The question before Congress, a consideration of the debates and final action by Congress upon various phases of the race question in the United States

Contents

CHAPTER I. — Attitude of Leading Statesmen on Slavery Question — Slavery in Constitution to Satisfy South Carolina and Georgia — Slave Trade Stimulated 17

CHAPTER II. — Organization of the Territory of Arkansas and the Attempt to Exclude Slavery — The Missouri Struggle — Secession Threatened — Gen. Talmage's Defiance 24

CHAPTER III. — President Monroe and His Cabinet on Missouri Compromise — Slaves as Personal Property — Indians Succor Escaping Slaves — The Exiles of Florida — Battle of Blout's Fort — First Seminole War — Ejectment of Indians from Georgia — Second Seminole 'War— Attack Upon Major Dade., 32

Foreword

It is difficult for one to write an unbiased history of the events in which he himself took part. And the cold, unvarnished truth, whether told by the historian or otherwise, is seldom popular. Most popular histories, therefore, are written, not to record the truth as it is found, but rather to boost or to disparage the memory of some party or cause. Being desirous of learning the truth concerning the events of which this volume treats, and finding that the historians differed widely among themselves in many particular cases, the author was led to examine the original records of Congress page by page. A few of the notes taken in connection with this reading have been put in the shape of the following pages and offered as a contribution to the literature on this particular subject to any who may be interested in knowing the whole truth as we found it. "Nothing to extenuate, and set down naught in malice."

G. W. M.

|7|

The world has always had a so-called race question, which is but another name for the struggle on the part of one mass, class or individual for mastery over another, or the attempt to adjust relations to their mutual advantage while striving to achieve group ideals. The history of the world is but the story of this struggle which is hoary with age, yet always new, because the old oppressor of to-day becomes the latest victim of to-morrow. Perhaps it is putting it a little strongly to speak of oppressor and oppressed; it might be fairer to say that the never-ending battle is between those in power and those seeking to dislodge them ; and, after all, the man •on top occupies the more precarious position for the reason that his sleepless antagonist beneath will surely get the upper hand some day, as there is no way for him to move but upward ; and move he must or be ground to pieces and disappear, which is itself movement. All the great nations have what we call a race problem due to the presence of so-called foreign elements in their midst. England has its Irishmen; France, its Jews ; Germany, its many branches of broken races; Russia, its Poles and Jews. The statute books are filled with laws expressive of the aims of one element to maintain first place and of another to resist encroachments upon what it regards as its rights. Each side has its champions in legislative halls or upon the hustings and the record of their combats constitutes the history of the times. For, however crude the age or however barbarous and strong the master class, the oppressed have never been without a champion. Slavery is universally regarded as the lowest position a man can occupy in human society. Three hundred years ago, this institution in the eyes of many in possession of power, did not seem monstrous nor even altogether unkind.

The desire to live is common and overwhelming. Ease and comfort seem to hold out the alluring promise of long life, and philosophical or religious sentiment has never been sufficiently universal or strong enough to prevent men from seeking the good things of life at any cost. Those who confederate in this search can see no wrong in what they may do to others provided the desired end is accomplished. The pious New Englanders were wont to thank God that they were able to save some "Negro and Indian heathens from the devyl by making slaves of them." That these were more or less genuine efforts at benevolent assimilation in the first instance, in view of the privileges and immunities extended to those who were baptized, may be admitted. Nevertheless, as we now look back, we regard these notions as crude and entirely out of harmony with our modern views of Christianity. But they were a Bible-reading people — these New Englanders — and doubtless believed that they had cornered the very heathen which the Bible speaks of as being "given as their possession." With such texts upon their lips in connection with the scarcity of labor, their relish for benevolent assimilation was kept sharp. The Indians absolutely refused to enter into the scheme and took to the woods ; and the baptized Negro was far from being happy. This, however, made but little difference, as it was regarded as mere heathen ingratitude. Then again, these masters themselves had been accustomed to tyranny. Many of them were only now fleeing from a condition in Europe bordering on slavery. They had been used to seeing the poor and weak abused by the powerful. With scant supplies, they had just pitched their tent in this trackless forest. Force and strength of arms were the only capital that had any real value. Under such conditions the social pet is the giant who is able to defend his hut against all comers. The ethics of the school-man become ridiculous.

