The Rights and Privileges of the Several States in Regard to Slavery, Vol. 1
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Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Author, Unknown) |
Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from The Rights and Privileges of the Several States in Regard to Slavery, Vol. 1: Being a Series of Essays, Published in the Western Reserve Chronicle, After the Election of 1842 It is, therefore, plain, that the General Government have now no more power over the institution of slavery than it had prior to the adoption of the Constitution. The people of the southern States hold that institution as independently of the Federal Government as they did under the old Confederation. Precisely to the same extent do the people of the free States bold and enjoy the blessings of personal liberty. They delegated to the Federal Government no more power to involve them in slavery, than the south did to involve them in its abolition. The rights of the States on this subject were mutual, and perfectly reciprocal. Those States who desired to do so, could continue the institution of slavery; and those who desired to be free and entirely exempt from the expense, the disgrace, and the guilt of it, reserved to themselves the full and indisputable right to remain altogether separate from, and unconnected with, its evils. The sons of the pilgrims regarded slavery as a violation of the will of Heaven and a flagrant transgression of the law of God. They would no sooner have been prevailed upon to involve themselves in its moral turpitude, than they would in that of piracy or murder. The people of the free States, therefore, secured to themselves the absolute right of remaining free from the guilt the disgrace and the expense of slavery, by withholding from the Federal Government all constitutional power in regard to that institution; while the slave States secured to themselves an equal privilege to enjoy the benefits (as they supposed) resulting from a continuance of slavery. These doctrines are not new - they are as old as the Constitution. They are not local for they have been substantially asserted in Congress, and both in the north and the south. They are not anti-slavery for they have been, for half a century, the declared doctrines of the slave States. If any anti-slavery men claims for the free States any further rights in regard to slavery than those expressed above, he is requested to make them known. If any Whig or Democrat of Ohio is willing to deny to the people of the free States the rights above set forth, he is invited to express his views, in order that the public mind may be informed upon this important subject. If these be the constitutional rights of the free States, all will agree that they should be maintained and supported. On this point it would appear impossible that Whigs and anti-slavery men should disagree. I, therefore, submit the question to our editors, and the conductors of the public press generally, whether they ought not to speak out boldly and temperately upon this subject. Ought they not to urge forward our State and National legislators to maintain and defend the rights of the free States, as assiduously as they do those of the slave States? The question is also submitted to the members of our State Legislature, and to our members of Congress, whether they are not as much bound by their oath of office to preserve the free States from all participation in the guilt, the disgrace, and the expense of slavery, as they are to preserve the slave States from the abolition of that institution by Congress? Ought they not to put forth their influence to separate and wholly divorce the Federal Government from all support of slavery, and to bring it back to the position in which the Constitution placed it in relation to that institution? Having thus stated, generally, the rights of the States, I shall, in my next communication, examine the subject of fugitive slaves; which has sometimes been urged as an exception to the general principle that we, of the free States, are constitutionally unconnected with slavery. Pacificus.
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