Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/12

4 regard to any specific subject was to act upon it, if within its province, and if otherwise, 'to touch not, taste not, handle not.'" (Lunt's Origin of the Late War, p. 25.) In the debate upon the subject, one Southern gentleman objected to the commitment of these memorials as containing "unconstitutional requests," and said, "he feared the commitment would be a very alarming circumstance to the Southern States; for if it was to engage Congress in an unconstitutional measure, it would be considered an interference with their rights, making them uneasy under the government, and causing them to lament that they had ever put additional power into their hands." Another declared, "that the States would never have entered into the confederacy unless their property had been guaranteed to them, and that we look upon this measure as an attack upon the palladium of our property"—meaning the constitution. Another said if he was to hold these slaves in eternal bondage he would feel no uneasiness on account of the present menace, "because he would rely upon the virtue of Congress that they would not exercise any unconstitutional authority." The same historian well says "the impression made upon the southern members of Congress at the earliest period is also significant. Although evidently considering it of no practical importance, they yet clearly made it known they regarded such action as in violation of the constitution, and that without the guaranty for their rights of property in slaves, permitted by that instrument, the States which they represented would not have assented to it, and hence the plan for the Union must have failed. No one can doubt that if they had deemed the guaranty afforded insufficient they could have obtained pledges of a still more precise character, either then or at a later period, since the object of the Union was one of permanent interest to all. But neither they nor their northern compatriots entertained any question of the fidelity of their successors to engagements so solemnly undertaken, both express and implied." (Lunt, p. 27.) The history of this transaction shows how early the South was taught to look to the constitution for the defences of their rights in regard to slavery; how fully, too, and clearly the Congress admitted the existence of these defences, and that the South disregarded the unauthorized menace of these "anarchic Quakers," as Carlisle calls them, because they "relied upon the virtue of Congress that they would not exercise any unconstitutional authority. "Their property in slaves was guaranteed by the constitution; they felt authorized to say so by a solemn declaration of Congress made at the time, and they had