The President's message--the sectional party : speech of Hon. John A. Bingham,of Ohio : delivered in the House of Representatives, April 24, 1860

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE — THE SECTIONAL PARTY.

SPEECH

OF

HON. JOHN A. BINGHAM, OF OHIO.

Delivered in the House of Representatives, April 24, 1860.

Mr. Chairman : The annual message of the
President of the United States, which has been
referred to this Committee for its consideration,
should not be passed over lightly. It contains
much that, in my judgment, is offensive to the
people and injurious to their interests, and which
should not be allowed to go to the country un-
challenged. It is my purpose, sir,. to speak of
this paper with all the respect that is due to the
distinguished position of its author, but with the
utmost freedom and candor. I speak to-day as
a representative of the people and for the people ;
not as the representative of party or for party.
I speak to-day as an American citizen, claiming
every State and section and rood of the Republic
as part of my native country, that country which
at last has but one Constitution and one destiny.
I do not intend, in anything I may this day utter,
to do injustice to any section of that country, or
to any of its interests.

The President of the United States, in this
paper, invokes all good citizens to strive to allay
" the demon spirit of sectional hatred and strife
now alive in the land." This sectional spirit, to
which the President refers, manifested itself upon
this floor during the first two months of this ses-
sion. It found fit, fierce, and expressive utterance
on the other side of this Chamber, amongst the
avowed political friends of the President himself,
in their attempt to arraign and condemn sixty of
their peers here as the aiders and inciters of trea-
son, insurrection, and murder; and this, too,
without giving to the accused a hearing, without
testimony, in defiance of all law, and without
subjecting the conscience of these self-consti-
tuted triers to the inconvenient obligation of an
official oath. While these gentlemen were thus
attempting to enforce mob law on this floor, they
were loud in proclaiming that the inauguration
of a Republican President, elected by the people
in conformity with the Constitution and laws,
should be resisted to the extremity of disunion
and civil war.

These were the enunciations with which our
ear3 were greated for two months, pending the
contest for the organization of this House. If it
was fit that the President should rebuke this
sectional spirit among the people, it is fit that its
manifestations upon this floor should be rebuked

as well ; and it is eminently fit that the sectional
policy of the President and of his party should be
rebuked in return by the whole people. There
is so much in the tone of this paper that is in-
tensely sectional, that I am constrained to believe
that the President's plaintive invocation to allay
"the demon spirit" was but smooth dissimula-
tion, the better to disguise the sectional policy
of himself and his party.

Sir, to put down forever this sectional party;
to put au end forever to this sectional strife, and
sectional innovation upon the Constitution and
the rights of the people, I am ready to join hands
with good men in every section of the Union.
That is a fell spirit, a demon spirit, which, under
any pretence or for any purpose, would strike
down all the defences of law ; would sweep away
all the landmarks of right and justice ; would
break down the traditional policy of this Gov-
ernment, as wise as it is beneficent; which, in-
stead of maintaining and perpetuating peace
between every section of this country, would in-
augurate and perpetuate discord, which would
fill this goodly land with the lurid light of civil
war; which would give its peaceful homes to
conflagration, and its citizens to the sword ;
staining the white raiment of its mountains and
the green vesture of its plains with the blood of
human sacrifice shed in that unnatural and un-
matched atrocity, fraternal strife.

Notwithstanding all I have heard, sir, upon
this floor, of threats of disunion and civil war, I
do not fear it ; for there is in this land a power
stronger than armies — that new power, born of
the enlightened intellect and conscience of the
people — the power of public opinion. That power
speaks to-day, through the pen and the press,
the living voice and the silent ballot. That power
is stronger, I repeat, than armies. No, sir; not-
withstanding all these threats, there can be no
conflict of arms between the great sections of
this -Union. This land, consecrated to freedom
and to man, by the blood of patriots and of mar-
tyrs, would refuse to bear up upon its holy
ground an army of traitors. Local rebellions
there may be ; but in the future, as in the past,
they will be suppressed by the popular will; by
that mujestic voice of the nation, at whose light-
est word the tumult of the mob is still, and the

wild, Btormy sea of human passion is calm. God
is not in the whirlwind, nor in the earthquake,
>:or in the storm.

The question to-day is, not how shall civil
war between the great sections of this Union be
averted — for that is not to be, it is an impossi-
bility— but the question of to-day is, how shall
this sectional party and this sectional strife be
allayed ? I answer, sir, that this sectional strife
will never be allayed by imitating the example,
or adopting the policy, of the President and his
party; never, while there is an honest head or an
honest heart in this land. Neither will this sec-
tional strife be allayed, but fostered, rather, by
the attempt, here or elsewhere, either by National
or by State legislation, to enact sedition laws, by
which to fetter the conscience, or stifle the con-
victions, of American citizens. This sectional
strife will never be allayed by the attempt, here
or elsewhere, either by National or by State leg-
islation, to annul the sacred right of domicile, to
make it a felony for any freeman, born anywhere
within the limits of the Republic, to live unmo-
lested on the spot of his origin, so long as he
behaves himself well, and it pleases God to let
him live.

This sectional strife never will be allayed by
the attempt to nationalize chattel slavery, to
place it under the shelter of the Federal Consti-
tution, and to maintain it in all the national do-
main, either by force of a Congressional slave
code, which the President recommends in this
message, or by force of Territorial legislation,
enacted by virtue of Congressional grants of
power.

