The Word Itself Is Not Mentioned In
The Constitution.
It speaks not of a slave, but of a "person held
to service or labor." It neither sanctions nor forbids slavery.
It
assumes no power in the matter of slavery; and under it, at the
present moment, all Congress voting together, with the full consent
of the legislatures of thirty-three States, could not
constitutionally put down slavery in the remaining thirty-fourth
State. In fact the Constitution ignored the subject.
But, nevertheless, Washington, and Jefferson from whom Madison
received his inspiration, were opposed to slavery. I do not know
that Washington ever took much action in the matter, but his
expressed opinion is on record. But Jefferson did so throughout his
life. Before the Declaration of Independence he endeavored to make
slavery illegal in Virginia. In this he failed, but long afterward,
when the United States was a nation, he succeeded in carrying a law
by which the further importation of slaves into any of the States
was prohibited after a certain year - 1820. When this law was
passed, the framers of it considered that the gradual abolition of
slavery would be secured. Up to that period the negro population in
the States had not been self-maintained. As now in Cuba, the
numbers had been kept up by new importations, and it was calculated
that the race, when not recruited from Africa, would die out. That
this calculation was wrong we now know, and the breeding-grounds of
Virginia have been the result.
At that time there were no cotton fields. Alabama and Mississippi
were outlying territories. Louisiana had been recently purchased,
but was not yet incorporated as a State. Florida still belonged to
Spain, and was all but unpopulated. Of Texas no man had yet heard.
Of the slave States, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were
alone wedded to slavery. Then the matter might have been managed.
But under the Constitution as it had been framed, and with the
existing powers of the separate States, there was not even then open
any way by which slavery could be abolished other than by the
separate action of the States; nor has there been any such way
opened since. With slavery these Southern States have grown and
become fertile. The planters have thriven, and the cotton fields
have spread themselves. And then came emancipation in the British
islands. Under such circumstances and with such a lesson, could it
be expected that the Southern States should learn to love abolition?
It is vain to say that slavery has not caused secession, and that
slavery has not caused the war. That, and that only, has been the
real cause of this conflict, though other small collateral issues
may now be put forward to bear the blame. Those other issues have
arisen from this question of slavery, and are incidental to it and a
part of it. Massachusetts, as we all know, is democratic in its
tendencies, but South Carolina is essentially aristocratic.
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