D. W. Bartlett

“ Sir, the people of Massachusetts may not believe that the African race,
"Outcast to insolence and scorn,"
is the equal to this Anglo-Saxon race of ours in intellectual power; but they know no reason why a man, made in the image of God, should be degraded by unjust laws, because his Creator has given him a weak body or a feeble mind. Sir, the philanthropist, the Christian, the true Democratic statesman, will see in the fact that a man is weak, ignorant, and poor, the reason why the State should throw over him the panoply of just and equal laws." ”

“ I will resort to all proper remedies to protect and defend slavery where it exists, but I will neither assist in nor encourage any attempt to force it upon a reluctant people anywhere, and still less will I justify the use of the military power of the country to establish it in any of the territories. If it finds its way there by legitimate means, it is all well; but never by force, through any instrumentality of mine. I am myself a slaveholder, and all the property my children have in the world is slave property, inherited from their mother ”

“ And this doctrine of 'Non-Intervention for Protection' is only equalled in danger and destructiveness by that correlative error of some minds in these days: 'That Congress may not intervene to protect; for if it has the power to protect, it has the power to destroy.' This is a non sequitur, and a weak fallacy and gross delusion. The power and duty to protect is the power and duty not only not to destroy, but something far greater—it is the duty to intervene against invasion and violence. The whole American system of government throughout is one to protect against destruction. ”

“ If anything can be worse than disunion to the United States, it would be the more dire alternative of degrading and subjugating any one State by forcing her submission to unequal laws and dishonorable conditions in the confederacy. The state or section of states thus subdued and humbled, would be unworthy of the union with other free republics, and such a union would be no longer what union now is. It should, then, be the watchful concern of all to maintain and support the honor, dignity, and equality of each; and equality alone can reciprocally maintain the strength of all. ”

“ My northern friends will believe me when I say that the rights of every State of the Union are as dear to me as those of Oregon. If I have a seat in Congress, I will be, at all times, prompt to resent any trespass on the rights of the States as secured by the Constitution. My affection rests on every inch of this Union—East and West, North and South. The promotion of the prosperity of this great country is the strongest desire of my heart. ”

“ Labor is here honored and respected, and great examples incite us to action. All around us in the professions, in the marts of commerce, on the exchange, where merchant-princes and capitalists do congregate; in these manufactories and workshops, where the products of every clime are fashioned into a thousand forms of utility and beauty; on these smiling farms, fertilized by the sweat of free labor; in every position of private and of public life, are our associates, who were but yesterday "hireling laborers," "mud-sills," "slaves." ”

“ Let me tell you, sir, I stand not here to use the language of intimidation or of menace; but you kindle the fires of civil war in that country by an attempt to force that constitution on the necks of an unwilling people; and you will light a fire that all Democracy cannot quench. Aye, sir, there will come up many another Peter the Hermit, that will go through the length and the breadth of this land, telling the story of your wrongs and your outrages; and they will stir the public heart; they will raise a feeling in this country such as has never yet been raised ”

“ Let me ask you, why force this constitution down the throats of the people of Kansas, in opposition to their wishes and in violation of our pledges. What great object is to be attained? Cui bono? What are you to gain by it! Will you sustain the party by violating its principles? Do you propose to keep the party united by forcing a division? Stand by the doctrine that leaves the people perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions for themselves, in their own way, and your party will be united and irresistible in power. ”

“ No one can doubt that a vast majority of the people of the United States are opposed to the policy represented by the slavery propagandists; and still less can we doubt that it is their diversity of opinion in non-essentials that encourages the Government with hopes of success, and constantly defeats the purposes of the people. It is no less a shame for us, under such circumstances, to admit our incapacity to maintain our principles, than to acknowledge a defection from the faith of our fathers.
"In our age, with our lights, success is a duty. ”

“ As wise men, we should not attempt to ignore them. We need not close our eyes, and suppose the sun will cease to shine because we see not the light. Let us rather, with eyes and mind wide awake, look around us and see where we are, whence we have come, and where we shall soon be, borne along by the rapid, swift, and irresistible car of time. This immense territory to the west has to be peopled. It is now peopling. New States are fast growing up; and others, not yet in embryo, will soon spring into existence. ”

