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Show 252 DESPOTISM the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves. and our posterity." Now, to which of these gre~t objects has not the existence among us of domestic slavery proved a stumbling-block from the day the fi rst Continental Congress met d?wn to the c~rrent moment? So long as slavery con~1nu?s, ~he unLOn of the states never can be perfected; JUSttce 1s but an c~pty name; our domestic tranquillity will always be 111 dangerand that even less from the slaves, reluctantly held in bondage, and watching an opportunity to throw o~· the yoke, than from the idle, turbulent, hot-headed, am) insolent among their masters, who, not cont~nt with lynching private individuals, and e~en sovereign states of the Union in the persons of thea representatives, threaten separation and civil war w~enevcr thwarted in any of their pretensions. What atd does the institution of slavery afford to the common defence? Officers, perhaps, but neither men nor money. A,. to securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, the slave-holders, backed by the mercantile interest of the North, in which they have found a humble but zealous ally, have, within the last fifteen years, made not Jess than two desperate attempts entirely to suppress all freedom of speech and of the press, and to make universal tha~ reign. of terror so vigorously enforced during that enttre pcnod throughout the southern part of the Union!_ . And yet t hose who labor to eradicate thts lastmg and inevitable source of discord, this eating cancer of our liberties and peace, are accused of hostility to the union of the states- and that, too, by a set of political pharisees, who, in parading their anxiety to carry out the alleged implied intentions of the framero of the constitution as to the return of runaway '~e· groes, do at best but pay tithe of mint _and cumtn, while t hey wholly neglect those wetghber matter., those great overrulina intentions, not implied, alleged, made out by constn~ction, or di~covercd. by a .re::;~;! to contemporaneous hist.ory, but proclauned 10 IN AMERICA. 253 preamble to the co.nstitution, and throughout the wh?le tPxt of . the Instrument- the growth of the U~1ted Sta.tcs mto a great, united, FREE republic ! . That whtch the fathers planned, and of which they la1d the foundatiOn~, ~ml dmg upon th.em according to the measure of their means and enh(1htenme.nt it becomes u~ of ihis generation, with the advant~gc of far supenor means, and greater experience, to carry out and perfect. 'l'hat the ·abolition of slavery is by no means so impracticable a thing as many represent, and that even the slave-hol~ers t~emsclves may, by a reasonabl~. regard to t.helf cla1ms t_o pecuniary indemnity, be 1nduced hearidy to concur 111 tt, an attempt will be made to show in a subsequent treatise. SECTION IV. Tile Fugitive Act of 1850. IT is upon the clause of the constitution of the United States for the delivery up of " persons held to ~ervice or labor under the laws" of any state escaptng into another, that the fugitive slave act (commonly so called) of 1850 is founded. That act, however, it is to be observed, notwithstanding i ts popular title,_ and the avowed purpose of its enactment, says nothmg, any more than tbe constitution itself, in direct terms, about slaves or slavery. Its application to the ca~e of fugitive slaves proceeds entirely on the assumptton that slavery exists in certain of the states not merely in fact but by Jaw, so that under the descnpbon of persons bound to service and labor under. sta~e laws slaves arc included- an assumption wh~ch Judges and commissioners may declare too plam to be argued about, or to require to be sustained 22 |