Sir, it is in such legislation as I have named,
or in the attempt to inaugurate such legislation,
that the President's party, sometimes misnamed
the Democratic party, lives, and moves, and has
its being. The time was, at the organization of
this Government, when it was conceded by every
State and every great statesman in the land, that
it was the right and the duty of the Federal
Government to exclude slave labor and chattel
slavery from every rood of the national domain,
and to protect the free labor of freemen, not only
in the Territories of the United States, but in
every State of the Union, North, South, East, and
West, and wherever the jurisdiction of the Gov-
ernment exteuded, either on the land or the sea.

In that day, sir, the grand words of the Con-
stitution, " TO ESTABLISH JUSTICE, TO PROMOTE THE
GENERAL WELFARE, AND SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF

liberty," were not denounced as " glittering gen-
eralities," or the utterances of " infant philoso-
phers;" but were reverently h^ld, believed in,
and acted upon, as absolute verities. Then, sir,
to promote the general welfare, Congress — the
First Congress — legislated for the greatest good
of the greatest number, by protecting the free
labor of the whole country ; and to establish jus-
tice and secure the blessings of liberty, that Con-
gress re-enacted the ordinance of 1787, (which
had ceased with the Confederation to be law,)
for the government of all the national territory ;
declaring thereby that no person therein should
ever be enslaved, except for crime ; or be de-
prived of life or liberty, but by due process of law
and the judgment of his peers ; nor of his proper-
ty, the product of his toil, without just compen-

sation. Under the influence of this legislation,
enacted in the very spirit of the Constitution,
and sanctioned by the great name of Washington,
the country commenced its sublime march of in-
dependence ; and was not then, as now, pos-
sessed of that devil, that demon spirit, which to-
day rends and distracts her.

In that day, sir, it was everywhere declared
and admitted that slavey did not exist by virtue
of the Constitution ; that the Constitution did
not operate on any class of men, black or white,
as property, but only and always as persons ;
that the institution of slavery was purely local,
sectional, not national ; existing only within the
limits of such of the States as tolerated it, and
there only by force of local, not national, law ;
that slavery was a great evil to the master and
slave, foreign to the spirit of our laws and insti-
tutions, an evil to be softened, not aggravated,
to be got rid of and ended, not to be spread into
new lands to be perpetuated and eternized. Un-
happily, the time came in the history of the Re-
public, when these just sentiments, and this wise
national legislation to which I have referred,
came to be questioned and denounced.

This was the beginning of :his sectional strife.
When and by whom was this strife inaugurated,
by whom has it been continued, and who and
what party are responsible for its continuance ?
In the year 1803, by a treaty of purchase, the
United States acquired from France the Territory
of Louisiana. This acquisition was made con-
fessedly without warrant in the Constitution, but
under a supposed public necessity. In 1804, an
organic act was passed for the government of so
much of this Territory as lay south of the thirty-
third parallel of north latitude. By that act the
traffic in foreign and domestic slaves was prohib-
ited in that Territory, under the penalty of fine
and the emancipation of the slaves. Jefferson,
in his approval of this act, was either ignorant
or careless of the alleged duty of thi3 Govern-
ment to protect the slave property of the citizens
of the slave States in the national Territories.
It was clearly a violation of thi3 alleged duty to
provide that the citizen should not traffie in his
slave property in that Territory without subject-
ing himself to fine and forfeiture.

The subsequent organization of Missouri as a
slave State within that Territory, and her ap-
plication for admission as such into the Union,
gave rise to the first great sectional conflict,
which was finally determined by the admission
of that JState, and the enactment of the com-
promise* act of 1820, by which chattel slavery
was fo; '''er excluded from all that territory lying
west of Missouri and north of the parallel of 36°
30/ north latitude.

After this compromise, the nation reposed in
peace, and its policy in favor of free territory
and the protection of free labor was deemed set-
tled, until about the year 1830, when, under the
beneficent effects of this policy, it became appar-
ent that, unless it was abandoned, slavery itself
must give way and cease to be in the slave
States, by the general consent and in obedience
to the ever-increasing demands for free labor.
Then, sir, Maryland tolerated open and active
efforts among her citizens for the abolition of
domestic slavery. Then Kentucky tolerated like

efforts for the abolition of slavery among her
eiti-pns ; and Virginia saw and felt in every
fibre of her existence that she must either throw
off that giant wrong, or perish by reason of its
continuance. Her Legislative Assembly about
that time engaged in a debate on the question
of the total abolition of the system ; some of her
ablest citizens insisting upon it, foremost among
whom was a distinguished gentleman who, but
the other day, was appointed our minister pleni-
potentiary to France, (Mr. Faulkner,) who re-
peated the expressive and prophetic admonition
of Jefferson : " You must adopt some plan of
emancipation, or worse will follow.'-' It was
theu, sir. that in the South this sectional strife
was again renewed, by opposing emancipation
and by making war upon the great and benefi-
cent policy of protection to free labor. That
strife was by the South brought into these. Halls,
and here inaugurated, by demanding that the
system of protecting and encouraging the free
labor of the freemen of this country by legisla-
tion should be abandoned. That sectional par-
ty in the South, then, as now, ostracized every
open and avowed friend of emancipation and of
protection to free labor.

Mr. SMITH, of Virginia. I want to say to the
gentleman from Ohio

Mr. BINGHAM. The gentleman will excuse me.

