438 
 

THE 
 
 KANSAS STRUGGLE, OF 1856, 
 
 IN CONGRESS 
 
 AND IN TIIK 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN; 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE, 
 
 NEW-YOKE;: 
 
 AM ERIC AX ABOLITION SOCIETY, 
 
 48 BEEKMAN STREET. 
 
 1857. 
 
V \ 
 
 THE 
 
 KANSAS STRUGGLE, OF 1856, 
 
 IN CONGRESS, 
 
 -AND IY THE. 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN; 
 
 WITH 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 AMERICAN ABOLITION SOCIETY, 
 
 48 BEEKMAN STREET. 
 1857. 
 
JOHN A. GRAY, Printer and Stereotype^ 
 16 & 18 Jacob St., Fire-Proof Buildings. 
 
i 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 REVIEW. 
 
 IN order to a full and distinct understanding of the struggle of 
 1856, in Congress, and during the Presidential campaign, concerning 
 Freedom or Slavery in Kansas ; it will be necessary to bear in mind 
 the previous controversy concerning the extension or non-extension 
 of Slavery, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the at- 
 tempted settlement of Kansas by the antagonistic elements of Free- 
 State men from the North, and Slavery extensionists from the 
 South. Presuming the reader to be already in possession of the 
 leading facts, up to the early part of the year 1856, we proceed to 
 a Review of that struggle. Our object will be to exhibit clearly 
 the position of the two contending parties, the " Democratic" and 
 the "Republican" with the causes which occasioned the defeat 
 of the latter, and the triumph of the friends of Slavery extension. 
 
 CONDITION OF KANSAS, ETC. 
 
 The scenes witnessed hi Kansas and at the seat of Government 
 have been most appalling. Bloody violence has been stalking forth 
 under the abused names of " law and order." The Slave Power, 
 with the connivance and by the official aid of the Federal Execu- 
 tive, has been carrying the " peculiar institution" by fire and sword, 
 and massacre, into the free Territory of Kansas. The particulars 
 are too voluminous for convenient record in our Review, but the 
 country and the world are already in possession of them. For the 
 most part, they are embraced in the Official Report of a Commit- 
 tee appointed by the House of Representatives of the United 
 States, presented to that body, and published under its authority. 
 Since the date of that Report, there has been no essential im- 
 provement in the action of the Federal Executive, nor in the as- 
 pect of affairs in Kansas. For a time it was hoped, by some, that 
 the appointment of Gov. Geary in the place of Gov. Shannon might 
 prove to be the introduction of a wiser policy, and result in a bet- 
 
 M35383 
 
4 Proceedings in Congress. 
 
 ter condition, of the Territory. But these hopes have been disap- 
 pointed. iSTot' only- Has "-there- been a renewal of violent outrages 
 on the part of .the. Missouri invaders, without any adequate pro- 
 tection "of -the- citiztens t)y-t-he v Federal Governor, but he has him- 
 self, driven back peaceful emigrants from the Free States, and has 
 proceeded to arrest as criminals, more than an hundred peaceful 
 citizens for no crime but that of preparing to defend their property, 
 their families, and their fire-sides from banditti of barbarous inva- 
 ders from the Slave States. Under his auspices another bogus 
 election has been held, in which the voters were chiefly non-resid- 
 ents, citizens of Missouri, who only came in to vote and to re- 
 turn, while no resident citizen was allowed to vote except on con- 
 dition of taking an oath to sustain the Slave Code imposed upon 
 the Territory, against the known wishes of a large majority of the 
 residents, by armed hordes of Missourians, who by force and with 
 slaughter had prevented the Free-State settlers from voting. In 
 this way the Territory is in process of being transformed into a 
 Slave State, against the wishes of a majority of bona-fide settlers, 
 
 PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS. 
 
 In Congress, there has been no successful stand taken against the 
 usurpations of the Executive. A decided majority of the Senate is in 
 full sympathy with the Executive, and acts as the tool of the Slave 
 Power. In the House of Representatives the opposition, after a long 
 and severe strugle, elected their Speaker, Mr. N". P. Banks. They 
 likewise appointed an Investigating Committee to visit Kansas, as 
 before mentioned. The House also passed a bill for admitting 
 Kansas under its Free-State Constitution, adopted at Topeka, but 
 it failed of passing the Senate. Beyond this, little or nothing of a 
 positive character has been effected. For a time, it was hoped 
 that the House would steadfastly adhere to their declared determi- 
 nation not to pass the Army Appropriation bill, except on condition 
 that the Federal troops should not be employed in enforcing the 
 enactments of the Missouri Ruffian Legislature, including the Slave 
 Code. The regular adjournment of both Houses took place with- 
 out the passage of the bill. But an extra session was called by 
 the President, for the express purpose ; when, after a few days, a 
 number of the opposition members gave way, by voluntary ab- 
 sence, and suffered the bill to pass. Various statements are made 
 in respect to the motives which led to this course. The Washing- 
 ton correspondent of the New- York Herald, a leading Fremont 
 journal, (Aug. 31,) lays the blame to the Republicans themselves. 
 He 
 
Proceedings in Congress. 5 
 
 " Letters had been received from Greeley and others, begging the Republicans 
 to change their tactics, as their course was ruining them at home. In one letter 
 G-reeley says : ' For G-od's sake let the bill pass.' And assurances were given to 
 Democrats that the bill should pass, if they would play their cards right. ' When 
 the result was announced, a general congratulation prevailed over the House, 
 the Republicans, if possible, showing the greatest joy.' ' The Republicans could, if 
 they had chosen, have killed the bill. Messrs. "Walsh of Connecticut, Milward of 
 Pennsylvania, Miller of New- York, with Speaker Banks, would have defeated it, 
 but they were evidently anxious it should pass.' " 
 
 The N. Y. Tribune replies in general terms, that " the statement 
 is not according to truth ;" but says nothing specifically of the. ab- 
 sentees named, nor of the letter. It adds, however, the following 
 apology : 
 
 "It was the fault of the Buchanan and Fillmore men, who went oflj prematurely, 
 that this result was not attained, days ago." ..." "We are content with the issue 
 as made by the Senate, and, since the passage of the House proviso was impossible, 
 we were and are ready to go at once to the people. Hence we were willing to 
 see the Appropriation Bill carried over the heads of the Republicans, and the ses- 
 sion brought to a close." " The Republicans, being a minority of the House, could 
 not prevent the ultimate passage of the bill without the proviso." 
 
 The fault charged by the Herald, it will be noticed, was, that 
 the Republicans suffered the bill to pass. The reply is, that it was 
 " the fault of the Buchanan and Fillmore men" that it was not 
 passed sooner! To understand this, it must be added that the 
 Administration presses had raised a loud clamor against the Repub- 
 licans for not suffering the bill to pass. This they represented as 
 being disorganizing and revolutionary. The tone of the Republi- 
 can presses, for several days previous to the passage of the bill, had 
 betrayed fears concerning the political effects of this clamor. 
 
 Such are the facts, so far as ascertained, in respect to this un- 
 expected and calamitous event, the unrestricted passage of the 
 Army bill, by the House, which, according to present appearances, 
 is very likely to result hi the permanent subjugation and enslave- 
 ment of Kansas. 
 
 Another specimen of the lame and vacillating tactics of the 
 opposition in the House of Representatives, is seen in their passing 
 (by a large majority, including, with exception of about six mem- 
 bers, the entire " Republican" force hi that House) of the so called 
 " Kansas Pacification bill," which was brought forward by Mr. 
 Dunn, a partisan of Mr. Fillmore. 
 
 The following abstract of the bill is from the N~. Y. Tribune : 
 
 " Mr Dunn's bill proposed 
 
 " 1. To wipe out the Border Ruffian legislation in Kansas by which the term of 
 the bogus ' Council' was protracted til Jan. 1, 1858; 
 
6 Condition of Society at Washington City. 
 
 " 2. To dismiss and restore to private life all the officers and appointees of the 
 bogus Legislature, so soon as a new Legislature should be ready to fill their places ; 
 
 " 3. To set free the Free-State prisoners; 
 
 " 4. To annul the most obnoxious of the Border Ruffian laws ; 
 
 " 5. To secure homesteads in Kansas to actual settlers, whether native-born or 
 not; 
 
 " 6. To prohibit the entrance of another slave into Kansas ; 
 
 '' but as the Official Census shows that there were 192 slaves in Kansas a 
 year and more ago, Mr. Dunn's bill continues 
 
 "Provided, however, That any person lawfully held to serve in either of said Ter- 
 ritories shall not be discharged from such service by reason of such repeal and re- 
 vival of said eighth section, if such persons shall be permanently removed from such 
 Territory or Territories prior to the 1st day of January, 1858 : and any child or 
 children born in either of said Territories, of any female lawfully held to service, if 
 in like manner removed without said Territories before the expiration of that date, 
 shall not be, by reason of any thing hi this act, emancipated from any service it 
 might have owed had this act never been passed : And provided further, That any 
 person lawfully held to service in any other State or Territory of the United States, 
 and escaping into either the Territory of Kansas or Nebraska, may be reclaimed 
 and removed to the person or place where such service is due, under any law of 
 the United States which shall be in force upon the subject." 
 
 This bill failed of becoming a law, only because it was rejected 
 by the pro-slavery Senate. 
 
 The last Session of Congress was disgraced by the ferocious and 
 cowardly assault of Preston S. Brooks, Member of the House from 
 South-Carolina, upon Hon. Charles Stunner, Senator of Massachu- 
 setts, in the Chamber of the Senate. Under all the circumstances 
 of the case, it stands, perhaps, without a parallel. Its avowed ob- 
 ject was the suppression of freedom of debate, on the Slave ques- 
 tion, with threats of similar inflictions on others. A circle of pro- 
 Slavery members, as if acting by previous concert, stood sentinels 
 ta prevent assistance to the defenseless victim, who was taken at 
 unawares, and in a position that prevented self-defense. By award 
 of the City Judiciary, the price of perpetrating such enormities 
 was put down at the petty sum of $300. In the House, a majority 
 voted for his expulsion, but, failing to reach the constitutional 
 condition of a two-thirds vote, it was of no legal effect. But Mr. 
 Brooks resigned, for the avowed purpose of appealing to his con- 
 stituents, who reflected him by acclamation, and loaded him with 
 commendations and honors, such as they had to bestow. 
 
 CONDITION OP SOCIETY AT WASHINGTON CITY. 
 
 The brutal murder of Keating, an Irish waiter in a hotel in 
 Washington City, by Philip T. Herbert, member of Congress, of 
 California, the legal impunity that sanctioned the deed, the gratula- 
 
Proposed Enslavement of the Whites. 7 
 
 tions of Southern members of Congress, and the editorial promulga- 
 tion of the sentiment that white waiters as well as colored ones, must 
 take the chance of being murdered by gentlemen, at their caprice 
 or pleasure, are among the minor incidents of the past year, mark- 
 ing the rapid and successful strides of Slavery towards the undis- 
 puted dominion of the entire country. 
 
 PROPOSED ENSLAVEMENT OF THE WHITES. 
 
 Along with this has been witnessed the promulgation of the 
 sentiment that Slavery is not for the African race only, but that 
 the laboring whites are to come in for a share of the blessings of 
 that "Christianizing" institution. Gov. McDuffie, Prof. Dew, Mr. 
 Pickens, Mr. Leigh, Mr. Hammond, John C. Calhoun, and other 
 Southern gentlemen of distinction, many years ago had given 
 utterance to the sentiment, and sometimes, as in the case of 
 Gov. McDuffie (in 1836) coupled with the prediction that within 
 twenty-five years, the laboring population of the North would 
 begin to come under the same yoke with the negroes. During 
 the current year, it has been apparent that the attempt is about to 
 be made in good earnest. If the scenes of Kansas and of Washing- 
 ton City are much longer to be tolerated, it may be concluded 
 that the subjugation has already begun. 
 
 Accordingly, the tone of the pro-Slavery presses, including at 
 least one at the North, are boldly advocating the measure. And 
 no marvel. The " Biblical" defenses of Slavery, Northern and 
 Southern, make no distinction of color, if we except the argument 
 drawn from the " curse of Ham" and the assumption that Ham 
 was a negro. The Slavery of the Greeks and Romans, alleged to 
 have been sanctioned by the New Testament writers, was cer- 
 tainly the Slavery of whites. It may be well to record here, a 
 few of the legitimate results of such clerical teachings, and to 
 notice the simultaneous propagation of these sentiments, with the 
 proceedings at the seat of Government and in Kansas. The one 
 may be regarded as an appropriate and significant comment upon 
 the other. 
 
 The Richmond Examiner ', one of the leading Democratic papers 
 in Virginia, ardently supporting Mr. Buchanan, holds the follow- 
 ing language in a late issue : 
 
 " Until recently, the defense of Slavery has labored under great difficultiej? 
 because its apologists (for they were mere apologists) took half-way grounds. 
 They confined the defense of Slavery to mere negro Slavery ; thereby giving up the 
 Slavery principle, admitting other forms of Slavery to be wrong. 
 
8 Proposed Enslavement of the Whites. 
 
 " The line of defense, however, i3 now changed. The South now maintains that 
 Slavery is right, natural and necessary, and does not depend on difference of 
 COMPLEXION". The laws of the Slave States justify the holding of WHITE 
 MEN in bondage." 
 
 Another Buchanan paper, the leading one in South-Carolina, 
 says: 
 
 "Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, whether 
 WHITE or black. The great evil of Northern free society is, that it is burdened with 
 :i servile class of MECHANICS and LABORERS, unfit for self-government, yet 
 clothed with the attributes and powers of citizens. Master and slave is a relation 
 in society as necessary as that of parent and child; and the Northern States will 
 vet have to introduce it. Their theory of free government is a delusion." 
 
 The Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, Mr. Buchanan's confidential 
 organ, and considered by the " Democratic" party as its ablest 
 paper in the South, speaks as follows in a recent number : 
 
 " Repeatedly have we asked the North ' Has not the experiment of Universal 
 liberty FAILED? Are not the evils of FREE SOCIETY INSUFFERABLE ? 
 And do not most thinking men among you propose to subvert and reconstruct it ?' 
 Still no answer. This gloomy silence is another conclusive proof added to many 
 other conclusive evidences we have furnished, th&ifree society in the long run, is an 
 impracticable form of society ; it is everywhere starving, demoralizing, and insurrec- 
 tionary. 
 
 "We repeat, then, that policy and humanity alike forbid the existence of the evils 
 of free society to new people and coming generations. 
 
 "Two opposite and conflicting forms of society can not, among civilized men 
 coexist and endure. The one must give way and cease to exist, the other become 
 universal. 
 
 " If free society be unnatural, immoral, unchristian, it must fall, and give way to 
 a slave society a social system old as the world, universal as man." 
 
 And the Muscogee (Ala.) Herald, says : 
 
 "Free society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of 
 GREASY MECHANICS, FILTHY OPERATIVES, SMALL-FISTED FARMERS, 
 and moonstruck THEORISTS? AH the Northern, and especially the New -Eng- 
 land States, are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing 
 class one meets with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farm- 
 TA who do their own drudgery ; and yet who are hardly fit for association with a 
 Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which the North- 
 ern hordes are endeavoring to extend into Kansas." 
 
 And the /South Side Democrat, another prominent Buchanan 
 paper, in Viginia, whose editor was supported for Clerk of the 
 House of Representatives by the Democratic members of the pre- 
 sent Congress abuses every thing FREE after this style : 
 
 "We have got to hating every thing with the prefix FREE, from free negroes 
 down and up through the whole catalogue FREE farms, FREE labor, FREE 
 society, FREE will, FREE thinking, FREE children and FREE schools, all be- 
 
Proposed Enslavement of the WTiites. 9 
 
 longing to the same brood of damnable isms. But the worst of all these abomina- 
 tions is the modern system of FREE SCHOOLS. The New-England system of 
 free schools has been the cause and prolific source of the infidelities and treason 
 that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, and her land into the 
 common nestling-places of howling Bedlamites. We abominate the system because 
 SCHOOLS ARE FREE." 
 
 The Washington Union, the national organ of the " Demo- 
 cratic" party, says that the honest and heroic FREE LABORING 
 MEN of Kansas, 
 
 " Are a MISERABLE, BLEAR-EYED RABBLE, who have been transferred 
 like so MANY CATTLE to that country." 
 
 The New-York Day Book, one of the two papers in New- York 
 City that supported James Buchanan, proposes to enslave poor 
 AMERICANS, GERMANS, and IRISH, who may fall into pov- 
 erty and be unable to support their families. Here are the Day 
 Bootes exact words, in speaking of the POOR "WHITE PEO- 
 PLE : 
 
 " Sell the parents of these children into SLAVERY. Let our Legislature pass 
 a law that whoever will take these parents and take care of them and their OFF- 
 SPRING-, in sickness and in health clothe them, feed them, and house them shall 
 be legally entitled to their service ; and let the same Legislature decree that whoever 
 receives these parents and their CHILDREN, and obtains their services, shall take 
 care of them AS LONG AS THEY LIVE." 
 
 S. W. Downs, late Democratic Senator from Louisiana, in an 
 elaborate and carefully prepared speech, published in the Wash- 
 ington Globe-, says : 
 
 " I call upon the opponents of Slavery to prove that the WHITE LABORERS 
 of the North are as happy, as contented, or as comfortable as the slaves of the 
 South. In the South the slaves do not suffer one tenth of the evils endured by the 
 white laborers of the North. Poverty is unknown to the Southern slave, for as 
 soon as the master of slaves becomes too poor to provide for them, he SELLS them 
 to others who can take care of them. This, sir, is one of the excellencies of the 
 system of Slavery, and this the superior condition of the Southern slave over the 
 Northern WHITE LABORER." 
 
 Senator Clemens, of Alabama, declared, in a speech in the U. S. 
 Senate, that " the operatives of New-England were not as well 
 situated, nor as comfortably off as the slaves that cultivate the rice 
 and cotton fields of the South." 
 
 In a recent speech by Mr. Reynolds, candidate for Congress 
 from Missouri, that gentleman distinctly asserted that 
 
 1 The same construction of the power of Congress to exclude Slavery from a 
 United States Territory, would justify the Government in excluding foreign-born 
 citizens GERMANS AND IRISH AS WELL AS NIGGERS." 
 
10 Proposed Enslavement of the Whites. 
 
 Here a Missouri Democrat classes GERMAN and IRISH in- 
 discriminately with NEGRO SLAVES. 
 
 Mr. L. H. Goode, another Atchison Democrat of Missouri, in a 
 recent speech against the Free State men of Kansas, denounced 
 the LABORING men as "WHITE SLAVES." 
 
 SENATOR BUTLER, (the uncle of Preston S. Brooks,) de- 
 clared in a speech in the U. S. Senate this session : 
 
 " That men have no right to VOTE unless they are possessed of property as re- 
 quired by the Constitution of South-Carolina, There no man can vote unless he 
 owns ten negroes, or real estate to the value of ten thousand dollars." 
 
 In reference to the murder of Keating, the Irish waiter, at Wil- 
 lard's Hotel, "Washington City, by Hon. Philip T. Herbert, the 
 Charleston Standard said : 
 
 "If "WHITE MEN" accept the office of menials, it should be expected that they 
 will do so with an apprehension of their relation to society, and the disposition 
 quietly to encounter both the responsibilities and liabilities which the relation im- 
 
 The Alabama Mail, in commenting on the same, says : 
 
 " It is getting time that waiters at the North were convinced that they are ser- 
 vants, and not ' gentlemen' in disguise. "We hope this Herbert affair will teach 
 them prudence." 
 
 It is in the light of these sentiments, we apprehend, that the 
 present and prospective politics of the nation are to be studied. 
 The longer continuance of Slavery must, almost of necessity, in- 
 volve the enslavement of the whites. The line of demarkation 
 between the white and colored races is every year becoming 
 fainter and fainter. The proportion of white slaves, described, 
 advertised, bought and sold as such, is constantly and rapidly on 
 the increase. The relative position of the whites and of the colored 
 people, among the poorer classes, has, from this cause, undergone 
 a marked change since the commencement of the anti-slavery agi- 
 tation, twenty-three or four years ago. Predictions then regarded 
 as extravagant are already in process of fulfillment. Unless there 
 should be a brisk renewal of fresh importations from Africa, it is 
 evident that color will not much longer remain the criterion of 
 liability to enslavement. There is danger that, with the poorer 
 classes of whites, the reopening of the African slave-trade will 
 come to be looked upon with favor, as affording them some tem- 
 porary protection. Enactments for the rendition of fugitive slaves, 
 by the facilities they afford to kidnapping, can scarcely fail to in- 
 volve the enslavement of many who have no African blood in their 
 
Pro-Slavery Theories of the Government. 11 
 
 veins. Already, though a dark color is held to be presumptive 
 evidence of a state of Slavery, it can not be said that a white skin 
 is regarded as a presumptive evidence of a condition of freedom. 
 Whites are already held as slaves. And Judge McLean, in his 
 decision in the case of Querry, laid down the rule that even in the 
 absence of statutes establishing Slavery, the continuance of the 
 practice makes it legal, provided it be maintained for an hundred 
 years. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that neither the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, nor the Federal Constitution, nor the State Constitu- 
 tions, at the period when the Federal Constitution was formed, 
 made any distinction of race or color. It is thence easy to see 
 that the claimants of legalized and constitutional slaveholding, in 
 this country, can afford to make no such distinction. And it is 
 equally plain that the laboring whites have a deep and vital inter- 
 est in all questions concerning the legal tenure and Constitutional 
 recognitions of Slavery, whether in the Territories or in the 
 States. 
 
 There can be no reasonable doubt that the novel and extraor- 
 dinary efforts for carrying Slavery into the higher northern lati- 
 tudes, is based in no small measure upon this long foregone con- 
 clusion, that the poorer class of whites, both at the North and at 
 the South, are to become slaves. The Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
 removing the obsolete geographical distinction ; the ruffian raid 
 upon Kansas ; the pre-concerted and joyously celebrated violation 
 of free speech in the Federal District, and in the Senate Chamber, 
 are all parts of the same enterprise. To be understood correctly, 
 they must be understood in their natural connection with each 
 other. We turn to another branch of the subject. 
 
 PRO-SLAYERY THEORIES OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 The theory of our State and National Governments under which 
 these lawless aggressions find shelter, deserves the most careful 
 attention. It is well known that the Slavery propagandists of the 
 South, with their Northern allies, are, professedly, the champions 
 of what they denominate " State Rights." Under this plausible 
 term they include and claim the right of the States to maintain 
 and protect Slavery, a system in which one citizen is held as a 
 chattel personal by another. This claim assumes the possibility of 
 human chattelhood, and likewise the legality of the tenure under 
 which slaves in this country are actually held. With this is also 
 connected, by them, the doctrine that the Constitution of the 
 
12 Pro-Slavery Tfieories of the Government. 
 
 United States recognizes Slavery as a legitimate institution in the 
 States wherein it exists, and regards slave property as entitled to 
 the same Federal protection that is afforded to other descriptions 
 of property. This is the theory that has been held by the slave- 
 holders and their Northern supporters, from the beginning of the 
 present agitation of the Slavery question. 
 
 But the debate on the Nebraska bill developed an improved 
 phase of the doctrine. The determination to carry Slavery into 
 free territory, that had, by the Missouri Compromise, been con- 
 ceded to freedom, demanded an extension of the old theory. 
 Instead of claiming that the Constitution protects Slavery where 
 it exists by positive law, (statutory enactment,) it became neces- 
 sary to claim that it protects slave property wherever the owner 
 pleases to carry it. And, inasmuch as the opening of Kansas and 
 Nebraska to the entrance of slaveholders with their slaves, re- 
 quired the protection of the Federal Government, prior to the 
 establishment of a State Government that could protect Slavery, 
 it became necessary to affirm Mr. Calhoun's doctrine, that Slavery 
 exists by natural right, or by usage, without positive law. There 
 was another necessity for this change. Abolitionists had discov- 
 ered and had published the fact that there are no positive laws or 
 statutes establishing Slavery in any one of the States. The testi- 
 monies of Mr. Calhoun, and of the Southern judges, Matthews 
 and Porter, had been adduced to this point. Senator Mason, of 
 Virginia, had been led to affirm the fact, as a reason why no jury 
 trial should be allowed to fugitive slaves. 
 
 Besides all this, the contests concerning the Wilmot proviso, 
 and the demand of abolitionists and free-soilers that " no more 
 Slave States" should come into the Union, as well as the Southern 
 determination to extend Slavery north of 36 30', made it neces- 
 sary to find some new basis on which to found the right of the 
 slaveholders, everywhere-) to the protection of whatever species of 
 " property" they might carry along with them. 
 
