person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” All the slaves in the District have been “deprived of liberty” by legislative acts. Now, these legislative acts “depriving” them “of liberty,” were either “due process of law,” or they were _not_. If they _were_, then a legislative act, taking from the master that “property” which is the identical “liberty” previously taken from the slave, would be “due process of law” _also_, and of course a _constitutional_ act; but if the legislative acts “depriving” them of “liberty” were _not_ “due process of law,” then the slaves were deprived of liberty _unconstitutionally_, and these acts are _void_. In that case the _constitution emancipates them_.
If the objector reply, by saying that the import of the phrase “due process of law,” is _judicial_ process solely, it is granted, and that fact is our rejoinder; for no slave in the District _has_ been deprived of his liberty by “a judicial process,” or, in other words, by “due process of law;” consequently, upon the objector’s own admission, every slave in the District has been deprived of liberty _unconstitutionally_, and is therefore _free by the constitution_. This is asserted only of the slaves under the “exclusive legislation” of Congress.
The last clause of the article under consideration is quoted for the same purpose: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Each of the state constitutions has a clause of similar purport. The abolition of slavery in the District by Congress, would not, as we shall presently show, violate this clause either directly or by implication. Granting for argument’s sake, that slaves are “private property,” and that to emancipate them, would be to “take private property” for “public use,” the objector admits the power of Congress to do _this_, provided it will do something _else_, that is, _pay_ for them. Thus, instead of denying _the power_, the objector not only admits, but _affirms_ it, as the ground of the inference that compensation must accompany it. So far from disproving the existence of _one_ power, the objector asserts the existence of _two_–one, the power to take the slaves from their masters, the other, the power to take the property of the United States to pay for them.
If Congress cannot constitutionally impair the right of private property, or take it without compensation, it cannot constitutionally, _legalize_ the perpetration of such acts, by _others_, nor _protect_ those who commit them. Does the power to rob a man of his earnings, rob the earner of his _right_ to them? Who has a better right to the _product_ than the producer?–to the _interest_, than the owner of the _principal_?–to the hands and arms, than he from whose shoulders they swing?–to the body and soul, than he whose they _are_? Congress not only impairs but annihilates the right of private property, while it withholds from the slaves of the District their title to _themselves_. What! Congress powerless to protect a man’s right to _himself_, when it can make inviolable the right to a _dog_? But, waving this, I deny that the abolition of slavery in the District would violate this clause. What does the clause prohibit? The “taking” of “private property” for “public use.” Suppose Congress should emancipate the slaves in the District, what would it “_take_?” Nothing. What would it _hold_? Nothing. What would it put to “public use?” Nothing. Instead of _taking_ “private property,” Congress, by abolishing slavery, would say “private property shall not _be_ taken; and those who have been robbed of it already, shall be kept out of it no longer; and since every man’s right to his own body is _paramount_, he shall be protected in it.” True, Congress may not arbitrarily take property, _as_ property, from one man and give it to another–and in the abolition of slavery no such thing is done. A legislative act changes the _condition_ of the slave–makes him his own _proprietor_ instead of the property of another. It determines a question of _original right_ between two classes of persons–doing an act of justice to one, and restraining the other from acts of injustice; or, in other words, preventing one from robbing the other, by granting to the injured party the protection of just and equitable laws.
Congress, by an act of abolition, would change the condition of seven thousand “persons” in the District, but would “take” nothing. To construe this provision so as to enable the citizens of the District to hold as property, and in perpetuity, whatever they please, or to hold it as property in all circumstances–all necessity, public welfare, and the will and power of the government to the contrary notwithstanding–is a total perversion of its whole _intent_. The _design_ of the provision, was to throw up a barrier against Governmental aggrandizement. The right to “take property” for _State uses_ is one thing;–the right so to adjust the _tenures_ by which property is held, that _each may have his own secured to him_, is another thing, and clearly within the scope of legislation. Besides, if Congress were to “take” the slaves in the District, it would be _adopting_, not abolishing slavery–becoming a slaveholder itself, instead of requiring others to be such no longer. The clause in question, prohibits the “taking” of individual property for public uses, to be employed or disposed of _as_ property for governmental purposes. Congress, by abolishing slavery in the District, would do no such thing. It would merely change the _condition_ of that which has been recognised as a qualified property by congressional acts, though previously declared “persons” by the constitution. More than this is done continually by Congress and every other Legislature. Property the most absolute and unqualified, is annihilated by legislative acts. The embargo and non-intercourse act, prostrated at a stroke, a forest of shipping, and sank millions of capital. To say nothing of the power of Congress to take hundreds of millions from the people by direct taxation, who doubts its power to abolish at once the whole tariff system, change the seat of Government, arrest the progress of national works, prohibit any branch of commerce with the Indian tribes or with foreign nations, change the locality of forts, arsenals, magazines, dock yards, &c., to abolish the Post Office system, the privilege of patents and copyrights, &c. By such acts Congress might, in the exercise of its acknowledged powers, annihilate property to an incalculable amount, and that without becoming liable to claims for compensation.
Finally, this clause prohibits the taking for public use of “_property_.” The constitution of the United States does not recognise slaves as “PROPERTY” any where, and it does not recognise them in _any sense_ in the District of Columbia. All allusions to them in the constitution recognise them as “persons.” Every reference to them points _solely_ to the element of _personality_; and thus, by the strongest implication, declares that the constitution _knows_ them only as “persons,” and _will_ not recognise them in any other light. If they escape into free States, the constitution authorizes their being taken back. But how? Not as the property of an “owner,” but as “persons;” and the peculiarity of the expression is a marked recognition of their _personality_–a refusal to recognise them as chattels–“persons _held_ to service.” Are _oxen “held_ to service?” That can be affirmed only of _persons_. Again, slaves give political power as “persons.” The constitution, in settling the principle of representation, requires their enumeration in the census. How? As property? Then why not include race horses and game cocks? Slaves, like other inhabitants, are enumerated as “persons.” So by the constitution, the government was pledged to non-interference with “the migration or importation of such _persons_” as the States might think proper to admit until 1808, and authorized the laying of a tax on each “person” so admitted. Further, slaves are recognized as “persons” by the exaction of their _allegiance_ to the government. For offences against the government slaves are tried as _persons_; as persons they are entitled to counsel for their defence, to the rules of evidence, and to “due process of the law,” and as _persons_ they are punished. True, they are loaded with cruel disabilities in courts of law, such as greatly obstruct and often inevitably defeat the ends of justice, yet they are still recognised as _persons_. Even in the legislation of Congress, and in the diplomacy of the general government, notwithstanding the frequent and wide departures from the integrity of the constitution on this subject, slaves are not recognised as _property_ without qualification. Congress has always refused to grant compensation for slaves killed or taken by the enemy, even when these slaves had been impressed into the United States’ service. In half a score of cases since the last war, Congress has rejected such applications for compensation. Besides, both in Congressional acts, and in our national diplomacy, slaves and property are not used as convertible terms. When mentioned in treaties and state papers it is in such a way as to distinguish them from mere property, and generally by a recognition of their _personality_. In the invariable recognition of slaves as _persons_, the United States’ constitution caught the mantle of the glorious Declaration, and most worthily wears it.–It recognizes all human beings as “men,” “persons,” and thus as “equals.” In the original draft of the Declaration, as it came from the head of Jefferson, it is alleged that Great Britain had “waged a cruel war against _human_ nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, carrying them into slavery, * * determined to keep up a market where MEN should be bought and sold,”–thus disdaining to make the charter of freedom a warrant for the arrest of _men_, that they might be shorn both of liberty and humanity.
The celebrated Roger Sherman, one of the committee of five appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence, and also a member of the Convention that formed the United States’ Constitution, said, in the first Congress after its adoption: “The constitution _does not consider these persons_, (slaves,) _as a species of property_.”–[Lloyd’s Cong. Reg. v. 1, p. 313.] That the United States’ Constitution does not make slaves “property,” is shown in the fact, that no person, either as a citizen of the United States, or by having his domicile within the United States’ government, can hold slaves. He can hold them only by deriving his power from _state_ laws, or from the law of Congress, if he hold slaves within the District. But no person resident within the United States’ jurisdiction, and _not_ within the District, nor within a state whose laws support slavery, nor “held to service” under the laws of such state or district, having escaped therefrom, _can be held as a slave_.
Men can hold _property_ under the United States’ government though residing beyond the bounds of any state, district, or territory. An inhabitant of the Wisconsin Territory can hold property there under the laws of the United States, but he cannot hold _slaves_ there under the United States’ laws, nor by virtue of the United States’ Constitution, nor upon the ground of his United States citizenship, nor by having his domicile within the United States jurisdiction. The constitution no where recognizes the right to “slave property,” _but merely the fact that the states have jurisdiction each in its own limits, and that there are certain “persons” within their jurisdictions “held to service” by their own laws_.
Finally, in the clause under consideration, “private property” is not to be taken “without _just_ compensation.” “JUST!” If justice is to be appealed to in determining the amount of compensation, let her determine the _grounds_ also. If it be her province to say _how much_ compensation is “just,” it is hers to say whether _any_ is “just,”–whether the slave is “just” property _at all_, rather than a “_person_.” Then, if justice adjudges the slave to be “private property,” it adjudges him to be _his own_ property, since the right to one’s _self_ is the first right–the source of all others–the original stock by which they are accumulated–the principal, of which they are the interest. And since the slave’s “private property” has been “taken,” and since “compensation” is impossible–there being no _equivalent_ for one’s self–the least that can be done is to restore to him his original private property.
Having shown that in abolishing slavery, “property” would not be “taken for public use,” it may be added that, in those states where slavery has been abolished by law, no claim for compensation has been allowed. Indeed the manifest absurdity of demanding it, seems to have quite forestalled the _setting up_ of such a claim.
The abolition of slavery in the District, instead of being a legislative anomaly, would proceed upon the principles of every day legislation. It has been shown already, that the United States’ Constitution does not recognize slaves as “property.” Yet ordinary legislation is full of precedents, showing that even _absolute_ property is in many respects wholly subject to legislation. The repeal of the law of entailments–all those acts that control the alienation of property, its disposal by will, its passing to heirs by descent, with the question, who shall be heirs, and what shall be the rule of distribution among them, or whether property shall be transmitted at all by descent, rather than escheat to the state–these, with statutes of limitation, and various other classes of legislative acts, serve to illustrate the acknowledged scope of the law-making power, even where property _is in every sense absolute_. Persons whose property is thus affected by public laws, receive from the government no compensation for their losses, unless the state has been put into possession of the property taken from them.
The preamble of the United States’ Constitution declares it to be a fundamental object of the organization of the government “to ESTABLISH JUSTICE.” Has Congress _no power_ to do that for which it was made the _depository of power_? CANNOT the United States Government fulfil the purpose _for which it was brought into being_?
