ページの画像
PDF
ePub

50

ee

.n

he Fee

258

SPEECHES OF DANIEL WEBSTER.

sup

States by Mexico for the various claims and demands which the people of this country had against that Govern ment. At any rate, it will be found that President Polk's message, at the commencement of the session of Decem ber, 1847, avowed that the war was to be prosecuted until some acquisition of territory was made. And, as the quisition was to be south of the line of the United States, in warm climates and countries, it was pose, expected by the South, that whatever acquisitions were made in that region would be added to the slaveholding portion of the United States. Events turned out as was not expected, and that expectation has not been realized; and therefore some degree of disappointment naturally, I and surprise has resulted, of course. In other words, it is obvious that the question which has so long harassed the country, and at some times very seriously alarmed the minds of wise and good men, has come upon us for a fresh discussion,-the question of slavery in these United

States.

Now, sir, I propose-perhaps at the expense of some detail and consequent detention of the Senate-to review, historically, this question of slavery, which, partly in consequence of its own merits, and partly, perhaps mostly, in the manner it is discussed in one and the other portion of the country, has been a source of so much alienation and unkind feeling between the different portions of the Union. We all know, sir, that slavery has existed in the world from time immemorial. There was slavery in the earliest periods of history, in the Oriental nations. There was slavery among the Jews; the theocratic Government of that people made no injunction against it. There was slavery among the Greeks; and the ingenious philosophy of the Greeks found, or sought to find, a justification for it exactly upon the grounds which have been assumed for

such a justification in this country; that is, a natural and original difference among the races of mankind, the inferiority of the black or colored race to the white. The Greeks justified their system of slavery upon that ground precisely. They held the African, and in some parts the Asiatic, tribes to be inferior to the white race; but they did not show, I think, by any close process of logic, that, if this were true, the more intelligent and stronger had, therefore, a right to subjugate the weaker.

The more manly philosophy and jurisprudence of the Romans placed the justification of slavery on entirely different grounds.

The Roman jurists, from the first, and down to the fall of the Empire, admitted that slavery was against the natural law, by which, as they maintained, all men, of whatsoever clime, color, or capacity, were equal; but they justified slavery, first, upon the ground and authority of the law of nations-arguing, and arguing truly, that at that day the conventional law of nations admitted that captives in war, whose lives, according to the notions of the times, were at the absolute disposal of the captors, might, in exchange for exemption from death, be made slaves for life, and that such servitude might extend to their posterity. The jurists of Rome also maintained, that, by the civil law, there might be servitude-slavery, personal and hereditary; first, by the voluntary act of an individual who might sell himself into slavery; second, by his being received into a state of slavery by his creditors in satisfaction of a debt; and, thirdly, by being placed in a state of servitude or slavery for crime. At the introduction of Christianity into the world, the Roman world was full of slaves; and I suppose there is to be found no injunction against that relation between man and man in the teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ or a

behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once-glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured-bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,-Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!

II.

In the Senate of the United States, March 7, 1850, on the Slavery

THE VICE-PRESIDENT.

Compromise.

The resolutions submitted by

the Senator from Kentucky were made the special order of the day at 12 o'clock. On this subject the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Walker) has the floor.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. President, .this vast audience has not assembled to hear me; and there is but one man, in my opinion, who can assemble such an audience. They expect to hear him, and I feel it to be my duty, as well as my pleasure, to give the floor therefore to the Senator from Massachusetts. I understand it is immaterial to him upon which of these questions he speaks, and therefore I will not move to postpone the special order.

Mr. WEBSTER. I beg to express my obligations to my friend from Wisconsin, (Mr. Walker,) as well as to my friend from New York, (Mr. Seward,) for their courtesy in allowing me to address the Senate this morning.

Mr. President: I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States. It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels. It is not

to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions of government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the West, the North, and the stormy South, all combine to throw the whole ocean into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, and to disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat of the political elements; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform it with fidelity-not without a sense of surrounding dangers, but not without hope. I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole, and the preservation of the whole; and there is that which will keep me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear, or shall not appear, for many days. I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. "Hear me for my cause.' I speak to-day, out of a solicitous and anxious heart, for the restoration to the country of that quiet and that harmony which make the blessings of this Union so rich and so dear to us all. These are the topics that I propose to myself to discuss; these are the motives, and the sole motives, that influence me in the wish to communicate my opinions to the Senate and the country; and if I can do any thing, however little, for the promotion of these ends, I shall have accomplished all that I desire.

[ocr errors]

Mr. President, it may not be amiss to recur very briefly to the events which, equally sudden and extraordinary, have brought the political condition of the country to what it now is. In May, 1846, the United States declared war against Mexico. Her armies, then on the frontiers, entered the provinces of that Republic; met and defeated all her

« 前へ次へ »