlements of free labor beyond the Missis-
sippi, until it now embraces in its conquest fifteen
States of this Union. And I am not surprised
that gentlemen of the South tremble and take
alarm ; they hear the tread of these millions of
freemen ; it is a mighty army marching on to
take possession of the Government, well officer-
ed and fully equipped, and with weapons, mu-
nitions, and supplies, more complete and more
potent than the army of Hannibal or Napoleon,
or the brave followers of Jackson when he struck
the decisive blow against British arrogance and
aggression at New Orleans ; inasmuch as the
ballot-box, the free press, and free speech, in the
cause of truth and justice, are more mighty in
battle and more powerful in conquest than the
sword.

Southern gentlemen have no right to complain
of the numbers and might and objects of the
Republican party, nor from these to accuse the
people of the North of a change of sentiment
upon the question of slavery. The history of
this contest, made up from their own record,
through the past twenty-five years, has been
conducting the mind of patriotic citizens, of
whatever party, all over the North, to the neces-
sity of organization to preserve the principles of
justice and liberty. It is not our people, but the
people of the South — you, gentlemen — who have
changed from the declared opinions and pur-
poses of the founders. When the declaration of
our rights was proclaimed, and the proclamation
of our liberties and those rights which belonged
to all, there existed among us an institution in-
consistent with its great truths, and with the
form and spirit of the Government which was
framed. All the leading men of that day, and
subsequently through a large period of our his-
tory, believed it to be not only anomalous to
our institutions, but a deplorable evil; and they
sought by every means to eradicate it. I will be
indulged by gentlemen in calling attention to
some of their ever-memorable sayings; for their
testimony fortifies and sustains my proposition,
and at the same time places in more vivid con-
trast these daily oblations of our Southern breth-
ren at the shrine of human bondage.

Previous to the Revolution, while the nation
was taking counsel* and preparing for the strug-
gle of liberty against despotism, the people gen-
erally " were struck with the inconsistency of an
appeal for their own liberties, while holding in
bondage their fellow-men, guilty only of a skin
not colored like their own." The people of Dan-
bury, Connecticut, in town meeting, agreed to im-
port no more slaves ; at the same time declaring,
" we cannot but think it a palpable absurdity so
loudly to complain of attempts to enslave us,
while we are actually enslaving others."

In Darien, Georgia, in 1775, the following reso-
lution was passed at a meeting of citizens :

"To show tho world that we are not influenced by any
contracted or interested motives, but by a general philan-
thro ij for all mankind, of whatever climife, language, or
wo hereby declare our disapprobation and ab-
horrence ol the unnatural practice of slavery as (however
tho an ■ of the countrj or other speciou

ments maj plead for it) a practice founded in injustice and
cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties as well as
lives, deba ; part of our fellow-creatures below men, and
corrupting the \ irtue and morals of tho rest."

Listen to Jefferson, in the Virginia Convention
of 1774:

-■ The abolition c slavery is tho greatest object ol

desire in th so colonies, where it was unhappily introduced

in their infant state."

Again, in the Declaration of Independence :

" That all men are created equal; that they are endowed
with cenar i unalienable rights; thatamong these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "

Again, in 1821, when urging a proposition upon
his native State, he says :

"Nothing is more certainly written in tho book of fate,
than that I 11 se p lople [the negroes] are to be free ; nor is it
that the two races, equally free, cannot live in
the same Government. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn
indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our
power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation,
and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear oft
sibly, and their plaee be, pari passu, filled up by free white
lab : ers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, hu-
man nature must shudder at the prosneot held up. We
should look in vain for an examplo in the Spanish deporta-
tion or deletion of the Moors."

I need not allude to the anti-slavery sentiment
of Virginia. It was written in letters of living
light and unfading remembrance in the ordinance
of 1787, passed by a unanimous vote of the
States.

We find that the Constitutional Convention
was presided over by Washington, who said " his
vote would never be wanting for the passage of
a law to abolish slavery ; " and in that Conven-
tion, made up of men whose genius and patriot-
ism had largely contributed to bear us up and
carry us through the perilous .assaults of the
Revolution, who drank in the spirit of the con-
test, and were moved in the Convention by the
purpose to secure and perpetuate to themselves
and posterity, union, freedom, and happiness, all
expressed themselves with equal force and em-
phasis, so far as cotemporaneous history gives
any account, against the evil, the wrong, and the
curse, of human bondage.

Time will not permit me to deal largely in ex-
tracts from the fathers, nor are these necessary.
I will only ask your attention to the recorded say-
ings of one or two of the more conspicuous states-
men. Gouverneur Morris said "he never would
concur in upholding domestic slavery. It was
a nefarious institution. It was the curse of
Heaven."