The Puritan panting for religious liberty, the pioneer thirsting for political freedom, the adventurer in search of gold, were all affected by the hard conditions by which they found themselves surrounded — conditions that made help in the shape of stout laborers a necessity. When the Huguenot arrived, boiling over with religious fervor, and the passengers from the Mayflower dropped on their knees to return thanks to God for having enabled them to reach the land where they might give full expression to their ideal life of piety and devotion, they little thought that in Old New England Negro babies would be so eagerly sought for as slaves that they would be sold by the pound. The political adventurer, too, saw many of his dreams of greatness fade as he found himself practically confined to territory within the range of his rifle notwithstanding the number of acres described as his in the king's Letters Patent. The vast expanse of unopen country and forests filled with hostile Indians and the utter lack of facilities for inter-colonial communication, tended to define and limit the bounds of the several settlements almost as completely as though they were Continents separated by wastes of water. Neither common blood nor identity of interests could accomplish the destruction of these barriers before localism had secured a long start on confederation, to say nothing of nationalization. Each settlement had its own regulations, and troubles, too, without the least reference to the other. So it happened that the Puritans of New England, the Cavaliers of Virginia and the Dutch of New York, had but slight connections with each other. All began to develop under a sort of look-out-for-yourself policy ; all anxiously purchased tramps, expelled from England, and exiled felons for terms varying from four to seven years, under such arrangements as could be made with the skippers. They even bought victims kidnapped from European ports, for kidnappers had been getting white men long before Negroes had been thought of in this connection. 1

It is one of the most curious paradoxes of history that human slavery of the meanest and most loathsome type should have developed at a time when there was nothing discussed so much as the Bible, nothing professed more blatantly than Christianity and theologians had a monopoly on the learning

1. Thwait's Epochs in Amer. Hist., page 74. Salmon's Domestic Service, page 22.

of the age. Europe had just begun to realize that her people were enslaved by a Church whose priests were enslaved by their own bigotry while the whole population was enmeshed in the embraces of a terrifying religious superstition that terrified all who embraced it. There was a seething in the religious world. Men began to make laws to restrain the rapacity of the Church and were hesitating about striking at the State which they found involved. These troubles were beginning to be acute, especially in England, where kings were destined to be dethroned on account of it and one at least was to lose his head. This strife impoverished many people who not only sought peace and safety in flight to America but here also hoped to recuperate their broken fortunes. The English rulers were glad enough to get rid of many of these agitators who were clamoring not only for religious liberty but for the equally if not more important rights of civil liberty, by granting them land in America. But after all, land is of but little use without labor and these broken English gentlemen had never worked with their own hands and the number of stragglers whom they, with the assistance of skippers, could kidnap about the docks of London, was quite inadequate. The mother country naturally encouraged these adventurers in every manner calculated to make them come here and to remain, and if these conditions caused the stealing of straggling Englishmen to be condoned, surely the members of an alien race could expect little sympathy and no help against the ravishers. Everybody could take all the men he could catch and hold them as long as he could.

The common dangers of the American colonists naturally caused them to make their cause common. The planters were compelled to combine not only to hold their slaves and indentured servants, the euphemism applied to their white slaves, but more especially to protect themselves against the ugly tomahawks of the Indians. And while these colonists soon organized and settled themselves in communities, they brought with them from abroad all their religious prejudices and racial antipathies. Here was a settlement of Huguenots, there one of Dutch, and still another dominated by Quakers as about old Philadelphia, while Cavaliers held forth further south. These communities developed and finally divided the territory among themselves and took the name of states. They built schools and churches to suit themselves likewise exploited their slaves and burnt their witches. Although commonly practiced over all the country, slavery in its infancy was recognized as a strictly local institution, and its regulation, propagation or abolition was altogether under the control of the local community. Thus it happened that many states just after the Revolution abolished slavery within their borders. 2

