35TH CONG...1ST SESS.

others, that it contained this extraordinary provision, to wit:

SEC. 1. Every male person of the age of twenty-one years or upwards, belonging to either of the following classes, who shall have resided in the United States one year, and in this State for four months next preceding any élection, shall be entitled to vote at such election, in the election district of which he shall at the time have been for ten days a resident, for all officers that now are, or hereafter may be, elective by the people:

"1. White citizens of the United States.

"2. White persons of foreign birth, who shall have declared their intentions to become citizens, conformably to the laws of the United States upon the subject of naturali

zation.

"3. Persons of mixed white and Indian blood, who have adopted the customs and habits of civilization.

4. Persons of Indian blood residing in this State, who have adopted the language, customs, and habits of civilization, after an examination before any district court of the State in such manner as may be provided by law, and shall have been pronounced by said court capable of enjoying the rights of citizenship within the State."

My colleague may account to his constituents for his vote in favor of this constitutional provi

sion.

My colleague not only voted for this, but, according to his own doctrine, voted for a bill the provisions of which give up millions of the public lands.

My colleague draws a picture, and gives his statement as to how northern people got to Kansas. He says nothing about how or for what our southern friends also went there. As to this I had said nothing. It was not my purpose to justify scuffling to get people into Kansas unnaturally and prematurely by either. My purpose here and elsewhere has been to do all in my power to allay excitement on the inflammable subject of slavery, and induce the country, in all sections, to leave this whole question to the result of the usual and natural immigration, and the citizens of the United States-those actually settled in the Territory-fairly and peaceably to decide this question at the proper time and in the proper way.

My colleague says that I based my opposition to the admission of Kansas, under the Lecompton constitution," in other words, to her admission as a slave State," upon three points, and so forth. Based my opposition to the admission of Kansas, under the Lecompton constitution, “IN OTHER WORDS, TO HER ADMISSION AS A SLAVE STATE!" Now, I ask any candid man to recur to all that I said upon that occasion, to read my speech, and then answer for himself what is the fair dealing of one who, in a reply to it, would say that? Did I not avow that, so far as I was concerned, I was well pleased with the Lecompton constitution, in substance; that I would be pleased to have Kansas as a slave State, should the people of Kansas be satisfied with it; and that I would be satisfied if we could acquire Kansas as a slave State properly, fairly, and peaceably?

Mr. Chairman, the object and design of this 1 cannot but say (and I do so in all becoming respect) is illustrated by the fable of the boy who tried to conceal the fish, which he had acquired by stealth, under his waistcoat, but staid in market, the tail sticking out below. [Laughter.] He says there was nothing in the Green amendment, but that he regretted to see it in the bill. He quotes it in his speech; he defends, as I understand him, the position taken on that subject by the Executive in his special message; he professes to take ground for the Executive against me; and upon that I am ready to go with him before the people of North Carolina, or the people of the South everywhere. Pray what is the doctrine intended to be covered by that Green amendment? It is that the readiest and quickest way to get slavery out of Kansas is to adopt the Lecompton constitution; for that, irrespective of the checks and limitations in the constitution, the majority of the people can elect a Legislature; and that Legislature can call a convention. The convention thus called can alter the constitution, and give at once power to the Legislature to abolish and confiscate slave property, nothing being said about compensation to the owners who, according to the Dred Scott decision, had gone as rightfully into the Territory with their property as others with other property. Is that a doctrine which is to be defended by southern men, or that is likely to advance the interests of the States interested in the institution of slavery?

striking, and imposing, he borrows the phrase "unparalleled outrage" to apply to the positions maintained by me. He turns me over to be destroyed by my constituents. After all this, who would have believed that he, so shortly thereafter, would have come substantially on the same platform with me, and have embraced the self-same "unparalleled outrage," and rejoiced with others over its success as a great triumph, a great measure of peace and quiet to the country? Yes, sir; a great Administration triumph, celebrated by music and singing, speaking, banners, and the firing of cannon. Now, sir, am pained to see that, among many politicians at the North, there is a scuffling to have the impression created on the country that there is not a submission of this constitution to the decision of the people of Kansas. And I discover the same thing among gentlemen of the South, who are trying to cover up the fact that they came down to this very platform, " unparalleled outrage," to wit: that the people of Kansas are substantially to have the privilege of deciding this very great quarrel among and for themselves. Now I want to make this point as plain as daylight-so plain, mark you, that these southern gentlemen who would charge me as being inconsistent, who supported the principle of the submission of the constitution of Kansas to the

