S P E E C H
OF
HIORACE MANN,
OF MASSACHUSETTS,
ON THE SUBJECT OF
SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES,
AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF A
DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION.
Delivered in the United States House of Representatives, February 16, 1850.
BOSTON:
RPEDDING AND COMPANY,
1850. 
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SPEECH.
MR. CHAIRMAN:
Ever since the organization of this House,-before its organization,
and even in a preliminary cause that preceded the commencement of the
session, southern gentlemen have pressed the cause, not only of human
slavery, but of slavery-extension, upon us. From motives of forbearance,
and not from any question as to our rights, we of the North have maintained an unbroken silence. The time has surely come when the voice
of freedom should find an utterance. Would to God that on the present
occasion it might find an abler defender than myself, although if my
ability to defend it were equal to the love I bear it, it could ask no abler
champion.
I wish to premise a few words respecting the propriety and true significance of some of the epithets by which the parties to this discussion
are characterized. The term "Free-Soiler" is perpetually used upon
this floor as a term of ignominy and reproach; yet, I maintain that in its
original and legitimate sense, as denoting an advocate of the doctrine that
all our territorial possessions should be consecrated to freedom, there is
no language that can supply a more honorable appellation. It expresses
a determination on the part of its disciples to keep free the territory
that is now free; to stand upon its frontiers as the cherubim stood at
the gates of Paradise, with a flaming sword to turn every way, to keep
the sin of slavery from crossing its borders. If, in any instance, the
original advocates of Free-Soil have abandoned their integrity, and have
courted allies who had no sympathy with their principles, but were only
eager to join them in a struggle for political ascendancy, then, in my
judgment, they have lost infinitely more in moral power than they have
gained in numbers.  They  have  ceased to be genuine and singlehearted Free-Soilers, whom I love, and have become partisans, whom
I condemn. For myself, I will engage in any honorable measure most
likely to secure freedom to the new Territories. I will resist any and
every measure that proposes to abandon them to slavery. The epithet
Free-Soiler,"  therefore,  when  rightly  understood  and  correctly
applied, implies both political and moral worth; and I covet the honor
of its application to myself.   But  what does its opposite mean? 
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What does the term "Slave-Soiler" signify? It signifies one who desires
and designs thatall soil should be made to bear slaves Its dreadful signif icancy is, that, after Magna Charta, and the Petition of Right, in Great
Britain, and after the Declaration of Independence, in this country, we
should cast aside with scorn, not only the teachings of Christianity, but
the clearest principles of natural religion and of natural law, and should
retrograde firom our boasted civilization, into the Dark Ages ay, into
periods that the dark ages might have called dark. It means that this
Republic, as we call it, formed to establish freedom, should enlist in a
crusade against freedom.
And again; those of us at the North who resist slavery extension,
who mean to withstand its spread beyond the limits where it now exists,
are denounced as Abolitionists.  This epithet is applied to us as a term
of reproach and obloquy; as a brand and stigma upon our characters
and principles.  No distinction is made between those few individuals
among us who desire to abolish the Constitution of the United States,
and that great body of the people, who, while their allegiance to this
Constitution is unshaken, mean also to maintain their allegiance to truth
and to duty, in withstanding the hitherto onward march of slavery.
Among the latter class, Mr. Collamer, the Postmaster General, is called
an Abolitionist. Mr. John Quincy Adams was denounced as an archabolitionist. Every man who advocates the Jefferson proviso, against
the spread of slavery, is so called; and if an unspeakable abhorrence of
this institution, and the belief that it is the second greatest enormity
which the oppressor, in his p6wer, ever committed against the oppressed,
in his weakness,  being inferior only to that ecclesiastical domination
which has trampled upon the religious freedom of man,- I say, if this
abhorrence of slavery, and this belief in its criminality, entitle a man to
be denominated an Abolitionist, then I rejoice in my unquestionable
right to the name.
In my apprehension, sir, before we can decide upon the honor or the
infamy of the term "Abolitionist," we must know what things they are
which he proposes to abolish. We of the North, you say, are Abolitionists; but abolitionists of what? Are we abolitionists of the inalienable, indefeasible, indestructible rights of man?  Are we abolitionists of
knowledge, abolitionists of virtue, of education, and of human culture?
Do we seek to abolish the glorious moral and intellectual attributes
which God has given to his children, and thus, as far as it lies in our
power, make the facts of slavery conform to the law of slavery, by
obliterating the distinction between a man and a beast?
Do  our laws and our institutions seek to blot out and abolish the
image of God in the human soul? Do we abolish the marriage cove 
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nant; and instead of saying, with the Apostle, that wives shall submit
themselves to their husbands, command them to submit themselves to
any body, and to their master as husband over all? Do we ruthlessly
tear asunder the sacred ties of affection by which God has bound the
parent to the child and the child to the parent? Do we seek to abolish
all those noble instincts of the human soul, by which it yearns for
improvement and progress; and do we quench its sublime aspirations
after knowledge and virtue? A stranger would suppose, from hearing
the epithets of contumely that are heaped upon us, that we were abolitionists of all truth, purity, knowledge, improvement, civilization, happiness, and holiness. On this subject, perversion of language and of idea
has been reduced to a system, and the falsehoods of our calumniators
exclude truth with the exactness of a science.
But if the word "Abolitionist" is to be used in a reproachful and
contumelious sense, does it not more properly belong to those who would
extend a sydtein which in its very nature abolishes freedom, justice,
equity, and a sense of human brotherhood? Does it not belong to those
who would abolish not only all social and political, but all natural rights;
who would abolish "liberty and the pursuit of happiness; " who would
close up all the avenues to knowledge; who would render freedom of
thought and liberty of conscience impossible, by crushing out the faculties by which alone we can think and decide; who would rob a fellow
man' of his parental rights, and innocent children of the tenderness and
joys of a filial love; who would introduce a foul concubinage in place
of the institution of marriage, and who would remorselessly trample
upon all the tenderest and holiest affections which the human soul is
capable of feeling? After IMr. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, had enumerated a few oppressive deeds of the British king
towards his American colonists, he denominated him "a prince whose
character was marked by every act that could define a tyrant." There
are now as many slaves in this country as there were colonists in 1776.
Compare the condition of these three million slaves with the condition
of the three million colonists.. The conduct of that sovereign who was
denounced before earth and heaven as having committed all the atrocities that could define a tyrant, was mercy and loving-kindness compared
with the wrongs and privations of three millions of our fellow-beings,
now existing among us.  If the word " Abolitionist," then, is to be used
in a reproachful sense, let it be applied to those who, in the midst of the
nineteenth century, and in defiance of all the lights of the age, would
extend the horrors of an institution which, by one all-comprehending
crime towards a helpless race, makes it impossible to commit any new 
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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 two-fold 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 Africans 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 interference, 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, 
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officers, and the militia, can stop short at the subject of slavery: seeing
all this, General Cass denies both inference and premises,anid places
the General Government in the relation of a foreign power to the territories which it owns, and of which it possesses the acknowledged
sovereignty. HIe reminds one of the man who denied the existence of
fuiture punishment, and, when pressed with arguments drawn from the
deserts of men, and from the justice of God, he suddenly arrested his
antagonist by denying the existence of a God!
When some immensely long speech, made in the British House of
Commons, was spoken of before Sheridan as being luminous, he
expressed both a negative and an affirmative opinion respecting it, in a
single word, by replying that it was vo-luminous. General Cass, in
a speech that fills more than nineteen columns in the Washington
Union, has reviewed the decisions of all the judges of the Supreme
Court who have ever expressed any opinion on the subject of Congressional power over territorial legislation; he has commented upon
the views of all the jurists who have written upon it, and of most of the
speakers in both Houses of Congress who have discussed it; he has
surveyed the course of administration of all the Presidents we have
ever had; and has come to the clear conclusion that all of them,judges, jurists, legislators, and Presidents, -have systematically violated
the Constitution of the United States, or commended its violation, on
every practicable occasion for the last sixty years.
Omitting the hundred ways in'which the absurdity of this conclusion
can be exposed, let me subject it to one practical test. We have acquired territory from Mexico. General Cass voted to ratify the treaty
of cession. Measures have been instituted for the formation of three
separate governments in this Territory-those of California, Deseret,
and New Mexico. The boundaries marked out by California and Deseret overlay each other to the amount of thousands of square miles. If
they have the exclusive right of self-government, as General Cass declares, and Congress none, then they must settle this question of boundary themselves. They may declare war against each other, make
alliances with foreign powers, equip armies, build fleets; while Congress can do nothing within their limits but -sell land.
