The Life of Jefferson Davis

The Senator from Illinois assumes that the congressional acts of 1850 meant no legislation in relation to slave property; while, in the face of that declaration, stand the laws enacted in that year, and the promise of another, which has not been enacted – laws directed to the question of slavery and slave property; one even declaring, in certain contingencies, as a penalty on the owner, the emancipation of his slave in the District of Columbia. If no action upon the question was the prevailing opinion, what does the legislation mean? Was it non-action in the District of Columbia? Be it remembered, the resolution of the Cincinnati platform says, “Non-interference, by Congress, with slavery in State and Territory, or in the District of Columbia.” They are all upon the same footing.

Again, he said that the Badger amendment was a declaration of no protection to slave property. The Badger amendment declares that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise shall not revive the laws or usages which preëxisted that compromise; and the history of the times, so far as I understand it, is, that it intended to assure those gentlemen who feared that the laws of France would be revived in the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, by the repeal of the act of 1820, and that they would be held responsible for having, by congressional act, established slavery. The Southern men did not desire Congress to establish slavery. It has been our uniform declaration that we denied the power of the Federal Government either to establish or prohibit it; that we claimed for it protection as property recognized by the Constitution, and we claimed the right for it, as property, to go, and to receive federal protection wherever the jurisdiction of the United States is exclusive. We claim that the Constitution of the United States, in recognizing this property, making it the basis of representation, put it, not upon the footing which it holds between foreign nations, but upon the basis of the compact or union of the States; that, under the delegated grant to regulate commerce between the States, it did not belong to a State; therefore, without breach of contract, they can not, by any regulation, prohibit transit, and the compact provided that they should not change the character of master and slave in the case of a fugitive. Could Congress surrender, for the States and their citizens, the claim and protection for those or other constitutional rights, against invasion by a State? If not, surely it can not be done in the case of a Territory, a possession of the States. The word “protecting,” in that amendment, referred to laws which preëxisted – laws which it was not designed, by the Democrats, to revive when they declared the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and, therefore, I think, did not affect the question of constitutional right and of federal power and duty.

In all these territorial bills we have the language “subject to the Constitution;” that is to say, that the inhabitants are to manage their local affairs in their own way, subject to the Constitution; which, I suppose, might be rendered thus: “In their own way, provided their own way shall be somebody else’s way;” for “subject to the Constitution” means, in accordance with an instrument with which the territorial inhabitants had nothing to do; with the construction of which they were not concerned; in the adoption of which they had no part, and in relation to which it has sometimes been questioned whether they had any responsibility. My own views, as the Senator is aware from previous discussions, (and it is needless to repeat,) are that the Constitution is co-extensive with the United States; that the designation includes the Territories, that they are necessarily subject to the Constitution. But if they be subject to the Constitution, and subject to the organic act, that is the language used; that organic act being the law of Congress, that Constitution being the compact of the States – the territorial inhabitants having no lot or part in one or the other, save as they are imposed upon them – where is their claim to sovereignty? Where is their right to do as they please? The States have a compact, and the agent of the States gives to the Territories a species of constitution in the organic act, which endures and binds them until they throw off what the Senator on another occasion termed the minority condition, and assume the majority condition as a State. The remark to which I refer was on the bill to admit Iowa and Florida into the Union. The Senator then said:

“The father may bind the son during his minority, but the moment that he (the son) attains his majority, his fetters are severed, and he is free to regulate his own conduct. So, sir, with the Territories; they are subject to the jurisdiction and control of Congress during infancy, their minority; but when they attain their majority, and obtain admission into the Union, they are free from all restraints and restrictions, except such as the Constitution of the United States imposes upon each and all of the States.”

This was the doctrine of territorial sovereignty – perhaps that is the phrase – at that period. At a later period, in March, 1856, the Senator said:

“The sovereignty of a Territory remains in abeyance, suspended in the United States in trust for the people, until they shall be admitted into the Union as a State. In the meantime, they are admitted to enjoy and exercise all the rights and privileges of self-government, in subordination to the Constitution of the United States, and in obedience to the organic law passed by Congress in pursuance of that instrument.”