As I remarked in my speech, I had supposed that the South had gained something by the principle settled in the Dred Scott decision, and that southern men could go into the Territories with their slave property just as northern men go with any other kind of property. But, according to his doctrine, as soon as the Territory becomes a State, there is this difference between slave property and other property, that the former is particularly liable to be abolished or confiscated. Both went in constitutionally and legally. But as soon as the Territory becomes a State, the rights in slaves enjoyed under the United States Constitution are gone. I was sorry to hear some of our northern friends say that that was their construction of it, and that it could be done without compensation to the owners. What service is the principle settled in the Dred Scott case to the South if that doctrine be true? I supposed that, to carry out that principle truly, southern men were entitled not only to go into the Territory with this species of property, but that, when they came to form a State constitution, the convention, or a subsequent Legislature, could do no more with slave property that had been lawfully brought into the Territory, than they could with any other species of property. The right to prohibit the further introduction of slaves is one thing; the right to legislate for the gradual emancipation of the issue born after-people, must apply inconsistency to themselves. wards is another thing; and the right to abolish slavery, allowing compensation to the owners, is a third thing. All these might be reasonably consistent with the principle settled in the Dred Scott case; but to go the fourth degree, and say that the convention assembled to form a State constitution can give the Legislature power to emancipate or confiscate the slaves that had gone in there right- |· fully, without compensation to the owners, is going far indeed, and is entirely a different thing. If southern men defend that, I am willing to meet my colleague on that issue in North Carolina or anywhere else.

My colleague tells the story of Pat McGowan. He uses an offensive term for a very clever Irishman in North Carolina, whose true name is Patrick McGowan, and is a gentleman who was doorkeeper to the Senate of North Carolina for a number of years, a poor but, as I believe, an honest man; a Roman Catholic; but he discharges his duties promptly, faithfully, and industriously. He was ever kind and attentive to me. I had a personal partiality for this little industrious man, who had a house full of children, and not the wherewithal to clothe and feed them easily. He asked me to sign a recommendation to get him the appointment of mail agent of the Raleigh and Gaston railroad. I did so; he received the appointment, and has filled it with ability and faithfulness ever since. I might say that all this took place before we had any controversy about the principles of the American party; but I do not want to plead off on any such ground as that. God forbid that there should be anything in the principles of the American party to prohibit me, or others, from lending my name or influence in a work of that kind! I think my colleague, if he

have found something that would have operated
more to my prejudice than this little aid which I
gave to one, poor and clever, but whom he con-
temptuously calls "Pat McGowan.” All that he
can make out of that little circumstance he is wel-

come to.

But my colleague says that I have supported the doctrine of alien suffrage. What does he mean by that? If this charge had the least semblance of truth in it, it would be no fault with him. The Senate bill and the Crittenden bill contained substantially the same provisions and safe guards as to this.

My colleague goes into a long history of the Missouri compromise, and winds up with this reason for the repeal thereof, to wit: "That northern men opposed the extension of it to the Pacific." I would reply to this, by asking whether the same majority that repealed the said compromise, could not, by the very same vote, and with the same ease, have extended it to the Pacific?

My colleague says he has no complaint to make of my votes on Kansas, but believes they are in direct opposition to the interests of his constituents and mine; and, to be the more emphatic,

I do it by reading the act itself; there is no getting around that. It reads as follows:

"Be it enacted, &c., That the State of Kansas be, and is hereby, admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, but upon this fundamental condition precedent, namely: that the question of admission, with the following proposition in lieu of the ordinance framed at Lecompton, be submitted to a vote of the people of Kansas, and assented to by them or a majority of the voters voting at an election to he held for that purpose, namely: that the following propositions be, and the same are hereby, offered to the people of Kansas for acceptance or rejection, which, if accepted, shall be obligatory on the United States and upon the said State of Kansas, to wit."

Here follows what the people of Kansas are to vote for or against.