But what renders the argument of General Cass still more extraordinary is the fact, that, according to his own doctrine, he has spent the
greater part of his political life in violating the Constitution, while constantly repeating his oaths to support it. As marshal of Ohio, as governor of Michigan, as Indian agent, he has appointed officers and magistrates, and executed laws, when, according to his own showing, he was
k mere interloper and usurper; he has met territorial legislatures which 
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had no more right to assemble than a mob; he has doubtless imprisoned,
if not executed many alleged offenders, who had as good a legal right
to execute or to imprison him; and he has received salaries for more
than twenty years, to which the Khan of Tartary was as much entitled
as he. Now, if he will refund the salaries he has unconstitutionally re ceived; make reparation for the penalties or forfeitures he has wrong fully extorted; show some signs of contrition for the men whom he has
unlawfully imprisoned or hung, it will remove the suspicions of many
minds, in regard to the sincerity, if not the soundness, of his argument
I mention these facts from no personal feelings in regard to the Sen ator from Michigan; but only to show to what desperate extremities
men are driven in order to defend the right of spreading slavery from
the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean; and because this is the last reading
of the Constitution which has been invented for the purpose.
Since the last session of Congress, the condition of a part of this territory has greatly changed. The unexampled velocity with which a living
stream of men has poured into it within the last twelve months has reversed its condition and decided its destiny. In other countries, in(liviluals seek their fortunes by changing their residence.  Under the vehement action of our enterprise, cities migrate. The new residents of California have framed a constitution, have applied for admission into this
Union, and their application is now pending before us.  Of their own accord, they have excluded slavery from their borders by their fundamental
law. Until the discovery of gold in that country, and until all incredulity in regard to that remarkable fact had been overcome, it was confidently anticipated at the South, and intensely feared at the North, that
the whole region would be overrun with slaveholders and with. slaves.
As far back as 1842, Mr. Wise, of Virginia; the administration leader
in the House of Representatives boldly declared that "slavery should
pour itself abroad wit/out restraint, and find no limit but the Southern
Ocean."  The war with Mexico was waged for the two-fold purpose of
robbing that republic of its territory, and then of robbing that territory
of its freedom.  Congressional orators and the Southern press avowed
that the object of acquiring territory was to extend the "divine institution."
I could quote pages in proof of this assertion.  The North had no hope,
the South had no fear, if the territories were left without control, that
they would first be filled with slaveholders, and would then incorporate
slavery into their organic law.  While these hopes and apprehensions
existed, the South insisted that the Territories should be left untrammelled.  Distinguished men in this IHouse, Mr.: Calhoun and other Senators, the Government organ, which was supposed to express the viewsof
the President and his Cabinet, all proclaimed that the Territories should 
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be left free to institute such government as they might choose.* But since
California has formed a free constitution, what a sudden change has taken
place in the convictions of men!  Within the present week we have had
three most elaborate speeches in this House, in which the admission of
California, with her free constitution, is vehemently opposed on constitutional grounds. Yes, sir, did you know it? the Constitution of the Ulnited
States has just been altered; or, what is intended to produce the same
effect, without' the trouble of an alteration in the manner prescribed by
itself, its interpretation has been altered.  While California promised to
be a slave State, all interference was unconstitutional. Now, as she desires to be a free State, it has become constitutional to interfere and
repel her.  Not only so, but, according to the gentleman from Alabama,
(Mr. Inge,) in swearing to support the Constitution we have sworn to
perpetuate, and not only to perpetuate, but to extend slavery. - "To those"
he says, "who are disposed to resist my views I commend a more attentive reading-of that instrument.  They will find that it not only guaran
tees slavery, but provides for its extension." Or, as he says in another
place, it makes provision "to extend the institution indefinitely.  And,
therefore, when a territory asks to be admitted as a free State, it is to be
repulsed, and virtually told, "If you will incorporate slavery into your
constitution, you shall be admitted; if not, not.   Had the man who first
uttered the adagethat'"circumstances alter cases," foreseen our times,
he would have said, "circumstances alter principles."
* In February, 1847, Mr Calhoun offered a series of resolutions in the Senate of the
United States, among which was the following:
Resolved, That it is a fundamental principle in our political creed, that a people, in
forming a constitution, have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government
which they nray think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity and happiness;
and, in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the Federal Constitution on
a State, in order to be admitted into this Union, except  that its constitution shall be
s republican; " and that the imposition of any other by Congress would not only be in
violation of the Constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which our political system rests."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In sustaining these resolutions. he said:
Sir, I hold it to be a fundamental principle of our political system that the people have
a right to establish what government they may think proper for themselves; that every
State ABOUT to become a member of this Union has a right to FORM ITS OWNi GovERNMENT AS IT PLEASES; and that, in order to be admitted, there is but one qualification, and that is, that the government shall be republican.  There is no express provision to that effect, but it results from that important section which guarantees to every
State in this Union a republican form of government.". 
Mr  Senator Downs, of Louisiana, offered the following resolution:
"Resolved, That it is competent and expedient, and not inconsistent with the practice
of the Government in some cases, to admit California, or such portion of it as Congress
may deem proper, immediately into the Union, on an equal footing'with the other States
Ik       *          "        v 
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The same gentleman defends slavery by an appeal to the Bible. But
if the Bible be authority for the principal, is it not authority for the incidents also? If an authority for the cruelties of bondage, is it not an
equal authority for its mitigations?  Is not the command to " hallow the
fiftieth year," as a year of Jubilee, and to "proclaim liberty throughout
all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," contained in the same code,
and in the same chapter of the same code, with that oft-cited authority
to buy bondmen and bondmaids of the heathen?  If the Bible is your
commission, why do you not follow the terms of the commission, obey
its limitations as well as its powers? This is the fiftieth year of the
century,-  the very year of jubilee itself; and yet, instead of "returning every man unto his possession, and every man unto his family," this
is the chosen year for subjugating new realms to bondage. It is not to
be "hallowed," as a year of jubilee, but to be profaned as a year of captivity and mourning.
- Sir, I must express the most energetic dissent from those who would
justify modern slavery from the Levitical law. My reason and conscience revolt from those interpretations which
Torture the hallowed pages of the Bible,
To sanction crime and robbery, and blood,
And, in oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God."
Priests appealed to the Bible in Galileo's time, to refute the truths
of astronomy. For more- than two hundred years, the same class of
men has appealed to the same authority to disprove the science of geology. And now, this authority is cited, not to disprove a law of physical
nature merely, but to deny a great law of the human soul, -a law of
human consciousness, -  a law of God, written upon the tablet of every
and that the Committee on --          be  instructed to report a bill for that purpose, for
that portion of California which lies west of the summit of the Sierra Nevada mountains."
The doctrine of these resolutions was fully endorsed by the Washington Union;
speaking, doubtless, (for it never spoke any thing else), the sentiments of the then
administration:
"The  South denies that Congress has any jurisdiction over the subject of slavery,
and contends that the people of the Territories alone, when they frame a constitution, preparatory to admission into the Union, have a right to speak and be heard on that matter.
This fact being settled, it really seems to us that this excitiny question might be speedily
adjsted, if calmn counsels prevail.  The South contends for her honor, and for the great
principles of non-intervention and State equality.  Why, then, cannot all unzite, and per1rdt California to come into the Unionz as soonz as she can frame a conzstitution?  Then,
according to the doctrines which prevail on both sides of Mason's and Dixon's line, she
may constitutionally establish her domestic institutions on any basis consistent with
republican principles.  The South could lose nothizg by adopting this course.  On ths
contrary, she would save allfor whic& she contends."
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man's heart, authenticating and attesting his title to freedom. Sir, let
those who reverence the Bible beware how they suborn it, to commit
this treason and perjury against the sacred rights of man and the holy
law of God. Whatever they gain for the support of their doctrine, will
be so much subtracted from the authority of the Scriptures. If the
Bible has crossed the Atlantic to spread slavery over a continent where
it was unknown before, then the Bible is a book of death, and not a
book of life.
It is further objected to the admission of California, that its dimensions are too large for a single State.  The force of this objection is
somewhat abated when we reflect that it comes from men who were
most strenuous for the admission of Texas. However, I shall not object very earnestly to the reduction of its limits. I will say, in frankness, that the southern portion of California is understood to be even
more attached to freedom than the northern. The result may, therefore, be, if this objection is persisted in and a division made, that we
shall soon have two free States instead of one. It was said by the last
administration, that Mexico was to be dismembered, in order "to extend
the area of freedom." The most just retribution for that diabolical
irony is, to carry out the declaration literally.
But I now come to a more substantial part of this great question.
The South rests its claims to the new territory upon the great doctrine
of equality.  There are fifteen slave States; there are only fifteen free
States. The South contributed men and money for the conquest, not
less than the North; hence, equal ownership and equal rights of enjoyments. This is the argument. In a long and most elaborate speech,
delivered in the Senate this week by one of the most eminent jurists in
the Southern States (Judge Berrien), he founds the whole claim of the
South on this doctrine of equality.
Now, I admit this principle in its fullest extent, and without hesitation. That country is equally free to all the people of the United States.
The government can sell the lands not already covered by valid titles;
and any citizen who will comply with its terms can buy them.  The
people of each of the United States can go there and establish their
domicil. The laws of Congress make no discrimination between them.
The Constitution makes no such discrimination. The law of nature and
of nations makes none. The North has no privilege over the South,
and the South has none over the North. If the North has any greater
right there than the South, the equality is destroyed. If the South has
any greater right there than the North, the equality is equally destroyed.
And now, practically, what right has the North, or what right is
claimed by the North, which the South has not to an equal extent? 