Mr. SMITH, of Virginia. I do not want the
gentleman to say that Virginia did that. Some
of her politicians did it, butVirginia repudiated it.

Mr. BINGHAM. I am speaking of her poli-
ticians ; and I wish to say that then, ever since,
and now, the South had and has men superior
to all such narrow, bigoted, selfish, mercenary
prejudices and practices ; but, unhappily, the
gentleman from Virginia is not one of them.
Whatever pretexts may have been urged, the
real purpose of the South, in assailing this pol-
icy of protection, was to secure an advantage to
the slave-owners of the South, at the expense of
the free laborers of the whole country, North
and South. The abandonment of this system
for such a purpose involved the practical appli-
cation, in the legislaticn of the country, of the
specious dogma that the Constitution was made
for the minority; it involved the specific disa-
vowal of the expressed intent and purpos of the
Constitution, "the promotion of th-? general wel-
fare," of the greatest good of the greatest num-
ber; it involved the sacrifice of the interests of
the many for the benefit of the few. What was
this, sir, but a demand that Congress should so
legislate as to make slave labor more profitable,
and free labor less profitable?

That has been the demand, the end, and aim,
of this sectional party, from that day to this.
The watchword of this party then was, and still
is, the expansion and protection of slavery and
slave labor, at the sacrifice of free labor, by the
withdrawal of legislative protection from it. To
accomplish the repeal of the laws which pro-
tected free labor, then, as now, the South blus-
tered, and threatened secession and treason.
South Carolina passed her ordinance and test
act, so offensive and treasonable in terms, as to
wring from the gentle spirit of her Grimko, in
her Senate Chamber, the burning invective :

" Your ordinance * * * is the gravo of liberty. Be-
fore I will pollute my lips or perjure my soul with your teat
oath, you may cut off my right hand, and nail it up as a fin-
ger-board, to point my way to the gibbet."

That State became a military encampment;
the cry to arms was everywhere heard within
her borders, and the treasonable purpose of
armed resistance to the laws everywhere pro-
claimed.

Strange, sir, that armed resistance in South
Carolina to the national laws for the protection
of free labor should be hailed as patriotism, and
those who advised or attempted it crowned with
honors, while an old man, into whose soul the
iron of oppression has entered, who, in his wild
dream of duty, lifts his hand against the slave
laws of Virginia, hoping thereby to shiver the
fetters which bind four million of men, and lift
them from the darkness of their prison-house
into the sunlight of liberty, is denounced as a
traitor, and strangled as a felon. What part, sir,
did the President, who now complains of sec-
tional strife, play in this sectional raid upon the
laws and the interests of free labor, in this at-
tempt to paralyze the mighty arm of intelligent
industry, in which is the nation's strength, in
order to secure increased profits to the few, who
produce by proxy, and live upon the unpaid toil
of slaves?

Go read the record of his shameless surrender
of the interests and rights of free labor to the
rebels against the law, the conspirators against
the national prosperity. I commend that page
which records his conflict with honest John
Davis, of Massachusetts. Hear this, our present
complacent counsellor and adviser against "sec-
tional hatred and strife," urge the sectional de-
mands of South Carolina, in words that should
be remembered only to blast him : " Reduce,"
said he, "the standard of prices in this country,
to the standard of prices in Europe, and you
cover our country with blessings and benefits."
That is, make your sons of honest toil, in your
fields, and shops, and miDes, work for the pit-
tance of sixpence a day, as in plundered, op-
pressed, and fettered Spain, and France, and
Austria, and you cover our country — that is, the
non-laboring, non-producing few of the South —
"with blessings and benefits." To allay this
sectional strife, this demand was, to a great ex-
tent, complied with.

Notwithstanding this suicidal change of the
national policy, avowedly, to enable the slave-
holder to buy cheaper, and sell at an increased
profit by obtaining a reciprocal reduction of du-
ties upon Lis slave products in the foreign mar-
ket; notwithstanding this blow dealt by the
Government upon the mighty brotherhood of
free, intelligent industry in the North, the free
States, though inferior in fertility and in climate
and territorial extent and geographical position
to the slave States, maintained the ascendency
in wealth, population, intelligence; and, unless
further interfered with by additional sectional
legislation, would inevitably soon assert such an
influence in the administration of the Govern-
ment as would permanently restore the time-
honored policy of protection to free labor, North
and South. That fact was made apparent by
the great political revolution of 1840, and the
protective enactment of 1842. To check this

ever-increasing political influence of free labor —
this triumph of freedom over slavery, of light
over darkness, of right over wrong — these same
pro-slavery seetionalists insisted upon the repeal
of the protective act of 1842, and the mainte-
nance by legislation of the political equilibrium
of the slave with the free States. That was the
proposition of Mr. Calhoun. I regret that an
intellect so strong, and once so national as was
his, could be cribbed and fettered by this sec-
tional spirit which demanded legislation for the
few, to the lasting injury of the many. He yield-
ed to the demands of this sectional spirit, this
slave interest, and, as its champion, insisted that
the advancing column of free labor should be
checked, and made to halt in its rapid and
sublime march to await the lagging step of the
fettered bondmau.

