Clement L. Vallandigham on Slavery

October 29, 1855.

“Slavery, gentlemen, older in other countries also, than the records of human society, existed in America at the date of its discovery. The first slaves of the European, were natives of the soil: and a Puritan governor of Massachusetts, founder of the family of Winthrop, bequeathed his soul to God, and his Indian slaves to the lawful heirs of his body. Negro slavery was introduced into Hispaniola in 1501: more than a century before the colonization of America by the English. Massachusetts, by express enactment in 1641 punishing ‘manstealing’ with death:—and it is so punished to this day under the laws of the United States—legalized yet the enslaving of captives taken in war, and of such ‘strangers,’ foreigners, as should be acquired by purchase: while confederate New England, two years later, providing for the equitable division of lands, goods and ‘persons,’ as equally a part of the ‘spoils’ of war, enacted also the first fugitive slave law in America. White slaves—convicts and paupers some of them; others at a later day, prisoners taken at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, and of Sedgemoor—were at the first, employed in Virginia and the British West Indies. Bought in England by English dealers, among whom was the queen of James II., with many of his nobles and courtiers, some of them perhaps of the house of Sutherland; they were imported and sold at auction to the highest bidder. In 1620, a Dutch man-of-war first landed a cargo of slaves upon the banks of James River. But the earliest slave ship belonging to English colonists, was fitted out in 1645, by a member of the Puritan church of Boston. Fostered still by English princes and nobles: confirmed and cherished by British legislation and judicial decisions, even against the wishes and in spite of the remonstrances of the Colonies, the traffic increased; slaves multiplied, and on the Fourth of July, 1776, every colony was now become a slave state; and the sun went down that day upon four hundred and fifty thousand of those who in the cant of eighty years later, are styled ‘human chattels,’ but who were not by the act of that day emancipated.

“Eleven years afterwards, delegates assembled at Philadelphia, from every state except Rhode Island, ignoring the question of the sinfulness and immorality of slavery, as a subject with which they as the representatives of separate and independent states had no concern, founded a union and framed a constitution, which leaving with each state the exclusive control and regulation of its own domestic institutions, and providing for the taxation and representation of slaves, gave no right to Congress to debate or to legislate concerning slavery in the states or territories, except for the interdiction of the slave trade and the extradition of fugitive slaves. The Plan of Union proposed by Franklin in 1754, had contained no allusion even to slavery; and the articles of Confederation of 1778, but a simple recognition of its existence—so wholly was it regarded then, a domestic and local concern. In 1787 every state, except perhaps Massachusetts, tolerated slavery either absolutely or conditionally.—But the number of slaves north of Maryland, never great, was even yet comparatively small; not exceeding forty thousand in a total slave population of six hundred thousand. In the North, chief carrier of slaves to others even as late as 1807, slavery never took firm root. Nature warred against it in that latitude; otherwise every state in the Union would have been a slaveholding state to this day. It was not profitable there; and it died out—lingering indeed in New York till July, 1827. It died out: but not so much by the manumission of slaves, as by their transportation and sale in the South: and thus New England, sir, turned an honest penny with her left hand, and with her right, modestly wrote herself down in history, as both generous and just.

“In the South, gentlemen, all this was precisely reversed. The earliest and most resolute enemies to slavery, were Southern men. But climate had fastened the institution upon them; and they found no way to strike it down. From the beginning indeed, the Southern colonies especially had resisted the introduction of African slaves; and at the very outset of the revolution, Virginia and North Carolina interdicted the slave trade. The Continental Congress soon after, on the sixth of April, 1776, three months earlier than the Declaration of Independence, resolved that no more slaves ought to be imported into the thirteen colonies. Jefferson, in his draught of the Declaration, had denounced the King of England alike for encouraging the slave trade, and for fomenting servile insurrection in the provinces. Ten years later, he boldly attacked slavery in his “Notes on Virginia;” and in the Congress of the Confederation, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, with its solemn compacts and compromises upon the subject of slavery, proposed to exclude it from the territory northwest the river Ohio. Colonel Mason of Virginia vehemently condemned it, in the convention of 1787. Nevertheless it had already become manifest that slavery must soon die away in the North, but in the South continue and harden into perhaps a permanent, ineradicable system. Hostile interests and jealousies sprang up, therefore, in bitterness even in the convention. But the blood of the patriot brothers of Carolina and Massachusetts smoked yet upon the battle fields of the revolution. The recollection of their kindred language, and common dangers and sufferings, burned still fresh in their hearts. Patriotism proved more powerful than jealousy, and good sense stronger than fanaticism. There were no Sewards, no Hales, no Sumners, no Greeleys, no Parkers, no Chase, in that convention. There was a Wilson; but he rejoiced not in the name of Henry; and he was a Scotchman. There was a clergyman—no, not in the convention of ’87, but in the Congress of ’76; but it was the devout, the learned, the pious, the patriotic Witherspoon; of foreign birth also, a native of Scotland, too. The men of that day and generation, sir, were content to leave the question of slavery just where it belonged. It did not occur to them, that each one among them was accountable for ‘the sin of slaveholding’ in his fellow; and that to ease his tender conscience of the burden, all the fruits of revolutionary privation and blood and treasure; all the recollections of the past; all the hopes of the future: nay the Union, and with it, domestic tranquillity and national independence, ought to be offered up as a sacrifice. They were content to deal with political questions; and to leave cases of conscience to the church and the schools, or to the individual man. And accordingly to this Union and Constitution, based upon these compromises—execrated now as ‘covenants with death and leagues with hell’—every state acceded: and upon these foundations, thus broad and deep, and stable, a political superstructure has, as if by magic, arisen, which in symmetry and proportion—and, if we would but be true to our trust, in strength and durability—finds no parallel in the world’s history.