 The suit of Virginia versus New- York, seeking the reversal of 
 Judge Paine's decision, which had liberated the slaves brought 
 into New- York by their claimant, Mr. Lemmon ; the decision of 
 Judge Kane in respect to Passmore Williamson, who had simply 
 informed the slaves brought into Pennsylvania by Mr. Wheeler, of 
 their right to freedom these are among the evidences of a deter- 
 mination to establish, by the Federal authorities, the right of slave 
 masters to hold slaves wherever they please to carry them. 
 
 The action of the Federal Executive in respect to Kansas, dur- 
 ing the past year, has been evidently based on the same principle, 
 
"State Equality:' 1 13 
 
 and has been directly aimed to give it practical effect. It is 
 deeply interesting, therefore, to learn the precise grounds on 
 which the present phase of constitutional exposition stands. 
 
 " STATE EQUALITY." 
 
 The new item, (if, in reality, there be any,) in addition to the 
 change of human property tenure, from positive municipal statute 
 to natural or common law, will be found to consist in the idea 
 represented by the phrases " State Equality? or " Equality of 
 the States." The import of the phrase, and the uses to which it 
 is to be applied, may be gathered from the following extracts. 
 
 At a Pennsylvania State Convention for nominating Mr. Bu- 
 chanan it was 
 
 " Resolved, That the Equality of the States is the vital element of the Constitu- 
 tion itself, and that the interference with the rights of the States by those who seek 
 to disregard the sacred guarantees of the past, and by all others, should be rebuked 
 with the same spirit that we would denounce and repudiate all attempts to erect 
 odious distinctions between those who are entitled to share the blessings and bene- 
 fits of our free institutions." 
 
 The allusions, here, to "interference," "guarantees," and "odious 
 distinctions," sufficiently indicate the reference of the Resolution to 
 Slavery, and show that the " rebuke" was levelled against all who 
 would interfere with it, anywhere in any State or Territory. 
 The " State Right" of maintaining slavery, so commonly conceded 
 to the Old Slave States, is here claimed for the New States, and 
 for the Territories out of which such States are to be formed. 
 This view of it will be confirmed by the following : 
 
 " THE CINCINNATI CONVENTION. An entirely new issue will be presented in the 
 approaching Presidential canvass an issue which it is impossible to avoid or 
 evade. The Opposition is essentially an Abolition party. It proposes to repeal 
 the Kansas-Nebraska act and the Fugitive Slave Law. It thereby denies State 
 Equality. The Democracy oppose the repeal of those laws, and seem thereby to 
 maintain State Equality. But all room for doubt or cavil must be removed. We 
 must, in the Cincinnati Platform, repudiate Squatter Sovereignty, and expressly 
 assert State Equality. We must declare that it is the duty of the General Govern- 
 ment to see that no invidious or injurious distinctions are made between the people 
 or the property of different sections, in the Territories. We do not mean to dictate. 
 It may be, that the assertion in the Platform of the abstract proposition of State 
 Equality may suffice to carry along with it the consequences which we desire. 
 But it is often charged, that the Kansas-Nebraska bill contains the doctrine of Squat- 
 ter Sovereignty, and that Squatter Sovereignty is the most efficient agent of Free- 
 Soilism. Some Northern Democrats have maintained this ground. Now, this gun 
 must be spiked. It must appear, from our Platform, that we maintain practical 
 
14 Cincinnati Platform. 
 
 State Equality, and repudiate that construction of the Kansas-Nebraska act which 
 would defeat it. The South only demands equality of rights." Richmond En- 
 quirer, April 28, 1856. 
 
 The meaning is obvious. Those who had previously opposed 
 the admission of new Slave States had conceded the Constitutional 
 right of the original States to maintain slavery, but had urged the 
 Constitutional right of restriction upon new States, making it a 
 condition that they should come in as free States. In the debates 
 on the Nebraska bill, the Slavery propagandists had carried the 
 vote over their opponents, by affirming the Constitutional equality 
 of the States, and that, whenever a State was admitted at all, it 
 was to be admitted on a footing of perfect equality with the 
 others. On this ground the Missouri Compromise was held to be 
 unconstitutional, and the same principle would repudiate the Jeffer- 
 sonian Ordinance of 1787. The " Squatter Sovereignty" doctrine, 
 however, had been affirmed, according to which the inhabitants 
 of the Territory might either establish slavery, or exclude it, as 
 they pleased. But this doctrine was now to be set aside, lest the 
 free-State men should preponderate. The Federal Government 
 was to be charged with the " duty" of protecting the "property" 
 of slaveholders in the Territory their " property" in slaves. 
 
 CINCINNATI PLATFORM. 
 
 The Cincinnati Convention was soon after held. It was a Na- 
 tional Convention of the Democratic Party, and nominated Mr. 
 Buchanan for President. The Resolutions adopted as a Platform, 
 by this Convention, declare that the Constitution is to be "strictly 
 construed" that it confers no powers for carrying on internal im- 
 provements, to assume State debts, to foster particular branches of 
 industry, to distribute public funds among the States, or to charter 
 n national Bank. It approves the " qualified Presidential veto," 
 lauds the Declaration of Independence, " which makes ours the 
 land of liberty, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation," 
 (not meaning to include the negro,) denounces the " Alien and 
 Sedition laws," (except those enforced in Kansas,) and all attempts 
 to proscribe and disfranchise men on account of their religion or 
 " accidental place of birth;" [forgetting to add " or complexion"!] 
 It then proceeds : 
 
 " Resolved, That we reiterate, with renewed energy of purpose, the well-con- 
 sidered declarations of former Conventions upon the sectional issue of domestic 
 slavery, and concerning the reserved rights of the States : 
 
Cincinnati Platform. 15 
 
 " 1. That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or 
 control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the 
 sole and proper judges of every thing appertaining to their own affairs not pro- 
 hibited by the Constitution ; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others, made to 
 interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in violation thereto, 
 are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences ; and that 
 all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, 
 and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be 
 countenanced by any friend of our political institutions." 
 
 The succeeding resolutions contain a pledge to abide by the 
 compromise measures of 1850, including particularly "the act for 
 reclaiming fugitives from service and labor" and " to resist all 
 attempts to renew anti-slavery agitation." It reaffirms the Ken- 
 tucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, and Mr. Madison's Vir- 
 ginia Report of 1799 (embracing the Southern doctrine of " State 
 Rights.") 
 
 To this summary of the former testimonies of the party, the 
 Convention adds others, " to meet more distinctly, the issue of a 
 sectional party, subsisting on anti-slavery agitation," etc., namely : 
 
 The Convention " recognize and adopt the principles" of the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill " non-interference by Congress with slavery 
 in State and Territory , or in the District of Columbia," declaring 
 this to be "the basis of the Compromise measures of 1850, con- 
 firmed both by the Democratic and Whig parties, in the election 
 of 1852." It recognizes the right of the people of the Territory 
 " to form a Constitution with or without domestic slavery, and be 
 admitted into the Union, UPON TEEMS OF PERFECT EQUALITY WITH 
 
 THE OTHEE, STATES." 
 
 The remaining Resolutions magnify the sacredness of "State 
 rights" the importance of " resisting all monopolies and exclusive 
 legislation, for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many" 
 and upholding " the compromises of the Constitution." They 
 also indorse " the Monroe doctrine," anticipate free communication 
 between the Atlantic and Pacific, recommend " every proper effort 
 to insure our ascendency in the Gulf of Mexico," [a hint concerning 
 Cuba,] and wind up with expressions of " sympathy" for the [filibus- 
 tering ?] efforts " which are being made by the people of Central 
 America." 
 
 This platform, it will be seen, was very skillfully contrived. 
 Many of its elements were well calculated to be popular, and es- 
 pecially to please and satisfy the old adherents of the party. The 
 seeming fairness of allowing the people of the Territory to deter- 
 mine their own institutions, was quite attractive to those who had 
 
16 Cincinnati Platform. 
 
 never thought of taking the negro into the account of human 
 beings, and who had forgotten that majorities can not take away 
 inalienable rights. By no party not planted upon these forgotten 
 truths was sitch a platform to be properly dissected and exposed. 
 
 The plausibility of the " Democratic" plea, and the secret of its 
 popularity and its power, even in Northern communities, may be 
 seen by the following extract from one of the journals of that 
 party : 
 
 " It has been the Democratic policy to regard the people of a Territory, when 
 organized like the people of a State, capable of self-government. No power on 
 earth can prevent any State in the Union, new or old, under the Federal Constitu- 
 tion, from becoming a slave State when its people choose. It is, therefore, and 
 must ever remain a question with the people of a State to dispose of for themselves, 
 and the Democratic party propose to leave the same question with the same peo- 
 ple while yet a Territory regarding the people of a Territory precisely as wise 
 while a Territory as they will be when they are the people of a State. But modern 
 ' Kepublicanism' insists that Congress ought .to legislate for them, and this is the 
 point in issue. Let those who have confidence in, and those who distrust the ca- 
 pacity of the people for self-government, whether in a State or a Territory, whether 
 in an old country or in a new, range themselves upon this question accordingly. 
 
 " The Democrats will meet the issue fairly, directly, and boldly, and have no fear 
 for the result. It was an alleged grievance by our fathers that the British Parlia- 
 ment would not permit them to legislate for themselves, but insisted on the right 
 to legislate for them, when the Colonies held the same relation to Parliament that 
 the Territories do to the Congress." 
 
 On the basis of this argument it was easy for this editor and his 
 Northern associates to deny that either themselves or their party 
 had any desire to assist in extending the area of slavery. They 
 only desired, they said, to preserve the constitutional rights of the 
 States, and the equal right of the people of the States and of the 
 Territories, to self-government. To the charge of being pro-slav- 
 ery on account of this concession, they could give their indignant 
 denial. They only conceded the same right to Kansas which the 
 " Republicans" themselves conceded to Missouri the right of 
 maintaining slavery, if they thought proper. If the " Democrats" 
 were to be branded as pro-slavery, for vindicating this right in 
 Kansas, why might not the " Republicans" be thus branded, for 
 conceding it to Missouri ? 
 
 This was the plea. And as the Republicans had conceded the 
 constitutional right of the States to maintain slavery, a large pro- 
 portion of the Democratic party, at the North, believed their party 
 to be no more pro-slavery than the Republican. There could be 
 no difference in principle, between them. If it were right to 
 allow slavery in one part of the nation, it could not be wrong to 
 
What was meant by the Cincinnati Platform? 17 
 
 allow slavery in another part of the same nation. If the Consti- 
 tution and State Rights ought to prevent Federal interference in 
 the one case, why not in the other ? The difference, at best, could 
 be only in degree. The two parties were agreed hi respect to the 
 proper treatment of all, or nearly all the slavery that actually 
 exists in the country. The only difference was in respect to the 
 small remaining fraction, and in respect to the location of future 
 increase. 
 
 Whatever of fallacy there may be to be detected in such deduc- 
 tions from the premises of " Constitutional protection to Slavery 
 in the States " premises held in common by both the contending 
 parties it may be recorded as a historical fact that nothing but 
 the apparent force of such reasonings, on the basis of the " Repub- 
 lican " concessions, has saved the Northern wing of the Demo- 
 cratic party from utter annihilation. How those reasonings should 
 have been met, is the question. 
 
 Another question, nevertheless, returns to us: 
 
 WlIAT WAS MEANT BY THE CINCINNATI PLATFORM? 
 
 How much was actually meant by the apparent recognition of 
 the right of the people of the Territories to frame their own insti- 
 tutions, maybe learned by the encomiums bestowed, by the same Con- 
 vention, on the administration of President Pierce, by whom the 
 Missouri invaders had been assisted to overthrow that right, and 
 also by their nomination of Mr. Buchanan, whose indorsement of 
 those acts of the President was equally unequivocal. 
 
 The hearty approval of the Editor of" the Richmond Enquirer, 
 Mr. Ritchie, by whom (as has been shown) the doctrine of " Squat- 
 ter Sovereignty" had been wholly repudiated, and who was a 
 member of the Convention, is equally significant. Immediately 
 after the Convention, Mr. Ritchie wrote the following, which ap- 
 peared as editorial in that paper of June 6th : 
 
 "With the utmost possible precision and emphasis of language, these resolutions 
 affirm the great vital principles, first, of the constitutional guarantees of Slavery; 
 and secondly, of the equality of the States, with respect to their sovereign dignity 
 and political rights. In equally clear and conclusive terms, the doctrine of Squat- 
 ter Sovereignty is repudiated by the platform of the Democratic party." 
 
 The Richmond Enquirer is the leading Democratic paper of the 
 South, and, on this point, speaks the sentiments of leading 
 Southern statesmen of all parties. No Northern Democratic 
 statesman, or editor of any note, is known to have dissented from 
 this position. 
 
 2 
 
18 What was meant by the Cincinnati Platform? 
 
 "CAN ANY SOUTHERN MAN DOUBT ? It is almost a work of supererogation to offer 
 further proofs upon the entire soundness of James Buchanan upon the question of 
 the constitutional rights of the South. The issue has been fully made, and, upon 
 argument, the South has decided to cast her votes for the Cincinnati nominees, 
 whose past history and present attitude show them to be thoroughly reliable. 
 What reason is there for the theory that Buchanan is a ' sectional ' candidate, 
 should the whole South go for him ? He stands upon a platform of the equality of 
 the States, and of full and exact justice to every section of the Union. The plat- 
 form and the candidates were adopted by the vote of the united Democracy, re- 
 presenting every district of every State of the Union. The Democratic party is 
 the only party that maintains the same ground in every State in the Union. The 
 great features of the Democratic platform, which James Buchanan has fully and 
 squarely indorsed, and of which he is a fair embodiment, are the equal rights of all 
 the States and sections, the quieting of the anti-Slavery excitement, and the guar- 
 dianship of the honor and interest of the nation." Richmond Enquirer of Aug. 21th, 
 1856. 
 
 The following, from the Charleston (S. C.) Mercury, is an ex- 
 tract of a speech by Hon. Laurence M. Keitt, M.C. : 
 
 " Sir, the next contest will be a momentous one. It will turn upon the question 
 of Slavery and the constitutional rights of the South. The South should establish 
 in the platform the principle that the right of a Southern man to his slave is equal, 
 in its length and breadth, to the right of a Northern man to his horse. She 
 should make the recognition of the right full, complete, and indisputable." 
 
 This shows the meaning of "State Equality." It means the 
 equal right of Southern Slaveholders and of Northern farmers, to 
 take their property, whether horses or negroes, wherever they 
 please, and to be equally protected by the Federal Government in 
 those rights ! 
 
 The Daily Union and American, (Nashville, Tenn.,) May 17th, 
 1856, gives an account of a discussion in the State Legislature "a 
 short time previous," and records the following : 
 
 " Messrs. Baily, Smith and others went so far as to assert, in effect, that Slavery 
 could only be carried where it is protected by local legislation; which is in direct 
 denial of the doctrine of the South, that the Constitution of the United States re- 
 cognizes Slavery, and protects it wherever that instrument extends. These are facts, 
 hard, stubborn facts, which no ingenuity can evade, or sophistry pervert." 
 
 This is an explicit affirmation* of the duty of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment to protect slave-property, in every part of the United 
 States, by its paramount authority. And this is affirmed to be " the 
 doctrine of the South." It is certainly the doctrine in process of 
 enforcement by the Federal troops in Kansas. It is the doctrine 
 of the Cincinnati Democratic platform, (as expounded by Mr. 
 Ritchie,) and of Mr. Buchanan, (who declared himself to be the 
 platform,) and o? the party that has supported Mr. Buchanan. 
 
What was meant by the Cincinnati Platform? 19 
 
 This last statement, together with its logical consequences, is em- 
 braced fully in the extract that follows : 
 
 " THE TRUE ISSUE. The Democrats of the South in the pending canvass can not 
 rely on the old grounds of apology and excuse for Slavery ; for they seek not 
 merely to retain it where it is, but to extend it into regions where it is unknown. 
 Much less can they rely on the mere constitutional guarantees of Slavery, for such 
 reliance is pregnant with the admission that Slavery is wrong, and, but for the 
 Constitution, should be abolished. Nor will it avail us aught to show that tho 
 negro is most happy and best situated in the condition of Slavery. If we stop 
 there, we weaken our cause by the very argument intended to advance it ; for wo 
 propose to introduce into new territory human beings whom we assert to be 
 unfit for liberty, self-government, and equal association with other men. "We must 
 go a step further. We must show that African Slavery is a moral, religious, natu- 
 ral, and probably, in the general, a necessary institution of society. This is the 
 only line of argument that will enable Southerners to maintain tho doctrines of 
 State Equality and Slavery Extension. For, if Slavery be not a legitimate, useful, 
 moral, and expedient institution, we can not, without reproof of conscience and the 
 blush of shame, seek to extend it, or assert our equality with those States having 
 no such institution. 
 
 "Our Northern friends need not go thus far. They do not seek to extend Slav- 
 ery, but only agree to its extension, as a, matter of right on our part. They may 
 prefer their own social system to ours it is right that they should. But, while 
 they may prefer their own social system, they will have to admit, in this canvass, 
 that ours is also rightful and legitimate, and sanctioned alike by the opinions and 
 usages of mankind, and by the authority and express injunctions of Scripture. 
 They can not consistently maintain that Slavery is immoral, inexpedient, and pro- 
 fane, and yet continue to submit to its extension. We know that we utter bold 
 truths, but the time has arrived when their utterance can be no longer suppressed. 
 Tho true issue should stand out in bold relief, so that none may mistake it." Rich- 
 mond Enquirer of June IQth, 1856. 
 
 It can not be mistaken, except by those who refuse information. 
 It will be found instructive to follow these developments still 
 further : 
 
 "The ensuing Presidential canvass will turn almost solely on the question of 
 Equality. None can consistently or effectively contend for State Equality who do 
 not hold that the institutions of the South are equally rightful, legitimate, moral, 
 and promotive of human happiness with those of the North. If slave society be 
 inferior in these respects to free society, we of the South are wrong and criminal 
 in proposing to extend it to new territory, and the North right in exerting itself to 
 the utmost to prevent such extension. But I go further: We must contend ours 
 is the best form of society ; for social organisms so opposite as those of the North 
 and the South, can not be equally well suited to people in all other respects so 
 exactly alike. We must surrender the doctrine of State Equality and Slavery 
 extension, unless we are prepared to meet the attacks of Black Republicanism 
 on our institutions, by making equally vigorous assaults on theirs. The President, 
 in his Annual Message, has clearly indicated this as the proper mode of defense 
 the true answer to Abolition." Charleston (S. <7.) Mercury of April Is*, 1856. 
 
20 What was meant by the Cincinnati Platform? 
 
 This is tendering to us the " true issue." Those who tell us that 
 we must meet the "issues" as presented to us by the Slave- 
 holders, (meaning the bare issue of Freedom or Slavery in Kan 
 sas,) would do well to learn, more correctly, what the' " issues " 
 presented to us, really are. Of the popularity and progress of the 
 "State Equality" doctrine, the following account is presented 
 to us : 
 
 'STATE EQUALITY. This new doctrine is the most popular ever broached by a 
 political party. In its application to our Territories, it was formally suggested but 
 a few months since. Yet it already commands the cheerful, unhesitating, and 
 cordial assent of the Democracy of the country, who constitute a majority of the 
 people, and is, besides, approved by every man with a Southern heart in his 
 bosom, no matter to what party he belongs. Many men, loyal to the South, 
 thought it unsafe to repeal the Missouri Compromise. They can think so no 
 longer, for that Compromise never did give satisfaction to North or South. The 
 North violated it in the case of California, and originated a party (the Freo- 
 Soilers) whose motto was, no more Slave Territory. It was the fruitful parent of 
 Abolition, because it contained and asserted Abolition. If Government might 
 and should prohibit Slavery north of 36 30' it might and should prohibit 
 it in all the Territories. If Slavery was wrong and inxpedient in the Territories, it 
 was equally wrong and inexpedient in the States. There is no excuse left to any 
 Southern man, whatever, to complain of the repeal of the Compromise. The Cin- 
 cinnati Convention leaves no room to doubt that the principle of State Equality 
 surpasses that Compromise in popularity, North and South. 
 
 " "We rejoice that the great issue in the canvass will turn on this doctrine, bo- 
 cause it will force the South into defending Slavery on principle. She contends 
 now for its equal extension with other social forms, and must contend that it is 
 equally worthy of extension. Her old grounds of apology and excuse will avail 
 her nothing. She must examine history and statistics, and prove that Slaves are 
 as well provided for, as happy and contented in the general, as hired laborers. 
 She can easily show that they are better off in all these respects than hirelings, 
 and, besides, far less addicted to crime. She must also show that Slave-owners 
 are the equals in morality, piety, courage and intelligence, to bosses and em- 
 ployers. It will be easy to prove that they are their superiors. It will only 
 remain for her to show that the Bible sanctions Slavery, and the victory will 
 be complete." Richmond Enquirer of June 13to, 1856. 
 
 "If Slavery was wrong and inexpedient in the Territories, it 
 was equally wrong and inexpedient in the States." True. And 
 if the Federal Government is not to protect it in the Territories, 
 it must not protect it in the States. The Slaveholders understand 
 the issue. Why can it not be understood by the statesmen op- 
 posed to them ? 
 
 Under the head of "The Slavery Agitation," the Richmond 
 Enquirer of Sept. 8th, 1856, says: 
 
 " Obviously, the omy mode of combating a party possessed with such a passion, 
 and pursuing so relentless a policy, is to accept its own desperate terms, and deter- 
 
What was meant by the Cincinnati Platform? 21 
 
 min, once for all, the issue in controversy. The Democracy have adopted this 
 plan, and have promulgated it with all the authority of their great Convention. 
 The principles at the basis of the Anti-Slavery (Republican) organization, could not 
 be more directly and boldly controverted than they are controverted in the Democratic 
 Platform. The conservation and constitutionalism of the South could not have a more 
 fit and significant representative than James Buchanan. As the creed of the party 
 clearly affirms the Equality of the States, and the illegality of any Federal restriction on 
 the rights of the South, so does its candidate declare his approval of the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise, and commit himself to the support of all the guarantees of 
 Slavery in the Union and under the Constitution." 
 
 As a commentary on this affirmed " illegality of any Federal 
 restriction on the rights of" slaveholding, we present evidence 
 that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was designed to establish slavery in 
 those Territories by Federal interference, and that any emigration 
 into them by free-State men, is deemed a reprehensible attempt to 
 defeat the purposes of that Act. In reply to Hon. Mr. Sumner, of 
 Massachusetts, Hon. John J. Evans, Senator from South-Carolina, 
 June 23, said : 
 
 " Well, sir, Kansas, although it is but one State, when added, will be good 
 against three more. And was it strange, then, that the South should desire pos- 
 session of Kansas, merely as a guaranty ? These, Mr. President, are the reasons 
 why we desire Kansas ; but it was not allowed. The very instant it was opened 
 to the Slave population, that instant there sprung up a contrivance, a machinery 
 was set in operation, of which I do not choose to speak the object of which was 
 to defeat this act of Congress, and, as was said by the Senator from Massachusetts, 
 to devote this Territory to a free population." 
 
 This shot was levelled at the Emigrant Aid Societies of New- 
 England. The President and his Secretary, Mr. Marcy his par- 
 tisans in Congress, the presses supporting the Administration, all 
 over the country, have denounced them. But why so f If " the 
 Southern man with his slave, and the Northern man with his horse, 
 are to be equally protected" where was the offense of Northern 
 emigration ? It was this. A population of free laborers, as was 
 proved in California, would vote to exclude slave-labor. And so 
 the Border Ruffians, by the aid of Gov. Shannon and Gov. Geary, 
 must virtually exclude them. " State equality," it seems, is only 
 to be realized by making all the States " equal" in their " equal 
 protection" of slaveholding their equal claim to the Federal pro- 
 tection of slave property. Does any one doubt that this is the 
 true rendering ? Let him examine what follows. 
 
