American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) by Various

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If we return home for instruction upon this point, we perceive that same
union exemplified in many a State, in which "Liberty has a temple in
every house, an altar in every heart," while involuntary servitude is
seen in every direction.

Is it denied that those States possess a republican form of government?
If it is, why does our power of correction sleep? Why is the
constitutional guaranty suffered to be inactive? Why am I permitted to
fatigue you, as the representative of a slaveholding State, with the
discussion of the "_nugae canorae_" (for so I think them) that have been
forced into this debate contrary to all the remonstrances of taste
and prudence? Do gentlemen perceive the consequences to which their
arguments must lead if they are of any value? Do they reflect that they
lead to emancipation in the old United States--or to an exclusion of
Delaware, Maryland, and all the South, and a great portion of the West
from the Union? My honorable friend from Virginia has no business here,
if this disorganizing creed be anything but the production of a heated
brain. The State to which I belong, must "perform a lustration"--must
purge and purify herself from the feculence of civil slavery, and
emulate the States of the North in their zeal for throwing down the
gloomy idol which we are said to worship, before her senators can have
any title to appear in this high assembly. It will be in vain to urge
that the old United States are exceptions to the rule--or rather (as the
gentlemen express it), that they have no disposition to apply the rule
to them. There can be no exceptions by implication only, to such a
rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States
by inference, will justify the like exemption of Missouri, unless they
point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not. The guarded
manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed
themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. They have no
disposition to meddle with slavery in the old United States. Perhaps
not--but who shall answer for their successors? Who shall furnish a
pledge that the principle once ingrafted into the Constitution, will not
grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow the whole land? It is the
natural office of such a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever
it finds it. New States, colonized by the apostles of this principle,
will enable it to set on foot a fanatical crusade against all who still
continue to tolerate it, although no practicable means are pointed out
by which they can get rid of it consistently with their own safety. At
any rate, a present forbearing disposition, in a few or in many, is not
a security upon which much reliance can be placed upon a subject as to
which so many selfish interests and ardent feelings are connected with
the cold calculations of policy. Admitting, however, that the old United
States are in no danger from this principle--why is it so? There can be
no other answer (which these zealous enemies of slavery can use) than
that the Constitution recognizes slavery as existing or capable of
existing in those States. The Constitution, then, admits that slavery
and a republican form of government are not incongruous. It associates
and binds them up together and repudiates this wild imagination which
the gentlemen have pressed upon us with such an air of triumph. But the
Constitution does more, as I have heretofore proved. It concedes that
slavery may exist in a new State, as well as in an old one--since the
language in which it recognizes slavery comprehends new States as well
as actual. I trust then that I shall be forgiven if I suggest, that no
eccentricity in argument can be more trying to human patience, than a
formal assertion that a constitution, to which slave-holding States were
the most numerous parties, in which slaves are treated as property
as well as persons, and provision is made for the security of that
property, and even for an augmentation of it by a temporary importation
from Africa, with a clause commanding Congress to guarantee a republican
form of government to those very States, as well as to others,
authorizes you to determine that slavery and a republican form of
government cannot coexist.

But if a republican form of government is that in which all the men have
a share in the public power, the slave-holding States will not alone
retire from the Union. The constitutions of some of the other States do
not sanction universal suffrage, or universal eligibility. They require
citizenship, and age, and a certain amount of property, to give a title
to vote or to be voted for; and they who have not those qualifications
are just as much disfranchised, with regard to the government and its
power, as if they were slaves. They have civil rights indeed (and
so have slaves in a less degree; ) but they have no share in the
government. Their province is to obey the laws, not to assist in making
them. All such States must therefore be forisfamiliated with Virginia
and the rest, or change their system. For the Constitution being
absolutely silent on those subjects, will afford them no protection. The
Union might thus be reduced from an Union to an unit. Who does not see
that such conclusions flow from false notions--that the true theory of a
republican government is mistaken--and that in such a government rights,
political and civil, may be qualified by the fundamental law, upon such
inducements as the freemen of the country deem sufficient? That civil
rights may be qualified as well as political, is proved by a
thousand examples. Minors, resident aliens, who are in a course of
naturalization--the other sex, whether maids, or wives, or widows,
furnish sufficient practical proofs of this.

* * * * *

We are next invited to study that clause of the Constitution which
relates to the migration or importation, before the year 1808, of such
persons as any of the States then existing should think proper to admit.
It runs thus: "The migration or importation of such persons as any
of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be
prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred
and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not
exceeding ten dollars for each person."

It is said that this clause empowers Congress, after the year 1808,
to prohibit the passage of slaves from State to State, and the word
"migration" is relied upon for that purpose.

