Facts and arguments against the election of General Cass, respectfully addressed to the Whigs and Democrats of all the free states

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Introduction

In offering the following remarks against the extension of slavery over the present or future territories of the United States, and over the new States which may rise in them, as reasons against the election of General Cass, or General Taylor, to the Presidency, I wish, in the commencement, to preclude all misconception of my motives or design. I am not an abolitionist. Preferring no charges against any sect, or party, denominated abolitionists, suggesting no doubts of their honesty or philanthropy, and regarding as " the idle wind," the prejudices and animosities which their name excites among the ignorant, or the interested, I doubt the expediency, or even practicability, of their remedy for slavery, immediate and unconditional emancipation. And I thoroughly disapprove every attempt, design, or wish, to dissolve the Federal Union. United by community of origin, language, jurisprudence, political institutions, and by that noblest of all human compacts, though still imperfect, the Federal Constitution, the people of the Free and Slave States are brethren and kindred. Hence, instead of being strangers, far less enemies, they should be united by community of interest and feeling. The North and South nobly sustained each other in the dark days of the Revolution. May they continue to sustain each other in Freedom and Fraternity, united by the ties of common

destiny,

" Till suns shall rise and set no more."

But this Union cannot be maintained, if perverted to the extension and perpetuation of wrong. Nor can it be maintained, if perverted by cne secijon of the Confederacy, to an instrument of unjust and humiliating domination over the other. About the wrong of slavery in the abstract, I will waste no argument ; it being a subject on which, in this age of light, the enlightened and disinterested cannot disagree. I urge nothing against the rights over slavery retained by the Old Thirteen States, and by Kentucky and Texas ; rights which, however condemned by reason and Revelation, and by all human experience, and however improperly extorted by some of those States, and uni\ isely yielded by the rest, are securely anchored by the Federal Constitution. But because unhallowed cupidity has covered too much by Constitutional compromises, and because timidity or temporary interests have permitted their extension far beyond their original ground, the South must not be permitted to extend them indefinitely, and thus make the Union an instrument of evil. A government established for the protection of human rights, must not be perverted to hewing them down. Slavery, which never should have been carried beyond the original Thirteen States, and even there should have been loaded with burdens insuring its speedy extinction, must not be made by the South, the weakest portion of the Confederacy, the chief purpose of the Federal Government, a great National object of perpetuation and extension. For the Free States, union on such terms would be criminal. Nor must the South be permitted to dictate all the National policy, to control the National Government, to make all the National interests subservient to its own, and to regard the North, Middle, and West, a great majority of the Confederacy, as united with it for the sole purpose of executing its decrees. To the Free States, union on such terms would be degrading. In thus interfering with Presidential elections, I am no man's man; no man's champion, no man's assailant; have no personal end to promote, no friendships or animosities to gratify. .My sole object is the exclusion of slavery from another square mile of territory. In pursuit of this object, I appeal to all men of the Free States, " Whigs," "Democrats," "Abolitionists," all, without partisan distinction; and I make the appeal as neither " Whig," " Democrat," " Barn, burner," nor " Hunker," but solely as an American citizen, free from local or partisan prejudices, and seeking the permanent honor and prosperity of our Country, and ouk whole Country.

Russell .Tarvis.

JVew York, June 13, 184S.

Chapter I

A GREAT battle must soon be fought, both at the polls, and in the halls of the Federal Legislature, between the slaveholders and those who would prevent the extension of slavery. The parties are arming for the contest, and the slaveholders, to achieve success, are deluging the country with false doctrines. The far seeing believers in human progress may feel secure in the ultimate triumph of right, because such is the decree of Providence. But will this absolve them from any proper efforts to accelerate that triumph ? Through their neglect, wrong may prevail for ages to come, as it has, through the neglect of their predecessors, prevailed for ages past ; and though right will surely come at last, yet for all the intermediate wrong which they might have prevented, and for all the suflering of its victims, they are responsible, at least to impartial posterity. This is the day of false docti'ines against human rights ; the day when opinions, not only in excuse, but in justification of slavery, are boldly avowed by those who, in the days of tlieir Revolutionary Fathers, would have blushed under the bare suspicion. Those who once condemned slavery as a deplorable evil, and lamented their inability to emancipate their country from its blighting influences, now boldl}^ defend it — in Congress, in the legislatures, and the press of the Slave States, and through politicians and aspirants in the Free States, as a salutary institution, a natural condition, a Divine ordinance, sanctioned by Revelation !