 Hon. A. G. Brown, of Mississippi, in a speech in the U. S. Senate, 
 April 28, 1856, says: 
 
 "The advocates of State Rights have always held that the Territories are the 
 common property of the States ; that one State has the same interest in them as 
 
22 What was meant by the Cincinnati Platform f 
 
 another ; and that the citizen of one State has the same right to go to them as a 
 citizen of any other State. The corollary, therefore, has been that a citizen of <my 
 one State has the same right as the citizen of any other State to go into the Terri- 
 tories, and take with him whatever is recognized as property in the State from which 
 he goes. Thus, if a citizen of Massachusetts may go and take with him a bale of 
 goods, a citizen of Tennessee may go and take a barrel of whiskey ; and if a citizen 
 of New- York may go and take a horse, a citizen of Mississippi may go and take a 
 slave. It must be so, or else the equality of the parties is destroyed. Tennessee 
 becomes inferior to Massachusetts, and the rights of the Mississippian are inferior 
 to those of the New-Yorker." 
 
 This might be good logic, in favor of the protection of slave 
 property, 5 man were a legitimate subject of ownership, like " a 
 bale of goods," or " a horse." The " issue" presented by the pro- 
 slavery " Democracy," in the Presidential Election of the present 
 year, involved, emphatically, that question. And it ought not to 
 have been blinked by their opponents. Mr. Brown, above quoted, 
 visited Mr. Buchanan to inform him of his nomination, and said 
 of him, in a letter to Hon. S. R. Adams (published hi the Rich- 
 mond Enquirer of Aug. 27) " In my judgment, he is as worthy of 
 Southern confidence and Southern votes, as Mr. Calhoun ever was." 
 
 This is not exclusively Southern doctrine. Hon. John Cadwala- 
 der, of Pennsylvania, a leading Democrat and an intimate friend 
 of Mr. Buchanan, in a speech in the Hall of Congress, March 5, 
 said: 
 
 ' But as the Mexican laws locally in force had excluded slavery from these Terri- 
 tories, (the Territories acquired from Mexico,) the application of this principle to 
 them was illusory, so far as any possibility of participation in their further settle- 
 ment by slaveholders might be concerned. Property in slaves was thus in effect 
 excluded wholly from their limits. The principle of the former partitions having 
 become inapplicable, and slaveholding settlers having been altogether excluded 
 from this Territory, the slaveholding States were, of right, entitled to an indemnifi- 
 cation for their loss, if it could be afforded, by giving to them access with their 
 slaves to other territory. This principle was the moral basis of that praiseworthy 
 legislation of 1854" the repeal of the Missouri Compromise."* 
 
 Thus openly is it avowed by a Northern " Democrat" that the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill was designed to introduce slavery into free 
 Territory. And this he denominates " praiseworthy legislation" ! 
 
 * For these extracts we are indebted to an able article, in the N. Y. Tribwe, 
 Oct. 20, by Johnson H. Jordan, dated at Washington, D. C. 
 
Extent of the Pro-slavery Claim. 23 
 
 EXTESTT OF THE PRO-SLAVERY CLAIM. 
 
 We have made these copious quotations, in order to exhibit 
 fully and clearly the precise shape and form of the Constitutional 
 theories upon which the pro-slavery party, miscalled "Democratic," 
 had planted itself, in the Presidential contest of the present year. 
 Briefly stated, it embraces the following positions : 
 
 1. Slavery exists, legally, in this country, not in virtue of local, 
 municipal legislation, but by natural right, or by the authority of 
 custom. 
 
 2. It therefore exists (as is claimed by the slaveholders) without 
 limitation as to race or color and without limitation of geographi- 
 cal position. Both these conditions result from its existing inde- 
 pendently of local statute. 
 
 3. The "States" have the independent right of maintaining this 
 " institution," without the interference of the General Government. 
 
 4. The Constitution of the United States recognizes this institu- 
 tion, and the Federal Government is bound to protect it, equally, 
 in all parts of the country. Consequently; 
 
 5. Though " State Rights" and " State Sovereignty" include the 
 right of maintaining slavery, they do not include the right to 
 abolish or exclude it. 
 
 6. The States are equal : as having an equal right to maintain 
 slavery also, they are equal in having no right to exclude it. 
 
 7. Every slaveholder has a right to demand Federal protection 
 in carrying his slave property into every part of the country. 
 
 And this is called " State Equality" and " State Rights" ! To 
 oppose this universal Federal protection of slavery, is to oppose 
 " State Sovereignty" and " State Rights" ! It is to " consolidate" 
 the Federal Government, and make it an engine for oppressing the 
 inoffensive slaveholders ! But no violation of State Rights is to be 
 feared, and no danger of " consolidation" from the Federal protec- 
 tion of slavery hi all the States ! 
 
 This may seem like a caricature. And it may be doubted whe- 
 ther this is a fair representation of the " Democratic" platform. 
 But, if it be a caricature, it is a caricature drawn by their own 
 leading statesmen and editors a caricature which, in each of its 
 enumerated seven features, will be claimed to be a truthful like- 
 ness, by the leaders of the Southern wing of the party, by whom 
 the entire party is controlled. Very certainly, and very explicitly, 
 they claim that the slaveholders have a Constitutional right to take 
 their slave property into the Territories, and to be protected in 
 
24 How has the Claim been met f 
 
 that right. This principle, as well as the decision of Judge Kane, 
 and the claim of Virginia as. New-York, extends the demand to 
 the free States, likewise. And this amounts to a denial of any 
 Constitutional right in the States, to prohibit slavery. The pro- 
 posed reopening of the African Slave Trade, by Act of Congress, 
 involves the same doctrine, since it would doubtless be held that 
 no State could exclude slaves, if their importation were Constitu- 
 tionally authorized by the Federal Government. 
 
 How HAS THE CLAIM BEEN MET? 
 
 The Republican party very properly repudiates the claim, and 
 very earnestly places itself in opposition to it. But, on what prin- 
 ciples, and by what process of argumentation does it seek to enlist 
 the people against it ? It is one thing to come into Court with a 
 just cause. It is quite another thing to vindicate that just cause 
 by a sound and available plea. Many a good cause is lost, in 
 Court, by being defended on an indefensible basis. Public senti- 
 ment, in civilized communities, especially in Republics, constitutes 
 the highest Court of Appeal. And Presidential Elections, once in 
 four years, constitute the grand political assizes of that Court. It 
 is not enough to declaim vehemently and eloquently against the mon- 
 strous results of the theory in question. Revolting and abhorrent as 
 are those results, to those by whom they are clearly apprehended, 
 the theory that covers it up and sustains it,, is not wanting in* plausi- 
 bility and attractiveness to those who look only at the surface, who 
 are captivated by specious names, and who are not easily persuaded 
 to believe that the results attributed to those theories are realities. 
 The sophistry must be unravelled. The cheatery must be exposed. 
 And this must be done by separating, correctly, the Truth from 
 the Falsehood, and showing that unmixed Truth not only leads to 
 opposite conclusions, but is the very opposite of the theory that 
 has been made to appear so attractive. 
 
 It will avail nothing to rely, as some do, upon the conclusion 
 that legislative bodies and masses of voters, being already wed- 
 ded to their parties, are not to be benefited by correct reason- 
 ings, nor injured by sophistry. Courts and juries are not always 
 governed by correct reasonings, but the lawyer who, on that ac- 
 count, should be incautious hi his arguments, would be very liable 
 to make wreck of the most righteous cause. 
 
 The theory of the pro-slavery party must be met, confronted, 
 and overthrown, on solid ground on the basis of TETJTH : and no 
 
f G- 
 
 How has the Claim been met f 25 
 
 other method will be found effectual in the end. Has that theory 
 been thus met by the " Republican" party ? 
 
 That theory, as we have exhibited it, reposes upon these two 
 premises : First. That Slavery is constitutionally entitled to Fed- 
 eral protection in the States wherein it already exists. Second. 
 That the States are equal with each other, and that they are to 
 be treated as having equal rights. 
 
 These are the premises. The conclusions have been already 
 described. 
 
 How are these premises to be treated ? Are they both to be 
 admitted ? If so, how shall we avoid the conclusion ?* 
 
 Are they both to be rejected ? Would such rejection be in 
 accordance with truth ? Or, can the public sentiment of the 
 country be led to a rejection of both of them ? 
 
 If it would be a surrendry of the cause of freedom in Kansas 
 and elsewhere, to admit both the premises and if it be neither 
 truthful nor available to deny both of them it remains to inquire 
 which of the two should be admitted, and which should be denied? 
 
 * The conclusion drawn by the Richmond Enquirer, it may be thought, does 
 not follow legitimately from these premises. The Constitutional right of the slave- 
 holder to be protected in his property, in a State wherein Slavery exists under the 
 shield of State sovereignty, (it may be said,) does not clothe him with the right to 
 be protected in that property when he removes it into a sovereign State wherein 
 Slavery is not established. 
 
 This plea might stand, if the assumed right to hold slaves rested on State legis- 
 lation, or local, municipal, positive law. But it does not. That claim is abjured by 
 the slaveholder. And consequently, his right of slaveholding, if he has any, is not 
 to be restricted by it. If his right is to be recognized at all, it is to be recognized 
 upon the foundation upon which he places it, and upon no other. He places it 
 upon natural right, which claim, if admitted, allows no restriction to State bounda- 
 ries. 
 
 It may be inquired, further, how the doctrine " State equality" affects the 
 rights of the individual citizens of States ? 
 
 The answer is, that the rights of the State are nothing distinct from (or, at least, 
 they include) the rights of its citizens. At all events, the right claimed in this 
 case is, primarily, the right of the individual. If the right be satisfactorily recog- 
 nized and protected, the State, too, is satisfied ; but not otherwise. 
 
 If the States are equal, and may claim equal protection from the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, then their subjects may claim equal protection. If a citizen of Missouri 
 is entitled to Federal protection in his right of slaveholding, then (the States being 
 equal) a citizen of Kansas or of Iowa, is entitled to the same protection. And if 
 a citizen of Missouri, holding slaves, removes with them into Kansas or Iowa, he 
 forfeits not that same protection. For the citizen of one State has equal rights in 
 another State. 
 
 Such is the Southern idea. The question is, how to meet it, without denying, 
 in toto, the Constitutional right of slaveholding ? 
 
26 How has the Claim been met f 
 
 Shall we admit that Slavery is constitutionally entitled to Fed- 
 eral protection in the States wherein it exists ? And shall we 
 avoid the conclusion that Slavery is everywhere entitled to Fed- 
 eral protection, by pleading that the States are not equal ? That 
 the original States have rights to the Federal protection of Slavery, 
 which can not be claimed by the new States, admitted afterwards ? 
 That the Federal Government may impose conditions on the new 
 States, which shall place them on a different footing, in this re- 
 spect, from the old? 
 
 This has been the position of those with few exceptions who, 
 in our national councils, have opposed the admission of new Slave 
 States. But is it in accordance with truth ? The Constitution 
 says that new States may be admitted. But does it say that con- 
 ditions not involved hi the Constitution, nor binding on the other 
 States, may be imposed upon them, aa conditions of their admis- 
 sion? Does it make provision for having some States with a 
 Constitutional right to maintain Slavery, and for having some other 
 States without any such Constitutional right ? These questions 
 have been urged by the Slavery party. And have they ever been 
 met by their " Republican" opponents, and answered ?* Have the 
 opponents of Slavery extension, on the basis commonly occupied 
 by them, maintained their ground ? Have they not themselves 
 virtually receded from it ? The " Free-Soil " party and the " Free 
 Democracy " raised the flag of " No more Slave States." But the 
 Republican Convention at Pittsburg refused to raise it, and the 
 Philadelphia Convention neglected to do so. It is not to be found 
 in either of those two platforms. 
 
 Is it retained, in respect to the Territories ? If so, how, and on 
 what grounds, and to what good purpose is it retained ? Con- 
 gress, it is said, can exclude Slavery from the Territories. " But 
 how," demands the Slavery party, " can Congress exclude Slavery 
 from the Territories, if it is to be protected hi the States f n 
 
 The only answer to this is, that Slavery is to be protected only 
 in the States wherein it already exists, by force of municipal, local, 
 positive law. But Slavery does NOT THUS exist, in any one of the 
 
 * " Republicans" have said that the admission or rejection of new States is left 
 to the discretion of Congress. And from this they infer that Congress may impose 
 conditions of admission. Admitting this to bo, technically, correct, the practical 
 question returns : Is it probable that a people who permit Slavery in some of the 
 States, will perseveringly refuse to permit it in other States ? "Will they consider 
 it fair to do so ? If they will bend conscience to expediency hi the one case, will 
 they not in the other ? What are the lessons of experience on this subject ? 
 
How has the Claim been met f 27 
 
 States. The Slave States do not pretend it. The slaveholders do 
 not. They deny the statement, and repudiate every thing of the 
 kind. 
 
 Will it be insisted, on the other side, that Slavery in the Slave 
 States does thus exist, notwithstanding the disclaimers of the slave- 
 holders? And notwithstanding the absence, in all the Slave 
 States, of any law which ordains and establishes Slavery? It 
 seems a gratuity to concede to them a right of slaveholding on 
 grounds which they disclaim and repudiate! Such concession 
 becomes a nullity and a farce. 
 
 It remains that if the opponents of Slavery extension are to con- 
 cede, on any grounds, the Constitutional right of the slaveholders 
 to Federal protection, hi the States wherein it already exists, they 
 must concede the right, on the only grounds on which the slave- 
 holders tlwmselves claim it. They can concede it on no other 
 grounds. The concession could not be accepted on any other 
 grounds. 
 
 But to concede the right of slaveholding on the grounds upon 
 which it is claimed, is to concede it as a natural right the same 
 right by which men hold horses and oxen, and all kinds of legiti- 
 mate property. And to concede it, on this ground, is to concede 
 the right of holding slave property in all the Territories, and in all 
 the States, and also the claim of Federal protection for that right. 
 
 So that, if the right of slave property to Federal protection, 
 anywliere, is to be admitted, the right is to be admitted everywhere. 
 For this, and nothing else, is the right claimed. To concede 
 another right, which is not claimed, is evading the issue. It is not 
 meeting the question.* 
 
 * It may still be insisted that the slaveholder's claim might, possibly, be a sound 
 and valid one, resting on some basis of which the slaveholder is himself ignorant, 
 and which he repudiates, so that his claim is not to be sot aside by merely dis- 
 proving Ms idea of its basis. Be it so. It then remains for those who gratuitously 
 recognize the validity of his claim to tell us on what basis it rests, in their minds. 
 And here they will find themselves shut up to a choice of one of the three following 
 alternatives, namely: 1. They must find some positive municipal law, establishing 
 Slavery, and donning who aro slaves ; they must produce the statute, and tell 
 when, where, by whom, and by what competent authority it was enacted; or 
 2. They must maintain with Judge McLean, that long-continued usage is a suffi- 
 cient basis for Slavery ; or else, 3. They must adopt the latest and most highly 
 approved Southern theory, that Slavery exists by the law of the strongest, which 
 they call "natural right." 
 
 This last theory, as already observed, carries Slavery at once into the Territories, 
 on the same tenure by which it already exists in the States; the second concedes 
 
28 How has ike Claim been met f 
 
 Besides this, it is generally held, on all hands, that if the old 
 Slave States have the right to maintain Slavery, then, whatever 
 conditions may be imposed upon a State in order to its admission, 
 the State has full power to control itself afterwards. It may be 
 admitted on the condition of its having an Anti-Slavery Constitu- 
 tion. The condition of admission may be complied with at the 
 time. But as soon as admitted, the State may change its Consti- 
 tution and establish Slavery. And that Slavery then conies under 
 Federal protection, just as in the old Slave States, which renders 
 the process of Anti-Slavery restriction a mere nullity, a farce, 
 except for the short time intervening before the Territory is admit- 
 ted as a State. If any of those who hold the constitutional right 
 of the old Slave States to maintain Slavery dissent from this, we 
 are yet to be apprized of the fact. 
 
 And thus the doctrine of " State Equality " so much gloried 
 in by the Slavery party, and even hailed as a new discovery the 
 doctrine of " State Equality," so much denounced by the opposers 
 of Slavery extension, is found to have gamed its firm foothold in 
 our national politics already. 
 
 This is seen in the abandonment, by the "non-extension " party 
 of the motto of " No more Slave States." It was seen during the 
 debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and in the final vote on that 
 question. This has been seen, too, in the strong vote given, at 
 the North, for the candidate of the delusive and wicked Cincinnati 
 platform, and in the election of members of Congress. The " De- 
 mocracy," as it calls itself, appeared strong in its seeming vindi- 
 cation of "State Equality" and "State Rights." There was a 
 guilty sophistry at the bottom of it, which tens and hundreds of 
 thousands failed to detect and failed because it was not properly 
 
 It is always a difficult task to convince men that the political party, 
 to which they are attached, and with which they have long acted, 
 has become wholly recreant to justice and liberty. So long as the 
 designing leaders of the party can dress up plausible platforms, 
 covering up the practical iniquity with maxims of abstract equity, 
 so long they can usually succeed in hood-winking the great mass 
 of their partisans. And the designs of such leaders receive the 
 most effective assistance from opponents who place their oppo- 
 
 that it may be done by lapse of time; and the first, that it may, at any time, be 
 done by a majority, if not by an oligarchy. 
 
 The question is, whether Slavery extension is to be warded oflj in the use of 
 either of these theories. 
 
How has the Claim been met f 29 
 
 sition upon false grounds, and even go so far as to deny or deride 
 the abstract truths which they should concede, while they concede 
 the very core and pith of the practical falsehoods they should 
 condemn and expose. 
 
 Such, unhappily, have been the arguments, that, for the most 
 part, have been urged against the propagandists of Slavery, 
 against the Kansas-Nebraska bill, against the administration of Pre- 
 sident Pierce, and against the platform and nominees of the Cin- 
 cinnati Democratic Convention. Such has been the course of the 
 Free-Soil party, the Free Democracy, the Republican party, and 
 their leading men. Instead of denying the Constitutional right 
 of the old Slave States to the Federal protection of their Slavery, 
 they have conceded that iniquitous claim, and have denied the 
 equitable and Constitutional equality of the States. Instead of 
 denying the Constitutional right, either of the Territories or of 
 the new States, to maintain Slavery, and denying also, that the 
 old Slave States ever had any such right, they have derided 
 the right of the people of the Territories to govern themselves, 
 and have insisted (until quite recently) that the Federal Govern- 
 ment alone hold that prerogative. They have thus carried on 
 their political campaign under the double disadvantage of con- 
 ceding the iniquitous falsehoods they should have contended 
 against, and of contending against the evident truths that they 
 should have maintained.* 
 
 * Since this and the preceding paragraphs were put in type, we have met with 
 several indications of a discovery by Kepublican leaders, and by friends of Kansas, 
 that the controversy as conducted, has been a failure, and will continue to be so. 
 Senator Collamer has made a speech " showing that Congress has full power over 
 the Territories." The N. Y. Times calls it " LOGIC WASTED." " Whatever the elec- 
 tion may or may not have settled, it has settled this. And no future event can be 
 more certain, in our judgment, than that Congress will not, during the next four 
 years, exert any such power. The verdict of the people has been, substantially, in 
 favor of popular sovereignty, at aU events against the exercise of Congressional sove- 
 reignty over the Territories, in this respect" 
 
 To which we add the inquiry, whether 'that the verdict is likely to be reversed, 
 until the advocates of restriction cease conceding the right of the Slave States to 
 maintain Slavery. In the popular mind, will not the right of the people in the Ter- 
 ritories, in this particular, be always considered the same as the right of the people 
 of the States t 
 
 The Herald of Freedom, by G-. W. Brown & Co., Lawrence, Kansas, expresses its 
 views of Territorial rights, and its appreciation of the " Kepublican" mode of sup- 
 porting them, in terms not easily mistaken. Under the head of " NOT DECIDED," 
 it copies from a Eepublican paper as follows : 
 
 "REMEMBER that the election on Thursday nextj decides whether freedom or 
 slavery is the fate of Kansas and Nebraska, and all the unoccupied territory west 
 of them. Eastern Exchange before election, 
 
30 How has the Claim been met f 
 
 They placed themselves in the attitude of self-confutation, by 
 doing this. Their denial of the right of Slaveholders to the 
 Federal protection of their Slaveholding in Kansas, stood con 
 fronted by their concession of that pretended right to the Slave- 
 holders of Missouri. Their vindication of the rights of the Free 
 settlers in Kansas, to establish free institutions without inter- 
 ference from the Federal Government, stood check-mated by their 
 sneers at popular or " Squatter Sovereignty " in Kansas, and by 
 their constantly reiterated claim that Slaveholding (which they 
 admitted to be entitled to Federal protection in the States) should 
 be prohibited by the Federal authorities, as a crime, in Kansas ! * 
 
 To which the Herald of Freedom responds : " The election decided no such 
 question. We deny the right of the people, either of the Northern or Southern States, 
 to decide the character of our institutions, Missouri thought she had settled the 
 question, but she never committed a greater blunder." 
 
 The Herald is gloriously right in spurning the idea that the Federal G-overnment 
 can fasten slavery upon the Territories, though doubtless it has the right to protect 
 freedom, both there and in the States. AU governments, State or National, are 
 bound to protect personal liberty. 
 
 * It must be observed, here, that the theory and practice of the pro-Slavery 
 " Democracy " involve them in similar and even worse self-contradictions. "With 
 all their affirmations of "popular sovereignty" hi the Territories, they still follow 
 the old precedents of a Federal control over them. They appoint the Governors, 
 Judges, and other officers of Kansas, instead of allowing the settlers to elect them. 
 Not only so ; they appoint officers most obnoxious to the settlers, and uphold them 
 in the most outrageous acts of tyranny. Denying the Constitutional power of the 
 Federal G-overnment to prohibit Slavery in Kansas, they wield that power to 
 establish it And when the settlers, unable longer to endure it, proceed to form 
 and adopt a Free State Constitution, choose State officers, elect and convene a 
 State Legislature, and ask admission into the Union, the " Democratic" clamorers 
 for "popular sovereignty" in the Territories, denounce it as treason, though their 
 own previous course in the case of other Territories,, had abundantly furnished the 
 precedent. 
 
 Neither party have, in fact, exhibited any thing like straightforward consistency 
 in the matter. Neither party hesitates either to use or to repudiate " Squatter 
 Sovereignty;" to invoke or to deprecate Federal interference, as then- own tem- 
 porary exigencies, for or against Slavery, may seem to require. And it can not be 
 said that the past history of the country supplies any uniform rule in respect to it. 
 
 As neither of the parties, then, has any consistent and authorized theory of the 
 relation of the Federal Government to the Territories, we may venture to propound 
 our own. The settle'rs of a Territory, being citizens of the United States, carry 
 with them all their essential rights, as such, and as human beings ; just as the 
 Plymouth Colonists brought with them their rights, as human beings, and as British 
 subjects. But none of them brought any right to hold Slaves, for they never had 
 any such right, either moral, legal, or Constitutional. They have the right, and 
 are under obligation to establish a Government for the equal protection of the 
 inalienable rights of all ; but have no right, either moral or Constitutional, to estab- 
 
The Position of the Republican Party. 31 
 
 So far as the logic of their arguments and of their position, in 
 these particulars, was concerned, it all went against the results they 
 were aiming at. It confirmed the logic and vindicated the posi- 
 tion of their opponents. For whatever of support they received 
 at the ballot-box, they were indebted, not to their position, nor 
 to their logic, but to the better instincts and higher conscience 
 which enabled the people to rise above all processes of reason- 
 ing, and reach their own independent conclusions. The atrocities 
 enacted in Kansas were sufficient to show, independently of plat- 
 forms, that the party supporting the Administration was out- 
 rageously wrong. And had it not been for the unhappy confusion 
 of ideas and inconsistencies of position, with which the opposition 
 was justly chargeable, the reaction of public sentiment would have 
 been resistless and overwhelming, instead of being dubious and 
 uncertain. These statements will be confirmed by the facts fol- 
 lowing. 
 
 THE POSITION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 
 
 The "Republican" Convention at Pittsburgh, Feb. 2 2 and 2 3, was 
 planned and notified by politicians at Washington City, who deter- 
 mined that it should be of a conservative character. And it was 
 aiterwards commended to support by affirming that the " con- 
 servative" element prevailed against the more radical influences in 
 the Convention. It was presided over by Mr. F. P. Blair, a slave- 
 holder, of Maryland, who read a paper, which he called a Southern 
 platform, and which was " received with unbounded enthusiasm" 
 by the Convention. Its leading sentiments will appear, from the 
 following extracts : 
 
 "There is a great body of thinking men in the Southern States many, I know 
 in Maryland, a considerable number of my neighbors in Montgomery county who 
 deplore the repeal of the compromises relating to slavery, which all hoped had termi- 
 nated the distractions growing out of this disturbing subject, forever" 
 
 lish any Government subversive of any man's rights. The Federal Government 
 is bound to protect the people of a Territory in the exercise and enjoyment of 
 these just and Constitutional rights ; but it has no moral or Constitutional right to 
 infringe them. It is bound to "guaranty" to the people a "Republican form of 
 Government" which excludes Slavery. This covers, consistently, and without 
 self-contradiction, the whole ground, and affords a firm foothold for the friends of 
 freedom, without disparaging either Federal powers or Territorial rights. If the 
 clause of the Constitution that says, " Congress shall have power to dispose of, and 
 make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory or other property 
 belonging to the United States," may be cited as conveying civil jurisdiction, it 
 certainly contains nothing inconsistent with the preceding statement. 
 