To abolish slavery, is to take from no rightful owner his property; but to “_establish justice_” between two parties. To emancipate the slave, is to “_establish justice_” between him and his master–to throw around the person, character, conscience, liberty, and domestic relations of the one, _the same law_ that secures and blesses the other. In other words, to prevent by _legal restraints_ one class of men from seizing upon another class, and robbing them at pleasure of their earnings, their time, their liberty, their kindred, and the very use and ownership of their own persons. Finally, to abolish slavery is to proclaim and _enact_ that innocence and helplessness–now _free plunder_–are entitled to _legal protection_; and that power, avarice, and lust, shall no longer gorge upon their spoils under the license, and by the ministrations of _law_! Congress, by possessing “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever,” has a _general protective power_ for ALL the inhabitants of the District. If it has no power to protect _one_ man, it has none to protect another–none to protect _any_–and if it _can_ protect _one_ man and is _bound_ to protect him, it _can_ protect _every_ man–all men–and is _bound_ to do it. All admit the power of Congress to protect the masters in the District against their slaves. What part of the constitution gives the power? The clause so often quoted,–“power of legislation in all cases whatsoever,” equally in the “_case_” of defending the blacks against the whites, as in that of defending the whites against the blacks. The power is given also by Art. 1, Sec. 8, clause 15–“Congress shall have power to suppress insurrections”–a power to protect, as well blacks against whites, as whites against blacks. If the constitution gives power to protect _one_ class against the other, it gives power to protect _either_ against the other. Suppose the blacks in the District should seize the whites, drive them into the fields and kitchens, force them to work without pay, flog them, imprison them, and sell them at their pleasure, where would Congress find power to restrain such acts? Answer; a _general_ power in the clause so often cited, and an _express_ one in that cited above–“Congress shall have power, to suppress insurrections.” So much for a _supposed_ case. Here follows a _real_ one. The whites in the District are _perpetrating these identical acts_ upon seven thousand blacks daily. That Congress has power to restrain these acts in one case, all assert, and in so doing they assert the power “in _all_ cases whatsoever.” For the grant of power to suppress insurrections, is an _unconditional_ grant, not hampered by provisos as to the color, shape, size, sex, language, creed, or condition of the insurgents. Congress derives its power to suppress this _actual_ insurrection, from the same source whence it derived its power to suppress the _same_ acts in the case _supposed_. If one case is an insurrection, the other is. The _acts_ in both are the same; the _actors_ only are different. In the one case, ignorant and degraded–goaded by the memory of the past, stung by the present, and driven to desperation by the fearful looking for of wrongs for ever to come. In the other, enlightened into the nature of _rights_, the principles of justice, and the dictates of the law of love, unprovoked by wrongs, with cool deliberation, and by system, they perpetrate these acts upon those to whom they owe unnumbered obligations for _whole lives_ of unrequited service. On which side may palliation be pleaded, and which party may most reasonably claim an abatement of the rigors of law? If Congress has power to suppress such acts _at all_, it has power to suppress them _in_ all.
It has been shown already that _allegiance_ is exacted of the slave. Is the government of the United States unable to grant _protection_ where it exacts _allegiance_? It is an axiom of the civilized world, and a maxim even with savages, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal and correlative. Are principles powerless with us which exact homage of barbarians? _Protection is the_ CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT _of every human being under the exclusive legislation of Congress who has not forfeited it by crime_.
In conclusion, I argue the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, froth Art. 1, sec. 8, clause 1, of the constitution: “Congress shall have power to provide for the common defence and the general welfare of the United States.” Has the government of the United States no power under this grant, to legislate within its own exclusive jurisdiction on subjects that vitally affect its interests? Suppose the slaves in the District should rise upon their masters, and the United States’ government, in quelling the insurrection, should kill any number of them. Could their masters claim compensation of the government? Manifestly not; even though no proof existed that the particular slaves killed were insurgents. This was precisely the point at issue between those masters, whose slaves were killed by the State troops at the time of the Southampton insurrection, and the Virginia Legislature; no evidence was brought to show that the slaves killed by the troops were insurgents; yet the Virginia Legislature decided that their masters were _not entitled to compensation_. They proceeded on the sound principle, that a government may in self protection destroy the claim of its subjects even to that which has been recognised as property by its own acts. If in providing for the common defence the United States government, in the case supposed, would have power to destroy slaves both as _property and persons_, it surely might stop half-way, destroy them as _property_ while it legalized their existence as _persons_, and thus provided for the common defence by giving them a personal and powerful interest in the government, and securing their strength for its defence.
Like other Legislatures, Congress has power to abate nuisances–to remove or tear down unsafe buildings–to destroy infected cargoes–to lay injunctions upon manufactories injurious to the public health–and thus to “provide for the common defence and general welfare” by destroying individual property, when it puts in jeopardy the public weal.
Granting, for argument’s sake, that slaves are “property” in the District of Columbia–if Congress has a right to annihilate property in the District when the public safety requires it, it may surely annihilate its existence _as_ property when public safety requires it, especially if it transform into a _protection_ and _defence_ that which as _property_ periled the public interests. In the District of Columbia there are, besides the United States’ Capitol, the President’s house, the national offices, &c. of the Departments of State, Treasury, War, and Navy, the General Post-office, and Patent Office. It is also the residence of the President, all the highest officers of the government, both houses of Congress, and all the foreign ambassadors. In this same District there are also _seven thousand slaves_. Jefferson, in his Notes on Va. p. 241, says of slavery, that “the State permitting one half of its citizens to trample on the rights of the other, _transforms them into enemies_;” and Richard Henry Lee, in the Va. House of Burgesses in 1758, declared that to those who held them, “_slaves must be natural enemies._” Is Congress so _impotent_ that it _cannot_ exercise that right pronounced both by municipal and national law, the most sacred and universal–the right of self-preservation and defence? Is it shut up to the _necessity_ of keeping seven thousand “enemies” in the heart of the nation’s citadel? Does the iron fiat of the constitution doom it to such imbecility that it _cannot_ arrest the process that _made_ them “enemies,” and still goads to deadlier hate by fiery trials, and day by day adds others to their number? Is _this_ providing for the common defence and general welfare? If to rob men of rights excites their hate, freely to restore them and make amends, will win their love.
By emancipating the slaves in the District, the government of the United States would disband an army of “enemies,” and enlist “for the common defence and general welfare,” a body guard of _friends_ seven thousand strong. In the last war, a handful of British soldiers sacked Washington city, burned the capitol, the President’s house, and the national offices and archives; and no marvel, for thousands of the inhabitants of the District had been “TRANSFORMED INTO ENEMIES.” Would _they_ beat back invasion? If the national government had exercised its constitutional “power to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” by turning those “enemies” into friends, then, instead of a hostile ambush lurking in every thicket inviting assault, and secret foes in every house paralyzing defence, an army of allies would have rallied in the hour of her calamity, and shouted defiance from their munitions of rocks; whilst the banner of the republic, then trampled in dust, would have floated securely over FREEMEN exulting amidst bulwarks of strength.
To show that Congress can abolish slavery in the District, under the grant of power “to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” I quote an extract from a speech of Mr. Madison, of Va., in the first Congress under the constitution, May 13, 1789. Speaking of the abolition of the slave trade, Mr. Madison says: “I should venture to say it is as much for the interests of Georgia and South Carolina, as of any state in the union. Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to _weaken_ them, and renders them less capable of self-defence. In case of hostilities with foreign nations, they will be the means of _inviting_ attack instead of repelling invasion. It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well _internal_ as external. _Every thing, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet if it involves national expense or safety, it becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government._” See Cong. Reg. vol. 1, p. 310-11.
WYTHE.
POSTSCRIPT
My apology for adding a _postscript_, to a discussion already perhaps too protracted, is the fact that the preceding sheets were in the hands of the printer, and all but the concluding pages had gone through the press, before the passage of Mr. Calhoun’s late resolutions in the Senate of the United States. A proceeding so extraordinary,–if indeed the time has not passed when _any_ acts of Congress in derogation of freedom and in deference to slavery, can be deemed extraordinary,–should not be suffered to pass in silence at such a crisis as the present; especially as the passage of one of the resolutions by a vote of 36 to 8, exhibits a shift of position on the part of the South, as sudden as it is unaccountable, being nothing less than the surrender of a fortress which until then they had defended with the pertinacity of a blind and almost infuriated fatuity. Upon the discussions during the pendency of the resolutions, and upon the vote, by which they were carried, I make no comment, save only to record my exultation in the fact there exhibited, that great emergencies are _true touchstones_, and that henceforward, until this question is settled, whoever holds a seat in Congress will find upon, and all around him, a pressure strong enough to TEST him–a focal blaze that will find its way through the carefully adjusted cloak of fair pretension, and the sevenfold brass of two-faced political intrigue, and _no_-faced _non-committalism_, piercing to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow. Be it known to every northern man who aspires to a seat in Congress, that hereafter it is the destiny of congressional action on this subject, to be a MIGHTY REVELATOR–making secret thoughts public property, and proclaiming on the house-tops what is whispered in the ear–smiting off masks, and bursting open sepulchres beautiful outwardly, and heaving up to the sun their dead men’s bones. To such we say,–_Remember the Missouri Question, and the fate of those who then sold the North, and their own birthright!_
Passing by the resolutions generally without remark–the attention of the reader is specially solicited to Mr. Clay’s substitute for Mr. Calhoun’s fifth resolution.
“Resolved, That when the District of Columbia was ceded by the states of Virginia and Maryland to the United States, domestic slavery existed in both of these states, including the ceded territory, and that, as it still continues in both of them, it could not be abolished within the District without a violation of that good faith, which was implied in the cession and in the acceptance of the territory; nor, unless compensation were made to the proprietors of slaves, without a manifest infringement of an amendment to the constitution of the United States; nor without exciting a degree of just alarm and apprehension in the states recognising slavery, far transcending in mischievous tendency, any possible benefit which could be accomplished by the abolition.”
By voting for this resolution, the south by a simultaneous movement, shifted its mode of defence, not so much by taking a position entirely new, as by attempting to refortify an old one–never much trusted in, and abandoned mainly long ago, as being unable to hold out against assault however unskilfully directed. In the debate on this resolution, though the southern members of Congress did not _professedly_ retreat from the ground hitherto maintained by them–that Congress has no power by the constitution to abolish slavery in the District–yet in the main they silently drew off from it.
The passage of this resolution–with the vote of every southern senator, forms a new era in the discussion of this question.
We cannot join in the lamentations of those who bewail it. We hail it, and rejoice in it. It was as we would have had it–offered by a southern senator, advocated by southern senators, and on the ground that it “was no compromise”–that it embodied the true southern principle–that “this resolution stood on as high ground as Mr. Calhoun’s.”–(Mr. Preston)–“that Mr. Clay’s resolution was as strong as Mr. Calhoun’s”–(Mr. Rives)–that “the resolution he (Mr. Calhoun) now refused to support, was as strong as his own, and that in supporting it, there was no abandonment of principle by the south.”–(Mr. Walker, of Mi.)–further, that it was advocated by the southern senators generally as an expression of their views, and as setting the question of slavery in the District on its _true_ ground–that finally when the question was taken, every slaveholding senator, including Mr. Calhoun himself, voted for the resolution.
By passing this resolution, and with such avowals, the south has surrendered irrevocably the whole question at issue between them and the petitioners for abolition in the District. It has, unwittingly but explicitly, conceded the main question argued in the preceding pages.
The _only_ ground taken against the right of Congress to abolish slavery in the District is, that slavery existed in Maryland and Virginia when the cession was made, and “_as it still continues in both of them_, it could not be abolished without a violation of that good faith which was implied in the cession,” &c. The _sole argument_ is _not_ that exclusive _sovereignty_ has no power to abolish slavery within its jurisdiction, _nor_ that the powers of even _ordinary legislation_ cannot do it,–nor that the clause granting Congress “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District,” gives no power to do it; but that the _unexpressed expectation_ of one of the parties that the other would not “in _all_ cases” use the power which said party had consented _might be used “in all cases,” prohibits_ the use of it. The only cardinal point in the discussion, is here not only _yielded_, but formally laid down by the South as the leading article in their creed on the question of Congressional jurisdiction over slavery in the District. The _sole reason_ given why Congress should not abolish, and the sole evidence that if it did, such abolition would be a violation of “good faith,” is that “_slavery still continues in those states_,”–thus explicitly admitting, that if slavery did _not_ “still continue” in those States, Congress _could_ abolish it in the District. The same admission is made also in the _premises_, which state that slavery existed in those states _at the time of the cession_, &c. Admitting that if it had _not_ existed there then, but had grown up in the District under _United States’ laws_, Congress might constitutionally abolish it. Or that if the ceded parts of those states had been the _only_ parts in which slaves were held under their laws, Congress might have abolished in such a contingency also. The cession in that case leaving no slaves in those states,–no “good faith,” would be “implied” in it, nor any “violated,” by an act of abolition. The principle of the resolution makes this further admission, that if Maryland and Virginia should at once abolish their slavery, Congress might at once abolish it in the District. The principle goes even further than this, and _requires_ Congress in such case to abolish slavery in the District “by the _good faith implied_ in the cession and acceptance of the territory.” Since according to the spirit and scope of the resolution, this “implied good faith” of Maryland and Virginia in making the cession, was that Congress would do nothing within the District which should go to counteract the policy, or bring into disrepute the “institutions,” or call in question the usages, or even in any way ruffle the prejudices of those states, or do what _they_ might think would unfavorably bear upon their interests; _themselves_ of course being the judges.