Mr. Madison " thought it wrong to admit in
the Constitution the idea of property in man.-'

Luther Martin, of Maryland, said:

" Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism,
has a tendency to destroy those principles on which it is
supported, as it lessens the sense of equal rights of mankind,
and habituates us to tyranny and oppression."

When the Government went into operation, we
find it supported by men who were open in their
expressions of hostility to slavery.

John Adams, Vice President, had declared that
" consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of
trust."

Alexander Hamilton, a member of the Aboli-
tion Society of New York, united in a petition
for those who, ''free by the laws of God, are held
in slavery by the laws of the Stele.''

John .Jay, iMiief Justice of the United States,
said that, in his sight, slavery was an " iniquity,"
" a sin of crimson dye."

Benjamin Franklin, President of the' Abolition
Society of Pennsylvania, appeared at the bar of
Congress, near the close of his well-spent life,
and entreated " that it would be pleased to
countenance the restoration of liberty to those
unhappy men who alone, in this land of free-
dom, are degraded into perpetual bondage."

Again, General Washington says, in a letter
to John F. Mercer, September 9, 1786 :

" I never mean, unless some particular circumstances
should compel me to it, to possess another slave by pur-
ehas i, it being anion!,' my first wisJies to see some plan
adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished
by law."

The eloquent and patriotic Henry says, in a

letter dated January 18, 1793:

" 1 believe a time will come when an opportunity will be
:: red to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can
do is to improve it, if it happens in our day ; if not, lei us
transmit to our descendants, together with oar slaves, a pay
for their unhappy lot, and an abhorrence for slavery. If we
cannot reduce this wished-for reformation to practice, let os
treat the unhappy victims with lenity. 1: is the furthest ad-
vance we can make toward justice. It is a debt we owe to
the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with
that law which warrants slavery."

And the eccentric genius and well-wisher for
the liberty of the black race, John Randolph,
after speaking in deprecation of the extension of
slavery and its horrors, makes use of the follow-
ing language :

"I give to my slaves their freedom, to which my con-
science tells me they are justly entitled. It has a long time
been a matter of the deepest regret to me, that the circum-
stances under which 1 inherited them, and the obstacles
thrown in the way by the laws of the land, have prevented
my emancipating them in my lifetime, which it is my full
intention fo do in case I can accomplish it."

But, sir, I hasten on, passing the many pages
of testimony from distinguished and patriotic
men in all the walks of public and private life,
to him whose voice was so magic and potent in
Senate Chambers and among the millions with-
out, and at the mention of whose name the heart
of every American throbs with deeper emotions,
and kindles with increased admiration and
pride.

I quote from a speech made by the distin-
guished Clay, before the American Colonization
Society :

" We are reproached with doing mischiel by the agitation
of this question. The society goes into no household to dis-
turb us domestic tranquility ; it addresses itselfto no slaves,
to weaken their obligations "i obedience. It seeks to affect
no man's property. It neither has the power nor the will to
affect the property of any one. Ternary to his consent.

'' If they would repress till tendencies towards liberty and
ultimate emancipation, they must do more than put down
the benevolent efforts of tins society. They must go back
to the era of our liberty and independence, and muzzle tho
cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. They must
revive the slave trade, with all its train of atrocities."

Ay, sir, revive the slave trade as we now see
it being revived !

" They must suppress the workings of British philanthro-
py, seeking to ameliorate the condition of the unfortunate
West Indian slaves. They must arrest the career of South
American deliverance from thraldom. They must blow out
the moral lights around us, and extinguish that greatest

.

torch of all, which America presents to a benighted work!,
pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, and their
happiness. And when they have achieved all these purpo-
ses, their work will be yel incomplete. Iheymnst penetrate
the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the
love of liberty. Then, and not until then, when universal
darkness and despair prevail, can you perpetuate slavery,
and repress all sympathies and all humane and benevolent
efforts among freemen in behalf of the unhappy portion of
our race who are dooi 1 to bondage."

In the Duited States Senate, in 1850, he used
the following memorable words :

"I am extremely sorry to hear the Senator from Missis-
sippi say that he requires, lirst, theextension of the Missouri
compromise fine to the Pacific, and also that he is not satis-
fied with that, but requires, if I understand him correctly, a
positive provision tor the admission of slavery south of that
line. * * * Coming, as I do, from a slave State, it is my
solemn, deliberate, and well-matured determination, that no
power, ii" earthly power, shall compel me to vote for the
positive introduction of slavery either south or north of that
line.