And, as if this were not enough, they boldly insult the common sense of mankind, by proclaiming that, it is the best of all institutions for maintaining/rec government in purity and efficiency. Yes! the self-styled professors of that Democratic Republicanism which is founded upon the natural equality of rights, and iias the warrant of Revelation in the command to all to do as they would be done by, boldly urge their daily violation of these rights, of^ this injunction, as the corner stone of a government which claims such rights for its foundation. And while thus boldly preaching these doctrines, they denounce all attempts to refute them as a violation of their constitutional rights, as an invasion of their domestic hearths, as fraught with insurrection, massacre to themselves, and dissolution to this glorious Confederacy. Did the poison of false doctrines infect slaveholders only, it might still find an antidote in the purer principles of the Free States. But the poison is doing its deadly work, in reconciling even the Free States to the guilt of slavery. Northern politicians, born and trained at firesides where slavery was ever regarded as a criminal violation of natural rights, a severe moral and political evil, gravely tell their constituents that it is necessary to the South ; that the country can be afflicted by greater evils than slavery; that dissolution of the Union, an evil still more formidable, will inevitably follow any attempt of the Free States to arrest its progress. When the principles of a nation are falling before corrupting influences ; when, through the seductions of interest, through dread of their responsibilities, a people renounce the pure sentiments, the high aspirations which once impelled and guided them, their institutions, however excellent, are of short duration. Freedom, God's gift to man as the instrument of developing his noblest attributes, of discharging his highest duties, cannot animate corrupt hearts, or guide perverted minds. It has no fellowship with selfishness; no congeniality with injustice. If the first of poets uttered eternal truth in saying that,

" Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away," —

so is eternal truth involved in the declaration, that, whoever robs another of his freedom, his social individuality, throws away more than half of his own worth. If without moral degradation, man cannot be enslaved, neither, without such degradation, can he be an enslaver. He cannot plunder, and be just. He cannot rob, and do as he would be done by. He cannot close his eyes to the injustice, the robbery, without moral perversion. Then, as this contest between right and might is speedily coming, and as right, though sure of ultimate triumph, may be temporarily overpowered, the duty of all who would contend for riglit, is to consider this danger of temporary defeat, and to spare no just efforts for an immediate, as well as a permanent victory. If the Free States are victors, they will arrest the progress, and prepare for the extinction of a baleful institution, which has long been in conflict with their interests and their rights ; and the Slave States will finally reach the only safe ground, freedom, founded on universal equality of rights. If the Slave States prevail, their victory w ill endure for ages ; they will blast a large portion of this continent witii the plague of slavery ; use it for ruling the Free States with a rod of iron ; prepare for the extinction of slavery in blood, and for the severance of the Union into hostile fragments, desolating each otlier with civil war. The Slave States will contend for the extension of slavery over new territory, as their only, yet sure instrument of supremacy in the Federal Government; and the Free States, if true to themselves, to the country, to posterity, to human rights, will oppose this extension, ■AS th(ir only means of restraining a power which has been exerciscil against tiiem with continually augmenting severity, and which has never yet hesitated in sacrificing to its own objects, present or prospective, their interests or their rights.

The following are some of the dcniamls preferred by the slaveholders.

First. Whenever a Free State is admitted to the Union, a Slave State must bo admitted to balance it.

Secondly. New States may enter the Confederacy without any conditions imposed by the Federal Government, excepting a republican Constitution ; or, in other words. Congress have no power to interdict slavery, as a condition of such admission.