But let us dissect another limb of the resolution. What is to be understood by “that good faith which was IMPLIED?” It is of course an admission that such a condition was not _expressed_ in the acts of cession–that in their _terms_ there is nothing restricting the power of Congress on the subject of slavery in the District–not a _word_ alluding to it, nor one inserted with such an _intent_. This “implied faith,” then, rests on no clause or word in the United States’ Constitution, or in the acts of cession, or in the acts of Congress accepting the cession, nor does it rest on any declarations of the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia made at the time, or in that generation, nor on any _act_ of theirs, nor on any declaration of the _people_ of those states, nor on the testimony of the Washingtons, Jeffersons, Madisons, Chaces, Martins, and Jennifers, of those states and times. The assertion rests _on itself alone!_ Mr. Clay and the other senators who voted for the resolution, _guess_ that Maryland and Virginia _supposed_ that Congress would by no means _use_ the power given them by the constitution, except in such ways as would be well pleasing in the eyes of those states; especially as one of them was the “Ancient Dominion!” And now after the lapse of half a century, this _assumed expectation_ of Maryland and Virginia, the existence of which is mere matter of conjecture with the 36 senators, is conjured up and duly installed upon the judgment-seat of final appeal, before whose nod constitutions are to flee away, and with whom, solemn grants of power and explicit guaranties are when weighed in the balance, altogether lighter than vanity!
But let us survey it in another light. Why did Maryland and Virginia leave so much to be “_implied_?” Why did they not in some way _express_ what lay so near their hearts? Had their vocabulary run so low that a single word could not be eked out for the occasion? Or were those states so bashful of a sudden that they dare not speak out and tell what they wanted? Or did they take it for granted that Congress would always act in the premises according to their wishes, and that too, without their _making known_ their wishes? If, as honorable senators tell us, Maryland and Virginia did verily travail with such abounding _faith_, why brought they forth no _works_?
It is as true in _legislation_ as in religion, that the only _evidence_ of “faith” is _works_, and that “faith” _without_ works is _dead_, i.e. has no power. But here, forsooth, a blind implication with nothing _expressed_, an “implied” _faith_ without works, is _omnipotent_. Mr. Clay is lawyer enough to know that even a _senatorial hypothesis_ as to _what must have been the understanding_ of Maryland and Virginia about congressional exercise of constitutional power, _abrogates no grant_, and that to plead it in a court of law, would be of small service except to jostle “their honors'” gravity! He need not be told that the constitution gives Congress “power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District.” Nor that the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia constructed their acts of cession with this clause _before their eyes_, and that both of them declared those acts made “in _pursuance_” of said clause. Those states were aware that the United States in their constitution had left nothing to be “_implied_” as to the power of Congress over the District;–an admonition quite sufficient one would think to put them on their guard, and induce them to eschew vague implications and resort to _stipulations_. Full well did they know also that these were times when, in matters of high import, _nothing_ was left to be “implied.” The colonies were then panting from a twenty years’ conflict with the mother country, about bills of rights, charters, treaties, constitutions, grants, limitations, and _acts of cession_. The severities of a long and terrible discipline had taught them to guard at all points _legislative grants_, that their exact import and limit might be self-evident–leaving no scope for a blind “faith,” that _somehow_ in the lottery of chances there would be no blanks, but making all sure by the use of explicit terms, and wisely chosen words, and _just enough_ of them. The Constitution of the United States with its amendments, those of the individual states, the national treaties, the public documents of the general and state governments at that period, show the universal conviction of legislative bodies, that when great public interests were at stake, nothing should be left to be “implied.”
Further: suppose Maryland and Virginia had expressed their “implied faith” in _words_, and embodied it in their acts of cession as a proviso, declaring that Congress should not “exercise exclusive legislation in _all_ cases whatsoever over the District,” but that the “case” of _slavery_ should be an exception: who does not know that Congress, if it had accepted the cession on those terms, would have violated the Constitution; and who that has ever studied the free mood of those times in its bearings on slavery–proofs of which are given in scores on the preceding pages–can for an instant believe that the people of the United States would have altered their Constitution for the purpose of providing for slavery an inviolable sanctuary; that when driven in from its outposts, and everywhere retreating discomfited before the march of freedom, it might be received into everlasting habitations on the common homestead and hearth-stone of this free republic? Besides, who can believe that Virginia made such a condition, or cherished such a purpose, when at that very moment, Washington, Jefferson, Wythe, Patrick Henry St. George Tucker, and almost all her illustrious men, were advocating the abolition of slavery by law. When Washington had said, two years before, Maryland and Virginia “must have laws for the gradual abolition of slavery and at a period _not remote_;” and when Jefferson in his letter to Price, three years before the cession, had said, speaking of Virginia, “This is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression–a conflict in which THE SACRED SIDE IS GAINING DAILY RECRUITS;” when voluntary emancipations on the soil were then progressing at the rate of between one and two thousand annually, (See Judge Tucker’s “Dissertation on Slavery,” p. 73;) when the public sentiment of Virginia had undergone, and was undergoing so mighty a revolution that the idea of the continuance of slavery as a permanent system could not be _tolerated_, though she then contained about half the slaves in the Union. Was this the time to stipulate for the _perpetuity_ of slavery under the exclusive legislation of Congress? and that too at the _same_ session of Congress when _every one_ of her delegation voted for the abolition of slavery in the North West Territory; a territory which she had herself ceded to Congress, and along with it had surrendered her jurisdiction over many of her citizens, inhabitants of that territory, who held slaves there–and whose slaves were emancipated by that act of Congress, in which all her delegation with one accord participated?
Now in view of the universal belief then prevalent, that slavery in this country was doomed to short life, and especially that in Maryland and Virginia it would be _speedily_ abolished–are we to be told that these states _designed_ to bind Congress _never_ to terminate it? Are we to adopt the monstrous conclusion that this was the _intent_ of the Ancient Dominion–thus to _bind_ the United States by an “implied faith,” and that when the United States _accepted_ the cession, she did solemnly thus plight her troth, and that Virginia did then so _understand_ it? Verily one would think that honorable senators supposed themselves deputed to do our _thinking_ as well as our legislation, or rather, that they themselves were absolved from such drudgery by virtue of their office!
Another absurdity of this dogma about “implied faith” is, that where there was no power to exact an _express_ pledge, there was none to demand an _implied_ one, and where there was no power to _give_ the one, there was none to give the _other_. We have shown already that Congress could not have accepted the cession with such a condition. To have signed away a part of its constitutional grant of power would have been a _breach_ of the Constitution. Further, the Congress which accepted the cession was competent to pass a resolution pledging itself not to _use all_ the power over the District committed to it by the Constitution. But here its power ended. Its resolution would only bind _itself_. Could it bind the _next_ Congress by its authority? Could the members of one Congress say to the members of another, because we do not choose to exercise all the authority vested in us by the Constitution, therefore you _shall_ not? This would have been a prohibition to do what the Constitution gives power to do. Each successive Congress would still have gone to the Constitution for its power, brushing away in its course the cobwebs stretched across its path by the officiousness of an impertinent predecessor. Again, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, had no power to bind Congress, either by an express or an implied pledge, never to abolish slavery in the District. Those legislatures had no power to bind _themselves_ never to abolish slavery within their own territories–the ceded parts included. Where then would they get power to bind _another_ not to do what they had no power to bind themselves not to do? If a legislature could not in this respect control the successive legislatures of its own State, could it control the successive Congresses of the United States?
But perhaps we shall be told, that the “implied faith” in the acts of cession of Maryland and Virginia was _not_ that Congress should _never_ abolish slavery in the District, but that it should not do it until _they_ had done it within their bounds! Verily this “faith” comes little short of the faith of miracles! “A good rule that works both ways.” First, Maryland and Virginia have “good faith” that Congress will _not_ abolish until _they_ do; and then just as “good faith” that Congress _will_ abolish _when_ they do! Excellently accommodated! Did those States suppose that Congress would legislate over the national domain, the common jurisdiction of _all_, for Maryland and Virginia alone? And who, did they suppose, would be judges in the matter?–themselves merely? or the whole Union?
This “good faith implied in the cession” is no longer of doubtful interpretation. The principle at the bottom of it, when fairly stated, is this:–That the Government of the United States are bound in “good faith” to do in the District of Columbia, without demurring, just what and when, Maryland and Virginia do in their own States. In short, that the general government is eased of all the burdens of legislation within its exclusive jurisdiction, save that of hiring a scrivener to copy off the acts of the Maryland and Virginia legislatures as fast as they are passed, and engross them, under the title of “Laws of the United States, for the District of Columbia!” A slight additional expense would also be incurred in keeping up an express between the capitols of those States and Washington city, bringing Congress from time to time its “_instructions_” from head quarters–instructions not to be disregarded without a violation of that, “good faith implied in the cession,” &c.
This sets in strong light the advantages of “our glorious Union,” if the doctrine of Mr. Clay and the thirty-six Senators be orthodox. The people of the United States have been permitted to set up at their own expense, and on their own territory, two great _sounding boards_ called “Senate Chamber” and “Representatives’ Hall,” for the purpose of sending abroad “by authority” _national echoes_ of _state_ legislation!–permitted also to keep in their pay a corps of pliant _national_ musicians, with peremptory instructions to sound on any line of the staff according as Virginia and Maryland may give the _sovereign_ key note!
Though this may have the seeming of mere raillery, yet an analysis of the resolution and of the discussions upon it, will convince every fair mind that it is but the legitimate carrying out of the _principle_ pervading both. They proceed virtually upon the hypothesis that the will and pleasure of Virginia and Maryland are _paramount_ to those of the _Union_. If the main design of setting apart a federal district had been originally the accommodation of Maryland, Virginia, and the south, with the United States as an _agent_ to consummate the object, there could hardly have been higher assumption or louder vaunting. The sole object of _having_ such a District was in effect totally perverted in the resolution of Mr. Clay, and in the discussions of the entire southern delegation, upon its passage. Instead of taking the ground, that the benefit of the whole Union was the sole _object_ of a federal district, that it was designed to guard and promote the interests of _all_ the states, and that it was to be legislated over _for this end_–the resolution proceeds upon an hypothesis _totally the reverse_. It takes a single point of _state_ policy, and exalts it above NATIONAL interests, utterly overshadowing them; abrogating national _rights_; making void a clause of the Constitution; humbling the general government into a subject–crouching for favors to a superior, and that too _on its own exclusive jurisdiction_. All the attributes of sovereignty vested in Congress by the Constitution it impales upon the point of an alleged _implication_. And this is Mr. Clay’s peace-offering, to appease the lust of power and the ravenings of state encroachment! A “_compromise_,” forsooth! that sinks the general government on _its own territory_ into a mere colony, with Virginia and Maryland for its “mother country!” It is refreshing to turn from these shallow, distorted constructions and servile cringings, to the high bearing of other southern men in other times; men, who in their character of legislators and lawyers, disdained to accommodate their interpretations of constitutions and charters to geographical lines, or to bend them to the purposes of a political canvass. In the celebrated case of Cohens vs. the State of Virginia, Hon. William Pinkney, late of Baltimore, and Hon. Walter Jones, of Washington city, with other eminent constitutional lawyers, prepared an elaborate written opinion, from which the following is an extract: “Nor is there any danger to be apprehended from allowing to Congressional legislation with regard to the District of Columbia, its FULLEST EFFECT. Congress is responsible to the States, and to the people for that legislation. It is in truth the legislation of the states over a district placed under their control for _their own benefit_, not for that of the District, except as the prosperity of the District is involved, and necessary to the _general advantage_.”–[Life of Pinkney, p. 612.]
