Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1853
race, makes it impossible to commit any new crime against them,--unless
it be to enlarge the area of their bondage, and to multiply the number
of their victims.
If we are abolitionists, then, we are abolitionists of human bondage;
while those who oppose us are abolitionists of human liberty. We
would prevent the extension of one of the greatest wrongs that man
ever suffered upon earth; they would carry bodily chains and mental
chains,--chains in a literal and chains in a figurative sense,--into
realms where even the half-civilized descendants of the Spaniard and
the Indian have silenced their clanking. We would avert the impending
night of ignorance and superstition; they would abolish the glorious
liberty wherewith God maketh his children free. In using this word,
therefore, to calumniate us, they put darkness for light, and light for
darkness; good for evil, and evil for good.
The constitutional right of Congress to legislate for the territories
is still debated. Having presented my views on this subject before,
I shall now treat it with brevity. In a speech, by General Cass,
which has lately been published, that distinguished senator, in order
to prove that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject of
slavery in the territories, has attempted to prove that it has no
right to legislate for the territories at all. I refer to the senator
from Michigan, because he now stands before the country in the twofold
character of being the head of the Democratic party, which goes for
the “_largest liberty_,” and also of the extreme pro-slavery party,
which goes for the _largest bondage_. He would sever all diplomatic
relations between this country and Austria, because she has robbed the
Hungarians of _a part_ of their liberties, while he is drawing closer
the political ties which bind him to the south, which has despoiled
three millions of the African race of _all_ their liberties, and is now
intent on propagating other millions for new despoliations. He claims,
as the great bequest of the barons of Runnymede, that the inhabitants
of the territories, under all circumstances of infancy, or poverty,
or weakness, shall have the sole and exclusive right of governing
themselves, when the practical result of this doctrine, so nicely
timed, would be, that one part of those inhabitants would be crowned
with power like so many King Johns, to lord it over their vassals.
Under the name of liberty, he enters a path that terminates in bondage.
Southern gentlemen had all admitted the power of Congress to legislate
for the territories, though they denied the special inference,
deducible from the general power, that they could legislate to prohibit
slavery in them. But, seeing that the right to legislate on the subject
of slavery flows irresistibly from the right to legislate on all other
subjects, because no rule of interpretation, which concedes the power
to make laws respecting political franchises, courts, crimes, officers,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account