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What article of property can a citizen of Massachusetts carry there
which a citizen of Georgia can not carry there?  Can we carry any of
our local laws  there; even though all the inhabitants of the State should
remove thither in a body? Certainly not. When we leave our State,
we leave our local laws behind us. A citizen of Boston has a right to
educate his children at school, at the public expense. In the Boston
public schools, he can prepare his son to enter any college in this country, even though he is too poor to pay a cent of tax, and never has paid
a cent of tax. Has he any such right on arriving at San Francisco?
If the city of Boston debars him of this right of educating his son at the
public, charge, he can institute a suit against it and recover full damages.
Can he do the same thing at San Francisco or San Jose?  Certainly
not.  He has left the laws andinstitutions of Massachusetts behind him.
But, it is said, we can carry our property there, and you cannot carry
your property there. I think those who use this argument, like the old
Roman augurs, must smile at each other askance, for the credulity or
simplicity of those they beguile by it.  Will not every man, even of the
feeblest discernment, see the fallacy which is here covered up under the
word "property?"  What is meant by this deceptive term "property?"
If you mean silver, or gold, or grass, or grain, or sheep, or horses, cannot you carry these there as freely as we can?  But you have special
laws; local and peculiar laws,-laws contrary to the great principles of
the common law, by which you call  zen and women property.   And
then, forsooth, because we can carry property there, when property
means grain and cattle, you can carry property there when it means human beings,-perhaps your own brothers, or sisters, or children.   Because we can carry our property there, when property means inanimate
substances, you have only to call a human being property-you have
only to call a creature, formed in the image of God, p?roperty, and then
he can be smuggled in under the new name.   Why, sir, there is not a
respectable village in the country, where, if a juggler or mountebank
were to attempt to palm off upon his audience so flimsy a trick as this,
he would not be hissed off the stage.  There are certain kinds of property and rights which we can carry with us to the Territories, and other
kinds which we cannot.  We  can carry movable property, but not immovable, a diamond or a library, but not a cotton factory nor a cotton
field. 
By the papers of this city, as I open them every morning, I see that
lotteries are authorzied by more or less of the Southern States.  Their
"schemes" are regularly advertised.  I remember, when stopping for
a day in one of the Southern cities, that some half-official looking personages came into the hotel, cleared a large space in the public hall, set 
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down a rotary machine, and proceeded to draw a lottery.  Now, in'
Massachusetts, and in many'of the Northern Statesi lotteries are pro hibited, under severe penalties.  With' us, it is highly penal to adver tise a lottery in any form, to placard one at the corners of the streets,
or to exhibit any plan or emblem of one at a shop window.'',We act
upon the well-known truth, that there is a much less number of persons
who draw any considerable prize in a lottery, than' there are who are killed by lightning; and therefore, whatever chance a ticket-holder has of
drawing any considerable prize, we know that he has a much  greater
chance of being killed by lightning. Now, when a citizen of Virginia and
a citizen of Massachusetts go to the new Territories, does the former carry
his right to establish and draw a lottery, or the latter carry his right to
prosecute the' other for doing so? Neither;' certainly neither. Both have
left the local law behind them.  If any State in this Union had adopted
polygamy as its peculiar institution, could an inhabitant of that State
take a dozen wives with him into the new territories, and defend his
claim to life with them there, because he could do so at home?
Suppose, in pursuance of the "manifest destiny" principle, we should
re-annex a part of China to this Union, would the Chinese, on removing
to California, carry the practice of infanticide with- them?  There are
cannibal islands in the South Seas, where, as voyagers  tell us, it is the
practice of the chiefs, after having condemned and executed a criminal,
to dine on him.  If "manifest destiny" should unite them to this country, could they bring their peculiar institution of cannibalism into New
Mexico?  Just as well, I answer, and on'precisely the same legal ground
that the South can carry slavery into New Mexico.  The reason is
that the law of slavery is a local law.' Like lotteries, or polygamy; or
infanticide, or cannibalism, it can legally exist in no' land where the principles of the common law prevail, until it is legalized and sanctioned by a
special law. It is then permitted on the simple'ground that so much of
the common  law as secures'liberty and property, the'right of habeas
corpus and-freedom of speech to each' individual, has been cut out and
cast away.  The Constitution proceeds upon this doctrine when it provides for the recapture of fugitive slaves.  Why did it not provide for
the capture of a fugitive horse or ox? Why did it not provide that, if
a horse or an ox should escape from a slave State into a free State, it
should be delivered up, or be recoverable by legal process?  Because
horses and oxen are property, by the common consent of mankind.' It
needed no law to make them property.  They are property by the law
of nations, by the English common law, by the law of every State in
this Union,-  while men and womnen are not.  All escaped slave could
not be recovered before the adoption of the Constitution.  The power 
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to seize upon escaping slaves was one of the motives for adopting it.These considerations demonstrate that slaves are not property, within
the meaning of this word, when it is affirmed that if the North can carry
its property into the Territories, so can the South. As the Constitution,
in terms, adopts the common law, it leaves slavery nothing to stand upon
but the local laws of the States where it is established. Freedom is the
rule, slavery is the exception. Judge Berrien's favorite doctrine of
equality would, therefore, be destroyed, if the exception should prevail
over the rule. For, if slavery can be carried into any of our Territories by force of the Constitution, it can into all of them; and if carried
into all of them, the exception becomes the rule, and the rule perishes.
Ay, the rule ceases to be even so much as an exception to that which
was its own exception. It is wholly swallowed up and lost.
I know it is said that the-fact of slavery always precedes thie law of
slavery; that law does not go before the institution and create it, but
comes afterwards to sanction and regulate it. But this is no more true
of slavery than of every other institution or practice among mankind,
whether right or wrong.  Homicide existed before law; the law came
in subsequently, and declared that he who took an innocent man's life
without law, should lose his own by law.  The law came in to regulate
homicide; to authorize the taking of human life for crime, just as we
authorize involuntary servitude for crime; and it may just as well be
argued that murder is a natural right because it existed before law, as
that slavery is a natural right because it existed before law. This argument appeals to the crime which the law was enacted to prevent, in order
to establish the supremacy of the crime over the law that forbids it.
There is another fallacy in the arguments which southern gentlemen
use on this subject, which, though not as transparent as the preceding,
is quite as unsound. They speak of the rights of the slaveholder in
the new Territories. They speak as though the collective ownership of
the Territories by the Government, were the ownership of the people
in severalty; as though each citizen could go there and draw a line
round a "placer" and say this is mine; and then, because it is his, introduce his slaves upon it.  But nothing is more clear than that there
is no such individual right. The right of the Government is, first, a
right of sovereignty and jurisdiction; and second, the right of ownership of all lands, navigable waters, &c., which have not been conveyed
away by the preexisting government. Individuals retain their citizenship on going there, as they do on going to Great Britain or France;
but a slave has just as much right to a portion of the public lands in
California, when he gets there, as his master.
Again; If the master carries into California the legal right to hold 
15
slaves, which he possessed at home, does not the slave also retain his
legal rights when he is transferred there? The laws which govern
slaves are as various as the States where they exist. In some States
manumission is comparatively unobstructed. In Delaware, it is a penal
offence even to sell a slave to a notorious slavedealer. In Georgia, the
law forbids, or lately forbade, the importation of slaves for sale. Now,
how can a Georgian import slaves into California from Georgia, when
the very laws of his own State, under which he claims to hold slaves,
and under which laws he claims to carry slaves with him, forbid their
importation?
And further, political franchises or privileges are just as much a part
of a man's rights as any tangible commodity.   In South Carolina, the
owner ship of ten slaves constitutes a property qualification for being a
member of the Legislature. On removing to California, will the citizen
of South Carolina, who owns ten slaves, carry an eligibility to the Legislature of California with him? Nay, this political privilege in South
Carolina goes further. It is a right in every owner of ten slaves that
no man who does not own ten slaves, (or some legal equivalent,) shall
be a member of the Legislature. The aspirant for office has a legal
right in the limitation of the number of his competitors as much as in
any thing else. Can he carry th,is to California with him? The inference is inevitable, that if the inhabitants of the fifteen slave States can
carry slaves into California by virtue of the laws of their respective
States, then they must also carry all the incidents of slavery known to
their respective codes.  For, how  can the incident be separated from
the principle? You might, therefore, have, in a neighborhood of fifteen
families, fifteen slave codes in operation at the same time, - a manifest
absurdity.
The conclusion, then, is irresistible, that when you come to the
boundary line between a slave State and a free State, you come to the
boundary line of slavery itself. On one side of the line, down to the
nadir and up to the zenith, the blackness of the slave code pervades all
things; but, on the other side, as high above and as deep below, is the
purity of freedom. Virginia cannot extend her laws one hair's breadth
over the line into Pennsylvania or into Ohio, because her soil is beyond
her jurisdiction. So neither Virginia, nor all the fifteen slave States
combined, can extend their slave laws one hair's breadth into the new
Territories; and for the same reason,- the Territories are beyond their
jurisdiction.