If it be admitted – and I believe there is no issue between the Senator and myself on that point – that the Congress of the United States have no right to pass a law excluding slaves from a Territory, or determining in the Territory the relation of master and slave, of parent and child, of guardian and ward; that they have no right anywhere to decide what is property, but are only bound to protect such rights as preëxisted the formation of the Union – to perform such functions as are intrusted to them as the agent of the States – then how can Congress, thus fettered, confer upon a corporation of its creation – upon a territorial legislature, by an organic act, a power to determine what shall be property within the limits of such Territory?

But, again, if it were admitted that the territorial inhabitants did possess this sovereignty: that they had the right to do as they pleased on all subjects, then would arise the question, if they were authorized, through their representatives, thus to act, whence came the opposition to what was called the Lecompton Constitution? How did Congress, under this state of facts, get the right to inquire whether those representatives in that case really expressed the will of the people. Still more; how did Congress get the right to decide that those representatives must submit their action to a popular vote in a manner not prescribed by the people of the Territory, however eminently it may have been advisable, convenient, and proper in the judgment of the Congress of the United States? What revisory function had we, if they, through their representatives, had full power to act on all such subjects whatsoever?

I have necessarily, in answering the Senator, gone somewhat into the argumentum ad hominem. Though it is not entirely exhausted, I think enough has been said to show the Senate in what the difference between us consists. If it be necessary further to illustrate it, I might ask how did he propose to annul the organic act for Utah, if the recognition by the Congress of a sufficient number of inhabitants to justify the organization of a territorial government transferred the sovereignty to the inhabitants of the Territory? If sovereignty passed by the recognition of the fact, how did he propose, by congressional act, to annul the territorial existence of Utah?

It is this confusion of ideas, it is this confounding of terms, this changing of language, this applying of new meanings to words, out of which, I think, a large portion of the dispute arises. For instance, it is claimed that President Pierce, in using the phrase “existing and incipient States,” meant to include all Territories, and thus that he had bound me to a doctrine which precluded my strictures on what I termed squatter sovereignty. This all arises from the misuse of language. An incipient State, according to my idea, is the territorial condition at the moment it changes into that of a State. It is when the people assemble in convention to form a constitution as a State, that they are in the condition of an incipient State. Various names were applied to the Territories at an earlier period. Sometimes they were called “new States,” because they were expected to be States; sometimes they were called “States in embryo,” and it requires a determination of the language that is employed before it is possible to arrive at any conclusion as to the differences of understanding between gentlemen. Therefore, it was, and, I think, very properly, (but not, as the Senator supposed, to catechise him,) that I asked him what he meant by non-intervention, before I commenced these remarks.

In the same line of errors was the confusion which resulted in his assuming that the evils I described as growing out of his doctrine on the plains of Kansas, were a denunciation, on my part, of the bill called the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. At the time that bill passed, I did not foresee all the evils which have resulted from the doctrine based upon it, but which I do not think the bill sustains. I am not willing now to turn on those who were in a position which compelled them to act, made them responsible, and to divest myself of any responsibility which belongs to any opinion I entertained. I will not seek to judge after the fact and hold the measure up against those who had to judge before. Therefore I will frankly avow that I should have sustained that bill if I had been in the Senate; but I did not foresee or apprehend such evils as immediately grew up on the plains of Kansas. I looked then, as our fathers had looked before, to the settlement of the question of what institutions should exist there, as one to be determined by soil and climate, and by the pleasure of those who should voluntarily go into the country. Such, however, was not the case. The form of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill invited to a controversy – not foreseen. I was not charging the Senator with any responsibility for it, but the variation of its terms invited contending parties to meet on the plains of Kansas, and had well-nigh eventuated in civil war. The great respect which even the most lawless of those adventurers in Kansas had for the name and the laws of the United States, served, by the timely interposition of the Federal force and laws, to restrain the excited masses and prevented violence from assuming larger proportions than combats between squads of adventurers.