'• Sir. while you reproach, and justly, too, our British an-
cestors for the introduction of this institution upon the conti-
nent of America, I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity
of the present inhabitants of California and of New Mexico
shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach Great
Britain for doing to us." * * *

Hear him further; he says:

" So long as God allows the vital current to flow through
my veins, I will never, never, never, by word or thought,
by mind or will, aid in admitting one rood of free territory
to the everlasting cursu of human bondage*"

And, gentlemen of the South, you had not en-
tirely abandoned these wise and salutary and
philanthropic truths — the doctrine that freedom
is beneficent and just, and ought to be extended ;
and that slavery was mischievous and immoral,
and ought to be restricted — when you asked our
co-operation in the project to annex Texas ; if
you had, then you were guilty of the deepest de-
ception and shame. Am I not correct ? Let us
see. Your party in the North and South pro-
claimed, in the canvass of 1844, in respect to the
annexation of Texas, these two fundamental
ideas : first, that by the removal of sJaves to
Texas, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Mis-
souri, would speedily become free States ; second,
that the transfer of slaves to the borders of Mex-
ico would open the way for the entire extinction
of slavery, by its transfer to regions where the
prejudice of race and color do not exist ; and by
the absorption in, or amalgamation with, the
mixed races of the torrid regions, where they
could enjoy substantial equality, social and po-
litical.

What said Hon. Robert J. Walker during the
Presidential contest of that year, (1844.) and 1
may say the influence of whose ingenious argu-
ments, thrown broadcast over the country North,
was manifest in determining the fortunes of the
struggle, and served to secure for him, as a re-
ward for such important political service, a com-
manding position in the Cabinet of President
Polk?

•■ Nor can it be disguised that, by the reannexation,as the
number of free blacks augmented in the slaveholding States,
they would be diffused gradually, through Texas, into Mex-
ico and Central and Southern America, where nine-tenths of
their present population are already of the colored races, and
where, from their vast preponderance in number, they are
not a degraded caste, but upon a footing, not merely of legal,
but, what is far more important, of actual equality with the rest
Of tlie population. Here, then, if Texas is annexed, through-
out the vast region and salubrious and delicious climate of
Mexico and of Central and Southern America, a large and
rapidly-increasing portion of the African race will disappear

from the limits of the Union. The process will be gradual
and progressiva, without a shock and without a convulsion.

•■ The annexation of Texas is the only safety-valve for the
whole Union, and the only practicable outlet for the African
population, through Texas, into ilexico and Central and
Southern America. * * *

" Again, then, the question is asked, ' Is slavery never to
disappear from the Union? ' This is a startling and moment-
ous question, but the answer is easy and the proof is clear ;
it will certainly disappear if Texas is reannexed to the Union ;
not by abolition, but against and in spite of all its frenzy,
slowly and gradually, by ditfusion, as it has already thus
nearly receded from several of the more northern of the
slaveholding State's, and as it will continue thus more rapidly
to recede by the reannexation of Texas, and finally, in the
distant future, without a shock, without abolition, without a
convulsion, disappear into and through Texas, into Mexico
and Central and Southern America.'' * * *

Mr. Walker's was not an isolated instance in
the promulgation of these views ; indeed, sir,
these opinions upon the subject of annexation
were the vitalizing elements of the canvass; and
were urged by the Democratic party as noble and
imperishable progress injustice and civilization,
by which a portion of the slave States, if not all,
were to escape from the barbarism of the ruder
ages, and take their stand on the principle
evolved from our struggle for independence and
our constitutional history.

Turn to the debates in Congress, and examine
the speeches, in the interest of Mr. Polk and an-
nexation, of Senator Breese, of Illinois, June 3,
1844 ; Senator Dickinson, of New York, February
22, 1845, (Appendix Congressional Globe, 2d
session Twenty-eighth Congress, page 321 ;)
Morris, of New Hampshire, January 25, 1845 ;
Gen. Ashley, of Arkansas, February 22, 1845 —
page 283 of Debates ; Tibbatts, of Kentucky, May
1 7, 1844. And I will not omit to quote from the
speech of the honorable gentleman now at the
other end of the avenue, whose pious and saintly
regard for the interest of free labor, and the en-
largement of the area of freedom, has been pain-
fully illustrated since his installment as Presi-
dent of these United States.

In the Senate, June 8, 1844, Hon. James Bu-
chanan, of Pennsylvania, said:

" After mature reflection, I now believe that the acquisi-
tion of Texas will he the means of limiting, not enlarging, the
dominion of slavery. In the government of the world, Provi-
dence generally produces great changes by gradual means.
There is nothing rash in the councils of the Almighty. May
not, then, the acquisition of Texas be the means of drawing
the >1 1 vis far to the south, to a climate more Congenial to their
nature ; and may they not finally pass off into Mexico, and
there mingle with a race where no prejudice exists against
their color? * * * Texas will open an outlet, and slave-
ry itself may thus finally pass the Del Norte, and lie lost in
Mexico."