And what is that, pray? Why, simply whether she would accept the quantity of land which she would get any way-the same that Minnesota receives the same that she would get whether she comes in under the Lecompton constitution or any other constitution. Yet gentlemen undertake to argue before the people of the country that it is not submitting the constitution to the people of Kansas. It is true, it is indirect; but it is the same principle, in fact, advocated by those who supported the Crittenden-Montgomery bill. They come as near to my bill as they could, considering that we are all creatures of human pride. Why, Mr. Chairman, you might as well have said, "you shall not vote for Lecompton, or against Lecompton, but you may do this: all those who are for Lecompton may throw into a hat blue beans, but all those who are opposed to Lecompton may throw in black beans; then, when all have thrown in their beans, count, and if the blue beans are the most in number, Kansas is in with Lecompton; but if the black beans are the most numerous, then there is no State of Kansas, and no Lecompton constitution."

But it does not stop there; the act goes further, and shows what is to be done if they thus reject this constitution. It reads as follows:

"At the said election the voting shall be by ballot, and by indorsing on his ballot, as each voter may please, Proposition accepted' or Proposition rejected." Should a majority of the votes cast be for Proposition accepted,' the President of the United States, as soon as the fact is duly made known to him, shall announce the same by proclamation; and thereafter, and without any further proceedings on the part of Congress, the admission of the State of Kansas into the Union upon an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever, shall be complete and absolute; and said State shall be entitled to one member in the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States until the next census be taken by the Federal Government. But should a majority of the votes cast be for Proposition rejected,' it shall be deemed and held that the people of Kansas do not desire admission into the Union with said constitution under the conditions set forth in the said proposition; and in that event the people of said Territory are hereby authorized and empowered to form for themselves a constitution and State government, by the name of the State of Kansas, according to the Federal Constitution, and may elect delegates for that purpose whenever, and not before, it is ascertained by a census duly and legally taken that the population of said Territory equals or exceeds the ratio of representation required for a memb er of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the Jni3 shall

ted States; and whenever thereafter such delegate

Origin of Slavery-Mr. Keitt.

with me indifference, at the effects and results he has so lamely and feebly attempted.

Then he attempts still further to prejudice me by saying that the member from Ohio [Mr. GIDDINGS] Congratulated me on the speech that I made on that occasion. When my colleague was upon the floor, and gentlemen who were near me at the time assured him that what was alleged did not take place, I should have expected, at least it would be expected, that he would have acknowledged that he had been mistaken; but not so. He had risen to make the speech, and his speech he made as he had fixed it up. What in my speech was there that Mr. GIDDINGS could congratulate me on?

And I would say here, with all submission, that if we could bring about a state of things in this country, when Mr. GIDDINGS, or all others, North or South, would be willing to congratulate themselves upon the platform laid down in that speech, it would be a better state of things than now exists, or I fear will soon exist. I say, in reference to my colleague's statement, however, with a solemn regard to truth, that there is not a word of truth in it. I do recollect that the member from Ohio, in passing up the aisle, some distance from me, on the conclusion of my speech, stopped and made some such remarks as he has stated in his reported reply to my colleague, about my having connected his name with that of Mr. Buchanan. That I believe to be true; no

An act for the admission of the State of Minnesota into the Union.

Whereas, an act of Congress was passed February 26, 1857, entitled "An act to authorize the people of the Territory of Minnesota to form a constitution and State government, preparatory to their admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original States ;" and whereas, the people of said Territory did, on the 29th day of August, 1857, by delegates elected for that purpose, form for themselves a constitution and State government, which is republican in form, and was ratified and adopted by the people, at an election held on the 13th day of October, 1857, for that purpose: Therefore,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the State of Minnesota shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever..

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That said State shall be entitled to two Representatives in Congress until the next apportionment of Representatives amongst the several States.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That from and after the admission of the State of Minnesota, as hereinbefore provided, all the laws of the United States, which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect

35TH CONG....1ST SESS.

