litigation was at so low an ebb that it required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as constable.
The reverse of all this was now seen and felt, – not to the whole extent which fancy or policy painted – but to extent enough to constitute a reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite the regrets which the memory of past joys never fails to awaken. A real change had come, and this change, the effect of many causes, was wholly attributed to one – the unequal working of the Federal Government – which gave all the benefits of the Union to the North, and all its burdens to the South. And that was the point on which Southern discontent broke out – on which it openly rested until 1835; when it was shifted to the danger of slave property.
Separation is no remedy for these evils, but the parent of far greater than either just discontent or restless ambition would fly from. To the South the Union is a political blessing; to the North it is both a political and a pecuniary blessing; to both it should be a social blessing. Both sections should cherish it, and the North most. The story of the boy that killed the goose that laid the golden egg every day, that he might get all the eggs at once, was a fable; but the Northern man who could promote separation by any course of wrong to the South would convert that fable into history – his own history – and commit a folly, in a mere profit and loss point of view, of which there is no precedent except in fable.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PROGRESS OF THE SLAVERY AGITATION: MR. CALHOUN'S APPROVAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
This portentous agitation, destined to act so seriously on the harmony, and possibly on the stability of the Union, requires to be noted in its different stages, that responsibility may follow culpability, and the judgment of history fall where it is due, if a deplorable calamity is made to come out of it. In this point of view the movements for and against slavery in the session of 1837-'38 deserve to be noted, as of disturbing effect at the time; and as having acquired new importance from subsequent events. Early in the session a memorial was presented in the Senate from the General Assembly of Vermont, remonstrating against the annexation of Texas to the United States, and praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia – followed by many petitions from citizens and societies in the Northern States to the same effect; and, further, for the abolition of slavery in the Territories – for the abolition of the slave trade between the States – and for the exclusion of future slave States from the Union.
There was but little in the state of the country at that time to excite an anti-slavery feeling, or to excuse these disturbing applications to Congress. There was no slave territory at that time but that of Florida; and to ask to abolish slavery there, where it had existed from the discovery of the continent, or to make its continuance a cause for the rejection of the State when ready for admission into the Union, and thus form a free State in the rear of all the great slave States, was equivalent to praying for a dissolution of the Union. Texas, if annexed, would be south of 36° 30', and its character, in relation to slavery, would be fixed by the Missouri compromise line of 1820. The slave trade between the States was an affair of the States, with which Congress had nothing to do; and the continuance of slavery in the District of Columbia, so long as it existed in the adjacent States of Virginia and Maryland, was a point of policy in which every Congress, and every administration, had concurred from the formation of the Union; and in which there was never a more decided concurrence than at present.
The petitioners did not live in any Territory, State, or district subject to slavery. They felt none of the evils of which they complained – were answerable for none of the supposed sin which they denounced – were living under a general government which acknowledged property in slaves – and had no right to disturb the rights of the owner: and they committed a cruelty upon the slave by the additional rigors which their pernicious interference brought upon him.
The subject of the petitions was disagreeable in itself; the language in which they were couched was offensive; and the wantonness of their presentation aggravated a proceeding sufficiently provoking in the civilest form in which it could be conducted. Many petitions were in the same words, bearing internal evidence of concert among their signers; many were signed by women, whose proper sphere was far from the field of legislation; all united in a common purpose, which bespoke community of origin, and the superintendence of a general direction. Every presentation gave rise to a question and debate, in which sentiments and feelings were expressed and consequences predicted, which it was painful to hear. While almost every senator condemned these petitions, and the spirit in which they originated, and the language in which they were couched, and considered them as tending to no practical object, and only calculated to make dissension and irritation, there were others who took them in a graver sense, and considered them as leading to the inevitable separation of the States. In this sense Mr. Calhoun said:
"He had foreseen what this subject would come to. He knew its origin, and that it lay deeper than was supposed. It grew out of a spirit of fanaticism which was daily increasing, and, if not met in limine, would by and by dissolve this Union. It was particularly our duty to keep the matter out of the Senate – out of the halls of the National Legislature. These fanatics were interfering with what they had no right. Grant the reception of these petitions, and you will next be asked to act on them. He was for no conciliatory course, no temporizing; instead of yielding one inch, he would rise in opposition; and he hoped every man from the South would stand by him to put down this growing evil. There was but one question that would ever destroy this Union, and that was involved in this principle. Yes; this was potent enough for it, and must be early arrested if the Union was to be preserved. A man must see little into what is going on if he did not perceive that this spirit was growing, and that the rising generation was becoming more strongly imbued with it. It was not to be stopped by reports on paper, but by action, and very decided action."
The question which occupied the Senate was as to the most judicious mode of treating these memorials, with a view to prevent their evil effects: and that was entirely a question of policy, on which senators disagreed who concurred in the main object. Some deemed it most advisable to receive and consider the petitions – to refer them to a committee – and subject them to the adverse report which they would be sure to receive; as had been done with the Quakers' petitions at the beginning of the government. Others deemed it preferable to refuse to receive them. The objection urged to this latter course was, that it would mix up a new question with the slavery agitation which would enlist the sympathies of many who did not co-operate with the Abolitionists – the question of the right of petition; and that this new question, mixing with the other, might swell the number of petitioners, keep up the applications to Congress, and perpetuate an agitation which would otherwise soon die out. Mr. Clay, and many others were of this opinion; Mr. Calhoun and his friends thought otherwise; and the result was, so far as it concerned the petitions of individuals and societies, what it had previously been – a half-way measure between reception and rejection – a motion to lay the question of reception on the table. This motion, precluding all discussion, got rid of the petitions quietly, and kept debate out of the Senate. In the case of the memorial from the State of Vermont, the proceeding was slightly different in form, but the same in substance. As the act of a State, the memorial was received; but after reception was laid on the table. Thus all the memorials and petitions were disposed of by the Senate in a way to accomplish the two-fold object, first, of avoiding discussion; and, next, condemning the object of the petitioners. It was accomplishing all that the South asked; and if the subject had rested at that point, there would have been nothing in the history of this session, on the slavery agitation, to distinguish it from other sessions about that period: but the subject was revived; and in a way to force discussion, and to constitute a point for the retrospect of history.
Every memorial and petition had been disposed of according to the wishes of the senators from the slaveholding States; but Mr. Calhoun deemed it due to those States to go further, and to obtain from the Senate declarations which should cover all the questions of federal power over the institution of slavery: although he had just said that paper reports would do no good. For that purpose, he submitted a series of resolves – six in number – which
