John William Burgess

“ Before 1830, indeed, as we have so often seen, slavery in the United States had been regarded as a grievous evil by most of the great spirits of the age and country, and schemes for gradual emancipation had been invented, and, in some slight degree, had been put into operation. It was, however, the humanitarian outburst of 1830, and the succeeding years, which represented slavery as a sin and a crime against the universal principle of human liberty and the rights of man, a sin which called for immediate expiation by instantaneous, unqualified, and uncompensated abolition. ”

“ Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President, to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval, as it is of the Supreme Judges when it may be brought before them for decision. The opinion of the Judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the Judges ”

“ It is not easy to see how the rich swamp-lands of these colonies could ever have been reclaimed and made tributary to the civilization of the world in any way but by the employment of negro labor. And it is no easier to see how the pure negro could then have been brought to do this great work save through slavery to the white race, save by being forced to contribute the muscular effort, under the direction of the superior intelligence of the white race, to the realization of objects determined by that superior intelligence. The negro is proof against malaria, and thrives under the burning sun. ”

“ It is only when we take all of these considerations together that we comprehend the reasoning of the men of the first decade of this century upon the great question. They saw a great interest developing which was bringing wealth and comfort into an impoverished country. They knew that it could be then sustained only by negro labor. They did not believe that the negro would work unless forced to it by the white man. They thought it was better for the negro himself to have food, clothing, and shelter, in slavery, than to starve, or become a robber, in liberty. ”

“ The power which made the Constitution can alone set up the metes and bounds between the realm of authority of the general Government and that of the Commonwealths. This is the indispensable condition of federal government. If the general Government possesses such power, the system is centralized in theory, and may become so in fact at the pleasure of the general Government. If, on the other hand, the Commonwealths possess such power, the system is the loosest form of confederation, an international league. ”

“ It is true that violence began there, and in its degeneration into savagery developed those devilish dispositions that carried murder and robbery into Virginia, and thereby helped mightily to create that intensely hostile feeling between the North and the South which resulted in Civil War, but we affront good morals and common sense when we dignify those Kansas atrocities by the title of war; and we obliterate moral distinctions when we attempt to justify them by the end which their authors professed to have in view, the extermination of African slavery throughout the country. ”

“ Would not war, undertaken in defence of one foreign Power against another, be offensive war, in the sense of the Constitution of the United States, such war as Congress alone can authorize? Or, could Texas be considered a part of the United States from the moment that the two Presidents signed the Treaty of annexation, and before its ratification by the respective Senates, thus making war in her defence defensive war, such war as the President of the United States may, of his own power, undertake? ”

“ But if the murders, and robberies, and arson committed in Kansas were not war, they were the forerunners of war. The last expedient which the minds of men could invent for putting the slavery question in the position of a purely local matter had been tried, and had utterly and miserably failed. The nation must now settle the question, by peaceable means if it could, but if it could not, then by force. ”

“ It will not improve matters to concede that the South had right and the North might, or, even, that both were equally right and equally wrong. Such a doctrine can only work injury to both, and more injury to the South than to the North. Chewing the bitter cud of fancied wrong produces both spiritual misery and material adversity, and tempts to foolish and reckless action for righting the imagined injustice. Moreover, any such doctrine is false, and acquiescence in it, however kindly meant, is weak, and can have no other effect than the perpetuation of error and misunderstanding. ”

“ Congress might thus prohibit slavery in the Territories, and the Territories would thus become settled by a free population, an anti-slavery population, which would form Commonwealths at the proper time, in which the free status would be perpetuated by Commonwealth law. And when a sufficient number of free Commonwealths had been thus created to give the necessary majorities to amend the Constitution in the direction of abolition, slavery might be extinguished in the Commonwealths which had already legalized it. ”

“ In self-defence the South must secure, therefore, the formation of new slaveholding Commonwealths. At the moment the representation in the Senate was evenly balanced, but in the House it stood against the South, one hundred and forty-one to ninety-nine. One more non-slaveholding Commonwealth, without an offset on the other side, would destroy the balance in the Senate and enable the North to undertake legislation hostile to slavery. ”