The reaction from the struggle for independence and the manly part the Negroes had taken in the war as soldiers and fellow-workers with the other patriots, naturally attracted attention to their social and political status. All the leading men of the nation were, at that time or soon before, anti-slavery men and slave holding was never so unpopular in this country. Jefferson's opposition to slavery was well-known.* He both wrote and spoke against it and no man of his time did so much as he did to check its progress. Madison and Henry also opposed the institution. 4 But this opposition did not go so far as to demand immediate and unconditional emancipation, for the system had already taken too strong a hold under the fostering influence of England to permit men like the above to anticipate Garrison.

The expatriation of the freed colored people was one of the cardinal principles of the early emancipationists ; indeed the American Colonization Society was but the crystalization of this idea into a working organization. The great moral force

2. Massachusetts adopted a Constitution which the Supreme Court of the State declared incompatible with slavery, in 1780, March 2; Connecticut passed her Emancipation Act March 1, 1784; Rhode Island about the same year; New Hampshire in 1792; Vermont, 1793; New York, 1799; New Jersey, 1804. "The condition of Negroes in this Union is regulated by the municipal laws of the separate states; the Government of the United States can neither guarantee their liberty in a state where they would be recognized only as slaves nor control them where they would be recognized as free." — Extract from Instructions of John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, to GaHatin and Rush, Plenipotentiaries to England, November 2, 1818. Annals Fifteenth Congress. Appendix, page 1577.

3. Giddings' Hist. Rebellion, p. 11.

4. Jefferson's Works, Vol. 1, pp. 23, 24, 135. Elliott's Debates, iii, p. 455, etc. Livermore's Essays — Attitude of the Founders, etc., ch. 1.

that constantly sustained the anti-slavery agitation, however, emanated from the religious sect known as Quakers or Friends. Year after year they discussed the institution and bitterly arraigned its supporters. The first anti-slavery society in the United States was founded in Philadelphia in 1775, with Dr. Benjamin Franklin as President. 5 Dr. Franklin was succeeded by Dr. Benjamin Rush. Other societies were formed as follows : New York, 1785, with John Jay as President; Delaware, 1788; Maryland, 1789; Rhode Island and Connecticut, 1790; Virginia, 1791 ; New Jersey, 1792. All of these societies were represented in a general convention held at Philadelphia in 1784, from which date general conventions of the kind were kept up, somewhat indifferently at times to be sure, until about the time of the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. 6 In May, 1776, the whole Quaker sect or Church adopted a resolution withdrawing fellowship from any of their number who refused to discountenance slavery after that date. As a consequence of this move, a large number of slaves in Virginia, North Carolina and other southern states was emancipated. Many of these, however, were re-enslaved by the southern planters before they could effect their escape from these parts. It is recorded that in three counties of North Carolina alone, one hundred and thirty-seven of such persons were sold into slavery again by the sheriff in a single day. 7

When this state of affairs was brought to the attention of Congress, a bill was promptly reported "For the Protection of Free Negroes," etc., but it was never acted upon. 8 Indeed it was seriously claimed in North Carolina that no person had the right to emancipate his slaves and this contention was maintained until the Supreme Court of the State decided that such a right did exist 9 whereupon the legislature of the state passed a law authorizing any one to sell free Negroes into

5. Nearly one hundred years before this time the Quakers of Philadelphia had begun to agitate the slavery question. Vide Pennypacker's "Early Dutch Settlers."

