Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the north is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this Capitol for renewal was $40,000,000. I cannot believe that the entire capital invested in inventions of this character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty or two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vast property rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives a remedy to the slave owner when his property is also found outside of the limits of the state in which he lives.
Without this protection what would be the condition of the northern inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his property, “render me up my property, or pay me value for its use.” The Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of this Vermont inventor, “Sir, if you want protection for your property go to your own state; property is governed by the laws of the state within whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention outside of the limits of your state; you cannot go an inch beyond it.” Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the right of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God has implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercise them, it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?
Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himself has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: “Now, you see that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves were property like other property, why have you this special clause in your constitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect the horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere.” Mr. President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as of all the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over persons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she has a perfect right to do—declare that hereafter, within the state of Pennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no man shall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a horse; and where will your horse owner be then? Just where the English poet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rights in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation to such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, are not property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us of them; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow the whole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise on jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he has to repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man, ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, in a country where slavery has been established for ages, has no other property in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statute law of the land where it is found.
“Tyrants! confident of its overthrow, proclaim not to your vassals, that the American Union is an experiment of freedom, which, if it fails, will forever demonstrate the necessity of whips for the backs, and chains for limbs of people. Know that its subversion is essential to the triumph of justice, the deliverance of the oppressed, the vindication of the brotherhood of the race. It was conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity; and its career has been marked by unparalleled hypocrisy, by high-handed tyranny, by a bold defiance of the omniscience and omnipotence of God. Freedom indignantly disowns it, and calls for its extinction; for within its borders are three millions of slaves, whose blood constitutes its cement, whose flesh forms a large and flourishing branch of its commerce, and who are ranked with four-footed beasts and creeping things. To secure the adoption of the constitution of the United States, first, that the African slave trade—till that time a feeble, isolated, colonial traffic—should, for at least twenty years, be prosecuted as a national interest, under the American flag, and protected by the national arm; secondly, that slavery holding oligarchy, created by allowing three-fifths of the slaveholding population to be represented by their taskmasters, should be allowed a permanent seat in congress; thirdly, that the slave system should be secured against internal revolt and external invasion, by the united physical force of the country; fourthly, that not a foot of national territory should be granted, on which the panting fugitive from slavery might stand, and be safe from his pursuers, thus making every citizen a slave-hunter and slave catcher. To say that this ‘covenant with death’ shall not be annulled—that this ‘agreement with hell’ shall continue to stand—that this refuge of lies shall not be swept away—is to hurl defiance at the eternal throne, and to give the lie to Him that sits thereon. It is an attempt, alike monstrous and impracticable, to blend the light of heaven with the darkness of the bottomless pit, to unite the living with the dead, to associate the Son of God with the Prince of Evil. Accursed be the American Union, as a stupendous, republican imposture!”
“I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have been unable to find a soft word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother—what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud—what is he? They who prohibit the circulation of the Bible—what are they? They who compel three millions of men and women to herd together like brute beasts—what are they? They who sell mothers by the pound, and children in lots to suit purchasers—what are they? I care not what terms are applied to them, provided they do apply. If they are not thieves, if they are not tyrants, if they are not men stealers, I should like to know what is their true character, and by what names they may be called. It is as mild an epithet to say that a thief is a thief, as to say that a spade is a spade. Words are but the signs of ideas. ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Language may be misapplied, and so be absurd or unjust; as for example, to say that an abolitionist is a fanatic, or that a slaveholder is an honest man. But to call things by their right names is to use neither hard nor improper language. Epithets may be rightly applied, it is true, and yet be uttered in a hard spirit, or with a malicious design. What then? Shall we discard all terms which are descriptive of crime, because they are not always used with fairness and propriety? He who, when he sees oppression, cries out against it—who, when he beholds his equal brother trodden under foot by the iron hoof of despotism, rushes to his rescue—who, when he sees the weak overborne by the strong, takes his side with the former, at the imminent peril of his own safety—such a man needs no certificate to the excellence of his temper, or the sincerity of his heart, or the disinterestedness of his conduct. Or is the apologist of slavery, he who can see the victim of thieves lying bleeding and helpless on the cold earth, and yet turn aside, like the callous-hearted priest or Levite, who needs absolution. Let us call tyrants, tyrants; not to do so is to misuse language, to deal treacherously with freedom, to consent to the enslavement of mankind. It is neither amiable nor virtuous, but a foolish and pernicious thing, not to call things by their right names. ‘Woe unto them,’ says one of the world’s great prophets, ‘that call evil good, and good evil;’ that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”
“Come with me, my friends, a moment more, pass over this golgotha of human history, treading reverent as you go, for our feet are on our mother’s graves, and our shoes defile our father’s hallowed bones. Let us not talk of them; go farther on, look and pass by. Come with me into the inferno of the nations, with such poor guidance as my lamp can lend. Let us disquiet and bring up the awful shadows of empires buried long ago, and learn a lesson from the tomb.” “Come, old Assyria, with the Ninevitish dove upon thy emerald crown! what laid thee low? ‘I fell by my own injustice. Thereby Nineveh and Babylon came with me also to the ground.’” “Oh, queenly Persia, flame of the nations, wherefore art thou so fallen, who troddest the people under thee, bridgest the Hellespont with ships, and pouredst thy temple-wasting millions on the world? Because I trod the people under me, and bridged the Hellespont with ships, and poured my temple-wasting millions on the western world, I fell by my own misdeeds.” “Thou muse-like Grecian queen, fairest of all thy classic sisterhood of states, enchanting yet the world with thy sweet witchery, speaking in art and most seductive song, why liest thou there, with beauteous yet dishonored brow, reposing on thy broken harp? ‘I scorned the law of God; banished and poisoned wisest, justest men; I loved the loveliness of thought, and treasured that in more than Parian speech. But the beauty of justice, the loveliness of love, I trod them down to earth! Lo, therefore have I become as those barbarian states—as one of them!’” “Oh, manly and majestic Rome, thy seven-fold mural crown all broken at thy feet, why art thou here? It was not injustice brought thee low; for thy great book of law is prefaced with these words—justice is the unchanged, everlasting will to give each man his right! ‘It was not the saint’s ideal; it was the hypocrite’s pretense.’ I made iniquity my law. I trod the nations under me. Their wealth gilded my palaces—where thou mayest see the fox and hear the owl—it fed my courtiers and my courtesans. Wicked men were my cabinet counselors, the flatterer breathed his poison in my ear. Millions of bondsmen wet the soil with tears and blood. Do you not hear it crying yet to God? Lo, here have I my recompense, tormented with such downfall as you see! Go back and tell the new-born child who sitteth on the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea, a crown of thirty stars upon his youthful brow—tell him that there are rights which states must keep, or they shall suffer wrongs! Tell him there is a God who keeps the black man and the white, and hurls to earth the loftiest realm that breaks his just, eternal law! Warn the young empire, that he come not down dim and dishonored to my shameful tomb! Tell him that justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to give each man his right. I knew it, broke it, and am lost. Bid him know it, keep it, and be safe.”