32 The Position of the Republican Party. 
 
 After denouncing the treachery and intrigues by means of which 
 the Nebraska bill was introduced and passed, the "paper" pro- 
 ceeds : 
 
 " They" (the moderate people of the South) " were not aware of the treachery 
 of these (Northern) representatives to their constituents, nor did they anticipate the 
 excitement which had ensued from the wrong, aggravated by the betrayal by 
 which it was attended, nor the dangerous consequences likely to follow. Multitudes 
 of honest patriots in the slaveholding States, who love the Union, would willingly 
 restore the Compromise, the work of the great men of their own region. They 
 were sensible of the fatal effects of its dissolution upon the peace and prosperity of 
 the Confederacy, and of the inevitable destruction of the security in which they hold 
 the slave institution of the frightful scenes of civil war and SLAVE INSURRECTION 
 which might arise from the collisions between the two sections ; on the one side, 
 wearing the aspect of a war of conquest for the extension of slavery ; on the other, 
 a war of defense to preserve the rights of the emigrants, who have gone from their 
 bosom." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " The persons who have sent me to this Convention are the first, of the slavehold- 
 ing region, who have come forward to vindicate the cause of our common country 
 against this sectional influence. They are 'a body of business men of Baltimore, 
 who feel that their city especially, and the State of Maryland, have a great stake 
 depending upon the preservation of the Union and the peace of the country." 
 
 * ***** 
 
 "The repeal of the repealing clause of the Nebraska-Kansas Act would be the 
 finale of all the existing commotions, and of the eager ambition that originated 
 them. If* this single line is inscribed on our flag, we shall conquer under it. It 
 will be the Union flag." 
 
 ****** 
 
 "I hold that every issue should merge in that of repeal" 
 
 The plain meaning of which is, that the Missouri Compromise 
 must be restored, as a means of security to slavery. 
 
 The Address of the Convention itself was so constructed as not 
 to conflict with the preceding. Among its concessions and dis- 
 claimers were the following : 
 
 " The slaveholding interest can not be made permanently paramount, in the 
 G-eneral G-overnment, without involving consequences fatal to free institutions. 
 We acknowledge that it is large and powerful, that in the States where it exists 
 
 IT IS ENTITLED, UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, LIKE ALL OTHER LOCAL INTERESTS, 
 
 to immunity from the interferences of the General Government, and that it must ne- 
 cessarily exercise, through its representatives, a considerable share of political 
 power." 
 
 This concession accords well with the views of President Pierce, 
 as they had been previously expressed in his Annual Message : 
 
 "Hence the General Government, as well by tho enumerated powers granted 
 to it, as by those not enumerated and therefore refused to it, was forbidden to 
 
The Position of the Republican Party. 33 
 
 touch this matter (slavery) in the sense of attack or offense, it was placed under 
 the general safeguard of the Union, in the sense of defense against either invasion 
 or domestic violence, like all other local interests of the several States." 
 
 The measures of the Republican party were stated as follows : 
 
 "We do therefore declare to the people of the United States, as objects for which 
 we unite in political action : 
 
 "' 1. We demand, and shall attempt to secure the repeal of all laws which allow 
 the introduction of slavery into Territories once consecrated to freedom, and will re- 
 sist, by every Constitutional means, the existence of Slavery in any of the Territo- 
 ries of the United States.* 
 
 " '2. We will support, by every lawful means, our brethren in Kansas, in their 
 Constitutional and manly resistance to the usurped authority of their lawless in- 
 vaders, and will give the full weight of our political power in favor of the imme- 
 diate admission of Kansas into the Union, as a free, sovereign State. 
 
 " ' 3. Believing that the present National Administration has shown itself to be 
 weak and faithless, and that its continuance in power is identified with the pro- 
 gress of the slave power to national supremacy, with the exclusion of freedom from 
 the Territories, and with increasing civil discord, it is a leading purpose in our or- 
 ganization to oppose and overthrow it.' " 
 
 The Convention proceed to say that " when Franklin Pierce, on 
 the 4th of March, 1853, became President of the United States, no 
 controversy growing out of slavery was agitating the country." 
 But the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had reopened the con- 
 troversy. In speaking of the question concerning the institutions 
 of Kansas, the Address says, distinctly : 
 
 " The doctrine of popular sovereignty in the people of the Territories, has no 
 warrant or support in the Constitution." " So long as they remain Territories, 
 they are the possession, and under the exclusive dominion of the United States, 
 and it is for the General Government to make such laws for them, as their welfare, 
 and that of the nation may require." 
 
 The Address closes with the following : 
 
 " Disclaiming- anif intentions to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists, 
 or to invalidate those portions of the Constitution by which it is removed from national 
 control, let us prevent the increase of its political power, preserve the General 
 Government from its ascendency, bring back its administration to the principles 
 and practice of its wise and illustrious founders, and thus vindicate the Constitu- 
 tion and the Union, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
 terity." 
 
 By the Pittsburg Convention a Committee was appointed to 
 call a Nominating Convention, on the preceding Platform. In 
 the discharge of their duty, this Committee issued an Address, 
 
 What those " Constitutional means" are, the Convention does not define! 
 
34 The Position of the Republican Party. 
 
 setting forth the objects of the Kominating Convention, which 
 were thus stated : 
 
 "Why may not all those classes who are hostile to the introduction of slavery 
 into free territory, unite at this crisis of impending danger, to vote for a common 
 ticket, which will be nominated to assert the grand principle of repressing the ex- 
 tension of slaveholding monopoly, and vindicate the rights of the people in all sec- 
 tions of the Union, who labor with their own hands ? A ticket which will agitate 
 NOT with a view to detract from the rights of the States to dispose of the subject 
 within their limits, according to their sovereign will : yet its influence to destroy 
 the freedom of WHITE laborers is a fit subject of investigation, (1 ?) with a view 
 to repress the aggressive power in every Constitutional way." 
 
 Again, speaking of their Democratic opponents, the Committee 
 say: 
 
 " In their arrogance they stigmatize as ' Black Republicans' those who would 
 make a constellation of free bright republics, constituted of the "WHITE race 
 ALONE, untarnished by a slave of any color." 
 
 The Nominating Convention met at Philadelphia, the 17th of 
 June. It did nothing contradictory to the doings of the Conven- 
 tion that preceded it, or of the call under which it had assembled. 
 Its disclaimers of Federal authority over slavery in the States, 
 though less offensively stated, were, in reality, retained. This 
 was done by adverting to the " self-evident truths" of the Decla- 
 ration of Independence, and then adding that "the primary object 
 and ulterior design, of our Federal Government were to secure 
 these rights to all persons under their exclusive jurisdiction," 
 meaning in the Territories, and plainly suggesting that the Gor- 
 ernment was not to apply the same principle within the States ! 
 This was done, still further, by quoting the Constitutional provi- 
 sion that " no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, 
 without due process of law" and then saying, " It becomes our 
 duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all at- 
 tempts to violate it in the Territories of the United States !" thus 
 plainly teaching that its violation in the States was to be passed 
 over with impunity. So that the Declaration of Independence 
 made by the "Representatives of the United States," and the 
 " Constitution of the United States" so far as the principles and 
 the safeguards of liberty are concerned are not at all for the 
 States, who declared and ordained them, but for " the Territories" 
 only! 
 
 In the selection of their Presidential Candidate, the Republican 
 Convention at Philadelphia placed itself precisely on the same 
 platform with the Pittsburg Convention. It nominated COL. FRB- 
 
The Position of the Republican Party. 35 
 
 MONT, in response to a letter from him, which was read in the 
 Convention, and which was received with acclamation. In this 
 letter he said : 
 
 11 While lam inflexible in the belief that it [slavery] ought not to be interfered with 
 where it exists, under the shield of State sovereignty, I am as inflexibly opposed to 
 its extension beyond its present limits." 
 
 Of the manner in which the Opposition party in Congress has 
 discharged its responsibilities, some statements have already been 
 made. Of the general tone of Republican speeches and editorials, 
 in the country at large, we can not and need not speak at much 
 length. While much important information has been diffused by 
 them, and many noble and just sentiments advanced, we fear that, 
 on the whole, the standard has not been raised higher than in the 
 two National Conventions. In some instances, toward the close 
 of the campaign, it has sunk lower. The determination to secure 
 freedom for Kansas has been more faintly expressed. Instead of 
 demanding, as at first, that "Kansas should be immediately ad- 
 mitted^ as a State of the Union, with her present Free Constitu- 
 tion^ (for this was the language of the Philadelphia Convention,) 
 there has seemed a tendency to recede to the position that Kansas, 
 as well as other new States, is to be admitted either with or with- 
 out slavery, as the people therein residing shall determine, pro- 
 vided only that there be no external interference or violence, 
 either from the people of neighboring States or from the Govern- 
 ment thus falling back upon the " Squatter Sovereignty" theory, 
 but without the only true corrective, namely, a denial of the right 
 of any State or Territory to establish slavery. 
 
 As specimens of this retreating tendency, it is suflicient to re- 
 cord an extract (from the New- York Tribune) of a speech of Mr. 
 Speaker BANKS, in "Wall street, New-York, September 25th. 
 After disclaiming, for his party, any desire to interfere with 
 Slavery in the States, Mr. Banks proceeded to say : 
 
 " The question is not that we shall legislate against the South upon the ques- 
 tion of Slavery. It is not that we shall legislate upon the question of the Fugitive 
 Slave bill. "We don't raise the question whether, in the future extension of our 
 Territory, Slavery shall be prohibited or no. We abandon all these questions, and 
 we stand upon this distinct simple proposition, that that which gave peace to the 
 country in 1820, and that which secured the peace of the country in 1850, ought 
 to be made good by the G-overnment of the United States with the consent of the 
 American people. That is all we ask no more, no less, no better and no worse 
 that the spirit of the Acts of 1820 and 1850 shall be made good by the Ameri- 
 can people of the South, let me say, as well as the North, in the place of the con- 
 flagration, murder, and civil war that now prevail in Kansas. To do this, no 
 
36 The Position of the Republican Party. 
 
 legislation is required, and it is not necessary that the halls of Congress should be 
 again opened to agitation. "We desire the election of a President of the United 
 States with simple views and determined will, who will exert the influence of the 
 Government in that portion of the Territory of the United States, and allow the 
 people of this country* to settle the question of Slavery for themselves there. 
 [Applause.] "We ask no man more than this, and when we have succeeded in the 
 Presidential election before us, as in the grace of God we shall and will succeed, 
 [great applause f ] and the fact is prociaimed that Fremont is elected, Kansas will 
 be again restored to freedom without legislative act, or the interference of the 
 hand of Government in any way. [Applause.] So much, gentlemen, for the re- 
 medy in regard to Kansas, that we propose. It is a simple, feasible, and states- 
 man-like proposition. Effect the settlement of this question, and you remove a 
 question of agitation, and give again the peace which it enjoyed in 1852. I should 
 do wrong to our cause, the cause of the Northern States, if I failed to say that 
 there are other influences we desire to exert by the elevation to the Presidency 
 of the man of our choice. We ask that the dead weight of human wrong shall be 
 lifted up from the continent again, that it may rise as it was rising before these 
 acts of wrong were done. [Applause.] "We ask of you, fellow-citizens of New- 
 York, four years of quiet and peace, so that we may again proceed to the develop- 
 ment of tho material interests of that portion of the continent which we occupy." 
 
 This is an explicit abandonment of " non-extension." The peo- 
 ple of Kansas are to " settle the question of Slavery for them- 
 selves." "Peace" and safety are to be regained, by going 
 back to the Compromise-measures of 1850, and reposing upon 
 them. The downward tendency and retreating course of political 
 " non-extension " (resorted to either as a substitute or as a prepa- 
 ration for abolition) are here clearly seen. 
 
 Nor have these vacillating and retreating tendencies of the 
 Republican party been unobserved or unimproved by their Demo- 
 cratic opponents. Their editors and public speakers have greedily 
 seized upon such manifestations and have held them up in triumph, 
 as confirmations of the soundness of the Democratic platform, and 
 as presages of a " Democratic " triumph, and of a " Republican " 
 overthrow. An instance we may mention, in the speech of Hon. 
 Rufus Choate, at Lowell, Mass., in the course of which he re- 
 viewed the speech of Mr. Banks, already quoted, and showed that 
 it was a concession of one of the principal points in debate be- 
 tween the two parties. The defeat of the Republican party may 
 be sufficiently accounted for, by the concessions made in that 
 singje speech of Mr. Banks, approved and lauded as it was by Re- 
 publican editors. V-* 
 
 * The New- York Herald's report has it : " so as to allow its people to settle the 
 question for themselves, there." This was evidently the meaning. 
 
Previous Experiments. 37 
 
 PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 II farther illustrations were needed of the downward tendency 
 of efforts for mere non-extension, the entire history of such efforts, 
 in times past, is full of important instruction. 
 
 The advocates of mere " non-extension " are never tired of for- 
 tifying their position, by pointing to the policy of our fathers. 
 They glory in seeking to bring back the country to the principles 
 and measures of Washington and Jefferson. They follow the 
 example (they tell us) of those who established the Ordinance of 
 1787, for the North-Western Territory, and for the important 
 States that have been formed out of it. And here closes the story 
 of the benefits of that policy. They forget to tell us that even the 
 North- Western States, and all the other nominally Free States, 
 are at this moment, insecure, and that they have all along been 
 hunting-ground for Slaves, to the utter insecurity of personal 
 liberty. They forget how those same illustrious " non-extension " 
 statesmen, gave us the first Fugitive Slave bill, the admission of 
 two new Slave States, the unconstitutional establishment of Slavery 
 in the Federal District, and the purchase of Slaveholding Louisiana, 
 thus inaugurating the policy that is still continued, and that has 
 brought us, step by step, into our present condition. " Non-ex- 
 tensionists" professedly such have done all this for us. At- 
 tempted "non-extension" (as a substitute for Abolition) has 
 brought upon the nation what it now suffers. 
 
 " Non-extension," after a feeble resistance to the admission of 
 slaveholding Missouri, yielded the point, by a disgraceful and 
 wicked Compromise, as oolish as it was wicked, by which the 
 Slave-power secured all it wanted then, with the vantage-ground 
 which, afterwards, enabled it to seize the relinquished Territory. 
 
 The steady and consistent fidelity of "non-extensionists " to 
 " non-extension," is a phenomenon seldom if ever witnessed. The 
 signature of Washington was appended to the reaffirmed North- 
 Western restriction, in 1789, and to the admission of slaveholding 
 Kentucky three years afterwards. The same Jefferson who so 
 solicitously excluded Slavery from the North-Western Territory, 
 in 1787, became clamorous for the unrestricted admission of Mis- 
 souri, in 1819-20. 
 
 For eight years, the annexation of Texas was resisted, but was 
 consented to, afterwards, thus demonstrating that Slavery per- 
 mitted to live is, eventually, Slavery permitted to make progress. 
 
38 Previous Experiments. 
 
 All it asks is a place for its root, in the soil. Its own nature and 
 the nature of things, stand pledged to its consequent growth. 
 And those who aim merely at non-extension, while they consent 
 to existing Slavery, for want of self-consistency become unstable 
 and gradually relax their efforts. 
 
 Still later experiments have produced similar results, and con- 
 firm the same lesson. We copy from an editorial of the New- 
 York Daily Tribune of October 29th, 1856: 
 
 "When, in 1846, President Polk sent a message to Congress, asking that money 
 be placed at his disposal to facilitate the negotiation of a peace with Mexico, every 
 body understood this proposition as looking to a purchase of Mexican Territory, 
 and a strong solicitude was spontaneously expressed that the Territory so acquired 
 should not be cursed with Human Slavery. A consultation among the Democratic 
 members from the Free States was has Lily had, in consequence of which Mr. David 
 Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, proposed to amend the first section of the bill as reported, 
 by adding : 
 
 "'Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition 
 of any Territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, by virtue of 
 any treaty which may be negotiated between them, and to the use by the Execu- 
 tive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude 
 shall ever exist in any part of said Territory, except for crime, whereof the party 
 shall first be duly convicted.' 
 
 "This Democratic proposition appeared so reasonable and just that every Whig 
 from the Free States voted for it, and every Democrat also but three. The repre- 
 sentative of the Berka District, Pennsylvania, was among its firmest supporters. 
 The South solidly opposed it; but it was carried by the strong vote of 83 to 64. 
 The bill thus amended passed the House, but failed for want of time in the Senate, 
 and Gten. Cass went home complaining that John Davis of Massachusetts, by talk- 
 ing against time, had prevented, the adoption of this salutary Proviso, for which he 
 said he was anxious to vote. 
 
 " The next year, (1847) most of the Legislatures of the Free States passed resolves 
 approving of the principle affirmed. Here is a fair sample hi the resolves of the 
 Legislature of New-Hampshire then strongly Democratic : 
 
 "" 'Resolved, ty the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened, 
 That we regard the institution of Slavery as a moral, social, and political evil, and, 
 as such, we deeply regret its existence, and are willing to concur in all reasonable 
 and constitutional measures that may tend to its removal. 
 
 " ' Resolved, That in alV Territory which may hereafter be added or acquired by 
 the United States, where Slavery does not exist at the tune of such addition or 
 acquirement, neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for the punish- 
 ment of crime, whereof the party has been duly convicted, ought ever to exist, but 
 the same should ever remain free ; and we are opposed to the extension of Slavery 
 over any such Territory ; and that we also approve of the vote of our Senators and 
 Representatives in Congress in favor of the Wilmot Proviso. 
 
 " ' Resolved, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representa- 
 tives be requested, by all expedient and constitutional means and measures, to 
 sustain the principles herein above set forth. 
 
 "' MOSES NORRIS, JR., 
 
 '"Speaker of the House o Representatives. 
 " ' HARRY HIBBARD, President of the Senate. 
 " ' JARED W. WILLIAMS, Governor.' 
 
Previous ^Experiments. 39 
 
 "In each of the two following years, successive New-Hampshire Legislatures, 
 still strongly Democratic, passed simila rresolves, as did those of all the other De- 
 mocratic Free States, Iowa only excepted. 
 
 " In 1847, (Oct. 6th,) a Whig State Convention was held at Syracuse, in our State, 
 whereof James Brooks, editor of the New- York Express, was a member ; and to 
 him was confided the duty of drafting the address to the people of our State. In 
 that address Mr. Brooks, with the hearty assent of the entire Convention, speaks 
 of Slavery Extension as follows : 
 
 " ' We protest, in the name of the Rights of Man and of Liberty, against the 
 further extension of Slavery in North- America. The curse which our mother 
 country inflicted upon us, in spite of our fathers' remonstrances, we demand shall 
 never blight the virgin soil of the North-Pacific. We feel that it would be a hor- 
 rible mockery for the columns of Anglo-Saxon immigration to be approaching and 
 looking down upon the dark, benighted region of Asiatic despotism, with Africans 
 enslaved under the banners that lead their march, " as westward the Star of Empire 
 takes its way." We have no desire to infringe upon any one of the Compromises 
 of the Constitution. The Constitution as it is, and the country as it is, are good 
 eneugh for us. We Whigs of the North are conservatives of the Constitution, in 
 its essence and in its every word and letter. The fell and mischievous results of 
 Abolitionism are nowhere better understood or more contemned than in New- York. 
 But we will not pour out the blood of our countrymen, if we can help it, to turn a 
 Free into a Slave soil. We will not spend from fifty to a hundred millions of dol- 
 lars per year, to make a slave-market for any portion of our countrymen. We 
 will never, for such a purpose, consent to run up an untold National Debt, and 
 saddle our posterity with fund-mongers, tax-brokers, tax-gatherers, laying an ex- 
 cise or an impost on every thing they taste, touch, or live by. The Union as it is, 
 the whole Union, and nothing but the Union, we will stand by to the last ; but No 
 More Territory is our watchword unless it be free.'' 
 
 "Now, this same James Brooks is one of the noisiest advocates of acquiescence 
 in Slavery Extension, and nightly sits up with the Union for fear that the ' Black 
 Republicans ' will destroy it by keeping Slavery out of Kansas and Nebraska ! 
 ****** 
 
 " Josiah Randall, of Philadelphia, is another ex- Whig who is now busily de- 
 nouncing the Republican party as sectional and dangerous to the Union, and 
 therefore (he says) he supports Buchanan. Yet nearly forty years ago (in 1819) 
 this same Mr. Randall, then a member of the Pennsylvania House, himself called 
 the Yeas and Nays upon and voted for a preamble which forcibly denounced the 
 contemplated admission of Missouri as a Slave State, stigmatizing it as a measure 
 'which has a palpable tendency to impair the political relations of the several 
 States; which is calculated to mar the social happiness of the present and future 
 generations ; which, if adopted, would impede the march of humanity and freedom 
 through the world ; and would transfer from a misguided ancestry an odious stain, 
 and fix it indelibly upon the present race a measure, in brief, which proposes to 
 spread the crimes and cruelties of Slavery from the banks of the Mississippi to the 
 shores of the Pacific.' 
 
 " Mr. Randall and his associates proceed to say, that ' it can not be pretended 
 that the rights of any of the States are at all to be affected by refusing to extend 
 the mischiefs of human bondage over the boundless regions of the West ' and 
 conclude by adopting, as the unanimous sentiment of Pennsylvania, the following: 
 
 " ' Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of 
 Pennsylvania, That the Senators of this State, in the Congress of the United States, 
 be and they are hereby instructed, and that the Representatives of this State, in 
 the Congress of the United States, be, and they are hereby requested, to vote 
 
40 Previous Experiments. 
 
 against the admission of any Territory as a State into the Union, unless said Terri- 
 tory shall stipulate and agree that 'the further introduction of Slavery or involun- 
 tary servitude, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have 
 been duly convicted, shall be prohibited ; and that all children born within the said 
 Territory, after its admission into the Union as a State, shall be free, but may be 
 held to service until the age of twenty-five years.' ' 
 
 " Daniel S. Dickinson, on one occasion when the "Wilmot Proviso was before 
 the Senate, protested against its interpolation into a Supply bill in tune of war, 
 saying he was in favor of the principle, but not of its assertion in that connection. 
 (We can not at this moment put our finger on his speech to this effect, but our 
 recollection of it is very decided.) 
 
 "Greene C. Bronson, in 1848, .wrote a letter to a meeting of Barnburners, avow- 
 ing himself opposed to the Extension of Slavery. 
 
 In short, before the Slave Power began to bluster and threaten, the con- 
 currence of sentiment in the Free States in favor of excluding Slavery from all 
 Territories not already cursed by it, was all but universal." 
 
 ****** 
 
 Thus far we have quoted from the Tribune. Its principal Editor 
 and Proprietor, HORACE GREELEY, has collected and published a 
 documentary " HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SLAVERY EXTEN- 
 SION OR RESTRICTION IN THE UNITED STATES, from the Declara- 
 tion of Independence to the present day," etc. a very valuable 
 and timely work. It exhibits (as it was doubtless intended to do) 
 the vast amount of labor that, has been expended by large num- 
 bers of the most able and popular statesmen of the country, of dif- 
 ferent parties, to prevent the extension of slavery. Their example, 
 and the influence of their honored names, are brought forward to 
 sanction and encourage similar efforts now. But the work also 
 exhibits (whatever was intended by itj the almost entire failure of 
 those efforts, especially of those of a recent date. Missouri, in 
 despite of the opposition, was admitted, and the territory then 
 exempted by a compromise, has lately been seized upon. Texas 
 has been admitted, and the Wilmot proviso defeated. California, 
 Oregon, and the States formed out of the North-Western Terri- 
 tory, nominally, have thus far escaped slavery, but this is counter- 
 balanced by the admission of slaveholding Louisiana, Florida, 
 Texas, and (prospectively) New-Mexico to say nothing of Cuba 
 and Central America. Our present condition and prospects, as 
 Mr. Greeley understands them, are thus set forth, at the close of 
 the article already quoted from, in the Tribune of Oct. 29. 
 