Origin of Slavery—Mr. Keitt.

be content to abide by its precepts, and cling to
its securities. We cannot, therefore, consent that
it shall be so lacerated as to pluck away from its

verses 2, 4, 6, 7, 20, 26, 27, 32.) Yes, turn to
that Book, which, in all the things of human life,
one of perpetual relevancy, because it is the
Book of eternal wisdom and truth, and any think-prohibitions, not a denunciation of slavery, but
ing and honest man must also be struck with this
peculiarity in this question of slavery, which the
Almighty, in his decrees, has seen fit to conse-
crate, but which some of his miserable, pre-
sumptuous creatures, in their superior wisdom
and holier claims, would damn into an abomina-
tion and a sin. As in our organic law its crea-
tors, after the declaration of the objects and
principles of government, gave the most promi-
nent place to the duties and inhibitions-marked,
in a specific form for the framers, the expounders,
and the executives of the supreme law; so in the
Divine constitution, after the declaration of the
moral law and of the requirements of Divine
worship, out of the multiplicity of precepts which
He had to impose, and which He did impose upon
His people, God seems specially to have selected
this question of slavery to make it the subject of
a particular determination of duties and delega-
tion of powers, enjoined and conferred on Moses,
the organ and exponent of His law.

that command which should forbid them "to bear
false witness against their neighbor." Hence,
sir, respecting that law, in all its bearings, we re-
spect it in its bearing upon slavery, where its rec-
ognition by man is corroborated by the sanction
of Heaven. It has the authority of covenant and
time for its applications in human societies. It
has the authority of apostolic instructions, and of
Christian practice. It has the authority of the can-
ons and decretals of the Church, when there was
but one Church on the face of the earth. It has the
authority of imperial rescripts and royal decrees,
not condemned by the spiritual dicta of the Church.
It has the authority of parliamentary statutes, of
colonial regulations and State laws, which rec-
ognize its concordance and fitness with slavery.
Slavery, sir, under that law, has claimed and ob-
tained the assent of universal custom and right;
and we contend that a disinterested renunciation, or
pious non-user of a right, on the part of any in-
individual, community, or State, can never dis-
parage the authority of that law, affect the sanc-
tity of our rights, or pervert their exercise into
an imputation of wrong. No, sir; we cannot allow
those men, unmasked and unrebuked, to mutilate
the record for purposes of malice, of falsehood,
and of strife. The municipal law of modern times
is but the binomial affirmation of the Divine law
of ancient days; and upon both we stand, and
shall ever stand, as a tower of impregnable
strength.

Painfully aware am I, Mr. Chairman, that this
is not the place where the question of slavery, in
this view-I mean in the religious view-should
be discussed. But when the assault is not con-
fined to the declarations of conferences, and the
decrees of synod; to the rabid vituperations of the
rostra, and the scurrilous amenities of the pulpit;
when the trained and prompted retailers of secu-
lar slanders and holy falsehoods come here, where
all meet upon an equality of political rights, what-
ever distinction may be marked by a sense of per-
sonal dignity, and the despotism of gentlemanly
nurture-come here, and upon this floor, "like
hounds let loose from leash," day after day howl
in our ears that we are
66 men stealers;" that we
are breakers of the Divine law; that slavery has
the curse of God upon its head; and that our
maintenance of the system is a sin in His eyes;
we may be pardoned for overlooking the propri-
eties of place, and even "wer 't in a church," not
refrain from repelling the assault where it is made,
and the falsehood where advanced. Why, sir,
even those who profess to stand by our rights
modify the admission by the salvo that slavery,
though a shocking thing, is our own business and
concern. They justify their gingerly advocacy
of what they call the rights of slavery, as existing
in the States, by the complimentary avowal that
our people are not their people, and our God
their God." That our people and our God are
not their people and their God, we have abundant
and satisfactory proof. The burning sense of
wrong that kindles the southern heart; every
pulse which, in the southern bosom, beats in an-
swer to the voice of justice, tells us that our people
cannot be their people. That their God is not,
and cannot be our God, we have the evidence in
their persistent repudiation of His law, and their
willful perversion of its precepts.