Such were then your declared objects and de-
sire— perhaps put forth to deceive — to obtain
power and betray. It now looks as though they
were the singing of Circe — "the voice of the
charmer, charming never so wisely " — lulling the
suspicions of the people of the North to sleep,
and deceiving them in regard to the stupendous-
ness of the fraud you were practicing upon their
credulity. Whether so or not, your party were
compelled, in consonance with the general sen-
timent that slavery was an evil of the deepest
and darkest dye, and that its extension, under
the care and consent of our Government, was an
intolerable crime, to make this record, to give
these assurances to the people ; and I need not
sav that they were in accordance with the con-

viction of the civilized world — at least, outside
of the fifteen slave States of this Union.

The South cannot deny that slavery, up to a
recent date in our history, was made to rest
entirely on local usage ; it was made so by civil
and common law, because it was assumed to be
in violation of natural right. And being such a
violation, it follows that it is a moral wrong;
and it has been so regarded by the mass of our
people from the earliest times. In other words,
it was a privileged and exceptional institution,
doomed, sooner or later, to perish. In this view,
men have spoken of the irrepressible conflict be-
tween freedom and slavery ; and it is a philo-
sophical truth, that one or the other, in the full-
ness of time, must recede ; one must triumph
and become supreme. Sober men, and men of
reason, will not be in doubt as to the result — no
more than they will doubt the ultimate triumph
of right and justice, in all things, over error and
wrong. In this view, speaking not of my polit-
ical duties and obligations to Government, and
disclaiming in this respect, or any other, the
right to interfere with the domestic institutions
of the South, I hope the time may come, not dis-
tant, when the sun, in his course across the con-
tinent, will not shine upon a slave ; when the
inalienable rights which belong to all men shall
be universally recognised, and become the con-
ceded right to be enjoyed by all. If I speak with
undue warmth of expression, iu the words of
Edmund Burke, "something must be pardoned
to the spirit of liberty."

But to return to the point of digression. I
had been exhibiting the recorded views of the
Democratic party in regard to slavery — the views
of the South and the North — at an early period,
and also at a later period.

What does the South say now ? What is
claimed in its name and behalf, in the meridian
of this Administration, and in the strength of
your power? You maintain the perfect recti-
tude of slavery ; that it is the highest type of
civilization ; that it is neither wrong nor an
evil; that it is the most economical form of
labor ; that it is adapted to promote the most
perfect social condition ; that it is in conformity
with the revealed Word of God ; that it must
travel with the Constitution into the Territories,
and there be sustained and protected by it; and
the adoption of these views, or disunion, is the j
ultimatum you now propose to the whole nation.
Not only the public men and public bodies of
the South boldly declare and vehemently insist
on these doctrines, but there are camp-followers
and soldiers of fortune in the North — men there
who say, with Charles O'Concr, that the negro
is doomed by nature to be the bondman of the
white man.

When 1 uttered my convictions from my place
in this House, in 1354. that it was the design of
the Democratic party — or those who had control
of it — in the r'peal of the Missouri compromise,
to extend negro bondage, it was denied. And
when again I said, February 24, 1858, in a
speech then made, that it was designed to carry
slavery into all the Territories under the protec-
tion of the Constitution, and that no power, not

even the Congress, nor the people of the Terri-
tories, could prevent or remove it, you indig-
nantly repelled the charge, as false in fact and
inference. How times have changed ! and more
rapidly still have men changed.

The President, in his late message, lays down
your party creed. Hear what he says :

••The right has been established of every citizen to take
his property of any kind, including slaves, into tin- common
Territories belonging equally to all the States of the Confed-
eracy . and to have it protected there under the Federal Con
stitution. Neither Congress, nor a Territorial Legislature,
nor any human power, has any authority to annul or impair
this vested right."

It is you, then, not we, who have changed
position upon this question ; and the Republican
party was organized from the necessity of the
case to preserve the maxims of our early faith
and pledges ; the principles upon which our
Government was founded, and upon the mainte-
nance of which, in my judgment, its perpetuity
depends. I need not speak of the next step in
the effort to nationalize slavery. I claim to be
no seer or prophet in respect to the purposes of
men, or parties, in this work of placing our Gov-
ernment under the control of the slave power.