As to the argument that the Constitution of the United States recognizes slavery, and that, upon the cession of new Territories, the Constitution, by some magical and incomprehensible elasticity, extends itself 
16
over them, and carries slavery into them, I think I speak with all due
respect when I say it does not come up to the dignity of a sophism.
Where do strict constructionists, or even latitudinarian constructionists,
find any Clause, or phrase, or word, which shows that the Constitution is
any thing but a compact between States?  Where do they find any
thing that shows it to be a compact between territories, or between territories and States conjoined?  On its very face, the Constitution meets
this pretension with a denial.  The preamble declares, "We the people
of the United  States "-not the people of the territories,  nor' the
people of the States and territories-  "in order to form a more perfect
Union "- "do'ordain and  establish this Constitution for the United
States'of-America."' If the  Constitution is a compact between  the
United  States and the territories; then the'people of the Territories
have all'the rights under it which the people- of the States have,- the
right. to choose electors for President and Vice President, &c., to be
represented in  Congress by a member who can vote as well as speak.
The only way in which the Constitution ever was extended, or ever can
be extended over any part of the earth's surface outside of the "original thirteen" is this:  The Constitution in express terms authorizes the
admission of new States, and therefore,'when a new State is admitted,
it becomes one of these "United States of America." - The Constitution
does not extend over the Territories, but Congress, being the'creature of
the Constitution, is, when  legislating  for'the  Territories, not only
invested with constitutional powers, but is limited by constitutional
restrictions.
It would have been a much more plausible pretension, when the purchase of Louisiana and Florida was made, that the Constitution carried
freedom into those territories; because the Constitution was built upon
the basis of the common law, and, in terms, adopts the common law for
its legal processes and its rules of judicial interpretation; and every body
knows that there is no principle more dear to the' common'law than that
all treaties, statutes and customs shall be construed in favor of life and
in favor of liberty.
Having, as I trust, refuted the argument of the slaveholder, that the
prohibition of slayvery in the territories is an act of injustice to his rights,
I will'consider his next assertion, that it is an insult to his feelings. We
are'told' that the exclusion'of slavery from the Territories is'an affront
to the honorable sensibilities' of the South; and that acquiescence in
this exclusion would involve their dishonor and degradation.
There are two answers to this'com plaint.  The  first'is, that among
gentlemen, no insult is ever offered where none is intended.  There
may be heedlessness of conduct, there may be an unintentional wound
t 
17
ing of sensibilities; but there can be no affront where the design to af front is wanting. He is not a gentleman, but a poltroon and a braggart,
who pretends he is insulted and proceeds to retaliate for the affront,
when all insult and all affront are sincerely disclaimed. Now, it is in finitely far from the purpose of the North to offer any indignity to the
South by excluding slavery from the Territories. Their hostility to
slavery grows out of an honest allegiance to what they believe to be the
highest moral and religious duty; it is fortified by the opinions of man kind; and is perfectly compatible with the most fraternal feelings to wards the South. They wish to expostulate, in regard to the wrong, in
such a way as to arrest the wrong, and not, by inflaming the wrong doer, to increase the evil. However erroneous, then, their language or
their sentiments may be, they are not affrontive nor contumelious; and,
when all such purpose is disavowed, those who aspire to stand on the
footing of gentlemen cannot reiterate the charge.
But there is another consideration, - one which appertains to the
party supposed to be insulted, rather than the party charged with the
insult. In his " Theory of Moral Sentiments," Adam Smith maintains
that it is the judgment of men,- the opinion of the bystanders, - that
gives us the pleasure of being approved, or the pain of being disap proved, on account of our conduct. Now, in this contest between the
North and the South, on the subject of extending slavery, who are the
bystanders?  They are the civilized nations of the earth.  We, the
North and the South, are contending in the arena. All civilized men
stand around us. They are a ring of lookers-on. It is an august spectacle. It is a larger assemblage than ever witnessed any other struggle
in the history of mankind; and their shouts of approbation or hisses of
scorn are worthy of our heed. And what do these spectators say, in
the alternations of the combat?  Do they urge on the South to mightier
efforts, to the wider spread of slavery, and the multiplication of its victims?  Do they shout when she triumphs?  WVhen new chains are
forged and riveted, when new realms are subdued by haughty taskmasters, and overrun by imbruted slaves, do their plaudits greet your
ears and rouse you to more vehement efforts? All the reverse; totally the reverse. They are now looking on with disgust and abhorrence.
They groan, they mock, they hiss. The brightest pages of their literature portray you, as covered with badges of dishonor; their orators
hold up your purposes as objects for the execration of mankind; their
wits hurl the lightnings of satire at your leaders; their statute-books
abound in laws in which institutions like yours are branded as crimes;
their moralists, from their high and serene seats of justice, arraign and
condemn you; their theologians find your doom of retribution in the 
18
oracles of God. England has abolished slavery. France, in one fervid moment of liberty, struck the chains from off all her slaves, as the
bonds of Paul and Silas were loosed in the inner prison by the mighty
power of God.  Sweden has abolished it.  More than twenty years
ago, impotent, half-civilized Mexico did the same.  Tunis, a Barbary
state, and, I might add, a barbarous state, has abolished slavery.
Mohammedanism precedes Christianity, and sets it an example of virtue.
Liberia, a republic of emancipated slaves, the very brothers and sisters
of those whom you now hold in bondage, has been acknowledged as an
independent sovereignty, and welcomed into the family of nations, by
two of the most powerful governments on the globe. By this act, Freedom secures a new dominion on the eastern continent, while you are striving to give a new domain to bondage on the western. A monarchy
hails the advent of a free nation in Africa, where slavery existed before;
a republic is seeking to create ten thousand absolute despotisms in
America, where freedom existed before.
Now, these are the bystanders and lookers-on in this grand and awful
contestation. They are all agreed, as one man, in their opinions about
it. They are unitedly visiting your course with execration and anathema. There is not a nation on the globe that has a printing press and
a people that can read, from which you can extort one token of approval.
I would agree to submit the question now at issue between the North
and the South to the arbitrament of any people on the face of the earth,
not absolutely savage, and to abide its decision. Nay, the wild tribes
of the Caucasus and of tJpper India, who have defended themselves so
nobly against aggression, would spurn your claim and deride its pretexts.
And yet you say you are insulted, dishonored, disgraced in the eyes of
mankind, if you are not permitted to bring down upon our heads, also,
the curses they are pouring upon yours. So far is this from truth, that
if you would promptly and cheerfully consecrate the new Territories to
freedom, every nation in the world would send their plaudits of your
conduct to the skies.
But gentlemen of the South not only argue the question of right and
of honor; they go further, and they tell us what they will proceed to do
if we do not yield to their demands. A large majority of the Southern
legislatures have solemnly "resolved" that if Congress prohibits slavery in the new Territories, they will resist the law "at any and at every
hazard." And yet they say they do not mean to threaten us. They
desire to abstain from all language of menace, for threats and menaces
are beneath the character of gentlemen. Sir, what is the meaning of
the terms "threats" and "menaces?"  Mr. Troup, formerly Governor
of Georgia, speaking of us upon this floor, and of others who resist the 
19
extension of slavery, calls each of us a "fanatic."  He says that it is
only the dread of death that will stay our hands or stop our machina  tions; and then adds: "THAT DREAD YOU MUST PRESENT TO HIM IN A
VISIBLE, PALPABLE FORM." "If," he says in another place, "the aboli tionists resolve to force emancipation, or to force dishonor upon the
Southern States by any act of Congress, then it is my decided opinion
that, with the military preparation here indicated, conjoined to a good
volunteer instead of a militia system, THE STATE SHOULD MARCH UPON
WASHINGTON  AND DISSOLVE THE GOVERNMENT."  The gentleman
from North Carolina, (Mr. Clingman) forewarns us that if certain meas ures-and they are legal and constitutional measures which he indicates
-are taken in order to carry on the business of legislation in this House,
the House itself shall be the "Lexington" of a new revolution, and that
"such a struggle would not leave a quorum to do business." I could oc cupy my hour in citing passages of a similar character from the South ern press and from Southern men. Now, if these are not threats threats most gross, flagrant and offensive-I know not the meaning of
the word. Perhaps those who utter such sentiments are only practising
an inversion of language equal to their inversion of ideas on this subject, and would call them "enticements;" like the sailor who said he
was enticed to join a mutiny, and being asked what arts had been used
to entice him, said that the ringleader sprang at him with a handspike,
and swore if he did not join it he would knock out his brains.
And do those gentlemen who mfiake these threats soberly consider
how deeply they are pledging themselves and their constituents by them?
Threats of dissolution, if executed, become rebellion and treason. The
machinery of this government is now moving onward in its majestic
course. Custom-houses, post-offices, land-offices, army, navy, are fulfilling their prescribed cirble of duties. They will continue to fulfil
them until arrested by violence. Should the hand of violence be laid
upon therm, then will come that exigency expressly provided for in the
Constitution and in the President's inaugural oath, "TO TAKE CARE
THAT THE LAWS BE FAITHFULLY EXECUTED."  Mr. Chairman, such
collision would be war. Such forcible opposition to the government
would be treason. Its agents and abettors would be traitors. Wherever this rebellion rears its crest, martial law will be proclaimed; and
those found with hostile arms in their hands must prepare for the felon's
doom.