* * * * *

Whatever may be the latitude in which the word "persons" is capable of
being received, it is not denied that the word "importation" indicates
a bringing in from a jurisdiction foreign to the United States. The two
termini of the importation, here spoken of, are a foreign country and
the American Union--the first the _terminus a quo_, the second the
_terminus ad quem_. The word migration stands in simple connexion with
it, and of course is left to the full influence of that connection.
The natural conclusion is, that the same termini belong to each, or, in
other words, that if the importation must be abroad, so also must be
the migration--no other termini being assigned to the one which are not
manifestly characteristic of the other. This conclusion is so obvious,
that to repel it, the word migration requires, as an appendage,
explanatory phraseology, giving to it a different beginning from that
of importation. To justify the conclusion that it was intended to mean a
removal from State to State, each within the sphere of the constitution
in which it is used, the addition of the words from one to another State
in this Union, were indispensable. By the omission of these words, the
word "migration" is compelled to take every sense of which it is fairly
susceptible from its immediate neighbor, "importation." In this view
it means a coming, as "importation" means a bringing, from a foreign
jurisdiction into the United States. That it is susceptible of this
meaning, nobody doubts. I go further. It can have no other meaning in
the place in which it is found. It is found in the Constitution of this
Union--which, when it speaks of migration as of a general concern, must
be supposed to have in view a migration into the domain which itself
embraces as a general government.

Migration, then, even if it comprehends slaves, does not mean the
removal of them from State to State, but means the coming of slaves
from places beyond their limits and their power. And if this be so, the
gentlemen gain nothing for their argument by showing that slaves were
the objects of this term.

An honorable gentleman from Rhode Island, whose speech was distinguished
for its ability, and for an admirable force of reasoning, as well to
as by the moderation and mildness of its spirit, informed us, with less
discretion than in general he exhibited, that the word "migration" was
introduced into this clause at the instance of some of the Southern
States, who wished by its instrumentality to guard against a prohibition
by Congress of the passage into those States of slaves from other
States. He has given us no authority for this supposition, and it is,
therefore, a gratuitous one. How improbable it is, a moment's reflection
will convince him. The African slave trade being open during the whole
of the time to which the entire clause in question referred, such a
purpose could scarcely be entertained; but if it had been entertained,
and there was believed to be a necessity for securing it, by a
restriction upon the power of Congress to interfere with it, is it
possible that they who deemed it important, would have contented
themselves with a vague restraint, which was calculated to operate
in almost any other manner than that which they desired? If fear and
jealousy, such as the honorable gentleman has described, had dictated
this provision, a better term than that of "migration," simple and
unqualified, and joined, too, with the word "importation," would have
been found to tranquilize those fears and satisfy that jealousy. Fear
and jealousy are watchful, and are rarely seen to accept a security
short of their object, and less rarely to shape that security, of their
own accord, in such a way as to make it no security at all. They always
seek an explicit guaranty; and that this is not such a guaranty this
debate has proved, if it has proved nothing else.

WENDELL PHILLIPS,

OF MASSACHUSETTS. (BORN 1811, DIED 1884.)

ON THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY;

FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, DECEMBER 8, 1837

MR. CHAIRMAN:

We have met for the freest discussion of these resolutions, and the
events which gave rise to them. [Cries of "Question," "Hear him," "Go
on," "No gagging," etc.] I hope I shall be permitted to express my
surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, surprise not only at
such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received
within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of
the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here,
in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the colonies,
and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy,
compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! Fellow
citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? ["No, no."] The mob at Alton
were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights--met to resist the
laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same; and the glorious
mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our
day. To make out their title to such defence, the gentleman says that
the British Parliament had a right to tax these colonies. It is manifest
that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground, for Lovejoy
had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only
defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in
arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him
went against and over the laws. The mob, as the gentleman terms it--mob,
forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvellously
patient generation!--the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old
South to destroy the tea, were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal
enactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act
laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's
usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary
history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments
of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament
unconstitutional--beyond its power. It was not until this was made out
that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments of the Council
Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the
contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs,
for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to
their memory. The difference between the excitements of those days and
our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked,
is simply this: the men of that day went for the right, as secured
by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and
constitution of the Province. The rioters of our days go for their
own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down
principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and
Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing
to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the
recreant American--the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he
should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles
of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil
consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the
earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.

[By this time, the uproar in the Hall had risen so high that the speech
was suspended for a short time. Applause and counter applause, cries of
"Take that back," "Make him take back recreant," "He sha'n't go on till
he takes it back," and counter cries of "Phillips or nobody," continued
until the pleadings of well-known citizens had somewhat restored order,
when Mr. Phillips resumed.]

Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely the
Attorney-General, so long and so well known here, needs not the aid of
your hisses against one so young as I am--my voice never before heard
within these walls!

