3. Congress has no power to abridge the right of petition. The right of the people of the non-slaveholding states to petition Congress for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the traffic of human beings among the states, is as undoubted as any right guarantied by the Constitution; and I regard the Resolution which was adopted by the House of Representatives on the 21st of December last as a virtual denial of that right, inasmuch as it disposed of all such petitions, as might be presented thereafter, in advance of presentation and reception.
If it was right thus to dispose of petitions on _one_ subject, it would be equally right to dispose of them in the same manner on _all_ subjects, and thus cut of all communication, by petition between the people and their representatives. Nothing can be more clearly a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, as it rendered utterly nugatory a right which was considered of such vast importance as to be specially guarantied in that sacred instrument.
A similar Resolution passed the House of Representatives at the first session of the last Congress, and as I then entertained the same views which I have now expressed, I recorded my vote against it.
4. I fully concur in the sentiment, that 'every principle of justice and humanity requires, that every human being, when personal freedom is at stake, should have the benefit of a jury trial;' and I have no hesitation in saying, that the laws of this state ought to secure that benefit, so far as they can, to persons claimed as fugitives from 'service or labor,' without interfering with the laws of the United States. The course pursued in relation to this subject by the Legislature of Massachusetts meets my approbation.
5. I am opposed to all attempts to abridge or restrain the freedom of speech and the press, or to forbid any portion of the people peaceably to assemble to discuss any subject--moral, political, or religious.
6. I am opposed to the annexation of Texas to the United States.
7. It is undoubtedly inconsistent with the principles of a free state, professing to be governed in its legislation by the principles of freedom, to sanction slavery, in any form, within its jurisdiction. If we have laws in this state which bear this construction, they ought to be repealed. We should extend to our southern brethren, whenever they may have occasion to come among us, all the privileges and immunities enjoyed by our own citizens, and all the rights and privileges guarantied to them by the Constitution of the United States; but they cannot expect of us to depart from the fundamental principles of civil liberty for the purpose of obviating any temporal inconvenience which they may experience.
These are my views upon the topics proposed for my consideration.
They are the views which I have always entertained, (at least ever since I have been awakened to their vast importance,) and which I have always supported, so far as I could, by my vote in Congress; and if, in any respect, my answers have not been sufficiently explicit, it will afford me pleasure to reply to any other questions which you may think proper to propose.
I am, Sir, very respectfully,
Your friend and fellow citizen,
WILLIAM SPRAGUE."
Oliver Johnson, Esq., Cor. Sec. R.I.A.S. Society.
APPENDIX C.
The abolitionists in Connecticut petitioned the Legislature of that state at its late session on several subjects deemed by them proper for legislative action. In answer to these petitions--
1. The law known as the "Black Act" or the "Canterbury law"--under which Miss Crandall was indicted and tried--was repealed, except a single provision, which is not considered objectionable.
2. The right to _trial by jury_ was secured to persons who are claimed as slaves.
3. Resolutions were passed asserting the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and recommending that it be done as soon as it can be, "consistently with the _best good_ of the _whole country_."(!)
4. Resolutions were passed protesting against the annexation of Texas to the Union.
5. Resolutions were passed asserting the right of petition as inalienable--condemning Mr. Patton's resolution of Dec. 21, 1837 as an invasion of the rights of the people, and calling on the Connecticut delegation in Congress to use their efforts to have the same rescinded.
APPENDIX D.
In the year 1793 there were but 5,000,000 pounds of cotton produced in the United States, and but 500,000 exported. Cotton never could have become an article of much commercial importance under the old method of preparing it for market. By hand-picking, or by a process strictly _manual_, a cultivator could not prepare for market, during the year, more than from 200 to 300 pounds; being only about one-tenth of what he could cultivate to maturity in the field. In '93 Mr. Whitney invented the Cotton-gin now in use, by which the labor of at least _one thousand_ hands under the old system, is performed by _one_, in preparing the crop for market. Seven years after the invention (1800) 35,000,000 pounds were raised, and 17,800,000 exported. In 1834, 460,000,000 were raised--384,750,000 exported. Such was the effect of Mr. Whitney's invention. It gave, at once, extraordinary value to the _land_ in that part of the country where alone cotton could be raised; and to _slaves_, because it was the general, the almost universal, impression that the cultivation of the South could be carried on only by slaves. There being no _free_ state in the South, competition between free and slave labor never could exist on a scale sufficiently extensive to prove the superiority of the former in the production of cotton, and in the preparation of it for market.
