States, without discrimination, to emigrate, with whatever property they possessed, including slaves, to any common territory, not embraced in the ordinance of '87, and to be secure in its peaceable enjoyment until each territory might be admitted as a state into the Union, with or without slavery, as she might determine.

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The second was, the right to the execution of the clause in the constitution which provides that no person, held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service, or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

The denial of those rights to the South by the Republican party formed the great issues of 1860.

The Democratic party of the North advocated them, not because they were in favor of slavery or wished to perpetuate it, but because these were rights existing in the constitution which by their honor and their oath they were bound to support. In this they had only

followed the Fathers who had formed the constitutiou for the thirteen states, twelve of which were slave states whose citizens from the time of its adoption and through all the administrations of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, had exercised these rights without hindrance from State or Federal authority but with the aid and concurrence of both.

Let us now look back, to some extent, into the history of American slavery, and of the political events connected with it, in order that we may weigh more justly the responsibilities of the parties of to-day for the great conflict, which resulted from the issues we have named, and see more clearly the present positions of each.

Let it be understood, however, in advance, that while we condemn the South for its separation from the North, we arraign the Republican party for its follies and crimes in all they did to provoke it, and commend the Democratic party of the North for all they did to avoid it.

Let us acknowledge, also in advance, that out of the evil deeds of the Republican party, and the great error of the South, Providence, as it often does, has made the wrath and wickedness of man to praise Him. To Him, and Him alone, working through the wicked ambition and folly of man, and not through the benevolence of the Republican party, is the black man indebted to his freedom, and the South for its relief from the burden of slavery.

For the origin and existence in the past of American slavery, Massachusetts is to-day more responsible than South Carolina. England is more responsible than them both, or, than the North and South combined. She not only taught it as consistent with the precepts of our religion, but forced it upon her colonies against their earnest protestations. Through her leading commentators and theologians, she taught that slavery, like sickness and poverty, was incident to the fall of man, and therefore ineradicable; that it is not sin in itself, but only in its abuse, like any other relation of life; that God, in His theocracy, in the decalogue itself, not only recognized slavery amongst the Jews, but, by Divine decree, authorized them to buy slaves from the heathen, and perpetuate their servitude from generation to generation-declaring the slave to be his owner's “money”; that in the times of the Apostles, their Lord lived in the midst of slaveholders, to whose authority he commanded obedience; that while he gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, and life to the dead, and dared denounce the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy and adultery, he gave no freedom to the slave, nor did he denounce the slaveholder as a wrong-doer; but on application healed for the Centurion his dying. slave, and restored him to service without a plea for his freedom, or a rebuke to his master. Indeed, England's latest and most distinguished scholars and commentators, Alford, Conybear and How son, shrink not from teaching that Paul returned a fugitive slave to his master, and that the passage in which the Apostle says: "Art thou called being a servant, care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather;" is an admonition to a slave to be content with his lot, and to use it, slavery, rather than change his condition. In 1711, the Commons of England resolved, that "the plantations ought to be supplied with negroes at reasonable rates." In 1713, England, by contract resulting from the treaty of Utretcht, engaged to supply certain portions of America annually, for thirty years, with 4,800 slaves. Shortly afterward, the Crown in council submitted to the Twelve Judges of England the question: what was the legal status of negro slaves in the hands of British subjects? The response was: "In pursuance of his Majesty's order, in council, hereunto annexed, we do humbly certify our opinion to be that negroes are merchandise," signed by Lord Chief Justice Holt and nine other Judges! After this, negro slaves were largely owned in

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England, and were frequently sold on the public exchange in London. The merchants of London, on one occasion, submitted to Sir Philip Yorke, afterward Lord Hardwicke, and to Lord Talbot, who were the Solicitor and the Attorney General of the Kingdom, this question: "What are the rights of a British owner of slaves in England?" Their answer was: A slave coming from the West Indies to England, with or without his master, doth not become free, and the master may legally compel him to return to the plantation." In 1749, the same question again came up before Sir Philip Yorke, then Lord Chancellor of England, and by a decree in chancery he affirmed the same doctrine. In 1771, Lord Mansfield, in the Sommersett case, so far dissented from the opinions of Lord 'Hardwicke and others, as to decide, not that a slave brought from America to England thereby became forever free, but that such a law of slavery as was in force in Jamaica, or the West Indies, could not operate in England, and there was no remedy to compel the slaves' return. With the view of showing what was the character of that African slavery which, as defined by the laws of England, she established by force in her colonies, let us quote from a review of the Sommersett decision, by Lord Stowell, of whom Lord Brougham has said: "Seldom if ever appeared in the profession of the law any one so peculiarly endowed with all the learning and capacity which can accomplish, as well as all the graces which can embellish, the judicial character, as this eminent person." Lord Stowell, in the case of the slave Grace, (decided in 1827), said: "The argu