“Where shall I find a parallel with men who will do such a deed—do it in Boston? I will open the tombs and bring up most hideous tyrants from the dead. Come, brood of monsters, let me bring up from the deep damnation of the graves wherein your hated memories continue for all time their never-ending rot. Come, birds of evil omen! come, ravens, vultures, carrion crows, and see the spectacle! come, see the meeting of congenial souls! I will disturb, disquiet, and bring up the greatest monsters of the human race! Tremble not, women! They cannot harm you now! Fear the living, not the dead!”
Come hither, Herod, the wicked. Thou that didst seek after that young child’s life, and destroyed the innocents! Let me look on thy face! No, go! Thou wert a heathen! Go, lie with the innocents thou hast massacred. Thou art too good for this company! “Come, Nero; thou awful Roman emperor, come up! No, thou wast drunk with power! schooled in Roman depravity. Thou hadst, besides, the example of thy fancied gods. Go, wait another day. I will seek a worse man.
“Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Torquemada; fathers of the Inquisition! merciless monsters, seek your equal here. No; pass by. You are no companion for such men as these. You were the servants of the atheistic popes, of cruel kings. Go to, and get you gone. Another time I may have work for you—now, lie there, and persevere to rot. You are not yet quite wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get you gone, lest the sun goes back at sight of ye!
“Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffries! thy hands deep purple with the blood of thy fellow-men. Ah! I know thee, awful and accursed shade! Two hundred years after thy death men hate thee still, not without cause. Look me upon thee! I know thy history. Pause, and be still, while I tell to these men. * * * Come, shade of judicial butcher. Two hundred years, thy name has been pillowed in face of the world, and thy memory gibbeted before mankind. Let us see how thou wilt compare with those who kidnap men in Boston. Go, seek companionship with them. Go, claim thy kindred if such they be. Go, tell them that the memory of the wicked shall rot; that there is a God; an eternity; ay, and a judgment, too, where the slave may appeal against him that made him a slave, to Him that made him a man.
“What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back! These not thy kindred! Why dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd clutched at thy life in London street? Forgive me, that I should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek companionship with such—with Boston hunters of the slave! Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted thee! Again, I say, pardon me for sending thee to keep company with such men! Thou only struckest at men accused of crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank thee with men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave a negro now! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St. Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada, in your fiery jail! Sleep, Jeffries, underneath ‘the altar of the church’ which seeks, with Christian charity to hide your hated bones!”
“But it is insisted that the admission of California shall be attended by a COMPROMISE of questions which have arisen out of SLAVERY! I am opposed to any such compromise in any and all the forms in which it has been proposed. Because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises radically wrong, and essentially vicious. They involve the surrender of the exercise of judgment and the conscience on distinct and separate questions, at distinct and separate times, with the indispensable advantages it affords for ascertaining the truth. They involve a relinquishment of the right to reconsider in future the decision of the present, on questions prematurely anticipated. And they are a usurpation as to future questions of the providence of future legislators.
“Sir, it seems to me as if slavery had laid its paralyzing hand upon myself, and the blood were coursing less freely than its wont through my veins, when I endeavor to suppose that such a compromise has been effected, and my utterance forever is arrested upon all the great questions, social, moral, and political, arising out of a subject so important, and yet so incomprehensible. What am I to receive in this compromise? Freedom in California. It is well; it is a noble acquisition; it is worth a sacrifice. But what am I to give as an equivalent? A recognition of a claim to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia; forbearance towards more stringent laws concerning the arrest of persons suspected of being slaves found in the free States; forbearance from the PROVISO of freedom in the charter of new territories. None of the plans of compromise offered demand less than two, and most of them insist on all these conditions. The equivalent then is, some portion of liberty, some portion of human rights in one region for liberty in another.”
“It is true indeed that the national domain is ours. It is true it was acquired by the valor and the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary power over anything, whether acquired by law or seized by usurpation. The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to welfare and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purpose. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust, as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness. This is a State, and we are deliberating for it, just as our fathers deliberated in establishing the institutions we enjoy. Whatever superiority there is in our condition and hopes over those of any other ‘kingdom’ or ‘estate,’ is due to the fortunate circumstance that our ancestors did not leave things to ‘take their chances’ but that they ‘added amplitude and greatness’ to our commonwealth ‘by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs as were wise.’ We in our turn have succeeded to the same responsibilities, and we cannot approach the duty before us wisely or justly, except we raise ourselves to the great consideration of how we can most certainly ‘sow greatness to our posterity and successors.’
“And now the simple, bold, and awful question which presents itself to us is this: shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions; shall we, who know by experience the wise and just, and are free to choose them, and to reject the erroneous and unjust; shall we establish human bondage, or permit it by our sufferance to be established? Sir, our forefathers would not have hesitated an hour. They found slavery existing here, and they left it only because they could not remove it. There is not only no free State which would now establish it, but there is no slave State which, if it had had the free alternative, as we now have, would have founded slavery. Indeed, our revolutionary predecessors had precisely the same question before them in establishing an organic law, under which the States of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa have since come into the Union, and they solemnly repudiated and excluded slavery from those States forever.”
Let me here say that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme Court of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the history of Judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious reverence. Judges are but men and in all ages have shown a full share of frailty. Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment.
It was a judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; which, in the name of the old religion, adjured the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards in the name of the new religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun.
