souri compromise line should be extended to the | territory which the United States had which could Pacific, and declared to be in full force, and bind-be made subject to it. It was recognized as a ing in the same sense, and with the same under-principle by its subsequent application upon the standing with which it was originally adopted. acquisition of Texas, when it was continued out Now, sir, what was the result of all these vari- in its course towards the Pacific ocean; yet Texas ous votes? Here was the Territory of New did not fall within the description contained within Mexico, all of which, except a very small fraction, the Missouri compromise. She was a foreign not worth mentioning, lay south of 36° 30', and independent State, incorporated by her free conyet the Senator who now invokes us to support sent, upon the principle of a treaty. Then, in the Missouri compromise, [Mr. CHASE,] moved to 1850, what had been thus recognized was disapply the Wilmot proviso to that territory, and tinctly and unequivocally repudiated. The prinvoted, in every instance, upon the yeas and nays, ciple upon which the legislation of 1850 was except in one case, where his name does not ap- founded, being thus disregarded, is it not strictly pear at all, against the recognition or the applica- proper to say that the principle that Congress tion of the Missouri compromise in any form should not intervene in relation to these matters whatever. What, then, is the actual result? Here distinctly show, evicerated, out of the acts of were those of us who were on the floor represent-legislation of 1850, being directly inconsistent with. ing southern constituencies, not only arguing, but the other principle on which the legislation of I may almost say, begging, for the recognition of 1820 was founded, the latter is inoperative and the Missouri compromise line. We could not void? I pray you, sir, if it is not strictly accurate obtain it. The Missouri compromise line was to say that this clause of the act of 1820 is inconrejected-it was repudiated-it was, in effect, sistent with the principle of non-intervention by declared not to be applicable to those territories, Congress with slavery in the States and Territoand that the principle of it should not extend to ries; and that that principle was recognized by them. What, under these circumstances, did the legislation of 1850? Congress do? They passed two bills for territorial governments-one for Utah, lying north of 36° 30', and one for New Mexico, nearly all of which was south of 36° 30', in precisely the same words in respect to this whole subject-matter, putting them exactly upon the same footing, and conferring upon each of them the same amount of legislative power, and treating the line of 36° 30' as if it had, politically, no existence.

Well, if it was. as to my understanding it is evident it was, I say that the honorable chairman could not have adopted operative words more strictly accurate and proper than those with which he has followed this recital. What are they? "Is hereby declared inoperative and void." It would not have been correct or just to the subject to say that we "hereby repeal " the Missouri compromise, as if we had taken a new notion Now, Mr. President, to recur, for a moment, to now, suddenly, in regard to it; but it is the true, what I set out upon this point with mentioning; proper and legitimate conclusion, that Congress that the principle upon which an enactment is having, in 1850, adopted a principle and groundfounded, the principle out of which a rule of con-ed its legislative action upon it, which is inconsistduct grows, in some original or assumed truth, ent with the principle involved in the eighth secsome proposition admitted to be right, out of tion of the Missouri law, that eighth section which the law, or rule of conduct, naturally and should be declared inoperative and void. In the properly springs; I beg your attention to the language which has been so much objected to and criticised. It is that the Missouri restriction limiting slavery according to latitude "is inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, recognized by the legislation of 1850." "The principle of non-intervention "—not the words contained in those laws. Now we ascertain what was the principle upon which that legislation proceeded, by looking both to what was put into the laws, and to what Congress refused to put into them; and examining the subject in that light, we find that the legislation of 1850 was founded upon a distinct repudiation of the idea of making any difference between the condition of a people lying on one side of a line of latitude, and the condition of a people lying on the other side; and that was accomplished against the speeches and votes of the whole southern delegation upon this floor.

