The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-10-18

swO BY HISTORICAL EXPOSTTION-Concluded.
de
l,ethe Friends Of american Liberty:
pat is thus historically certain that the States
Il Virginia and Pennsylvania ratified the Con-
titution with the understanding" that it
clothed Congress with power to abolish Slavery
In the States.
The friends of Liberty have no occasion,
think, in view of such facts as these, to qualify
or modify their constitutional expositions, as
founded on examination of the instrument
itself, by any historical reservations or misgiv-
ings. They need indulge no apprehensions
that something Of the nature of compro-
mise" must or may have entered into the
transactions Of our fathers, in framing or in
adopting this instrument. There Is not the
slightest foundation for the apprehension. On
the other hand, it is as well established as any
negative proposition can be, that nothing of
the kind could hare taken place The facts
show more than the improbability, they even in
dictate the impossibility, of any such thing. The
ascertained and attested historical facts cannot
be shown to consist with the supposition of it.
Turn over all the political literature of that
period that has come down to US. Its testimony
is uniformly on one side. There is the i" Fed
eralist," written by Madison, Jay, and Hamil-
ton, members of the Convention, and written
for the express purpose of persuading the peo-
pie to adopt the Constitution. Those pages
reveal the fact that there tcere a number of
delicate and difficult subjects to be adjusted
and harmonized, but, among them all, not the
slightest notice is taken of any such delicate
and difficult question as that of Slavery. There
was the question between the large and the
small States, whether the small States were to
be allowed as many Senators as the large States.
There was the question respecting the relative
position and powers of the Federal and State
Governments There was the question con-
corning the powers of the Judiciary, the inter-
ests of navigation, and especially whether the
structure and form of the proposed Government
were sufficiently republican. On these and
kindred points, the Convention seems to have
labored, and sometimes TO have encountered
grave difficulties On these points, too, the
gigantic authors of the Federalist labored,
through the whole of their large volume. and
expended their strength. But not paragraph
do we find discussing that great question con-
corning Slavery, with which, it is now pretended,
that Convention was so largely, so laboriously,
30 painfully occupied, and with such dubious
prospects that the Declaration of Independence,
the Preamble of the Constitution, and all the
liberty securing provisions and prohibitions of
the instrument, had to be contradicted and
stuihhed by compromise in favor of Sla-
very! a compromise between free and slave
States, when all Tor all but one) of them were
slave States-a " compromise to propitiate
the Southern members, who were distinguished
among their fellows by their opposition to Sla-
very! 1t is impossible to conceive of such
discussion, such a struggle, such a "compro-
mise IN the Convention, without some cores
ponding agitations in the country, like those of
our own times, of which neither history nor
tradition have preserved the least trace. 1t is
preposterous to suppose that such a series OF
papers could have been written for such
purpose, at such a time, by three such men,
one of them a Nirginian, two of them New
orkers, and all three Of them opponents of
Slavery-one ofthem, at least, Jay,) an earnest
and practical one-withOut any account of this
great struggle, without any argument in favor
OF the mode of its adjustment
And then the revelations of two members Of
the CoWention, Yates and Lansing, some thirty
years afterwards, and the posthumous papers
of Madison, later still-these likewise fail to
furnish us with any records of what the prevail
ing theory assumes to have been the most mo-
mentous political struggle the nation ever wit
messed
AS well might we be told Of Guy Fawkes
Gunpowder Plot under the chambers of the
Convention, and of Know Nothing" detec-
ton of it, and of compromise between the
two, as a basis of our Federal Union-as well
might We give grave credit to all this, as to the
humbug of constitutional compromise of the
slave question. As well might we build con-
stItuhonal expositions upon the one fiction as
upon the other. Of all the expedients for eking
out Pro-Slavery exposition Of the Constitution.
the historical experiment is, undoubtedly, the
most shallow, the most impudent one, presum-
ing farthest on the popular stupidity and igno-
rance.
ltwas in treating of the Slavery question that
Hannah More WAS tempted TO use irony, and to
exclaim, as now we may well do, "Alas poor
human reason when wilt thou come to years
of discretion?" WILLIAM GooDEIL
The problem not how the Union could be
Formed nor how II could bc kept together hut how the
parisans of the old Aucles Confederation and those
OF more consolidated Cove could reconciled
The compromise on that question but the dis
puts ragged Tor years afterwards.