CHAPTER II. PARTY CREEDS AND MODES CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRUCTION-NEW ENGLAND SLAVE TRADE - THE COTTON GIN AND THE MULE-JENNY — COTTON AND SLAVERY SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY · -FIRST FREE SOIL VOTE - SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES -THE LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA PURCHASES-THE MISSOURI QUESTION THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS THE KANSAS STRUGGLE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY · THE WHIG PARTY DISBANDS- T 1 THE HE distinguishing feature between the great political parties of this country is their different modes of construing the Constitution of the United States. A loose construction of law tends to loose government. Loose government leads to loose morals. On the other hand, strict construction is a constant security against excessive, tyrannical, and dishonest policies and conduct. So nearly are these parties divided, that at the recent vote for the electoral ticket, amounting in the aggregate to 10,036,057 votes, 4,842,292 were given for one party, and 4,810,219 for the other. The votes given outside of these two parties, including scattering and defective votes, did not amount to 400,000,- or, to be more exact, 385,808. If one should fix the dividing line between our people in the matter of politics, it must be drawn between the Democratic party and the Republican party. The issues upon which these parties divide in the most conspicuous manner turn upon the hinges of constitutional construction. The latter party construes the Constitution upon latitudinarian theories, by lax methods. It finds its highest sanction for these theories in the Preamble of that instrument, which says: "We, the peoPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America"; and a further sanction in that part of Article I., Section 8, Clause 1, which says that: "The Congress shall have Power To provide for the common Defense and general Wel fare of the United States." The Democratic party regards these general words as being limited by the expressly enumerated grants of power to Congress, which point out the modes by which the object of the Constitution shall be secured. It holds, for example, that the "common Defense and general Welfare of the United States" are best secured by confining Congress to the exercise of the powers expressly granted; and that there is no discretion to enlarge these powers. It holds that the implied powers of Congress can be drawn alone from the express powers, and not from the general words of the Preamble. Some of the latter-those last above quoted are found in the first clause of the eighth section of the Constitution. Any other mode of construction must leave Congress at liberty to enact any law at its discretion, on a plausible pretext for promoting the welfare of the people. The journals of Congress in the past three decades are full of the records of attempts at such latitudinarian legislation. These attempts, the Democratic party has invariably opposed. It has opposed them as being unconstitutional. They are subversive of the structure and genius of our government. It holds that the tendency of such legislation is to divest the people of the power over their own domestic affairs. Such power all free people should retain in their own hands. To show to the unprejudiced reader of the Constitution the evil results of loose construction, it is only necessary to remind him that in the year 1860 the Republican party held that justice was overthrown and domestic tranquillity destroyed by the existence of slavery; that slavery was a perpetual menace to the general welfare; and that the strife in regard to slavery had its origin in the action of an aristocratic governing class founded upon that institution. This was the view of its best writer upon the "war powers" of the government-the Hon. William Whiting, of Boston. There is no doubt that early in the century slavery became irreconcilable, if not with republican institutions, at least with the sentiment of the North. There is no doubt that its championship during the late war became the chief obstacle to the restoration of Federal relations. But whether slave-holding communities were a privileged class or not, depended not upon the Preamble but upon the extent of the granted powers of the Constitution. If the extent of these powers depended upon a construction of the Preamble in its wide significance, or upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the rights of man, there would be no doubt that the abolitionists of the North had not only constitutional vindication but immense moral emphasis on their side. There is no one so hot in his temper or so extreme in his Southern proclivities as now to defend the institution of slavery or yearn for its re-establishment. The progress of our time has long since forbidden it, even if our war had not riddled slavery to its death with the bullet, and even if the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution had not buried it beyond all thought of resurrection. SLAVERY IN THE COLONIES. 37 The conspicuous upheaval of Europe in modern times, led by France, dethroned slavery in 1794. It was never practically established by that country in any of its colonies. England, in 1833, by an act of Parliament proclaimed universal emancipation. Sweden followed in 1844; Denmark in 1847. Mexico took the lead of England for emancipation. When she became independent she decreed emancipation. Spain and Brazil were not backward in pursuing the same course; and the Czar of Russia in 1862 emancipated the serf. It is no defense of slavery to say that it was harmless bondage two or three hundred years ago, while it was a harsh institution in 1860. It was no better when fixed upon the soil of North America by England and New England, in our infancy, than when, by the strength of the cotton interest, it was aggrandized beyond the anticipation of the founders of our government. It does not justify the existence of the institution, to recur to the history of its establishment and propagation in America. Suppose it were fixed upon the South against the will of her people, and in despite of the protest of her leading statesmen; is that any reason to justify the shackling of many millions of our human kind? Nor would it justify slavery that the African slavetrade continued under the protection of the American flag and Constitution. Nor would it justify slavery to prove, by colonial and later records, that the Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants were inseparably and profitably connected with this trade. It may be true that one of the Pilgrim vessels, a consort of the Mayflower in 1620, landed the first cargo of slaves in Virginia. It is no doubt true that in 1636 a second cargo was brought into the American colonies, in the ship Desire, of Marblehead. True, it may be, that this cargo was landed at Salem, and that by order of the General Court of the colony the officers of that ship were compensated for their service in keeping and distributing those slaves. It is true that in 1641 the Massachusetts General Court passed an act authorizing slavery, not only