Now, sir, if I am right, these things are made out: The principle or fundamental truth upon which the legislation of 1820 was founded was, that Congress had power, and that Congress ought to intervene to exercise that power, to exclude slavery from territories lying north of a certain latitude, and implicitly admitting it on the other side. That principle was applied to all the

court below that provision effects a repeal; and it is just as legitimate a mode of effecting a repeal of a law to declare it void, as to say it is "hereby repealed." If gentlemen will consult the English statute-book, they will find numerous instances of repeals by such words. It is peculiarly appropriate to adopt that form in this case, because it is a legal consequence following out of the facts recited, that it ought to be "inoperative and void," and it is therefore declared to be so.

Mr. President, in the view which I take of this subject, it seems to me strange-no, I will not say strange-but I ask you if it is not very remarkable, whether strange or not, that the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. CHASE] should have felt such an extreme urgency for proper respect being paid to the Missouri compromise line, when in every instance in which it was proposed to the consideration of the Senate in the year 1850, he constantly, by his vote, refused to recognize it? He calls upon us to "respect the Missouri compromise, regard plighted faith, submit to the exclusion of your slaves in territory lying north of 36° 30', and, in consideration thereof, I will also exclude your slaves from territory south of 36° 30'." "I beg you," says he, "not to disregard the terms of this compromise. You are men of honor; you have agreed to give up the right of carrying your slaves north of 36° 30', and we impliedly

agreed that you might carry them into territory | principle on which the legislation was based, as south of 36° 30'; beg you to adhere to your demonstrated by the circumstances of the time. surrender north of 36° 30'." And as the most and the subsequent recognition in the annexation persuasive argument to induce us to do so, he of Texas. They have refused to carry out tho says: "I feel bound, by my love of freedom and contract in its spirit and fair meaning. They seek regard for the Constitution, to refuse to let you to maintain whatever of it is beneficial to themcarry them into territory south of 36° 30'; that be- selves, and to disregard all the residue. ing the equivalent upon which you made the other surrender"

there that calls upon me to vote against it, or against a bill containing it? I have shown, I think, that there is no principle of plighted faith that in the least binds us. The legislation now proposed is, in my judgment, right. It is what I have always desired, if it could have been freely obtained.

Mr. President, believing, as I do, that the proposition contained in the words of the amendmen This is a strange mode of enforcing the observ-which has been incorporated into the bill is true, ance of compacts; and it shows with what facili- that the form of legislation is appropriate, what is ty we perceive the propriety of obliging others, and how easily we perceive it is not easy to oblige ourselves by the obligation of a compact, when the question returns, whether we shall give the consideration for which the other party contracted. I remember having seen somewhere, that Dr. Porteus, who was at one time the Bishop of London, and a man of no small celebrity in My position, as you, Mr. President, are aware, his day, had written a poem on the horrors and has never been an extreme one upon this subject. miseries of war, in which he had given so vivid a I was always content with the Missouri compropicture of the dreadful consequences and accom- mise line-always anxious for it-always voted paniments of war, and its utter irreconcilability for it; but my own individual opinion upon the with the principles of Christianity, that every-subject always was, that the principles adopted in body who read the poem was deeply struck with 1850 are the true principles. What are they? the fervid eloquence and impassioned piety of the They are announced in the amendment which has right reverend author. It is said that some time been adopted.

แ

afterwards, during the prosecution of a foreigu We have among us a population of three milwar, he made a strong speech in the British Par-lions of slaves. Nothing is more idle than for liament in favor of the war, and in support of the gentlemen to trouble themselves with an investiMinistry who were carrying it on. As he was gation into the propriety of those slaves being leaving the House, some noble lord fell alongside here, into the rectitude and lawfulness of keeping of him, and said: "After reading your lordship's them in the condition of slavery, or into the misvery animated and stirring picture of the horrors fortune or calamity which may result from retainof war, I was a little surprised to hear your lord-ing them in slavery. We are dealing with a fact. ship's speech to-day, comparing it to what you They are here. They are slaves. They cannot have said in your poem." Oh," said he, my remain here except as slaves. Everybody knows lord, my poem was not written for this war." that. They cannot, by any operation of man's wit, [Laughter.] It seems to me that this is just ex- be put into any situation in our country which will actly the same answer which the honorable Sen- not be vastly more injurious to them, physicially ator from Ohio gives to us. He says: "Observe and morally, than the identical state and condition your plighted faith; hold yourselves bound by the bargain; adhere to the Missouri compromise." We ask him in reply, "Will you adhere to it ?" "Oh," he answers, my position, my argument, my urgency, were not intended for this case, but for the other."