The gentleman from Texas, [Mr. Reagan,] a
few days since, with disingenuous boldness, in-
dicated one of the advance steps the Democratic
party will soon take ; and I could, therefore,
claim no credit for the discovery in this instance.
If I understood him correctly, he claimed that
not even State authority — State sovereignty —
can abolish or impair the right of property in
slaves, short of revolution — that is, the right to
abolish would be a revolutionary right ; that its
claim for protection under Federal and State
authority rests upon the same right as all other
kinds of property. Indeed, I do not see why this
is not a logical sequence from the premises.
Then it is, that slavery may go to New York, to
the home of the Pilgrim Fathers, sweep along the
shores of the great lakes, and darken the broad
prairies of the West, under the sanctions of this
vested right of property in slaves under the
Constitution. And, Mr. Chairman, is it not a
remarkable and instructive fact, that while the
South claim these immunities and this protec-
tion for their slaves in the Territories and in the
States, they are at this moment driving North-
ern men from their midst, for real or suspected
sentiments in favor of the institutions of the
North, or for a preference for the condition of
the free white laborers over that of the bondmen
in chains?

I pass, however, from this sad spectacle of the
degradation and tyranny incident to, I may say
inseparable from, a society which insists upon
the Divine character of human servitude, to note
the one step further in this work to complete its
supremacy. The revival of the African slave
trade rather follows as a corollary to the doc-
trine of extension and perpetuation ; and I ap-
prehend the party will soon accept this tenet of
faith, now urged by a large portion of its mem-
bers in the South.

If slavery is humane, beneficent, and just, how
can the philanthropy and Christianity of ourDem-
ocratic brethren be at ease, while vast numbers

of negroes in Africa are deprived of the elevating
influences of their discipline and instruction upon
the broad plantations of the South ? In truth,
sir, from this view of the rightfulness of slavery,
advocacy of the revival of the slave trade fol-
lows; and, as a party, the Democracy will as
surely reach this point as the waters of yonder
Potomac, in their course, will reach the Chesa-
peake Bay.

The Republican party will oppose these pres-
ent and prospective schemes, by which the rich
freight of precious interests secured by our form
of Government may be precipitated in ruin, and
it will seek to correct the public sentiment of the
South in respect to its own doctrine, so wickedly
perverted by those in position and power. It
will not only do this, and stay the march of sla-
very into the common Territory, but it will un-
dertake to correct the financial mismanagement
and abuses which have assumed such gigantic
proportions under your administration of public
affairs. We shall strive to lessen the present
enormous and profligate expenditures, establish
fairness in the dispensation of patronage, and
secure perfect fidelity and honesty with all the
officers and agents of the Government.

No one can complain of this, except upon the
principle that he who disturbs the peace shall
have full license to destroj' it ; that he who rav-
ages a portion of our inheritance shall be at lib-
erty to pillage and lay waste the whole ; upon
the principle that the highwayman who takes
your purse shall be entitled to your raiment and
food.

The Democratic party have exercised power
corruptly, as the record shows. They have not
only abused the trust which free labor commit-
ted to them, but they have rioted upon their sub-
stance, and wrested from them their fair, equal
privilege in the political advantages, honors, and
emoluments, under the Government.

Let us see if this is not as I have stated ; and
I may here remark, that I am led to the follow-
ing investigation with increased desire, because
of the partial statements, or omitted tables, in
the comparisons drawn by the honorable mem-
ber from Mississippi [Mr. Barksdale] a short
time since.

The population of the South is scarcely more
than half that of the North. Since the organi-
zation of the Government, there have been eigh-
teen elections for President, in which the candi-
dates chosen were twelve of them Southerners
and slaveholders, and only six of them Northern-
ers, four of which six stood upon a Southern
platform ; that no Northern man has ever been
re-elected, while five of the Southern men have;
or, in other words, that out of the seventy-two
years of Federal administration closing with Mr.
Buchanan's term, Southern men and slavehold-
ers have held the reins for forty-three years, or
more than two-thirds of the time, and have di-
rected them a greater part of the remaining
third.

In all the other departments of the Federal
Government, the South has enjoyed the same as-
cendency. It has had seventeen out of the twen-
ty-eight judges of the Supreme Court ; fourteen

out of the nineteen Attorneys General ; sixty-one
out of the seventy-seven Presidents of the Sen-
ate ; twenty-one out of thirty-three Speakers of
the Bouse ; and eighty out of one hundred and
thirty-four foreign Ministers.