* * * * *

I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the
events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not
appeal to the executive--trust their defence to the police of the city?
It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men
within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course
of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, sir, that they did act with
the approbation and sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was
no executive to appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that
he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to
defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling
in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely
citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the
_posse comitatus_, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city,
acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting
lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to
be sustained here that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in
executing the laws?

Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist?
Sir, I protest against the question instead of answering it. Lovejoy did
not resist, in the sense they mean. He did not throw himself back on the
natural right of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the
dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow. Sir, as
I understand this affair, it was not an individual protecting his
property; it was not one body of armed men resisting another, and making
the streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did
not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met
family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws under
foot. No! the men in that house were regularly enrolled, under the
sanction of the Mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy
men were enrolled with the approbation of the Mayor. These relieved each
other every other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night
of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next evening, it was not
thought necessary to summon more than half that number; among these was
Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city
resisting rioters--civil government breasting itself to the shock of
lawless men.

Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It is in fact
simply this: Has the civil magistrate a right to put down a riot?

Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at Alton from the
commencement of these disputes. Not at all. "No one of us," says an
eyewitness and a comrade of Lovejoy, "has taken up arms during these
disturbances but at the command of the Mayor." Anarchy did not settle
down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the
law, represented in his person, sustained itself against its foes.
When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had "planted
himself on his constitutional rights,"--appealed to the laws,--claimed
the protection of the civil authority,--taken refuge under "the broad
shield of the Constitution. When through that he was pierced and fell,
he fell but one sufferer in a common catastrophe." He took refuge under
the banner of liberty--amid its folds; and when he fell, its glorious
stars and stripes, the emblem of free institutions, around which cluster
so many heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr's blood.

It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy or his comrades
fired first. This is denied by those who have the best means of knowing.
Guns were first fired by the mob. After being twice fired on, those
within the building consulted together and deliberately returned the
fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right so to do;
not only the right which every citizen has to defend himself, but the
further right which every civil officer has to resist violence. Even
if Lovejoy fired the first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our
sympathy, or destroy his title to be considered a martyr in defence of a
free press. The question now is, Did he act within the constitution and
the laws? The men who fell in State Street, on the 5th of March, 1770,
did more than Lovejoy is charged with. They were the first assailants
upon some slight quarrel, they pelted the troops with every missile
within reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy with which Hancock and
Warren hallowed their memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the
cause of American liberty? If, sir, I had adopted what are called Peace
principles, I might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you
who believe as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates to execute the
laws, join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the conduct of those who
assemble year after year on the 4th of July to fight over the battles of
the Revolution, and yet "damn with faint praise" or load with obloquy,
the memory of this man who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty,
property, and the freedom of the press!

Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that,
within the limits of our country, civil authority should have been so
prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defence, and to arm
in vain. The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent--he
"died as the fool dieth." And a reverend clergyman of the city tells
us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the
community! If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt.
He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with
him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to
speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions!
If this be so, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan,
where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the
tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we
may do or say, till some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the
lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the
abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob. By so doing,
it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights,
but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may
sometime provoke disturbances from the minority. A few men may make a
mob as well as many. The majority then, have no right, as Christian men,
to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead to a mob!
Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits!

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence
was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want
of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent
when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by
that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he
hated sat again upon the throne.

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle
reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: "The patriots
are routed,--the redcoats victorious, Warren lies dead upon the field."
With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who should have
charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that, bred a
physician, he was "out of place" in that battle, and "died as the fool
dieth." How would the intimation have been received, that Warren and his
associates should have merited a better time? But if success be indeed
the only criterion of prudence, _Respice finem_,--wait till the end!

_Presumptuous_ to assert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is
the assertion of such freedom before the age? So much before the age as
to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the community?
Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very thing which
entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked
the Revolution--taxation without representation--is far beneath that
for which he died. [Here there was a general expression of strong
disapprobation.] One word, gentlemen. As much as thought is better than
money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere
question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the King did
but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence had
England offered to put a gag upon his lips. The question that stirred
the Revolution touched our civil interests. This concerns us not only as
citizens, but as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost
with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions
of the pulpit and the progress of our faith.

The clergy, "marvellously out of place" where free speech is battled
for--liberty of speech on national sins! Does the gentleman remember
that freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom
to print? I thank the clergy here present, as I reverence their
predecessors, who did not so far forget their country in their immediate
profession as to deem it duty to separate themselves from the struggle
of '76--the Mayhews and Coopers, who remembered that they were citizens
before they were clergymen.

Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that brave little band
at Alton for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had fled from city
to city,--suffered the destruction of three presses patiently. At length
he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of
wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come; it
was full time to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a community
like our own, of fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one
"in the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." The
people there, children of our older States, seem to have forgotten the
blood-tried principles of their fathers the moment they lost sight
of our New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the
priceless value of the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right
their wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked out on
a community, staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights
and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might
be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the
necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion,
fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.

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