It was a judicial tribunal which, in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as during the brief reign of terror it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen to the beheading of Sir Thomas Moore; which lighted the fires of persecution, that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rodgers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sydney and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the laws of conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder, even with the blood of innocent women. Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem, which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished “jurors and the people” to obey; and which now, in our day, has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Law.
But even if the Government could derive any revenue from the actual sale of public lands, it is neither just nor sound policy to hold them for that purpose. Aware, however, that it is a poor place, under a one hour rule, to attempt to discuss any of the natural rights of men, for, surrounded by the authority of ages, it becomes necessary, without the time to do it, first to brush away the dust that has gathered upon their errors. Yet it is well sometimes to go back of the authority of books and treatises, composed by authors reared and educated under monarchical institutions, and whose opinions and habits of thought consequently were more or less shaped and moulded by such influences, and examine, by the light of reason and nature, the true foundation of government and the inherent rights of men.
The fundamental rights of man may be summed up in two words—Life and Happiness. The first is the gift of the Creator, and may be bestowed at his pleasure; but it is not consistent with his character for benevolence, that it should be bestowed for any other purpose than to be enjoyed, and that we call happiness. Therefore, whatever nature has provided for preserving the one, or promoting the other, belongs alike to the whole race. And as the means for sustaining life are derived almost entirely from the soil, every person has a right to so much of the earth’s surface as is necessary for his support. To whatever unoccupied portion of it, therefore, he shall apply his labor for that purpose, from that time forth it becomes appropriated to his own exclusive use; and whatever improvements he may make by his industry become his property, and subject to his disposal.
The only true foundation of any right to property is man’s labor. That is property, and that alone which the labor of man has made such. What right, then, can the Government have in the soil of a wild and uncultivated wilderness as a source of revenue, to which not a day nor hour’s labor has been applied, to make it more productive, and answer the end for which it was created, the support and happiness of the race?
It is said by the great expounder of the common law in his commentaries, that “there is no foundation in nature or natural law, why a set of words upon parchment should convey the dominion of land.” The use and occupancy alone gives to man, in the language of the commentaries, “an exclusive right to retain, in a permanent manner, that specific land which before belonged generally to everybody, but particularly to nobody.” * * *
It may be said, true, such would be man’s right to the soil in a state of nature; but when he entered into society, he gave up part of his natural rights, in order to enjoy the advantages of an organized community. This is a doctrine, I am aware, of the books and treatises on society and government; but it is a doctrine of despotism, and belongs not to enlightened statesmen in a liberal age. It is the excuse of the despot in encroaching upon the rights of the subject. He admits the encroachment, but claims that the citizen gave up part of his natural rights when he entered into society; and who is to judge what ones he relinquished but the ruling power? It was not necessary that any of man’s natural rights should be yielded to the state in the formation of society. He yielded no right, but the right to do wrong, and that he never had by nature. All that he yielded in entering into organized society, was a portion of his unrestrained liberty, which was, that he would submit his conduct, that before was subject to the control of no living being, to the tribunals to be established by the state, and with a tacit consent that society, or the Government, might regulate the mode and manner of the exercise of his rights. Why should he consent to be deprived of them? It is upon this ground that we justify resistance to tyrants. Whenever the ruling power so far encroaches upon the natural rights of men that an appeal to arms becomes preferable to submission, they appeal from human to divine laws, and plead the natural rights of man in their justification. That government, and that alone, is just, which enforces and defends all of man’s natural rights, and protects him against the wrongs of his fellow-men. But it may be said, although such might be the natural rights of men, yet the Government has a right to these lands, and may use them as a source of revenue, under the doctrine of eminent domain. * * *
What is there in the constitution of things giving to one individual the sole and exclusive right to any of the bounties provided by nature for the benefit and support of the whole race, because, perchance, he was the first to look upon a mere fragment of creation? By the same process of reasoning, he who should first discover the source or mouth of a river, would be entitled to a monopoly of the waters that flow in the channel, or he who should first look upon one of the rills or fountains of the earth might prevent fainting man from quenching there his thirst, unless his right was first secured by parchment.
Why has the claim to monopolize any of the gifts of God to man been confined, by legal codes, to the soil alone? Is there any other reason than that it is a right which, having its origin in feudal times—under a system that regarded man but as an appendage of the soil that he tilled, and whose life, liberty and happiness, were but means of increasing the pleasures, pampering the passions and appetites of his liege lord—and, having once found a place in the books, it has been retained by the reverence which man is wont to pay to the past, and to time-honored precedents? The human mind is so constituted that it is prone to regard as right what has come down to us approved by long usage, and hallowed by gray age. It is a claim that had its origin with the kindred idea that royal blood flows only in the veins of an exclusive few, whose souls are more ethereal, because born amid the glitter of courts, and cradled amid the pomp of lords and courtiers, and, therefore, they are to be installed as rulers and law-givers of the race. Most of the evils that afflict society have had their origin in violence and wrong enacted into law by the experience of the past, and retained by the prejudices of the present.
Is it not time to sweep from the statute book its still lingering relics of feudalism; and to blot out the principles engrafted upon it by the narrow-minded policy of other times, and adapt the legislation of the country to the spirit of the age, and to the true ideas of man’s rights and relations to his Government? If a man has a right on earth, he has a right to land enough to rear a habitation on. If he has a right to live, he has a right to the free use of whatever nature has provided for his sustenance—air to breathe, water to drink, and land enough to cultivate for his subsistence; for these are the necessary and indispensable means for the enjoyment of his inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And is it for a Government that claims to dispense equal and exact justice to all classes of men, and that has laid down correct principles in its great chart of human rights, to violate those principles and its solemn declarations in its legislative enactments?
The struggle between capital and labor is an unequal one at best. It is a struggle between the bones and sinews of men, and dollars and cents. And in that struggle, is it for the government to stretch forth its arm to aid the strong against the weak? Shall it continue, by its legislation, to elevate and enrich idleness on the wail and woe of industry?
