Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/95

Rh here, not without truth, and not without some acerbity of temper and force of language, to the injurious policy of the mother country, who, to favor the navigator, had entailed these evils upon the colonies. I need hardly refer, sir, to the publications of the day. They are matters of history on the record. The eminent men, the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the south, held the same sentiments; that slavery was an evil, a blight, a blast, a mildew, a scourge, and a curse. There are no terms of reprobation of slavery so vehement in the north of that day as in the south. The north was not so much excited against it as the south, and the reason is, I suppose, because there was much less at the north, and the people did not see, or think they saw, the evils so prominently as they were seen, or thought to be seen, at the south.

Then, sir, when this constitution was framed, this was the light in which the convention viewed it. The convention reflected the judgment and sentiments of the great men of the south. A member of the other house, whom I have not the honor to know, in a recent speech, has collected extracts from these public documents. They prove the truth of what I am saying, and the question then was, how to deal with it, and how to deal with it as an evil. Well, they came to this general result. They thought that slavery could not be continued in the country, if the importation of slaves were made to cease, and therefore they provided that after a certain period the importation might be prevented by the act of the new government. Twenty years were proposed by some gentleman,—a northern gentleman, I think,—and many of the southern gentlemen opposed it as being too long. Mr. Madison especially was something warm against it. He said it would bring too much of this mischief into the country to allow the importation of slaves for such a period. Because we must take along with us, in the whole of this discussion, when we are considering the sentiments and opinions in which this constitutional provision originated, that the conviction of all men was, that, if the importation of slaves ceased, the white race would multiply faster than the black race, and that slavery would therefore gradually wear out and expire. It may not be improper here to allude to that, I had almost said, celebrated opinion of Mr. Madison. You observe, sir, that the term “slave” or “slavery” is not used in the constitution. The constitution does not require that “fugitive slaves” shall be delivered up. It requires that “persons bound to service in one state, and escaping into another, shall be delivered up.” Mr. Madison opposed the introduction of the term “slave” or “slavery” into the constitution; for he said that he did not wish to see it recognized by the constitution of the United States of America, that there could be property in men. Now, sir, all this took place at the convention in 1787; but connected with this—concurrent and contemporaneous—is another important transaction not sufficiently attended to. The convention for framing this constitution assembled in Philadelphia in May, and sat until September, 1787. During all that time the Congress of the United States was in session at New York. It was a matter of design, as we know, that the convention should not assemble in the same city where Congress was holding its sessions. Almost all the public men of the country, therefore, of distinction and eminence, were in one or the other of these two assemblies; and I think it happened in some instances that the same gentlemen were members of both. If I mistake not, such was the case of Mr. Rufus King, then a