Volume IV Part 19 (1/2)
You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union.
Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the Government ought to be in the proportion of three to two. But how stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers, here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a representation, nominally of persons, but really of property, ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of supplementary power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the compact, CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AND HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.
In the Articles of Confederation, there was no guaranty for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation could purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Const.i.tution of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert the first principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority shall rule the land. By means of the double representation, the minority command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW AND PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.
ADDRESS TO THE FRIENDS OF CONSt.i.tUTIONAL LIBERTY, ON THE VIOLATION BY THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE RIGHT OF PEt.i.tION AT THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.
NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, NO. 143 Na.s.sAU STREET.
1840.
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ADDRESS.
TO THE FRIENDS OF CONSt.i.tUTIONAL LIBERTY:--
There was a time, fellow citizens, when the above address would have included the PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. But, alas! the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the right of pet.i.tion, are now hated and dreaded by our Southern citizens, as hostile to the perpetuity of human bondage; while, by their political influence in the Federal Government, they have induced numbers at the North to unite with them in their sacrilegious crusade against these inestimable privileges.
On the 28th January last, the House of Representatives, on motion of Mr. Johnson, from Maryland, made it a standing RULE of the House that ”no pet.i.tion, memorial, resolution, or other paper, praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or any State or Territory of the United States, in which it now exists, SHALL BE RECEIVED BY THE HOUSE, OR ENTERTAINED IN ANY WAY WHATEVER.”
Thus has the RIGHT OF PEt.i.tION been immolated in the very Temple of Liberty, and offered up, a propitiatory sacrifice to the demon of slavery. Never before has an outrage so unblus.h.i.+ngly profligate been perpetrated upon the Federal Const.i.tution. Yet, while we mourn the degeneracy which this transaction evinces, we behold, in its attending circ.u.mstances, joyful omens of the triumph which awaits our struggle with the hateful power that now perverts the General Government into an engine of cruelty and loathsome oppression.
Before we congratulate you on these omens, let us recall to your recollection the steps by which the enemies of human rights have advanced to their present rash and insolent defiance of moral and const.i.tutional obligation.
In 1831, a newspaper was established in Boston, for the purpose of disseminating facts and arguments in favor of the duty and policy of immediate emanc.i.p.ation. The Legislature of Georgia, with all the recklessness of despotism, pa.s.sed a law, offering a reward of $5000, for the abduction of the Editor, and his delivery in Georgia. As there was no law, by which a citizen of Ma.s.sachusetts could be tried in Georgia, for expressing his opinions in the capital of his own State, this reward was intended as the price of BLOOD. Do you start at the suggestion? Remember the several sums of $25,000, of $50,000, and of $100,000, offered in Southern papers for kidnapping certain abolitionists. Remember the horrible inflictions by Southern Lynch clubs. Remember the declaration, in the United States Senate, by the brazen-fronted Preston, that, should an abolitionist be caught in Carolina, he would be HANGED. But, as the Slaveholders could not destroy the lives of the Abolitionists, they determined to murder their characters. Hence, the President of the United States was induced, in his Message of 1835, to Congress, to charge them with plotting the ma.s.sacre of the Southern planters; and even to stultify himself, by affirming that, for this purpose, they were engaged in sending, by _mail_, inflammatory appeals to the _slaves_--sending papers to men who could not read them, and by a conveyance through which they could not receive them! He well knew that the papers alluded to were appeals on the immorality of converting men, women, and children, into beasts of burden, and were sent to the masters, for _their_ consideration. The masters in Charleston, dreading the moral influence of these appeals on the conscience of the slaveholding community, forced the Post Office, and made a bonfire of the papers. The Post Master General, with the sanction of the President, also hastened to their relief, and, in violation of oaths, and laws, and the const.i.tution, established ten thousand censors of the press, each one of whom was authorized to abstract from the mail every paper which _he_ might think too favorable to the rights of man.