Thus, it has happened that Mr. Whitney has been the innocent occasion of giving to slavery in this country its present importance--of magnifying it into the great interest to which all others must yield. How he was rewarded by the South--especially by the planters of Georgia--the reader may see by consulting Silliman's Journal for January, 1832, and the Encyclopedia Americana, article, WHITNEY.
APPENDIX E.
It is impossible, of course, to pronounce with precision, how great would have been the effect in favor of emancipation, if the effort to resist the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding state had been successful. We can only conjecture what it would have been, by the effect its admission has had in fostering slavery up to its present huge growth and pretensions. If the American people had shown, through their National legislature, a _sincere_ opposition to slavery by the rejection of Missouri, it is probable at least--late as it was--that the early expiration of the 'system' would, by this time, have been discerned by all men.
When the Constitution was formed, the state of public sentiment even in the South--with the exception of South Carolina and Georgia, was favorable to emancipation. Under the influence of this public sentiment was the Constitution formed. No person at all versed in constitutional or legal interpretation--with his judgment unaffected by interest or any of the prejudices to which the existing controversy has given birth--could, it is thought, construe the Constitution, _in its letter_, as intending to perpetuate slavery. To come to such a conclusion with a full knowledge of what was the mind of this nation in regard to slavery, when that instrument was made, demonstrates a moral or intellectual flaw that makes all reasoning useless.
Although it is a fact beyond controversy in our history, that the power conferred by the Constitution on Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations" was known to include the power of abolishing the African slave-trade--and that it was expected that Congress, at the end of the period for which the exercise of that power on this particular subject was restrained, would use it (as it did) _with a view to the influence that the cutting off of that traffic would have on the "system" in this country_--yet, such has been the influence of the action of Congress on all matters with which slavery has been mingled--more especially on the Missouri question, in which slavery was the sole interest--that an impression has been produced on the popular mind, that the Constitution of the United States _guaranties_, and consequently _perpetuates_, slavery to the South. Most artfully, incessantly, and powerfully, has this lamentable error been harped on by the slaveholders, and by their advocates in the free states. The impression of _constitutional favor_ to the slaveholders would, of itself, naturally create for them an undue and disproportionate influence in the control of the government; but when to this is added the arrogance that the possession of irresponsible power almost invariably engenders in its possessors--their overreaching assumptions--the contempt that the slaveholders entertain for the great body of the _people_ of the North, it has almost delivered over the government, bound neck and heels, into the hands of slaveholding politicians--to be bound still more rigorously, or unloosed, as may seem well in their discretion.
Who can doubt that, as a nation, we should have been more honorable and influential abroad--more prosperous and united at home--if Kentucky, at the very outset of this matter, had been refused admission to the Union until she had expunged from her Constitution the covenant with oppression? She would not have remained out of the Union a single year on that account. If the worship of Liberty had not been exchanged for that of Power--if her principles had been successfully maintained in this first assault, their triumph in every other would have been easy.
We should not have had a state less in the confederacy, and slavery would have been seen, at this time, shrunk up to the most contemptible dimensions, if it had not vanished entirely away. But we have furnished another instance to be added to the long and melancholy list already existing, to prove that,--
"facilis descensus Averni, Sed revocare gradum Hoc opus hic labor est,"
if _poetry_ is not _fiction_.