The profound legal opinion, from which this is an extract, was elaborated at great length many years since, by a number of the most distinguished lawyers in the United States, whose signatures are appended to it. It is specific and to the point. It asserts, 1st, that Congressional legislation over the District, is “the legislation of the _States_ and the _people_,” (not of _two_ states, and a mere _fraction_ of the people.) 2d, “Over a District placed under _their_ control,” i.e. under the control of the _whole_ of the States, not under the control of _two twenty-sixths_ of them. 3d, That it was thus put under their control “_for_ THEIR OWN _benefit_,” the benefit of _all_ the States _equally_; not to secure special benefits to Maryland and Virginia, (or what it might be _conjectured_ they would regard as benefits.) 4th, It concludes by asserting that the design of this exclusive control of Congress over the District was “not for the benefit of the _District_,” except as that is _connected_ with, and _a means of promoting_ the _general_ advantage. If this is the case with the _District_, which is _directly_ concerned, it is pre-eminently so with Maryland and Virginia, who are but _indirectly_ interested, and would be but remotely affected by it. The argument of Mr. Madison in the Congress of ’89, an extract from which has been given on a preceding page, lays down the same principle; that though any matter “_may be a local affair, yet if it involves national_ EXPENSE OR SAFETY, _it becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government_.” Cong. Reg. vol. 1. p. 310, 11.
But these are only the initiatory absurdities of this “good faith _implied_.” The thirty-six senators aptly illustrate the principle, that error not only conflicts with truth, but is generally at issue with itself. For if it would be a violation of “good faith” to Maryland and Virginia, for Congress to abolish slavery in the District, it would be _equally_ a violation for Congress to do it _with the consent_, or even at the earnest and unanimous petition of the people of the District: yet for years it has been the southern doctrine, that if the people of the District demand of Congress relief in this respect, it has power, as their local legislature, to grant it, and by abolishing slavery there, carry out the will of the citizens. But now new light has broken in! The optics of the thirty-six have pierced the millstone with a deeper insight, and discoveries thicken faster than they can be telegraphed! Congress has no power, O no, not a modicum, to help the slaveholders of the District, however loudly they may clamor for it. The southern doctrine, that Congress is to the District a mere local Legislature to do its pleasure, is tumbled from the genitive into the vocative! Hard fate–and that too at the hands of those who begat it! The reasonings of Messrs. Pinckney, Wise, and Leigh, are now found to be wholly at fault, and the chanticleer rhetoric of Messrs. Glascock and Garland stalks featherless and crest-fallen. For, Mr. Clay’s resolution sweeps by the board all those stereotyped common-places, as “Congress a local Legislature,” “consent of the District,” “bound to consult the wishes of the District,” &c. &c., which for the last two sessions of Congress have served to eke out scanty supplies. It declares, that _as slavery existed in Maryland and Virginia at the time of the cession, and as it still continues in both those states, it could not be abolished in the District without a violation of ‘that good faith’_, &c.
But let us see where this principle of the _thirty-six_ will lead us. If “implied faith” to Maryland and Virginia _restrains_ Congress from the abolition of slavery in the District, it _requires_ Congress to do in the District what those states have done within their bounds, i.e., restrain _others_ from abolishing it. Upon the same principle Congress is _bound_, by the doctrine of Mr. Clay’s resolution, to _prohibit emancipation_ within the District. There is no _stopping place_ for this plighted “faith.” Congress must not only refrain from laying violent hands on slavery, _itself_, and see to it that the slaveholders themselves do not, but it is bound to keep the system up to the Maryland and Virginia standard of vigor!
Again, if the good faith of Congress to Virginia and Maryland requires that slavery should exist in the District, while it exists in those states, it requires that it should exist there _as_ it exists in those states. If to abolish _every_ form of slavery in the District would violate good faith, to abolish _the_ form existing in those states, and to substitute a totally different one, would also violate it. The Congressional “good faith” is to be kept not only with _slavery_, but with the _Maryland and Virginia systems_ of slavery. The faith of those states not being in the preservation of _a_ system, but of _their_ system; otherwise Congress, instead of _sustaining_, would counteract their policy–principles would be brought into action there conflicting with their system, and thus the true spirit of the “implied” pledge would be violated. On this principle, so long as slaves are “chattels personal” in Virginia and Maryland, Congress could not make them _real estate_, inseparable from the soil, as in Louisiana; nor could it permit slaves to read, nor to worship God according to conscience; nor could it grant them trial by jury, nor legalize marriage; nor require the master to give sufficient food and clothing; nor prohibit the violent sundering of families–because such provisions would conflict with the existing slave laws of Virginia and Maryland, and thus violate the “good faith implied,” &c. So the principle of the resolution binds Congress in all these particulars: 1st. Not to abolish slavery in the District _until_ Virginia and Maryland abolish. 2d. Not to abolish any _part_ of it that exists in those states. 3d. Not to abolish any _form_ or _appendage_ of it still existing in those states. 4th. _To abolish_ when they do. 5th. To increase or abate its rigor _when, how_, and _as_ the same are modified by those states. In a word, Congressional action in the District is to float passively in the wake of legislative action on the subject in those states.
But here comes a dilemma. Suppose the legislation of those states should steer different courses–then there would be _two_ wakes! Can Congress float in both? Yea, verily! Nothing is too hard for it! Its obsequiousness equals its “power of legislation in _all_ cases whatsoever.” It can float _up_ on the Virginia tide, and ebb down on the Maryland at the same time. What Maryland does, Congress will do in the Maryland part. What Virginia does, Congress will do in the Virginia part. Though Congress might not always be able to run at the bidding of both _at once_, especially in different directions, yet if it obeyed orders cheerfully, and “kept in its place,” according to its “good faith implied,” impossibilities might not be rigidly exacted. True, we have the highest sanction for the maxim that no _man_ can serve two masters–but if “corporations have _no_ souls,” analogy would absolve Congress on that score, or at most give it only _a very small soul_–not large enough to be at all in the way, as an _exception_ to the universal rule laid down to the maxim!
In following out the absurdities of this “_implied_ good faith,” it will be seen at once that the doctrine of Mr. Clay’s Resolution extends to _all the subjects_ of _legislation_ existing in Maryland and Virginia, which exist also within the District. Every system, “institution,” law, and established usage there, is placed beyond Congressional control equally with slavery, and by the same “implied faith.” The abolition of the lottery system in the District as an _immorality_, was a flagrant breach of this “good faith” to Maryland and Virginia, as the system “still continued in those states.” So to abolish imprisonment for debt, and capital punishment, to remodel the bank system, the power of corporations, the militia law, laws of limitation, &c., in the District, _unless Virginia and Maryland took the lead_, would violate the “good faith implied in the cession,” &c.
That in the acts of cession no such “good faith” was “implied by Virginia and Maryland” as is claimed in the Resolution, we argue from the fact, that in 1781 Virginia ceded to the United States all her northwest territory, with the special proviso that her citizens inhabiting that territory should “have their _possessions_ and _titles_ confirmed to them, and be _protected_ in the enjoyment of their _rights_ and liberties.” (See Journals of Congress vol. 9, p. 63.) The cession was made in the form of a deed, and signed by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee, and James Monroe. Many of these inhabitants _held slaves_. Three years after the cession, the Virginia delegation in Congress _proposed_ the passage of an ordinance which should abolish slavery, in that territory, and declare that it should never thereafter exist there. All the members of Congress from Virginia and Maryland voted for this ordinance. Suppose some member of Congress had during the passage of the ordinance introduced the following resolution: “Resolved, That when the northwest territory was ceded by Virginia to the United States, domestic slavery existed in that State, including the ceded territory, and as it still continues in that State, it could not be abolished within the territory without a violation of that good faith, which was implied in the cession and in the acceptance of the territory.” What would have been the indignant response of Grayson, Griffin, Madison, and the Lees, in the Congress of ’87, to such a resolution, and of Carrington, Chairman of the Committee, who reported the ratification of the ordinance in the Congress of ’89, and of Page and Parker, who with every other member of the Virginia delegation supported it?
But to enumerate all the absurdities into which the thirty-six Senators have plunged themselves, would be to make a quarto inventory. We decline the task; and in conclusion, merely add that Mr. Clay in presenting this resolution, and each of the thirty-six Senators who voted for it, entered on the records of the Senate, and proclaimed to the world, a most unworthy accusation against the MILLIONS of American citizens who have during nearly half a century petitioned the national legislature to abolish slavery in the District of Colombia,–charging them either with the ignorance or the impiety of praying the nation to violate its “PLIGHTED FAITH.” The resolution virtually indicts at the bar of public opinion, and brands with odium, all the Manumission Societies, the _first_ petitioners for the abolition of slavery in the District, and for a long time the only ones, petitioning from year to year through evil report and good report, still petitioning, by individual societies and in their national conventions.
But as if it were not enough to table the charge against such men as Benjamin Rush, William Rawle, John Sergeant, Robert Vaux, Cadwallader Colden, and Peter A. Jay,–to whom we may add Rufus King, James Hillhouse, William Pinkney, Thomas Addis Emmett, Daniel D. Tompkins, De Witt Clinton, James Kent, and Daniel Webster, besides eleven hundred citizens of the District itself; headed by their Chief Justice and judges–even the sovereign States of Pennsylvania, New-York, Massachusetts, and Vermont, whose legislatures have either memorialized Congress to abolish slavery in the District, or instructed their Senators to move such a measure, must be gravely informed by Messrs. Clay, Norvell, Niles, Smith, Pierce, Benton, Black, Tipton, and other honorable Senators, either that their perception is so dull, they know not whereof they affirm, or that their moral sense is so blunted they can demand without compunction a violation of the nation’s faith!
We have spoken already of the concessions unwittingly made in this resolution to the true doctrine of Congressional power over the District. For that concession, important as it is, we have small thanks to render. That such a resolution, passed with such an _intent_, and pressing at a thousand points on relations and interests vital to the free states, should be hailed, as it has been, by a portion of the northern press as a “compromise” originating in deference to northern interests, and to be received by us as a free-will offering of disinterested benevolence, demanding our gratitude to the mover,–may well cover us with shame. We deserve the humiliation and have well earned the mockery. Let it come!
If, after having been set up at auction in the public sales-room of the nation, and for thirty years, and by each of a score of “compromises,” treacherously knocked off to the lowest bidder, and that without money and without price, the North, plundered and betrayed, _will not_, in this her accepted time, consider the things that belong to her peace before they are hidden from her eyes, then let her eat of the fruit of her own way, and be filled with her own devices! Let the shorn and blinded giant grind in the prison-house of the Philistines, till taught the folly of intrusting to Delilahs the secret and the custody of his strength.
Have the free States bound themselves by an oath never to profit by the lessons of experience? If lost to _reason_, are they dead to _instinct_ also? Can nothing rouse them to cast about for self preservation? And shall a life of tame surrenders be terminated by suicidal sacrifice?
A “COMPROMISE!” Bitter irony! Is the plucked and hood-winked North to be wheedled by the sorcery of another Missouri compromise? A compromise in which the South gained all, and the North lost all, and lost it for ever. A compromise which embargoed the free laborer of the North and West, and clutched at the staff he leaned upon, to turn it into a bludgeon and fell him with its stroke. A compromise which wrested from liberty her boundless birthright domain, stretching westward to the sunset, while it gave to slavery loose reins and a free course, from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
The resolution, as it finally passed, is here inserted. The original Resolution, as moved by Mr. Clay, was inserted at the head of this postscript with the impression that it was the _amended_ form. It will be seen however, that it underwent no material modification.