 "The Republican party, and that alone, stands clearly on the ground first marked 
 out by Thomas Jefferson in 1784, and unanimously affirmed by the last Continental 
 Congress in '87 and the first Federal Congress in '89 the ground maintained by 
 the Free States in 1818-20, and again in 1846-48. If we are beaten in this Elec- 
 tion, the North is completely backed down from all the distinctive ground she has 
 hitherto taken, and slavery is established as the natural condition of the Territories, 
 
Lessons of Experience. 41 
 
 while freedom is made the local and casual exception. If we are beaten now, it is 
 settled that the Slave Power has but to demand and threaten, to secure whatever 
 further concession it may see fit to require. The right of the slaveholder to bring 
 his human chattels into free States, and the reopening of the African Slave Trade, 
 are all that remain to be exacted, to render the enthronement of slavery complete. 
 And these can both be carried with a lighter shock to the sensibilities of the North 
 than was given in the repudiation of the Missouri Compact." 
 
 \ LESSONS OP EXPEEIENCE. 
 
 This, then, is the condition into which we are brought by an 
 EIGHTY YEARS' EXPERIMENT OF THE "NON-EXTENSION" POLICY, 
 connected (except at an early date, the only period of its efficacy) 
 with disclaimers of abolition. As soon as abolition came to be dis- 
 claimed or postponed, " non-extension" gave way to " extension," 
 and thus " the great struggle" becomes less and less hopeful. If 
 any thing is to be learned by this Eighty Years' " Struggle" con- 
 firming the deductions of reason it is this, that " NON-EXTENSION" 
 without ABOLITION is, in the long run, and on the whole, a failure. 
 Incidental exceptions confirm the general rule. The closing pic- 
 ture of the Tribune attests this. And the temporary or seeming 
 rescue of Kansas, should it occur, either with or without a " Re- 
 publican" triumph, would add but a flickering light to that dark 
 picture. 
 
 " The Republican party," says the Tribune, " stands clearly on 
 the ground first marked. out by Thomas Jefferson, in 1784." Then 
 " the Republican party stands clearly" on the ground of " empti- 
 ness," marked out by " the plummet of confusion" where " Kon- 
 extension" has stood for the last eighty years ! Instead of having 
 made progress, it has gone backward. Its contrast of position is 
 marked by placing its 1856 by the side of its 1784. See what it 
 is now, as compared with what it was then. From this, the mea- 
 sure of its past, may be computed its future. What the Tribune 
 apprehends from a Republican defeat, may be expected either with 
 a Republican defeat or a Republican triumph, unless Republican- 
 ism can learn that "Non-'Extension" is to be reached in no way 
 but by Extinction. High time is it, after an eighty years' disas- 
 trous experiment, to explode the transparent fallacy of either 
 facilitating extinction, or of compensating for the absence of it, by 
 a previous "Non-extension." What Washington, Franklin, and 
 Jefferson, in the plenitude of their popularity and power, and in 
 the feeble infancy of slavery, could not or dared not do ; what 
 John Quincy Adams and Van Buren could not do ; what Webster, 
 Clay, and FiUmore could not or did not do (for all these are 
 
42 Lessons of Experience. 
 
 claimed as having been ISTon-Extensionists) what Chase, Hale, 
 Seward, Sumner, and Giddings have not been able to do, is not 
 very likely to be done by their successors, the leaders of the pre- 
 sent Republican party, who have not attempted more, nor stood 
 more firmly, nor brought more comprehensiveness of vision or 
 mental power to the work. It is no disparagement either to the 
 earlier or the later generations of " Non-extensionists" to say, that 
 they could not and can not do what, in the nature, of things, can 
 not be done. We would not deny that local and temporary ad- 
 vantages may, at tunes, be gained by restriction ; and we would 
 earnestly insist that every effort for the extension of slavery, in 
 whatever direction, should be firmly resisted by the friends of 
 freedom, by every consistent and lawful measure. But among 
 such measures we could not include the support of parties and can- 
 didates opposed to the abolition of existing slavery, which would 
 be doing evil that good may come. We would not rely on the 
 best measures of restriction, to work out the future extinction of 
 slavery, or even to afford permanent security to any portion of the 
 country, while any other portion of it is relinquished to slavery. 
 
 We do not say that the Republican party, had it been tri- 
 umphant in this election, might not successfully roll back the tide 
 of pro-slavery aggression. We think it could and would, if it could 
 but be persuaded to accurately count the cost, and magnanimously 
 consent to pay the price, namely, a radical and resolute change of 
 its policy. But we have no faith in its ability to do it in any other 
 way. We do not believe in its power to disarrange the order of 
 nature, to repeal the laws of moral and political cause and effect, 
 or to reverse all the lessons of past history. We do not believe it 
 could prevent the future extension of slavery, under the Federal pro- 
 tection, into all the Territories and all the States, if it continued to 
 concede to the slaveholders of any one of the States the right of 
 Federal protection for their slaveholding. We do not believe that 
 the people of the Nation, or even of the ISTon-slaveholding States, 
 can be made to settle down into a resolute and effectual denial of 
 the Constitutional right of elaveholding in one part of the country, 
 while they concede that same right to the slaveholders in another 
 part of the country. When forced, as they soon must be, to act 
 upon the slaveholder's claim to property in man, not as resting upon 
 any local or State enactment, but upon " natural right," they will 
 be compelled either to deny the claim to all the citizens of all the 
 States and Territories, or else concede it to all of them. The 
 statesman or the party that asks their vote against the extension 
 of slavery, must give them an opportunity to vote against the ew 
 
Lessons of Experience. 43 
 
 istence of slavery. They will see in the latter the only adequate 
 and sure means of the former. 
 
 Or if, on the other hand, the people finally conclude to continue 
 their indorsement of the Constitutional right of slaveholding in the 
 slave States, yielding to the claim of the slaveholders as a natural 
 right, they will, of necessity, be driven to concede the same Con- 
 stitutional right of the slaveholder to carry his slaves into all the 
 Territories and all the States, in accordance with the present de- 
 mands of the Oligarchy, and with the policy of President Pierce.* 
 
 The same result will also be witnessed in Congress and in the 
 Cabinet. The Constitutional right of the slaveholders to the pro- 
 tection of their slave property in all the States and Territories, 
 will have to be ACKNOWLEDGED, or, else it will have to be DENIED 
 in respect to all of them. The changed position of the slavery 
 party, in respect to the ground of their claim on slave property, 
 has forced this alternative upon the Government and upon the 
 country. Is the Republican party, prepared, or in process of pre- 
 paring itself, to grapple with this question, and to decide it in favor 
 
 * In all the debates in Congress, on the Nebraska bill and on the affairs of Kan- 
 sas, we have found no Free Soiler or Republican who has based an argument against 
 the admission of slaves into Kansas, on the ground of the illegality of Slavery, in 
 tfie Slave States, or, that human beings are not property. We may extend the same 
 remark to all the Republican Conventions, public speeches, and newspaper discus- 
 sions, during the Presidential canvass. They have uniformly taken the ground that 
 Slavery can not lawfully go into the Territories, because, in the Territories, there is 
 no local positive law, creating the relation. Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, in a speech 
 in the Senate, during the present session, places the argument expressly on that 
 ground. "We deny," says he, "that there ia any Constitutional right, on the part 
 of any Southern man, to go into a free Territory, and carry his slaves with him. 
 "We say that Slavery can exist there only by force of positive law" This carries the 
 implied admission that it does thus exist in the Slave States, and might thus be 
 established in Kansas. Granting them this, the slaveholders readily claim their 
 "rights of property ," and very plausibly claim their equal rights, with Northern citi- 
 zens, of carrying their "property" into the Territories. The true way to silence 
 this clamor is, to deny the right of property altogether. They have no such " pro- 
 perty " to be carried anywhere, and the Constitution recognizes no such property. 
 We have the testimony of Mr. Madison, that in the Federal Convention, he himself 
 objected to any such recognition, and that the Convention, on motion of Mr. Ran- 
 dolph, unanimously changed the word "servitude" to "service," in the Apportion- 
 ment clause, on purpose to avoid the appearance of any such recognition. The 
 Madison papers also prove that in the same clause, the appotionment of taxes was 
 intended to be based upon the number of wealth-earning inhabitants, not upon any 
 number of slaves, more or less, considered as property. Neither the rendition nor 
 the importation clause describe or recognize property in man. No Constitutional 
 obligation, or compact, or treaty, can therefore be pleaded in favor of the claim of a 
 right to carry slave "property" into the Territories. 
 
44 The, Presidential Election. 
 
 of a nation's freedom ? If so, that party may hang together, and 
 do public service. If not, it must fall in pieces, speedily, or live 
 only to hinder the progress of freedom. 
 
 THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. CAUSES OF "REPUBLICAN" 
 DEFEAT. 
 
 The Republican party and its candidate have sustained a defeat. 
 Whether, or in what degree, that defeat has been owing to the 
 defects and errors we have pointed out, we leave for others to 
 judge and determine. That party has not failed for want of sup- 
 port from the great body of "Free-Soilers" and "Abolitionists." 
 Whether wisely or unwisely, these, with inconsiderable exceptions, 
 have cast their votes for Col. Fremont. If it be true, as they 
 have maintained, that men always "throw away their votes" 
 when they so vote as to fail of electing their candidates, then they 
 have, in this case, thrown away theirs. But if no vote is truly 
 saved, except that which is cast in favor of truth and righteous- 
 ness, if no Presidential vote is saved, except that which is cast for 
 the abolition of Slavery where it exists, and for the liberation of 
 our four millions of Slaves and if, in reality, no other vote is an 
 effective vote for the deliverance of the country from the power 
 of the Slavery Oligarchy, whose control has been proved by the 
 experience of eighty years to be involved in the fact of its per- 
 mitted existence, then the almost uncounted few who have cast 
 their votes for Gerrit Smith and Samuel McFarland have NOT 
 lost THEIR votes. They have recorded them in favor of the only 
 true course for the friends of liberty the only course that, under the 
 moral and providential government of a just God, promises success. 
 They have set an example which, if followed by a majority of the 
 voters in each of the non-slaveholding States, would insure the deliv- 
 erance, not only of Kansas, but of the entire country, and all its inhab- 
 itants. They have set an example which, if it had been set by all Abo- 
 litionists and Free-Soilers, would have shaped the platform, and de- 
 termined the qualifications of the candidates of the opponents of 
 Slavery, for the next Presidential contest an advantage that 
 might perhaps have decided, even at this late day, the nation's 
 destiny. As it is, they enjoy the consciousness of having voted 
 in accordance with the explicit rules of God's word, and the prin- 
 ciples of unchanging right. N"or can they be taunted, neither by 
 their friends nor their enemies, with having deserted the slave, nor 
 contradicted their principles. And under the circumstances of the 
 case, no one can say that the "Republican" candidates have lost 
 
The Presidential Election. 45 
 
 their election, for want of their votes. Had they all voted for 
 Fremont, the result would not have been changed. 
 
 From this last statement it may be inferred that nothing could 
 possibly have been gamed to the Republican party by their adop- 
 tion of an Abolition platform. It may be said that such a plat- 
 form would have repelled tens of thousands, who have now voted 
 with them, while it would have attracted but an inconsiderable 
 few in their places. 
 
 The inference is by no means a legitimate one. It is freely ad- 
 mitted that large numbers who now voted with them, would have 
 been startled and offended by an Abolition platform. But large 
 numbers even of these might have been won over, before the 
 election, by the clear and impregnable arguments that might have 
 been forced upon their attention. The apprehended loss of num- 
 bers, from this source, might have been, in this manner, greatly 
 reduced. 
 
 Add to this, that a proper exposure of the fallacies and absurdi- 
 ties of the Democratic platform an exposure which nothing but 
 an Abolition platform would have enabled the Republicans to 
 have made and to have promulgated by all their public speakers, and 
 through all their widely-circulated journals, would doubtless have 
 opened the eyes of many thousands to the true issue before the 
 country, and the true way of meeting it at the ballot-box. Large 
 numbers connected with the Democratic party, and who have been 
 persuaded to remain and vote with it, under the notion that by so 
 doing they were only voting for "State Equality" and "State 
 Rights," but not for the extension of Slavery, might have dis- 
 covered their mistake and rallied with the friends of freedom. The 
 large numbers in the so-called " American " party, to whom the 
 Republican editors concede a desire to promote the cause of free- 
 dom, but whose cooperation they have failed to secure, might, in 
 the lig ht of the true issue, presented by so large and growing a 
 party, have been guided and encouraged to cast in their lot with 
 them a mode of cooperation without compromise and without 
 hazard. It is now claimed by leading Republican editors, that 
 their party would have been victorious, had there been no such 
 intervening party as the "American" between themselves and the 
 party of Slavery. Assuming this to be true, it is quite evident 
 that the lines between Slavery and Freedom should have been 
 drawn with the greatest possible distinctness, and in a manner to 
 exhibit not (as has been done) the slight shades of difference be- 
 tween the Republican party and the pro-Slavery Democratic and 
 Whig parties as it stood at the date of the Compromise-measures 
 
46 The Presidential Election. 
 
 of 1850 ; but, on the other hand, the broad and heaven-wide dis- 
 tinction between the parties, as involving either the deliverance or 
 the enslavement of the entire American people, Northern and 
 Southern, and of all hues. 
 
 Such an issue, (and it is the only truthful one,) had it been pre- 
 sented by so numerous and imposing a body of men as the Repub- 
 lican party, would have clothed them with an almost resistless 
 power, and would have compelled the attention of the very nu- 
 merous class of quiet citizens, who seldom, if ever, approach the 
 polls, and who are now free to say that the differences between 
 rival parties are seldom so clearly defined and vital as to demand 
 the attention of those who neither expect nor desire office. 
 
 It must be confessed, that two antagonistic parties, on so mo- 
 mentous a subject as American Slavery, but who both agree that, 
 so far as their action is concerned, not a single Slave is to be re- 
 leased, nor a single rood of Slave-soil reclaimed to freedom, are in 
 rather a singular position ! The party desiring to make a change 
 in the administration, should present, as truth and humanity de- 
 mand, a more bold and determined issue than even the question 
 of freedom in Kansas; especially when it seems so difficult to 
 understand how an administration is to secure freedom to Kansas 
 without disturbing Slavery in Missouri. It may be a fault of our 
 citizens (but the fact is to be recognized) that they are much in 
 the habit of demanding how and whether a proposed measure can 
 be accomplished, before they enlist in a political revolution for the 
 purpose of effecting it. As "practical business men," politicians 
 should look such a fact in the face. After an eighty years' failure 
 in attempting non-extension without abolition, the problem de- 
 mands marked attention. The solution should, at the least, be 
 worked out on paper, instead of being taken for granted. If the 
 people are to be enlisted in any further efforts, they must be con- 
 vinced that they are feasible. To lay out work for limiting the 
 ravages of a conflagration, under a pledge to throw no water upon 
 the fire where it is already raging, may not, perhaps, be the best 
 way of rousing the citizens to action, though it may be true that 
 many of them would choose to be excused from working the 
 engines. 
 
 Such are some of the considerations that may suggest the pos- 
 sible increase of the number of votes polled for the Republican 
 candidates, had that party avowed the purpose of Abolition, in- 
 stead of disclaiming it. It was an unfortunate disclaimer difficult 
 to be believed without discrediting their love of freedom diffi- 
 cult to be disbelieved without impeaching their truthfulness. All 
 
The Presidential Election. 47 
 
 the odium of being an Abolition party, attached to the Republi- 
 can party, because it disputed the supremacy of the Slave-power.* 
 The affectionate confidence and enthusiastic support due to a tho- 
 rough and out-spoken Abolition party, it could not command, to 
 counterbalance the disadvantage. Its disclaimers could neither 
 disarm its enemies, nor satisfy the selfishly cautious and wary. 
 They were effectual only to cut the smews of its own strength, 
 and disarm and discourage its best and most self-denying friends. 
 All over the Free States, there were scattered and isolated Aboli- 
 tionists, whose tireless and gratuitous labors in their respective 
 neighborhoods would have infused new life into the canvass, but 
 for the ungracious disclaimer but who could now rally only 
 strength enough, with conscientious qualms and misgivings, to cast 
 their own solitary, hesitating votes. High over these there was ONE, 
 who is called in the Scriptures, "THE REFUGE OF THE OPPRESSED," 
 who regarded that disclaimer as an affront to Himself, in the per- 
 sons of his outcast and despised ones, whom He cherishes as the 
 apple of his eye. In His hands are the hearts and the destinies of 
 all. The party that would contend, successfully, against "the ag- 
 gressions of the Slave-power," must enlist HIM. "He that stoppeth 
 his ear at the cry of the poor, shall cry himself and not be heard" 
 is one of the inexorable laws of His administration. 
 
 There is nothing improbable, then, in the supposition, that an 
 increase of votes, and even a majority over their opponents, might 
 have been secured by the Republican party, had they boldly and 
 consistently taken the position of radical Abolitionists, making ag- 
 gressive assults against Slavery, instead of acting on the defensive. 
 An additional confirmation of this may be found in the well-known 
 tact, almost everywhere noticed and commented upon, that the 
 masses of the Republican party are far ahead of their leaders 
 that disclaimers of Abolitionism, in public speeches of Republicans, 
 are commonly received coldly, or have been greeted with but 
 feeble responses ; while the strongest expressions against Slavery, 
 and of a determination to wage against it an aggressive and un- 
 
 * Some of the Republican editors, since their defeat, have noticed the fact, and 
 have complained, that all their disclaimers of Abolition, and their pledges to let 
 Slavery alone in the States, have had no effect to disarm the opposition of their 
 opponents, or to win over proselytes from their ranks. "Although our platform" 
 (say they) " guarantied the most sacred protection to the slaveholder, who had 
 acquired property under the Constitution, our offers were rejected. The South did 
 not believe us, and of course, went with the party that had been tried, and that 
 had been found reliable." The President's Message, and the speeches in Congress 
 concerning it, contain ample proofs of the truth of this statement. 
 
48 The Presidential Election. 
 
 compromising warfare, whenever those sentiments have been 
 uttered, have been hailed with the most enthusiastic applause. 
 Had the Pittsburg and Philadelphia Conventions been as distin- 
 guished for boldness and decision, as they confessedly were for 
 timidity and caution, the response of the masses of the friends of 
 freedom, including a majority of their country editors, would have 
 been as prompt and as decided as it was seen to have been dila- 
 tory and hesitant. There is no calculating the difference between 
 the two states of feeling in public exigencies like these. 
 
 But suppose it to be otherwise. Be it so, for the argument's 
 sake, that the adoption of a higher standard would have been fol- 
 lowed by a defeat. What then ? The party has sustained a de- 
 feat, now. The cautiousness of its leaders has not prevented that 
 result. And a defeat on a thorough, radical Abolition issue would 
 have been no worse than a defeat upon the lower issue of freedom 
 for Kansas. It would not have been half as bad. More than this 
 might be said. A victory would have been involved in such a de- 
 feat, even with a reduction of many thousands of votes. 
 
 Let it be supposed, for illustration, that the Pittsburg and Phi- 
 ladelphia Conventions had erected for their platform the Federal 
 Abolition of Slavery in the. States ; suppose they had nominated 
 candidates to correspond with that platform ; let it be conceded 
 that, under that bold platform, sustained by the same leaders, 
 heralded by the same editors, and advocated by the same orators, 
 the number of their votes cast at the election, instead of being in- 
 creased, as perhaps they might have been, would have been di- 
 minished to one half their present number. Who does not see 
 that such a defeat, on SUCH AN ISSUE, would have been a vast gain 
 .over the defeat that has had to be encountered, now ? ISTay that 
 it would have been a victory ? A more glorious and more im- 
 portant victory than would have been gained by carrying the late 
 election upon the present Republican platform? Would it not 
 have been worth more to Kansas ? Who believes that a Demo- 
 cratic Administration either by Pierce or Buchanan directed 
 by the Slave-power, would dare to lay a finger upon freedom, or 
 upon the free settlers in Kansas, if such a vote towards the aboli- 
 tion of Slavery were hanging over their heads, or rolling up stead- 
 ily before them ? Who doubts that, instead of planning new ag- 
 gressions, as they now do, even threatening to reopen, by Federal 
 authority, the African Slave-trade, and to establish Slavery in Nica- 
 ragua, they would have been thrown back again upon the defens- 
 ive, quite ready to propose a compromise that should leave them 
 
The Presidential Election. 49 
 
 in their present condition ?* Were such a bargain, on our part, 
 admissible, (as it is not,) what better or other method could be 
 devised for securing it, than to place the Slave-power in a position 
 to clutch greedily, for the chance of it ? 
 
 However invincible the 347,000 slaveholders may be, under the 
 " Republican" pledge of security from the interference of Aboli- 
 tionists, that petty handful of tyrants would tremble like Belshaz- 
 zar, were one half the late Presidential Republican vote, a vote for 
 their direct overthrow. Such a vote, in 1856, would have been 
 the sure presage of complete triumph in 1860. One half, nay, two 
 thirds of the late Republican vote might have been spared, with 
 an indefinite increase of Republican strength, to-day. No saga- 
 cious and impartial politician will deny this. With such a vote 
 upon such a platform, the Slavery question, in America, might have 
 been regarded to-day, as being prospectively settled. The " price 
 of negroes" in Virginia would, ere this, have declined, and the free 
 settlers in Kansas would have been basking in the sunlight of hope. 
 
 Neither the fears nor the consciences of the slaveholders are 
 likely to be effectually reached by any array of Northern votes at 
 the ballot-box, so long as those votes are cast upon a platform that 
 concedes the Constitutional duty of protection to Slavery where 
 it already exists, recognizes distinctions of color, and appeals to 
 anti-Christian prejudice by declaring itself to be " the party of the 
 WHITE man." 
 
 As an illustration of this, we present an extract from the speech 
 of Ex-Governor Floyd, of Virginia, delivered in New-York City, 
 as reported in the New-York Times, of October 3d. This speech 
 was understood to have been designed to counteract the previous 
 speech of Mr. Banks, who had distinctly appealed to the white 
 race, as a class. Perceiving, no doubt, the incongruity of this 
 with " Republican" declamations against the extension of Slavery, 
 founded on its despotism and barbarity, yet coupled with disclaimers 
 of any intention to interfere with it in the States, Gov. Floyd said: 
 
 "If they have in contemplation a practical policy, why not avow it distinctly? Is 
 it the amelioration of the condition of the African race ? "Why not say what they 
 
 * Since this paragraph was written, the slaveholders in Congress and elsewhere, 
 have " backed down" in respect to the revival of the African slave-trade. And 
 the reason of it is quite apparent. It was the fruit of a general panic among the 
 slaveholders, arising from the apprehension that " Eepublicans" were becoming 
 " Radical Abolitionists" ! "When the panic shall have subsided, (as, under super- 
 abundant " Republican" disclaimers it is likely to do,) the slaveholders will natu- 
 rally settle back again to their old level, unless the " Radicals" shall show them- 
 selves strong in the field. 
 
 4 
 
50 The Presidential Election. 
 
 propose, what they desire ? Let me, as a Southern man, offer a suggestion : these 
 friends of the negro race, if sincere in their professions, have a duty to perform to 
 the race. "When they shall take practical steps to elevate the race, we will believe 
 in their honesty and sincerity. We must be excused from believing the world 
 must be excused from believing in their sincerity, until their avowed policy pro- 
 poses some amelioration of the black man's condition. Let them begin with the free 
 black man. Why did this ' Free soil, free speech, free men ' party exclude the 
 colored man forever from free Kansas? After all, do these philanthropists not con- 
 sider the African to be a ' MAN ?' If otherwise, why exclude him from the soil 
 'consecrated to Freedom,' as they have done by the Topeka proceedings? This 
 looks like a deception and a cheat. But if they be honest, let the experiment be 
 made of elevating the black man to an equality with the white. Why do they not 
 propose to take off the galling disabilities under which public opinion has placed 
 this race ? Can they not declare that the negro man shall be admitted to the pro- 
 fessions, to the Legislature, to the parlors, to the hearthstone ? If this is done, 
 mankind will believe in then' sincerity. Until then, there must be doubt. But if 
 public opinion in the ' Free States ' is not yet prepared for this, why not give these 
 people a trial through the means of the African Colonization Society? Virginia 
 gives thirty thousand dollars a year to this enterprise. What do the ' friends ot 
 Freedom ' give ? A small percentage of the money expended in Sharp's rifles for 
 bleeding Kansas, would presently demonstrate the capability of the negro man for 
 self-government in Africa if he is capable. But probably this course would not 
 affect materially the Presidential election, and that no doubt is the chief object with 
 our philanthropic friends." 
 