To maintain this political equilibrium, having
converted all the territory south of the thirty-
sixth parallel into slave States, including Flori-
da, all north was to be declared a trust held in
common for the slave and free States, into which
slavery was to go with the citizen of the slave
States, and to be acknowledged and protected
there under the Constitution. This proposition
involved the avoidance or repeal of all that
legislation which had, by the consent of Monroe
and Jackson and Van Buren and Polk, forever
excluded slavery from the national Territories
between the compromise line of 1820 and the
Pacific ocean. It was but the announcement of
that political blasphemy and atheism which de-
clares that it is right to enslave labor, to take
away by law from honest toil and honest en-
deavor and honest purpose its just reward — pro-
claiming that a man shall not reap where he has
sown; that he shall not enjoy the fruit of his
own toil; that the roof- tree which his own hands
have reared shall not be for shelter or defence to
him or his children.

To maintain the equilibrium of the slave with
the free States, the Federal Government must,
by legislation, counteract the laws of population
and growth ; must efsay to annul the great law
of human progress, the law of civilization, that
they who cultivate the land shall possess it. In-
telligence, the central orb in our industrial, polit-
ical, and social system, must pale its splendors
in the darkening shadows of a perpetual and
ever-increasing despotism, that the political equi-
librium of the slave States may be maintained.
To accomplish this end, this sectional party fur-
ther demanded that a foreign slave State, as
large in territorial extent as New York, Pennsyl-
vania, and Ohio, should be annexed as a slave
State to the Union, for the twofold purpose of
furnishing to Virginia a new market in which to
make merchandise of her children, and securing
to a sparse slave population of two hundred
thousand a Senatorial representation equal to
that of the Empire State with her three million
freemen.

The proposition shocked right-minded citizens
and patriots of all parties and of all sections.
The great Commoner of Kentucky opposed it as
a violation of the nation's plighted faith, and,
with the prescience of a seer, proclaimed that its
accomplishment would involve the country in
the two greatest of all national calamities— na-

tional dishonor and national tear. That pure and
noble man, Mr. J. Q. Adams, who for fifty years
had stood a warder of civilization and liberty,
denounced it as treason to the rights of man.
The once chosen of the Democracy to the Chief
Magistracy, Mr. Van Buren, also denounced it as
dangerous to the peace and honor of the country.
This proposition, eir, was the very incarnation
of that demon spirit of sectional strife. This
sectional party banded together and trampled
down the good men and true, who rejected, with
honest scorn, the monstrous purpose. They
hunted the noble and lion-hearted Kentuckian to
his grave, and, aided by such traitors to the right
in the North as the present Chief Magistrate,
they hunted down the noble and patriotic Silas
Wright.

In accomplishing this infamy, this party com-
mitted a wanton, deliberate violation of that
Constitution which the immediate actors in this
wrong were sworn to support, that Constitution
which these same gentlemen have now the au-
dacity to say is with them sacred as life itself!
Where, sirs, was your reverence for the Constitu-
tion when the treaty-making power — the only-
power under the Constitution which can contract
with foreign States — was struck down ; its sol-
emn rejection of the proposed contract of Texan
annexation treated with contempt and set aside
by the wicked and flagitious joint resolutions,
sustained by a majority of one in the Senate, and
by which Texas came into the Union? This
perfidious act of aggression was no sooner done,
your banner of liberty was no sooner advanced
to wave in solemn mockery over a land of slaves
in this newly-acquired domain, than this party
. took another step forward in this war of aggres-
I sion, and asserted that the left bank of the Bio
| Grande was the western boundary of this new
slave State, and, to establish it, sent the army
of the United States forward, under the lead, but
against the protest, of that brave man, Zachary
Taylor. You did establish and mark that line,
not only by the waters of that river, rolling in
silent majesty from the mountains to the sea,
but you marked it as well by an ineffaceable,
crimson line of blood.

Having thus fixed the Texan boundary, this
sectional party demanded indemnity for the past
and security for the future. Indemnity, sir, for
what ? Not for what we lost, but for what we
took and held by force, and without color of
right. Security for what ? Not security for a
violated Constitution ; not security for the rights
of freemen and free labor, which had been clo-
ven down; but security for the "great humani-
tarian fact," as the gentleman from Alabama
[Mr. Curry] called the institution of slavery. To
this end, this sectional party, by the national
arm, conquered large portions of Mexico, and
annexed them, softening the venality of the act
by the formula of a constrained treaty of peace
at Guadalupe Hidalgo. That these acquisitions
were made for this purpose, let the subsequent
conduct of this sectional party bear witness.

California, a portion of this Mexican acquisi-
tion, was rich in gold, in a genial climate, in a
fruitful soil, and commanding in geographical
and commercial position. Such a country was
not without strong attractions to an ardent, en-

ergetic, and adventurous people. Thej forsook
all the endearments, and burst away from all
the ties of home and kindred, and took posses-
sion oi' the land of gold. A nation was born in
a day. A new St:; to was thus created as by
magic, washed by the quiet waves and guarded
by the Golden Gates of the great Pacific. The
people of California, and also of New Mexico',
formed each a free Constitution, and hand in
hand they came, iu the white robes of freedom,
asking for admission as free States into the
Union. This constitutional exercise of the right
of petition was made the occasion for a wild
storm of sectional agitation.

In the midst of the tumult, the brave patriot,
President Taylor, the chosen of the people, resi-
dent in the South, but not of this sectional party ;
full of years and full of honors ; calm and col-
lected, just and honest, with a patriarchal sim-
plicity, said, let these new free States come in ;
there is room for them in the paternal mansion —
in that great Union built for freedom by those
mighty men of old, whom God taught to build for
glory and for beauty. No, cried this sectional
party, we insist that the proposed Constitutions
embrace too much territory for perpetual free-
dom ; those territories must be divided ; a part
of these great regions at least must be kept in
reserve for slavery ; they, together with Utah,
must be divided by the thirty-sixth parallel.
That was the ultimatum ; it must be acceded to,
or the Union should perish.