of negroes and criminals, but of Indians. The commercial history of Massachusetts furnishes us instructions from owners to commanders of slave ships. The slaves were purchased with New England rum. The officers of the ships. were paid in rum and slaves; and by a refinement of elegance, if any old slaves were taken they were "to be close shaved and oiled before going on shore to approve their appearance." The Rev. George Whitfield, through the instrumentality of certain men of New England, took slaves to Georgia against the protest of Governor Winthrop and the trustees of the colony. Up to 1771, the Legislature of Virginia had at twenty-three different times passed acts prohibiting the importation of slaves into that colony; but through the influence of Massachusetts slave-traders, the king would not allow the enforcement of these acts. Suppose these facts to be historic, what do they imply? It is well known that Mr. Jefferson, in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, made that action of the king one of the "repeated injuries and usurpations" designed to reduce the colonies "under absolute despotism." It is also known that a special committee, of which a Massachusetts member was chairman, struck out this protest. In 1780 Massachusetts adopted a Constitution which contained the Jeffersonian declaration that liberty was an inalienable right. A distinguished Democrat of that state, Theodore Sedgwick, raised the point, which after eight years of litigation was sustained by the court, that slavery was thereby abolished. It is unnecessary to recount the various acts of the people of this country whereby they early undertook to evince their hatred of slavery. But when the raising of cotton became profitable, slavery received a new impulse, and from that time became more or less aggressive. The year 1770 marks the period when the planters in the South began to turn their attention to cotton-raising. The value of negro slave labor was not then so much appreciated as in later years. This fact will explain the absence of the word "slavery" from the Constitution when it was originally adopted. It was then expected that the institution would soon die out. In colonial times there was an idea that the upland cotton of America could not be profitably used in textile manufactures. As late as 1787, no cotton was exported from North America. That year, Great Britain imported 32,800,000 pounds from the West Indies, the French, Dutch, and Portuguese colonies, and the Turkish dominions. In 1792 the United States exported only 138,328 pounds. For many years following, little or no cotton was consumed in our manufactures. American cotton was not as clean as that baled elsewhere. Labor could be better employed than in giving it the necessary manipulation. But in the year 1795 Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, invented the cotton-gin. The effect on cotton production was remarkable. In the year 1807 we exported 55,018,449 pounds of this staple. In 1831 the export was 619,000 bales to Great Britain, 127,000 to France, and 27,000 to other countries. In 1845 our crop amounted to 2,100,537 bales. In the year 1775 that ingenious English weaver, Samuel Crompton, combined the drawing-roller of Arkwright with the jenny of Hargreave, and produced that beautiful, complex machine, to which he gave the appropriate name of the mule-jenny. About the same period the celebrated Scotchman, Watt, was engaged in successfully applying his steam-engine to the operation of moving factory machinery. These three men-an Englishman, a Scotchman, and an American, made cotton-raising one of the leading industries of the world. Their inventions greatly benefited mankind; but they also increased the value of negro slaves to an extent never thought of by the framers of the Constitution. With a steady and ever-advancing market for American cotton, was it strange that pecuniary interests in the South should strive for the maintenance of slavery? Is it strange that pecuniary interests now demand concessions to the cotton-factories of New England, in which the labor system is as hard on the operatives as ever PURITAN PRACTICES. 39 slavery was in the South? It is easy to be a philanthropist when pecuniary interests are not involved. Yet, notwithstanding the strong inducements to the spread of slavery in fields where no other form of labor was possible, it must be said to the credit of the American people, that they were among the first opponents to the slave-trade. The destruction of that trade was in great measure due to their persistent efforts. The writer of this volume, as a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, even during the anxieties of the Civil War, took part in assaulting the slave-trade upon the African coast, by international and Federal action. The first debate he ever had in Congress was with Joshua R. Giddings, the celebrated Abolitionist of Ohio, who contended that when the Democratic party came into power with Mr. Buchanan, it was committed to the slave-trade; although by this, as he explained afterwards, he did not mean the slave-trade from Africa, but the inter-state slave-trade. Slavery in the British-American colonies was not a peculiar institution of the South. It was introduced into all the colonies. and sustained by the local laws of each of them. It was not repelled from It was cherished the cold North by any sentiment among the people. It is to climatic influences, rather than to a love of liberty, that the Northern states owe their early riddance of the institution. Northern people are apt to believe that their ancestors, like themselves, regarded the enslaving a fellow-being as a crime in the sight of Heaven. But their own colonial statutes furnish evidence that even the Puritans of New England were not averse to slavery. The "Forefathers" had virtues which are still celebrated as those of a race chosen by the Almighty. They were a peculiar people,- and yet they were slave-holders. They had their "slave-codes." Their codes might have served as models for the ultra slave-holding southwestern communities of thirty years ago. Colonial New-York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were little, if any, more troubled than their New England neighbors in respect to the morality of the "institution." The slave-codes of the colonies are evidence that the great mass of the people sustained slavery. In New England, in the days when slavery was sanctioned by rigid laws, no one was allowed to vote who was not a member of the established Puritan, or Congregational church. And in the other Northern states the right of suffrage was far from being universal. In those good old days it was the "saints" and the better sort of people the elect and the electors-and not the sinners and base fellows, who practiced slave-holding and prescribed slave-codes. Then, Rum and Religion formed a sweeter euphony than in days more recent and eventful. Mr. William Goodell, a high anti-slavery authority, in his work entitled Slavery and Anti-Slavery, says of the introduction of slaves: "The colonies now known as the Southern or Slave States, on the Atlantic Coast, received the principal share of these importations. The mid |