The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862Various
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
'But the Senator from Kentucky asks us of the North by irrepealable
constitutional amendments to recognize and protect slavery in the
Territories now existing, or hereafter acquired south of thirty-six
degrees, thirty minutes; to deny power to the Federal Government to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, in the forts,
arsenals, navy-yards, and places under the exclusive jurisdiction
of Congress; to deny the National Government all power to hinder
the transit of slaves through one State to another; to take from
persons of the African race the elective franchise, and to purchase
territory in South-America, or Africa, and send there, at the
expense of the Treasury of the United States, such free negroes as
the States may desire removed from their limits. And what does the
Senator propose to concede to us of the North? The prohibition of
slavery in Territories north of thirty-six degrees and thirty
minutes, where no one asks for its inhibition, where it has been
made impossible by the victory of Freedom in Kansas, and the
equalization of the fees of the slave Commissioners.'
Here we have the true position in which the free States are placed
toward the slaveholding States. Seven States openly throw off all
allegiance to the Federal Union, do not even profess to be willing to
come back upon any terms, and then such conditions are proposed by the
other slaveholding States as leads to the repudiation of the
Constitution in its whole spirit and import upon the subject of slavery.
The alternative, in reality, is either civil war or the surrender of the
Constitution into the hands of pro-slavery men to be molded just as it
may suit their convenience. The price they ask for peace is simply the
liberty to have their own way, and that the majority should be willing
to submit to the minority. They aim for a reconstruction of the Union
that shall incorporate the Dred Scott decision into the whole policy of
the Government and make slavery the supreme power of the country, and
all other interests subservient to it. The North has its choice of two
evils--unconditional and unqualified submission to the demands of
slavery, or civil war. It is expected, since the country has yielded
step by step to the exactions of slavery ever since the Government was
instituted, that the free States will keep on yielding until the South
has nothing more to ask for, and the North has nothing more to give.
With such a servile compliance, the free States are assured that they
will have no difficulty in keeping the peace. But the question to be
decided is: Is such a kind of peace worth the price demanded for it? May
it not be true that great as is the evil of civil war, it is less an
evil than an unresisting acquiescence to the exactions of slavery, and
the admission that any State that pleases can leave the Union? The
theory of secession involves, if admitted, a greater disaster to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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