Success in the Missouri struggle--late as it was--would have placed the cause of freedom in our country out of the reach of danger from its inexorable foe. The principles of liberty would have struck deeper root in the free states, and have derived fresh vigor from such a triumph. If these principles had been honored by the government from that period to the present, (as they would have been, had the free states, even then, assumed their just preponderance in its administration,) we should now have, in Missouri herself, a healthful and vigorous ally in the cause of freedom; and, in Arkansas, a free people--_twice_ her present numbers--pressing on the confines of slavery, and summoning the keepers of the southern charnel-house to open its doors, that its inmates might walk forth, in a glorious resurrection to liberty and life. Although young, as a people, we should be, among the nations, venerable for our virtue; and we should exercise an influence on the civilized and commercial world that we most despair of possessing, as long as we remain vulnerable to every shaft that malice, or satire, or philanthropy may find it convenient to hurl against us.[A]
[Footnote A: A comic piece--the production of one of the most popular of the French writers in his way--had possession of the Paris stage last winter. When one of the personages SEPARATES HUSBAND AND WIFE, he cries out, "BRAVO! THIS IS THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES!" [Bravo! C'est la Declaration d'Independence des Etats Unis.]
One of our distinguished College-professors, lately on a tour in Europe, had his attention called, while passing along the street of a German city, to the pictorial representation of a WHITE MAN SCOURGING A SUPPLICATING COLORED FEMALE, with this allusion underwritten:--"A SPECIMEN OF EQUALITY--FROM REPUBLICAN AMERICA."
Truly might our countryman have exclaimed in the language, if not with the generous emotions of the Trojan hero, when he beheld the noble deeds of his countrymen pencilled in a strange land--
--"Quis jam locus-- Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?"
Instead of being thus seated on a "heaven-kissing hill," and seen of all in its pure radiance; instead of enjoying its delightful airs, and imparting to them the healthful savor of justice, truth, mercy, magnanimity, see what a picture we present;--our cannibal burnings of human beings--our Lynch courts--our lawless scourgings and capital executions, not only of slaves, but of freemen--our demoniac mobs raging through the streets of our cities and large towns at midday as well as at midnight, shedding innocent blood, devastating property, and applying the incendiaries' torch to edifices erected and dedicated to FREE DISCUSSION--the known friends of order, of law, of liberty, of the Constitution--citizens, distinguished for their worth at home, and reflecting honor on their country abroad, shut out from more than half our territory, or visiting it at the hazard of their lives, or of the most degrading and painful personal inflictions--freedom of speech and of the press overthrown and hooted at--the right of petition struck down in Congress, where, above all places, it ought to have been maintained to the last--the people mocked at, and attempted to be gagged by their own servants--the time the office-honored veteran, who fearlessly contended for the _right_, publicly menaced for words spoken in his place as a representative of the people, with an indictment by a slaveholding grand jury--in fine, the great principles of government asserted by our fathers in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in our Constitution, with which they won for us the sympathy, the admiration of the world--all forgotten, dishonoured, despised, trodden under foot! And this for slavery!!
Horrible catalogue!--yet by no means a complete one--for so young a nation, boasting itself, too, to be the freest on earth! It is the ripe fruit of that _chef d'oeuvre_ of political skill and patriotic achievement--the MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
Another such compromise--or any compromise now with slavery--and the nation is undone.
APPENDIX F.
The following is believed to be a correct exhibit of the legislative resolutions against the annexation of Texas--of the times at which they were passed, and of the _votes_ by which they were passed:--
1. VERMONT.
"1. _Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives_, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to use their influence in that body to prevent the annexation of Texas to the Union.
2. _Resolved_, That representing, as we do, the people of Vermont, we do hereby, in their name, SOLEMNLY PROTEST against such annexation in any form."
[Passed unanimously, Nov. 1, 1837.]
2. RHODE ISLAND.
(_In General Assembly, October Session, A. D. 1837_.)
"Whereas the compact of the Union between these states was entered into by the people thereof in their respective states, 'in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity;' and, therefore, a Representative Government was instituted by them, with certain limited powers, clearly specified and defined in the Constitution--all other powers, not therein expressly relinquished, being 'reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.'
And whereas this limited government possesses no power to extend its jurisdiction over any foreign nation, and no foreign nation, country, or people, can be admitted into this Union but by the sovereign will and act of the free people of all and each of these United States, nor without the formation of a new compact of Union--and another frame of government radically different, in objects, principles, and powers, from that which was framed for our own self-government, and deemed to be adequate to all the exigencies of our own free republic:--
Therefore, Resolved, That we have witnessed, with deep concern, the indications of a disposition to bring into this Union, as a constituent member thereof, the foreign province or territory of Texas.