6. Life of Garrison, by His Children, Vol. 1, p. 90.

7. Giddings' Hist., etc., p. 23.

8. Cf. Giddings, p. 22.

9. Vide Stroud's Slave Laws.

slavery. And it was on the petition of the slave holders of North Carolina that Congress, in 1802, passed an exclusion act against the Negroes of Hayti. At this early period there was little anti-slavery literature of a permanent nature published in this country, unless the memorials and petitions of the Quakers and the anti-slavery societies be called permanent. 10 These petitions and memorials which were constantly poured into Congress soon began to be reflected in essays at legislation either to tighten or loosen the chains of the slave. In every slave-holding community, and this included about the whole country, there were statutes and ordinances discriminating against Indians and Negroes. Except for the purpose of illustration, however, it is not our intention to notice particularly these local regulations, which in themselves would fill many volumes, but to direct attention to the national aspects of the race problem, so called, as it came up for consideration as THE QUESTION BEFORE CONGRESS.

10. Ralph Sanderson, a Quaker, published a pamphlet in 1729; Benjamin Lay, another Quaker, published one in 1737. Many works against slavery had been published abroad by eminent Negro scholars, but they dealt with the question in the West Indies and the books had little or no circulation in the United States. Eminent statesmen abroad had also published many works, cf. H. Gregoire.

Chapter I

The Attitude of Leading Statesmen on the Question of Slavery — Slavery in the Constitution to Satisfy South Carolina and Georgia — Slave Trade Stimulated — Protest of Quakers to First Congress — Proposition to Declare Freedom of Slaves in the District of Columbia After July 4, 1805 — Suspension of Commercial Relations with Hayti — Slave Trade Attacked by John Randolph of Virginia.

Slaves can be acquired only by the power of arms and can be held only by a continued exertion of the overwhelming force by which they were acquired. This means a state of perpetual warfare though the forces in resistance may be so feeble as to be practically negligible. But feeble as these opposing forces may be they are always sufficient to make timid ones fearful, brave ones apprehensive and to deprive all of the sense of absolute security. For although after generations of breeding and training in subjugation, most of the pristine manhood and stamina of a people may be cuffed and cudgeled out, there is always the danger of atavism and the likelihood of meeting with a Nat Turner or Denmark Vesey at some lonely spot on our pathway, and worst of all, suppose we should meet a Toussaint L'Ouverture ! For it happened that just about the time the fathers of our Republic were laying the foundation of the government, this country, and the world at large, was filled with the echoing sound of the feet of Frenchmen fleeing from Hayti. Small wonder, then, that the statesmanship and philanthropy of this country at the time was against human slavery and that a strong effort was made by men like Jefferson to put an end to the slave trade and to arrange for the ultimate extirpation of the institution from among us 1 and that a majority of the states

1. Elliott's Debates, Vol. 4, p. 285.

as shown by their representatives sent to the convention was in favor of such propositions, and that the project failed only because a two-thirds vote was required to pass it. 2 The representatives of Georgia and South Carolina made the recognition of slavery a sine qua non of their states entering the Union. 3 Besides the political expediency of shelving an unpleasant question, there were many things before this convention that were deemed of greater importance than this* matter of getting rid of the incubus of slavery. Then, too, it was thought that after we had settled down to the quiet enjoyment of our liberties under our Constitution, the nation would take up and settle the slavery question within a generation at furthest. And although this proved to be a delusion, it was readily indulged and the question was allowed to be compromised. As an expedient resorted to in the formation of the Union, it worked fairly well and accomplished its purpose ; but compromises never settle anything permanently ; it was forced on the nation by South Carolina and Georgia, which states made it their price of entering the Union. 4 Having won this first contest under the Constitution, and being stimulated by the continued demand for slaves, the African slave trader soon became bolder in his activities, more shameless in his methods and more callous of conscience. The method of kidnapping men by enticing them aboard ship under pretense of the desire to trade was soon given up as too slow, too sentimental ; too much dependent upon chance. To make sure of large, quick loads, the trader could not remain aboard ship and wait for his prey while in African ports. Native villages were sought out and such inhabitants as might be fit for slaves were seized, while the rest were butchered or burned with their huts. These depredations soon became intolerable to all who were not participating in the immediate pecuniary benefits. An anti-slavery convention was called to meet at Philadelphia in 1794, when and where these outrages were taken up and discussed, and as a result, a memorial was sent to Congress demanding the abolition of the African

