The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5

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The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the
original Constitution, twenty-one--a clear majority of the
whole--certainly understood that no proper division of local from Federal
authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
Government to control slavery in the Federal Territories; whilst all the
rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the
understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and
the text affirms that they understood the question "better than we."

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question
manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the
original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have
already stated, the present frame of "the Government under which we live"
consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and
adopted since. Those who now insist that Federal control of slavery in
Federal Territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions
which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, they all fix
upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original
instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves
upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived
of "life, liberty, or property without due process of law"; while Senator
Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth
amendment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution" "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people."

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first
Congress which sat under the Constitution--the identical Congress which
passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in
the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they
were the identical same individual men who, at the same session, and at
the same time within the session, had under consideration, and in
progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act
prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The
Constitutional amendments were introduced before and passed after the act
enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that, during the whole pendency of the
act to enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also
pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the
framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were
pre-eminently our fathers who framed that part of "the Government under
which we live," which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government
to control slavery in the Federal Territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the
two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to
maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other?
And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with
the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two
things alleged to be inconsistent understood whether they really were
inconsistent better than we--better than he who affirms that they are
inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original
Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed
the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who
may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the Government under which
we live." And, so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them
ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper
division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the
Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in
the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that
any living man in the world ever did, prior to the beginning of the
present century (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the
last half of the present century), declare that, in his understanding,
any proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the
Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in
the Federal Territories. To those who now so declare, I give not only
"our fathers who framed the Government under which we live," but with
them all other living men within the century in which it was framed,
among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of
a single man agreeing with them.

Now and here let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not
mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers
did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience to
reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is that, if we would
supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do
so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their
great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most
surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the
question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that proper division of local
from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories,
he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful
evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead
others who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it,
into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under
which we live" were of the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and
deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day
sincerely believes "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we
live," used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have
led them to understand that a proper division of local from Federal
authority, or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is
right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the
responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their
principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not
shirk that responsibility by asserting that they "understood the question
just as well, and even better than we do now."

But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the
Government under which we live, understood this question just as well,
and even better than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they
acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask--all Republicans desire--in
relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again
marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected
only because of, and so far as, its actual presence among us makes that
toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those
fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained. For
this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe,
they will be content.

And now, if they would listen--as I suppose they will not--I would
address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just
people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and
justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak
of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the
best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or
murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your
contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional
condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended
to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable
prerequisite license, so to speak among you, to be admitted or permitted
to speak at all: Now; can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause, and to
consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring
forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough
to hear us deny or justify.

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden
of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that
our party has no existence in your section--gets no votes in your
section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If
it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to
get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You
cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it?
If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be
sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You
will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof,
does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section
is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that
fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that
we repel you by, some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by
any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you
to where you ought to have started to a discussion of the right or wrong
of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your
section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our
principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and
denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our
principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet us as
if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept
the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which "our
fathers who framed the Government under which we live" thought so clearly
right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official
oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without
a moment's consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional
parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight
years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the
United States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the
prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied
the policy of the Government upon that subject up to, and at, the very
moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he
wrote La Fayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure,
expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time
have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon
this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or
in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast
the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon
you, who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we
commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right
application of it.

But you say you are conservative--eminently conservative--while we are
revolutionary, destructive, or something, of the sort. What is
conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against a new and
untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point
in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live"; while you with one accord reject, and
scout, and spit upon that old policy and insist upon substituting
something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that
substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but
you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the
fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a
Congressional slave code for the Territories; some for Congress
forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some
for maintaining slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some
for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another,
no third man should object," fantastically called "popular sovereignty";
but never a man among you in favor of Federal prohibition of slavery in
Federal Territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed
the Government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans
can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our
Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism
for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness against us, are based
on the most clear and stable foundations.

Again: You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it
formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny
that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy
of the fathers. We resisted and still resist your innovation; and thence
comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that
question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy.
What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have
the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old
times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it;
and what is your proof'? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that
matter you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do
not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for
persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does
not know to be true is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the
Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We
know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held
to and made by our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it
occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were
in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you
could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and
your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew
that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not
much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines
and declarations are accompanied with a continued protest against any
interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves.
Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common
with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,"
declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us
declare even this. For any thing we say or do, the slaves would scarcely
know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact,
generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing.
In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the
other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to
the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood,
and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the
Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton
insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times as
many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your
very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by
Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United
States, I do not think a general or even a very extensive slave
insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be
attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can
incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials
are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied the
indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their
masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for
an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty
individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite
master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave
revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring
under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history,
though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only
about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his
anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by
consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the
kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local
revolts, extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the
natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I
think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears or
much hopes for such an event will be alike disappointed.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in
our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation
peaceably, and in such slow degrees as that the evil will wear off
insensibly, and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human
nature must shudder at the prospect held up."

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of
emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as
to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slave holding States only.
The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of
restraining the extension of the institution--the power to insure that a
slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now
free from slavery.

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was
an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the
slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves,
with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That
affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts related in
history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods
over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by
Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little
else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely
the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and
on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two
things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown,
Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human
action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be
changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this
nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot
destroy that judgment and feeling--that sentiment--by breaking up the
political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter
and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your
heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the
sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box,
into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your
constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not
fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to
deprive you of some right plainly written down in the Constitution. But
we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood
allusion to an assumed constitutional right of yours to take slaves into
the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such
right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is
literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that
such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the
Government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution
as you please on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule
or ruin, in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme
Court has decided the disputed constitutional question in your favor. Not
quite so. But, waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and
decision, the court have decided the question for you in a sort of way.
The court have substantially said it is your constitutional right to take
slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.
When I say, the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in
a divided court, by a bare majority of the judges, and they not quite
agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so
made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its
meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of
fact--the statement in the opinion that "the right of property in a slave
is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in
a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind,
the judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is
impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity
that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there--"distinctly," that
is, not mingled with anything else; "expressly," that is, in words
meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of
no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is
affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to
show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in the
Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection with
language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and that wherever in
that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person"; and
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is
spoken of as "service or labor which may be due," as a debt payable in
service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of
speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the
Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to their notice,
is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken
statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers; who framed the
Government under which we live",--the men who made the Constitution
--decided this same constitutional question in our favor, long ago;
decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision,
without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was
made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any
mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to
break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is shall
be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political
action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In
that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you
say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is
cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his
teeth, "stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you'll be a
murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me-my money was my own, and I had
a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my
own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of
destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be
distinguished in principle.