which they now occupy. They cannot be sent away. Where are your means to come from to make an exodus across the ocean of three millions of slaves-to buy them, and to remove them? And if you could buy them, and remove them, permit me to say that a more cruel act of tyranny Sir, I have now shown that, from the time I and oppression could not be perpetrated upon any have had a seat in Congress, in common with body of men. A very large proportion of them my southern friends generally, I have endeavored would reject with horror the idea of being transto obtain a recognition and perpetuation of the ported to those barbarous and foreign climes of principles which were involved in the compromise Africa, for which, though their fathers came from of 1820. We have signally failed. Whether we them, they cherish no feeling of attachment; for thought the rule laid down was just or unjust, this is their country, as well as ours. favorable or unfavorable, however much, or how-not remove them; they are obliged to remain ever little, we thought it might have intrenched on here, and they are obliged to be slaves. That is what we might consider liberal or fair in our north-clear.

You can

ern brethren, we asked for nothing but the bar- Now, sir, can anything be more evident than gain fairly carried out, and we were at all times that the true course for people situated in this ready to be content with it. Now, after it has way, is not to aggravate the incidental evils of been utterly repudiated, after a totally different such a condition by exasperating inquiries, system of legislation has been adopted, in defiance charges, and counter-charges? The people of of our votes and our remonstrances, I think it is every portion of the United States should meet a little unreasonable, and a little absurd, that gen- this question as involving a common interest, and tlemen should call upon us to respect a compro- so far as there is calamity, a common calan:ity. mise which they themselves have destroyed- What then are you going to do? Is it not obdestroyed just as effectually, though not as di- vious that the true policy, as well as the true rectly, as if they had applied their opposition to Christian philanthropy involved in this matter, is the specific case to which the Missouri compro- to allow this population to diffuse itself in such mise line was applied. They have destroyed the portions of the Territories as from climate and

soil are adapted to slave cultivation? You can | submission and reverence on the other wants to have no injurious competition with your free break up from the place where he is obliged to labor. Slave labor will not be profitable, and stint himself or stint his people, and to remove largely employed anywhere, except upon the great staples of the South-tobacco, cotton, sugar, and rice. Will white men make these products for exportation? They will not. Will your northern people compete with southern slaves for the privilege of making rice, and sugar, and cotton, and tobacco? No, sir. Where that cultivation ceases, rely upon it, a slave population is not going to spread itself. We shall have no conflict, no embarrassment from the meeting of two tides of laborers from the North and South; for the kind of soil and climate which suits us and our slave cultivation does not suit yours. Who is injured by it? Not the slave. Nothing is more beneficial for him than to allow the population of which he forms a portion to spread itself, to give it room. You promote his comfort, you increase his wealth, you diminish his hardships. If you surround a population situated like ours with a Chinese wall or barrier, beyond which it cannot spread itself—if you compress it-what do you do? Why you expose the master to serious inconvenience and discomfort, and you destroy the whole happiness of the slave. No man proposes to add to this population. There is not a man in the New England States who would more thoroughly and absolutely resist any attempt to bring a slave from Africa to this country than we of the South would.

Here, then, is the great fact we have to deal with. Why not let it adjust itself? Why not pursue the wise policy indicated in the measures of 1850? Cease to quarrel and wrangle with each other. Live in your free States. Rejoice in the possession of the many advantages you have. But if there is a strip of land belonging to the United States, upon which a southern planter can make cotton or sugar, why grudge it to him? He reduces no man from freedom to slavery in order to make it. He transfers his slaves from the banks of the Mississippi, or the Cooper, or the Cape Fear, or any of our southern rivers, to another place; and he certainly will not do it unless the lands are better, the crops larger, and he and his slaves can live more comfortably, and have a more abundant supply of the necessaries of life; and I will ask, in the name of Heaven, whom does it hurt? You love freedom. We do not ask you to make freemen slaves. You profess to have a regard for the black man; can you resist the only measure which can enable us to make a progressive improvement of his condition as the amount of black population increases?