2. Amer. Conflict I, p. 39.

3. Madison's State Papers III, p. 145.

4. Gidilings, p. 12.

slave trade. In response to this appeal and the public sentiment it created, Congress passed an Act 5 making it unlawful for any of our citizens to engage in the foreign trade. The promptness with which these petitions were responded to is worthy of note in view of the changes that subsequently took place in this regard. This act was amended by acts passed May 10th, 1800; February 28th, 1803; and March 2d, 1807. 6 The last-named statute was evidently enacted in anticipation of the expiration of the time limit on the foreign slave trade as originally fixed by the constitutional compromise which provided for the cessation of the trade after 1808.

The southern planters, however, had definitely determined to hold their slaves at any cost ; and many doubtless thought that the union of the states would afford them additional security; that under the Union slaves might be exploited for their local advantage while under the mutual protection clause of the Constitution, the power of the nation might be called upon to suppress anything in the nature of a serious servile uprising. After forcing the first compromise into the Constitution, in connection with these interests, they immediately set about the work of further safeguarding them. We had just entered upon the age of our agricultural expansion and the planters and farmers had and exerted a political influence hardly less potent than that exerted by the great commercial and manufacturing corporations of a century later. The Congressional debates on questions in opposition to the slave-holding interests at this particular time were likely to be spiritless and tame and usually resulted in a victory for the planter-barons. Almost as soon as the national government was formed, the southern planters secured the passage of a Fugitive Slave Act (Feb. 5, 1793). Prior to the date of this Act the existence of slavery was entirely dependent upon local regulations and under local police power which had and could exercise no extra territorial jurisdiction. While the relations of the slave states were always reciprocal

5. March 22, 1794, Annals of Congress.

6. Act of 1800 forbade citizens of the United States holding or owning property in any vessel engaged in the trade; 1803 forbade the landing of any vessel carrying slaves at any port of the United States where state laws prohibited slavery.

in matters connected with the management and control of slaves, a different atmosphere was experienced as the borders of the non-slave holding states were approached where the people were first indifferent, then cool and finally hostile. This anti-slavery attitude, however, was sustained by sentiment alone ; it was not then so clearly seen how unfavorably the competition of slaves was affecting the social and political interests of our free yeomanry. When the Act of 1807 was before Congress, therefore, there was little or no aggressive opposition to the provision in the sixth section to the effect that "though it be illegal to import Negroes as slaves, they, on arrival, may be enslaved by the legislatures of the states where they may be landed." If this did not leave the door open for the continued importation of slaves, it certainly had the effect of leaving the latch string hanging invitingly outside. Several of the states took immediate advantage of this clause and enacted laws to suit the case. 7 And when the Quakers of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia petitioned the First Congress for the abolition of the slave trade, the petitioners were politely informed that "Congress had no power to act in the matter until after 1808." 8 It will be remembered that it was not yet contended that Congress had no right to act at all which contention did not arise until many years later when it became the rock on which the ship of state stranded. But there was even at that time an undercurrent of doubt as to how far Congress might go in the direction of regulating slavery in the states. There was no question, however, about the right and duty of Congress to legislate concerning the national domain not yet erected into states. 9 In this connection a resolution was introduced in the House by Representative Sloan, of New Jersey, in the early part of 1805, declaring free all blacks, mulattoes, etc., born in the District of Columbia after July 4th of that year. This was lost by a vote of 77 to 31. Six Rep-

8. Article 1, Section 9, Constitution United States.

9. Dred Scott decision declaring among other things unconstitutional the Act excluding slavery from a portion of Missouri, was the first effective attack upon the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress over the Territories.

resentatives from slave states voted for the measure — four from North Carolina, one from Maryland and one from Kentucky.