ments of counsel, in that decisive case of Sommersett, do not go further than to the extinction of slavery in England, as unsuitable to the genius of this country, and to the modes of enforcement. It is observable that Lord Mansfield limits it (the question) expressly to this country, for he says: The now question is, whether any dominion, authority, or coercion, can be exercised on a slave in this country, according to the American laws; meaning thereby the laws of the West Indies.' In the final judgment he delivers himself thus: The state of slavery is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law.' That is slavery as it existed in the West Indies, for it is to that he looks, considering that many of the adjuncts that belonged to it there, were not admissible under the laws of England." To the above declaration that slavery cannot be established without positive law, which he calls an obiter dictum, Lord

Stowell replies: "That ancient custom is generally recognized as a just foundation of all law; that villenage of both kinds, which is said by some to be the prototype of slavery, had no other origin than ancient custom; that a great part of the common law itself, in all its relations, has little other foundation than the same custom; and that the practice of slavery as it exists in Antigua and several other of our colonies, though regulated by law, has been in many instances founded upon a similar authority." Having thus overruled this obiter dictum, as he calls it, of Lord Mansfield, he says: "The fact certainly is, that it never has happened, that the slavery of an African, returned from England, has been interrupted in the colonies in consequence of this sort of limited liberation conferred upon him in England. The entire change of the legal character of individuals, produced by the change of local situation, is far from being a novelty in the law. Persons bound by particular contracts which restrain their liberty, debtors, apprentices, and others, lose their character and condition for the time when they reside in another country, and are entitled as persons totally free; though they return to their original servitude and obligations upon coming back to the country they had quitted. Having adverted to most of the objections that arise to the revival of slavery in the colonies, I have first to observe that it returns upon the slave by the same title by which it grew up originally. It never was in Antigua the creature of law, but of that custom which operates with the force of law; and when it is cried out that malus abolendus est, it is first to be proved that, even in the consideration of England, the use of slavery is considered as a malus usus, which the Court of the King's Privy Council and the Courts of Chancery are every day carrying into full effect in all considerations of property, in the one by appeal, and in the other by original causes, and all this enjoined by statutes. Has it not [that is the government], since the declaration of its judgment against slavery, declared in the most explicit and authentic manner its encouragement of slavery in its colonial establishments? Have not innumerable acts passed which regulate the condition of slaves, and which tend to consider them as the colonists themselves do, res posito in commercio, as mere goods and chattels, as subject to mortgages, as constituting part of the value of estates, as liable to be taken in execution for debt, to be publicly sold for such purposes, and has it not established courts of the highest jurisdiction

for carrying into execution provisions for all these purposes? Can it be asserted that the law of England does not support, and in a high degree favor, the law of slavery in its West India Colonieshowever it may discourage it in the Mother Country? If it be a sin, it is a sin in which this country has had its full share of guilt.”

Lord Stowell sent a copy of this opinion to Judge Story, of Massachusetts, then a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; who in a letter, dated Salem, near Boston, Sept. 22, 1828, replies: "I have read with great attention your judgment in the slave case. Upon the fullest consideration which I have been able to give the subject, I entirely concur in your views. If I had been called upon to pronounce a judgment in a like case, I should certainly have arrived at the same result, though I might not have been able to present the reasons which led to it in such a striking and convincing manner. It appears to me that the decision is impregnable In my native State (Mass.), the state of slavery is not recognized as legal; and yet if a slave should come hither and afterwards return to his home, we should certainly think that the local law would re-attach upon him." Such was the system of slavery in England, as expounded by her divines, her law-makers, and judges, which she had by her tyranny forced upon her colonies, and of which, when they became Independent States, they found themselves the victims.

As early as 1760, South Carolina passed an act forbidding the importation of slaves, which was rejected by the King; and her Governor reprimanded. Virginia, in 1770, passed a similar act with a like result. In 1775, just on the eve of the revolution, the Earl of Dartmouth, in reply to a remonstrance from the agent of the colonies against the importation of slaves, said: "We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage a traffic so beneficial to the nation."

After the peace of 1783, the first act by the states in their collective capacity, containing a restriction against slavery, was the celebrated ordinance of 1787, passed by the Congress of the Confederation for the "Territory north-west of the Ohio;" the 6th Article of which excluded slavery from that territory, with this provision: "Provided always that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and con