FIVE YEARS' PROGRESS OF THE SLAVE POWER; A SERIES OF PAPERS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE BOSTON "COMMONWEALTH," IN JULY, "The Preservation, Propagation, and Perpetuation of Slavery, the Vital and Animating Spirit of the National Government."- JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. BOSTON: BENJAMIN B. MUSSEY AND COMPANY, term of four years had the executive administration been in the hands of a citizen who was not a slaveholder. The lust of dominion had naturally strengthened with its long possession. It was proposed to reinforce the Slave Power with another State formed out of the French purchase west of the Mississippi. The measure was resisted, but by the help of one of Mr. Clay's fatal compromises was carried through. Slavery was intrenched anew in the West, up to the latitude of forty degrees and a half, and two more Slave Power Senators took their seats. New England votes in Congress-three Massachusetts votes - helped to do this lamentable business. It was in the debate on this measure that John Randolph said: "We do not govern them [the people of the Free States] by our black slaves, but by their own white slaves. We know what we are doing. We have conquered you once, and we can, and we will, conquer you again. Ay, Sir, we will drive you to the wall, and when we have you there once more, we mean to keep you there, and nail you down, like base money." And John Randolph spoke the truth. He knew what were the resources of the Slave Power to deal with base Northern men, and he knew what base Northern men there were for it to work upon. In the year that Missouri became one of the United States, Mexico established her independence of Spain. Three years after, she decreed a prospective manumission of slaves. Five years after this, followed a decree of immediate emancipation, which was ratified for itself by the province of Texas. The scheme for the annexation of Texas to the United States dates directly from this measure. Texas was wanted to give greater security to the slave interest, and open a new market for men. General Jackson offered to purchase it of Mexico, and the proposal was ineffectually repeated at different times through six years. Meantime measures were in progress to get up an insurrection, and men and munitions of war were sent from the Southwestern States. In December, 1835, a declaration of independence was published by about ninety persons, not pretending to act in a representative capacity, and all of them but two believed to be Americans. The President of Mexico marched to put down the revolt, and was defeated at San Jacinto in April, 1836, by a body of eight hundred men, fifteen sixteenths of whom were freebooters, fresh from this country.* Texas, under its new government, applied to President Van Buren in 1837 for annexation to the United States. She got no encouragement from him, and the project slept until the next Presidential term, when John Tyler, of Virginia, was at the head of the government, and Abel P. Upshur, of Virginia, Secretary of State. Mr. Upshur reopened the negotiation, representing * See North American Review, Vol. XLIII. p. 254, in an article written by the late Judge Bullard, of New Orleans. that "the establishment, in the very midst of our slaveholding States, of an independent government forbidding the existence of Slavery, and by a people born, for the most part, among us, reared in our habits, and speaking our language, could not fail to produce the most unhappy effects upon both parties." He effected a treaty of annexation; but the public mind was not yet prepared for so enormous a measure, and the Senate rejected it on the 8th of June, 1844. The Slave Power was not to be so put off. In the Democratic Convention for nominating a President, which met a week before the action of the Senate, a majority of the delegates would have been for Mr. Van Buren. But the Southern members insisted on the adoption of the two-thirds rule, and by so doing made Mr. Polk the candidate. They at the same time suc'ceeded in carrying a resolution approving of what they called "the reannexation of Texas." Mr. Clay, the Whig candidate, who had manfully opposed the measure, became alarmed, as the election drew near, and gave in a qualified adhesion to it, in a letter to Alabama, just before the voting in that State. His trimming course enfeebled his party in Western New York, and Mr. Polk, obtaining the vote of that State, was elected. When Congress came together in December, Mr. Tyler, in his message, represented this as the people's decree in favor of Texas annexation. Congress passed a joint resolution, giving its consent that "the Republic of Texas may be erected into a new State," and the invitation was forthwith communicated to that government. The Twenty-ninth Congress met, December 1st, 1845. December 10th, immediately on the appointment of the committees of the House, the question on the admission of Texas was referred to the Committee on the Territories. The next day, that committee reported a resolution for her admission, which was made the special order of the day for the fifth day after. When that time came, the Previous Question, cutting off debate, was immediately called for and sustained; the measure was carried; and on the 22d of December (the anniversary of the landing at Plymouth, of all the days in the year!) the Senate concurred. And so ended the year 1845, with the reinforcement of the Slave Power by the annexation of a foreign slave country with two more Senators (making the Senators representing the Slavery interest to be thirty in number, or one half of the whole body), and the creation in posse, according to Mr. Webster's 7th of March speech, of four other Slave States still to come, with their