United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
My opinion is, that the election of Lincoln alone is not sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; but that fact, when taken in connection with the avowed objects and intentions of the party whose candidate he is, and the overt acts already committed by that party in nullifying the fugitive-slave law, and the enactment of personal liberty bills in many of the non-slave-holding States, with other acts of like kind, is sufficient cause for dissolving every tie which binds the Southern States to the Union.
In one form or other, under the acts of 1793 and 1850, both being substantially the same, the fugitive-slave law has been the law of the land from the days of Washington until the present moment.
Nine years ago a convention of her people met and declared that her connection with this government depended upon the faithful execution of the Fugitive-slave law. I was a member of that convention, and I stood then and stand now pledged to its action.
Some masters, who fail from defect of temper or disposition to secure the affections of the conquered people, frequently find themselves left without a single servant, in consequence of the absence and impossibility of enforcing a fugitive-slave law, and the readiness with which those who are themselves subjected assist the fugitives across the rivers in canoes.
"I do not agree that there is no power in the President to preserve the Union; I will say that now. Senator Pugh, of Ohio, saying that he lived on the border of the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States, contended that the fugitive-slave law was executed every day, or nearly every day. It was in constant operation.
The nation had accepted that theory as a makeshift for the emergency of that day; but slave cultivation had already exhausted much of the Southern land, and, not content with Utah and New Mexico for their propagandism, the slaveholders cast envious eyes upon the great territory of the Northwest, stretching out from the Missouri border, although it was north of the prohibited line of 36° 30'. And so it came about that, within four short years after the compromise of 1850, the unrest of the North under the Fugitive-Slave Law, followed by the efforts of the South to break down the earlier compromise of 1821, awoke again with renewed fierceness the slavery agitation, in discussing the bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, an immense area, extending from the borders of Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, west to the Rocky Mountains, and from the line of 36° 30' north to British America.
My folks used to live around there, and I can remember when I was a boy hangin' around the bar-room nights hearin' him argue that colored folks had no souls; and along about the time the fugitive-slave law was passed the folks pootty near run him out o' town for puttin' the United States marshal on the scent of a fellow that was breakin' for Canada. Well, it was just so when the war come.
He did not desert his party, but he passed over from the anti-slavery to the pro-slavery wing, defeated the policy of his predecessor, secured the enactment of the Fugitive-slave Law, and neutralized all efforts to prohibit the introduction of slavery in the Territories. In this course Mr. Fillmore had the support of the great leaders of the party, Mr. Clay and Mr.
And even yet the conservatism of the North was not wholly inflamed; for political partisanship is in itself a kind of slavery, and while the Northern Democrats stood squarely with the South, the Northern Whigs, fearing division and defeat, made strenuous efforts to stand on both sides, and, admitting slavery to be an "evil," to uphold the Fugitive-Slave Law because it was a part of the "great compromise."
This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each.
Word Of The Day