For more than twenty years, pet.i.tions have been presented to Congress, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The right to present them, and the power of Congress to grant their prayer, were, until recently, unquestioned. But the rapid multiplication of these pet.i.tions alarmed the slaveholders, and, knowing that they tended to keep alive at the North, an interest in the slave, they deemed it good policy to discourage and, if possible, suppress all such applications. Hence Mr. Pinckney's famous resolution, in 1836, declaring, ”that all pet.i.tions, or papers, relating _in any way, or to any extent_ whatever to the _subject of slavery_, shall, without being printed or referred, be laid on the table; and no further action, whatever shall be had thereon!”
The peculiar atrocity of this resolution was, that it not merely trampled upon the rights of the pet.i.tioners, but took from each member of the House his undoubted privilege, as a legislator of the District, to introduce any proposition he might think proper, for the protection of the slaves. In every Slave State there are laws affording, at least, some nominal protection to these unhappy beings; but, according to this resolution, slaves might be flayed alive in the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton, and no representative of the people could offer even a resolution for inquiry. And this vile outrage upon const.i.tutional liberty was avowedly perpetrated ”to repress agitation, to allay excitement, and re-establish harmony and tranquillity among the various sections of the Union!!”
But this strange opiate did not produce the stupefying effects antic.i.p.ated from it. In 1836, the pet.i.tioners were only 37,000--the next session they numbered 110,000. Mr. Hawes, of Ky., now essayed to restore tranquillity, by gagging the uneasy mult.i.tude; but, alas!
at the next Congress, more than 300,000 pet.i.tioners carried new terror to the hearts of the slaveholders. The next anodyne was prescribed by Mr. Patton, of Va., but its effect was to rouse from their stupor some of the Northern Legislatures, and to induce them to denounce his remedy as ”a usurpation of power, a violation of the Const.i.tution, subversive of the fundamental principles of the government, and at war with the prerogatives of the people.”[105] It was now supposed that the people most be drugged by a _northern_ man, and _Atherton_ was found a fit instrument for this vile purpose; but the dose proved only the more nauseous and exciting from the foul hands by which it was administered.
[Footnote 105: Resolutions of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut, April and May, 1838.]
In these various outrages, although all action on the pet.i.tions was prohibited, the papers themselves were received and laid on the table, and _therefore_ it was contended, that the right of pet.i.tion had been preserved inviolate. But the slaveholders, maddened by the failure of all their devices, and fearing the influence which the mere sight of thousands and tens of thousands of pet.i.tions in behalf of liberty, would exert, and, taking advantage of the approaching presidential election to operate upon the selfishness of some northern members, have succeeded in crus.h.i.+ng the right of pet.i.tion itself.
That you may be the more sensible, fellow citizens, of the exceeding profligacy of the late RULE and of its palpable violation of both the spirit and the letter of the Const.i.tution, which those who voted for it had sworn to support, suffer us to recall to your recollection a few historical facts.
The framers of the Federal Const.i.tution supposed the right of pet.i.tion too firmly established in the habits and affections of the people, to need a const.i.tutional guarantee. Their omission to notice it, roused the jealousy of some of the State conventions, called to pa.s.s upon the const.i.tution. The _Virginia_ convention proposed, as an amendment, ”that every _freeman_ has a right to pet.i.tion, or apply to the Legislature, for a redress of grievances.” And this amendment, with others, was ordered to be forwarded to the different States, for their consideration. The Conventions of North Carolina, New York, and Rhode Island, were held subsequently, and, of course, had before them the Virginia amendment. The North Carolina Convention adopted a declaration of rights, embracing the very words of the proposed amendment; and this declaration was ordered to be submitted to Congress, before that State would enter the Union. The Conventions of New York and of Rhode Island incorporated in their _certificates of ratification_, the a.s.sertion that ”Every _person_ has a right to pet.i.tion or apply to the legislature for a redress of grievances”--using the Virginia phraseology, merely subst.i.tuting the word _person_ for _freeman_, thus claiming the right of pet.i.tion even for slaves; while Virginia and North Carolina confined it to freemen.
The first Congress, a.s.sembled under the Const.i.tution, gave effect to the wishes thus emphatically expressed, by proposing, as an amendment, that ”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or _abridging_ the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to a.s.semble, and _to pet.i.tion Government_ for a redress of grievances.”