If the rule be correct as applied to governments as well as individuals, that whatever a person permits another to do, having the right and means to prevent it, he does himself, then indeed is the government responsible for all the evils that may result from speculation and land monopoly in the public domain. For it is not denied that Congress has the power to make any regulations for the disposal of these lands, not injurious to the general welfare. Now, when a new tract is surveyed, and you open the land office and expose it to sale, the man with the most money is the largest purchaser. The most desirable and available locations are seized upon by the capitalists of the country, who seek that kind of investment. The settler who chances not to have a pre-emption right, or to be there at the time of sale, when he comes to seek a home for himself and his family, must pay the speculator three or four hundred per cent. on his investment, or encounter the trials and hardships of a still more remote border life. And thus, under the operation of laws that are called equal and just, you take from the settler three or four dollars per acre, and put it in the pocket of the speculator—thus, by the operation of law, abstracting so much of his hard earnings for the benefit of capital; for not an hour’s labor has been applied to the land since it was sold by the government, nor is it more valuable to the settler. Has not the laborer a right to complain of legislation that compels him to endure greater toils and hardships, or contribute a portion of his earnings for the benefit of the capitalist? But not upon the capitalist or the speculator is it proper that the blame should fall. Man must seek a livelihood and do business under the laws of the country; and whatever rights he may acquire under the laws, though they may be wrong, yet the well-being of society requires that they be respected and faithfully observed. If a person engage in a business legalized and regulated by the law, and uses no fraud or deception in its pursuit, and evils result to the community, let them apply the remedy to the proper source—that is to the law-making power. The laws and the law-makers are responsible for whatever evils necessarily grow out of their enactments.
While the public lands are exposed to indiscriminate sale, as they have been since the organization of the government, it opens the door to the wildest system of land monopoly. It requires no lengthy dissertation to portray its evils. In the Old World its history is written in sighs and tears. Under its influence, you behold in England, the proudest and most splendid aristocracy, side by side with the most abject and destitute people; vast manors hemmed in by hedges as a sporting-ground for her nobility, while men are dying beside the enclosure for the want of land to till. Thirty thousand proprietors hold the title deeds to the soil of Great Britain, while in Ireland alone there are two and a half millions of tenants who own no part of the land they cultivate, nor can they ever acquire a title to a foot of it, yet they pay annually from their hard earnings twenty millions of dollars to absentee landlords for the privilege of dying on their soil. Under its blighting influence you behold industry in rags and patience in despair. Such are some of the fruits of land monopoly in the Old World; and, shall we plant its seeds in the virgin soil of the New? * * *
If you would raise fallen man from his degradation, elevate the servile from their grovelling pursuits to the rights and dignity of men, you must first place within their reach the means for satisfying their pressing physical wants, so that religion can exert its influence on the soul, and soothe the weary pilgrim in his pathway to the tomb. It is in vain you talk of the goodness and benevolence of an Omniscient Ruler to him, whose life from the cradle to the grave is one continued scene of pain, misery and want. Talk not of free agency to him whose only freedom is to choose his own method to die. In such cases, there might, perhaps, be some feeble conceptions of religion and its duties—of the infinite, everlasting, and pure; but unless there be a more than common intellect, they would be like the dim shadows that float in the twilight. * * *
Riches, it is true, are not necessary to man’s real enjoyment; but the means to prevent starvation are. Nor is a splendid palace necessary to his real happiness; but a shelter against the storm and winter’s blast is.
If you would lead the erring back from the paths of vice and crime to virtue and honor, give him a home—give him a hearth-stone, and he will surround it with household gods. If you would make men wiser and better, relieve the almshouse, close the doors of the penitentiary, and break in pieces the gallows, purify the influences of the domestic fireside. For that is the school in which human character is formed, and there its destiny is shaped. There the soul receives its first impress, and man his first lesson, and they go with him for weal or woe through life. For purifying the sentiments, elevating the thoughts, and developing the noblest impulses of man’s nature, the influences of a moral fireside and agricultural life are the noblest and the best. * * *
It was said by Lord Chatham, in his appeal to the House of Commons, in 1775, to withdraw the British troops from Boston, that “trade, indeed, increases the glory and wealth of a country; but its true strength and stamina are to be looked for in the cultivators of the land. In the simplicity of their lives is found the simpleness of virtue, the integrity and courage of freedom. These true, genuine sons of the soil are invincible.”
The history of American prowess has recorded these words as prophetic: man, in defence of his hearth-stone and fireside, is invincible against a world of mercenaries. In battling for his home and all that is dear to him on earth, he is never conquered save with his life. In such a struggle every pass becomes a Thermopylæ, every plain a Marathon. With an independent yeomanry scattered over our vast domain, the “young eagle” may bid defiance to the world in arms. Even though a foe should devastate our seaboard, lay in ashes its cities, they have made not one single advance towards conquering the country; for from the interior comes its hardy yeomanry, with their hearts of oak and nerves of steel, to expel the invader. Their hearts are the citadel of a nation’s power—their arms the bulwarks of liberty.
Every consideration of policy, then, both as to revenue for the general government, and increased taxation for the new States, as well as a means for removing the causes of pauperism and crime in the old, demands that the public lands be granted in limited quantities to the actual settler. Every consideration of justice and humanity calls upon us to restore man to his natural rights in the soil. * * *
In a new country the first and most important labor, as it is the most difficult to be performed, is to subdue the forest, and to convert the lair of the wild beast into a home for civilized man. This is the labor of the pioneer settler. His achievements, if not equally brilliant with those of the plumed warrior, are equally, if not more, lasting; his life, if not at times exposed to so great a hazard, is still one of equal danger and death. It is a life of toil and adventure, spent upon one continued battle-field, unlike that, however, on which martial hosts contend, for there the struggle is short and expected, and the victim strikes not alone, while the highest meed of ambition crowns the victor. Not so with the hardy pioneer. He is oft called upon to meet death in a struggle with fearful odds, while no herald will tell to the world of the unequal combat. Startled at the midnight hour by the war-whoop, he wakes from his dreams to behold his cottage in flames; the sharer of his joys and sorrows, with perhaps a tender infant, hurled, with rude hands, to the distant council-fire. Still he presses on into the wilderness, snatching new areas from the wild beast, and bequeathing them a legacy to civilized man. And all he asks of his country and his Government is, to protect him against the cupidity of soulless capital and the iron grasp of the speculator. Upon his wild battle-field these are the only foes that his own stern heart and right arm cannot vanquish.
