John M. Landrum

“ In a Confederacy of one-half slave States and one-half free States, or nearly in that proportion, and when there is a provision in the Constitution that new States may be admitted into the Union, without qualification, one would naturally suppose that there would be no more restriction upon the admission of a slave State than upon the admission of a free State. ”

“ What judge of any court, what lawyer who wished to ascertain the true doctrine of a case, would search for the private opinions of the judge when the reports bristled with adjudicated cases from which he could learn the true doctrine which he had expressed under oath and in the discharge of his duties? When you search for the opinions of our ancestors to guide us as legislators, look at their conduct as legislators, and not their private opinions. Every lawyer, every sensible man, every rational man, knows that that is the true test of the opinions of our ancestors upon a given subject. ”

“ The ten laborers add as much wealth annually to the State, increase its exports as much, in the one case as the other. Certainly five hundred freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of taxes, than five hundred slaves. Therefore the State in which are the laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that in which are those called slaves. Suppose, by any extraordinary operation of nature or of law, one-half the laborers of a State could, in the course of one night, be transformed into slaves, would the State be made the poorer, or the less able to pay taxes? ”

“ That the condition of the laboring poor in most countries—that of the fisherman, particularly, of the northern States—is as abject as that of slaves. It is the number of laborers which produces the surplus for taxation; and numbers, therefore, indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth. That it is the use of the word ‘property’ here, and its application to some of the people of the State, which produces the fallacy. How does the southern farmer procure slaves? ”

“ Madison thought slavery was an evil; because these thoughts controlled not the action of his public position. Do not tell me that Washington and Jefferson were opposed to slavery abstractly, after that; because we find even New England men, with all their prejudices, as good pro-slavery men as South Carolina [Pg 5] and Georgia wanted—for they were the only States that made a question on this African slave trade. ”

“ It is they who have caused the trouble. Like the old English gentleman in the play, they say they are the best natured men in the world if we will only give them their own way. All they want is to be permitted to have their own way, and then there will be no excitement. We say that, as the Confederacy consisted originally of free States and slave States, each new State, when applying for admission, has the right to regulate the matter for herself. ”

“ Yet we are told that, according to the doctrine of our forefathers, there can be no such thing as property in man. The language I have quoted occurs first in the preliminary articles in 1782, and again in the treaty of peace which was signed in 1783.
Kentucky was admitted into the Union as a slave State, without objection, on the 4th of February, 1791. Now, if you had the right to exclude Missouri because she tolerated slavery, why did you not have the same right to exclude Kentucky? ”

“ If he imports a slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay taxes; if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of a laborer from one farm to another, which does not change the annual produce of a State, and therefore should not change its tax; that if a northern farmer works ten laborers on his farm, he can, it is true, invest the surplus of ten men’s labor in cattle ”

“ We meet here, not to strengthen the bonds that bind us together in the Union, but to weaken them, as far as human ingenuity can do so. To such a point has this state of things culminated, that the people of State after State in the Southern portion of the Confederacy have met in convention and declared their belief that there is a probability that the time is rapidly approaching when they “must provide new guards for their future security.” ”

“ No power is given to the General Government to interpose with respect to the property in slaves now held by the States. The taxation of this State being equal only to its representation, such a tax cannot be laid as he supposes. They cannot prevent the importation of slaves for twenty years ”

“ While we have voted for the admission of free State after free State, without [Pg 8] making it a question; while we were then ready to vote for the admission of Maine, you turned round and ungenerously—what your motives may have been God only knows; whether to promote your political power or not it is not for me to say—forbid Missouri coming into the Union unless she relinquished the right to hold slaves. ”

“ And we are invoked to adopt that legislation by the example of our forefathers.
Now, what precedent do they furnish us in this clause of the Constitution? The Constitution of the United States did make regulations in regard to the slavery question. One of those regulations was to permit the African slave trade until the year 1808. Now, sir, was there anything so morally wrong in the African slave trade; was it any such crime against humanity as to deter the ancestors of those gentlemen from coming into a Union which permitted the African slave trade? ”

“ That we are now threatened with great and alarming evils, no one who will take a calm and unprejudiced survey of the condition of the country can for a moment doubt. In the formation of this Government there existed a spirit of harmony and concession from the citizens of each State in this Union towards the citizens of every other State ”

“ Harmony and concord and good feeling reigned throughout the whole Confederacy. The citizen of South Carolina rejoiced in the prosperity and commended the virtues of the citizen of Massachusetts; and the citizen of Massachusetts responded to the feeling of the citizen of South Carolina. That was the feeling which pervaded the citizens of this common country when the Constitution was formed ”

“ That in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the State was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or give them those necessaries at short hand? ”

“ In 1793 they gave us the fugitive slave law, there being only seven votes in opposition to it, and some of those were from the South, I think—a law, which if we attempt to [Pg 7] enforce in the northern States we are met by mobs, and bloodshed frequently follows. No southern man dares go into some portions of the northern States and attempt to execute this law, except at the peril of his life. ”

“ The money for the support of the Government is collected in an entirely different manner. If taxes were assessed on that principle, by a system of direct taxation, we would have derived some benefit from the three-fifth provision ”

“ He affirmed that slaves did not do as much work as freemen, and doubted if two effected more than one. That this was proved by the price of labor, the hire of a laborer in the Southern Colonies being from £8 to £12, while in the Northern it was generally £24. ”