“Resolved, That the interference by the citizens of any of the states, with the view to the abolition of slavery in the District, is endangering the rights and security of the people of the District; and that any act or measure of Congress designed to abolish slavery in the District, would be a violation of the faith implied in the cessions by the states of Virginia and Maryland, a just cause of alarm to the people of the slaveholding states, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to disturb and endanger the Union.”
The vote upon the Resolution stood as follows:
_Yeas_.–Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Buchanan, Brown, Calhoun, Clay, of Alabama, Clay, of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Lumpkin, Lyon, Nicholas, Niles, Norvell, Pierce, Preston, Rives, Roane, Robinson, Sevier, Smith, of Connecticut, Strange, Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, White, Williams, Wright, Young.
_Nays_.–Messrs. DAVIS, KNIGHT, McKEAN, MORRIS, PRENTISS, RUGGLES, SMITH, of Indiana, SWIFT, WEBSTER.
THE
ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER
No. 5
* * * * *
THE
POWER OF CONGRESS
OVER THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
* * * * *
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW-YORK EVENING POST, UNDER THE SIGNATURE OF “WYTHE.”
* * * * *
WITH ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR.
* * * * *
NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY
NO. 143 NASSAU-STREET.
1838.
* * * * *
This periodical contains 3-1/2 sheets–Postage under 100 miles, 6 cts., over 100, 10 cts.
POWER OF CONGRESS
OVER THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
A civilized community presupposes a government of law. If that government be a republic, its citizens are the sole _sources_, as well as the _subjects_ of its power. Its constitution is their bill of directions to their own agents–a grant authorizing the exercise of certain powers, and prohibiting that of others. In the Constitution of the United States, whatever else may be obscure, the clause granting power to Congress over the Federal District may well defy misconstruction. Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 18: “The Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation, _in all cases whatsoever_, over such District.” Congress may make laws for the District “in all _cases_,” not of all _kinds_; not all _laws_ whatsoever, but laws “in all _cases_ whatsoever.” The grant respects the _subjects_ of legislation, _not_ the moral nature of the laws. The law-making power every where is subject to _moral_ restrictions, whether limited by constitutions or not. No legislature can authorize murder, nor make honesty penal, nor virtue a crime, nor exact impossibilities. In these and similar respects, the power of Congress is held in check by principles, existing in the nature of things, not imposed by the Constitution, but presupposed and assumed by it. The power of Congress over the District is restricted only by those principles that limit ordinary legislation, and, in some respects, it has even wider scope.
In common with the legislatures of the States, Congress cannot constitutionally pass ex post facto laws in criminal cases, nor suspend the writ of habeas corpus, nor pass a bill of attainder, nor abridge the freedom of speech and of the press, nor invade the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, nor enact laws respecting an establishment of religion. These are general limitations. Congress cannot do these things _any where_. The exact import, therefore, of the clause “in all cases whatsoever,” is, _on all subjects within the appropriate sphere of legislation_. Some legislatures are restrained by constitutions, from the exercise of powers strictly within the proper sphere of legislation. Congressional power over the District has no such restraint. It traverses the whole field of legitimate legislation. All the power which any legislature has within its own jurisdiction, Congress holds over the District of Columbia.
It has been objected that the clause in question respects merely police regulations, and that its sole design was to enable Congress to protect itself against popular tumults. But if the convention that framed the Constitution aimed to provide for a _single_ case only, why did they provide for “_all_ cases whatsoever?” Besides, this clause was opposed in many of the state conventions, because the grant of power was not restricted to police regulations _alone_. In the Virginia Convention, George Mason, the father of the Virginia Constitution, Patrick Henry, Mr. Grayson, and others, assailed it on that ground. Mr. Mason said, “This clause gives an unlimited authority in every possible case within the District. He would willingly give them exclusive power as far as respected the police and good government of the place, but he would give them no more.” Mr. Grayson said, that control over the _police_ was all-sufficient, and “that the Continental Congress never had an idea of exclusive legislation in all cases.” Patrick Henry said, “Is it consistent with any principle of prudence or good policy, to grant _unlimited, unbounded authority?_” Mr. Madison said in reply: “I did conceive that the clause under consideration was one of those parts which would speak its own praise. When any power is given, its delegation necessarily involves authority to make laws to execute it…. The powers which are found necessary to be given, are therefore delegated _generally_, and particular and minute specification is left to the Legislature…. It is not within the limits of human capacity to delineate on paper all those particular cases and circumstances, in which legislation by the general legislature, would be necessary.” Governor Randolph said: “Holland has no ten miles square, but she has the Hague where the deputies of the States assemble. But the influence which it has given the province of Holland, to have the seat of government within its territory, subject in some respects to its control, has been injurious to the other provinces.” The wisdom of the convention is therefore manifest in granting to Congress exclusive jurisdiction over the place of their session. [_Deb. Va. Con._, p. 320.] In the forty-third number of the “Federalist,” Mr. Madison says: “The indispensable necessity of _complete_ authority at the seat of government, carries its own evidence with it.”
Finally, that the grant in question is to be interpreted according to the obvious import of its _terms_, is proved by the fact, that Virginia proposed an amendment to the United States’ Constitution at the time of its adoption, providing that this clause “should be so construed as to give power only over the _police and good government_ of said District,” _which amendment was rejected._
The former part of the clause under consideration, “Congress shall have power to exercise _exclusive_ legislation,” gives _sole_ jurisdiction, and the latter part, “in all cases whatsoever,” defines the _extent_ of it. Since, then, Congress is the _sole_ legislature within the District, and since its power is limited only by the checks common to all legislatures, it follows that what the law-making power is intrinsically competent to do _any_ where, Congress is competent to do in the District of Columbia. Having disposed of preliminaries, we proceed to state and argue the _real question_ at issue.
IS THE LAW-MAKING POWER COMPETENT TO ABOLISH SLAVERY WHEN NOT RESTRICTED IN THAT PARTICULAR BY CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS–or, IS THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY WITHIN THE APPROPRIATE SPHERE OF LEGISLATION?
In every government, absolute sovereignty exists _somewhere_. In the United States it exists primarily with the _people_, and _ultimate_ sovereignty _always_ exists with them. In each of the States, the legislature possesses a _representative_ sovereignty, delegated by the people through the Constitution–the people thus committing to the legislature a portion of their sovereignty, and specifying in their constitutions the amount and the conditions of the grant. That the _people_ in any state where slavery exists, have the power to abolish it, none will deny. If the legislature have not the power, it is because _the people_ have reserved it to themselves. Had they lodged with the legislature “power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever,” they would have parted with their sovereignty over the legislation of the State, and so far forth the legislature would have become _the people_, clothed with all their functions, and as such competent, _during the continuance of the grant_, to do whatever the people might have done before the surrender of their power: consequently, they would have the power to abolish slavery. The sovereignty of the District of Columbia exists _somewhere_–where is it lodged? The citizens of the District have no legislature of their own, no representation in Congress, and no political power whatever. Maryland and Virginia have surrendered to the United States their “full and absolute right and entire sovereignty,” and the people of the United States have committed to Congress by the Constitution, the power to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District.”
Thus, the sovereignty of the District of Columbia, is shown to reside solely in the Congress of the United States; and since the power of the people of a state to abolish slavery within their own limits, results from their entire sovereignty within that state, so the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, results from its entire _sovereignty_ within the District. If it be objected that Congress can have no more power over the District, than was held by the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, we ask what clause in the constitution graduates the power of Congress by the standard of a state legislature? Was the United States’ constitution worked into its present shape under the measuring line and square of Virginia and Maryland? and is its power to be bevelled down till it can run in the grooves of state legislation? There is a deal of prating about constitutional power over the District, as though Congress were indebted for it to Maryland and Virginia. The powers of those states, whether few or many, prodigies or nullities, have nothing to do with the question. As well thrust in the powers of the Grand Lama to join issue upon, or twist papal bulls into constitutional tether, with which to curb congressional action. The Constitution of the United States gives power to Congress, and takes it away, and _it alone_. Maryland and Virginia adopted the Constitution _before_ they ceded to the United States the territory of the District. By their acts of cession, they abdicated their own sovereignty over the District, and thus made room for that provided by the United States’ constitution, which sovereignty was to commence as soon as a cession of territory by states, and its acceptance by Congress, furnished a sphere for its exercise. That the abolition of slavery is within the sphere of legislation, I argue,
2. FROM THE FACT, THAT SLAVERY, AS A LEGAL SYSTEM, IS THE CREATURE OF LEGISLATION. The law, by _creating_ slavery, not only affirmed its _existence_ to be within the sphere and under the control of legislation, but equally, the _conditions_ and _terms_ of its existence, and the _question_ whether or not it _should_ exist. Of course legislation would not travel _out_ of its sphere, in abolishing what is _within_ it, and what was recognised to be within it, by its own act. Cannot legislatures repeal their own laws? If law can take from a man his rights, it can give them back again. If it can say, “your body belongs to your neighbor,” it can say, “it belongs to _yourself_.” If it can annul a man’s right to himself, held by express grant from his Maker, and can create for another an _artificial_ title to him, can it not annul the artificial title, and leave the original owner to hold himself by his original title?
3. THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONSIDERED WITHIN THE APPROPRIATE SPHERE OF LEGISLATION. Almost every civilized nation has abolished slavery by law. The history of legislation since the revival of letters, is a record crowded with testimony to the universally admitted competency of the law-making power to abolish slavery. It is so manifestly an attribute not merely of absolute sovereignty, but even of ordinary legislation, that the competency of a legislature to exercise it, may well nigh be reckoned among the legal axioms of the civilized world. Even the night of the dark ages was not dark enough to make this invisible.
The Abolition decree of the great council of England was passed in 1102. The memorable Irish decree, “that all the English slaves in the whole of Ireland, be immediately emancipated and restored to their former liberty,” was issued in 1171. Slavery in England was abolished by a general charter of emancipation in 1381. Passing over many instances of the abolition of slavery by law, both during the middle ages and since the reformation, we find them multiplying as we approach our own times. In 1776 slavery was abolished in Prussia by special edict. In St. Domingo, Cayenne, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, in 1794, where more than 690,000 slaves were emancipated by the French government. In Java, 1811; in Ceylon, 1815; in Buenos Ayres, 1816; in St. Helena, 1819; in Colombia, 1821; by the Congress of Chili in 1821; in Cape Colony, 1823; in Malacca, 1825; in the southern provinces of Birmah, 1826; in Bolivia, 1826; in Peru, Guatemala, and Monte Video, 1828, in Jamaica, Barbadoes, Bermudas, Bahamas, the Mauritius, St. Christophers, Nevis, the Virgin Islands, Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Vincents, Grenada, Berbice, Tobago, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Honduras, Demarara, and the Cape of Good Hope, on the 1st of August, 1834. But waving details, suffice it to say, that England, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Prussia, and Germany, have all and often given their testimony to the competency of the legislative power to abolish slavery. In our own country, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed an act of abolition in 1780, Connecticut, in 1784; Rhode Island, 1784; New-York, 1799; New-Jersey, in 1804; Vermont, by Constitution, in 1777; Massachusetts, in 1780; and New Hampshire, in 1784.
When the competency of the law-making power to abolish slavery, has thus been recognised every where and for ages, when it has been embodied in the highest precedents, and celebrated in the thousand jubilees of regenerated liberty, is it an achievement of modern discovery, that such a power is a nullity?–that all these acts of abolition are void, and that the millions disenthralled by them, are, either themselves or their posterity, still legally in bondage?