These sectional partisans hissed like so many
serpents upon the path of the brave old man,
President Taylor, whose whole life had been
spent in the camp or on the battle-field. He was
denounced as a traitor — not to his country, but
to the slave interest — and was hunted, with a
relentless persecution, to his grave He adhered,
thank God — he adhered with more than an east-
ern devotion, to the right of the people and the
highest interests of the country. Thus stead-
fast in his great purpose, the last summons came,
not too soon for him, but too soon for us. Death
laid his hand upon that manly form, and at its
touch his great and noble spirit departed, arac-
ulating those grand words, noble as ever fell
from hero's or patriot's lips before, " I have tried
to do my duty." Sir, it was not in the field of poised
battle ; it was not when the earthquake and the
fire led the charge ; it was not when victory,
with its lance-light and triumph singing, threw
its splendors around the person ot that heroic
man, that his great character so fully revealed
itself, as iu that dread hour, and the near com-
ing of the shadow of death, when he said, " I
have tried to do my duty."

When all was over, when the strong arm
which had conquered, and the clarion voice
which had commanded in the storm of battle,
were powerless and hushed, those who had as-
sailed his motives — who had resisted his pur-
poses of justice and fair-dealing with the young
Pacific States — those sectional agitators and ag-
gressors took fresh courage, whispering, like
gibbering ghosts, above his perished dust, " after
life's fitful fever he sleeps well." The agitation,
the aggression, the conspiracy against free prin-
ciples, free labor, and equal rights, went on.
California was admitted ; but New Mexico was

rejected, and remanded to the condition of n
Territorial organization, with the concession to
the slave interest that Congress should not then
exercise its admitted power of legislation for tho
protection of liberty and right, either iu that Ter-
ritory or in Utah.

Yes, sir; the free North, with her twenty mil-
lion of freemen, for the sake of peace, submitted
to the humiliation of the demand of this sec-
tional party, that in those va.^t Territories the
law of God should not be re-enacted, as Mr.
Webster called the law of liberty. That gr< ;>t
man, now sleeping in his tomb by the great sea,
at the demand of this power, yielded up his own
convictions, and not only consented to this, but
joined with others in yielding a reluctant assent
to the enactment of the fugitive slave law of
1S50 — a law which, in direct violation of the
Constitution, transfers tbe judicial power from
judges duly appointed by the President, with the
consent of the Senate, to irresponsible commis-
sioners appointed by the Circuit Courts, tender-
ing them a bribe of five dollars, if, upon ex parte
evidence — the affidavit of some unknown man,
taken in the rice swamps of Florida, it may be,
before some justice of the peace — he shall ad-
judge a man brought before him on his warrant
a fugitive slave, guilty of the crime of preferring
liberty to bondage.

That flagitious law insults the conscience of
the people, by declaring it a crime to exercise
that highest duty enjoined by God upon man —
charity. That law also discriminates most offen-
sively in favor of slave property over all other
movable property, by providing that the slave-
owner, or claimant, may, on his affidavit, have
his property restored to him at the national ex-
pense; while, if the cattle of a Northern farmer
escape into another State, he must reclaim them
at his own expense.

1 should like to be informed of tbe constitu-
tional provision for this discrimination. Can it
be accounted for upon any other hypothesis than
that this Government is made exclusively to ex-
pand, maintain, and protect, the slave institu-
tion, and to legislate exclusively for the pecuni-
ary and political benefit of three hundred and
fifty thousand slaveholders ? The people are
told that they shall not repeal this aet of 1850,
or the Union will fall. How comes it that the
Union lasted for sixty years without this enact-
ment ? Having thus saved the Union by enact-
ing the fugitive law of 1850, and by refusing, in
the Territorial acts for Utah and New Mexico, to
re-enact the law of God, these sectional disturb-
ers and aggressors, in Democratic Convention at
Baltimore, in 1852, resolved to suppress all agita-
tion of this question, either in or out of Congress.

Thus, to maintain as a finality this legislation
for slavery, this sectional party attempted to
muzzle the press, and stifle the lowest whisper
of the national conscience, even in humble pro-
test against this infamous enactment. These
gentlemen did not themselves obey their own
officious and insulting order of silence. The
whole country knows who opened anew this
angry controversy in 1854, and filled the whole
land with the agitation of this question, by the
repeal of the eighth section of the act of 1820,
known as the Missouri compromise, under the

6

false pretence of giving to the people of the great
Territories north of that line the right of self-
government, under the title of popular sover-
eignty. The demagogue cry was: the people of
a Territory, like the people of a State, are per-
fectly free to establish slavery, black or white.
True, the Federal Government appoint for all
the Territories their Governors, judges, and mar-
shals ; prescribe the qualifications of their elect-
ors ; limit, as well as confer, their legislative
powers; and approve or annul, at pleasure, all
their legislative enactments ; but the people have
the rigut to enslave and sell one another.
<: This," said the President, " is a right as old as
the right of self-government" — the right to do
wrong, and to be supported in that wrong by the
nation. This right of popular sovereignty not
only includes the right to convert a man into
property, but, for reasons of State necessity, to
roast and eat him, if they see fit.