That law, Mr. Chairman, endured in its fullness, as the expressed will of the Maker, until it pleased Him again to reveal that will to His creatures and to send His Messiah as the witness of that revelation. It remained in vigor, unmodified and unchanged, save in the necessities of the new scheme, among which slavery was not reckoned, by Him who emphatically declared, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" the law, which He committed to His ministers in their prose ution of His divine mission. By them it was transmitted to their successors, and by these, in an unbroken line, to the succeeding agents who continued that work. And thus, sir, down the steep of ages, until our days of new lights and modern improvements, when it is sought to substitute a sickly philanthropy for the salutary precepts of the Creator, our days of fanatical innovations and dissolving doctrines, in which the voice of the Romillies, the Wilberforces, and the Clarksons, denouncing the law of God, found an echo in our own second-handed Abolition conferences, in our modest revisers of the olden creed, and northern editors of a new code of Christianity. From negation to negation they have gone on repudiating the traditions of the original code; repudiating the customs of the past which it sanctioned; repudiating the formal instructions of the earliest apostles; repudiating, when they did not actually criminate, the silence of the Savior himself; they have gone on thus, until, in one crowning act of impious insolence, howling for "an anti-slavery Bible and an anti-slavery God," they have repudiated the written law of the divine Legislator, and ex cathedra declared his own institution and consecration of slavery to be a defilement and a crime. If we, sir, who claim a twofold guarantee for the rights of the slaveholder, in the legal sanction and the Divine injunctions, which I take to be the very duramen of the institution and its growth, are tainted by such defilement and guilty of such crime; if these men, instead of being impious maniacs and malicious slanderers, are the assertors of truth and the vindicators of right; then shall we have to reverse the injunctions of the apostles delivered in the prosecution of their ministry, and baptized in the holy spirit of knowledge and truth; shall have to load our souls with the guilt of the blasphemer and condemn the Savior for his silence on this question of slavery, or interpolate His teachings dispensed to those apostles as the muniments of their approaching ministry. Then, sir, shall we be compelled to rend asunder the slavery record of Exodus, extended over the chap ters of Leviticus, and reaffirmed in the second pro-fusion existing on that score. For the duality of mulgation of the law through the precepts of Deuteronomy. Compelled, sir, if these men are to escape the stigma which should attach to them as willful falsifiers of the word of God, to pervertulations of the Roman poet: every line of Scripture, and blot out the decalogue itself; which, embodying the sum of our moral duties and religious obligations, embodies also a recognition of slavery.

But we of the South, with no claim to self-sustaining godliness and with no impudent pretensions to reform or amend the word of God, must

66

For the delicate allotment in the former case,
of the suum cuique, Mr. Chairman, and the proper
discrimination between our people and theirs, they
have the due acknowledgments of one, at least,
who would regret to find misconception or con-

the godship, in the latter instance, I am not other-
wise prepared, nor is it quite my province to ac-
count. I am, however, reminded of the congrat-

"O! sanctas gentes, quibus hæc nascuntur, in hortis
Numina"-

congratulations addressed to "that holy race
whose gods in gardens grow;" whilst mine may
not be withheld from the people; not ours, whose
inventive genius, among others of its achieve-
ments, has secured for them a patent northern

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Ho. OF REPS.

god, in a Yankee heaven. I am satisfied, sir, to give wide berth to this horrid idol of northern contrivance-horrid indeed, sir, if we are to judge of its character by the madness and impiety to which its baleful spirit is driving its fanatical worshipers. I give it wide berth to cling to the God whom we acknowledge in reverence and truth, the God of ou: fathers; who has smiled, and who continues to smile, in kindness and protection, upon both master and slave; the God of our fathers in the trial times of our struggle, whose light they invoked in the deliberations of the council-room, and to whose might they appealed in the arbitrament of the battle-field; the God who breathed wisdom in their councils, and gave power to their arms; the God who, in the day of ordeal, with the scales of justice in His hand, swayed the beam on the side of victory and right. This, sir, is our God-the God whose paths we have striven to pursue, and whose mandates we have labored to obey. This God the very brotherly spirit of our northern friends has differenced from theirs.

