248 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



authority of the United States ? This is what 

 I object to : that when you pass a law in refer- 

 ence to property, you should take one species 

 of property and put it upon a different footing 

 from another. This Congress has no power, 

 and the power exists nowhere in this Govern- 

 ment, to set at liberty the slaves now held in 

 bondage in the slave States ; and when Con- 

 gress undertakes to confiscate slave property, 

 that species of property should be put upon the 

 very same basis as all other property confiscated 

 by the General Government. Let me state a 

 case to the gentleman, and ask him a question. 



" I am a citizen of the State of Tennessee, 

 which is now one of the rebellious States ; I 

 own slaves ; I use those slaves upon my farm 

 in the culture of tobacco, wheat, and the usual 

 products of that State; they make corn and 

 wheat and hay ; and I take those things, the 

 products of slave labor, and sell them to that 

 rebel army. Now, the gentleman is a lawyer, 

 and will he say that, by the provisions of this 

 bill, my slaves are not entitled to their free- 

 dom?" 



Mr. Bingham : " I think, when the gentle- 

 man sells his produce to the rebels, he ought 

 to forfeit all he has." 



Mr. Burnett: "Exactly; and that is this bill." 



Mr. Crittenden: "Mr. Speaker, it has been 

 conceded in all time, I believe, that the Federal 

 Government, the Congress of the United States, 

 has no power to legislate upon the subject of 

 slavery within the States. It has been con- 

 ceded that that was a subject for State legisla- 

 tion only. Does war change the powers of 

 Congress in this respect ? It is the absence of 

 all power upon the subject which has prevented 

 your legislation. Absence of all power of le- 

 gislation in time of peace must be the absence 

 of the same power at all times. The constitu- 

 tional power of this House does not come and 

 go with a change of circumstances. That is a 

 fixed rule of Congress, permanent, immutable, 

 and made to govern Congress. Now, sir, if you 

 can legislate in regard to slavery in this in- 

 stance, and if you can, upon certain conditions 

 in time of war, destroy the right of the master 

 to his slave, why cannot you, upon conditions, 

 in time of peace do the same thing ? You do it 

 here because the slave is employed to aid the 

 master in the commission of a great crime, that 

 is, the uniting in a civil war. Could you not 

 apply the principle to times of peace, and make 

 the conditions then ? If a master uses his slave 

 to aid in the commission of a trespass, or it may 

 be a murder, can you declare that to be sufficient 

 cause for the liberation of the slave ? Why can 

 you not ? Becaue you have no power by your 

 Constitution to touch slavery at all." 



Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois : " I wish to make 

 this suggestion : while we concede that there is 

 no power to interfere with the right to hold 

 slaves in Kentucky, I suggest to him whether 

 it is not competent to forfeit the claim that a 

 man has to his slaves for treason in the master, 

 in the same way that he would forfeit his claim 



to his horse, and yet not at all in conflict with, 

 or abrogate the law that authorizes the holding 

 of slaves ? I deny any disposition on my own 

 part to interfere with the laws of the States in 

 reference to holding slaves, but I insist upon 

 our power to make a forfeiture of the right to 

 service or labor of a person or the title to a 

 horse, when the master of one, or the owner of 

 the other, has become a traitor to his country, 

 and uses that property or right for the destruc- 

 tion of the Government. I wish the gentleman 

 to make a distinction between the right a mas- 

 ter has, and the idea of abrogating the State law 

 of Kentucky, for instance, allowing him to hold 

 slaves ; and that is the point to which I wish to 

 call his attention." 



Mr. Crittendeu : " I answer the gentleman in 

 the same general terms in which he argues his 

 case. If you have no power, there the question 

 ends. Well, have you a power to legislate con- 

 cerning a slave in Kentucky, as to his rights 

 present or future ? Have you a right to impose 

 any terms or conditions on the master, in time 

 of peace, on which the slave shall be entitled to 

 his liberty?" 



Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois : " My idea on that 

 point is simply this : that the citizen of Ken- 

 tucky,, like the citizen of any State, by an in- 

 fraction of law of the highest law of the coun- 

 try is liable to penalties and forfeitures. It 

 operates on the person to forfeit his right by 

 his own crime, and does not at all attack or in- 

 validate the right to hold slaves or abolish slav- 

 ery in Kentucky. It operates as a forfeiture on 

 the person for his crime in precisely the same 

 way as it operates as a forfeiture on other kinds 

 of property." 



Mr. Crittenden : " I say, if you have no power 

 directly, no matter what the advantages of the 

 exercise of that power would be, no matter how 

 just, no matter how necessary to the preserva- 

 tion of the Union, you cannot legislate about it 

 for want of power. That is my point. You 

 cannot make a general law that shall regulate 

 slavery, that shall regulate the rights of the 

 master or the rights of the servant, in a State 

 of this Union, in time of peace. That will be 

 admitted, I think. You cannot punish any 

 crime in the State ; that is for the State. It is 

 a part of its interior police. It is the law, and 

 you were willing to put it in the Constitution 

 as a thing never denied. Now, I ask my friend 

 if this bill is not getting around that, making 

 use of a state of war, of a state of things that 

 highly excites us all ? " 



Mr. Kellogg, of Illinois : " I repeat that we 

 have no more power to legislate on the subject 

 of slavery in time of war than we have in time 

 of peace. If a citizen of the United States com- 

 mits high treason, or any other great crime 

 known to the law, it is competent for the 

 United States Legislature, if the crime be within 

 its cognizance, (and treason is,) to provide for 

 the forfeiture and confiscation of the offender's 

 property. And it is because he is a criminal 

 before the law that I propose that his horses, 