The President, as the chief of this sectional
party, in one year after his inauguration, an-
nounced, as another principle of this sectional
party, that slavery exists in all the Territories,
not by virtue of this ancient right of self-govern-
ment, but by virtue of the Constitution of the
United States. To make good this proposition,
this party, aided by the President, attempted to
fasten the Lecompton slave Constitution upon
the people of Kansas, against their protest — that
Constitution which declared that it should never
be so altered or amended as to affect the ownership of
property in slaves, and that this property ic as higher
than all Constitutions. This sectional party, foiled
in this attempt to legalize this atrocity only by
the united action of the Republican party on this
floor, next enacted that other statute, the Eng-
lish bill, for the double purpose of restricting
the exercise of the right of petition, and of fet-
tering the progress of free labor by the forma-
t.on of a free State. The population, all-suth-
eient for a slave State, was held not sufficient
for a free State. The demon spirit of this enact-
ment can be seen in the declaration of the Pres-
ident, that slavery exists in Kansas by virtue of the
Constitution of the United Slates, and therefore Kan-
sas is as much a slave Slate as Georgia or South
Carolina.

This dogma is the burden of the message now
before us. The President has not more than
concluded his invocation " to allay the demon
spirit." than he informs U3 that the Supreme
Court has finally determined the question of sla-
very in the Territories, and established the right
of every citizen to take his slave property into
the Territories and " have it protected there un-
der the Constitution ; " and that " neither Con-
gress, nor a Territorial Legislature, nor any hu-
man power, has any authority to annul or im-
pair this vested right." Yes, sir, we are gravely
told that a mere stump speech, made in the
Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, on this
Territorial question, whereof the court had con-
fessedly no jurisdiction, is a final judicial, decision
which has " irrevocably jized the status of a Territo-
ry" as a slave Territory. " Had it been decided,"
says the President, " that either Congress or the
Territorial Legislature possess the power to im-
pair the right of property in slaves, the evil
•would be intolerable." It is settled that the

Judiciary must relieve against such Territorial
legislation as impairs this right, and that Con-
gress " must strengthen their hands by further
legislation." I submit that it was bad enough
for this parly to declare, as it did, from 1854 to
1856, that the scattered settlers of a Territory
were perfectly free to enslave their fellow men in
the Territories j but who can fathom that lower
deep of infamy to which it descends when it
avers that property in slaves within the Territo-
ries is a vested right, to be protected by a Con-
gressional slave code ?

The President seems to think, and so to in-
struct us, that we are to be bound by the decis-
ions of the Supreme Court in the discharge of
our duties here. The time was, sir, when the
President thought and spoke differently. In the
Senate, in 1841, when the fiscal bank bill was
under consideration, this same person, now
President, then a Senator, on being told that the
constitutionality of the question had been settled
by the Supreme Court, said :

" If the Judiciary bad settled the question, I should never
hold myself bound by their decision. * * * If they failed
to convince me that the law was constitutional, I should bo
guilty of perjury before high Heaven if I voted in its fa-
vor."— Congressional Globe, vol. 10, page 1C3.

If the Supreme Court is to decide all constitu-
tional questions for us, why not refer every ques-
tion of constitutional power to that body, not
already decided, before acting upon it. I recog-
nise the decisions of thut tribunal as of binding
force only as to the parties and privies to the
suit, and the rights particularly involved and
passed upon. The court has no power, in deciding
the right of Dred Scott and of his children to
their liberty, to decide, so as to bind this body,
that neither Congress, nor a Territorial Legisla-
ture, nor any human power, has authority to
prohibit slavery in the Territories; neither has
that tribunal the power to decide that five million
persons, born and domiciled in this land, u have
no rights which we are bound to respect." The
Judiciary are entitled to respect ; but if they ar-
rogate powers not conferred upon them, and at-
tempt by such arrogation of power to takeaway
the legislatne power of the whole people, and
to deprive large numbers of them of their natural
rights, 1 claim, as a Representative, the right to
disregard such assumed authority, and, as a
citizen and a man, to appeal from such decis-
ion to that final arbriter, the public opinion of
the country.

With Jefferson, I deny that the Supreme Court
is the final arbiter on all questions of political
power, and assert that the final arbiter on all
such questions is the people — that people which
ordained the Constitution. While I would con-
demn armed resistance to any decision of the Su-
preme Court, or to the execution of any statute
of the United States, I would claim for myself,
in common with all my fellow-citizens, the right
to question their propriety, to denounce their in-
justice, and to insist that whatever is wrong
therein shall be corrected. This is one of " the
powers reserved to the people." While the peo-
ple should habitually revere the Judiciary as the
ministers of justice, they should not forget that
the judge is fallible, and sometimes stains his
ermiue with that darkest of all crimes that ever
blackened the sunny page of human life — the

crime of judicial murder ! That people which
are jealous of all deli gated power, whether judi-
cial, legislative, or executive, and ready to avenge
the wanton ami oppressive abuse of it, are most
likely to maintain their liberties.