In the prosecution of this duty to the South, and in vindication of its traduced and slandered people, to Him and to His law, its permissions and its guarantees, I confidently appeal to shake off the responsibility which the repeated assertion that slavery is a sin, because it is an assumed violation of the justice of God, seeks to impute to us as breakers of the Christian law in the maintenance of the institution in our political and domestic society. Why, sir, the news current upon your streets but yesterday tells you that a religious conference-a religious conference!—at the North, following scores of other conferences of the kind, by a vote of fifty-one against thirty-five, passed resolutions-affirmed resolutions, decreeing us and our people of the South to be violators of the law of God, and of the teachings of His Son. The duties of the headsman, performed on some of the more distinguished felons, were wont, in times past, to borrow a relative dignity from the character of the criminals. But the office of an executioner, discharged even on these saintly culprits of ours, can be but loathsome at best. Hence, sir, I shrink from branding these pious perverters of truth with the stigma due to the falsehoods which they, with fiendish malice and unstinted breath, daily drivel against the institutions, the morals, and the religion of the South. Were it not for the obligation incumbent on this discussion to pluck the mask from the face of error, and to champion the sanctities of truth, I would scarcely waste the breath to ask them to point out to us where Christ taught, where Christ hinted, that slavery, as He found it established by the will of His Father, uttered on the heights of Sinai-that slavery, as He found it under the derivative authority of human legislation, is a violation and a breaking of His Divine precepts? Humbly and reverently, sir, have I scanned those precepts; not to falsify, not to warp, but to understand and respect; and nowhere yet have I been able to find a line that will either screen our slanderers from the guilt of willful obliquity from the paths, which, in this respect, He has marked for our feet, or subject us to the charge of a departure from His intents in the same respect. It is our sincere acknowledgment, on the contrary, that His teachings, without conceit of ourselves, or disparagement of others, are a guide to our lives, and a sacrament to our hopes; and we keep them sacred and free from the thousand worldly stains by which, through their prostitution of religion to political and secular ends, our traducers blur the holiness and deform the beauty of His worship, in persistent contempt of His admonition, "My kingdom is not of this world."

Much as the fact may exercise the incredulity of our northern friends-credulous in all else that promises full scope for the pursuit of serious follies and fanatical aims-I assert this, in the name of a high-thoughted and generous people, whose only guilt is blindness to the refined civilization, and rebellion against the self-seeking morality of a self-righteous North. I do it in the name and on behalf of the mothers of the South, before the moral splendors of whose home-virtues and exemplary lives the fame of the Roman matrons dwindles into an empty boast. I assert it in the name and on behalf of the daughters of the South,

=

35TH CONG....1ST SESS.

who, rich in every endowment that adorns the female character, give assurance that this patrimony of quiet and purifying virtues shall long continue unflawed by the rude contact of the public rostrums, or unshamed by dabbling in the vagaries of women's rights. I assert it in the name of the younger sons of the South, the spes altera Roma, the future hope of our Republic, held to the memory of lofty deeds, and sworn to patriotic service. But especially do I assert it in the name and in vindication of a pure and enlightened clergy, who sustain high purposes with high dignity, and justify their ministry by the teachings which their Master taught.

Origin of Slavery—Mr. Keitt.

entrance into Capernaum, he heals the slave of the centurion, and has no rebuke for slavery, but praises for the officer's faith.* No, sir, nothing of condemnation, nothing of even reproof from the Savior's lips, for the "vile wretch," the "man stealer;" who, according to the approved Yankee formula, "held his brother man in bondage." If ever, Mr. Chairman, an opportunity was offered to stamp with reprobation, this lately devised curse, and ungodliness of slavery, surely this healing of the centurion's slave held out that most golden opportunity. Had one of our pious go-betweens--one of our religious brokers here upon earth-but stood next When, therefore, Mr. Chairman, the attempt to the Savior, and found the chance of whisperis made, in the name of religion, to put our moraling his puritanic suggestion, well might He have and social character under the ban of the world's opinion; when made by the arm of fanaticism, led by falsehood, to assail the institutions and endanger the peace of the South; it is neither out of place, nor against propriety, for us to go even to the armories of Christianity for a weapon of defense. I trust, sir, that the same spirit of fairness which sustained my reference to the primitive sources of unerring wisdom and truth, and guided the investigation into the other sources of authority, will not fail me in further inquiries directed to the record of the Gospel, which time has handed down to us as the voucher of the doctrines of Christ.

man.