with his little family like a patriarch, and settle upon better land, where he can live in the fullest enjoyment of the necessaries and comforts of life; and you say, no? Why, "no?" You do not want the land yourself; you do not want to grow cotton; you do not want to grow tobacco or rice. Why say that this southern planter shall not grow them with his slaves? Is it from hatred of the master? Is it because the removal, while it benefits the slave, will benefit the master also? I cannot believe that anybody can cherish a wish to do us injury for the sake of it; yet if it benefits the slave while it benefits the master, and injures nobody else, in the name of common sense, and our common Christianity, what motive can dictate such a policy? It must be the result either of frenzy and fanaticism, or of an angry and embittered feeling against a population who do not wish to injure, and are not conscious of having ever injured you. That we have slaves among us, if it be a fault, God knows it is not our fault. They were brought here in the times of your fathers, and of our fathers. Your fathers brought them, and ours became the purchasers-if you say in an evil hour, be it so; but what are we to do? Here is this burden; assume it to be as great as you please; the greater it is, the more powerful is my argument-here is this burden upon us, not by any fault of our own; we have inherited it; it has been transmitted to us; it was created here by the joint action of your forefathers and ours, and in the name of God, will you step forward and put heavier weights on this very burden thus innocently inherited by us?

I think, Mr. President, it is in the highest degree probable that with regard to these Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, there will never be any slaves in them. I have no more idea of seeing a slave population in either of them than I have of secing it in Massachusetts; not a whit. It is possible some gentlemen may go there and take a few domestic servants with them; and I would say that if those domestic servants were faithful and good ones, and the masters did not take them with them, the masters would deserve the reprobation of all good men. What would you have them do? Would you have me to take the servants who wait upon me, and live with me, and to whom I have as strong attachments as to any human beings on this earth out of my own immediate blood relations, and because I want to move to Kansas, put them in the slave market and sell them? Sir, Í would suffer my right arm to be cut off before I It is, therefore, as it seems to me, wise and just would do it. Why, therefore, if some southern to pursue the principles indicated in, and out of gentleman wishes to take the nurse that takes which sprang the legislation of 1850. It is unjust charge of his little baby, or the old woman that to no section of the country. No mortal man can nursed him in childhood, and whom he called show that it will do an injury to any human being "mammy" until he returned from college, and purthat treads God's earth, whether he be free or haps afterwards, too, and whom he wishes to take slave. The poor slave will be benefited by it. with him in her old age when he is moving into The master, with a large number of slaves, cramped one of these new Territories for the betterment of for land in a country, perhaps, where land is dear, the fortunes of his whole family, why, in the who desires to do a good part by these slaves, who have been perhaps transmitted down to him for three generations in the same family, and between whom and himself there are mutual feelings of protection on the one hand, and of affectionate

name of God, should anybody prevent it? Do you wish to force us to become hard-hearted slavedealers? Do you wish to aggravate the evils, if there are evils, existing in this relation? Do you wish that we shall no longer have a mutual feudal

feeling between our dependants and ourselves? | lieve me, sir, the day will come, as indicated by Do you want to make us mercenary and hard- my friend from Massachusetts, [Mr. EVERETT,] hearted? Or will you allow us, having, as I trust when the ways of Providence, in permitting this we have, some touch of humanity, and some of the beneficial and breathing spirit of Christianity, to let these beings go forth as they are accustomed to do, and to rejoice when we look out and see our slaves happy and cheerful around us, when we hear the song arising from their dwellings at night, or see them dressed in their neat clothes and going to attend their churches on Sunday, and realizing, as they look at us, that we are the best friends they have upon earth?