4. LEGISLATIVE POWER HAS ABOLISHED SLAVERY IN ITS PARTS. The law of South Carolina prohibits the working of slaves more than fifteen hours in the twenty-four. In other words, it takes from the slaveholder his power over nine hours of the slave’s time daily; and if it can take nine hours it may take twenty-four. The laws of Georgia prohibit the working of slaves on the first day of the week; and if they can do it for the first, they can for the six following.
The law of North Carolina prohibits the “immoderate” correction of slaves. If it has power to prohibit immoderate correction, it can prohibit _moderate_ correction–_all_ correction, which would be virtual emancipation; for, take from the master the power to inflict pain, and he is master no longer. Cease to ply the slave with the stimulus of fear; and he is free.
The Constitution of Mississippi gives the General Assembly power to make laws “to oblige the owners of slaves to _treat them with humanity_.” The Constitution of Missouri has the same clause, and an additional one making it the DUTY of the legislature to pass such laws as may be necessary to secure the _humane_ treatment of the slaves. This grant to those legislatures, empowers them to decide what _is_ and what is _not_ “humane treatment.” Otherwise it gives no “power”–the clause is mere waste paper, and flouts in the face of a befooled legislature. A clause giving power to require “humane treatment” covers all the _particulars_ of such treatment–gives power to exact it in _all respects–requiring_ certain acts, and _prohibiting_ others–maiming, branding, chaining together, separating families, floggings for learning the alphabet, for reading the Bible, for worshiping God according to conscience–the legislature has power to specify each of these acts–declare that it is not “_humane_ treatment,” and PROHIBIT it.–The legislature may also believe that driving men and women into the field, and forcing them to work without pay, is not “humane treatment,” and being Constitutionally bound “to _oblige_” masters to practise “humane treatment”–they have the power to _prohibit such_ treatment, and are bound to do it.
The law of Louisiana makes slaves real estate, prohibiting the holder, if he be also a _land_ holder, to separate them from the soil.[A] If it has power to prohibit the sale _without_ the soil, it can prohibit the sale _with_ it; and if it can prohibit the _sale_ as property, it can prohibit the _holding_ as property. Similar laws exist in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies.
[Footnote A: Virginia made slaves real estate by a law passed in 1705. (_Beverly’s Hist. of Va_., p. 98.) I do not find the precise time when this law was repealed, probably when Virginia became the chief slave breeder for the cotton-growing and sugar-planting country, and made young men and women “from fifteen to twenty-five” the main staple production of the State.]
The law of Louisiana requires the master to give his slaves a certain amount of food and clothing. If it can oblige the master to give the slave _one_ thing, it can oblige him to give him another: if food and clothing, then wages, liberty, his own body.
By the laws of Connecticut, slaves may receive and hold property, and prosecute suits in their own name as plaintiffs: [This last was also the law of Virginia in 1795. See Tucker’s “Dissertation on Slavery,” p. 73.] There were also laws making marriage contracts legal, in certain contingencies, and punishing infringements of them, [“_Reeve’s Law of Baron and Femme_,” p. 340-1.] Each of the laws enumerated above, does, _in principle_, abolish slavery; and all of them together abolish it in fact. True, not as a _whole_, and at a _stroke_, nor all in one place; but in its _parts_, by piecemeal, at divers times and places; thus showing that the abolition of slavery is within the boundary of legislation.
5. THE COMPETENCY OF THE LAW-MAKING POWER TO ABOLISH SLAVERY, HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED BY ALL THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES, EITHER DIRECTLY OR BY IMPLICATION. Some States recognize it in their _Constitutions_, by giving the legislature power to emancipate such slaves as may “have rendered the state some distinguished service, “and others by express prohibitory restrictions. The Constitution of Mississippi, Arkansas, and other States, restrict the power of the legislature in this respect. Why this express prohibition, if the law-making power _cannot_ abolish slavery? A stately farce, indeed, to construct a special clause, and with appropriate rites induct it into the Constitution, for the express purpose of restricting a nonentity!–to take from the law-making power what it _never had_, and what _cannot_ pertain to it! The legislatures of those States have no power to abolish slavery, simply because their Constitutions have expressly _taken away_ that power. The people of Arkansas, Mississippi, &c., well knew the competency of the law-making power to abolish slavery, and hence their zeal to _restrict_ it.
The slaveholding States have recognised this power in their _laws_. The Virginia Legislature passed a law in 1786 to prevent the further importation of Slaves, of which the following is an extract: “And be it further enacted that every slave imported into this commonwealth contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, shall upon such importation become _free_.” By a law of Virginia, passed Dec. 17, 1792, a slave brought into the state and kept _there a year_, was _free_. The Maryland Court of Appeals at the December term 1813 [case of Stewart _vs._ Oakes,] decided that a slave owned in Maryland, and sent by his master into Virginia to work at different periods, making one year in the whole, became _free_, being _emancipated_ by the law of Virginia quoted above. North Carolina and Georgia in their acts of cession, transferring to the United States the territory now constituting the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, made it a condition of the grant, that the provisions of the ordinance of ’87, should be secured to the inhabitants _with the exception of the sixth article which prohibits slavery_; thus conceding, both the competency of law to abolish slavery, and the power of Congress to do it, within its jurisdiction. (These acts show the prevalent belief at that time, in the slaveholding States, that the general government had adopted a line of policy aiming at the exclusion of slavery from the entire territory of the United States, not included within the original States, and that this policy would be pursued unless prevented by specific and formal stipulation.)
Slaveholding states have asserted this power _in their judicial decisions_. In numerous cases their highest courts have decided that if the legal owner of slaves takes them into those States where slavery has been abolished either by law or by the constitution, such removal emancipates them, such law or constitution abolishing their slavery. This principle is asserted in the decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, in the case of Lunsford _vs._ Coquillon, 14 Martin’s La. Reps. 401. Also by the Supreme Court of Virginia, in the case of Hunter _vs._ Fulcher, 1 Leigh’s Reps. 172. The same doctrine was laid down by Judge Washington, of the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Butler _vs._ Hopper, Washington’s Circuit Court Reps. 508. This principle was also decided by the Court of Appeals in Kentucky; case of Rankin _vs._ Lydia, 2 Marshall’s Reps. 407; see also, Wilson _vs._ Isbell, 5 Call’s Reps. 425, Spotts _vs._ Gillespie, 6 Randolph’s Reps. 566. The State _vs._ Lasselle, 1 Blackford’s Reps. 60, Marie Louise _vs._ Mariot, 8 La. Reps. 475. In this case, which was tried in 1836, the slave had been taken by her master to France and brought back; Judge Mathews, of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, decided that “residence for one moment” under the laws of France emancipated her.
6. EMINENT STATESMEN, THEMSELVES SLAVEHOLDERS, HAVE CONCEDED THIS POWER. Washington, in a letter to Robert Morris, dated April 12, 1786, says: “There is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by _legislative_ authority.” In a letter to Lafayette, dated May 10, 1786, he says: “It (the abolition of slavery) certainly might, and assuredly ought to be effected, and that too by _legislative_ authority.” In a letter to John Fenton Mercer, dated Sept. 9, 1786, he says: “It is among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by _law_.” In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he says: “There are in Pennsylvania, _laws_ for the gradual abolition of slavery, which neither Maryland nor Virginia have at present, but which nothing is more certain than that they _must have_, and at a period not remote.” Speaking of movements in the Virginia Legislature in 1777, for the passage of a law emancipating the slaves, Mr. Jefferson says: “The principles of the amendment were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day; but it was found that the public mind would not bear the proposition, yet the day is not far distant, when _it must bear and adopt it_.”–Jefferson’s Memoirs, v. 1, p. 35. It is well known that Jefferson, Pendleton, Mason, Wythe and Lee, while acting as a committee of the Virginia House of Delegates to revise the State Laws, prepared a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves by law. These men were the great lights of Virginia. Mason, the author of the Virginia Constitution; Pendleton, the President of the memorable Virginia Convention in 1787, and President of the Virginia Court of Appeals; Wythe was the Blackstone of the Virginia bench, for a quarter of a century Chancellor of the State, the professor of law in the University of William and Mary, and the preceptor of Jefferson, Madison, and Chief Justice Marshall. He was author of the celebrated remonstrance to the English House of Commons on the subject of the stamp act. As to Jefferson, his _name_ is his biography.
Every slaveholding member of Congress from the States of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, voted for the celebrated ordinance of 1787, which _abolished_ the slavery then existing in the Northwest Territory. Patrick Henry, in his well known letter to Robert Pleasants, of Virginia, January 18, 1773, says: “I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to _abolish_ this lamentable evil.” William Pinkney, of Maryland, advocated the abolition of slavery by law, in the legislature of that State, in 1789. Luther Martin urged the same measure both in the Federal Convention, and in his report to the Legislature of Maryland. In 1796, St. George Tucker, of Virginia, professor of law in the University of William and Mary, and Judge of the General Court, published an elaborate dissertation on slavery, addressed to the General Assembly of the State, and urging upon them the abolition of slavery by _law_.
John Jay, while New York was yet a slave State, and himself in law a slaveholder, said in a letter from Spain, in 1786, “An excellent law might be made out of the Pennsylvania one, for the gradual abolition of slavery. Were I in your legislature, I would present a bill for the purpose, drawn up with great care, and I would never cease moving it till it became a law, or I ceased to be a member.”
Daniel D. Tompkins, in a message to the Legislature of New-York January 8, 1812, said: “To devise the means for the gradual and ultimate _extermination_ from amongst us of slavery, is a work worthy the representatives of a polished and enlightened nation.”
The Virginia Legislature asserted this power in 1832. At the close of a month’s debate, the following proceedings were had. I extract from an editorial article of the Richmond Whig, of January 26, 1832.
“The report of the Select Committee, adverse to legislation on the subject of Abolition, was in these words: _Resolved_, as the opinion of this Committee, that it is INEXPEDIENT FOR THE PRESENT, to make any _legislative enactments for the abolition of Slavery_.” This Report Mr. Preston moved to reverse, and thus to declare that it _was_ expedient, _now_ to make legislative enactments for the abolition of slavery. This was meeting the question in its strongest form. It demanded action, and immediate action. On this proposition the vote was 58 to 73. Many of the most decided friends of abolition voted against the amendment; because they thought public opinion not sufficiently prepared for it, and that it might prejudice the cause to move too rapidly. The vote on Mr. Witcher’s motion to postpone the whole subject indefinitely, indicates the true state of opinion in the House.–That was the test question, and was so intended and proclaimed by its mover. That motion was _negatived_, 71 to 60; showing a majority of 11, who by that vote, declared their belief that “at the proper time, and in the proper mode, Virginia ought to commence a system of gradual abolition.”
7. THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES HAVE ASSERTED THIS POWER. The ordinance of ’87, declaring that there should be “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,” in the North Western territory, abolished the slavery then existing there. The Supreme Court of Mississippi, in its decision in the case of Harvey vs. Decker, Walker’s Mi. Reps. 36, declared that the ordinance emancipated the slaves then held there. In this decision the question is argued ably and at great length. The Supreme Court of La. made the same decision in the case of Forsyth vs. Nash, 4 Martin’s La. Reps. 395. The same doctrine was laid down by Judge Porter, (late United States Senator from La.,) in his decision at the March term of the La. Supreme Court, 1830, in the case of Merry vs. Chexnaider, 20 Martin’s Reps. 699.
That the ordinance abolished the slavery then existing there is also shown by the fact, that persons holding slaves in the territory petitioned for the repeal of the article abolishing slavery, assigning _that_ as a reason. “The petition of the citizens of Randolph and St. Clair counties in the Illinois country, stating that they were in possession of slaves, and praying the repeal of that act (the 6th article of the ordinance of ’87) and the passage of a law legalizing slavery there.” [Am. State papers, Public Lands, v. 1. p. 69.] Congress passed this ordinance before the United States Constitution was adopted, when it derived all its authority from the articles of Confederation, which conferred powers of legislation far more restricted than those conferred on Congress over the District and Territories by the United States Constitution. Now, we ask, how does the Constitution _abridge_ the powers which Congress possessed under the articles of confederation?