This brings me in the line of rejoinder, to the meaning of the phrase, “the people of a Territory, like those of a State, should decide for themselves,” etc., the language quoted against the President in the remarks of the Senator. This, it was announced, was squatter sovereignty in its broadest sense; and it was added, that the present Executive was elected to the high office he holds on that construction of the platform. Now, I do not know how it is that the Senator has the power to decide why the people voted for a candidate. I rather suppose, among the many millions who did vote, there must have been a variety of reasons, and that it is not in the power of any one man to declare what determined the result. But waiving that, is it squatter sovereignty in its broadest sense? Is it a declaration that the inhabitants of a Territory can exercise all the powers of a State? It says that, “like the people of a State,” they may decide for themselves. Then how do the people of a State decide the question of what shall be property within the State? Every one knows that it is by calling a convention, and that the people, represented in convention, and forming a constitution their fundamental law, do this. Every one knows that, under the constitutions and bills of rights which prevail in the republican States of this Union, no legislature is invested with that power. If this be the mode which is prescribed in the States – the modes which the States must pursue – I ask you, in the name of common sense, can the language of the President be construed to mean that a territorial legislature may do what it is admitted the legislature of a State can not; or that the inhabitants of a Territory can assemble a convention, and form a fundamental law overriding the organic act, to which the Senator has already acknowledged they stand subject until they be admitted as a State?

We of the South, I know, are arraigned, and many believe justly, for starting a new question which distracts the Democratic party. I have endeavored, therefore, to show that it is not new. I have also asserted, what I think is clear, that if it were new, but yet a constitutional right, it is not only our province, but our duty to assert it – to assert it whenever or wherever that right is controverted. It is asserted now with more force than at a former period, for the simple reason that it is now denied, to an extent which has never been known before. We do not seek, in the cant language of the day, to force slavery on an unwilling people. We know full well there is no power to do it; and our limited observation has not yet made us acquainted with the man who was likely to have a slave forced upon him, or who could get one without paying a very high price for him. He must first have the will, and, secondly, he must put money in his purse to enable him to get one. They are too valuable among those by whom they are now owned, to be forced upon any body. Not admitting the correctness of the doctrine which the Senator promulgated in his magazine article in relation to a local character of slave property, I recognise the laws of nature, and that immigration will follow in the lines where any species of labor may be most profitably employed; all, therefore, we have asked – fulfillment of the original compact of our fathers – was that there should be no discrimination; that all property should be equally protected; that we should be permitted to go into every portion of the United States save where some sovereign power has said slaves shall not be held, and to take with us our slave property in like manner as we would take any other; no more than that. For that, our Government has contended on the high seas against foreign powers. That has entered into our negotiations, and has been recognized by every government against whom a claim has been asserted. Where our property was captured on the land during the period of an invasion, Great Britain, by treaty, restored it, or paid for it. Wherever it has suffered loss on the high seas, down to a very recent period, we have received indemnity; and where we have not, it was only because the power and duty of the Federal Government was sacrificed to this miserable strife in relation to property, with the existence of which, those making the interference had no municipal connection, or moral responsibility.

I do not admit that sovereignty necessarily exists in the Federal Government or in a territorial government. I deny the Senator’s proposition, which is broadly laid down, of the necessity which must exist for it in the one place or the other. I hold that sovereignty exists only in a State, or in the United States in their associated capacity, to whom sovereignty may be transferred, but that their agent is incapable of receiving it, and, still more, of transferring it to territorial inhabitants.

