Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/554



In the ten years between 1830 and 1840, the aggregate increase amounted to 478,412. Slavery had decreased in the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

On the 24th of January, 1842, Mr. Adams presented a petition to the house, signed by forty-six citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, for the adoption of measures peaceably to dissolve the Union, assigning as one of the reasons the inequality of benefits conferred upon different sections, one section being annually drained to sustain the views and course of the other without adequate return. Mr. Adams moved its reference to a select committee, with instructions to report an answer showing the reasons why the prayer of the petitioners should not be granted.

This matter produced considerable excitement, questions and motions followed. Mr. Gilmer, of Virginia, submitted as a question of privilege the following: "Resolved, that in presenting to this house a petition for the dissolution of the Union, the member from Massachusetts has justly incurred the censure of this house." The resolution was objected to as out of order; the speaker decided that being a question of privilege it was in order. Mr. Adams hoped the resolution would be received and debated, desiring the privilege of addressing the house in his own defense. A motion to lay Gilmer's resolution on the table was negatived, 94 to 112, Mr. Adams himself voting in the negative.

Mr. Marshall, of Kentucky, then offered as a substitute for Gilmer's resolution, a preamble and two resolutions, declaring a proposition to the representatives of the people to dissolve the constitution which they were sworn to support, to be "a high breach of privilege, a contempt offered to the house, a direct proposition to each member to commit perjury, and involving necessarily in its consequences the destruction of our country, and the crime of high treason;" that Mr. Adams, in presenting the petition, had "offered the deepest indignity to the house, and insult to the people," and would, if "unrebuked and unpunished, have disgraced his country in the eyes of the world." It was farther resolved, that this insult, the first of the kind ever offered, deserved expulsion; but, as an act of grace and mercy they would only inflict upon him "their severest censure, for the maintenance of their own purity, and dignity; and for the rest, they turn him over to his own conscience and the indignation of all true American citizens."