“Patriotic sentiments, sir, such as marked the era of ’89, continued to guide the statesmen and people of the country for more than thirty years, full of prosperity; till in a dead political calm, consequent upon temporary extinguishment of the ancient party lines and issues, the Missouri Question resounded through the land with the hollow moan of the earthquake, shook the pillars of the republic even to their deep foundations.

“Within these thirty years, gentlemen, slavery as a system, had been abolished by law or disuse, quietly and without agitation, in every state north of Mason and Dixon’s line—in many of them, lingering, indeed, in individual cases, so late as the census of 1840. But except in half a score of instances, the question had not been obtruded upon Congress. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had been passed without opposition and without a division, in the Senate; and by a vote of forty-eight to seven, in the House. The slave trade had been declared piracy punishable with death. Respectful petitions from the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and others, upon the slavery question, were referred to a committee, and a report made thereon, which laid the matter at rest. Other petitions afterwards were quietly rejected, and, in one instance, returned to the petitioner. Louisiana and Florida, both slaveholding countries, had without agitation been added to our territory. Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, slave states each one of them, had been admitted into the Union without a murmur. No Missouri Restriction, no Wilmot Proviso had as yet reared its discordant front to terrify and confound. Non-intervention was then both the practice and the doctrine of the statesmen and people of that period: though, as yet, no hollow platform enunciated it as an article of faith, from which, nevertheless, obedience might be withheld, and the platform ‘spit upon,’ provided the tender conscience of the recusant did not forbid him to support the candidate and help to secure the ‘spoils.’

“I know, sir, that it is easy, very easy, to denounce all this as a defence of slavery itself. Be it so: be it so. But I have not discussed the institution in any respect; moral, religious, or political. Hear me. I express no opinion in regard to it: and as a citizen of the north, I have ever refused, and will steadily refuse, to discuss the system in any of these particulars. It is precisely this continued and persistent discussion and denunciation in the North, which has brought upon us this present most perilous crisis: since to teach men to hate, is to prepare them to destroy, at every hazard, the object of their hatred. Sir, I am resolved only to look upon slavery outside of Ohio, just as the founders of the constitution and Union regarded it. It is no concern of mine; none, none: nor of yours, Abolitionist. Neither of us will attain heaven, by denunciations of slavery: nor shall we, I trow, be cast into hell for the sin of others who may hold slaves. I have not so learned the moral government of the universe: nor do I presumptuously and impiously aspire to the attributes of Godhead; and seek to bear upon my poor body the iniquities of the world.

“I know well indeed, Mr. President, that in the evil day which has befallen us, all this and he who utters it, shall be denounced as ‘pro-slavery;’ and already from ribald throats, there comes up the slavering, drivelling, idiot epithet of ‘dough-face.’ Again, be it so. These, Abolitionist, are your only weapons of warfare: and I hurl them back defiantly into your teeth. I speak thus boldly, because I speak in and to and for the North. It is time that the truth should be known, and heard, in this the age of trimming and subterfuge. I speak this day not as a northern man, nor a southern man; but, God, be thanked, still as a United States man, with United States principles;—and though the worst happen which can happen—though all be lost, if that shall be our fate; and I walk through the valley of the shadow of political death, I will live by them and die by them. If to love my country; to cherish the Union; to revere the Constitution: if to abhor the madness and hate the treason which would lift up a sacrilegious hand against either; if to read that in the past, to behold it in the present, to foresee it in the future of this land, which is of more value to us and the world for ages to come, than all the multiplied millions who have inhabited Africa from the creation to this day:—if this it is to be pro-slavery, then, in every nerve, fibre, vein, bone, tendon, joint and ligament, from the topmost hair of the head to the last extremity of the foot, I am all over and altogether a PRO-SLAVERY MAN.”