I was sorry for some of the remarks which he thought it necessary to make, as to the position of the South on this question, and for his assertion that the resolutions of the convention of 1848 put the pro-slavery men and the Abolitionists on the same ground. I think it was altogether unjust. I did not think it quite belonged to him to make it. I was aware that his opponent, in that canvass to which I referred, had made a prophecy that he was, sooner or later, to land in the ranks of the Republicans. Even if I had believed it, I would not have chosen – and it is due to candor to say I do not believe – …

Mr. Davis. Well, it is unimportant. I feel myself constrained, because I promised to do it, to refer to some portion of the joint record of the Senator and myself in 1850, or, as I have consumed so much time, I would avoid it. In that same magazine article, to which I have referred, the Senator took occasion to refer to some part which I had taken in the legislation of 1850; and I must say he presented me unfairly. He put me in the attitude of one who was seeking to discriminate, and left himself in the position of one who was willing to give equal protection to all kinds of property. In that magazine article the Senator represents Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, as having endeavored to discriminate in favor of slave property, and Mr. Chase, of Ohio, as having made a like attempt against it; and he leaves himself, by his argument, in the attitude of one who concurred with Mr. Clay in opposition to both propositions.

I offered an amendment to the compromise bill of 1850, which was to strike out the words “in respect to,” and insert “and introduce or exclude,” and after the word “slavery” to insert the following:

“Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to prevent said territorial legislature passing such laws as may be necessary for the protection of the rights of property of any kind which may have been or may be hereafter, conformably to the Constitution and laws of the United States, held in, or introduced into, said Territory.”

Mr. Chase’s amendment is in these words:

“Provided further, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as authorizing or permitting the introduction of slavery, or the holding of persons as property within said Territory.”

Whilst the quotation in the magazine article left me in the position already stated, the debates which had occurred between us necessarily informed the Senator that it was not my position, for I brought him in that debate to acknowledge it.

On that occasion, I argued for my amendment as an obligation of the Government to remove obstructions; to give the fair operation to constitutional right; and so far from the Senator having stood with Mr. Clay against all these propositions, the fact appears, on page 1134 of the Globe, that, upon the vote on Chase’s amendment, Douglas voted for it, and Davis and Clay voted against it; that upon the vote on Davis’ amendment, Clay and Davis voted for it, and Douglas voted against it.

Mr. Douglas. The Senator should add, that that vote was given under the very instructions to which he referred the other day, and which are well known to the Senate, and are on the table.

Mr. Davis. I was aware that the Senator had voted for Mr. Seward’s amendment, the “Wilmot proviso,” under these instructions, but I receive his explanation. Mr. Berrien offered an amendment to change the provision, which said there should be no legislation in respect to slavery, so as to make it read, “there shall be no legislation establishing or prohibiting African slavery.” Mr. Clay voted for that; so did Mr. Davis. Mr. Douglas voted against it. Mr. Hale offered an amendment to Mr. Berrien’s amendment, to add the word “allowing.” Here Mr. Douglas voted for Mr. Hale’s amendment, and against Davis and Clay. Then a proposition was made to continue the Mexican laws against slavery until repealed by Congress. I think I proved – at least I did to my own satisfaction – that there was no such Mexican law; that it was a decree, and that the legislation which occurred under it had never been executed. But that proposition by Mr. Baldwin, which was to continue the Mexican laws in force, was brought to a vote, and again Mr. Douglas voted for it, and Mr. Davis and Mr. Clay voted against it. When another proposition was brought forward to amend by “removing the obstructions of Mexican laws and usages to any right of person or property by the citizens of the United States in the Territories aforesaid,” I do not find the Senator’s name among those who voted, though, by reference to the Appendix, I learned he was present immediately afterwards, by his speaking to another amendment.

Thus we find the Senator differing from me on this question, as was stated; but we do not find him concurring with Mr. Clay, as was stated; and we do not find the proposition which I introduced, and which was mentioned in the magazine article, receiving the joint opposition of himself and Mr. Clay; and yet his remarks in the Senate the other day went upon the same theory, that Mr. Clay and himself had been coöperating. Now, the fact of the case is, that they agreed in supporting the final passage of the bill, and I was against it. I was one of the few Southern men who resisted, in all its stages, what was called the compromise, or omnibus bill. I have consumed the time of the Senate by this reference, made as brief as I could, on account of the remarks the Senator had made.