Thirdhj. The citizen has no right of petition to Congress upon the subject of slavery.

Foitrtlih/. The Federal Government is bound to interpose with foreign governnients, fl)r the surrender of fugitive slaves.

Fifthhj. Congress cannot prohibit slaveholders from establishing slavery in the Territories.

Sixthly. The people of new territories cannot proiiibit slaveholders from establishing slavery among them.

I find no foundation for either of these demands, in the Federal Constitution, or the Common Law, or the Laws of Nations; and in considering the important questions involved in this subject, I must refer to the intentions concerning slavery, not only of the Convention which devised the Federal Constitution, and of the States which adopted it, but of the wise and patriotic generation which achieved the Revolution, from their first step to their last, for the rescue of their liberties. If we find, in every step of their progress, from the commencement to the consummation of that glorious enterprise, declarations of rights, and assertions of principles, entirely inconsistent with slavery, and which, practically applied in social and political relations, would abolish it completely and irrevocably, we must infer that, having achieved their political emancipation, they entered upon their peaceful duties of seifgovernment with no newly born, suddenly imbibed indulgence for domestic bondage. And if we find them, from their acknowledgment as a nation by the British government in 1783, to their departure from tiie Federal Convention in 1787, continually avowing principles and enacting laws against slavery, we must infer that, in their great work, perhaps their greatest, the Federal Constitution, they intended to leave no insidious constructions, no covert implications, against human rights. Our Revolutionary Fathers began their great struggle as British subjects; as inheritors of all the natural and conventional rights of Englishmen ; the rights which their ancestors possessed and brought with them on first landing upon American soil ; the rights of life, liberty, property, opinion, and speech, transmitted through that Saxon Common Law, enlarged by the Norman Conquest, confirmed by the Great Charter and its various renewals, which had come down, continually improving, to their ancestors at the commencement of the seventeenth century, a guarantee for individual freedom, a barrier, a bulwark against social bondage.

Slavery, in the sense in which we apply the term to the African race, had long ceased to exist in England, when the English colonists landed at Jamestown and Plymouth. And we must remember that these settlements were made in the reign of James I., when the principles and guarantees of political and social liberty were already well established in England ; and that, from this period, the English at home were involved in continual struggles for their rights, always terminating in their favor. The interval between the landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, a period of one hundred and fifty-six years, had witnessed the overthrow of Charles I., the republican government of Cromwell, the restoration of Charles II. under new and enlarged guarantees for popular rights, the abolition of the remaining feudal tenures, the enactment of the present law of Habeas Corpus, the expulsion of James II. for his designs against popular rights, the Bill of Rights at the accession of William III., and the triumph of personal liberty in Wilkes under George III. And in all these popular triumphs did the colonists participate, every new guarantee for personal rights acquired at home, being their property as Englishmen. Nor must I overlook the various charters granted to the colonists at different periods, all recognising them as English subjects of the English crown, and consequently as invested with all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. Then, upon this foundation, the rights and privileges of Englishmen, did the people of the Old Thirteen Colonies stand at the commencement of the Revolution ; from this point did they start in that great enterprise. If then, domestic slavery were entirely inconsistent with the rights and privileges of Englishmen, we must infer that, in appealing to the Lord

God of battles in defence of these rights and privileges, they never could have contemplated its perpetuation or extension.

A brief glance at the important proceedings of that period, will enable us to settle this question. At various periods in 1774, before the first meeting of the Continental Congress, the people of Prince George, Culpepper, Nansemond, Surrey, Fairfax, Hanover, and Princess Anne counties, in Virginia, in meetings in their respective counties, declared that the importation of negro slaves and convict servants prevented the settlement of the Colony by freemen and useful manufacturers, and that they would thereafter import no more of such slaves or servants. On August 1st, 1774, the people of all Virginia assembled by delegates in Convention at Williamsburgh, and resolved that they would not, after November 1st following, import any slaves from Africa, the West Indies, or elsewhere, or purchase any imported by others. Jefferson, a delegate to this Convention, but prevented by sickness from attending it, sent to it a declaration of his opinions concerning slavery, of which the following is an extract :

" The Abolition of slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonics, wiiere it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further imi>ortations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by im}x>sing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative ; he thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few African corsairs, to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rightsof human nature, deeply wounded by this inflimous practice."