England had her judicial monster, Jeffreys,
who could hang his court in scarlet, fit emblem
of cruelty and injustice; who could condemn,
without a hearing, innocent men and women to
a speedy and violent death, mocking at their
fear and laughing at their calamity. That was
a just retribution which overtook him when he
was made to skulk and hide from the wrath of
an outraged people ; to disfigure his face and
disguise his person in filthy apparel, in hope to
elude their stern, searching gaze. Vain hope !
no disguise could hide the features of that ter-
rible face, which had glared upon the people from
the high places of power with a ferocity that
filled them with horror. He who had been
Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and Lord
High Chancellor of England ; who could boast
a judicial massacre of three hundred and twenty
victims ; this man, unapproached in infamy, in
order to be saved from the fury of the people,
was trundled by the train-bands through the
streets of London, pallid with fear and be-
grimed with dust, at his own request was com-
mitted to the Tower ; and accepted with thank-
fulness the protection of those dark walls, made-
famous by so many crimes and sorrows, there to
remain, amid gloom and solitude, friendless and
alone, until remorse should gnaw away his
heartstrings, and send him to his last account.
"With such an example before us, we, the lineal
decendents of those who witnessed and avenged
Jeffreys's judicial crimes, are not to be told that
the Judiciary are, at pleasure, and by the as-
sumption of power, to bind the conscience and
dispose of the liberties and lives of the people !

But, sir, the President respects the deci.-ions
of the Supreme Court only when it suits his pur-
pose, and accords with the interests of slavery
and the demands of the sectional slave party.
In this message, in which the President claims
that the Supreme Court has finally settled ihe
vested right of property in slaves beyond the
power of Congress or a Territorial Legislature,
or any human authority, to affect it, he tells us
that the Spanish claimants "in the Amistad
case" are clearly entitled to compensation under
the Spanish treaty of 1795, and recommends that
an appropriation be made for that purpose out
of the National Treasury.

What is this Amistad case ? Who are these
Spanish claimants? On the 28th day of June,
1839, a Spanish schooner, named Amistad, sailed
from the port of Havana, in Cuba, bound to
Pueito Principe, in the same island, having on
board Captain Ferrer, and two Spanish gentle-
men named Ruiz and Montez; also fifty-three
Africans, claimed and held by these Spaniards
as their slaves. These fifty-three persons were
natives of Africa, speaking an Af. ican dialect.
Ignorant and uninstructcd as they were, they
had the natural love of liberty, and the natural
affections for humanity of home and kindred,
sweet vUions of which soot.ed their troubled
rest amid the horrors of that second death, the
middle passage.

The felon-skip, with its cargo of human souls,

moved out, like a tiling ol life, over the calm,
bine waters of that western sea, on which was
seen, sinking beneath its waves, the lifeless body
of one of those captive children of sorrow. The
felon-ship floats on. The day is gone; the mists
of night gather, " low and cold, like the shadow
of death, upon the doomed and guilty vessel, as
it labors in darkness amid the lightnings of the
sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines
of blood, and girdtd with condemnation." The
uplifted arm of one of those sons of wrong and
oppression, made strong by the mighty arm of
the God of the oppressed, comes down in terri-
ble retribution tipon the master at the helm, and
iie falls a lifeless corpse upon the deck. His
body is consigned, with that of his captive who
had gone before, to the same silent burial in the
deep waters, there to rest until the sea gives up
its dead !

On the 27th of August, 1839, the United States
brig Washington captured the vessel and crew,
off the coast of the United States, and brought
her into the port of New London, Connecticut.
The officers of the brig filed a libel in the
District Court of the United States for the dis-
trict of Connecticut, against the vessel, cargo,
and slaves, for salvage. On the 29th of August,
1839, Ruiz and Monlez filed in that court claims
to the negroes as their slaves, and claimed the
right to hold them under the treaty of 1795. The
United Slates attorney for the district of Con-
necticut filed an information, stating that the
Minister of Spain had claimed of the Govern-
ment of the United States, that the vessel, cargo,
and slaves, should be restored under the provis-
ions of the treaty of 1795, between Spain and
the United States. On the 23d of January, 1840,
the district judge made a decree in the case,
wherein is recited the decree of the Government
of Spain, made December, 1817, prohibiting the
slave trade, and declaring all negroes brought
into the dominions of Spain by slave traders
free, and enjoining the execution of the decree
on all officers of Spain in all her dominions.

The court decided that these Africans were
kidnapped, and could not be held or claimed
under the treaty of 1795. From this decree the
United States, in pursuance of the demand of the
Minister of Spain, duly accredited to the United
States, appealed to the Circuit Court of the. Uni-
ted States for the district of Connecticut. The
Circuit Court affirmed the decree of the District
Court in the premises ; and from this decree of
the Circuit Court, the United States appealed to
the Supre.ne Court. At the January term, 1841,
of the Supreme Court of the United States, this
great cause came on to be heard upon the claim
of Ruiz and Montez to these Africans as their
slaves, and the answer of the kidnapped Afri-
cans, that they were natives of Africa, born free,
and of right ought to be free, and not slaves;
that in the land of their nativity they were un-
lawfully kidnapped, and forcibly, and agaiust
their will, and under circumstances of great
cruelty, carried to Cuba. Spain, and the "Span-
ish claimants," Ruiz and Montez, were ably rep-
resented on the trial of the ciu^e by the Attorney
General of the United States, Mr. Gilpin. These
Africans, captives in a strange laud, awaited
with fear the issue, in the prisons of Connecti-
cut. To the honor of our country and of our

8

common humanity, these captives found an ad-
v icata in one of the most remarkable men of his
time, or any time, now gone, the profound and
illustrious John Quincy Adams — that venera-
ble man, who had tilled the highest and most
reapoawble trusts of his country, and had con-
ferred honor upon each. After an absence of a
uird of a century from the presence of that great
tribunal, Mr. Adams appeared to plead the cause
of the poor, the oppressed, and defenceless. He

id :

'- 1 appear tp plead the cause of justice, * * * of lib-
c iy. and life, in behalf of many of in) fellow-men, before
Same court which, in a former age, I had addressed in
lortttfthe rights ol property."

