Green Mountain Freeman

Abstract of Mr. Sumner's Great Speech.

This great and masterly effort of Sumner which is stereotyped and publishing at the Era office, for $2.00 per 100, is so long that we can't give it at length, at present, and therefore give the following abstract and extracts—

The Senate, on Thursday, the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation bill being under discussion, the committee reported the following amendment, as an additional section:

That when the ministerial officers of the ordinary expenses in executing the laws thereof, the payment of which is not specifically provided for, the President of the United States be authorized to allow the payment thereof under special taxation of the district in which the said services have been or shall be rendered, to be paid from the appropriation for defraying the expenses of the Judiciary.

Mr. Sumner moved to add :—

Provided, that no such allowance shall be made for expenses under the act of September, 1850, known as the Fugitive Slave act, which act is hereby repealed.

Mr. Sumner said this question was no longer an abstraction; it was brought here in a practical manner by one of the committees of the Senate, beneath these words "extraordinary expenses." He would examine the question upon which, by solemn vote, the Senate had refused to hear him. He now would speak on it,—now, not as a courtesy, but as a matter of right. The graceful usage of the Senate may for a time be abandoned, but the privilege of debate, the parliamentary law, could not now be abridged. The whole subject was now open for discussion. With the blessing of God, it would now be discussed.

One of the ancient law-givers of Greece provided that any individual proposing to repeal any existing law, should do so in the public assembly, with a halter round his neck. With somewhat similar tyranny was thrown the same protection around this most obnoxious law.

He would speak with a full knowledge of his responsibility,—impressed with the horror and inhumanity of slavery,—feeling and believing that it was a local institution, and in no way national in its character, and one with which the national government has no connection. He could not allow this session to come to a close without expressing his condemnation of the cruelty, inhumanity, and unconstitutionality of the enactment. He knew that he was in a small minority, and that slavery was as sensitive as it was powerful; but he would speak freely and candidly.

All he was or may be, he freely offered to this cause. He belonged to no party. The slave of principles, he acknowledged no master in any party. His life had been early identified with the democratic idea,—not the democratic idea known under party organization,—but that idea transfigured in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and in the precepts of Christianity. He occupied a place in the Senate from no act or desire of his own. He never before held office. He was here by the free choice of his native Commonwealth. In answer to all inquirers on the subject, he said he did not desire the office.

He should speak boldly, because he spoke from conviction; warmly because he spoke from his heart. He would not speak of slaveholders, but he would assail the institution pronounced by Jefferson to be an enormity. The Conventions of both political parties had recently declared that the question of slavery had been finally settled: but this was not so. That subject was in all hearts, in all minds, and on all tongues. It pervaded all meetings, it threw its shadow over these halls: it comes to Congress asking an appropriation in its behalf; and like the daughters of the horseleech, it still cries "Give, give." No legislation could be final: no act or constitution could be final; nothing but the naked truth could be final. The idea of that settlement being final was not only pledge but absurd. It would exclude the freedom of speech and of the debate. In vain could the despotism of the Old World be denounced when its leading feature is borrowed and attempted to be enforced here. He protested against such a rule. He would not, could not abandon his right.

It was not possible to imagine a greater error than that slavery is a national institution. It was an institution which the fathers of the country refused to name in the Constitution. Both parties, in supporting slavery, became national, and all who did not support it were sectional. He argued that slavery was not in any way national. It existed, and only could exist, by virtue of positive law, and was so held by the Supreme Courts of Mississippi and Kentucky. It was not named in the constitution; the word slave does not pollute the charter of our rights. He read the debates on the constitution by Messrs. Ellsworth, Gerry and Madison, showing that they all considered slavery sectional and they were opposed to making it national. He read various authorities on his point. He referred to the circumstances attending the first inauguration of Washington in N. Y., and after describing it at length, said that at that proud moment the National Ensign nowhere covered a single slave; then was slavery sectional and freedom national. The government thus formed was anti-slavery. Washington was a slaveholder, but it would be unjust to his memory to say he was not an abolitionist. He had expressed himself in favor of some plan by which slavery might be abolished by law. Washington and John Adams, Hamilton, John Jay, and Jefferson, the companions and friends of Washington, were all abolitionists, and he quoted at length from their speeches and writings to that effect. The church at that time also united in the cause of freedom and against slavery. The Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, all united in the glorious cause of freedom. The colleges of Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth did the same. Franklin, Rush, Jefferson, and other writers of that day, all took the side of freedom. Scholars and Christians all engaged in the work—such being the feeling of the time when the Constitution was adopted. He contended it was never understood that Congress had the power to make a slave or to give any man that right of property in man. The slaveholders of the present day, numbering only 300,000, had succeeded in dictating the policy of the national government, and have written slavery on its front, and now an arrogant and unrelenting ostracism is applied, not only to all who express themselves against slavery, but to every man who is unwilling to be the menial of slavery. Could Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin the demi-gods of our history, again mingle in the affairs of earth, not one of them could receive a nomination from either party. Out of the convictions of their hearts, and the utterance of their lips against slavery, they would be condemned.