On August 27, 1774, the people of North Carolina, assembled by delegates in convention at Newburn, adopted the following resolution : " We will not import any slave or slaves, or purchase any slave or slaves imported into this province by others, from any part of tlie world, after the last day of November next."

But in June, 1774, before the meeting of these conventions, three months before the first meeting of the continental Congress, and a few weeks after the battle of Lexington, the Legislature of Rhcxle Island,- of ever brave, ever resolute, ever gallant, ever unquailing little Rhode Island, passLul an act prohibiting the slave trade. As all such acts of the Colonies had been invariably rejected by the British crown, the boldness of this little Colony iti thus braving British vengeance, within a few weeks after the battle of Lexington, and before the other Colonies had organized any general plan of resistance, is worthy of all commendation. I gladly cite the preamble of this act, for the justice of its sentiments, and for the severity of its rebuke lo those who trample upon national rights. It is the following :

" W/icrcas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own riglits and liberties, among which that of personal freedom n)ust be considered the greatest, and as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty tlu-mselvcs, should be willing lo extend personal liberty to others, tJiereforc, c^c."

Then follow the prohibitory provisions against the slave trade.

On September '), 1774, tin* Continental C^ingress asseml)led, all the old States being represented excepting Georgia, which sent delegates to it in the folK)wing year. On October '20. 1774, this Congress adopted " Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," saying : " We, for ourselves, and the inhabitants of the several colonies whom we represent, firmly agree and associate under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of our country, as follows :

"Article 2d. We will neither import nor purchase any slaves imported after the first day of December next, after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and we will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."

On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress presented to the world a Declaration of Rights on taking up arms ; a declaration beginning with a sentence to which I would call particular attention, as it contains the fundamental principle on which slavery must stand or fall. It is the following :

" If it were possible for men who exercise their reason to believe that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over othei's, marked out by His Infinite Goodness and Wisdom as the objects of a legal dominion, never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain, some evidence that this dreadful authority over them had been granted to that body."

Here is a declaration in explicit terms, by the Continental Congress of 1775, representing States of which every one then held slaves, against the right, moral or political, of one portion of the human race to hold absolute property in another. It declares such unlimited dominion inconsistent with humanity, loith reason, with reverence for the Creator. I want nothing more, for human language can express no more, as an unlimited condemnation of slavery.

But the Continental Congress did not confine themselves to these declarations against slavery. On April 6, 1776, they prohibited the importation of slaves into any part of the confederacy. Three months after the date of this prohibition came tlie Declaration of Independence, proclaiming as self-evident truths, that, '■^ all men are created equal," are " endowed by nature with inalienable rights," and that among these inalienable rights are " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

We must remember that the Continental Congress which uttered this great declaration, had already proclaimed their rights as Englishmen ; rights which they described as transmitted from their ancestors ; and that, in construing these rights, we must refer to the acknowledged, well established rights of Englishmen at that period ; and to the well known fact, that, slavery was not then recognised by the laws of England, upon English soil. They were under no political necessity for making this declaration of fundamental principles ; for a declaration of their political rights, of their right to representation in the British Parliament, to establish local legislatures, to nationality, would have been amply sufficient for their purpose. The right of rebellion, the right of any community to throw off the political yoke of any other community, had been fully recognised by the Laws of Nations, as understood and practised by all the Christian nations of Europe, and had been exemplified by Switzerland against the German Empire in 1308, by Sweden against Denmark in 1520, by Holland against Spain in 1580, and by Portugal against Spain in 1640. The Continental Congress was composed of men most distinguished, in each of the Colonies, for talent, experience in public business, social and political influence. Among tliem were the most eminent lawyers and statesmen of their time, meeting in that assembly with all the knowledge of "constitutional and international law, acquired during the controversies of the ten preceding years between the British Government and the Colonies, and the controversies and wars between the British and French Governments about American territory, which began in 1749, and ended a tew years only before the Declaration of Independence.