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said to the Roman officer: "you profess that this slave is endeared to you,' and yet you keep him in bondage against my Father's law and mine. You have appealed to the power which He gave to me to raise him up from his bed of palsy, and I have raised him up without money and without price; will you not alike evince your acknowl- || edgment of my ministry, and your affection for your slave, and restore him to that freedom, of which you deprived him, in defiance of nature, of man, and of God?" No, sir; wrapped in His own imperscrutable knowledge of all things-unaided even by the lights of our modern improvers, not a word of rebuke, not one of remonstrance, On His advent, sir, slavery was a universal passes His Divine lips, but instead, come the fact, growing out of the rights laid down in the words of eulogy, that set up the soldier as a patoriginal law, and acknowledged by every tribe tern for Israel, whilst the right of the master and and nation, whether now lost in the darkness of the protection of the slave are sanctioned in the ages, or once figuring in the geographies of the faith of the believer. It is vain for these godly inhabited earth. Neither He, as the promulger of expounders of ours to speculate upon ignorance, the suppletory law, nor His apostles, as its sub-or rely on fanaticism to distort the teachings of sequent heralds, ever denied the law in that par- Christ to the support of their interested, malicious, ticular, or preached in condemnation of either the and selfish crusade against an institution devised right or the fact. The founder of the new code by the will of God, and accepted by the law of taught the unity of God in a trinity of persons. In the words of the Prætor, sir, non ita He taught the fall of man and the regeneration scriptum legis carmen-this is not the sacramental through His merits. He enforced the necessities language of either the Divine law, or of Him who of meekness, justice, temperance, and charity. expounded its precepts. In the multitude of subHe rebuked the pride of human will and of hu- jects upon which He discoursed with His disciman intellect, and sustained all orders of men by ples, you find no mention of slavery; in matters the doctrine that the highest of the spiritual vir- upon which He gave them instruction and charge, tues can be linked with a lowly estate, a chastened never did He breathe the name of slave except in will, and a trusting faith. From the summit of the frequent use which He makes of the relations that mount, to which every sincere Christian looks between master and slave to illustrate those befor the law of his duty, He, in minutest details, tween God and His creatures. uttered all the offices of those who claim to be the followers of his Gospel, but in nothing, save the redemption of marriage from the bond of the Mosaic law, and in its consecration under a holier form, did He enjoin any innovation in the social scheme. He provided ample means for the emancipation of his creatures from the spiritual bondage; but nowhere did He proclaim the abolition of legal or domestic slavery. He drew closer the family tie-stripped the husband of much of his irresponsible authority, and raised woman up in the scale of social influence. He inculcated good works on all-each in his degree, and enjoined purity of life and respect for the fraternal authority and the conjugal bond. This, and more, He has left to us as memorials of a mission still spreading through the civilized and uncivilized world. But I ask to be pointed to the record, where He gave one word of mandate, where He uttered one syllable of reprobation regarding the relations of master and slave-relations recognized by the Government under which His gospel and its precepts were dispensed. It is, on the contrary, a singular and noteworthy fact that He universally abstained from any reproving allusion to them. He talked to the doctors and of the doctors, never loath to wrest the law to their own purposes, whether clad in the Jewish gabardine, or the New England cloak. He talked to Pharisees, and of the Phar

isees, whose self-righteousness has lost no presumption by grafting on the Puritan stock. He talked to hypocrites, and of hypocrites, whose unbroken lineage has run through time, and conquered space from the shores of Genesareth to the base of Plymouth rock. But I call for the allegation of a single instance, when, in the midst of Galilee, a conquered Jewish province, ruled by a Roman procurator, with slavery existing under the Mosaic law, and slavery existing under the heathen law, He once spoke to slaves or against slavery. I find, on the other hand, that, on His

HO. OF REPS.

up against his lawful authority. In that Divine foresight of the dissensions which the adoption of His creed by some, and its rejection by others, would introduce in the family and the State, He told His disciples He had come to bring, not peace but the sword. But, sir, I am yet to find that He ever commended that sword to the hand of the slave, with the invitation-nay, with the injunc tion-to sheath it in the master's throat. If there be a record of it, it must be in some precepts of the "anti-slavery god," and written down in some edition of the "anti-slavery bible," which northern fanatics have created for their rule of faith. To the chapters of that bible of intrusive, meddlesome, and ever dissatisfied contrivers of isms, was reserved the high privilege of correcting the laches of the Savior, and of putting, in His holy name, the torch and the knife in the hands of our slaves-pointing the former to our roofs, and the latter to our throats.