The Senate of the United States consists of
sixty-six members — representing fifteen slave
and eighteen free States ; the free States have a
white population of about eighteen million, the
slave States have a white population of about
eight million. The Senate have twenty-two com-
mittees ; and, in fairness, the free States ought
to have a preponderance proportional to their
numbers and power. How stands the case in
the arrangement of the Senate at the beginning
of the present Congress? The chairmanship of
sixteen is given to the slaveholding members,
and the chairmanship of the six others to mem-
bers who side with them in politics. Not a sin-
gle committee of any importance is assigned to
the free States, either in the chairmanship or in
the majority of its members. The Republicans,
who have twenty-five representatives in the Sen-
ate, or considerably more than one-third of the
-whole body, are allowed two members on each
committee of seven. Could anything be more
sectional than this?

Now, can any one say that this is altogether
fair? I believe I am authorized to say that the
people of the North regard it as an unjust and
invidious discrimination; and, because they have
determined to take these matters in hand, the
South should not get into a rage, and menace in
a furious manner a rupture of the Federal bands.
It is an old maxim, that " wisdom is more valu-
able than rubies ; " and so I think it will not re-
quire much observation and experience, under
this change of administration, to convince the
wildest opponent of the present hour that it
works well ; that the effects are beneficent, and
that the peace and greatness and glory of our
whole country are promoted thereby.

But I am not done with these tabular state-
ments and comparisons. The following table is
compiled from the last published annual report
of the Secretary of the Treasury, and shows the
amount of revenue from the customs in 1857,
and the expenses of collecting it for the fiscal
year ending June 30, 1858 :
Revenue.

Maine $358,980.56

X. Hampshire 5,530.54

•Vermont 8,581.70

Massachusetts 7,457,276.06
Rhode Island. ' 80,126.06
Connecticut... 257,307.91

New York. . . . 42,721,862.88
New Jersev.. 5,011.36

Pennsylvania. 3,6S8,766.96

Delaware 2,004 .85

Maryland .... . 1,475,823.57

Virginia 246,130.00

Dist. Columbia 25,527.70

N.Carolina... 66!523.0S

S.Carolina... 511,856.53

Georgia 237,108.06

Alabama 162,3S0.42

Mississippi . . . 4,445.90

Florida 56,017.71

California.... 1,5S"8,175.S2
Louisiana.... 3,601,899.20

Texas 134,517.99

Ohio 270.104.5S

Michigan 147,211.53

Expenses.

No. Employes.

$107,198.69

121

10.982.49

21

16,285.47

33

1,286,531.87

319

' 23,552.87

63

55.793.34

4S

1,303.754.11

1.311

9.140.03

30

214,492.11

203

15,849.36

S

144.10S.42

128

71,807.73

58

4^077.89

6

15;962.26

37

70,247.51

51

35,918.04

33

65.295.76

25

1,419.70

6

30/240.10

45

433,004.89

149

264,797.35

210

5S.H82.59

52

17,430.46

28

14,934.16

42

%

Illinois 183,878.29 • 10.82 21

Missouri 365,703.78 12,14 6

Kentucky.... 22,225.41 2,298 I 5

Tennessee.... 149,000.54 7,715.21 3

Iowa 40,455.80 2,801.10 3

Wisconsin.... 284,790.88 8

Minnesota..., 68.00 2,460.00 2

Wash. Tor.... 6,522.61 4,94 9

on Ter... 4,199.11 26,996.67 8

Now, sir, you see by this that the State that I
have the honor in part to represent contributes
more to the support of the General Government
than all the other States put* together ; and we
get from the Federal Treasury scarcely a dollar
to improve our channels of commerce, our rivers
•and harbors, while 'millions are lavished in eon-
Btructing public buildings, harbors, and fortifica-
tions, in Southern States, which contribute to the
general support not a tithe in the comparison.
More than this. There, only one-fortieth part of
the revenue is expended in collecting it; and in
Maryland, one-tenth is consumed; in Virginia,
North Carolina. Alabama, and Mississippi, one-
fourth ; in Florida, more than half; while in
Delaware, it seems that the custom-houses do a
losing business, costing seven times as much as
they yield.

This is not all. Under your administration of
the Government, the first year of Mr. Buchanan's
term, the expenditures amounted to the smm of
$81,585, 667. 76 — more than the expenditures for
the whole of the first twenty years of our national
existence. JFor the first forty years, from 178.9
to 1S30, inclusive, including the war of 1812, our
expenses were §293,541,195.92, and for five years
ot Mr. Pierce's and Mr. Buchanan's reign, it
amounted to $316,949,226.65; so they spent of
the people's money $33,408,030.73 more, during
five years, than for the first half of the entire pe-
riod of our national being.

