The Union and eastern journal. [volume] (Biddeford [Me.]) 1854-1858, 1857-09-11


States, bring their labor there into CON-
petition with free labor, sell Thorn there,
and ship them for sale to other partswithin
the United States; and really to estab-
lish slavery in the free States as effectu-
ally as it is established in the slave States,
and that the free States lie helpless, bound
and fettered by the constitution, and can
not prevent this. This is the undeniable
deduction from Mr.. Buchanan's doctrines,
and because it is so, it is time for men to
become alarmed, and to rise up indig-
nantly against it, and those who promul-
gate it. All who believe labor to be hon.
orable, and that men should enjoy the
fruits of their labor, should strike now
when they have opportunity Of doing so
with the freeman's weapon, the ballot, the
authors Of and apologists for this most
anti-republican doctrine. Everywhere,
any where, they should be denounced as
the enemies Of free institutions, and made
to feel that there is slecplcss vigilance
over their movements; and at every re-
curing election, the people Of the South
should be told, that these new ideas which
would make the federal constitution a
thing of scorn and derision, and the gov
eminent, IL administered according to
them, the worst of tyrannies, that We will
have mono of them, that We will vote
against their adoption so long as voting
is avail, and when voting is powerlcss
rather than be cursed with slavery, and
its concomitant evils, rather than submit
to see labor disgraced, we will appeal to
the God of battles, and fight for the prin-
ciplcs which our fathers fought to obtains
when they fought the battles of the rev.
olution. We have seen nothing for a
long time, which marks so cmphatically
the progress which the advancing wave
of slavery is making, as this bold enunci-
alton, of once hated and spurncd prin-
ciplc, by the President Of the United
States.
The President says, after declaring that
slavery exists in Kansas under the con-
stitution Of the United States" "How it
could have been seriously doubted is a
mystery" Let us examine this in the
light of history, and the acts Of other
men distinguished for their long and bril-.
liant public scourccs. The declaration Of
Mr.. Buchanan implies that so clear is the
constitution on this point, that it is mys-
terry that any other view of it should be
taken, and so plain that the general un-
Outstanding of tho people would readily
admit it. 1t is mysterious that it should
be denied, yet from 1888, down to ls4s,
more than sixty years, no such views OF
the constitution wcrc entertained, and
through successive administrations, there
was an unbroken line OF policy based on
rthc contrary idea. In ls4s, in the de-
bate on framing territorial government
for Oregon, it was bi cached in the SEN
ate of the United States for the first time.
A few fire eaters, nullificrs, and disunion-
lists in South Carolina, may have talked
such hcresy before, but no public man
had had the audacity to declare it in the
councils of the nation. What does Mr..
Benton in his Thirty years in the Senate
say of it, and its introduction! Listen to
him, and ask If it be possible that MIR.
Buchanan can be in the possession of his
scnses' In his Thirty years in the Sem
ate, pages ia, and rs, after noting the
circumstances connected with the debate
he says:
"a new dogma was invented to fit the
case, that of the transmigration of the
constitution (thc slavery part of it) into
the territories overriding and overruling
all the anti-slavery laws, which it found
there, and planting the institution there,
under its own wing, and maintaining it
beyond the power of eradication, either
by Congress, or the people Of the terrific
ry."
Speaking of this new dogma thus in
vented by Mr.. Calhoun to get over the
former doctrine Of the shareholders, as
given in some previous resolutions of Mr..
Calhoun, of denying Congress to act up
on the subject Of slavery at all. Mr..
Benton says in his tese and vigorous Ian
guage.
"History cannot class higher than rs a
vagary Of diseased imagination, this
imputed, sclf.acting, and selfextension of
the constitution. The constitution does
nothing Of ITSELF not even in the States,
for which it was made. Every part Of it
requires law to put it into opcration.-I
No part of it can reach a territory unless
impaired to il by an act Of Congress-
Sidrery as a local institution, can only be
established by a local legislative authori-
ty. 1t cannot transmigrate-cannot car
~ along with it the law which protects
il.
And he closes his denunciation Of it
in these words:
"In word, this dogma Of the selfcx-
tension of the slavery part Of the Consti.
tuition to territory is impracticable and
preposterous, and as novel as unfounded."
Such is the emphatic testimony of Mr..
n,,t NJ. W,ksto. ,rbo ,,..