Well, sir, if the Savior did not reprove, nay, did not even mention legal or domestic slavery; if He left no instructions and no charge to His disciples touching either its abolition or its sinfulness, let us see whether those disciples did not, upon the organization of the visible Church, and its entwining with the offices of a new form of society, either from their own authority, or from that of their Master, denounce the institution. Open the book of eternal truth, and you will find that in His teachings He never went beyond the race of Abraham.

To them the promise had been made, and to them He came in its fulfillment. When, therefore, He had revealed himself in the form of humanity; when He had forced upon them the testimony of His mission, and of His power, by a concordance with prophecy, and by His working of miracles; when, in the prospect of His death, which He knew to be impending, He gave the last of His charges to His immediate followers; among them was the injunction to preach the Gospel to all the nations of the earth. In the discharge of their duty, that Gospel they did preach, and preached it as its precepts had been orally delivered to them. If, then, in His mandates He had enjoined them against slavery, or if, by virtue of some grant of power not recorded, and which might have been made to them, they had found anything contrary to His instructions and His charge, in the fact and usage of slavery, unI therefore challenge our detractors to point questionably would they have recorded the fact out to us where He condemned slavery, or de- in His Gospel of truth; unquestionably would they nounced the master who owned the slave. In have raised their voice against the continuance of what passage of His conferences with His disci- an institution of which they knew God Himself ples? In what line of His preachings to the mul- to have been the founder, and warning a slave not titudes? In what word of His mandates to His to obey a master who had neither religious nor apostles, and in what last injunction, when He legal right over him; unquestionably would they laid in their hands the destinies, not only of the have rebuked, or rather condemned the master, world, but the destinies of the hereafter also of not merely for claiming obedience, but for holdthat world? On the contrary, sir, you find Him ing his "brother man" in that condition which de recognizing all the obligations of the social scheme manded obedience. Now, sir, we find nothing of in the midst of which He lived, and moved; and the kind. As their Master had abstained in the case taught all of them, down to the payment of tribute of the centurion, so they abstained in the general to Cæsar, recurring even to His power of miracle fact of relations between master and slave. Against to provide the means of its payment. He recog- this no contrivance of malice and no refinement of nizes all the subordinations of political life, and sophistry can avail. The Savior taught for a peamong these He specially recognizes the subjec-riod of nearly three years, and of these teachings tion of the slave to the master, when, warning His followers of the duty of faith in Him, He expressly enforces His admonition by the dictum that "the disciple is not above his teacher, nor the slave (it is doulos in the original text) above his master." In His foresight of the influence of His mission on all the relations of heathen life, He tells His disciples that He has come to set the father against the son, the daughter against the mother, the friend against the friend. But I nowhere find that He told them that He had come to overthrow the standing order of things, that He had come to stir the untutored passions of the slave, to break the tie that bound him to his master, and set him *Once, for all, the fact is mentioned that, in Greek, avópárodov is a slave by captivity in war; doxos, a slave by birth; Ocpárov, a servant, a Yankee"help; "oikerns, a domestic, whether menial or servile; and lastly odwrós, one that serves for wages or pay. The word "servant," as a version of doulos, in King James's translation, is a refinement of language; for doulos means "slave" and nothing but slave, so born.

He left no record written by Himself. The task of embodying them in what we now know as the canon of the New Testament, devolved upon His ministers. As they received so must they have handed down to us. Now, sir, nowhere will you find slavery mentioned by them as an abomination and a sin. They have not so handed it down to us; they therefore did not thus receive it from the Savior's lips. But if not thus laid down, either from the oral declarations of the Savior or the written record of His words, slavery cannot, therefore, without perversion, be called an abomination and a sin. And yet we are seriously told, within the last three weeks we have heard it sanetimoniously repeated, that slavery is a damning sin against the Divine law; a hot-bed of corrup tion, tainting everything within its atmosphere; everything, even to the most sacred relations of the domestic circle. Whence, would I ask, do those kind men of the North, who are not touched by the blight or cursed by the sin of slavery, derive their peculiar contributions to the stock of mor ality? From what quarter of this Confederacy: under what state of morals, come those daily and