Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/372

360 then moved an amendment, "that no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this Act;" and the House divided, sixty against sixty, nearly all the Pennsylvanians supporting Bidwell, while ten of the seventeen New York members showed the influence of slavery in their State by voting with the Southern slave-owners. Six Southern men, including the member for Delaware, joined the Pennsylvanians and New Englanders in this protest against turning the government into a slave-trading agency; while but two Northern men besides the members from New York voted with the South. Macon, the Speaker, by his casting vote threw out the amendment.

Even after this point was carried, notwithstanding the time wasted in going over and over again the same arguments on either side, the Bill made no progress. Men like Sloan and Smilie were not gifted with great genius, but found infinite resources in their patient obstinacy; and no one could fail to see that the true sympathies of the House were with them. Their first object was to prevent the forfeiture of the negroes, because forfeiture implied title, and the United States government could have no title in these human beings, mere captives in war of barbarous tribes; but on that point the House was decidedly against them, and even Josiah Quincy insisted that they were wrong. Forced to yield on the issue of forfeiture, they resisted with the greater obstinacy the sale of the forfeited negroes; and their objections were so obviously sound