Sir, I cannot contemplate this spectacle without a thrill of horror. If
the two sections of this country ever marshal themselves against each
other, and their squadrons rush to the conflict, it will be a war carried
on by such powers of intellect, animated by such vehemence of passion, 
20
and sustained by such an abundance of resources, as the world has never
before known.  "Ten foreign wars," it has been well said, "are a luxury compared with one civil war." But I turn from this scene with a
shudder. If, in the retributive providence of God, the volcano of civil
war should ever burst upon us, it will be amid thunderings above and
earthquakes below, and darkness around; and when that darkness is
lifted up, we shall see this once glorious Union,-this oneness of government, under which we have been prospered and blessed as Heaven
never prospered and blessed any other people,-rifted in twain from
east to west, with a gulf between us wide and profound, save that this
gulf will be filled and heaped high with the slaughtered bodies of our
countrymen; and when we reawaken to consciousness, we shall behold
the garments and the hands of the survivors red with fratricidal blood.
And what is the object for which we are willing to make this awful
sacrifice?  Is it to redeem a realm to freedom?  No!  But to subjugate a realm to slavery.  Is it to defend the rights of man?  No! But
to abolish the rights of man! o
MP. BowDoN.  Does not the gentleman think that such a picture as
he has drawn would induce the North to yield a portion of the new territories to the institution of slavery?
MR. MANN. I trust that no pictures and no realities will ever induce
us to extend slavery beyond its present limits. Beyond those limits,
a No more slave Territories, no more slave States," is the doctrine by
which I, for one, shall live and die.
Now, sir, as this event of a dissolution of the Union is so frequently
forced upon our contemplation, I propose to occupy the residue of my
hour in considering some of its more obvious consequences. Southern
papers and Southern resolution writers have a favorite phrase, that if
Congress shall pass any law against the extension of slavery, they will
resist it "at any and every hazard."  Let us inquire, soberly, what a
few of these hazards are. First, as to the recovery, or non-recovery,
of fugitive slaves, which is one of the alleged provocatives of dissolution. Take a map of the Southern States and spread it out before you,
Although they cover an area of about nine hundred thousand square
miles, yet it is a very remarkable fact, that only an insignificantly small
portion of this vast extent lies more tlhan two hundred and fifty miles
from a free frontier; and those parts which do lie beyond this distance
hold but few slaves. Those portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, where their upper boundaries
converge among the mountains, are a little more than this distance from
a free border; but this territory is relatively insignificant in size, and 
21
sparsely populated with slaves. An outside belt or border-region of the
slave States, no part of which shall be more than one hundred miles
from a free frontier, would embrace nearly one-half of their whole,
area; and, as I suppose, much more than one-half of their whole slave
population. What is to prevent the easy escape of slaves living within
these limits? While God sends nights upon the earth, nothing can prevent it. I venture to predict, that in such a state of things, slaves will
become cheap, and horses will become dear. I am aware of your laws
which forbid slaves to cross bridges or ferries, without a pass; but you
can have no law against seasons of low water. The old adage says,
" riches have wings." You will find that these riches have legs. The
Mississippi and Ohio rivers, where they border upon free States, will
be alive as with shoals of porpoises. Remember there is no Constitution of the United States now. That you have broken. The free
States are therefore absolved from all obligation to surrender fugitives.
The law of 1793 is also at an end. No action can be maintained for
aiding them to escape, nor for harboring or concealing them. The distinguished Senator from Kentucky said, in his late speech, that no
instance had ever come to his knowledge where an action for harboring
runaways had not been maintained in the courts of the free States, and
damages recovered. But this remedy you will have annulled. The
Constitution of the United States, and the law of 1793 being at an end,
the law of nature revives. By this law, every case of an escaping
slave is but the self-recovery of stolen goods. When they cross the line
into a free State, they are free, -as free as you or I. The States
being separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into
bondage, as I would return a fugitive slave.  Before God, and Christ,
and all Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters. As our laws
make it piracy to kidnap slaves in Africa, or to ship them thence, so it
shall be a felony, punishable with death, for any southern master to kidnap a colored man, in a free State, or transport him from it, on the
ground of alleged ownership. You are fond of quoting Scripture to
us, in justification of slavery.  We will retort the Scripture, that "he
that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he befound in his hand, he
shall surely be put to death."
Here, then, is a free land frontier of about two thousand miles, and
a free ocean frontier of about twenty-five hundred miles; and more than
one half of all your slaves are within two days' run of it. More than
one quarter of them are within one night's run of it. Thousands and
tens of thousands can escape, even while you are dining. Canada, now
so distant, is brought five hundred miles nearer. The under-ground railroad will be abandoned, and its stock so invested as to yield quicker 
22
returns. What facilities for escape, too, will the ocean present. Fleets
of vessels are constantly passing and repassing within a few hours' sail
of the coast. The day for the power and the triumph of those whom
you hate as abolitionists will have arrived. Steamboats could lie out of
sight of land in the day time, run in at night, and be out of sight again
before the rising of the sun. To guard twenty-five hundred miles of
coast is impossible. If you declare war in order to avenge your losses,
then that war makes your coast lawfully accessible both by day and by
night, and multiplies a hundred-fold the opportunities and facilities for
this self-recovery of stolen goods.
I know it is said that some of the Northern States are averse to the
reception of blacks. Let us analyze this idea. There are now by estimation three millions of slaves. Say one half of these are either
too old or too young to have the strength or the intelligence to escape.
A million and a half are left; five hundred thousand of these will have
attachments to their own parents or children, or to their masters, too
strong to be broken; or they may be so degraded as to be contented
with bondage; for their contentment is always one of the measures
of their degradation.  This would leave a million for fugitives, consisting wholly of the most able bodied and intelligent. The Northern
States comprise a territory of five hundred thousand square miles. A
million of escaped slaves would give but two to a square mile, and this
surely would not be a formidable number, even where colorphobia is
strongest.   Suppose the case of a family of fourteen slaves -two
grandparents, too decrepit for labor, six atlietic sons or dauglhters, and
six grandchildren. What but affection should prevent the able-bodied
and the profitable from escaping, and leaving the aged and the young
on their masters' hands. Affection, indeed, would bind the parents to
their children, but they know too well how often this bond is remorselessly broken by the master; and, besides, an enlightened affection
would look to future children and their posterity forever, as well as to
those they already have.
Will you make your laws horribly penal, in order to deter slaves from
escaping by fear? Will you mutilate them, or scourge them till within
a minute of death?  Do  so.  All such punishments not only nourish
the love of freedom, but breed the purpose of revenge; and it is a kind
of lesson which a brutalized nature is always prone to retaliate with improvements. Will you make the act of escape a capital offence in a
slave, and destroy the victim you cannot restrain?  Do so.  Though
you may inflict death in a paroxysm of wrath, yet of all your penal
dispensations it is the most merciful. It not only releases the slave
himself, but is a prospective and perpetual amnesty - a true act of ob 
23
livion -for all his descendants. But this extremity of punishment is
not likely to be resorted to. In looking over the criminal codes of the
slave States I think I have noted cases where the slave is not punished
with death for an offence for which a white man is. The value moderates
the vengeance. There are not many who, like Cleopatra, can afford to
dissolve a pearl in the cup of revenge, and swallow it at a draught,
when that pearl will command five hundred or a thousand dollars in the
market-place.
Southern gentlemen, when they threaten disunion, cannot surely be
so much at fault as to forget that slavery exists here as it never existed
in the world. In Greece there were slaves; in some cases, highly intelligent and accomplished slaves.   They could have escaped if they
would; but where should they escape to? All conterminous nationsthe whole circle round-were barbarians. Their slaves, therefore, had
no place to flee to, where better institutions and juster laws prevailed.
So it was with Rome. Whither could her slaves fly but to barbarous
Spain,- or more barbarous Gaul, or to some nation whose language
they did not understand. Ignorance of language is a more insuperable
barrier than mountains or oceans. It is just the reverse here. The
English language is spoken on all sides; and our slave land is encircled
by free land or free ocean,-Jamaica, the Bermudas, and two thousand
miles of Northern frontier. And I have lately seen an estimate from a
credible source, that if an inter-oceanic canal should be opened across
the isthmus of Darien, twelve hundred ships would annually pass through
it; and, as they sail to and fro, they will skirt the whole of your Gulf
coast, and the whole of your Atlantic coast, a great part of the voyage
being within sight, or within a day's sail of, your shores. Now, the ignorant
slave knows but little of geography, but he would know of these avenues to freedom, and nothing but death could extinguish such knowledge and the hopes it would inspire. I say, sir, under such circum stances, slavery would melt away upon your borders like an iceberg in
the tropics. The particles, that is, the individuals of the exposed sur face would disappear; and you might as well attempt to stop solar evap oration by statutory laws, as to prevent their escape. Perhaps a disso lution of the Union is the means foreordained by God for the extinction of
slavery; and did I not foresee its doom before any very long period
shall have elapsed, without the unspeakable horrors of a civil and a ser vile war, I cannot say to what conclusion the above considerations
would lead my own mind.