Touching was his allusion to the fact, that he

ttood before the same court, but not before the

fame judges — Marshall and his great associates

were gone to join the illustrious dead — stronger

than any formal argument was his statement:

• ■ This court is a court of justice ; and justice demands that
the rights of each party should he allowed to himself."

It was in vain that the treaty of 1795 was set
up by the Attorney General as securing to Ruiz
i'.nd Montez the right to hold these men, women,
and children, as their chattels, against their para-
mount right to themselves, by the law of nature
and of nature's God. The court decided the
case; and, by their solemn judgment, declared
that the kidnapped Africans were free, and
fhould be dismissed from custody, and go hence
without day. They did go hence. They went
back to their own country, under the protection
of our flag, singing their simple songs of thanks-
giving to him and His servants who had deliv-
ered them from the hand of the spoiler.

How comes it, sir, that the President has so
high a regard for the decision of the Supreme
Court in the Dred Scott case, and so profound a
contempt for its decision in the Amistad case ?
Is it because the Dred Scott case is a decision
agajbibt liberty and life, and the Amistad case
t. decision in favor of liberty and life ? By
what logic does the President hold the one bind-
ing upon us, and the other not binding upon us?
He recommends an appropriation to be made by us,
to be paid to Spain, to be distributed among these
Spanish claimants, " because," he says, " they are
ciearly entitled to restitution under the treaty of
1 795." Appropriate out of your Treasury money
to be paid to Ruiz and Montez to the amount of
the value of fifty-three human souls. Have you
that amount in your Treasury? What i3 the
value of a human soul? The question, "What
will a man give in exchange for his soul?" has
been asked, but never answered. In keeping
with this recommendation of the President, to
p iy those Spanish claimants for their kidnapped
Aiiica.is, is that other recommendation for the
jii.ichase of Cuba and her six hundred thousand
6 ves, at a price. As a Representative and citi-
: l of the United States, 1 beg leave to protest
t _ainst this attempt to convert this Government
i i;0 a mere pirate and slave trader.

This traffic in slaves is condemned and out-
lawed by all civilized nations. By statute we
hive declared this traffic on the high seas piracy,
i. 1 punishable with death. By our treaty at
(t ient, with Great Britain, we have solemnly
6 blared, without respect to time or place, that
•• ;e traffic in slaves i8 irreconcilable with the
principles of humanity and justice," and that

both Great Britain and the United States " are
desirous of continuing their efforts to promote
its entire abolition;" and it is thereby agreed
"that both the contracting parties shall use their
best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an
object." (U. S. Statutes at Large, vol. 8, p. 223.

The Pre;ideut gravely says that we should
annex Cuba in order to put an end to the Afri-
can slave trade, and that until this is done there
is no hope for benighted Africa. The sincerity
of the Presidents professions of sympathy for
"benighted Africa" might not tax our credulity
quite so much, if the President had executed our
laws against this traffic at home, and if he had
not asked us to pay these Spaniards for kidnap-
ping Africa's children.

This Cuban annexation is only another at-
tempt by legislation to maintain the political
equilibrium of the slave with the free States, by
the increase of slave representation in Congress.
While this sectional party thus press these sec-
tional measures upon us and upon the countryr,
with equal zeal they resist all attempts to enact
into a law that much-needed and beneficent
national measure, the homestead bill, which has
thrice passed this House, and has been as often
defeated by this sectional party in the Senate.
That measure, sir, which would give free homes
to the homeless families of all our citizens, North
and South, (and in the latter section they are
legion.) finds no favor in this message, and was
but the other day resisted and attempted to be
defeated by the vote of every Representative of
the slave interest, save one, on this floor. Thi3
measure would fill our vast Territories with a
free and industrious population ; would greatly
increase the number of landed proprietors, and
the measure of our wealth ; it would secure to
every family the means of acquiring that com-
petence which, politically speaking, is the very
rock of life, on which the citizen may stand erect,
unawed by power, unbribed by gain, ready to
return the supercilious sneer, to smile at the
haughty frown, to give to truth its due force, and
scorn " the embroidered He."

This measure, so just, so national, and benefi-
cent, is resisted by this sectional party. There
stands the long list of aggressions of thi3 sec-
tional Democratic party, to which, in the brief
time allowed me, I have but referred :

The repeal of the laws for the protection of
free labor ; the repeal of the laws for the protec-
tion of freedom and free labor in the Territories ;
the conquest of foreign territory for slavery; the
admission into the Union of a foreign slave
State : the rejection by this sectional party of the
homestead bill ; the restriction of the right of
petition ; the restoration of fugitive slaves at the
national expense ; the attempt to reward slave
pirates for kidnapping Africans ; the attempt to
acquire Cuba, with her six hundred thousand
slaves ; the attempt to fasten upon an unwilling
people a slave Constitution ; the attempt to en-
act a sedition law, thereby restricting the freedom
of the press and the freedom of speech, in direct
violation of the Constitution, which declares
that Congress shall make no law abridging either ;
and the attempt, by extra-judicial interference,
to take away from the people and their Repre-
sentatives the power to legislate for freedom and
free labor in the Territories.