During Jackson's term, the revenue did not
exceed §52(5,000,000 annually, and yet he was
able to conduct the Government from this, and
extinguish $50,000,000 of the public debt ; but
our present Chief Magistrate, with a revenue of
over fifty million dollars annually, is not only
unable to balance the accounts and extinguish
the public debt, but during the firstyear increases
it S40,000,000 under his financial mismanage-
ment, extravagance, and corruption. The ex-
penses of the army have nearly trebled, and the
expense of co'lecting the revenue has increased
over forty per cent., or Si, 700,000.

In 1840, the "miscellaneous" items were se-
verely criticized, and contributed in a large de-
gree to defeat Mr. Van Buren in his canvass for
re-election. It then rose to $'-,500,000, and it
now reaches the vast sum of Sl8,000,000. Gen-
tlemen will recollect the charges then preferred
against Mr. Van Buren, because of his prodigality
in furnishing and conducting the White House ;
and yet all was within the outlay, over salary, of
0 a year — while Mr. Buchanan, with his
more expensive luxuries, elegance, and profligate
habits, squanders $35,000 a year, exclusive of
his salary. Now, when it is considered that this
money comes mainly from taxes, direct and indi-
rect, on the industry of the country, three-fourths
of which is found in the North — a burden upon
our capital, our skiil, our arts, our professions,

and our labor — it should not create wonder or
surprise that we seek to return to frugal and
economical expenditure ; and to this end will ex-
ert all fair means at the ballot-box, and in every
constitutional way, to obtain supremacy in the
affairs of the Government.

I will pursue these statements and comparisons
no further. Sufficient has been shown for my
purpose, and sufficient, I trust, to convince all
fair-minded men that, from the "highways an«l
by-ways of the so-called Democratic party there
comes up an insufferable stench," pervading
every tissue of their administration.

But, sir, bad as these practices are in the ad-
ministration of the Government, demoralizing as
are the means employed to accomplish these
purposes, and proscriptive and intolerant as are
the usages of this party in the distribution of
favors and patronage, it is of minor importance
compared with the obstinate and continued effort
to destroy the principles of justice and freedom
which are the substratum of the whole super-
structure of our free institutions. It is said by
Tacitus, I believe, that the first advances of
tyranny are steep and perilous ; but when
once you are entered, parties and instruments
are ever ready to espouse you.

How true is this of that bold step of the slave
power which first attracted the attention of our
confiding people! I allude to the overthrow of
that time-honored ordinance of freedom, in 1854,
from which act every patriot heart in the North
shrank wTth horror, and the whole nation was
then aroused to a sense of danger. Moses was
not more surprised and appalled, when he came
down from the mountains and found his hosts in
tumult, than were the freedom-loving people of
this Confederacy when violent hands were laid
on this security to free labor ; and none were
found, in all the North, so reckless as to applaud
the cruel purpose. Since then — ah ! most pain-
ful truth — since then, from among the universal
sentiment of condemnation, men have been found
who approve of the work, and go forth with this
party to new scenes and fresh fields of innova-
tion and invasion. The Kepublican party intend
to arrest their progress, and they can only do so
effectually by taking the Govenrment into their
own hands. They will trench upon not the least
constitutional right ; they intend no overt act,
nor will they countenance any, affecting the
safety or security of Southern men's human
chattels ; they contemplate no illegal conspiracy,
nor secret treason, but will march with firm and
honest tread to the very verge of their constitu-
tional rights, and there stop.

The most conclusive proof that there are no
considerable number of men in the North with
such wrong intent, is to be found in the late feeble
attempt of John Brown " to promote the good of
freedom by the evil of servile strife and civil
war ; " who, after two years of effort, with all his
power to inspire men with his own views, with
his perseverance and heroism of character; with
his truth, sincerity, and honesty, heightened and
impelkd by the cruelties and wrongs heaped
upon him and his family in Kansas, you find him
surrounded by only sixteen white men and five

8

negroes in his attempt "to undo the heavy bur-
dens, and to let the oppressed go free." And it
is not likely that the folly and madness of even
this experiment will be repeated during the pres-
ent century, if ever. It is not from the North
slaveholders have cause of alarm in methods of
conspiracy, violence, and blood. Jefferson fore-
saw the source of greatest peril, when he said:

" The whole commerce between master and slave is a per-
petual exercise of the most boisterous passion — the most un-
remitting despotism on the one part, and degrading sub-
mission on the other." * * * "Indeed, I tremble for
mycountry when I reflect that God is just." * * * "The
Almighty has Ho attribute which can take side with us in
such a contest."

That is, a contest between the enslavers and
the enslaved.

From the views, then, of one of the most dis-
tinguished of Southern statesmen, it is not a
wild conjecture to suppose that, iu the progress
of events, unless some change takes place in his
condition, the slave will rise and assert his nat-
ural rights, and stamp on "the wild and guilty
phantasy that man can hold property in man."