“ They want only a little more harmony of purpose and a little more completeness of organization. These will result from only the least addition to the pressure of slavery upon them. You are lending all that is necessary, and even more, in this very act. But will the slave States agitate? Why? Because they have lost at last a battle that they could not win, unwisely provoked, fought with all the advantages of strategy and intervention, and on a field chosen by themselves. What would they gain? Can they compel Kansas to adopt slavery against her will? ”

“ But, on the other hand, having been all my life, and being still, an ardent 'State Rights' man—believing 'State Rights' to be an essential, nay, the essential, element of the Constitution, and that no one who thinks otherwise can stand on the same constitutional platform that I do, it seems to me that I am, and all those with whom I act habitually are, if Democrats at all, true 'State Rights Democrats.' Nothing in public affairs so perplexes and annoys me as these absurd party names, and I never could be interested in them. ”

“ Will they not need some fairer or more plausible excuse for a proposition so desperate? How would they improve their condition, by drawing down a certain ruin upon themselves? Would they gain any new security for Slavery? Would they not hazard securities that are invaluable? Sir, they who talk so idly, talk what they do not know themselves. No man when cool can promise what he will do when he shall be inflamed; no man inflamed can speak for his actions when time and necessity shall bring reflection. Much less can any one speak for States in such emergencies. ”

“ I trust so, because, if we have inherited the demoralization of slavery, we have also attained the virtue required for emancipation. If we have inherited prejudices of caste, we have also risen to the knowledge that political safety is dependent on the rendering of equal and exact justice to all men. And if we have suffered our love for the Union to be abused so as to make us tolerate the evils that more than all others endanger it, we have discerned that great error at last. ”

“ The adoption of this platform commits the American party unconditionally to the policy of slavery—to the iron dominion of the Black Power. I tell you, sir, I tell this convention, that we cannot stand upon this platform in a single free State of the North. The people of the North will repudiate it, spurn it, spit upon it. For myself, sir, I here and now tell you to your faces, that I will trample with disdain on your platform. I will not support it. I will support no man who stands upon it. ”

“ If the American party is to achieve anything for good, it must adopt a wise and humane policy consistent with our Democratic ideas—a policy which will reform existing abuses and guard against future ones—which shall combine in one harmonious organization moderate and patriotic men who love freedom and hate oppression. Upon the grand and overshadowing question of American slavery, the American party must take its position. If it wishes a speedy death and a dishonored grave, let it adopt the policy of neutrality upon that question or the policy of ignoring that question. ”

“ It is a painful thing to differ from our associates and friends—but when duty, a stern sense of duty, demands it, I shall do so. Reject this majority platform—adopt the proposition to restore freedom to Kansas and Nebraska, and to protect the actual settlers from violence and outrage—simplify your rules—make an open organization—banish all bigotry and intolerance from your ranks—place your movement in harmony with the humane progressive spirit of the age, and you may win and retain power, and elevate and improve the political character of the country. ”

“ We now have it in our power, by cordial coöperation with our southern sisters, to secure it—to secure it on such a basis as will permanently preserve our institutions. We can here make our demand, and with a united South, we can offer it to the true men of the North. If we act wisely and present such an ultimatum, I doubt not that thousands, perhaps millions, at the North, will espouse and maintain it; for it is a platform of the Constitution, and there are hosts of conservative men who I know are prepared to maintain the Constitution of our fathers. ”

“ Frame any other bill that secures a fair, honest vote, to men of all parties, and carries out the pledge that the people shall be left free to decide on their domestic institutions, for themselves, and I will go with you with pleasure, and with all the energy I may possess. But if this constitution is to be forced down our throats in violation of the fundamental principle of free government, under a mode of submission that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last. ”

“ Notwithstanding all the heroism of your champions in Washington and Kansas, the contest will be fearfully endangered, if the slaveholding class shall win the President and the Congress in this great national canvass. Even although every one of these champions should perish in his proper field, yet the Rights of Man will be saved, and the tide of oppression will be rolled back from our northern plains, if a President and a Congress shall be chosen who are true to freedom. ”

“ Is it true that the intellectual and moral development of our country has not kept pace with its physical? Has our political body outgrown the heads and hearts of those who are to govern it? Is it so, that this thirty-fifth Congress is unequal to the great mission before it! Are we progressing in everything but mind and patriotism? Has destiny cast upon us a heavier load of duty than we are able to perform? ”

