Various - The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, June, 1862

The constitutional provision for the rendition of slaves was simply a compromise between union and slavery. Of the two evils of no union , or no slavery , it was thought the former was the worse, and consequently the free States fell in with the measure. But could the patriots of the Revolution have foreseen the gigantic growth of slavery, and the use that would have been made of the provision recognizing it, no consideration would have induced them to adopt a course that has been prolific of so much misrepresentation and mischief to the country. They left the suppression of slavery to the States where it existed, but there was no intention to ingraft the idea of property in man in the Constitution, or to favor its extension beyond the original slave States in any way. John Jay, the first Chief-Justice, was preëminently qualified to judge respecting this. We have his testimony most explicitly denying the natural right of property in slaves, and declaring that the Constitution did not recognize the equity of its extension in the new States or Territories. Who was there more conversant with the genius of our country than Washington; and yet how full is his testimony to the evil of slavery; its want of natural right to support it, and the necessity of its speedy suppression and abolition? Is it possible that he, himself a slaveholder and an emancipationist, could utter such sentiments and enforce them by his example, if he regarded the Constitution as establishing the light of property in man, and the benefit of the indefinite expansion of slavery over the country? No, indeed! If we may consider the Constitution in relation to slaves an inconsistent instrument, we can not prove it an hypocritical and dishonest one. The hard necessities of the times wrung out of reluctant patriots the admission of the rendition of slaves, but they would not by any reasonable construction of language, assert the natural right of property in slaves, and the propriety or benefit of its toleration in new States and Territories. It was bad enough to tolerate this evil in the old slave States, but it would be infamous to hand down to posterity a Constitution denying the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. Toleration is not synonymous with approval, or existence with right. There is a most subtle error in the assumption of the indifference of the Constitution to freedom and slavery—that it advocated neither, but protected both. Certainly the framers of the Constitution were not automatons, or this instrument the accident of the throw of the dice-box. The great purpose of this instrument was to raise the revenue, and defend the country. Its end was to protect the liberties and command the respect of civilized nations. The old Confederation was to give way to the Federal Constitution. The independence of the United States had been achieved at a heavy cost. To say nothing of frontiers exposed, country ravaged, towns burnt, commerce nearly ruined, the derangement of finances—the pecuniary loss alone amounted to one hundred and seventy million dollars, two thirds of which had been expended by Congress, the balance by individual States. The design of the Constitution was to preserve the fruits of the Revolution, to respect State sovereignty, and yet secure a powerful and efficient Union; to have a central government, and yet not infringe upon the local rights of the States. It will, therefore, be seen that while the subject of slavery was earnestly discussed, and presented at the outset a great obstacle to the union of the States, yet it was thought, upon the whole, best to leave to the slave States the business of doing away with this great evil in such a manner as in their judgment might best conduce to their own security and the preservation of the Union.

But no truth of history is more evident than that the authors of the Constitution regarded slavery as impossible to be sustained upon the ground of the natural rights of mankind, and deserving of no encouragement in the Territories, or States hereafter to come into the Union. It was thought that the best interests of the slave States would lead them to abolish slavery, and that before many years, the Republic would cease to bear the disgrace of chattel bondage. It is certainly proper that the acts and language of the authors of the Constitution, and those who chiefly were instrumental in achieving our independence, should be made to interpret that instrument which was the creation of their own toils and love of country. Because the circumstances of the present day have brought about a mighty change in the feelings and opinions of the slave States, it does not follow that the Constitution in its original intention and spirit should be accommodated to this new aspect of things. It is easy to get up a theory of the natural right of slavery, and then say that the Constitution meant that the slave States should carry slave property just where the free States carry their property; but when this ground is taken, the Constitution is made, to all intents, a pro-slavery instrument. It ceases to be the charter of a nation's freedom, and resolves itself into the most effective agent of the propagandism of slavery. The transition is easy from such a theory to the fulfillment of the boast of Senator Toombs, 'that the roll of slaves might yet be called at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument.' But no straining of the language of the Constitution can make it mean the recognition of the natural right of slavery. The guarded manner in which the provision was made for the rendition of slaves, and all the circumstances connected with the adoption of the Constitution, show conclusively that slavery was considered only a local and municipal institution, a serious evil, to be suppressed and curtailed by the slave States, and never by the General Government a blessing to be fostered and extended where it did not exist at the time the Union of the thirteen States was perfected.

Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederate States, in a speech at Atlanta, Georgia, said:'Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and many others, were tender of

the word slave, in the organic law, and all looked forward to the time when the institution of slavery should be removed from our midst as a trouble and a stumbling-block. The delusion could not be traced in any of the component parts of the Southern Constitution. In that instrument we solemnly discarded the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians, that all men of all races were equal, and we have made African inequality, and subordination, the chief corner-stone of the Southern Republic.'

Here we have the great idea of an essential difference in relation to the Constitution and slavery existing at the present day South, from that which did exist at the time of its ratification universally by the people of the thirteen States. The Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy frankly admits that slavery is its chief corner-stone; that our ancestors were deluded upon the subject of slavery; that the ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence respecting the equality of all men, and their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are only the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians; consequently that in the Southern Constitution all such trash was solemnly discarded. Can clearer proof be wanted to show that the stand-point of slavery and freedom has altogether changed since the days of Washington? Is it not true that our country at the present day presents the singular spectacle of two great divisions, one holding to the Constitution as interpreted by our ancestors North and South, the other openly repudiating such interpretation? Is it strange, with such a radical difference existing as to the import of the Constitution upon the subject of slavery, that we should have such frequent and ever persistent charges of Northern aggression? If the history of slavery be kept in mind, it will be seen that it has steadily had its eye upon one end, and that is national aggrandizement. Thus about two hundred thousand slaveholders wield all the political power of the South, and compel all non-slaveholders to acquiesce in their supremacy. But whatever the South may choose to do, the North is under obligation to give to slavery nothing more than what is guaranteed in the Constitution. If more than this is asked for, the North is bound by a just regard for its own interests and the prosperity of the country to refuse compliance. It has been seen that even admitting that a State has a just cause of complaint, or supposing as a matter of fact that the Constitution is violated, she can not set herself up to be exclusively the judge in this matter, and leave the Union at her convenience.