And now, .Mr. Chairman, a word in respect to
this thing with seven heads and ten horns, which
has furnished a theme for so much impetuous
declamation and ridiculous parade with our
our Southern friends, and I close. I refer, sir,
to the publication of Mr. Helper, entitled The
Impending Crisis of the South, mainly drawn from
the United States census of 1850, calculated to
prove that slavery is a curse to the South ; that
it is paralyzing to the prosperity of the South —
an incubus upon their material and social ad-
vancement ; aud that it operates to crush out all
the individualism, hopes, and primal instincts,
of the. non-slaveholding class, and is therefore
to be deprecated.

And just here I will be allowed to read from
this work, the recommending of which, by acci-
dent or otherwise, has been sufficient cause, in
the view of Democrats, for keeping this House
unorganized for eight weeks, and for denouncing
Republican members with all manner of oppro-
brious epithets — yes, sir, read from this work the
most intense abolition, treasonable, and incen-
diary doctrine to be found between its lids, the
utterances of one of Virginia's own sons, and
who has just been rewarded by this same Dem-
ocratic party with the French mission ! Listen
to the heretical language of Hon. Charles James
Faulkner, in the Virginia House of Delegates,
January 20, 1832 :

,: Sir, if there be one who concurs with that gentleman as
to the harmless character of this institution, let me request
him to compare the condition of the slaveholding portion of
lies Commonwealth, barren, desolate, and seared, as it were,
by the avenging hand ofHeaven,with the description which
we have of this country from those who Qrst broke its virgin
soil. To what is this change to be attributed ? Alone tolhe
toit/teri < \ing effects of slavery— to that vice in the

organization of society, by which one' halt of its inhabitants
are arm; ed in interest and feeling against the other halt— to
that unfortunate slate of society in which freemen regard
labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden
tyrannically imposed upon them.

"In the language of the wise and patriotic Jefferson, ' You
must approach it— you must bear it— von must adopt some
plan ol emancipation, or worse will follow.' "

Now, I do not think I have ever said anything

as fierce and defiant and sweeping in condemna-
tion of your system of negro slavery as this; and
I do not know that Mr. Helper has. I do not say
it is unjust or unwise ; it is rather a question of
policy or taste, which I leave to Soul hern gen-
tlemen to settle in their own way. But to the
matter of arraignment; and I have this to say:
my constituents do not expect me to ask permis-
sion of the South, when, or how, or where, I may
endorse or recommend, for circulation or other-
wise, any pamphlet or book whatever. They
treat with respectful disdain yo.ur perversions of
my motives, and condemn the disingenuous ar-
gument of gentlemen, wrung" from infelicitous
phrases and sentences to be found in the work,"
to cast imputations upon my patriotism and
honor.

My constituents and the free people of the
North have not arrived at the point when they
will, in servile obedience to any clas3 of men, be
dictated to in what they shall read, nor what they
shall respectfully advise others to read ; and I
trust in God they never will. A large majority
of the people of the North will take the liberty
of exposing the injurious and debasing influence
of slavery upon our national politics; its disad-
vantages in an economical point of view; its
antagonism to Christianity and the higher and
better interests of civilization ; and acting upon
these convictions, in stern political duty, will
strive to limit its extension and destroy its pre-
ponderance in the affairs of the General Govern-
ment.

This is no new doctrine or modern theory; it
was the universal conviction of our people, up
to a few years ago, as patent upon every page
of our political history as the talismanic charac-
ters on the cimeter of Solyman were to his hosts ;
and I have aimed, I trust successfully, to show
that the Republican party, of which I am proUd
to be a member, is but the historical outgrowth
of the condition and circumstances of our coun-
try, while its principles are as old as the frame-
work of our society, and coeval with the first
notions of our ancestors of independent self-
government.

It occupies now no temporary ground ; it has
no entirely special purpose ; but with duties as
varied as the interests of our free institutions
and the welfare of our people, the purity of its
doctrines, sanctioned by the fathers and sustain-
ed by a long line of illustrious patriots and
statesmen, gives it a permanancy and promise
not measured by generations of men. And to
the immediate causes which called our organiza-
tion into being, add the lawless and unprovoked
violence to freemen in Kansas ; the attempt not
only to force slavery upon that fair domain, con-
trary to the will of the people, but to convey
and protect it by Federal power wherever the
Constitution extends; and now the espionage
and ostracism carried on in the South against
Northern men — and you have given us a rising
power and swelling current of public opinion
which can no more be turned aside than the
course of the winds or the on-sweeping tide of
the ocean.