The abolition of the slave trade by Congress, in 1808, is another illustration of the competency of legislative power to abolish slavery. The African slave trade has become such a mere _technic_, in common parlance, that the fact of its being _proper slavery_ is overlooked. The buying and selling, the transportation, and the horrors of the middle passage, were mere _incidents_ of the slavery in which the victims were held. Let things be called by their own names. When Congress abolished the African slave trade, it abolished SLAVERY–supreme slavery–power frantic with license, trampling a whole hemisphere scathed with its fires, and running down with blood. True, Congress did not, in the abolition of the slave trade, abolish _all_ the slavery within its jurisdiction, but it did abolish all the slavery in _one_ part of its jurisdiction. What has rifled it of power to abolish slavery in _another_ part of its jurisdiction, especially in that part where it has “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever?”
8. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES RECOGNISES THIS POWER BY THE MOST CONCLUSIVE IMPLICATION. In Art. 1, sec. 3, clause 1, it prohibits the abolition of the slave trade previous to 1808: thus implying the power of Congress to do it at once, but for the restriction; and its power to do it _unconditionally_, when that restriction ceased. Again; In Art. 4, sec. 2, “No person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from said service or labor.” This clause was inserted, as all admit, to prevent the runaway slave from being emancipated by the _laws_ of the free states. If these laws had _no power_ to emancipate, why this constitutional guard to prevent it?
The insertion of the clause, was the testimony of the eminent jurists that framed the Constitution, to the existence of the _power_, and their public proclamation, that the abolition of slavery was within the appropriate sphere of legislation. The right of the owner to that which is rightfully property, is founded on a principle of _universal law_, and is recognised and protected by all civilized nations; property in slaves is, by general consent, an _exception_; hence slaveholders insisted upon the insertion of this clause in the United States Constitution, that they might secure by an _express provision_, that from which protection is withheld, by the acknowledged principles of universal law.[A] By demanding this provision, slaveholders consented that their slaves should not be recognised as property by the United States Constitution, and hence they found their claim, on the fact of their being “_persons_, and _held_ to service.”
[Footnote A: The fact, that under the articles of Confederation, slaveholders, whose slaves had escaped into free states, had no legal power to force them back,–that _now_ they have no power to recover, by process of law, their slaves who escape to Canada, the South American States, or to Europe–the case already cited, in which the Supreme Court of Louisiana decided, that residence “_for one moment_,” under the laws of France emancipated an American slave–the case of Fulton _vs._. Lewis, 3 Har. and John’s Reps., 56, where the slave of a St. Domingo slaveholder, who brought him to Maryland in ’93, was pronounced free by the Maryland Court of Appeals–are illustrations of the acknowledged truth here asserted, that by the consent of the civilized world, and on the principles of universal law, slaves are not “_property_,” and that whenever held as property under _law_, it is only by _positive legislative acts_, forcibly setting aside the law of nature, the common law, and the principles of universal justice and right between man and man,–principles paramount to all law, and from which alone law, derives its intrinsic authoritative sanction.]
9. CONGRESS HAS UNQUESTIONABLE POWER TO ADOPT THE COMMON LAW, AS THE LEGAL SYSTEM, WITHIN ITS EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION.–This has been done, with certain restrictions, in most of the States, either by legislative acts or by constitutional implication. THE COMMON LAW KNOWS NO SLAVES. Its principles annihilate slavery wherever they touch it. It is a universal, unconditional, abolition act. Wherever slavery is a legal system, it is so only by _statute_ law, and in violation of the common law. The declaration of Lord Chief Justice Holt, that, “by the common law, no man can have property in another,” is an acknowledged axiom, and based upon the well known common law definition of property. “The subjects of dominion or property are _things_, as contra-distinguished from _persons_.” Let Congress adopt the common law in the District of Columbia, and slavery there is at once abolished. Congress may well be at home in common law legislation, for the common law is the grand element of the United States Constitution. All its _fundamental_ provisions are instinct with its spirit; and its existence, principles, and paramount authority, are presupposed and assumed throughout the whole. The preamble of the Constitution plants the standard of the Common Law immovably in its foreground. “We, the people of the United States, in order to ESTABLISH JUSTICE, &c., do ordain and establish this Constitution;” thus proclaiming _devotion to_ JUSTICE, as the controlling motive in the organization of the Government, and its secure establishment the chief object of its aims. By this most solemn recognition, the common law, that grand legal embodyment of “_justice_” and fundamental right–was made the Groundwork of the Constitution, and intrenched behind its strongest munitions. The second clause of Sec. 9, Art. 1; Sec. 4, Art. 2, and the last clause of Sec. 2, Art. 3, with Articles 7, 8, 9, and 13 of the Amendments, are also express recognitions of the common law as the presiding Genius of the Constitution.
By adopting the common law within its exclusive jurisdiction Congress would carry out the principles of our glorious Declaration, and follow the highest precedents in our national history and jurisprudence. It is a political maxim as old as civil legislation, that laws should be strictly homogeneous with the principles of the government whose will they express, embodying and carrying them out–being indeed the _principles themselves_, in preceptive form–representatives alike of the nature and the power of the Government–standing illustrations of its genius and spirit, while they proclaim and enforce its authority. Who needs be told that slavery makes war upon the principles of the Declaration, and the spirit of the Constitution, and that these and the principles of the common law gravitate toward each other with irrepressible affinities, and mingle into one? The common law came hither with our pilgrim fathers; it was their birthright, their panoply, their glory, and their song of rejoicing in the house of their pilgrimage. It covered them in the day of their calamity, and their trust was under the shadow of its wings. From the first settlement of the country, the genius of our institutions and our national spirit have claimed it as a common possession, and exulted in it with a common pride. A century ago, Governor Pownall, one of the most eminent constitutional jurists of colonial times, said of the common law, “In all the colonies the common law is received as the foundation and main body of their law.” In the Declaration of Rights, made by the Continental Congress at its first session in ’74, there was the following resolution: “Resolved, That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage according to the course of that law.” Soon after the organization of the general government, Chief Justice Ellsworth, in one of his decisions on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, said: “The common law of this country remains the same as it was before the revolution.” Chief Justice Marshall, in his decision in the case of Livingston _vs._ Jefferson, said: “When our ancestors migrated to America, they brought with them the common law of their native country, so far as it was applicable to their new situation, and I do not conceive that the revolution in any degree changed the relations of man to man, or the law which regulates them. In breaking our political connection with the parent state, we did not break our connection with each other.” [_Hall’s Law Journal, new series._] Mr. Duponceau, in his “Dissertation on the Jurisdiction of Courts in the United States,” says, “I consider the common law of England the _jus commune_ of the United States. I think I can lay it down as a correct principle, that the common law of England, as it was at the time of the Declaration of Independence, still continues to be the national law of this country, so far as it is applicable to our present state, and subject to the modifications it has received here in the course of nearly half a century.” Chief Justice Taylor of North Carolina, in his decision in the case of the State _vs._ Reed, in 1823, Hawkes’ N.C. Reps. 454, says, “a law of _paramount obligation to the statute_, was violated by the offence–COMMON LAW founded upon the law of nature, and confirmed by revelation.” The legislation of the United States abounds in recognitions of the principles of the common law, asserting their paramount binding power. Sparing details, of which our national state papers are full, we illustrate by a single instance. It was made a condition of the admission of Louisiana into the Union, that the right of trial by jury should be secured to all her citizens,–the United States government thus employing its power to enlarge the jurisdiction of the common law in this its great representative.
Having shown that the abolition of slavery is within the competency of the law-making power, when unrestricted by constitutional provisions, and that the legislation of Congress over the District is thus unrestricted, its power to abolish slavery there is established.
We argue it further, from the fact, that slavery exists there _now_ by an act of Congress. In the act of 16th July, 1790, Congress accepted portions of territory offered by the states of Maryland and Virginia, and enacted that the laws, as they then were, should continue in force, “until Congress shall otherwise by law provide.” Under these laws, adopted by Congress, and in effect re-enacted and made laws of the District, the slaves there are now held.
Is Congress so impotent in its own “exclusive jurisdiction” that it _cannot_ “otherwise by law provide?” If it can say, what _shall_ be considered property, it can say what shall _not_ be considered property. Suppose a legislature should enact that marriage contracts shall be mere bills of sale, making a husband the proprietor of his wife, as his _bona fide_ property; and suppose husbands should herd their wives in droves for the market as beasts of burden, or for the brothel as victims of lust, and then prate about their inviolable legal property, and deny the power of the legislature, which stamped them “property,” to undo its own wrong, and secure to wives by law the rights of human beings. Would such cant about “legal rights” be heeded where reason and justice held sway, and where law, based upon fundamental morality, received homage? If a frantic legislature pronounces woman a chattel, has it no power, with returning reason, to take back the blasphemy? Is the impious edict irrepealable? Be it, that with legal forms it has stamped wives “wares.” Can no legislation blot out the brand? Must the handwriting of Deity on human nature be expunged for ever? Has law no power to stay the erasing pen, and tear off the scrawled label that covers up the IMAGE OF GOD?
II. THE POWER OF CONGRESS TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT HAS BEEN, TILL RECENTLY, UNIVERSALLY CONCEDED.
1. IT HAS BEEN ASSUMED BY CONGRESS ITSELF. The following record stands on the journals of the House of Representatives for 1804, p. 225: “On motion made and seconded that the House do come to the following resolution: ‘Resolved, That from and after the 4th day of July, 1805, all blacks and people of color that shall be born within the District of Columbia, or whose mothers shall be the property of any person residing within said District, shall be free, the males at the age of —-, and the females at the age of —-. The main question being taken that the house do agree to said motion as originally proposed, it was negatived by a majority of 46.'” Though the motion was lost, it was on the ground of its alleged _inexpediency_ alone. In the debate which preceded the vote, the _power_ of Congress was conceded. In March, 1816, the House of Representatives passed the following resolution:–“Resolved, That a committee be appointed to inquire into the existence of an inhuman and illegal traffic in slaves, carried on in and through the District of Columbia, and to report whether any and what measures are necessary for _putting a stop to the same_.”
On the 9th of January, 1829, the House of Representatives passed the following resolution by a vote of 114 to 66: “Resolved, That the Committee on the District of Columbia, be instructed to inquire into the _expediency_ of providing by _law_ for the gradual abolition of slavery within the District, in such manner that the interests of no individual shall be injured thereby.” Among those who voted in the affirmative were Messrs. Barney of Md., Armstrong of Va., A.H. Shepperd of N.C., Blair of Tenn., Chilton and Lyon of Ky., Johns of Del., and others from slave states.
2. IT HAS BEES CONCEDED BY COMMITTEES OF CONGRESS, OF THE DISTRICT of COLUMBIA.–In a report of the committee on the District, Jan. 11, 1837, by their chairman, Mr. Powell of Va., there is the following declaration:–“The Congress of the United States, has by the constitution exclusive jurisdiction over the District, and has power upon this subject, (_slavery_,) as upon all other subjects of legislation, to exercise _unlimited discretion_.” Reps. of Comms. 2d Sess. 19th Cong. v. iv. No. 43. In December, 1831, the committee on the District, Dr. Doddridge of Va., Chairman, reported, “That until the adjoining states act on the subject, (slavery) it would be (not _unconstitutional_ but) unwise and impolitic, if not unjust, for Congress to interfere.” In April, 1836, a special committee on abolition memorials reported the following resolutions by their Chairman, Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina: “Resolved, That Congress possesses no constitutional authority to interfere in any way with the institution of slavery in any of the states of this confederacy.”