 Gov. Floyd evidently intimated that their exclusion of free 
 colored men from the Territories, betrayed the hollowness of all 
 their pretensions to moral principle and philanthropy, and could 
 not exemplify a higher principle than that of selfishness the prin- 
 ciple of expatriation so extensively patronized by the slaveholders. 
 And he could not be made to believe that there was any honest, 
 conscientious opposition to Slavery in the hearts of those who occu- 
 pied such a position. Yet Gov. Floyd's just rebuke was eagerly 
 circulated by " Republican " journals, in confirmation of their 
 abundant disclaimers of affinity with Abolition. Tttey seemed not 
 to have felt the force of the rebuke, nor to have understood how 
 their position in this respect, strengthened the slavery party, at the 
 North as well as at the South, while it tended, almost resistlessly, 
 to neutralize the force of all those eloquent appeals, lectures, ser- 
 mons, and speeches, whether by clergymen or politicians, on which 
 their cause had mainly to rely, and which constituted the chief 
 element of their strength, with the masses of the people. Anti- 
 Slavery appeals must, of necessity, lose the greater part of their 
 force, when placed in companionship with proscription of the op- 
 pressed race, and disclaimers of Abolitionism. To suppose other- 
 wise, would be to ignore the connection between moral cause and 
 effect, or to doubt whether man is gifted with moral discernment 
 and reason. 
 
The Presidential Election. 51 
 
 Of the precise extent to which this lamentable error in the Re- 
 publican leaders obtained, it would be difficult to say. We have 
 already noticed its prominence in the Republican Platform, in the 
 letter of its Presidential candidate, in its chief political speakers, . 
 and in its political press. It would be easy to multiply illustrations 
 from such sources, to any desired extent, if we could spare room. 
 It only remains to give a specimen from the religious press, and from 
 certain theological supporters of the new party. We can not bet- 
 ter do this than by making an extract from an article in the New- 
 York Independent, of October 16, under the head of ''The Voice 
 of a Conservative? in which the editor says : 
 
 " But in Connecticut, one profound and sagacious logician, a venerable theologian, 
 one of those ' Nestors ' among ministers of the Gospel whom the Journal of Com- 
 merce, a few years ago, dishonored with its commendation, has spoken out for the 
 special benefit of such men. His ' thoughts,' as printed for local distribution in hie 
 own State, are before us. We would gladly republish the whole, if there were time 
 and space for their publication in this sheet. We give all that we can." 
 
 The first of these quotations is devoted to a statement concern- 
 ing the Democratic party, so called. And he says they seem to 
 have been frightened into a support of " Border Ruffianism " by a 
 belief that " the Abolitionists, so called, have become a great and 
 dangerous party." The " venerable " writer then proceeds : 
 
 " I now ask : WHO GAVE THIS FEARFUL POWER TO ABOLITIONISM ? Who ? The 
 Whig party? No, not they. True, old, conservative Whiggery, like that of Clay 
 and Webster, never gave to Abolitionism one particle of its power. The abolition 
 of Slavery never was a doctrine of the Whig party. Its doctrine was, Slavery at 
 the will of each sovereign State, but no further. Whiggery and Abolitionism had no 
 fellowship. They were political adversaries. Besides, when the so called Aboli- 
 tionism began to have, or to be supposed to have, power, politically, and thus to 
 become formidable, the Whig party was dead. It had been killed chiefly by its 
 own folly, in not maintaining its own entirety, and in not giving prominence, as the 
 exigency demanded, to the doctrine common to itself and to the Democracy THE 
 
 NON-EXTENSION OF SLAVERY." 
 
 The writer (says the Independent) " holds that true Whigs are 
 now, as they always were, opposed to the extension of Slavery." 
 The Republican party, he understands, occupies the same ground, 
 and thus he appeals in its behalf: 
 
 " Friends of a common country 1 a question for all honest men shall the evils 
 we feel be terminated shall the sorer calamities we fear, be averted ? Then, 
 whether Whigs or Democrats by whatever name you are called renounce, con- 
 demn, resist the doctrine of Extension. . Vote for a President who will not disturb 
 Slavery where it is, but will stay every step of its progress. Thus meet the great 
 exigency of your distracted, afflicted country. Thus stand on the broad but single 
 plank of the Republican platform. Thus unite the honest men and true patriots. 
 
52 The Presidential Election. 
 
 Thus, as the only means and method, give Abolitionism proper, so profound a 
 burial, that it shall trouble and disturb no more. Thus concede to each sovereign 
 State the right to regulate its domestic institutions as guaranteed by the Consti- 
 tution and the principles of comity between sister States. Thus restore the har- 
 mony of former days to our happy Union. Thus save this great people whom the 
 God of our fathers will delight to bless." 
 
 The people are thus taught by "the venerable Theologian," 
 that the blessing of "the God of our fathers" is to be secured 
 not by "breaking every yoke, and letting the oppressed go free" 
 not by "executing justice between a man and his neighbor" 
 not by "proclaiming liberty throughout all the land, unto all the 
 inhabitants thereof "-^-but by "the single plank of the Republican 
 platform " namely not "to disturb Slavery where it is," but 
 "stay every step of its progress," and "give Abolition proper, so 
 profound a burial, that it shall trouble and disturb no more," and 
 "thus restore the harmony of former days to our Union" when 
 no agitation against Slavery existed among those who enjoyed 
 their own freedom! In what portion of his Bible this "oldest 
 living Professor in Theology in the United States the oldest Pro- 
 fessor of any Theological Seminary" discovered this national 
 remedy for the national sin of oppression, we are not informed 
 nor from what School of Ethics such political maxims are derived, 
 unless it be from that which, a number of years since, supported 
 the Presidential nominee of the Whig party by advising Christian 
 citizens to "vote for the lesser devil of the two." From the theo- 
 logical and literary position ascribed to him by the Independent, 
 and from his location in Connecticut, and his allusions to a public 
 meeting in "New-Haven," the identity of the "Voice" may be 
 inferred. 
 
 Not less remarkable is the Editorial with which these extracts 
 are accompanied. Says the Independent: 
 
 " Thus does the oldest living Professor of Theology in the United States the 
 oldest Professor in any Theological Seminary appeal to the patriotism of the whole 
 country in this great crisis of our history. "What he calls 'Abolitionism proper,' 
 is, in a just and reasonable use of words, Abolitionism most improper. Mr. G-ar. 
 rison, Mr. "Wendell Phillips, and others of that sort, who either deny all Govern- 
 ment, or denounce the Constitution as a pro-Slavery compact, and who oppose the 
 election of Mr. Fremont, because it will relieve and pacify the public mind the 
 self-styled Radical Abolitionists, on the other hand, who hold that Slavery is abol- 
 ished already in all the States by the Federal Constitution, and therefore insist on 
 throwing away their votes in this hour of their country's direst peril all who ex- 
 haust themselves in speculative agitations, and refuse to do any thing practical or 
 tangible against the extension of Slavery are Abolitionists in no good sense, and 
 therefore are not ' Abolitionists proper.' But if the venerable Professor sees fit to 
 call them so, we will not quarrel with him for the dishonor put on the names of 
 
The Presidential Election. 53 
 
 Franklin, of Jay, of Stiles, of Hopkins, of Clarkson, and of Wilberforce. Rather 
 do we thank him for this appeal, and thank God who has given him grace to 
 make it." 
 
 Did the learned editor of the New- York Independent intend to 
 have his readers believe, that Franklin, Jay, Stiles, Hopkins, 
 Clarkson, and Wilberforce,* labored only " against the extension 
 of Slavery;" and that, like the late Whig party, u the abolition 
 of Slavery was never their doctrine ;" and that they " would never 
 distub Slavery where it is" ? In what page of their writings, on 
 what page of history, will he find proof of that f Will the history 
 of the abolition of Slavery in our Northern States, or in the British 
 West-Indies corroborate such a statement ? Or can it be shown 
 that those results were secured by the potency of mere "non-ex- 
 tension" ? Or, that "there is nothing practical nor tangible " in 
 Abolition ? In the use of what Lexicon will he justify his asser- 
 tion that that is "Abolitionism most improper," which demands 
 the abolition of Slavery, rather than its mere "non-extension" ? 
 When "Radical Abolitionists" maintain (what no man living can 
 gainsay) that the Federal Constitution clothes our National Gov- 
 
 * "Franklin, Jay, Stiles, and Hopkins," like modern Abolitionists, knew how to 
 oppose the extension of Slavery, without pledging themselves against the abolition 
 of Slavery. But some of them erred, as did Clarkson and Wilberforce, in suppos- 
 ing that the abolition of the African slave-trade would do away Slavery. Clarkson 
 lived long enough to see and lament his error. His later efforts were directed to 
 the immediate abolition of West-India Slavery, by proving (as "Radical Aboli- 
 tionists" in America now do) that negro Slavery in the British Colonies, had always 
 been illegal, and was totally unsupported by any valid law. As we say that the 
 Federal Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are sufficient authority 
 for abolishing Slavery, so he said the same (as we also do) of the British Constitu- 
 tion, Common Law, and Magna Charta. This was " the speculative agitation" that 
 abolished Slavery in the British West-Indies. Granville Sharpe (whom the Inde- 
 pendent does not name) had previously, by the same " speculative agitation," abol- 
 ished Slavery in England. And he had the sagacity to foresee and predict, that all 
 efforts for abolishing the African slave-trade, disconnected with efforts for abolish- 
 ing Slavery itself, would prove abortive. [This was verified by the British Par- 
 liament, in 1845, up to which time the slave-trade had doubled, instead of 
 decreasing.] Hopkins, whom the Independent thinks is "dishonored" by being 
 named in company with modern Abolitionists, is the earliest "immediate Aboli- 
 tionist" on record, as his writings and his stringent Church discipline of slave- 
 holders attest. Dr. Edwards and John Wesley were equally " radical" in their 
 Abolitionism. But these also, as well as Granville Sharpe, are omitted from the 
 Independent's list of " honored names" though " Franklin, Jay, Stiles, and Hop- 
 kins" were not ashamed of them. It would be well if the successors of such min- 
 isters, instead of "garnishing their sepulchres," could emulate their manliness, 
 and " honor" their principles. 
 
54 What would have been gained-by a Victory 
 
 eminent with ample powers to abolish Slavery, does he consider 
 it Christian-like to ridicule them as absurdly seeking to do over 
 again what has already been done, because they ask that those 
 Constitutional powers shall be exercised ? And when God bids 
 them vote for "just men," who will "execute justice for all the 
 oppressed," did he think to deter them from obedience by the fear 
 of " casting away their votes" ? Can he show them how they 
 could have avoided "casting away their votes," by voting for an 
 equally unsuccessful candidate, who was pledged not to do what 
 God explicitly requires to be done ? Is there no way for Aboli- 
 tionists to "save their votes'' but by casting them with those 
 whose spirit and aims are here expressed in the New- York Inde- 
 pendent f 
 
 If the Professors of Theology, and if the reputedly anti-slavery 
 religious editors supporting the Republican party, are represented 
 truthfully in these extracts, and if the political ethics of the party 
 rise no higher than its.theological standard, the vigilant friends of 
 liberty and abolition, in this and other lands, will judge posterity 
 will judge how much has been lost to the slave, to humanity, to 
 true religion, by the failure of the "Republican" party of 1856, to 
 elect its candidates. 
 
 WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN GAINED BY A VICTORY ON THE 
 REPUBLICAN PLATFORM? 
 
 Some further light on this question, may perhaps be gathered 
 from such editorials in the Republican journals, as the following, 
 which we copy from the Hew- York Times of November 11, a few 
 days after the results of the election had transpired. The extract 
 is taken from a leader, entitled, "English Press on American 
 Affairs." The Times is commenting upon an article in " the 
 London Morning Post, of a recent date," respecting our Presi- 
 dential election, and anticipating " internal feuds" and " violent 
 conflicts between the Legislature and the Executive, whichever 
 candidate may succeed." To which the New- York Times replies : 
 
 " The Morning Post has probably learned before this, that our October prelimi- 
 nary elections fixed the character of the next Congress, to come in with the new 
 President, and that in the event of Mr. BUCHANAN'S success, himself a Northern 
 man, he will be sure to have the support and counsel of a large party in the House 
 of Representatives, as in the Senate, from the Northern States, directly from the 
 psople. And that in the opposite event of Col. FREMONT'S election, his first pur- 
 pose would be so to conduct his administration as to conciliate the Southern 
 party in Congress, backed as they will be by forty-five or fifty members from the 
 
on the Republican Platform f 55 
 
 great Middle and North- Western States, so far as it would enable him to conserve 
 the material interests of the whole country, and to preserve if possible, from further 
 sectional violence tne workings of our free institutions." 
 
 Undoubtedly it would be proper and wise for any President to 
 preserve the country from " sectional violence." But the way in 
 which the Times assumes that Col. Fremont would have effected 
 this, deserves our attention. He would have done this by making 
 it his first object to conciliate the Southern party in Congress, and 
 this would be effected by the measures of his administration. The 
 same idea had been thrown out, before the election, by the New- 
 York Herald, and other Republican journals. " The South will 
 be astonished," said they, "the South will be satisfied," "when 
 they learn how conservative and conciliating the course of Col. 
 Fremont's administration will be." 
 
 Now, bearing in mind that the grand point in dispute, as we 
 have shown, is whether the Federal Government shall protect the 
 right of slaveholders to carry their slaves both into the Territories 
 or into the States, wheresoever they please, bearing in mind that 
 Col. Fremont and his platform and his party are as thoroughly 
 committed to the doctrine of the Federal protection of slave pro- 
 perty in the slave States as Mr. Buchanan and his party can possi- 
 bly be, bearing in mind that the original Republican doctrine of 
 Federal prohibition of Slavery in the Territories, including Kan- 
 sas, has been virtually given up in the later utterances of the Re- 
 publican party, particularly in the Wall-street speech of Mr. 
 Banks, not dissented from by Republican editors ; bearing in mind 
 also the vote of the House on Mr. Dunn's bill, and on the Army 
 bill bearing in mind all this, the question arises : In what manner 
 could Col. Fremont, if he had been elected President, have so 
 shaped his administration as to conciliate the Southern party in 
 Congress the party of Border Ruffianism, the party of Preston 
 S. Brooks, the party of his admiring constituents, the party that, 
 even at the North, jeers at the sufferings of " bleeding Kansas," 
 and that censures Sumner almost as much as it does Bully Brooks 
 the party that (in the case of Hon. John Cadwallader, of Penn- 
 sylvania) lauds "the praiseworthy legislation of 1854," described 
 by him, truly, as " giving the slaveholders access to the Territories 
 (of Kansas and Nebraska) with their slaves" ? 
 
 Yes ! how, or by what further concessions could the administra- 
 tion of Col. Fremont have conciliated " this Southern party hi 
 Congress" without giving up all that the Republican party was 
 organized to secure ? Mr. Banks had already conceded (and the 
 Tribune and the Times had not demurred) that " Kansas" was to 
 
56 What would have been gained by a Victory 
 
 be " restored to freedom without legislative act or the interfer- 
 ence, at the hand of government, in any way" that "no legisla- 
 tion is required, and it is not necessary that the halls of Congress 
 should be again opened to agitation," but that " the people of the 
 Territory should settle the question of Slavery for themselves, 
 there." In other words, Freedom and Slavery, in the Territories, 
 should receive equal protection a thing impossible for any Presi- 
 dent to carry out, in practice. But, would the speech of Mr. 
 Banks " conciliate the Southern party in Congress" ? Did it con- 
 ciliate Gov. Floyd ? Or even the New- York Journal of Com- 
 merce ? Sow then could a Republican administration have con- 
 ciliated them, but by yielding to the slaveholders their right to carry 
 their slaves wherever they please f 
 
 We suggest no impeachment of the integrity of Col. Fremont. 
 It was the New- York Times that suggested his powers of concili- 
 ation. It would have needed no seer to predict that in such an 
 embarrassing situation, he would have been urged by the leaders 
 of his own party, including such statesmen as Mr. Banks, to go as 
 far as possible in order to conciliate the South. And it would have 
 been a situation involving great danger. We say not that, as 
 President, Col. Fremont and his advisers would not have stood as 
 firm for liberty as any other men living could do, attempting to 
 stand on the Republican platform, and sliding from it no farther 
 than its sidling position and slippery nature would inevitably com- 
 pel them to do. They would doubtless have done all that, with 
 their Constitutional theories, they were able to do. The question 
 is, how, or whether, it could have been of any substantial benefit 
 to the cause of Freedom ? 
 
 In order to accomplish great and good ends, there must be not 
 only laudable aims, but wise counsels. And public councils are 
 wise in exact proportion to the inflexibility of the grasp with which 
 they fasten themselves to the great moral laws by which God 
 governs the world. When the platform of a political party or 
 administration is too narrow to embrace these, it would be strange 
 if it did not prove too narrow to meet the exigencies of a great 
 nation, especially in times like the present. So long as GOD'S Con- 
 stitution of Government requires the protection of personal liberty, 
 it must be evident that no written Constitution, or constitutional 
 theories that do not recognize that duty of the Government, can 
 meet the divine demands. And the Administration that fails of 
 doing this, fails utterly, and fatally. 
 
 Take the case now before us. The Republican party stands 
 pledged not to protect the personal liberties of nearly one half of 
 
on the Republican Platform f 57 
 
 the inhabitants of nearly one half of the States. Its views of the 
 Constitution forbid such protection. How, then, with those 
 views, could it protect the liberties of the " free settlers " in Kan- 
 sas? Suppose the Administration inaugurated, with a working 
 majority of both Houses. How would it go at work ? And how 
 would the work be accomplished ? 
 
 The most feasible thing we can think of, is that of admitting 
 Kansas as a free State, under its Constitution formed at Topeka. 
 The House of Representatives, as before noticed, once passed a 
 bill to that effect. But did it '* conciliate the Southern party in 
 Congress" f Far otherwise. It was almost kicked out of the 
 Senate. Very evidently this plan would fail of securing the paci- 
 fication promised in the New- York Times. A Republican Sen- 
 ate might however pass it, and the Republican President might 
 sign it. But it would be likely to need strong Executive measures 
 to enforce it. And would not that be a precedent of Federal in- 
 terference with the Slavery question in a " sovereign State" ? A 
 practical solution of the puzzling question how " the United States " 
 can "guaranty to every State in this Union a Republican form of 
 Government" ? If this could be done in one State, why not in 
 another f A majority (it may be said) of the people of Kansas 
 would desire it. Perhaps a majority of the people of some of the 
 other States, would desire the same. And perhaps the " Republi- 
 can " party would be ready to " go ahead." Success to it, then, 
 say we, whatever might become of its " platform " and of its dis- 
 claimers. 
 
 But, what other course could a Republican administration take ? 
 Would it legislate Slavery out of the Territory ? This was under- 
 stood to have been a part of the platform, at the beginning. But, 
 if Mr. Banks' speech, not dissented from, may be regarded a truth- 
 ful exponent of the party, that plank belongs not to the platform, 
 now. For months past, and before the speech of Mr. Banks, we 
 have not heard it affirmed.* But why should it have been laid 
 
 * It is proper to mention that since this was written, some of the Republican 
 Members of Congress have reaffirmed their original doctrine. "Whether the same 
 policy that led to its virtual repudiation, during the latter part of the canvass, 
 would have been retained as a means of " conciliating the Southern party in Con- 
 gress," had the Republicans gained the election, is more than we can undertake to 
 determine. It is obvious that a President coming in with a strong Northern vote 
 against the united South, would have been likely to feel a necessity of conciliating 
 the South, just as a President coming in with a strong Southern vote against the 
 North, would feel the necessity of conciliating the North. It is nothing to the dis- 
 credit of Fremont, nor the credit of Buchanan, to notice that circumstances would 
 naturally place them in these different positions. 
 
58 What would have been gained by a Victory 
 
 aside ? Public discussion, and the tide of public sentiment, under 
 that discussion, was turning strongly against it. The right to 
 legislate Slavery out of the Territories, was found to be repudiated 
 by the same principle that denies the right to legislate Slavery out 
 of the States. Thus the "Democrats " have voted. Thus too the 
 "American" party has voted. And thus the leading "Republi- 
 cans " have virtually conceded. By its silence, the party assents. 
 How then could the Republican party, if in power, stand up 
 against the sentiment? IDEAS, not parties, not Presidents, not 
 Cabinets, control public measures. 
 
 But suppose a Republican administration should, by legislation, 
 exclude Slavery from the Territory. If a majority of the people 
 desired 'Slavery, they could change their Constitution and allow 
 Slavery, so soon as the Territory is admitted as a State. The 
 " Free State " men of Kansas would then come under the iron 
 slave Code, and the Republican administration, with its IDEA of 
 the Constitution, and of National responsibilities, can not relieve 
 them.* 
 
 Both parties varied their tone in different localities, and according to the suppos- 
 ed necessities of the contest. Thus the doctrine of Mr. Banks, was adapted to 
 "Wall street, but a different one was needed for the interior districts. The "Demo- 
 cratic" appeals, at the South, were of the highest tone of pro-Slavery propagand- 
 ism ; while at the North, particularly in the rural districts, all this was disclaimed, 
 and the support of Mr. Buchanan was advocated on the ground that he was in 
 favor of freedom in Kansas. The rejection of both Pierce and Douglas, at the Cin- 
 cinnati Convention, favored this pretension. Toward the close of the campaign, 
 while the Republican party seemed to be lowering its standard, the "Democratic" 
 party, at the North, seemed to be raising theirs. As the " Republicans" lost 
 votes by their changed tone, so the " Democrats" gained votes by theirs. It was 
 currently believed, in the " Democratic" ranks at the North, that Pierce and 
 Douglass had been thrown overboard for their rampant pro-Slaveryism, and that 
 Buchanan would pursue a different policy. 
 
 As these well-known facts would naturally tend to moderate the pro-Slaveryism 
 of the " Democratic" party when successful, so the known fact that the " Repub- 
 lican" party had lowered its tone before the election, would have naturally tended 
 to prevent it from taking a higher stand afterwards, hi case it -had succeeded at 
 the election. 
 
 * It has been suggested to the writer that this danger might be averted by in- 
 serting in the act of admission, a clause providing that if the State should after- 
 wards establish slavery, it should cease to be any longer a member of the Federal 
 Union. The answer is, that neither the "Democratic" or the " Republican" ideas 
 of the Constitution, admit of any such proviso, or would vindicate its binding 
 force. The " Democrats" deny the constitutionality of the Missouri restriction, and of 
 the ordinance of It 8 7 for the North- Western Territory. Of course they would deny 
 the constitutionality of this proposed proviso. The " Republicans" maintain the 
 validity of the restriction for Territories, but do not dare to say that it can be en- 
 
on the Republican Platform f 59 
 
 Would a Republican administration protect the " Free State " 
 men in Kansas by securing them a chance to vote ? And by pro- 
 tecting them against the " Border Ruffians" ? Suppose they 
 should do this, and after all, the " Free State " men should be out- 
 numbered ? Then, again, they would come under the Slave Code, 
 and the Republican administration, on its own theories, could not 
 protect them, after they were once admitted as a State. 
 
 But if the " Free State " men, being thus protected, should 
 prove to be a majority, then, white remaining a majority, they 
 would no longer need Federal protection. Whenever they should 
 become a minority they would come under the Slavery oligarchy, 
 and a "Republican" administration, on its theory of the Constitu- 
 tion, could not help them. But it is minorities rather than ma- 
 jorities the weak, rather than the strong, that need the National 
 protection. A National Government that can only protect major- 
 ities^ could seldom or never be of any benefit to Freedom, either 
 in the States or Territories. If a despotic majority, in a State or 
 Territory, must alone enjoy National protection, then a National 
 Government becomes a despot, instead of a protector.* 
 
 forced upon States. The broad distinction they make between States and Territo- 
 ries forbids them to say so. Missouri was admitted on a condition which has been 
 violated, but no " Republican" moves for its ejectment from the Union. " Repub- 
 licans" do not hold that the Constitution gives Congress any power over slavery 
 in the States, and if the Constitution does not, no act of Congress, under the Con- 
 stitution could do so. The acceptance of the condition by the new State would 
 not give it validity, if the condition itself were unconstitutional. 
 