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is now nearly four months since the canvass between Mr. Lincoln and myself commenced. On the 16th of June the Republican Convention assembled at Springfield and nominated Mr. Lincoln as their candidate for the United States Senate, and he, on that occasion, delivered a speech in which he laid down what he understood to be the Republican creed and the platform on which he proposed to stand during the contest. The principal points in that speech of Mr. Lincoln’s were: First, that this Government could not endure permanently divided into free and slave States, as our fathers made it; that they must all become free or all become slave; all become one thing or all become the other, otherwise this Union could not continue to exist. I give you his opinions almost in the identical language he used. His second proposition was a crusade against the Supreme Court of the United States because of the Dred Scot decision; urging as an especial reason for his opposition to that decision that it deprived the negroes of the rights and benefits of that clause in the Constitution of the United States which guaranties to the citizens of each State all the rights, privileges, and immunities of the citizens of the several States. On the 10th of July I returned home, and delivered a speech to the people of Chicago, in which I announced it to be my purpose to appeal to the people of Illinois to sustain the course I had pursued in Congress. In that speech I joined issue with Mr. Lincoln on the points which he had presented. Thus there was an issue clear and distinct made up between us on these two propositions laid down in the speech of Mr. Lincoln at Springfield, and controverted by me in my reply to him at Chicago. On the next day, the 11th of July, Mr. Lincoln replied to me at Chicago, explaining at some length, and reaffirming the positions which he had taken in his Springfield speech. In that Chicago speech he even went further than he had before, and uttered sentiments in regard to the negro being on an equality with the white man. He adopted in support of this position the argument which Lovejoy and Codding, and other Abolition lecturers had made familiar in the northern and central portions of the State, to wit: that the Declaration of Independence having declared all men free and equal, by Divine law, also that negro equality was an inalienable right, of which they could not be deprived. He insisted, in that speech, that the Declaration of Independence included the negro in the clause, asserting that all men were created equal, and went so far as to say that if one man was allowed to take the position, that it did not include the negro, others might take the position that it did not include other men. He said that all these distinctions between this man and that man, this race and the other race, must be discarded, and we must all stand by the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal.
The issue thus being made up between Mr. Lincoln and myself on three points, we went before the people of the State. During the following seven weeks, between the Chicago speeches and our first meeting at Ottawa, he and I addressed large assemblages of the people in many of the central counties. In my speeches I confined myself closely to those three positions which he had taken, controverting his proposition that this Union could not exist as our fathers made it, divided into free and Slave States, controverting his proposition of a crusade against the Supreme Court because of the Dred Scott decision, and controverting his proposition that the Declaration of Independence included and meant the negroes as well as the white men when it declared all men to be created equal. I supposed at that time that these propositions constituted a distinct issue between us, and that the opposite positions we had taken upon them we would be willing to be held to in every part of the State. I never intended to waver one hair’s breadth from that issue either in the north or the south, or wherever I should address the people of Illinois. I hold that when the time arrives that I cannot proclaim my political creed in the same terms not only in the northern but the southern part of Illinois, not only in the Northern but the Southern States, and wherever the American flag waves over American soil, that then there must be something wrong in that creed. So long as we live under a common Constitution, so long as we live in a confederacy of sovereign and equal States, joined together as one for certain purposes, that any political creed is radically wrong which cannot be proclaimed in every State, and every section of that Union, alike. I took up Mr. Lincoln’s three propositions in my several speeches, analyzed them, and pointed out what I believed to be the radical errors contained in them. First, in regard to his doctrine that this Government was in violation of the law of God, which says that a house divided against itself cannot stand, I repudiated it as a slander upon the immortal framers of our Constitution. I then said, I have often repeated, and now again assert, that in my opinion our Government can endure forever, divided into free and slave States as our fathers made it,—each State having the right to prohibit, abolish or sustain slavery, just as it pleases. This Government was made upon the great basis of the sovereignty of the States, the right of each State to regulate its own domestic institutions to suit itself, and that right was conferred with the understanding and expectation that inasmuch as each locality had separate interests, each locality must have different and distinct local and domestic institutions, corresponding to its wants and interests. Our fathers knew when they made the Government, that the laws and institutions which were well adapted to the green mountains of Vermont, were unsuited to the rice plantations of South Carolina. They knew then, as well as we know now, that the laws and institutions which would be well adapted to the beautiful prairies of Illinois would not be suited to the mining regions of California. They knew that in a Republic as broad as this, having such a variety of soil, climate and interest, there must necessarily be a corresponding variety of local laws—the policy and institutions of each State adapted to its condition and wants. For this reason this Union was established on the right of each State to do as it pleased on the question of slavery, and every other question; and the various States were not allowed to complain of, much less interfere with the policy, of their neighbors.
Suppose the doctrine advocated by Mr. Lincoln and the Abolitionists of this day had prevailed when the Constitution was made, what would have been the result? Imagine for a moment that Mr. Lincoln had been a member of the Convention that framed the Constitution of the United States, and that when its members were about to sign that wonderful document, he had arisen in that Convention as he did at Springfield this summer, and addressing himself to the President, had said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand; this Government, divided into free and slave States, cannot endure, they must all be free or all be slave, they must all be one thing or all be the other, otherwise, it is a violation of the law of God, and cannot continue to exist;”—suppose Mr. Lincoln had convinced that body of sages that that doctrine was sound, what would have been the result? Remember that the Union was then composed of thirteen States, twelve of which were slaveholding and one free. Do you think that the one free State would have outvoted the twelve slaveholding States, and thus have secured the abolition of slavery? On the other hand, would not the twelve slaveholding States have outvoted the one free State, and thus have fastened slavery, by a Constitutional provision, on every foot of the American Republic forever? You see that if this Abolition doctrine of Mr. Lincoln had prevailed when the Government was made, it would have established slavery as a permanent institution, in all the States, whether they wanted it or not, and the question for us to determine in Illinois now as one of the free States is, whether or not we are willing, having become the majority section, to enforce a doctrine on the minority, which we would have resisted with our hearts’ blood had it been attempted on us when we were in a minority. How has the South lost her power as the majority section in this Union, and how have the free States gained it, except under the operation of that principle which declares the right of the people of each State and each Territory to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way. It was under that principle that slavery was abolished in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; it was under that principle that one-half of the slaveholding States became free; it was under that principle that the number of free States increased until from being one out of twelve States, we have grown to be the majority of States of the whole Union, with the power to control the House of Representatives and Senate, and the power, consequently, to elect a President by Northern votes without the aid of a Southern State. Having obtained this power under the operation of that great principle, are you now prepared to abandon the principle and declare that merely because we have the power you will wage a war against the Southern States and their institutions until you force them to abolish slavery everywhere.
