258 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



all our lives in one-half the States of the Union, 

 it was by reason of slavery. 



"If these Halls have resounded from our 

 earliest recollections with strifes and contests 

 of sections, ending sometimes in blood, it was 

 slavery which almost always occasioned them. 

 No superficial observer, even, of our history 

 North or South, or of any party, can doubt that 

 slavery lies at the bottom of our present trou- 

 bles. Our fathers who made the Constitution 

 regarded it as an evil, and looked forward to 

 its early extinction. They felt the inconsist- 

 ency of their position, while proclaiming the 

 equal rights of all to life, liberty, and happiness, 

 they denied liberty, happiness, and life itself to 

 a whole race, except in subordination to them. 

 It was impossible, in the nature of things, that 

 a Government based on such antagonistic prin- 

 ciples could permanently and peacefully endure, 

 nor did its founders expect it would. They 

 looked forward to the not distant, nor as they 

 supposed uncertain period when slavery should 

 be abolished, and the Government become in 

 fact, what they made it in name, one securing 

 the blessings of liberty to all. The history of 

 the last seventy years has proved that the 

 founders of the Republic were mistaken in 

 their expectations; and slavery, so far from 

 gradually disappearing as they had anticipated, 

 had so strengthened itself that in 1860 its ad- 

 vocates demanded the control of the nation in 

 its interests, failing in which they attempted its 

 overthrow. This attempt brought into hostile 

 collision the slaveholding aristocracy, who made 

 the right to live by the toil of others the chief 

 article of their faith, and the free laboring 

 masses of the North, who believing in the right 

 of every man to eat the bread his own hands 

 had earned." 



He then proceeded to state the various acts 

 of Congress since the war began, and the meas- 

 ures of the Administration relative to slaves, 

 and said : "If, then, we are to get rid of the 

 institution, we must have some more efficient 

 way of doing it than by the proclamations that 

 have been issued or the acts of Congress which 

 have been passed. 



" Then, sir, in my judgment, the only effect- 

 ual way of ridding the country of slavery, and 

 so that it cannot be resuscitated, is by an amend- 

 ment of the Constitution forever prohibiting 

 it within the jurisdiction of the United States. 

 This amendment adopted, not only does slavery 

 cease, but it can never be reestablished by State 

 authority, or in any other way than by again 

 amending the Constitution. "Whereas, if sla- 

 very should not be abolished by act of Congress 

 or proclamation of the President, assuming that 

 either has the power to do it, there is nothing 

 in the Constitution to prevent any State from 

 reestablishing it. This change of the Constitu- 

 tion will also relieve us of all difficulty in the 

 restoration to the Union of the Rebel States 

 when our brave soldiers shall have reduced 

 them to obedience to the laws. 



" To secure its passage requires, in the first 



instance, a vote of two-thirds in its favor in 

 each branch of Congress, and its ratification 

 subsequently by three-fourths of the States of 

 the Union. Can these majorities be obtained? 

 It is very generally -conceded, I believe, by men 

 of all political parties, that slavery is gone; 

 that the value of slavery is destroyed by the 

 rebellion. What object, then, can there be on 

 the part of any one, in the present state of 

 public feeling in the country, to giving the peo- 

 ple an opportunity to pass upon this question? " 



Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, followed with 

 a very full statement of his views relative to 

 slavery, and thus referred to the pending 

 question : " But, sir, the crowning act in this 

 series of acts for the restriction and extinction 

 of slavery in America is this proposed amend- 

 ment to the Constitution prohibiting the ex- 

 istence of slavery for ever more in the Repub- 

 lic of the United States. If this amendment 

 shall be incorporated by the will of the nation 

 into the Constitution of the United States, it 

 will obliterate the last lingering vestiges of the 

 slave system ; its chattelizing, degrading, and 

 bloody codes ; its dark, malignant, barbarizing 

 spirit ; all it was and is, every thing connected 

 with it or pertaining to it, from the face of the 

 nation it has scarred with moral desolation, 

 from the bosom of the country it has reddened 

 with the blood and strewn with the graves of 

 patriotism. The incorporation of this amend- 

 ment into the organic law of the nation will 

 make impossible for ever more the reappearing 

 of the discarded slave system, and the return- 

 ing of the despotism of the slavemasters' dom- 

 ination. 



"Then, sir, when this amendment to the 

 Constitution shall be consummated, the shackle 

 will fall from the limbs of the hapless bondman, 

 and the. lash drop from the weary hand of the 

 taskmaster. Then the sharp cry of the agoniz- 

 ing hearts of severed families will cease to vex 

 the weary ear of the nation, and to pierce the 

 ear of Him whose judgments are now avenging 

 the wrongs of centuries. Then the slave mart, 

 pen, and auction-block, with their clanking fet- 

 ters for human limbs, will disappear from the 

 land they have brutalized, and the school-house 

 will rise to enlighten the darkened intellect of 

 a race inibruted by long years of enforced ig- 

 norance. Then the sacred rights of human 

 nature, the hallowed family relations of husband 

 and wife, parent and child, will be protected 

 by the guardian spirit of that law which makes 

 sacred alike the proud homes and lowly cabins 

 of freedom. Then the scarred earth, blighted 

 by the sweat and tears of bondage, will bloom 

 again under the quickening culture of re- 

 warded toil. Then the wronged victim of the 

 slave system, the poor white man, and sand- 

 hiller, the clay-eater of the wasted fields of 

 California, impoverished, debased, dishonored 

 by the system that makes toil a badge of dis- 

 grace, and the instruction of the brain and soul 

 of man a crime, will lift his abashed forehead 

 to the skies and begin to run the race of iin- 