 And besides, the "Republican" theory, equally at least with the "Democratic," 
 admits of no Federal power to enforce upon the States a compliance with their po- 
 litical compacts. On this ground, " Republicans" have maintained thai although 
 (as they say) the States are constitutionally bound to return fugitive slaves, yet the 
 Federal Government has no power to enforce it. If then, the compact of a State, 
 contained in its ratification of the Constitution, gives Congress no power to enforce 
 its observance, how could Congress enforce the observance of a compact not con- 
 tained in the Constitution nor contemplated by it ? 
 
 Finally, the Constitution itself, as it stands, contains prohibitions of slavery in the 
 States, and contains provisions for Federal action against it, altogether more availa- 
 ble than any that could be incorporated in such a proviso, to an act admittimg a 
 new State, for it says: "No State shall pass any bill of attainder, or ex post facto 
 law, or law impairing the obligations of contracts, or grant any title of nobility." 
 i( No person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law." And " the 
 United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union, a republican form of 
 government." If these Constitutional provisions do not enable Congress to put 
 down slavery in a State, assuredly no act .of Congress, outside of the Constitution 
 could do it. So that " Republicans" would have to go outside of their own theories 
 in order to secure any new State against slavery. 
 
 * In all the preceding argument, and hi what follows, we do not deny the possi- 
 ble admission of Kansas as a free State, either under Fremont or Buchanan. Nor 
 
60 What would have been gained by a Victory 
 
 Again. It is evident that if the National Government, under a 
 Republican administration, did not, by legislation, or by Execu- 
 tive interference, exclude Slavery from Kansas, then the very best 
 it could possibly do, would be to keep an even balance on the 
 maxim of "hands off," and let the settlers, as Mr. Banks proposes, 
 settle the question among themselves. With this might possibly 
 be connected the function of supervision as well as protection, the 
 administration providing umpires to determine who may and who 
 may not vote. No mere paper enactment, prescribing the quali- 
 fications of voters, would answer the purpose. There must be 
 well-armed and trusty functionaries, at every voting rendezvous, 
 on election-day, to execute the enactment, or the executive order. 
 And these functionaries must determine, in the case of each one 
 whose vote may be challenged, whether he is or is not entitled to 
 vote. In the absence of this, the voting would, very probably, be 
 determined by the contending force of armed voters, or the settlers 
 would be liable to be driven away, as before. 
 
 [If you say the Federal administration could abdicate its con- 
 trol over the Territory, and leave the free settlers to take care of 
 themselves, then you go back to "Squatter Sovereignty" with a 
 vengeance, and claim the credit of delivering Kansas, by doing 
 nothing at all.] 
 
 But how could an adequate and impartial statute or order be 
 shaped ? Impartial between Slavery and Freedom ? And how, 
 or by whom, could it be impartially and successfully executed 
 yet so as to secure freedom or even an equal chance for freedom ? 
 The proximity of Missouri would enable her inhabitants to deter- 
 mine the question, if a short residence entitles to the franchise ? 
 If the term be extended, the annoying presence of the ruffians is 
 prolonged, and the time extended for their assembling. 
 
 The Missourian claims to have come as a settler. The Free 
 State man does the same. If the one be received, so must the 
 other. If the one be excluded, so must the other. In any con- 
 do we say that there was no difference between them. Kansas may come in, a 
 free State, as the Democrats and as N. P. Banks predicted, "without any action of 
 Congress.' 1 '' It may come in, by the preponderance of free settlers, and their supe- 
 rior industry and enterprise. Our argument only goes to show the difficulties in 
 the way of a Congressional and Executive guaranty of freedom in Kansas, accord- 
 ing to the Republican platform, which denies Federal authority over slavery in the 
 States. None of these difficulties could, for one moment, embarrass an administra- 
 tion of "Radical Abolitionists," who all understand that the National Government, 
 like all other civil governments, is bound to protect personal liberty, and that no 
 civil government (State, National, or Territorial) can have any right to maintain 
 or to tolerate slaveholding. 
 
on the Republican Platform f 61 
 
 ceivable case, the issue becomes a game of fraud or chance, or a 
 struggle of journeyings and of physical endurance. The possible 
 success of liberty only remains. The protection of a " Republi- 
 can" administration ends here. It can not exclude Slavery from 
 the Territory, an embryo State, because it can not prohibit Slav- 
 ery in a State at maturity. 
 
 There is a further difficulty in the case. If the Republican 
 administration gives up (as does Mr. Banks) the idea of a Fede- 
 ral exclusion of Slavery from the Territory, while remaining a Ter- 
 ritory, and while it is forming itself into a State, then the Repub- 
 lican administration, impliedly and virtually admits Slavery into 
 the Territory during the same period. It must either exclude, or 
 it must admit slaveholders with their slaves. No imaginary or 
 attempted neutrality can help this. If it excludes them, then the ' 
 Republican administration decides the case against Slavery, and 
 the plan of Mr. Banks is abandoned. The slaveholder is then ex- 
 cluded. How then, or to what purpose, can he be allowed to 
 vote ? 
 
 But, if the administration admits slaveholders with their slaves, 
 then the administration decides in favor of Slavery, and casts a 
 strong if not a controlling influence against freedom. A Republi- 
 can administration, like every other administration, including that 
 of Mr. Pierce, would have to do one thing or the other. It must 
 either exclude or admit slaveholders with their slaves. In ad- 
 mitting them, the Cincinnati Democratic platform, as expounded 
 by Mr. Ritchie, of the Richmond Enquirer, becomes, in practice, 
 the rule. The national administration (whether called Demo- 
 cratic or Republican, whether under Buchanan or Fremont) pro- 
 tects the right of slaveholders to slave " property " in the Terri- 
 tory, unless it excludes such property. If protected in the Terri- 
 tory, it must be protected when the Territory becomes a State, 
 or else the previous Federal protection becomes a deceptive lure. 
 The slaveholder brought his "property" with him, under as- 
 surance of Federal protection; but if the State inaugurated under 
 such Federal supervision, can "rob him of his property" by its 
 first act, as a State, the previous promise of Federal protection 
 was a sham. 
 
 An administration that could recognize " property in man " any- 
 where, would find an almost insuperable difficulty, here, however 
 averse to establishing Slavery in a free State. But how else could 
 the "national faith" be kept sacred? and the "honor" of the ad- 
 ministration be redeemed ? How shall they dispose of the dilemma? 
 A little paltering, here, and a few missing votes, and the very last 
 
62 What would have been gained by a Victory 
 
 screw of the Cincinnati platform is effectually turned. Kansas 
 becomes the first example of a State, with a Constitution, it may 
 be, or a statute, excluding Slavery, in which slave-property is 
 nevertheless protected by the Federal arm. And all has been 
 done so naturally and quietly that nobody who recognizes the 
 legality of Slavery, anywhere, could very readily put his finger 
 upon the fatal link of the chain. Is it quite certain that the " Re- 
 publican" platform, as Mr. Banks constructs it, and as the "TRI- 
 BUNE" and the " TIMES "gave it unquestioned favor, would keep 
 their feet out of the trap ? If " the first purpose" of the Republi- 
 can President, (as the " TIMES " says,) would have been " so to 
 conduct his administration, as to conciliate the Southern party in 
 Congress," could he have begun by excluding Slavery and slaves 
 from Kansas ? Failing to do this, could his administration have 
 secured liberty for Kansas, as the majority of his supporters have 
 intended by their votes ? The question is not concerning his pre- 
 ferences, his intentions, or his determinations but simply whether, 
 with the platform of principles adopted by himself and his party, 
 and as already modified by them, he could have given those deter- 
 minations effect ? All men, and most of all, public functionaries, 
 find their wishes controlled by the prevailing IDEAS identified 
 with their history, their position, and their associates. We may 
 give full credit to Col. Fremont for all the excellent qualities that 
 his most admiring friends attribute to him, and yet question his 
 ability to overcome obstacles like these. Can a man receive fire into 
 his bosom, and not be burned ? Then may a President admit the 
 legality of Slavery, and yet maintain freedom. It is hardly to be 
 expected of a President that he should go beyond or against the 
 platform and the party to which he owed his election, and to 
 which he is still indebted for support. When James Buchanan an- 
 nounced himself to be no longer himself but the platform of his 
 party, he was singular only in giving expression to a sentiment 
 commonly concealed, even from themselves, by aspirants to high , 
 stations. 
 
 Connected, closely, with this last view, is another, which de- 
 mands attention. The administration of President Pierce has in- 
 curred the just reprobation of the civilized world, (his own inter- 
 ested and prejudiced partisans excepted,) for the aid and comfort 
 he has extended to the Ruffian Invaders of Kansas. And yet, the 
 proper grounds of this condemnation are not, perhaps, as well 
 settled, at least in this country, as the importance of the subject 
 demands. The theory of the Constitution commonly current in this 
 country, places the National Government in the position of an im- 
 
on the Republican Platform f 63 
 
 partial and equal protector of SLAVERY and of FREEDOM ! The 
 irreconcilable antagonism between the two functions is almost 
 universally overlooked ! It is taken for granted that a Federal 
 administration is bound and is able to keep an even balance be- 
 tween them! It never occurs to most minds that the function 
 of protecting men's liberties includes, of necessity, the function 
 of eradicating tyranny, and of casting down tyrants. Still less 
 do they dream that immunity and toleration to tyrants, on the 
 part of the Government, necessitates the protection and aid of 
 them in their tyranny. When it was found that the Federal forces 
 were employed to drive out the free settlers of Kansas, or to ob- 
 struct the proper exercise of their freedom and that those forces 
 were swelled by accessions from the lawless and murderous ban- 
 ditti of invading slaveholders, the whole country, north of Mason 
 and Dixon's line (with the exception already noticed) stood aghast 
 at the exhibition. But very few seemed to have understood that, 
 under the circumstances of the case, and considering the pressure 
 coming upon the President from opposite quarters, the exhibition 
 was one of the most natural and inevitable that could have been 
 imagined that an administration not pledged to protect Liberty 
 in Kansas, was, of necessity, pledge^, virtually, to uproot Liberty 
 in Kansas ! The crime imputed to the administration was merely 
 that it failed to protect the " free State" men, and, instead of this, 
 took the part of the aggressors, against them. Further than this, 
 the censure has not gone. To voice of astonishment or of indigna- 
 \ ion has been raised against the administration because it did not 
 at once proclaim Freedom in Kansas, and put down, with a strong 
 hand, all attempts to plant Slavery upon the ruins of freedom. 
 Such a course, from the existing administration, might have eli- 
 cited expressions of alarm, even from Republicans, Free Soilers, 
 and perhaps from some Abolitionists, lest the Government should 
 have been overstepping its Constitutional boundaries, becoming 
 " consolidated," or invading the rights of the Territory, or of the 
 neighboring States! So little did men understand that there 
 were only two ways for the administration of Mr. Pierce, or of any 
 other President (whether Whig, Democrat, or Republican) no 
 other alternative for selection, to wit, either the protection of 
 Freedom against Slavery, or else the protection of Slavery against 
 Freedom the driving out or " crushing out" of free settlers, or a 
 similar visitation upon the invaders. It was not seen that if Pre- 
 sident Pierce were not prepared for the latter, he had no choice 
 left him but to yield his assent to the former. Up to the present 
 moment, the multitudes who so justly condemn President 
 
64 "What would have been gained by a Victory 
 
 Pierce, do not see this. They imagine that he might have found 
 some middle course between such extremes. They will tell you 
 that Slavery and Freedom have lived together, under our Na- 
 tional Government, thus far, without involving any administration 
 in their quarrels. They forget that Slavery has uniformly gov- 
 erned hitherto, and that there has been peace falsely so called 
 only because Liberty has slept, dormant. They forget that the 
 case has now changed, because Liberty has begun to resist, be- 
 cause issues, long delayed, have now come up for decision, because 
 the death-struggle has already commenced, and because the de- 
 mands of Slavery upon the National Government, which it has so 
 long controlled, have, of necessity, become so exorbitant, that 
 any administration must either resist it all, or enforce it all must 
 either wage an exterminating war with Slavery or with Freedom 
 not merely in Kansas, but in the entire country. Under tem- 
 porary pressures, there may, indeed, be temporary reactions, tem- 
 porary relaxations, and temporary respites. The struggle must 
 nevertheless go on, until either Freedom or Slavery is vanquished. 
 The Nation will soon be driven to see all this. The question 
 now is, whether the Republican party, its leaders, and its Presi- 
 dential candidate, already see this. If they do, they are prepared 
 to meet the crisis like freemen. Then, but not otherwise, would they 
 have been able to fill their places, and meet the crisis, if the Presi- 
 dential election had resulted in their favor. Then, but not other- 
 wise, would "Freedom in Kansas," and in the whole country, 
 have been secure in their keeping. To have come into power 
 under the control of any less comprehensive IDEA, would well- 
 nigh have insured disappointment and disgrace. 
 
 And this view prepares us to look at one remaining particular, 
 in the process of liberating Kansas. It has been said, and well 
 said, that one of the first steps to be taken by the National Govern- 
 ment for the relief of " Free State" men in Kansas, must be the 
 repudiation of the Slave Code imposed upon them by the Border 
 Ruffian Legislature of the Territory. For " Free State" men to 
 wield the suffrage under the required oath to submit to that Code, 
 would be to give up themselves and their Territory, as its victims. 
 The Federal abolition of the existing Slavery in Kansas, then, 
 is confessedly among the first steps to be taken. 
 
 And this settles the question of Federal authority over Slavery 
 in the Territories. It settles also the propriety and the necessity 
 of the measure in respect to Kansas. 
 
 But this upsets the expositions of Mr. Banks. " Legislation in 
 Congress," and consequent "agitation" there, would have been 
 
on the Republican Platform f 65 
 
 needed, unless the still bolder measure of Executive interference, 
 without legislation, should have taken its place. The IDEA of 
 Federal interference with Slavery would have had to be restored 
 by Col. Fremont and his advisers, or else, confessedly, they could 
 have done nothing for Kansas. But how could this have been 
 done, if, as the Times says, " his first purpose would be so to con- 
 duct his administration as to conciliate the Southern party in Con- 
 gress" ? Which of the two incompatible things would have been 
 preferred ? 
 
 Still farther. The power and duty of the Federal Government 
 to put down the existing Slavery in Kansas, involves the power 
 and duty of the same Government to do the same thing in other 
 Territories, and in the States. This will be doubted. It will be 
 said that the reason why the Federal Government has just author- 
 ity to put down Slavery in Kansas, is because the Slave Code there 
 was established, contrary to the Constitution, by invasion, by law- 
 less violence, without the consent of the people upon whom it was 
 imposed. But this is no more true of the Slavery in Kansas than 
 it is of all the Slavery that exists in the States. The slave-traders 
 invaded Africa and hunted down their victims. Their slaves were 
 sold in the Colonies, not only without law, but in violation of law. 
 To the present hour there is no positive law for Slavery in any one 
 of the States. And if Slavery be unconstitutional in the Territo- 
 ries, it is equally so in the States. The reason given for Federal 
 authority over Slavery in Kansas, is therefore an equal reason for 
 its authority over Slavery in the States. 
 
 The claim of Federal authority to set aside the Slave Code of 
 Kansas assumes the right of the Federal Government to decide 
 whether its slavery was introduced lawfully or no. And if it may 
 inquire into the lawfulness and Constitutionality in Kansas, it may 
 institute the same inquiry in respect to the States. If it may de- 
 cide in the one case, it may decide in the other. 
 
 If it be still imagined that there is a broad distinction between 
 the Territories and the States in this matter, let it be remembered 
 that the Slavery party will admit no such distinction. It insists 
 that the two cases are parallel. The Slavery party has exercised 
 its prerogative of defining its own claim. At this we do not de- 
 mur. Nor can it complain that its opponents deal with the pre- 
 cise claim thus presented to them with that claim, and with no- 
 thing different from it. 
 
 The claim we have seen to be, the right of property in man, 
 under natural, NOT municipal law the right everywhere, and at 
 all times, in the Territories, in the old States and in the new the 
 5 
 
66 What would have been gained by a Victory f 
 
 right of Federal protection of slave property, wherever it may be 
 carried, within the country, in despite of State laws. The claim is 
 to be met, as presented, or it is not met at all. 
 
 But it must be met and disposed of, in some way. It must be 
 resisted, or submitted to. The claim is pressed, and must be dis- 
 posed of, one way or the other. It can not be halved. It can not 
 be compromised. 
 
 Now what will the Republican party do with this claim ? They 
 must take it just as it stands. They must concede the whole, or 
 they must resist the whole. The same necessity, were they in 
 power, would rest on tfiem, that has rested on the administration 
 of Mr. Pierce. They must help drive Liberty out of Kansas, or 
 they must help drive Slavery out of Kansas. Which will they do? 
 And their decision, either way, will of necessity involve their 
 similar decision in respect to Slavery in the States. If they decide 
 it in the one direction, they give up Kansas to Slavery, and re- 
 linquish the enterprise of " non-extension," of " localizing" and of 
 " limiting" Slavery, in any degree, or in any form. If they decide 
 it in the other direction, they decide upon the Federal abolition of 
 Slavery in all the States, or, what amounts to the same thing, the 
 protection from chattelhood, of every human being within the 
 United States and its possessions. 
 
 To that issue every political party in this country must be driv- 
 en, and on that issue its decision must be made, and its platform 
 
 The party now in power was, by the fact of its being in power, 
 compelled to define its position, on that issue. It has done so. 
 And any other party coming into power will have to do the same. 
 
 Was the Republican party, at the time of the election in No- 
 vember, prepared for that issue ! And was it ready to define its 
 position in favor of THE NATION'S FREEDOM ? If so, it was pre- 
 pared to come into power, and to wield its power with honor. If 
 not, its defeat may have been a providential and merciful chastise- 
 ment, to teach it wisdom. It might have been a worse defeat, to 
 have come into power under the incumbrance of disclaimers, con- 
 cessions, and pledges, incompatible with the attainment of a single 
 one of its objects. 
 
 We shall not be understood as saying that no difference of object 
 or of purpose between the Democratic and the Republican parties 
 is to be recognized, nor as affirming that, under conceivable cir- 
 cumstances, and through the good providence of God, the Re- 
 publican party, had it succeeded in the late election, might not 
 have been instrumental in placing the country in a better condition 
 

 The True Course. 67 
 
 than it now is, or is likely to be soon. All this lies beyond our 
 vision. We are looking at probable operations of cause and effect, 
 upon a party unfortunately trammelled with such a platform, and 
 holding such IDEAS of the Constitution. We have deemed it de- 
 sirable to look critically at the almost insuperable difficulties that 
 must have interposed between its purposes and the accomplishment 
 of them. And we have done this for the purpose of entreating its 
 leaders and members, if they mean to remain in the field, as an 
 organized party, to remove such needless incumbrances from tneir 
 shoulders, and take up such formidable stumbling-blocks from the 
 path of their future usefulness. The cause of human liberty can 
 not afford to have the field they occupy lumbered up in this man- 
 ner. They must clear it up, or give the room for others. 
 
 THE TRUE COURSE. 
 
 And now, having thus freely remarked upon tlie platforms and 
 the policy of the Democratic and the Republican parties, we may 
 be asked what we would substitute instead. 
 
 The answer is easy. We would have a party declaring the 
 power and duty of Congress to abolish Slavery in the States ; a 
 party against Slavery where it already exists, as well as against 
 the further extension of Slavery. We would have the oppo- 
 sition to the Slave Power based upon principle, and because slave- 
 holding everywhere, is a crime that can not be legalized, instead 
 of its being based upon policy, and because the extension of 
 Slavery, in certain directions, is opposed to the interests of the 
 " whites" of the Northern States ! We would as distinctly affirm 
 the unconstitutionality of Slavery in Missouri and in South-Caro- 
 lina, as in Kansas and Nebraska. We would as promptly and as 
 earnestly demand the Federal protection of black men in the slave 
 States as the protection of white men in the free Territories. We 
 would affirm the same Constitutional right and duty of the Federal 
 Government to act in the one case as in the other. We would 
 give precedence to Federal action against Slavery in the States, not 
 only as being of greatest importance, but as coming first in the 
 order of Nature, and first in point of time, and feasibility of ac- 
 complishment. By a prompt and speedy abolition of Slavery in 
 the States, we would secure the Territories against the possibility 
 of its encroachments, instead of wasting our strength in absurd 
 and visionary schemes for preventing its extension, while conced- 
 ing its Constitutional right to existence. 
 
68 The True Course. 
 
 In doing this, we should have the satisfaction of striking, direct- 
 ly, at the root of the evil, instead of aiming random shafts at the 
 branches ; of laboring for our whole country, not for a particular 
 section of it ; for all the inhabitants, not for a select class of them. 
 
 In this, we should be fortified by the principles of impartial 
 justice, and approved by the civilized world. We should be in 
 harmony with nature, which teaches liberty ; with the Scriptures, 
 which condemn oppression ; with the spirit of our fathers, who 
 bled for freedom ; with the genius of the age, which demands 
 progress; with the literature of all nations, which is against 
 slavery ; with the first principles of government and law, which 
 protect the equal rights of all men ; with the divine purpose of 
 human redemption, which includes all the families of the earth in 
 its promised blessings. 
 
 In the prosecution of such a work, we should but be giving 
 practical effect to the Declaration of Independence, and to the 
 declared objects of the Constitution, conforming to the strict 
 letter of its provisions, in obedience to its living spirit. 
 
 By the simple process of understanding the Constitution as it 
 reads, by expounding it according to established legal rules, by 
 giving to it the same construction in one latitude that we do in 
 another, and by claiming for all " the people of the United States," 
 alike, the benefits of its provisions, we should avoid the inconsist- 
 ency of seeking to make it the aegis of liberty in one part of the 
 nation, while consenting that it may be made the shield of slavery 
 in another part ; the inconsistency of maintaming that, while the 
 Constitution secures the liberty of white men, and owners of plant- 
 ations, it affords no equal protection to black men and laborers 
 upon plantations. Nor should we be betrayed into the absurdity 
 of holding that the " people of the United States," by whom the 
 Constitution was " ordained and established," are entitled to none 
 of its safeguards of personal freedom, while, in the same breath, 
 we were loudly claiming the protection of those same beneficent 
 provisions for the people of new Territories, beyond our original 
 boundaries, and which have recently come into existence. 
 
 In laboring to persuade our fellow-citizens to occupy with us, 
 this firm platform, our chief task must be to convince them that 
 political acts are moral acts, that the moral world, (including the 
 political world,) like the natural world, is governed by fixed laws, 
 established by the Author of nature, laws from which He himself, 
 in his righteous Providence, never swerves, laws from which He 
 never permits individuals or communities to depart, without in- 
 curring the just penalties of transgression. 
 

 Principles of Government. 69 
 
 PRINCIPLES or GOVERNMENT. 
 
 And among all these divine laws, there are none more universal 
 and inexorable than that which binds Civil Society to protect the 
 natural rights, the personal liberties, of each one of its unoffending 
 subjects. By this law, God requires, and always has required of all 
 nations, in all ages, and whatever may be their recognized forms and 
 modes of Civil Government, that every man shall be restrained from 
 violating the natural rights of every other man. It is upon this 
 divine law that all civil law is founded, and it is from the same 
 divine law that all civil governments derive their right and author- 
 ity to govern. No human compacts, constitutions, statutes, or 
 usages can supersede, nor modify, in the slightest degree, this 
 divine law, which is the law of equity and justice, and must remain 
 in force so long as human beings live together in society, and re- 
 main moral, accountable beings, as they now are. It is the Law 
 of Love, affirmed in the Scriptures, as applied to the relations and 
 responsibilities of communities and nations of men. 
 
 Civil Government, however organized, is the instrument of 
 society, or of nations, for the exercise of this high function the 
 equal and impartial " protection of the natural rights of all men, 
 taking none of them from them."* In Scripture language it is to 
 " execute justice between a man and his neighbor" " to deliver 
 him that is spoiled out of the hands of the oppressor." This is the 
 mission of Civil Government. This is the object, and this is the de- 
 finition of civil law. All the great writers on Civil Government, 
 from Moses and Justinian, down to Blackstone and Jefferson, have 
 been occupied with statements of these elementary truths, which 
 lie at the basis of all jurisprudence, of all legislation, of all that can 
 properly be called the Science of Government, the Science of Poli- 
 tics, the Science of Law. The statesman or the jurist, the politician 
 or the civilian, who ignores or tramples upon these principles, or 
 who allows himself, under any exigencies, to depart from them, or to 
 hold them in abeyance, in practice, is either too ignorant or too 
 dishonest to be intrusted with the rights and interests of his fel- 
 lows, by holding public stations. Whoever " for reasons of state" 
 violates justice, or permits its violation, has no claim to the name 
 of a statesman, and can do nothing for the State but to corrupt and 
 destroy it. 
 Our fathers understood these principles, and therefore, in form- 
 
 * Jefferson. 
 