After having pressed these arguments home on Mr. Lincoln for seven weeks, publishing a number of my speeches, we met at Ottawa in joint discussion, and he then began to crawfish a little, and let himself down. I there propounded certain questions to him. Amongst others, I asked him whether he would vote for the admission of any more slave States in the event the people wanted them. He would not answer. I then told him that if he did not answer the question there I would renew it at Freeport, and would then trot him down into Egypt and again put it to him. Well, at Freeport, knowing that the next joint discussion took place in Egypt, and being in dread of it, he did answer my question in regard to no more slave States in a mode which he hoped would be satisfactory to me, and accomplish the object he had in view. I will show you what his answer was. After saying that he was not pledged to the Republican doctrine of “no more slave States,” he declared:
“I state to you freely, frankly, that I should be exceedingly sorry to ever be put in the position of having to pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there never would be another slave State admitted into this Union.”
Here permit me to remark, that I do not think the people will ever force him into a position against his will. He went on to say:
“But I must add in regard to this, that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territory during the territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people should, having a fair chance and a clear field when they come to adopt a Constitution, if they should do the extraordinary thing of adopting a slave Constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but we must admit it into the Union.”
That answer Mr. Lincoln supposed would satisfy the old line Whigs, composed of Kentuckians and Virginians down in the southern part of the State. Now what does it amount to? I desired to know whether he would vote to allow Kansas to come into the Union with slavery or not, as her people desired. He would not answer; but in a roundabout way said that if slavery should be kept out of a Territory during the whole of its territorial existence, and then the people, when they adopted a State Constitution, asked admission as a slave State, he supposed he would have to let the State come in. The case I put to him was an entirely different one. I desired to know whether he would vote to admit a State if Congress had not prohibited slavery in it during its territorial existence, as Congress never pretended to do under Clay’s Compromise measures of 1850. He would not answer, and I have not yet been able to get an answer from him. I have asked him whether he would vote to admit Nebraska if her people asked to come in as a State with a Constitution recognizing slavery, and he refused to answer. I have put the question to him with reference to New Mexico, and he has not uttered a word in answer. I have enumerated the Territories, one after another, putting the same question to him with reference to each, and he has not said, and will not say, whether, if elected to Congress, he will vote to admit any Territory now in existence with such a Constitution as her people may adopt. He invents a case which does not exist, and cannot exist under this Government, and answers it; but he will not answer the question I put to him in connection with any of the Territories now in existence. The contract we entered into with Texas when she entered the Union obliges us to allow four States to be formed out of the old State, and admitted with or without slavery as the respective inhabitants of each may determine. I have asked Mr. Lincoln three times in our joint discussions whether he would vote to redeem that pledge, and he has never yet answered. He is as silent as the grave on the subject. He would rather answer as to a state of the case which will never arise than commit himself by telling what he would do in a case which would come up for his action soon after his election to Congress. Why can he not say whether he is willing to allow the people of each State to have slavery or not as they please, and to come into the Union when they have the requisite population as a slave or a free State as they decide? I have no trouble in answering the questions. I have said every where, and now repeat it to you, that if the people of Kansas want a slave State they have a right, under the Constitution of the United States, to form such a State, and I will let them come into the Union with slavery or without, as they determine. If the people of any other Territory desire slavery, let them have it. If they do not want it, let them prohibit it. It is their business, not mine. It is none of our business in Illinois whether Kansas is a free State or a slave State. It is none of your business in Missouri whether Kansas shall adopt slavery or reject it. It is the business of her people and none of yours. The people of Kansas have as much right to decide that question for themselves as you have in Missouri to decide it for yourselves, or we in Illinois to decide it for ourselves.
And here I may repeat what I have said in every speech I have made in Illinois, that I fought the Lecompton Constitution to its death, not because of the slavery clause in it, but because it was not the act and deed of the people of Kansas. I said then in Congress, and I say now, that if the people of Kansas want a slave State, they have a right to have it. If they wanted the Lecompton Constitution, they had a right to have it. I was opposed to that Constitution because I did not believe that it was the act and deed of the people, but on the contrary, the act of a small, pitiful minority acting in the name of the majority. When at last it was determined to send that Constitution back to the people, and accordingly, in August last, the question of admission under it was submitted to a popular vote, the citizens rejected it by nearly ten to one, thus showing conclusively, that I was right when I said that the Lecompton Constitution was not the act and the deed of the people of Kansas, and did not embody their will.
I hold that there is no power on earth, under our system of Government, which has the right to force a Constitution upon an unwilling people. Suppose that there had been a majority of ten to one in favor of slavery in Kansas, and suppose there had been an Abolition President, and an Abolition Administration, and by some means the Abolitionists succeeded in forcing an Abolition Constitution on those slaveholding people, would the people of the South have submitted to that act for one instant? Well, if you of the South would not have submitted to it a day, how can you, as fair, honorable and honest men, insist on putting a slave Constitution on a people who desire a free State? Your safety and ours depend upon both of us acting in good faith, and living up to that great principle which asserts the right of every people to form and regulate their domestic institutions to suit themselves, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.
Most of the men who denounced my course on the Lecompton question, objected to it not because I was not right, but because they thought it expedient at that time, for the sake of keeping the party together, to do wrong. I never knew the Democratic party to violate any one of its principles out of policy or expediency, that it did not pay the debt with sorrow. There is no safety or success for our party unless we always do right, and trust the consequences to God and the people. I chose not to depart from principle for the sake of expediency in the Lecompton question, and I never intend to do it on that or any other question.
But I am told that I would have been all right if I had only voted for the English bill after Lecompton was killed. You know a general pardon was granted to all political offenders on the Lecompton question, provided they would only vote for the English bill. I did not accept the benefits of that pardon, for the reason that I had been right in the course I had pursued, and hence did not require any forgiveness. Let us see how the result has been worked out. English brought in his bill referring the Lecompton Constitution back to the people, with the provision that if it was rejected Kansas should be kept out of the Union until she had the full ratio of population required for a member of Congress, thus in effect declaring that if the people of Kansas would only consent to come into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution, and have a slave State when they did not want it, they should be admitted with a population of 35,000, but that if they were so obstinate as to insist upon having just such a Constitution as they thought best, and to desire admission as a free State, then they should be kept out until they had 93,420 inhabitants. I then said, and I now repeat to you, that whenever Kansas has people enough for a slave State she has people enough for a free State. I was and am willing to adopt the rule that no State shall ever come into the Union until she has the full ratio of population for a member of Congress, provided that rule is made uniform. I made that proposition in the Senate last winter, but a majority of the Senators would not agree to it; and I then said to them if you will not adopt the general rule I will not consent to make an exception of Kansas.