Having shown how the "red)ress" of disunion will operate upon one
of the grievances alleged as its motive and excuse, let us look at another
of those "hazards," whose list of indefinite length the South is so willing 
24
to brave. In case of rebellion or secession, to whom will the territories
belong. It is the rule of political as well as of municipal law, that who   ever retires from a community, leaves its common property behind him.
I have a direct interest and proprietorship in the church in my parish,
in the schoolhouse in my town, and in the statehouse and other public
property belonging to my State.  But if I expatriate myself, I leave all
that interest and proprietorship behind me. If the county of Brooke, in
Virginia, should secede from the State of Virginia, and should annex
itself to Ohio or Pennsylvania, no one doubts that it would forfeit all its
rights to whatever public property the State of Virginia possesses.  In
like manner, if the"  United States South," as the new confederacy has
already been named by the' Richmond Enquirer,' should secede, they
would, by the very act of secession, surrender and abandon all right,
title and interest, in the new Territories. By such secession, all their
citizens become foreigners. They have no rights under the treaty with
Mexico. The new Spanish citizen, whose allegiance was transferred by
the treaty with Mexico, and whose citizenship is not yet two years old,
would have a right to expel them.  The "United States South," it is
true, may declare war and attempt the conquest of the Territories by
force; but in such a contest, the army, and navy, and military stores of
the Government, which, also, they have lost by secession, will be turned
against them. But, I venture to prophesy, that if the slave States shall
pass through one war, single-handed, they will afterwards be the most
peaceable nation the world ever saw. To every frontier country and
to every naval power, they hlave given three millions of hostages for
their good behavior.
Let us look at a third grievance they mean to redress, and a third
"hazard" they are ready to encounter. They complain of Northern agitation on the subject of slavery, and Northern instigation of the slaves
themselves.  On the subject of "agitation," I deny that the North has
ever overstepped the limits of their constitutional rights. They have
never agitated the question of slavery in the States. It has been only
in regard to slavery in this District, or the annexation of Texas, or the
acquisition of territory for the extension of slavery, or the imprisonment
of her own citizens in southern ports, or a denial of the inviolable right
of petition; it has been only on such subjects that the North has lifted
up the voice of expostulation and remonstrance. Even these constitutional rights she has used forbearingly. She has never exerted force,
nor threatened force, either to maintain the right of petition or to liberate her own citizens imprisoned in Southern jails.
In regard to instigating slaves to escape, I acknowledge there have
been some instances of it; but they have been few. The perpetrators 
25
have been tried and severely punished, and the North has acquiesced;
for they acknowledge that, if a man will go into a slave State and violate its laws, he must be judged by them. But I have never known of
a single case,-I believe there is no well-authenticated.case on record,
-where a Northern fnan has instigated the slaves to rise in rebellion,
and to retaliate upon their masters for the wrongs which they and their
race have suffered. As I dread indiscriminate massacre and conflagration, I should abhor the perpetrator of such a crime. But will separation bring relief or security?  No, sir; it will enhance the danger a
myriad fold. Thousands will start up, who will think it as much a duty
and an honor to assist the slaves in any contest with their masters, as to
assist Greeks, or Poles, or Hungarians, in resisting their tyrants. Two
things exist at the North which the South does not duly appreciate,the depth and intensity of our abhorrence of slavery, and that reverence
for the law which keeps it in check. The latter counterpoises the former. We are a law-abiding people. But release us from our obligations, tear off from the bond with your own hands the signatures which
bind our consciences and repress our feelings, destroy those compensations which the world and which posterity would derive from this Union,
and well may you tremble for the result. I have seen fugitive slaves at
the North, and heard from their own lips the dreadful recital of their
wrongs: and if I am any judge of the natural language of men; if I
can divine from the outward expression what passions are burning within,
each one of them had a hundred conflagrations and a hundred massacres in his bosom. They felt as you and I should feel if we had been
subjected to Algerine bondage. And do you doubt, sir; does any Southern gentleman on this floor doubt, for one moment, that if he were seized
by a Barbary corsair and sold into Algerine bondage, and carried a hundred miles into the interior, that he would improve the first opportunity
to escape, though at every step in his flight he should crush out a human life, and should leave an ever widening expanse of conflagration
behind him? If agitation and instigation are evils now, woe to those
who would seek to mitigate or to repress them by the remedies of disunion and civil war. Let men who live in a powder mill beware how
they madden pyrotechnists.
But it is said that if dissolution occurs, the "United States South"
can form an alliance with Great Britain. And are there no instigators
and abolitionists in England? Yes, sir, ten in England where there is
one at the North. Frederick Douglass has just returned from England,
where he has enjoyed the honors of an ovation. William Wells Brown,
another fugitive slave, is now travelling in England. His journeys from
place to place are like the "Progresses" of one of the magnates of that 
26
land,- passing wherever he will with free tickets, and enjoying the
hospitalities of the most refined and educated men.   The very last
steamer brought out an account of his public reception at Newcastle.
An entertainment was given him which was attended by four hundred
ladies and gentlemen. Men of high distinction and character adorned
it by their presence. The ladies made up a purse of twenty sovereigns,
which they gave him. It was presented in a beautiful purse that one
of their number, -the successful competitor  for the honor,- had
wrought with her own hands.  All their generosity and kindness they
considered as repaid by hearing from his own lips the pathetic story of
his captivity and the heroism of his escape. Sir, every man who has
travelled in England knows that there are large, wealthy, and refined
circles there, no member of whom would allow a slaveholder to sit at
their table or enter their doors. Not only churches, but moral and
religious men, the world over, have begun to read slaveholders out of
their communion and companionship. If the South expects to rid itself
of agitation and abolitionism by rupturing its bonds with the North and
substituting an alliance with Great Britain for our present Constitution,
they may envy the wisdom of the geese who invited the fox to stand
sentinel over them while they slept. Northern interference will increase a hundred-fold; And the whole power  and wealth of British
abolitionism, not only founded on moral principle, but nursed by national
pride, will be brought to bear directly upon them.
I said that the slave does not know much of geography; but he
understands enough of it to know where lies the free frontier. The
slave does not know much of astronomy; but there is one star in the
firmament which is dearer to him than all the heavenly host were to the
Chaldeans.  He worships the North star with more than Persian idolatry. But let the South form commercial alliances with Great Britain;
let the carrying trade be carried on in British vessels; and the slave
will find a star in the East as beautiful to his eye, and as inspiring to
his hopes, as the star in the North.
Is the case of the Amistad forgotten, where a few ignorant, degraded
wretches, fresh from the jungles of benighted Africa herself, seized
upon the vessel in which they were transported, and compelled the master, under peril of his life, to steer for the North star, - that light which
God kindled in the heavens, and which he will as soon extinguish as he
will extinguish the love of liberty which he has kindled in every human
breast?
And will a slave, escaping to Great Britain, or to any of her colonial
possessions, be reclaimable? Examine Somersett's case for an answer.
No, sir. Neither the third clause of the second section of the fourth 
27
article of the Constitution, nor the law of 1793, will ever be extended
over the Three Kingdoms or their dependencies.
It surely is not beneath the dignity of the place or the occasion to
look at another of those "hazards" which the South are invoking.
They are proud of their past history, and I doubt not their reflecting
and patriotic men are at least reasonably solicitous of their future fame.
When they meet in august council to inaugurate the great event of
establishing an independent confederacy of slave States, and of dissolving the political bands which now connect them with us, "a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind" will "require them to declare the
causes which had impelled them to the separation." And will they find
a model for their manifesto in that glorious Declaration of American
Independence which their own immortal Jefferson prepared, and to
which many of the greatest of all their historic names are subscribed?
Alas, they will have to read that Declaration, as the devil reads Scripture, backwards! I know not what may be the rhetorical terms and
phrases of the new Declaration, but I do know that its historic form
and substance cannot be widely different from this:
" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are not created
equal; that they are not endowed by their Creator with inalienable
rights; that white men, of the Anglo-Saxon race, were born to rob, and
tyrannize, and enjoy; and black men, of the African race, to labor, and
suffer, and obey; that a man, with a drop of African blood in, his veins,
has no political rights, and therefore shall never vote; that he has no
pecuniary rights, and therefore whatever he shall earn or receive,
belongs to his master; that he has no judicial rights, and therefore he
shall never be heard as a witness, to redress wrong, or violence, or robbery, committed by white men upon him; that he has no parental rights,
and therefore his children may be torn from his bosom, at the pleasure
or caprice of his owner; that he has no marital rights, and therefore
his wife may be lawfully sold away into distant bondage, or violated
before his eyes; thliat he has no rights of mind or of conscience, and
therefore he shall never be allowed to read or to think, and all his aspi rations for improvement shall be extinguished; that he has no religious
rights, and therefore he shall never read the Bible; that he has no
heaven-descended, God-given rights of freedom, and therefore he and
his posterity shall be slaves forever; we hold that governments were
instituted among men to secure and fortify this ascendency of one race
over another; that this ascendency has its foundation in force ratified
by law, and in ignorance and debasement inflicted by intelligence and
superiority; and when any people, with whom we are politically asso ciated, would debar us from propagating our doctrines or extending our
-  t, -.::..  - 
2S
domination into new realms and over free territories, it becomes our
duty to separate from them, and to hold them, as we hold the rest of
mankind; friends when they make slaves, enemies when they make
freemen."