70 National Responsibilities. 
 
 ing their national Constitution, (as Mr. Madison testifies,) they 
 would not permit it to contain language which could be construed 
 to imply that man can hold property in man that Slavery can, by 
 any possibility, be made legal. The previous National Declaration 
 that the right to liberty is inalienable, amounts to the same thing. 
 For the right to liberty would not be inalienable, if Civil Govern- 
 ment could legalize Slavery, or lawfully tolerate such a practice. 
 To admit that Slavery can be made legal, would be to admit that 
 lawlessness may become law, and that Civil Government can, law- 
 fully, become an oppressor instead of a protector. To say this, 
 would be to contradict and deny the first principles of the Science 
 of Government, and the Science of Law. Politics is the Science 
 of Government, of legislation, of law. So that the pretended 
 politician is a quack, or an impostor, who believes that there can 
 be valid law for Slavery, or who, from considerations of policy, 
 allows himself to admit its legality. To clothe such a person with 
 civil office, would be as great an absurdity as to make a man an 
 engineer of a locomotive, who knew nothing of the rules of his 
 profession, or who could be bribed to violate them. 
 
 NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES. 
 
 Wherever a national existence is to be recognized, there is to be 
 recognized likewise, a corresponding national responsibility, and 
 this responsibility must always, in the very nature of things, in- 
 volve the national duty of securing the natural right to liberty, of 
 each and every one of its innocent inhabitants. Throughout the 
 Scriptures, God is represented as holding nations, as such, along 
 with their rulers, responsible for all the oppression, violence, in- 
 equality, and injustice which the nation or its government either 
 perpetrates or tolerates within its borders. Even under the 
 despotic governments of Egypt, Tyre, and Assyria, God held the 
 people responsible for the oppressions committed or tolerated by 
 their national governments, and he visited them with retributive 
 judgments, accordingly. Scripture history and prophecy are full 
 of this truth. In His moral and providential government over all 
 the nations of the earth, ancient and modern, God has uniformly 
 pursued the same course. Universal history attests this. The 
 equity of this t feature of the divine administration is to be vindi- 
 cated on the ground that civil society, everywhere, communities, 
 states, and nations, are morally bound to protect the essential 
 rights of each and every human being within their geographical 
 
National Responsibilities. 71 
 
 limits, (not merely as some say, " the greatest good of the greatest 
 number,") that "for the security of these rights, governments 
 are instituted among men" that governments can not inno- 
 cently be instituted for any purposes or under any constitution 
 exclusive of this ; and that no community, state, or nation can 
 have a moral right to institute or to maintain any government 
 not exercising these powers, or to support any civil rulers by 
 whom these duties are not discharged. The evidences of this 
 divine constitution of civil society are visible, not only on the 
 pages of past history, but in the present condition of mankind. 
 Communities everywhere enjoy the blessings of liberty, and the 
 protection of law, in exact proportion to the fidelity with which 
 they honor the principles upon which law and security are founded. 
 And the general prevalence of insecurity, of oppression, and of 
 the reign of despotism among the nations, is owing, mainly, to the 
 fact that men disregard or trample upon those principles by the 
 support of rulers who refuse or neglect to extend protection, 
 security, and freedom to all classes of the people. 
 
 The notion that a " Constitution of the United States," or of 
 any other nation, can be so framed and arranged that the National 
 Government, by its constitutional limitations, can be restrained from 
 discharging the duties devolving, in the nature of things, upon all 
 civil governments, particularly upon all national governments, 
 and that the national government, the nation, and the people of 
 whom the nation is composed, can thereby and thus absolve them- 
 selves, or be absolved from the duty of " executing justice between 
 a man and his neighbor," of " delivering him that is spoiled out of 
 the hand of the oppressor," is a notion too impious to be received 
 by any one who fears God, too servile to be endured by any one 
 who values his own freedom, too disorganizing to be tolerated by 
 any one who prizes social order, too absurd to be entertained by 
 any one who has ever mastered the first rudiments of legal and 
 political science, as recognized and enunciated by standard writ- 
 ers on civil government and civil law. 
 
 If the Federal Constitution does, in fact, contain any such im- 
 pious, despotic, disorganizing, and absurd limitations, then it be- 
 comes a high moral duty and an imperious political necessity, more 
 sacred and more authoritative than any parchments or compacts, 
 to disregard and over-rule all those limitations, to obey our living 
 God rather than our dead fathers, to protect our own liberties by 
 securing the liberties of our enslaved brethren, to deliver the nation 
 by delivering the oppressed, to establish a free government that 
 will exclude Slavery , the opposite of freedom. 
 
72 The Constitution. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 But there is no truth in the pretense that our National Govern- 
 ment has no constitutional authority to "establish justice, and 
 secure the blessings of liberty." The document itself, in its first 
 paragraph, explicitly affirms itself to have been "ordained and 
 established" by " the people of the United States," for that express 
 object, which is stated without reservation or exception. To say 
 that the powers of the Government created by the Constitution 
 are not commensurate with the declared objects of the Constitu- 
 tion, is to make the Constitution a cheat, and the Government an 
 abortion. If the Federal Government has no power to secure 
 these objects, then it has no power to secure any of the other de- 
 clared objects of the Constitution no power to preserve "a more 
 perfect Union, to insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the com- 
 mon defense, and promote the general welfare." And if it has no 
 power to secure any one of these declared objects, then it has no 
 power under the Constitution, at all. If the Federal Government 
 has no power to secure the personal liberties of its subjects, then 
 it has no claim on their allegiance ; for allegiance is founded upon 
 protection. If the Federal Government can not protect its sub- 
 jects, it can not remain a government ; for the very nature of 
 government is protection, and the absence of power to protect the 
 personal liberties of its subjects is the absence of power to protect 
 any of the rest of their rights. If it can not protect them at home 
 it can not protect them abroad. If it can not protect them from 
 enslavement under authority of the States, then the States can 
 undermine and uproot the National Government by chattelizing 
 the mass of its citizens, reducing them to articles of merchandise. 
 
 The specific provisions of the Constitution secure its declared ob- 
 jects. They secure to the people the privileges of "the writ of 
 Habeas Corpus," and provide that " no man shall be deprived of 
 liberty without due process of law." They secure religious liberty, 
 freedom of speech and of the press. And they restrict these secur- 
 ities to no favored class. They declare that ' no State shall pass 
 any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the 
 obligations of contracts, or grant any title of nobility." They 
 direct that " the United States shatt guaranty to every State in 
 this Union a Republican form of government" a Republicanism 
 defined by the preceding securities of freedom. And they commit 
 to the Federal Government the administration of this Constitution, 
 which is therein declared to be " the supreme law of the land," and 
 

 Duties Alternatives Necessities. 73 
 
 that " the Judges in each State shall be bound thereby, any thing 
 in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwith- 
 standing." 
 
 The only pleas set up against the exercise of these Federal 
 powers for the security of personal freedom are founded on sup- 
 posed recognitions of Slavery in that instrument. The plea implies 
 that such recognitions of Slavery would annul constitutional secur- 
 ities of freedom, and thus defeat the declared objects of " the peo- 
 ple of the United States" in establishing the government. 
 
 To this plea we demur : FIRST, That by the established legal 
 rules of expounding the Constitution, the clauses cited contain no 
 recognitions of Slavery. SECOND, that such recognitions, if ad- 
 mitted, are to be admitted only as exceptions, confined strictly to 
 their own specified limitations, leaving the declared objects and 
 leading provisions of the Constitution in full force. That is to say, 
 if the Constitution did provide (as it does not) for the rendition 
 of fugitives from Slavery, and if it did provide for a misrepresent- 
 ation of three fifths of them in Congress, those ambiguous, anoma- 
 lous, and exceptional clauses could not annul those clear and ex- 
 plicit provisions in favor of the security of personal liberty, which, 
 if carried out, would abolish Slavery. The general rule, the de- 
 clared object, could not be superseded and annulled by the excep- 
 tion. The plea under consideration begins under the pretext of a 
 "compromise," but ends with the permanent establishment of 
 Slavery, and the consequent subversion of freedom a " compro- 
 mise" in which freedom loses all and gains nothing ! Thus arrogant 
 and unfounded are the pleas under consideration. 
 
 DUTIES ALTERNATIVES NECESSITIES. 
 
 But no possible views of the Constitution can relieve the nation 
 and the National Government from the natural duty, the moral 
 obligation, the political necessity, of abolishing American Slavery. 
 If the Constitution be adequate, as we have shown, for the national 
 abolition of Slavery, then there is no excuse for the neglect of the 
 Government and the people to exercise, in that direction, and for 
 that object, those constitutional powers. But if the Constitution 
 be defective in that particular, then the fault lies with the nation, 
 with the people of whom the nation is composed. They had no 
 moral or political right to establish such a defective government. 
 Its defects, fancied or real, can not absolve them from the original 
 and irrepealable obligations of our common nature, of our common 
 social humanity, which no compacts can annul. If we have, our- 
 
74 Duties Alternatives Necessities. 
 
 selves, entered into a wicked compact, our first duty is to repent 
 of the sin, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance, by repudiat- 
 ing its pretended obligations, and performing the duty we had pro- 
 mised to refrain from performing. If our fathers made a wicked 
 compact, they could neither bind themselves nor their children to 
 fullfil it. Unlawful compacts are never binding, nor can they be, 
 so long as law retains its authority. No plighted faith to the 
 slaveholders can absolve us from the discharge of known duty. 
 The Slaveholders have violated the Missouri Compromise, which 
 they boasted of having forced upon us under a threat of dissolving 
 the Union. They now say that the Compromise was unconstitu- 
 tional. Be it so. It was unconstitutional, because it was a com- 
 promise between Slavery and Freedom, for which the Constitution 
 makes no provision a compromise with crime, which is itself 
 criminal. " The compromises of the Constitution" (even if there 
 were any) could no longer be urged upon us by the Slaveholders, 
 who will abide by no compromises. 
 
 The nation and its Government are bound to abolish Slavery, 
 because the nation and its government are involved in the guilt of 
 its long-continued existence, extension, and protection. The 
 nation and the National Government have shaped the national 
 policy, and prostituted the national diplomacy for this end. If the 
 Constitution sanctions this, the nation is guilty for having adopted 
 and supported it. If the Constitution does not sanction it, the 
 nation is guilty of protecting and extending Slavery without its 
 sanction, and against its declared ends. In either case, the national 
 guilt of protecting and extending Slavery remains. 
 
 And that guilt would not be washed away by a dissolution of 
 the Union, leaving the slaves in their chains. The nation has no 
 right to disband without liberating them. As the whole nation is 
 responsible for Slavery, so the whole 'nation, and every part of it, 
 is bound to put an end to the system. The Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence contained the solemn promise of THE NATION to establish 
 a government that should secure the inalienable rights of all men 
 in the nation, to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "The 
 representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress 
 assembled, appealed to the Supreme Judge of the World for the 
 rectitude of their intentions " in making this declaration. No 
 earthly power can absolve the Nation, nor any portion of it, from 
 this promise. No plea that THE STATES ought to abolish Slavery, 
 however truthful, can release the Nation from this national pro- 
 mise. No amount of " moral suasion," either by individuals or by 
 
Duties Alternatives Necessities. 75 
 
 the Nation, entreating the slave-masters to emancipate their slaves, 
 can release the Nation from this promise. Both by solemn pro- 
 mise and by original natural obligation, the Nation is bound to 
 " execute justice," to " proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all 
 the inhabitants thereof." This National duty must be discharged, 
 or the Nation can not be saved. The SLAVEHOLDER that repents 
 of his oppression will indeed be forgiven. The State that repents of 
 its support of Slavery may be forgiven. But neither the repentance 
 of the Slaveholder nor of the State can avail for the Nation, if the 
 Nation refuses to repent and put away the sin. All the Slavehold- 
 ers and all the Slave States might repent and be forgiven, but if 
 the people of the Northern States, who have so long sustained 
 Slavery, would have a share in that forgiveness, they, too, must 
 have a share in the repentance, and in the putting away of the sin, 
 in which they also have been involved. National repentance and 
 National amendment constitute the only remedy for National sins 
 and their effects. 
 
 The responsibilities, the duties, the delinquencies, the repentance, 
 the amendment, and the preservation of Nations and National 
 Governments, are closely connected together, if, indeed, there be 
 any distinction between them. The Republican theory regards the 
 people as sovereign, and the rulers elected by them as their repre- 
 sentatives and servants. This theory is correct, if it be added 
 thereto, that the Creator is supreme over communities and their 
 governments, that Rulers must not neglect the administration of 
 justice to please their constituents, and that the sovereignty of the 
 People, like the authority of Rulers, is valid for the protection of 
 rights, but not for the violation of them. 
 
 The wickedness of the Government, or of the Administration, 
 or of the Statesman, becomes the wickedness of the people of the 
 voters who elect and cordially sustain them. It is idle for the 
 people, the voters, to complain of the Government, of the Admin- 
 istration, of the President, of the Member of Congress, for their 
 servility to the Slaveholders, and their support of Slavery, so long 
 as they themselves continue to vote for candidates who are known 
 to disclaim the design of interfering with Slavery in the Slave 
 States. Not to interfere with it is to afford it national protection, 
 and that national protection is our great national sin, for which the 
 voice of God, in Nature, in Scripture, and in Providence, calls 
 loudly upon the Government, the Nation, the people, and the vot- 
 ing citizen who consents with them, to repent. If it be sinful in 
 the Administration, the President, and the Members of Congress 
 
76 Duties Alternatives Necessities. 
 
 and the Judiciary, to neglect or postpone the duty of abolishing 
 American Slavery, then it is sinful in the voting citizen to join 
 with them in such a course. And they do thus join with and sus- 
 tain them whenever they vote for candidates for those offices who 
 are not to be relied upon to pursue an opposite course. If con- 
 siderations of supposed utility, expediency, and public advantage 
 may justify the citizen in voting for such candidates, thus voting 
 for the continued National support of Slavery, then the same, or 
 similar considerations, may justify the President, the Congress, and 
 the Judiciary in their continuance of the National support of 
 Slavery. Yet scores of thousands of such voters are loud in their 
 condemnation of " compromises with Slavery," little thinking that 
 such compromises are involved in their own votes. They cry out 
 against " dough-faces," without reflecting that their own votes lie 
 at the bottom of the mischief, that if they continue their present 
 course, and if all other voters follow their example, the National 
 Abolition of Slavery can never take place, because the Government 
 can never come into the hands of those who would abolish it. 
 
 Whatever of guilt is involved in slaveholding, and whatever may 
 be the accumulated guilt' of all the slaveholding in the nation, that 
 entire weight of guilt rests, most indisputably, upon the Nation and 
 the National Government that afford it protection, by tolerating 
 its existence. If this be not true, then there is no use nor signifi- 
 cance in charging upon any nation or national government the 
 guilt of upholding or permitting oppression. 
 
 And whatever of guilt rests on the nation or on the Government 
 in respect to the tolerance of the Slave System, most indisputably 
 rests upon each citizen who votes for a continuance of the present 
 condition of things, by voting for such candidates for Federal 
 offices as he has reason to believe will not exert their powers for a 
 national abolition of Slavery. If this be not true, we may as well 
 dismiss all ideas of the moral responsibility of citizens in respect 
 to their choice of civil rulers. National responsibilities are the 
 personal responsibilities of the individuals of whom the nation is 
 composed, and these responsibilities are not frittered away by sub- 
 division among the millions of voters. The entire guilt that rests 
 upon all rests upon each one who, by his vote, participates in 
 it. And the guilt of each one of them is multiplied by the num- 
 bers of all the rest whose sin is approved and indorsed by his 
 example. So that political responsibilities are among the most 
 weighty that can be sustained by human beings, and they in- 
 volve the most extensive and enduring results. 
 
Abolition Pledge. 
 
 TEMPTATIONS AND SAFEGUARDS. 
 
 But the weight of these responsibilities appears to be but little 
 regarded, especially at those times when the people, collectively 
 and individually, are called upon to the discharge of the duties 
 indicated by them. Congressional, and especially Presidential 
 elections, presenting, as they do, the proper occasions for the dis- 
 charge of our national duties respecting the abolition of slavery, 
 are, notoriously, the very seasons in which all moral considera- 
 tions on that subject lose their hold on the great majority even 
 of those who, at other times, appear to be most deeply affected 
 by them; but who then suffer them to be overborne by consi- 
 derations of expediency, diverted by deceptive compromises, or 
 swept away by those gales of excitement which artful politi- 
 cians always know how to stimulate and use on such occasions, 
 for their own ends. The dread of standing alone, the reproach 
 of being fanatical, the impulse to go with the multitude, the vague, 
 delusive hope of accomplishing a little by choosing the least of 
 two evils, these are among the influences that prevent even pro- 
 fessed Abolitionists from voting for the national abolition of 
 Slavery. And nothing can be more certain than that the national 
 abolition of Slavery can never take place, until these untoward 
 influences are effectually counteracted, these habits and practices 
 broken up and abandoned. Just as certainly as drunkenness 
 must prevail and increase unless sober citizens abandon the com- 
 mon use of intoxicating liquors, just so certainly the nation can 
 never prevent the continuance and increase of Slavery, so long 
 as the mass of moral and religious citizens continue to vote for 
 candidates for national offices who are not known to be heartily 
 devoted to the measure of national abolition. Why, then, should 
 not the same preventive measures be applied to the latter evil 
 as to the former ? If the pledge of total abstinence from the 
 intoxicating drafts of alcohol was found a necessary auxiliary in 
 the cause of Temperance, why should not the pledge of total 
 abstinence from the intoxication of pro-slavery politics be equally 
 necessary to the cause of freedom ? Confining our attention, for 
 the present, to National politics, we propose the following 
 
 ABOLITION PLEDGE. 
 
 " We, the undersigned, believing in the wickedness, illegality, 
 and unconstitutionality of American Slavery, and in the duty of the 
 American people and Government to abolish it, do hereby pledge 
 
78 A National Abolition Party. 
 
 ourselves, that, until Slavery shall be abolished in this land, we will 
 not vote for any candidate for Congress, or the Presidency, or the 
 Vice-Presidency, who is not publicly known to be in favor of the 
 Abolition of Slavery by the action of the American people and 
 Government." 
 
 ITS USES. 
 
 The circulation of this pledge, in any locality, would afford the 
 best of facilities for conversation, and the diffusion of important 
 truths. Presented as a definite question of personal duty, it would 
 acquire fresh interest. Every one to whom the pledge is pre- 
 sented, will be led to inquire, whether he, himself, has a duty to 
 perform, and what that duty is. Such a movement would give 
 definiteness to the enterprise of abolition. Every other instru- 
 mentality and influence would be seen as converging towards this. 
 " Moral suasion," religious influences, the pulpit, ecclesiastical ac- 
 tion, delineations of slavery and of its blighting effects, all these 
 would be seen to have meaning and practical value when regarded 
 as means to an important end, THE NATIONAL ABOLITION OF 
 SLAVERY. And it will be seen that no amount or variety of influ- 
 ences will have produced their proper effect, any farther than as 
 they shall have enlisted the voters of America in the one great work 
 of abolishing Slavery in America. Every thing else is but pre- 
 liminary and auxiliary to this. All else is talk, which, if it goes 
 no farther, is mere talk. THIS is ACTION. Talk is good, in its 
 place, as a means of producing action. After a talk of twenty- 
 three or twenty-four years, it is time for action, or at least for en- 
 listments and preparations for action. 
 
 The number of pledged voters in neighborhoods, villages, town- 
 ships, cities, counties, and States, will help, from time to time, to mark 
 progress. One hundred thousand signers to the pledge would revo. 
 lutionize or supersede the Republican party, and there are proba- 
 bly thrice that number who profess to be, in principle, with us. 
 We ask them to be with their principles, in practice. Five hun- 
 dred thousand signatures to the Abolition pledge, would settle, 
 prospectively and speedily, the question of American Slavery. 
 Politicians, now sitting in darkness, would soon see great light. 
 Constitutional difficulties would vanish. And Slaveholders would 
 themselves hasten to get rid of the system. 
 
 A NATIONAL ABOLITION PARTY. 
 
 A national abolition of Slavery calls for a National party, a 
 party supported at the North and at the South. The petty 
 

 A National Abolition Party. 79 
 
 oligarchy has well-nigh throttled the Nation. Assuming to be, 
 themselves, " the South," they have managed to control the North. 
 The inquiry has been started, and is still debated : Whether there 
 be any North ? One hundred thousand pledged abolition voters, 
 at the North would solve that question. And the solution would 
 lead to the discovery that there is also a South. Comparing the 
 census with the late election returns,* it appears that not more 
 than one third, probably not more than one fifth, of the Southern 
 voters are Slaveholders. The great majority are ^o^i-slaveholders. 
 These will soon show themselves to be " the South," when it is 
 once discovered by them that there is a North, and that the North 
 is ready to unite with them for a National deliverance. "Our 
 glorious Union " may thus be secured and perpetuated. A Na- 
 tional deliverance from Slavery must be its object and its basis 
 A Northern rally for Northern interests can not develop it. Mere. 
 " non-extension" can interest few Southerners, except those\ who 
 seek to emigrate. Least of all would a separation from the free 
 North be desired by Southern abolitionists. The spirit of general 
 liberty can be developed only by a National Abolition Party 
 strongly sustained by " the North" and " the South." By such a 
 movement, the reproach of " Sectionalism" would be transferred 
 to its proper place. 
 
 Such, then, is a hasty outline of the course we would have the 
 friends of liberty, in this country, pursue. This is our proposed 
 substitute for the timid policy and vacillating tactics of the Re- 
 publican party, hi the STRUGGLE OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FIFTY- 
 SIX. This is our advice to Republicans. This is our advice to 
 Free-Soilers. This is our programme for Abolitionists. This is 
 our proposal to our fallow-citizens, our countrymen. We invite 
 you, one and all, Northern men and Southern men, to a grand 
 united rally for NATIONAL DELIVERANCE BY A NATIONAL ABOLI- 
 TION OF SLAVERY. 
 
 Dismissing useless regrets for the past, let us look hopefully to 
 the future. We say not that the Republican movement has 
 accomplished nothing. It was something to have thoroughly 
 
 * Presidential votes cast in the Slave States, in!856, . . 1,137,723 
 
 Slaveholders, by census of 1850, including women and minors, who 
 
 do not vote, . , . . 347,525 
 
 Leaves, non-slaveholding votes, 790,198 
 
 In the census, persons holding slaves in several counties, were several times 
 counted. Deducting these, and women and minors, the real number of slavehold- 
 ing voters would probably not exceed 200,000. Non-slaveholding, 937,723. 
 
80 A National Abolition Party. 
 
 alarmed the oligarchy of slaveholders. But it is instructive to 
 notice the cause of that alarm. The President's Message, and a 
 month's debate upon it, in both Houses, have revealed tlie cause. 
 Republicans were suspected of having contemplated a National 
 Abolition of Slavery. This, and nothing else, caused the alarm. 
 Instead of laboring to appease it, by disclaimers, as has been at- 
 tempted in Congress, let all who hate slavery and love freedom, 
 unite, openly and boldly, for the defense of the latter, by the abo- 
 lition of. the former. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Near the beginning of this Review, some statements were made concerning the 
 course of Gov. Geary, in Kansas. It is proper to say that his subsequent course, 
 (while our printing has lingered,) has been less obnoxious, and hi some particulars, 
 quite satisfactory, to the friends of freedom and good order. Some evidence of 
 this is afforded by the complaints of Border Ruffians against him. Through his 
 influence Judge Lecompte has been removed, and some degree of protection has 
 been afforded to the free settlers. The Administration, too, has relaxed its rigors. 
 Since the election, the Democratic party has been in no immediate necessity for 
 securing Southern votes, and now seeks to regain Northern favor. The panic 
 created by the strong vote of a party suspected of latent abolitionism has had a 
 salutary effect, while the thrift and prospective increase of free settlers, has held in 
 check the Southern invasion. " Hope on ! Hope ever!" 
 
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