Coupled with this arraignment of myself, at a time when he says he had leisure to discuss the question with the Attorney-General, but when there was nothing in my position certainly to provoke the revision of my course in Congress, is his like review of it in the Senate. As I understood his remarks, for I did not find them in the Congressional Globe the next morning, he vaunted his own consistency and admitted mine, but claimed his to be inside and mine outside of the Democratic organization. Is it so? Will our votes on test questions sustain it? The list of yeas and nays would, on the points referred to, exhibit quite the reverse. And it strikes me that, on the recent demonstrations we have had, when the Democratic administration was, as it were, put on its trial in relation to its policy in Kansas, the Senator’s associations, rather than mine, were outside of the Democratic organization. How is it, on the pending question – the declaration of great principles of political creed – the Senator’s position is outside of the Senate’s Democracy, and mine in it, so that I do not see with what justice he attempts that discrimination between him and me? That the difference exists, that it involves a division greater or less in Democratic ranks, is a personal regret, and I think a public misfortune. It gives me, therefore, no pleasure to dwell upon it, and it is now dismissed.

Mr. President, after having for forty years been engaged in bitter controversy over a question relating to common property of the States, we have reached the point where the issue is presented in a form in which it becomes us to meet it according to existing facts; where it has ceased to be a question to be decided on the footing of authority, and by reference to history. We have decided that too long had this question been disturbing the peace and endangering the Union, and it was resolved to provide for its settlement by treating it as a judicial question. Now, will it be said, after Congress provided for the adjustment of this question by the courts, and after the courts had a case brought before them, and expressed an opinion covering the controversy, that no additional latitude is to be given to the application of the decision of the court, though Congress had referred it specially to them; that it is to be treated simply and technically as a question of meum et tuum, such as might have arisen if there had been no such legislation by Congress? Surely it does not become those who have pointed us to that provision as the peace-offering, as the means for final adjustment, now to say that it meant nothing more than that the courts would go on hereafter, as heretofore, to try questions of property.

The courts have decided the question so far as they could decide any political question. A case arose in relation to property in a slave held within a Territory where a law of Congress declared that such property should not be held. The whole case was before them; every thing, except the mere technical point that the law was not enacted by a territorial legislature. Why, then, if we are to abide by the decision of the Supreme Court in any future case, do they maintain this controversy on the mere technical point which now divides, disturbs, distracts, destroys the efficiency and the power of the Democratic party? To the Senator, I know, as a question of property, it is a matter of no consequence. I should do him injustice if I left any one to infer that I treated his argument as one made by a man prejudiced against the character of property involved in the question. That is not his position; but I assert that he is pursuing an ignis fatuus– not a light caught from the Constitution – but a vapor which has arisen from the corrupting cess-pools of sectional strife, of faction, and individual rivalry. Measured by any standard of common sense, its magnitude would be too small to disturb the adjustment of the balance of our country. There can be no appeal to humanity made upon this basis. Least of all could it be made to one who, like the Senator and myself, has seen this species of property in its sparse condition on the north-western frontier, and seen it go out without disturbing the tranquillity of the community, as it had previously existed without injury to any one, if not to the benefit of the individual who held it. He has no apprehension, he can have none, that it is to retard the political prosperity of the future States – now the Territories. He can have no apprehension that in that country, to which they never would be carried except for domestic purposes, they could ever so accumulate as to constitute a great political element. He knows, and every man who has had experience and judgment must admit, that the few who may be so carried there have nothing to fear but the climate, and that living in that close connection which belongs to one or half a dozen of them in a family, the kindest relations which it is possible to exist between master and dependent, exist between these domestics and their owners.