“Resolved, That Congress _ought not to interfere_ in any way with slavery in the District of Columbia.” “Ought not to interfere,” carefully avoiding the phraseology of the first resolution, and thus in effect conceding the constitutional power. In a widely circulated “Address to the electors of the Charleston District,” Mr. Pinkney is thus denounced by his own constituents: “He has proposed a resolution which is received by the plain common sense of the whole country as a concession that Congress has authority to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.”
3. IT HAS BEEN CONCEDED BY THE CITIZENS OF THE DISTRICT. A petition for the gradual abolition of slavery in the District, signed by nearly eleven hundred of its citizens, was presented to Congress, March 24, 1827. Among the signers to this petition, were Chief Justice Cranch, Judge Van Ness, Judge Morsel, Prof. J.M. Staughton, and a large number of the most influential inhabitants of the District. Mr. Dickson, of New York, asserted on the floor of Congress in 1835, that the signers of this petition owned more than half of the property in the District. The accuracy of this statement has never been questioned.
THIS POWER HAS BEEN CONCEDED BY GRAND JURIES OF THE DISTRICT. The Grand jury of the county of Alexandria, at the March term, 1802, presented the domestic slave trade as a grievance, and said, “We consider these grievances demanding _legislative_ redress.” Jan. 19, 1829, Mr. Alexander, of Virginia, presented a representation of the grand jury in the city of Washington, remonstrating against “any measure for the abolition of slavery within said District, unless accompanied by measures for the removal of the emancipated from the same;” thus, not only conceding the power to emancipate slaves, but affirming an additional power, that of _excluding them when free_. Journal H.R. 1828-9, p. 174.
4. THIS POWER HAS BEEN CONCEDED BY STATE LEGISLATURES. In 1828 the Legislature of Pennsylvania instructed their Senators in Congress “to procure, if practicable, the passage of a law to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.” Jan. 28, 1829, the House of Assembly of New-York passed a resolution, that their “Senators in Congress be instructed to make every possible exertion to effect the passage of a law for the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia.” In February, 1837, the Senate of Massachusetts “Resolved, That Congress having exclusive legislation in the District of Columbia, possess the right to abolish slavery and the slave trade therein.” The House of Representatives passed the following resolution at the same session: “Resolved, That Congress having exclusive legislation in the District of Columbia, possess the right to abolish slavery in said District.”
November 1, 1837, the Legislature of Vermont, “Resolved, that Congress have the full power by the constitution to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and in the territories.”
May 30, 1836, a committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature reported the following resolution: “Resolved, That Congress does possess the constitutional power, and it is expedient to abolish slavery and the slave trade within the District of Columbia.”
In January, 1836, the Legislature of South Carolina “Resolved, That we should consider the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia as a violation of the rights of the citizens of that District derived from the _implied_ conditions on which that territory was ceded to the General Government.” Instead of denying the constitutional power, they virtually admit its existence, by striving to smother it under an _implication_. In February, 1836, the Legislature of North Carolina “Resolved, That, although by the Constitution _all legislative power_ over the District of Columbia is vested in the Congress of the United States, yet we would deprecate any legislative action on the part of that body towards liberating the slaves of that District, as a breach of faith towards those States by whom the territory was originally ceded. Here is a full concession of the _power_. February 2, 1836, the Virginia Legislature passed unanimously the following resolution: “Resolved, by the General Assembly of Virginia, that the following article be proposed to the several states of this Union, and to Congress, as an amendment of the Constitution of the United States: “The powers of Congress shall not be so construed as to authorize the passage of any law for the emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia, without the consent of the individual proprietors thereof, unless by the sanction of the Legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, and under such conditions as they shall by law prescribe.”
Fifty years after the formation of the United States’ constitution the states are solemnly called upon by the Virginia Legislature, to amend that instrument by a clause asserting that, in the grant to Congress of “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over the District, the “case” of slavery is not included!! What could have dictated such a resolution but the conviction that the power to abolish slavery is an irresistible inference from the constitution _as it is_. The fact that the same legislature passed afterward a resolution, though by no means unanimously, that Congress does not possess the power, abates not a tittle of the testimony in the first resolution. March 23d, 1824, “Mr. Brown presented the resolutions of the General Assembly of Ohio, recommending to Congress the consideration of a system for the gradual emancipation of persons of color held in servitude in the United States.” On the same day, “Mr. Noble, of Indiana, communicated a resolution from the legislature of that state, respecting the gradual emancipation of slaves within the United States.” Journal of the United States Senate, for 1824-5, p. 231.
The Ohio and Indiana resolutions, by taking for granted the _general_ power of Congress over the subject of slavery, do virtually assert its _special_ power within its _exclusive_ jurisdiction.
5. THIS POWER HAS BEEN CONCEDED BY BODIES OF CITIZENS IN THE SLAVE STATES. The petition of eleven hundred citizens of the District, has been already mentioned. “March 5, 1830, Mr. Washington presented a memorial of inhabitants of the county of Frederick, in the state of Maryland, praying that provision be made for the gradual abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.” Journal H.R. 1829-30, p. 358.
March 30, 1828. Mr. A.H. Shepperd, of North Carolina, presented a memorial of citizens of that state, “praying Congress to take measures for the entire abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.” Journal H.R. 1829-30, p. 379.
January 14, 1822. Mr. Rhea, of Tennessee, presented a memorial of citizens of that state, praying “that provision may be made, whereby all slaves which may hereafter be born in the District of Columbia, shall be free at a certain period of their lives.” Journal H.R. 1821-22, p. 142.
December 13, 1824. Mr. Saunders of North Carolina, presented a memorial of citizens of that state, praying “that measures may be taken for the gradual abolition of slavery in the United States.” Journal H.R. 1824-25, p. 27.
December 16, 1828. “Mr. Barnard presented the memorial of the American Convention for promoting the abolition of slavery, held in Baltimore, praying that slavery may be abolished in the District of Columbia.” Journal U.S. Senate, 1828-29, p. 24.
6. DISTINGUISHED STATESMEN AND JURISTS IN THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES, HAVE CONCEDED THIS POWER. The testimony of Messrs. Doddridge, and Powell, of Virginia, Chief Justice Cranch, and Judges Morsel and Van Ness, of the District, has already been given. In the debate in Congress on the memorial of the Society of Friends, in 1790, Mr. Madison, in speaking of the territories of the United States, explicitly declared, from his own knowledge of the views of the members of the convention that framed the constitution, as well as from the obvious import of its terms, that in the territories, “Congress have certainly the power to regulate the subject of slavery.” Congress can have no more power over the territories than that of “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever,” consequently, according to Mr. Madison, “it has certainly the power to regulate the subject of slavery in the” _District_. In March, 1816, Mr. Randolph of Va. introduced a resolution for putting a stop to the domestic slave trade within the District. December 12, 1827, Mr. Barney, of Md. presented a memorial for abolition in the District, and moved that it be printed. Mr. McDuffie, of S.C., objected to the printing, but “expressly admitted the right of Congress to grant to the people of the District any measures which they might deem necessary to free themselves from the deplorable evil.”–[See letter of Mr. Claiborne of Miss. to his constituents, published in the Washington Globe, May 9, 1836.] The sentiments of Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, on the subject are well known. In a speech before the U.S. Senate, in 1836, he declared the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District “unquestionable.” Messrs. Blair, of Tenn., and Chilton, Lyon, and R.M. Johnson, of Ky., A.H. Shepperd, of N.C., Messrs. Armstrong and Smyth, of Va., Messrs. Dorsey, Archer, and Barney, of Md., and Johns, of Del., with numerous others from slave states, have asserted the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District. In the speech of Mr. Smyth, of Va., on the Missouri question, January 28, 1820, he says on this point: “If the future freedom of the blacks is your real object, and not a mere pretence, why do you not begin _here_? Within the ten miles square, you have _undoubted power_ to exercise exclusive legislation. _Produce a bill to emancipate the slaves in the District of Columbia_, or, if you prefer it, to emancipate those born hereafter.”
To this may be added the testimony of the present Vice President of the United States, Hon. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky. In a speech before the U.S. Senate, Feb. 1, 1820, (National Intelligencer, April 20, 1820) he says: “In the District of Columbia, containing a population of 30,000 souls, and probably as many slaves as the whole territory of Missouri, THE POWER OF PROVIDING FOR THEIR EMANCIPATION RESTS WITH CONGRESS ALONE. Why, then, this heart-rending sympathy for the slaves of Missouri, and this cold insensibility, this eternal apathy, towards the slaves in the District of Columbia?”
It is quite unnecessary to add, that the most distinguished northern statesmen of both political parties, have always affirmed the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District: President Van Buren in his letter of March 6, 1836, to a committee of gentlemen in North Carolina, says, “I would not, from the light now before me, feel myself safe in pronouncing that Congress does not possess the power of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia.” This declaration of the President is consistent with his avowed sentiments touching the Missouri question, on which he coincided with such men as Daniel D. Tompkins, De Witt Clinton, and others, whose names are a host.[A] It is consistent, also, with his recommendation in his late message, in which, speaking of the District, he strongly urges upon Congress “a thorough and careful revision of its local government,” speaks of the “entire dependence” of the people of the District “upon Congress,” recommends that a “uniform system of local government” be adopted, and adds, that “although it was selected as the seat of the General Government, the site of its public edifices, the depository of its archives, and the residence of officers entrusted with large amounts of public property, and the management of public business, yet it never has been subjected to, or received, that _special_ and _comprehensive_ legislation which these circumstances peculiarly demanded.”
[Footnote A: Mr. Van Buren, when a member of the Senate of New-York, voted for the following preamble and resolutions, which passed unanimously:–Jan 28th, 1820. “Whereas the inhibiting the further extension of slavery in the United States, is a subject of deep concern to the people of this state: and whereas, we consider slavery as an evil much to be deplored, and that _every constitutional barrier should be interposed to prevent its further extension_: and that the constitution of the United States _clearly gives congress the right_ to require new states, not comprised within the original boundary of the United States, to _make the prohibition of slavery_ a condition of their admission into the Union: Therefore,
“Resolved, That our Senators be instructed, and our members of Congress be requested, to oppose the admission as a state into the Union, of an territory not comprised as aforesaid, without making _the prohibition of slavery_ therein an indispensable condition of admission.” ]
The tenor of Mr. Tallmadge’s speech on the right of petition, and of Mr. Webster’s on the reception of abolition memorials, may be taken as universal exponents of the sentiments of northern statesmen as to the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
An explicit declaration, that an “_overwhelming majority_” of the _present_ Congress concede the power to abolish slavery in the District, has just been made by Hon. Robert Barnwell Rhett, a member of Congress from South Carolina, in a letter published in the Charleston Mercury of Dec. 27, 1837. The following is an extract:
“The time has arrived when we must have new guaranties under the constitution, or the Union must be dissolved. _Our views of the constitution are not those of the majority_. AN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY _think that by the constitution, Congress may abolish slavery in the District of Columbia–may abolish the slave trade between the States; that is, it may prohibit their being carried out of the State in which they are–and prohibit it in all the territories, Florida among them. They think_, NOT WITHOUT STRONG REASONS, _that the power of Congress extends to all of these subjects_.”
_Direct testimony_ to show that the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, has always till recently been _universally conceded_, is perhaps quite superfluous. We subjoin, however, the following:
The Vice-President of the United States in his speech on the Missouri question, quoted above, after contending that the restriction of slavery in Missouri would be unconstitutional, declares, that the power of Congress over slavery in the District “COULD NOT BE QUESTIONED.” In the speech of Mr. Smyth, of Va., also quoted above, he declares the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District to be “UNDOUBTED.”
Mr. Sutherland, of Penn., in a speech in the House of Representatives,