I say, sir, of whatever words and phrases the Southern "Magna
Charta" may consist, this, or something like this, must be its substance
and reality.
So the preamble to their constitution must run in this wise: "We,
the people of the'United States South,' in order to form a more per  fect conspiracy against the rights of the African race, establish injustice,
insure domestic slavery, provide for holding three millions of our fellow
beings, with all the countless millions of their posterity, in bondage,
and to secure to ourselves and our posterity the enjoyment of power, and
luxury, and sloth, do ordain and establish this constitution for the' United
States South.'"
Sir, should a civil war ensue between the North and the South,
(which may God in his mercy avert,) in consequence of an attempt to
dissolve this Union, and the certain resistance which would be made to
such an attempt, it would be difficult to exaggerate the immediate evils
which would befall the interests of New England and some other parts
of the North. Our manufactures and our commerce would suffer at
least a temporary derangement. But we have boundless resources in our
enterprise and our intelligence. Knowledge and industry are recuper ative energies that can never long be balked in their quest of prosperity. The people that bore the embargo of 1807, and the war of 1812,
when all their capital was embarked in commerce, can survive any change
that does not stop the revolution of the seasons or suspend the great
laws of nature. And, when the day of peace again returns, business will
again return to its old channels. The South, notwithstanding any personal hostility, will be as ready to take Northern gold as though it had
come from the English mint; and they will employ those first, who will
do their manufacturing or their commercial labor cheapest and best.
Gold is a great pacificator between nations; and, in this money-loving
age, mutual interests will. in the end, subdue mutual hostilities. Our
share, therefore, of the calamities of a civil war, will be mainly of a
pecuniary nature. They will not be intolerable. They will invade
none of the securities of home; they will not associate poison with our
daily food, nor murder and conflagration with our nightly repose; nor
black violation with the sanctities of our daughters and our wives.
Even in a pecuniary point of view, a dissolution of our political ties
would cause less immediate and intense suffering at the North than at
the South.  Our laws and institutions are all framed so as to encourage
.   -
'. n,'.:........  
29
the poor man, and, by education, to elevate his children above the condition of their parents; but their laws and institutions all tend to aggrandize the rich, and to perpetuate power in their hands. Were it not
for the visions of horror and of bloodshed which Southern threats have
so intimately associated with this controversy, one remarkable feature,
which has hitherto been eclipsed, would have been most conspicuous.
With every philanthropic Northern man, a collateral motive for keeping
the new Territories free is, that they may be a land of hope and of promise
to the poor man, to whichever of all our States he may belong; where
he may go and find a home and a homestead and abundance. But the
South, in attempting to open these Territories to the slaveholders, would
give them to the rich alone-would give them to less than three hundred thousand persons, out of a population of six millions. The interests of the poorer classes at the South all demand free territory, where
they can go and rise at once to an equality with their fellow-citizens,
which they never can do at home. They are natural abolitionists, and
unless blinded by ignorance, or overawed by their social superiors, they
will so declare themselves. Every intelligent and virtue-loving wife or
mother, at the South, when she thinks of her husband and her sons, is
forced to be an abolitionist.  The attempt, therefore, to subject the
new Territories to the law of slavery is not made in the name of one
half of the people of the United States; it is not made for the six millions, more or less, who inhabit the slave States; but it is made for less
than three hundred thousand slaveholders among more than twenty millions of people.
There is one other "hazard," sir, which the South invokes and defies,
which to her high-minded and honor-loving sons, should be more formidable than all the rest. She is defying the Spirit of the Age. She is
not only defying the judgment of contemporaries, but invoking upon
herself the execrations of posterity. AIark the progress in the public
sentiment of Christendom, within the last few centuries, on the subject of
slavery and the rights of man. After the discovery of this continent by
Columbus, the ecclesiastics of Spain held councils to discuss the question, whether the aborigines of this country had or had not souls to be
saved. They left this question undecided; but they said, as it was possible that the nations of the New World might have an immortal spirit,
they would send them the Gospel, so as to be on the safe side; and the
mission of Las Casas was the result. In the time of Lord Coke, only
a little more than two centuries ago, the doctrine was openly avowed
and held, in Westminster Hall, that the heathen had no rights; and
therefore that it was lawful for Christians to drive them out of their inheritance, and to despoil them, as the Jews despoiled the Egyptians and 
30
drove out the Canaanites.  During the seventeenth century, all the
commercial nations of Europe engaged in the African slave trade, with  out compunction or reproach. In the last, or eighteenth century, the
horrors of that trade were aggravated and blackened by such demoniacal
atrocities, as, were it not for some redeeming attributes among men,
would have made the human race immortally hateful. Even when our
own Constitution was formed, in 1787, this dreadful traffic was not only
sanctioned, but a solemn compact was entered into, by which all prohi bition of it was prohibited for twenty years. Yet, in the year 1820,
after the lapse of only thirty-three years, this very trade was declared
to be piracy-the highest offence known to the law-and the felon's
death was denounced against all principals and abettors. We are often
reminded by gentlemen of the South, that, at the time of the adoption
of that Constitution, slavery existed in almost every State in the Union;
and that some Northern merchants, by a devilish alchemy, transmuted
gold from its tears and blood. But they can read no lesson as to the
progress of the age from the fact that all those States have since abjured slavery of their own free will; and that, at the present day, it
would be more tolerable for any Northern merchant, rather than to be
reasonably suspected of the guilt of this traffic, to be cast into the fiery
furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, seven times heated.  In Europe, the tide
of liberty, though meeting with obstructions from firm-seated dynasties
and time-strengthened prerogative, still rises, and sweeps onward with
unebbing flow. In France,-revolutions follow each other in quicker and
quicker succession. These revolutions are only gigantic struggles of
the popular will to escape from oppression: and; at each struggle, the
giant snaps a chain.
Great Britain, which in former times sent more vessels to the coast of
Africa to kidnap and to transport its natives, than all the other nations
of the earth together, now maintains a fleet upon the same coast to suppress the trade she so lately encouraged. Three times, during the
present century, has that government escaped civil commotion  by
making large concessions to popular rights. Since the year 1814,
written constitutions have been extorted by the people from more than
three-fourths of all the sovereigns of Europe. What a tempest now
beats upon Austria, from all points of the compass, because, during the
last season, she attempted only to half-enslave the Hungarians,because she attempted to do what, during the last century, she might
have done without a remonstrance. The rights of individuals, not less
than the rights of communities, have emerged from oblivion into recognition, and have become law. Penal codes have been ameliorated and
barbarous customs abolished. There are now but two places on the 
globe where a woman can be publicly whipped, - in Hungary and in
the Southern States! And the universal scorn and hissing with which
the rulers of the former country have been visited for their womenwhipping, and their execution of those whose sole crime was their love
of freedom, only foretoken that fiercer scorn and louder hissing with
which, from all sides of the civilized world, the latter will soon be
visited. Let the high-toned and chivalrous sons of the South, -those
" who feel a stain up'on their honor like a wound,"- think of all this,
as one in the long catalogue of "hazards" upon which they are rushing.
Sir, the leading minds in a community are mainly responsible for the
fortunes of that community. Under God, the men of education, of
talent, and of attainment, turn the tides of human affairs. Where great
social distinctions exist, the intelligence and the wealth of a few stimulate or suppress the volition of the masses. They are the sensorium of
the body politic, and their social inferiors are the mighty limbs, which,
for good or for evil, they wield. Such is the relation in which the three
hundred thousand, or less than three hundred thousand slave owners of
the South, hold to their fellow citizens. TI'hey can light the torch of
civil war, or they can quench it. But if civil war once blazes forth, it
is not given to mortal wisdom to extinguish or control it.  It comes
under other and mightier laws, under other and mightier agencies.
Human passions feed the combustion; and the flame which the breath of
man has kindled, the passions of the multitude, - stronger than the
breath of the hurricane,-  will spread.  Among these passions, one of
the strongest and boldest is the love of liberty, which dwells in every
bosom. In the educated and civilized, this love of liberty is a regulated
but paramount desire; in the ignorant and debased it is a wild, vehement
instinct. It is an indestructible part of the nature of man. Weakened
it may be, but it cannot be destroyed. It is a thread of asbestos in the
web of the soul, which all the fires of oppression cannot consume.