I hold that it is a violation of the fundamental principles of this Government to throw the weight of federal power into the scale, either in favor of the free or the slave States. Equality among all the States of this Union is a fundamental principle in our political system. We have no more right to throw the weight of the Federal Government into the scale in favor of the slaveholding than the free States, and last of all should our friends in the South consent for a moment that Congress should withhold its powers either way when they know that there is a majority against them in both Houses of Congress.
Fellow-citizens, how have the supporters of the English bill stood up to their pledges not to admit Kansas until she obtained a population of 93,420 in the event she rejected the Lecompton Constitution? How? The newspapers inform us that English himself, whilst conducting his canvass for re-election, and in order to secure it, pledged himself to his constituents that if returned he would disregard his own bill and vote to admit Kansas into the Union with such population as she might have when she made application. We are informed that every Democratic candidate for Congress in all the States where elections have recently been held, was pledged against the English bill, with perhaps one or two exceptions. Now, if I had only done as these anti-Lecompton men who voted for the English bill in Congress, pledging themselves to refuse to admit Kansas if she refused to become a slave State until she had a population of 93,420, and then return to their people, forfeited their pledge, and made a new pledge to admit Kansas at any time she applied, without regard to population, I would have had no trouble. You saw the whole power and patronage of the Federal Government wielded in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to re-elect anti-Lecompton men to Congress who voted against Lecompton, then voted for the English bill, and then denounced the English bill, and pledged themselves to their people to disregard it. My sin consists in not having given a pledge, and then in not having afterward forfeited it. For that reason, in this State, every postmaster, every route agent, every collector of the ports, and every federal office-holder, forfeits his head the moment he expresses a preference for the Democratic candidates against Lincoln and his Abolition associates. A Democratic Administration which we helped to bring into power, deems it consistent with its fidelity to principle and its regard to duty, to wield its power in this State in behalf of the Republican Abolition candidates in every county and every Congressional District against the Democratic party. All I have to say in reference to the matter is, that if that Administration have not regard enough for principle, if they are not sufficiently attached to the creed of the Democratic party to bury forever their personal hostilities in order to succeed in carrying out our glorious principles, I have. I have no personal difficulty with Mr. Buchanan or his cabinet. He chose to make certain recommendations to Congress, as he had a right to do, on the Lecompton question. I could not vote in favor of them. I had as much right to judge for myself how I should vote as he had how he should recommend. He undertook to say to me, if you do not vote as I tell you, I will take off the heads of your friends. I replied to him, You did not elect me, I represent Illinois and I am accountable to Illinois, as my constituency, and to God, but not to the President or to any other power on earth.
And now this warfare is made on me because I would not surrender my convictions of duty, because I would not abandon my constituency, and receive the orders of the executive authorities how I should vote in the Senate of the United States. I hold that an attempt to control the Senate on the part of the Executive is subversive of the principles of our Constitution. The Executive department is independent of the Senate, and the Senate is independent of the President. In matters of legislation the President has a veto on the action of the Senate, and in appointments and treaties the Senate has a veto on the President. He has no more right to tell me how I shall vote on his appointments than I have to tell him whether he shall veto or approve a bill that the Senate has passed. Whenever you recognize the right of the Executive to say to a Senator, “Do this, or I will take off the heads of your friends,” you convert this Government from a republic into a despotism. Whenever you recognize the right of a President to say to a member of Congress, “Vote as I tell you, or I will bring a power to bear against you at home which will crush you,” you destroy the independence of the representative, and convert him into a tool of Executive power. I resisted this invasion of the constitutional rights of a Senator, and I intend to resist it as long as I have a voice to speak, or a vote to give. Yet, Mr. Buchanan cannot provoke me to abandon one iota of Democratic principles out of revenge or hostility to his course. I stand by the platform of the Democratic party, and by its organization, and support its nominees. If there are any who choose to bolt, the fact only shows that they are not as good Democrats as I am.
My friends, there never was a time when it was as important for the Democratic party, for all national men, to rally and stand together as it is to-day. We find all sectional men giving up past differences and continuing the one question of slavery, and when we find sectional men thus uniting, we should unite to resist them and their treasonable designs. Such was the case in 1850, when Clay left the quiet and peace of his home, and again entered upon public life to quell agitation and restore peace to a distracted Union. Then we Democrats, with Cass at our head, welcomed Henry Clay, whom the whole nation regarded as having been preserved by God for the times. He became our leader in that great fight, and we rallied around him the same as the Whigs rallied around old Hickory in 1832, to put down nullification. Thus you see that whilst Whigs and Democrats fought fearlessly in old times about banks, the tariff, distribution, the specie circular, and the sub-treasury, all united as a band of brothers when the peace, harmony, or integrity of the Union was imperilled. It was so in 1850, when Abolitionism had even so far divided this country, North and South, as to endanger the peace of the Union; Whigs and Democrats united in establishing the Compromise measures of that year, and restoring tranquillity and good feeling. These measures passed on the joint action of the two parties. They rested on the great principle that the people of each State and each Territory should be left perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions to suit themselves. You Whigs, and we Democrats justified them in that principle. In 1854, when it became necessary to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, I brought forward the bill on the same principle. In the Kansas-Nebraska bill you find it declared to be the true intent and meaning of the act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way. I stand on that same platform in 1858 that I did in 1850, 1854, and 1856. The Washington Union, pretending to be the organ of the Administration, in the number of the 5th of this month, devotes three columns and a half to establish these propositions: First, that Douglas, in his Freeport speech, held the same doctrine that he did in his Nebraska bill in 1854; second, that in 1854 Douglas justified the Nebraska bill upon the ground that it was based upon the same principle as Clay’s Compromise measures of 1850. The Union thus proved that Douglas was the same in 1858 that he was in 1856, 1854, and 1850, and consequently argued that he was never a Democrat. Is it not funny that I was never a Democrat? There is no pretense that I have changed a hair’s breadth. The Union proves by my speeches that I explained the Compromise measures of 1850 just as I do now, and that I explained the Kansas and Nebraska bill in 1854 just as I did in my Freeport speech, and yet says that I am not a Democrat, and cannot be trusted, because I have not changed during the whole of that time. It has occurred to me that in 1854 the author of the Kansas and Nebraska bill was considered a pretty good Democrat. It has occurred to me that in 1856, when I was exerting every nerve and every energy for James Buchanan, standing on the same platform then that I do now, that I was a pretty good Democrat. They now tell me that I am not a Democrat, because I assert that the people of a Territory, as well as those of a State, have the right to decide for themselves whether slavery can or cannot exist in such Territory. Let me read what James Buchanan said on that point when he accepted the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 1856. In his letter of acceptance, he used the following language:
“The recent legislation of Congress respecting domestic slavery, derived as it has been from the original and pure fountain of legitimate political power, the will of the majority, promises ere long to allay the dangerous excitement. This legislation is founded upon principles as ancient as free government itself, and in accordance with them has simply declared that the people of a Territory, like those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits.”
