Speech of Hon. L. F. S. Foster, of Connecticut, on the Lecompton Constitution
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| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Foster, L. F. S.) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Speech of Hon. L. F. S. Foster, of Connecticut, on the Lecompton Constitution: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 8 and 19, 1858 Senate having under consideration, as in Committee of the Whole, the bill tor the admission of Kansas into the Union as a State - Mr. Foster said; Mr. President: After the intimation which was given us by the honorable Senator from Missouri, representing the majority of the Territorial Committee, that the vote on this question is to be taken on Monday next, it struck me that those who proposed to be heard on this subject had better be prompt in their action. I certainly received it as kind in the honorable Senator to give us this early notice; for I was one of those who had been making some preparation to address the Senate upon the subject now pending. I have made some few notes and memoranda on the subject, but I had not expected to speak upon it to-day, and I have not those notes or memoranda here; but, sir, I have before me the constitution which it is proposed to impose on the people of Kansas by this body, and I desire to call the attention of the Senate for a few moments to that constitution, and to urge a few of the reasons why I, as a member of the Senate, can never vote to admit Kansas under that constitution with the provisions and principles which it contains, though everything else in regard to the subject was as I could wish it to be. In the first place, I cannot vote to admit a State into this Confederacy which lies north of 36 30 north latitude, having slavery as a provision of its constitution. I recognize the Missouri compromise of 1820 as still binding upon the people of this country, notwithstanding the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. I am one of those who mean to be bound by that compromise, to act upon it here, at least so far forth as never to vote for the admission of a State lying north, of that line, which State proposes to establish African slavery. I believe that compromise was entered into in good faith.1 believe that it conduced to the peace of the country for a long course of years.1 believe there was no necessity for its repeal. I believe that its repeal was a violation of plighted faith. I believe it was an outrage upon the moral sense of the nation, and it ought not to have been done. I therefore will recognize the old compromise, and will never recognize the repeal. Inasmuch as this constitution proposes to establish slavery in the future State of Kansas, and to establish it in a most offensive and obnoxious form - if that were all, 1 could not vote for its admission. The article to which I call the attention of the Senate is the seventh article of the Lecompton constitution, which is before us. The first section of that article reads thus: "The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave, and its increase, is the same, and an inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever." That section contains a principle which, in my judgment, is false in morals, false in politics, and false in law. I will never vote for the admission of a State into this Union with a provision so obnoxious as that. If we were admitting a State lying far South, there would be no necessity for the enunciation of a doctrine like that. Even although the State might tolerate and establish slavery, it need not do it in that most offensive form. It is flying in the face of Christendom inn manner which I cannot justify or tolerate. I do not believe that here, in the latter half of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, it is to be laid down as a fundamental principle in a constitution which is required to be republican in its form, that the right of property by man in man is prior to all constitutional law, and is as in
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