Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we
could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the
fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident
promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of
that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have
been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the
house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest
the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates
will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,
old as well as new -- North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination -- piece of machinery, so to speak -- compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only
what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also,
let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or
rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of
action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory
by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which
ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the
national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people,
real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained,
and give chance for more.
This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as
well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty,"
otherwise called "sacred right of self-government," which latter
phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government,
was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this:
That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed
to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself,
in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning
of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to
exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to
form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject
only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar
of loose declamation in favor of "Squatter Sovereignty," and
"sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition
members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the
people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we,"
said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case involving
the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily
taken him first into a free State and then into a Territory covered by
the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time
in each, was passing through the U. S. Circuit Court for the District of
Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and law suit were brought to a decision
in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott,"
which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before
the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued
in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was
deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator
Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of
the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter
answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such
as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement,
however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred
thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory.
The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as
possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the endorsement.
The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered
a re-argument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision
of the court; but the incoming President in his inaugural address, fervently
exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might
be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.
The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make
a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently
denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision,
and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!
At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author
of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas;
and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote
for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or
voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as
an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind --
the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready
to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has
any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only
shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision
"squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down
like temporary scaffolding -- like the mould at the foundry served through
one blast and fell back into loose sand -- helped to carry an election,
and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans,
against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska
doctrine. That struggle was made on a point -- the right of a people to
make their own constitution -- upon which he and the Republicans have never
differed.
The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection, with Senator
Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery,
in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The
working points of that machinery are:
First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant
of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that
term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made
in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit
of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that
"The citizens of each State, shall be entitled to all privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States."
Secondly, That "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from
any United States territory. This point is made in order that individual
men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them
as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution
through all the future.
Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free
State, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts
will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave
State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not
to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently
indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion
that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the
free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other
one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.
Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion,
at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted
down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also,
whither we are tending.
It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the
mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things
will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring.
The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only
to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders
could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche,
for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment,
expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough
now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott
decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual
opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough
now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument
upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President's
felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the
incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These
things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory
to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall.
And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and
others?
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result
of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions
of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and
by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance
-- and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly
make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly
fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few
-- not omitting even scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we
see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such
a piece in -- in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that
Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from
the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before
the first blow was struck.
It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of
a State as well as Territory, were to be left "perfectly free,"
"subject only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They
were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly
the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of
the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial
law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein
lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated
as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice
Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring
Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither
permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from
any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the
same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude
it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean
or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited
power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just
as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people
of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill; -- I ask, who can be quite sure
that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in
the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of
a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than
once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska
act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "except in cases where
the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law
of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction."
In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States
Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question,
as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was left open in the
Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little
niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision,
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a
State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected
if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted
up," shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise
that such a decision can be maintained when made.
Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful
in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming,
and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty
shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that
the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and
we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made
Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty,
is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That
is what we have to do. How can we best do it?
There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet
whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there
is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the
fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty;
and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he
and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and
that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a
living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead
lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he
oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed
mission is impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about
it. A leading Douglas democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent
will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas
believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said
so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years
he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves
into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred
right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably
they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all
in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right
of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade --
how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly
free" -- unless he does it as a protection to the home production?
And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will
be wholly without a ground of opposition.
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day
than he was yesterday -- that he may rightfully change when he finds himself
wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make
any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can
we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever,
I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives,
or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever,
he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance
from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.
But clearly, he is not now with us -- he does not pretend to be -- he does
not promise ever to be.
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted
friends -- those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work --
who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation
mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single
impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance
against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered
from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the
constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave
all then, to falter now? --now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered
and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail -- if we
stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes
delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.