Dr. Hope will there find my answer to the question he propounded to me before I commenced speaking. Of course no man will consider it an answer, who is outside of the Democratic organization, bolts Democratic nominations, and indirectly aids to put Abolitionists into power over Democrats. But whether Dr. Hope considers it an answer or not, every fair-minded man will see that James Buchanan has answered the question, and has asserted that the people of a Territory like those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits. I answer specifically if you want a further answer, and say that while under the decision of the Supreme Court, as recorded in the opinion of Chief Justice Taney, slaves are property like all other property, and can be carried into any Territory of the United States the same as any other description of property, yet when you get them there they are subject to the local law of the Territory just like all other property. You will find in a recent speech delivered by that able and eloquent statesman, Hon. Jefferson Davis, at Bangor, Maine, that he took the same view of this subject that I did in my Freeport speech. He there said:
“If the inhabitants of any Territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less valueless in proportion to the difficulties of holding it without such protection. In the case of property in the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred, by the circumstances of the case, from taking slave property into a Territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction. So much for the oft repeated arm in arm fallacy of forcing slavery upon any community.”
You will also find that the distinguished Speaker of the present House of Representatives, Hon. Jas. L. Orr, construed the Kansas and Nebraska bill in this same way in 1856, and also that great intellect of the South, Alex. H. Stephens, put the same construction upon it in Congress that I did in my Freeport speech. The whole South are rallying to the support of the doctrine that if the people of a Territory want slavery they have a right to have it, and if they do not want it that no power on earth can force it upon them. I hold that there is no principle on earth more sacred to all the friends of freedom than that which says that no institution, no law, no constitution, should be forced on an unwilling people contrary to their wishes; and I assert that the Kansas and Nebraska bill contains that principle. It is the great principle contained in that bill. It is the principle on which James Buchanan was made President. Without that principle he never would have been made President of the United States. I will never violate or abandon that doctrine if I have to stand alone. I have resisted the blandishments and threats of power on the one side, and seduction on the other, and have stood immovably for that principle, fighting for it when assailed by Northern mobs, or threatened by Southern hostility. I have defended it against the North and South, and I will defend it against whoever assails it, and I will follow it wherever its logical conclusions lead me. I say to you that there is but one hope, one safety for this country, and that is to stand immovably by that principle which declares the right of each State and each Territory to decide these questions for themselves. This Government was founded on that principle, and must be administered in the same sense in which it was founded.
But the Abolition party really think that under the Declaration of Independence the negro is equal to the white man, and that negro equality is an inalienable right conferred by the Almighty, and hence that all human laws in violation of it are null and void. With such men it is no use for me to argue. I hold that the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no reference to negroes at all when they declared all men to be created equal. They did not mean negroes, nor savage Indians, nor the Fejee Islanders, nor any other barbarous race. They were speaking of white men. They alluded to men of European birth and European descent—to white men, and to none others, when they declared that doctrine. I hold that this Government was established on the white basis. It was established by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men, and none others. But it does not follow, by any means, that merely because the negro is not a citizen, and merely because he is not our equal, that, therefore, he should be a slave. On the contrary, it does follow that we ought to extend to the negro race, and to all other dependent races all the rights, all the privileges, and all the immunities which they can exercise consistently with the safety of society. Humanity requires that we should give them all these privileges; Christianity commands that we should extend those privileges to them. The question then arises what are these privileges, and what is the nature and extent of them. My answer is that that is a question which each State must answer for itself. We in Illinois have decided it for ourselves. We tried slavery, kept it up for twelve years, and finding that it was not profitable, we abolished it for that reason, and became a free State. We adopted in its stead the policy that a negro in this State shall not be a slave and shall not be a citizen. We have a right to adopt that policy. For my part I think it is a wise and sound policy for us. You in Missouri must judge for yourselves whether it is a wise policy for you. If you choose to follow our example, very good; if you reject it, still well, it is your business, not ours. So with Kentucky. Let Kentucky adopt a policy to suit herself. If we do not like it we will keep away from it, and if she does not like ours let her stay at home, mind her own business and let us alone. If the people of all the States will act on that great principle, and each State mind its own business, attend to its own affairs, take care of its own negroes and not meddle with its neighbors, then there will be peace between the North and the South, the East and the West, throughout the whole Union. Why can we not thus have peace? Why should we thus allow a sectional party to agitate this country, to array the North against the South, and convert us into enemies instead of friends, merely that a few ambitious men may ride into power on a sectional hobby? How long is it since these ambitious Northern men wished for a sectional organization? Did any one of them dream of a sectional party as long as the North was the weaker section and the South the stronger? Then all were opposed to sectional parties; but the moment the North obtained the majority in the House and Senate by the admission of California, and could elect a President without the aid of Southern votes, that moment ambitious Northern men formed a scheme to excite the North against the South, and make the people be governed in their votes by geographical lines, thinking that the North, being the stronger section, would out-vote the South, and consequently they, the leaders, would ride into office on a sectional hobby. I am told that my hour is out. It was very short.