With the creation of every human being, God creates this love of
liberty anew. The slave shares it with his master, and it has descended
into his bosom from the same high source.  Whether dormant or wakeful, it only awaits an opportunity to become the mastering impulse of
the soul. Civil war is that opportunity. Under oppression it bides its
time. Civil war is the fullness of time. It is literal truth that the
South fosters within its homes three millions of latent rebellions. Imbedded in a material spontaneously combustible, it laughs at fire. Has
it any barriers to keep the spirit of liberty, which has electrified the old
world, from crossing its own borders, and-quickening its bondmen into
mutinous life?- not all of them, but one in ten thousand, one in a hundred thousand of them. If there is no Spartacus among them, with his
31 
32
lofty heroism and his masterly skill for attack and defence, is the race
of Nat Turners extinct, who, in their religious musings, and their dumb
melancholy, take the impulses of their own passions for the inspiration
of God, and, after prayer and the eucharist, proceed to massacre and
conflagration? In ignorant and imbruted minds, a thousand motives
work which we cannot divine. A thousand excitements madden them,
which we cannot control. It may be a text of Scripture, it may be the
contents of a wine-vault; but the result will be the same, - havoc
wherever there is wealth, murder wherever there is life, violation wher ever there is chastity. Let but this wild-fire of a servile insurrection
break out in but one place in a State; nay, in but tell places, or in five
places in all the fifteen States; and then, in all their length and breadth,
there will be no more quiet sleep. Not Macbeth, but the Angel of
Retribution will "murder sleep."  The mother will clasp her infant to
her breast, and, while she clasps it, die a double death. But, where will
the slaves find arms?  "Furor arema ministrat."  Rage will supply
their weapons.  Read the history of those slaves who have escaped
from bondage; mark their endurance and their contrivance, and let in credulity cease forever. They have hid themselves under coverts, dug
holes and burrowed in the earth for concealment, sunk themselves in
ponds, and sustained life by breathing through a reed, until their pur suers had passed by; crushed themselves into boxes, but of half a
coffin's dimensions, to be nailed up and transported hundreds of miles,
as merchandise; and, in this horrible condition, have endured hunger
and thirst, and standing upon the head, without a groan or a sigh; have
wandered abroad, almost fasting for forty days and forty nights, like
Christ in the wilderness;-and, will men, who devise such things, and
endure such things, be balked in their purposes of hope and of revenge,
when the angel of destruction, in the form of the angel of Liberty
descends into their breasts?
The state of slavery is always a state of war. In its deepest tranquility, it is but a truce. Active hostilities are liable at any hour to be
resumed. Civil war between the North and the South, - any thing
that brings the quickening idea of freedom home to the mind of the
slave, that supplies him with facilities of escape, or immunities for
revenge, - will unleash the bloodhounds of insurrection. Can you
muster armies in secret, and march them in secret, so that the slave
shall not know that they are mustered and marched to perpetuate his
bondage, and to extend the bondage of his race? Was not Major
Dade's whole command supposed to be massacred through the treachery
of a slave? A forray within your borders places you in such a relation
to the slave that you are helpless without him, and in danger of assas 
sination with him.  He that defends slavery by war, wars against the
eternal laws of God, and rushes upon the thick bosses of Jehovah's
buckler.  Such are some of the "hazards" which the leaders of public opinion at the South, the legislators and guides of men in this dark
and perilous hour, are invoking upon themselves and their fellows; not
for the interests of the whole, but for the fancied interests of the slaveholders alone, and against the real interest of a vast majority of the
people.  May God give that wisdom to the followers which he seems
not yet to have imparted to the leaders.
Sir, in these remarks, I have studiously abstained from every thing
that seemed to me like retaliation or unkindness. I certainly have suffered no purposed word of crimination to pass my lips.  If I have
uttered severe truths, I have not sought for severe language in which to
clothe them. What I have said, I have said as to a brother sleeping
on the brink of a precipice, where one motion of his troubled sleeping,
or of his bewildered awaking, might plunge him into remediless ruin.
In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding
conviction of the character of slavery, that under a full sense of my
respoiinsobiiy to niy country and my God, I deiloerately say, better
disunion,- better a civil or a servile war,- better any thing that God
in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of slavery.
Upon the close of Mr. Mann's remarks,
MIR. BURT, of South Carolina, rose and said that he had not interrupted the gentleman from MAassachlusetts during his speech, but he presumed he did not wish to have any error go forth under the sanction of
his nme; and he therefore called upon him to retract what he had said
in regard to slaves ever being exempted from capital punishment for
crimes for which the whites were executed. He called upon him also
to withdraw the imputation that the pecuniary value of the slave was a
motive for any such difference in the laws respecting them. He
remarked that, by the laws of the Southern States, such a distinction is
not made. I know, (said he,) no instance in which it exists. On the
contrary, slaves are punished capitally for offences that are not so punished when committed by white men. In South Carolina, slaves have
never been admitted to the benefit of clergy for offences at common law;
and thus a slave is punished capitally for maiming or grievously beating
a white man. Mr. Burt was also understood to say that there were
"six or eight," or " eight or ten," offences in South Carolina for which
slaves were punished capitally, but for which white men were not.
MR. MANN replied that he had stated what he believed to be true;
but if he had fallen into any mistake, he should be most happy to be
corrected. He was assured also by the gentleman from Georgia, on his
33 
34
left, (Mvr. Toombs,) that no such distinction existed as he had supposed;
and it was but reasonable to believe that those gentlemen were more
conversant with the Southern laws than himself.
MR. MAN added that he (Mr. Mann) could not be expected to have
the statute books of the Southern States before hinm, at that time, to
meet so unexpected a denial. Neither could he be expected by any
honorable gentleman to make a retraction until he had time to see
whether the ground he had taken were tenable.
[NOTE  BY Mn. IANN.]  On repairing to the Law Library, to ascertain which
party was right, in regard to the above difference of opinion, the second book
I opened contained at least three cases, where the courts were authorized to
sentence a slave to be transported for the commission of an offence, for which
a white man must be unconditionally hung. See North Carolina Rev. Stat.
vol. L chap. III. ~ ~ 36, 37, 39.  Of course the reason of this difference is the
pecuniary value of the slave. Hung, he would be worthless; transported to
Ctba, he might bring, five hundred dollars.
The law was formerly so in Mr. Burt's own State.
In the seventh volume of the Statutes at Large of South Carolina, No. 344,
~ 5, I find the following: 1, And whereas, it has been found by experience that the
execution of several negroes for felonies of a smaller nature, by which they have
been condemned to die, has been of great charge and expense to the public,
and will continue (if some remedy be not found,) to be very chargeable and
burdensome to this province; Be it therefore enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that all negroes or other slaves who shall be convicted and found guilty
of. any capital crie, (murder excepted) for which they used to receive the
sentence of death, as the law directs, shall be transported from this province,
by the public receiver for the time being, to any other of his majesty's plantations, or other foreign part. where he shall think fitting to send them, for the
use of the ptbic."
The slave condemned to transportation was to be appraised, and his master
paid out of the public treasury, and this amount was, of course, to be reimbursed by what should be received from the foreign sale. From the statement
of Mr. Burt, that no such law now exists in South Carolina, I suppose the
above enactment must have been repealed.
Thefact stated in my speech is therefore proved, although the instances may
be fewer than I had supposed. As to the motive attributed there can be no
doubt.  The cases are most numerous in the Southern States, where white men
are merely imprisoned for offences for which slaves are whipped, branded, and
cropped, or otherwise corporally punished.  The slave's time is too valuable to
be lost in a prison, but the white man's is not; the white man's skin is too
sacred to be flayed or branded, but the slave's is not.
But laws which punish "six or eight," or " eight or ten," or any other number of offences with death, when committed by slaves, while the same offences
receive a milder penalty when committed by whites; or laws denying the 
35
benefit of clergy, (where that relic of barbarism still prevails,) to a slave, while
it is granted to a white man, are surely among the greatest atrocities recorded
in the history of the race. Ponder for a moment upon the accursed fact.
A freeman acting under all the motives to self-respect; moved by all the
incentives to good conduct; enjoying all the means of education; inspired
by all the influences of the Gospel; and capable of comprehending all the
powerful restraints and the sublime rewards connected with a hereafter,
exonerated from the punishment of death; w hile death, in all the horrorswith
which ignorance and superstition can invest it, is inflicted upon men who are
subjected to bondage; deprived of all motive for honorable conduct; debarred
from every avenue to knowledge by cruel penalties; blinded to the light of
the Gospel; and, in a land of boasted Christianity, left in the darkness of
heathenism! These are not the customs of a lawless banditti, of outcasts or
renegades, but solemn enactments of State Legislatures, devised by talent and
eminence, enforced and preserved by the oligarchical few, by the virtual
nobility and flower of populous communities. Such laws demand a return of
five talents, under penalty of death, where only one talent had been confided;
they absolve him who had received five talents, though he brings none of them
back. Such laws make the Scriptures read, that the servant who knoweth his
lord's will, but doeth it not, shall be beaten with but few stripes; but the
servant who did not know it, whom his very master debarred from knowing it,
shall be beaten with many stripes; for unto whomsoever much is given, but
little shall be required; but to whom men have committed much, of him little
shall be asked.  What shall be thought of a system, AND OF EXTENDING A
SYSTEM, which so perverts the hearts of men, otherwise clear-headed, highminded and generous!
What more fitting theme could be conceived, were the arch-enemy of mankind to compose a burlesque, in ridicule of Republics, to be represented in that
Theatre which is all "Pit?'
It is not, however, the existence of slavery, but its extension, we now intend
to avert. 
I