When one reflects upon the vote on the Ordinance of July 13th, 1787, which excluded slavery from the Northwest Territory, the vast section which was subsequently carved into six powerful states, and compares the figures with this vote in 1805, relative to the District of Columbia, it will be seen how solidly and steadily slavery had advanced during those two decades. Besides having brought upon the nation no less than a half dozen wars, counting those with the Indians and Mexico, slavery kept our foreign relations always unsettled. Perhaps one of the meanest little acts in this connection of which we became guilty was the suspension of our commercial relations with Hayti in 1806 in order to discourage the people of that island in their struggle to maintain the liberty they had wrenched from France; and this act was passed after a lengthy and somewhat acrimonious debate in the House by a vote of 92 to 26. 10 The slavery question was passive from 1807 to 1816, complications in connection with our foreign relations which ultimately led up to the second war with England having absorbed both popular and legislative attention. On March 1st, 1816, John Randolph, of Virginia, made a short but bitter speech against the slave trade and moved to instruct the Committee on the District of Columbia to report a bill abolishing the trade in the District. The motion was carried and a bill was reported, but no further steps were ever taken. 11 But the cauldron had again begun to boil and bubble, and so when the Fifteenth Congress met there was an unusually large number of petitions for the abolition of the slave trade. All of these petitions were read but no further action was taken. One of the first things this Congress did, however, was to pass an act amending the Fugitive

10. This law was repealed in 1860. England refused to acknowledge the independence of Hayti, spurned her offers of commercial advantage, denied her West Indian colonies any intercourse with the island and even as late as 1825 passed an act forbidding any foreign ship that had touched at San Domingo to enter any port of Jamaica. Vide Frazier's magazine, February 22, 1879, p. 453; article by Francis W. Newman.

Slave Law, and when an effort was made to insert a clause intended for the protection of free Negroes by securing them from arrest except under such circumstances as rendered other citizens liable to arrest, it was defeated. And so we come to the year 1819, when there was soon to occur that great test of strength on the part of both the slavery and anti-slavery forces in Congress over the admission of Missouri.

In excluding slavery from the territories ceded by Virginia and the Carolinas under the Ordinance of 1787, the Ohio River was taken as the natural dividing line between slavery and freedom, the part north of that river was known as the "Northwest Territory" and in this slavery was abolished by the Ordinance ; on the south side of the river, known as the "Southwest Territory," including what afterwards formed some of the southern states, like Mississippi, slavery was retained under the Ordinance, but even here it was provided that no more slaves should be brought in from foreign ports, that is, from places outside the United States. Some of the inhabitants of the Northwest Territory complained bitterly on the account of the emancipation of their slaves without compensation and petitioned Congress for relief, but it was determined to be inexpedient to grant relief. John Randolph, of Virginia, in reporting for his committee against relief, pointed out the fact that the products of these lands did not require slave labor, besides the country was being settled by people from parts where slavery did not exist, and that it was the policy of the government to discourage slavery in every way. But sentiment changed rapidly after it was seen that no serious attempt was to be made to check the foreign slave trade after 1808, as provided by the Constitution. The fight over the conditions under which territories might be admitted to the Union began here and may be traced down through the days of Reconstruction. Time and again the question would be brought up in one way or another and in every instance the opinion prevailed that Congress was supreme in its power to govern and regulate. The slave power took the ground that the territories being common property, slave-holders might enter them with their slaves without regard to any regulation that Congress might make. And while this was generally true, the fallacy of their argument, as so ably pointed out by Mr. Benton, 12 was in the fact that slaves were not generally regarded as property and were made so only by statute ; and because a man was held in slavery in Virginia, where the law made him a slave, it did not necessarily follow that he would be a slave also in Massachusetts, as the Virginia slave-holder could not take his laws with him to Massachusetts. The fight was renewed over every new territory acquired by us and upon the admission of every territory as a state. And while our leading statesmen and constitutional lawyers recognized the question as one belonging exclusively to the realm of politics and therefore within the determination of Congress, listening to the repeated appeals of the slave power, the Supreme Court went beyond its jurisdiction and even beyond the question that was properly before it in the Dred Scott case, and undertook to nullify the Missouri Compromise. This caused the troubles in Kansas and ignited the fires of the Civil War.