large exodus of the natives of Africa to this country, will be vindicated to man. Why, sir, the light is already dawning upon us in which we can begin to see how ultimate and incalculable a good is to be wrought out of the temporary absence of this population from their native land. The successful commencement of the colonization scheme shows us how the emancipated slaves may carry back to the native Africa of their fore fathers the civilization, the Christianity, and the Mr. President, perhaps I manifest too much freedom which they never had enjoyed, and so far feeling about this matter. It seems to me so clear as we can see, but for this instrumentality, never that no interest or advantage of humanity can pos- could enjoy, in their own country. Slaves! The sibly be promoted by the spirit which dictates this veriest slaves on earth are the native Africans in incessant opposition to every measure which will their own country. The freest of them is not allow us to improve our own condition and that of as free as the hardest bonded slave in southern our slaves together. It is so impossible to per- lands. They have ever been so-the property ceive that any good can arise from it that I cannot of their princes; as an English traveler says, speak of it without excitement. I have no bitter- having nothing as their own, except their skins. ness about it. God knows I have none. I blame In the course of Providence, they were pernot those at a distance from us who take up false mitted to be brought here. They have been, and and mistaken impressions respecting us. I know their descendants are a great deal better off than that efforts, the most wicked and persevering, have they were in Africa; and if we can only be conbeen made to produce those impressions, and to tent to struggle on with the difficulties of our popresent us to the minds of our northern fellow-cit- sition, in faith and patience doing our own duty, izens as ministers of cruelty and oppression. I under the present circumstances in which we blame them not. They have been trained to en- stand, attempting no wild schemes by which foltertain these sentiments and feelings. They are ly may be misled, and by which wrong and misunfortunate in having such false estimates placed ery may be produced, but pursuing that steady in their bosoms respecting their friends and fellow-course in which God himself, in all his ministra citizens, descendants of a common revolutionary ancestry. I would to God that I could obliterate those feelings. I would to God that they would be disposed to enfold me and mine, as I am the whole of my northern brethren, if they would per- Mr. President, I desire to say, that though I mit it, in the arms of a fraternal and perpetual hold none of my southern friends on this floor re concord. Sir, there can be no difficulty about this sponsible for the course of argument which I have matter if we suffer ourselves to be influenced by offered, or any of the intermediate views I have those considerations which spring necessarily and expressed, I think it right to say, and I think I naturally out of the facts of the case, and realize have their authority to say, that with regard to that, after all, no abolition movement ever yet ac- the results to which I have come upon this meascomplished good for a slave. The whole move-ure, we all agree as one man-every southern ments of the Abolitionists of the North, as all my Whig Senator. I wish that to be understood, southern friends around me know, so far as they that the position of gentlemen may not be mishave had any influence with us, have tended to taken because they have not yet had the opportu restrict, rather than to relax the bondage under nity of voting upon this bill.

tions, brings about by gradual means and operations, the great beneficial results of his creation, we may be assured that ultimately all this will work out great and lasting good.

which these people live. They have, in a great I think, then, that the great mistake in the armeasure, stricken from the capacity to be useful gument of my honorable friend from Massachuin various directions towards them, those philan-setts, was in not discriminating between the printhropic and honorable people who should lead, and ciple and the enactment; between the doctrine otherwise would lead, our society upon these top-out of which the enactment sprung and the encs. They expose every one to suspicion. They actment which sprung from it; and that if he will have a tendency to close up the avenue to the oth-take that into view he will see, I think-I know erwise opening and expanding heart. They do no good to the slave. They do no good to the Abolitionist. They are but a fruitful source of evils among them and evils among us, without one single compensating advantage on earth, present or future.

Oh! Mr. President, if we could only agree to take up this subject as a matter of fact, and agree to deal with it in the best way we can, be

he has never any other desire than to see whatever is true and right-that the amendment which has been incorporated into the bill speaks the truth and is germane and proper in its operative language to the matters recited; and that if his mind is relieved in regard to the provisions for securing the national faith towards the Indians, he ought to have no difficulty in voting for the bill.

SPEECH OF THE HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

IN THE SENATE, FEB. 17, 1854.

"FREEDOM AND PUBLIC FAITH."