eight Slave-Power Senators. Mr. Polk was now in the executive chair. The Slave States, with not more, at a large calculation, than one slaveholding vote for every thirty votes of non-slaveholders, North and South, had given a President to the country at eleven elections out of fifteen, and by the early death of General Harrison had actually held the Presidency four fifths of the time since the government was founded. The elections of Presidents Van Buren and Harrison were only apparent exceptions to the almost constant sway of the Slave Power, for both gave it pledges beforehand of concurrence in its policy. The former wrote a letter for publication, in which he said that, if elected, he "must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of any attempt on the part of Congress to abolish Slavery in the District of Columbia, against the wishes of the slaveholding States." The latter was certified, in the address of his friends. to the electors of Virginia, to be "sound to the core on the subject of Slavery." Meanwhile, the distribution of other high offices had been as follows: If a hundred thousand merchants, or lawyers, or bricklayers, or men of any other position but slaveholding planters, had held this large proportion of office and power in the government of the country, we should probably think it something approaching a monopoly. No. III. THE WAR WITH MEXICO. Down to the time of the passage of the joint resolution by Congress, on the 27th of February, 1845, authorizing Texas to form a constitution, with a view to admission into the Union, there had been a steady opposition to the measure in the Free States. Several of them expressed their hostility to it in emphatic resolutions of their legislatures. Their tone generally was that of the legislatures of Ohio and Massachusetts, the former of which unanimously resolved, "that Congress has no power conferred on it by the Constitution of the United States to consent to such annexation; and that the people of Ohio cannot be bound by any such covenant, league, or arrangement, made between Congress and any foreign state or nation." And the latter expressed itself as follows, also by a unanimous vote: "We do, in the name of the people of Massachusetts, earnestly and solemnly protest against the annexation of Texas to this Union, and declare that no act done, or compact made, for such purpose, by the government of the United States, will be binding on the States or the people." During the interval between the dissolution of the Twentyeighth Congress, and the meeting of the Twenty-ninth, while the question of annexation was still unsettled, opposition to it was suddenly abandoned by the leading Whig politicians of the North. Under what particular appliances this was brought to pass, time has not yet revealed, nor does it appear to deserve any particular inquiry; for the change of position on the part of those who act directly on the Northern mind was nothing different on this occasion from what it has always been of late years, when the Southern statesmen have had a sufficient motive to ply all their arts. The use of one method of influence, however, was not at all disguised. A system of high protective duties has long been regarded by not a few Northern Whigs as the one object to be secured by political action. To this class of politicians, Mr. Robert J. Walker of Mississippi (afterwards Secretary of the Treasury) addressed himself, when, in his famous letter on annexation, he said, "Let it be known, and proclaimed as a certain truth, and as a result which can never hereafter be changed or recalled, that upon the refusal of reannexation, now, and in all time to come, THE TARIFF, AS A PRACTICAL MEASURE, FALLS WHOLLY AND FOR EVER, and we shall thereafter be compelled to resort to direct taxes to support the government."+ 'What influence this consideration had over individual minds, no one can undertake to say; but certain it is, that gentlemen largely interested in the cotton manufacture were leaders in the retreat which followed. The result did not turn out as Mr. Walker had led credulous persons to expect. The majority which repealed the high tariff act of 1842 was created by the two new Senatorial votes from Texas. Immediately after the return of the members from Washington in March, 1845, consultations appear to have been held, re ..... *"A Solemn Appeal to the People of the Free States was published in 1843, by twenty members of Congress. Among the signers were John Quincy Adams, and George N. Briggs, since Governor of Massachusetts. Those gentlemen said: "We hold that the objects of this new acquisition are the perpetuation of slavery, and the continued ascendency of the Slave Power. That there is no constitutional power delegated to any department of government to authorize it; that no act of Congress, or treaty of annexation, can impose the least obligation upon the several States of this Union to submit to such an unwarrantable act We hesitate not to say, that annexation, effected by any act or proceeding of the federal government, or any of its departments, would be identical with dissolution. It would be a violation of our national compact, its object and designs, and the great elementary principles which entered into its formation, of a character so deep and fundamental, and would be an attempt to eternize an institution and a power so unjust in themselves, so injurious to the interests and abhorrent to the feelings of the people of the Free States, as, in our opinion, not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it; and we not only assert that the people of the Free States ought not to submit to it,' but we say, with confidence, that they would not submit to it!" The italics and capitals are Mr. Walker's own. |