CONGEESS, U. S. 



189 



thing is treason under the Constitution and 

 laws of the United States, is it possible, under 

 the law of nations, and under the common sen- 

 timents of humanity that govern mankind, for 

 the Federal Government to undertake to act 

 upon the individual who is placed under duress 

 to commit treason, instead of first relieving him 

 from that duress by making war upon the 

 State?" 



Mr. Doolittle: "If the man is to be hung 

 if he does the act, and to be hung if he does 

 not, undoubtedly, so far as he is concerned, it 

 will make no great difference, (laughter ;) but, 

 as a question of law, if he does an act which is 

 treason against the United States, and is com- 

 pelled to do that act by a law of the State, the 

 State law is void, because it is in conflict with 

 tfce Constitution of the United States. 1 ' 



Mr. Benjamin : " Then would the hanging be 

 Toid ? " 



Mr. Doolittle: "The hanging would be a 

 certainty, (laughter ;) it would not be void for 

 uncertainty. I say, Mr. President, that where 

 the Constitution of the United States speaks 

 in language clear enough to delegate power to 

 this Government, it is not in the power of one, 

 ten, one hundred, or all the citizens of a State, 

 to annul that act of Congress; because the 

 Constitution and the acts in pursuance of it are 

 the supreme law of that State, and binding on 

 every citizen and upon all the citizens in that 

 State, and every citizen must, of course, act at 

 his peril.'' 



Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, continued the de- 

 bate by saying : " It seems to me that North- 

 ern Senators most perniciously overlook the 

 main point at issue between the two sections 

 of our Confederacy. "We claim that there is 

 property in slaves, and they deny it. Until we 

 shall settle, upon some basis, that point of con- 

 troversy, it is idle to talk of going any further. 

 The Southern people have $4,000,000,000 locked 

 up in this kind of property. I do not mean to 

 say that their slaves are worth so much ; but 

 their real property, their stock, then* household 

 goods, and all that belongs to them, are depend- 

 ent upon the security of that kind of property. 



" During the first forty years of our national 

 existence, I undertake to affirm that no man, 

 North or South, pretended to deny the great 

 fact that there was such a thing as property in 

 slaves. About 1818, 1819, 1820, this doctrine 

 of refusing to recognize the right of property in 

 slaves sprang up. It has continued to intensify 

 from that day to this, until we find ourselves in 

 our present condition. Now, I ask Senators on 

 the other side if, looking at this thing calmly, 

 they can for an instant suppose that, under any 

 possible conceivable state of the case, we can 

 voluntarily consent to live under a Government 

 passing into the hands of a power, on the 4th 

 of March, which openly and undisguisedly tells 

 us that all this vast interest is to be outlawed 

 under the common Government ; that the 

 $4,000,000,000 invested in this property, the 

 accumulation of centuries of hard labor, mus- 



cular and physical labor, is going to be volun- 

 tarily abandoned abandoned, I mean, so far 

 as the action of this Federal Government is con- 

 cerned ; and that we, the inhabitants of fifteen 

 States of this Union, will consent to live under 

 a Government outlawed by its authority? 

 That is the stern proposition which you submit 

 to us. That is the proposition which we as 

 sternly reject. Can we ever consent to remain 

 in any Government, and know it only through 

 its taxing power? Do rational men of the 

 North suppose that nine million Southern peo- 

 ple can ever consent to live in a Government 

 outlawed by the Government, and known by it 

 only when it wants tribute ? 



" I have no hope, no expectation, of chang- 

 ing the judgment of Senators on the other side, 

 and very little hope of ever reaching their con- 

 stituents ; but there are some stubborn facts in 

 history, which it were well enough their con- 

 stituents should come to learn.'' 



Mi-. Green, of Missouri, referring to the ques- 

 tion before the Senate, observed that when 

 Mexico ceded all this territory to us by the 

 Gadsden treaty, no slavery existed there except 

 the peonage ; but the very moment it became 

 ceded to us, and became part of the United 

 States, it was under the Constitution of the 

 United States. There is no such thing as a 

 constitutional Government acquiring property, 

 and yet that property not be subject to the 

 Constitution ; and it is a contradiction to say 

 so. If we have the power to acquire, it is by 

 virtue of our organization under the__ Constitu- 

 tion ; and the moment you acquire it, it is sub- 

 ject to th,at Constitution. 



Mr. Doolittle replied, that the Senator of 

 Missouri assumed, as a proposition which ought 

 not to be doubted, that the Constitution of the 

 United States entered the territory acquired 

 from Mexico, repealed the Mexican law abolish- 

 ing slavery, and established a law in its favor. 

 This proposition was in direct contravention 

 of the decision of the Supreme Court of the 

 United States in the Prigg case, in which they 

 held expressly that " the state of slavery is 

 deemed to be a mere municipal regulation, 

 founded upon, and limited to, the range of the 

 territorial laws. 7 ' It was in violation of the 

 decisions of the supreme court of every State, 

 both North and South, previous to 1848. 

 When John C. Calhoun, on the floor of this 

 Senate, first announced the doctrine that the 

 Constitution of the United States, by its own 

 positive force, guaranteed the right to take and 

 hold slaves as property in the territories of the 

 United States, it did not have half a dozen sup- 

 porters in either House of Congress. 



Mr. Mason, of Virginia, wished the privilege 

 of saying, as Mr. Calhoun lives no longer, and 

 had no representative of his State on that floor, 

 that he never understood him, nor ever under- 

 stood any jurist in the land, in giving a consid- 

 ered view of this question, as declaring that the 

 Constitution of the United States established 

 slavery anywhere ; but he understood that 