He referred to a case decided in England by Lord Mansfield, in which a negro slave was declared free, and said he looked forward to the day when Court and Congress would proudly declare that nowhere under the constitution could man hold property in man. He denied that the provision in the constitution respecting fugitives was one of the compromises of the constitution upon which the Union was established, and read from the debates in the Convention which formed the constitution to show that this was adopted without debate. It was not discussed in any State, nor in the Federalist. The act of 1793 was passed mainly with regard to the restoration of fugitives from justice. In 1850, the present act was passed. He was filled with painful feelings when he read the bill. The masterly subtlety with which it was drawn might challenge admiration, if exerted for a benevolent purpose, but in an age of sensibility and refinement, a machine of torture, however skillful, cannot be regarded without horror.

In the name of the Constitution, which it violates, of this country, which it dishonors, of humanity, which it degrades, of Christianity, which it offends, he arraigned this enactment, and now held it up to the judgment of the country. There was no attribute of God which does not unite against this act. It made no difference of color and condition. Every freeman was liable to its outrages, wrongs and pains. There is no safeguard of human freedom which it does not set at naught. It committed the most sacred rights to the unaided judgment of a petty magistrate whose fees were doubled, provided he decided against Freedom. No statutes of limitation against freedom were allowed by it. It was an usurpation by Congress, not granted by the Constitution, and an infraction of the rights secured to the States. It took away trial by jury, in a question of personal liberty, and a suit at common law.

The Congress of 1793 also passed an act to charter the Bank of the United States, which was now considered by many as constitutional. If that Congress erred in that act, could they not have erred in the fugitive act. The precedent was of no authority. He read from the biography of Story to show that, in the decision of the Supreme Court, in the case of Prigg and Pennsylvania, the right of a fugitive to trial was not touched, but was an open question. He read also from a Veto Message of Jackson that Congress and the President were not to be ruled by opinions of Judges of that Court in their legislative function. He examined the question of the power of Congress over this subject, and read again from the proceedings of the Convention to show that the framers of the Constitution intended to give Congress no such power. Had they so intended they would have explicitly given Congress power to establish a uniform rule for the restoration of fugitives from labor throughout the Union; but no person in the Convention, not one of the reckless partisans of slavery, was so audacious as to make this proposition. Had it been made it would have been denied. The manner in which the provision was adopted, the indifference with which its adoption was followed, showed that it was not regarded as a source of national power.

It was a peculiar duty of the States to protect the liberty of their citizens. This act denied to the States this power. In this fatal overthrow of State rights was a lesson which might return to plague the teacher, compelling the National Government to stretch its Briarean arms into the Free States for the sake of slavery. It was shown how it may stretch these same great arms into the Slave States for the sake of freedom.—He then examined in great detail the right of trial by jury, in all cases involving the personal liberty or right of property. The party was entitled to a trial by jury which this act denied. He quoted largely from many English authors on the subject. He ran a parallel between the circumstances attending the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, and the opposition to its enforcement in Colonies, and the passage of this act, and the hostility of the people to it. The Stamp Act was welcomed in the Colonies by the Tories of that day, precisely as this Slave Act has been welcomed by large and imperious majorities of this present day. The judges of that day charged grand juries to notice all resistance to it and likewise the marshals—The custom house officers called in the soldiers to aid in its execution. That act was resisted by the people in a powerful phalanx, and they triumphed. Earth, fire, and water, can be subdued, but they can never be. In one year after the Stamp Act was repealed, it was consigned to the charnel house of history, with the unclean things of the past. It now rots; thither the Slave Act is destined to follow.

The stamp act was an infringement only of civil liberty—it touched not the person. As freedom is more than property; as man is above the dollar he earns, as heaven is above the earth; so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher than those assailed by the British Parliament; and in the same degree will history condemn the slave act more than the stamp act.

He enlarged upon the objection to the law, that it lacked that essential support in the public conscience of the States where it is to be enforced, which is the life of all law, and without which any law must become a dead letter; and he held that this duty of consulting the feelings of the people was recognized by Washington, who, in writing in 1796 to get a slave returned, said he did not desire any measures resorted to which would result in a mob, or cause uneasiness in the minds of the people. That fugitive was never returned, but lived until within a few years past.

It was to be regretted that Washington desired her capture. From this act of Washington, weighed by the policy of the world he appealed to the higher court of his slaves. This law, wherever it was attempted to be enforced, had produced popular disturbance, and he referred to the several mobs and outrages following the enforcement of the law. Commercial interests had twice prevented efforts in behalf of the abolition of slavery. It delayed the suppression of the slave trade of the United States. It interfered now in behalf of this act. That interest lends its aid to the slave hunter, as to that which could not be touched without detriment; so it would appear that all who lent themselves to execute this act, the spirit of it entered their hearts as the devil entered the swine. The hearts of the people were right on the subject. Poetry and literature came to aid the cause, the cause of freedom. The feelings of woman were enlisted; and over 100,000 copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin had been sold already. He cited this as the testimony of the people against the principle of that law. He cited the case of Vincent De Paul, who was a fugitive slave. The efforts of these slaves to escape to freedom showed that they were composed of high and noble aspirations, and often displayed a courage and endurance equal to that of romance. He considered the slave act as opposed by divine law, and he would prefer to be the humblest restored fugitive than to aid in its enforcement. He could not obey any law which his conscience told him was unconstitutional, and opposed to divine law. He was for the immediate repeal of the law.