As the war of 1756 was a contest of intellect as well as of force, of argument as well as of arm.s, of principles, precedents, and logic, as well as of battles and sieges, in all of which the Colonies were actively and conspicuously engaged, we cannot suppose that the Adamses, the Morrises, the Sliermans, the Livingstons, the Wolcotts, the Hopkinsons, the Dickinsons, the McLeans, the Lees, the Pendletons, the Wythes, the Rulledges, the Middletons, the most eminent lawyers and politicians of their day, would come out of this contest without careful investigation of the various questions which it involved, of national right, of international law. We must also remember that the disputes between the British government and the Colonies about their respective powers and rights, began in 17G4, twelve years before the Declaration of Independence ; disputes in which the Colonies were driven, in self defence, to every position alTurded by the British constitution, and finally to the original, natural, congenital right of self government. Can we suppose that such an assembly, composed of men thus thoroughly drilled in political law, under institutions fully recognising the freedom of speecli and the press, with faculties stimulated and enlightened by long controversies in which they had personally borne a conspicuous part, were ignorant of the ground which they occupied ? That such an assembly, thus coming before the civilized world in the name of a whole people, and solemnly appealing, in defence of their rights, to the common sense and justice of mankind, and to the Supreme Justice of Heaven, had not weighed well their words and knew not the force of their declarations ?

They fully comprehended every principle which they proclaimed, and were prepared to show, in their justification, every argument supplied by reason, Revelation, precedent, historical record. And thus prepared, they would have amply satisfied the civilized nations to which they appealed, by reference merely to their rights as British subjects, and to the examples of successful and rightful rebellion in Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, and Portugal. They needed nothing more, for a full justification of their separation from the nation to which they had hitherto acknowledged allegiance, than a reference to their political rights, based on the merely conventional ftumlation of iMiglish Charters, English laws, and Swiss, Swedish, Dutch. Portuguese, and other precedents. All that tliey needed was a plain statement, based on foundations exclusively human, their conventional rights as British subjects, and their conventional right under the common Law of European nations, to establish a distinct nationality in defence of those rights. They were under no necessity of referring to first princip/cs, older than the government whence they derived tlieir coiiventional rights, older than any human government. Why then should they encumber their solemn declaration with references entirely cxtrani>ous ? With reference to principles older than their conventional rights .' Why should they go back to principles emanating from God, before an English foot ever touched this continent ? Aye ! Before a Saxon or a Norman foot ever touched the soil of England ?

Because they intended to record their solemn protest against all tyrannies, all usurpations, all violations of rights. Because, in appealing to God and man for the justice of their cause, they intended to intrench themselves behind those principles which were designed, before the foundations of the world, for the government of its rational and accountable inhabitants. Because they intended to assert their rights, not only us Englishmen, but as men ; not only as oppressed colonists, but as rational and accountable subjects of the Lord God Omnipotent, the Author of all legitimate authority ! They appealed lothat Ruler against a// tyrannies, and in defence of national, original, congenital, inalienable rights, and therefore asserted that all men were equal! ! And going back one year, to the declaration of the same Congress, on taking up arms against the British nation in defence of their rights as Englishmen, why, we may ask, did they not confine themselves to a statement of such rights, as in their first declaration upon establishing their colonial union, on October 20, 1774 ? In that first declaration they merely asserted their rights as Englishmen, without uttering a word about their rights as men. Aiid as they had not, in making their second declaration, on July 6, 177.5, resolved on a separate nationality, but had merely resorted to arms in defence of their rights as an in'tegral part of the British nation, they required nothing more, to satisfy the world about the justice of their cause, than a reference to such rights only. But they go to the full length, in a single sentence, of declaring that slavery, in all forms, was condemned by reason, and forbidden by the Divine Governnient !