“ What it really sought and accomplished was national independence against foreign rule. Those, however, who formulated the creed of the Revolution sought its justification in the doctrine of human rights rather than in that of national rights. The philosophy of the eighteenth century was a humanitarian outburst. Politically and legally it is summed up in the very misleading propositions that all men are born equal and are endowed with freedom, and that the people have the right to change or abolish existing government at their pleasure. ”

“ In fact they degraded the poor whites more than they did the blacks. The blacks felt, and were proud of, the increased importance of their masters. And, naturally, this spirit and life among the slaveholding class made the generation which grew up under them eager for adventure and war, intensely tenacious of rights, sensitive to every only apparent discourtesy, and resentful of every semblance of interference from without. The War with Mexico, the filibustering expeditions, and the Civil War itself, were all national consequences of the social development in the South after 1836. ”

“ In the light of these considerations it certainly appears that the cause of free labor won a substantial triumph in the Missouri compromise, and that, in place of that shameful surrender of freedom to slavery, so emphasized by certain historians, a mighty step forward in the progress of liberty was taken.
It was confidently hoped and believed that the compromise had solved the slavery problem, in so far as Congress could solve it. The whole country breathed more easily and the thoughts of men were turned to other subjects. ”

“ From the point of view of the present, we are compelled to regard the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act as probably the greatest error which the Congress of the United States ever committed, and the arguments by which it was supported as among the most specious fallacies that have ever misled the minds of men. We must take this ground, unless we assume that we could not have solved the slavery problem in any other way than we did, and at any less cost. ”

“ When we find Tallmadge, of New York, the self-same person who introduced, at the same session, the proposition for restricting slavery in Missouri, defending Jackson's course in every particular, while Cobb, of Georgia, attacked it, and when we consider that John Quincy Adams, the life-long opponent of slavery, sustained Jackson in the cabinet, while Calhoun moved to bring him to account for disobedience to orders, we are bound to conclude that we have here nothing whatsoever to do with the question of slavery. ”

“ There is now certainly little question that the determination of the civil status of all persons is, from an ethical point of view, a matter of national concern, and that that status must be fixed, in general principle, by a national act. There is just as little question that the denial of personal liberty to any human being of adult years does not comport with the civilization of the nineteenth century. ”

“ The old ruling class in American society was driven from place and power, and a new, untried, and inexperienced set of men seized the reins of Government. It looked something like a combination of the South and West against the East. They had, however, secured the two most important Eastern Commonwealths through Van Buren's activity in New York and Jackson's own popularity in Pennsylvania. It was not yet, however, a socialistic uprising against the wealth of the East. It was a political uprising against the monopoly of office-holding by the old official aristocracy. ”

“ The continued misunderstanding between the North and the South is an ever present menace to the welfare of both sections and of the entire nation. It makes it almost impossible to decide any question of our politics upon its merits. It offers an almost insuperable obstacle to the development of a national opinion upon the fundamental principles of our polity. ”

“ With the existing colonies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.... ”

“ The extension of slavery to new Commonwealths was thus manifestly a necessity to its permanent security, and even continuance, in the Commonwealths where it already existed. The policy of the slaveholders must be to allow no new non-slaveholding Commonwealth to be formed without another slaveholding Commonwealth to match it, and to secure the extension of the territory of the United States toward the South. ”

“ At the same moment that this measure was being considered in the Congress, the Constitutional Convention, sitting at Philadelphia, was framing the national Constitution of 1787. The attitude which the nation would assume in this new instrument of its organic law toward the subject of slavery was one of the most, if not the most, important of the questions which the Convention was called upon to consider.
There can be little doubt that the men of 1787 had come to regard the question of the rights of man a little more calmly than they did during the heat of the battle with the motherland. ”

“ Under this power, however, each House may and should protect itself against all obstacles thrown by outsiders in the way of the discharge of its duties in legislating for the country. If any number of people undertake, by an abuse of the right of petition, to obstruct the legitimate work of the Congress for the whole people, each House certainly has the right to meet this attempt in any way which will not deny the right of petition, the right of any one or any number of the people to be heard in asking for a redress of grievances. ”