“ This is but to cast odium upon slavery, by creating the impression that a discrimination is necessary to distinguish it above what is due to other personal and proprietary rights. On the contrary, no such code is required to create either the right or the duty of protection, and no law is necessary to distinguish slave property from any other property. All persons and all property, equally and alike, require only not to be assailed and destroyed in, or excluded from the common territories. Every species of rights requires laws, it is true, suited to its character and to its case. ”

“ A government can never be better or wiser, or even so good or so wise as the people over whom it presides? Who can wonder, then, that the Congress of the United States, in 1820, gave to slavery the west bank of the Mississippi quite up to the present line of Kansas, and was content to save for freedom, out of the vast region of Louisiana, only Kansas and Nebraska! ”

“ Should our experiment succeed, such will be our exhibition—a machinery of government so intricate, so complicated, with so many separate and distinct parts, so many independent States, each perfect in the attributes and functions of sovereignty, within its own jurisdiction, all, nevertheless, united under the control of a common directing power for external objects and purposes, may natural enough seem novel, strange, and inexplicable to the philosophers and crowned heads of the world. ”

“ Does any person here deny the proposition, that the people of a territory, in the formation of a State Constitution, are to that extent—quoad hoc—sovereign and uncontrollable, though still owing obedience to the provisional government of the territory? Will any senator contend that the territorial legislature can either give to the people any power over that subject which they did not possess before, or withhold from them any which they did possess? The territorial legislature cannot dictate any one provision of the constitution which the people think proper to form. ”

“ Is it not waging civil war against Freedom, wherever it encounters real resistance? No! no! you have let the lion and the spotted leopard into the sheep-fold. They certainly will not die of hunger there, nor retire from disgust with satiety. They will remain there so long as renewed appetite shall find multiplied prey. Be not self-deceived. Whenever a property class of any kind is invited by society to oppress, it will continue to oppress. Whenever a slaveholding class finds the non-slaveholding classes yielding, it will continue its work of subjugation. ”

“ No feud is so bitter as that which exists between brethren—no persecution so relentless as that which pursues an estranged friend—no war so ruthless as one of domestic strife; and yet this evil genius, disguised with the garb of superior sanctity—the blear-eyed miscreant disunion—is walking up and down the earth like Satan loosed from his bondage of a thousand years, endeavoring to array one section of the Union against the other upon a question which was wisely disposed of by those who laid the broad and deep foundations of our government. ”

“ I thank God, sir, Massachusetts is not dishonored by such laws! In Massachusetts we have about seven thousand colored people. They have the same rights that we have; they go to our free schools, they enter all the business and professional relations of life, they vote in our elections, and in intelligence and character are scarcely inferior to the citizens of this proud and peerless race whose superiority we have heard so vauntingly proclaimed to-night by the senators from Tennessee and Indiana. ”

“ No doctrine could be more repugnant to its benign spirit, none more destructive of federal immunities and privileges, and none more fatal to State rights and the safety of individual persons and their property, than this new light of "Non-Intervention" to protect all and everything in the jurisdiction of the United States. It is a question which cannot be retired from discussion in Congress, where it rises up every day in every form, and where it must be met with intelligence, integrity and courage. ”

“ Chase, while in the Senate of the United States, bore a very high reputation as a debater and as an orator. He never descended to notice personal attacks unless his political history was called in question, and remained cool and unruffled through scenes of great excitement and under a storm of personalities. His manner is dignified and his eloquence massive. Few men can deliver a speech, which for force, solid arguments, and high-toned eloquence, will equal the best of his. He is not an impetuous orator, or man, but is always collected, calm, and self-poised. ”

“ I rejoice with an inward joy, that the young men of Massachusetts, as it were by spontaneous movement, and with a true appreciation of their duty and power, have assumed a position and unfurled a flag that will be hailed in other States as a harbinger of a better age—a radiant star, that shall lead to new and decisive victories for the good old cause. ”

“ They are ours by all the laws of nature; slave labor will go over every foot of this great valley where it will be found profitable to use it; and some of those who may not use it are soon to be united with us by such ties as will make us one and inseparable. The iron horse will soon be clattering over the sunny plains of the South, to bear the products of its upper tributaries to our Atlantic ports, as it now does through the ice-bound North. There is the great Mississippi, a bond of union made by Nature herself. ”