But as slavery then existed in every one of the thirteen colonies, why did not the Continental Congress expressly denounce it in the Declaration of Independence ? Why did they leave it as a standing and reproachful commentary upon all these declarations, proclaiming that, while they asserted the great principles of universal emancipation, they held thousands of their fellow creatures in the most degrading bondage ? They found slavery among themselves, imposed by the mother country, against their earnest, incessant remonstrances. Their whole colonial history proved that it had been introduced among them, not with their consent, but in spite of their opposition ; that all their appeals to the British government against it had been contemned ; that all their colonial laws to prevent the introduction of slaves, and to promote emancipation among those already introduced, had been invariably rejected by the British crown. The curse being fastened upon them, they could not suddenly throw it ofi". In Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, it was thoroughly interwoven with the social constitution, and could not be suddenly torn up by the roots. As domestic slavery was then extinct in all Christian Europe excepting Russia, and manorial slavery in all excepting Russia, Poland, Polish Prussia, and some States of the Austrian Empire, as both had been abolished for centuries in France, the Low Countries, Italy, most of Germany, and had scarcely ever existed in Spain and Portugal, the Continental Congress, in appealing to civilized nations for the justice of their cause, could not allude to slavery as existing among themselves for a single day with their consent, without incurring the reproaches of all the nations to whom they thus appealed.

They anticipated from all such nations the significant inquiry, " Why, in appealing to the world and the Creator in defence of the natural rights of mankind, do you not abolish domestic slavery, in the very moment, and by the very act, bv wliich you burst the political bonds which bind you to Britain ? In proclaiming yourselves free, why do you not grant the boon to your own slaves ? Can you expect our sympathies, when you speak for liberty in the attitude of slaveholders, holding the sword in one hand, and the chain in the other ? They anticipated these commentaries upon their appeals to first principles, and knew that general, immediate emancipation, however due to abstract justice, was impracticable upon any otlier condition than intolerable evils to bond and free, and therefore forbidden by humanity. Hence their only resort was avoiding all allusion to the curs ■, regarding it as a monster of wliose presence they were painfully conscious, but with which they would not then deal according to its deserts. They therefore confined themselves to its implied condemnation ; a condemnation involving an implied promise to extirpate it eventually, by a declaration of those principles with which it is thoroughly inconsistent, and before which it must eventually fall. Hence they proclaimed that property in man, unlimited dominion of one man over another, was inconsistent with the reason, and with the design of the Creator in the moral government of his creatures; that, all men were created equal, and endowed by nature witli inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It was all that tliey could do, and they did it all. And they had the highest authority for this entire condemnation of an evil, by stating the general principle involving its removal, without specific allusion to its details. In the very midst of domestic slavery, of political despotism, of a social and political constitution whose enormities no tongue can adequately describe, whose head, guide, inspiring and ruling spirit could scarcely find a characterizing epithet in any modern language, in the very midst of Roman dominion under the auspices of Tiberius, came One to preach and to teach condemnation of all tyrannies. He denounced not political tyranny by name, uttered naught against Roman laws or Roman governors, declared not that property in man was unlawful, or that masters must emancipate their slaves. But He proclaimed two principles which involve all these condemnations, and before which, practically applied to the details of society, political or social, all tyrannies must vanish. He said that God teas no respecter of persons ; in other words, that, " all men were created equal ;" and that all men must do as they tcould be done by ; in other words, that, they must respect the natural, inalienable rights of each other to "lite, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Then as He denounced all tyrannies without naming them, by proclaiming the two fundamental, universal, immutable principles which condenmed them, so the Continental Congress, prevented by the irresistible pressure of surrounding circumstances, from condemning domestic slavery by name, confined themselves to proclaiming the fundamental, universal, immutable principles that involve its condemnation and prohibition.