502 



MAKYLAND. 



to abolish their peculiar institution, Slavery ; and 

 the North were in a corresponding degree imperilled 

 by the serious injury done to their commerce by the 

 Embargo and the Declaration of War ; he had, there- 

 fore, notwithstanding his veneration for the great 

 names of Madison and Jeft'erson, whose opinions had 

 been mainly relied upon as contemporaneous with 

 the formation of the Constitution as authority for the 

 doctrine of State Sovereignty, to receive such au- 

 thority with comparative qualifications and restraints 

 for the reason that these men were at last but men, 

 and were influenced in a good degree by the circum- 

 stances of their surroundings, by the prejudices in- 

 separable from their locality and connections, and 

 the training and discipline of the school of politicians 

 to which they belonged. 



They had expressed opinions upon both sides of 

 this question. Mr. Madison, as a member of the 

 First Congress, had earnestly opposed Mr. Hamil- 

 ton's project of a bank, upon the ground that there 

 was no such power enumerated in the grant of 

 powers in the Constitution ; that Congress had no 

 power to create a corporation and mainly upon his 

 influence the scheme was defeated. The same 

 gentleman Mr. Madison had, during his Pres- 

 idency, surrendered these constitutional scruples, 

 and signed the bill to incorporate the Bank of the 

 United States. Mr. Jefferson, who, notwithstand- 

 ing his well-known State Rights doctrines, had, 

 in his advocacy of the construction of the navy 

 by* the Government for the purpose of punish- 

 ing the Barbary powers, maintained that such navy 

 would be also an effectual means of enforcing 

 the laws against delinquent States. Mr. Jefferson 

 had also, in a letter to Mr. Monroe, expressed the 

 opinion that a single frigate sent to a delinquent 

 port which had refused or withheld payment of its 

 taxes to the Government, would be the effectual 

 means of coercing obedience to the laws. 



He also repudiated the theory that the United States 

 was the mere agent of the separate State Sovereign- 

 lies, by referring to the absurd conclusion which 

 such premises would involve, leading, as they did, 

 to the inevitable result, that the principal, if the in- 

 dividual States were such, would' in fact be subordi- 

 nate to the agent, for, by the Constitution, every 

 officer of a State Government was bound, under 

 oath, to support the Constitution of the United 

 States ; hence the obligation would be from the prin- 

 cipal to the agent, rather than from the agent to the 

 principal. 



He concluded his speech by an analysis of the pro- 

 posed Article in the Bill of Rights under discussion, 

 contending that it was literally a transcript of the 

 existing Article in the Constitution of the United 

 States, which declares that the Constitution, and the 

 laws made in pursuance thereof, is the supreme law ; 

 and that the language of the Article reported by the 

 Committee on the Bill of Rights did not vary the 

 Article, but simply drew, as a conclusion from the 

 words of the Constitution, thai paramount allegiance 

 was due to it, simply because the law being supreme, 

 necessarily imposed, as inseparable from such su- 

 premacy, supreme allegiance to it ; or, in other 

 words, supreme obedience to it. He remarked also 

 that he thought the objection was rather to the word 

 allegiance, because in these times it had a peculiar 

 significance, well understood, without special defini- 

 tion, rather than to the idea that supreme obedience 

 was not due to the Constitution of the United States 

 and the laws made in pursuance thereof. 



The question was fully discussed, and on 

 June 16th all amendments were rejected, and 

 the original article adopted yeas 57; nays 31. 



The 23d article was next taken up for dis- 

 cussion, and its passage urged by Mr. Valliant 

 of Talbot County, who thus presented the 

 reasons for refusing compensation to owners : 



This article fails to make any provisic n for the 

 compensation of those who may happen to lose by 

 the sudden emancipation of slavery, and fails to em- 

 power the Legislature to make any such provision, 

 and very justly failed to do so. Mr. President, sla- 

 very has already been emancipated. I contend that 

 there is not a single slave in the State. Let us see 

 if I am correct in saying there is not a single slave in 

 the State. If one of your servants saw fit to approach 

 you to-morrow morning and say: "I want to leave 

 your service forever, and that ere another day passes 

 over my head, I shall be beyond the western hills, 

 to take up my residence with a strange people," you 

 would not think it worth your while to take any steps 

 to prevent his absconding. Is he a slave who can 

 approach his master and use such language as this 

 with impunity? Certainly not. Then, sir, slavery 

 is entirely destroyed in this State, and really it is not 

 the institution of slavery which we propose to do 

 away with, but the status of slavery. All we propose 

 to do is to wipe off from our statute books all recog- 

 nition of an institution which has already ceased to 

 exist. 



Mr. President, I submit to gentlemen thinking 

 differently from myself if it is the fault of the State 

 of Maryland that slavery has been abolished here, or 

 in any of the States south of it? Did the honest 

 workingmen of this State have any thing to do with 

 it ? Did the people of the State, or any party in it, 

 bring about this radical change ? Had the Governor 

 of the State any hand in it ? or had any of the State 

 authorities any hand in it? Then, sir, I want to 

 know, if neither the State nor any of the State au- 

 thorities, nor the people, had any thing to do with 

 the breaking up of the institution, upon what prin- 

 ciple of justice can gentlemen claim a compensation 

 at the hands of the State ? Was it the fault, I again 

 ask, of the honest, hard-fisted workingman of the 

 State, the small farmers of the State, the merchants 

 of Baltimore, or the people of any of the Western 

 counties? If not, then why should they be com- 

 pelled to pay for it? Had the sudden emancipation 

 of slavery been under their control, you and I would 

 still have been slaveholders ; therefore I am honestly 

 of the opinion that the State ought not to be taxed 

 for this destruction of property, for which destruc- 

 tion it is not in the smallest degree to be held re- 

 sponsible. 



Suppose, for the sake of argument, slavery does 

 exist in Maryland ; suppose, further, that good men 

 hands are worth all the Government is offering to 

 pay for them ; even in that case I doubt the ex- 

 pediency of the State paying for them, and for this 

 reason, that if we undertake to compensate loyal 

 owners we will soon have to compensate the dis- 

 loyal. 



The leading objections to emancipation were 

 presented in opposition by Mr. Peter, of Mont- 

 gomery County. 



He first contended that the ties which bind the 

 affection and love of a people to their country was a 

 safe, sure, and stable protection in their rights and 

 privileges, among which is the right of property ; 

 that the right of property in slaves existed by Divine 

 authority, and by the laws of the land as settled and 

 fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the 

 United States. He secondly contended that nothing 

 sooner disturbed the quiet and equanimity of a 

 people than the infringement or destruction of this 

 right. That the destruction of this right would be a 

 flagrant act of injustice to the people of Maryland, 

 and dangerous in the extreme. If they could be 

 stripped of one species or kind of property in this 

 summary manner, it might soon follow that they 

 would be deprived of some other kind of property ; 

 that by the Constitution of the United States the 

 people of this State cannot be thus divested of their 

 property, under the plea of policy or necessity, with- 

 out just compensation. That the Constitution of the 



