The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-04-15

alton OF this SUBJECT AT the earliest convenient
time. i~
KANsAs-sLAvERY-TH LEC0MPT0N CON-
sTITUTI0N.
SPEECH OF HON. SIDNEY DEAN,
OF CONNECTICUT
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 20, 1858.
Mr.. Chairman, desire to submit few re-
marks, which have been very hastily prepared.
Such is the aggressive nature of Slavery, that
it was the early policy of our Government to
confne it within metes and bounds. Confessed
by correct jurists of every age to be crea-
ture of positive municipal law, in defiance of
the laws of nature and of the laws of God, it
was the deliberate judgment of the venerated
sres of our revolutionary history, that it should
sustain its existence-if existence it should
have-by the statute laws of the independent
States. While this policy was pursued, the
people of the non aslaveholding States washed
their hands in innocency of this Ito them) crime
against the laws of God and the rights of man.
Hedged in by State sovereignty, it was as clear
ly beyond the jurisdiction of the other States,
as though it we're q foreign Government in
SEINE island of the sea. When the man was
the law of force, or, what is its equivalent, a
statute law embodying the power of a sovereign
State, he could do no lees than submit to the
prisoners chain, unless by successful revolu-
ton he emancipated himself. But when he
passed the barriers of that law, then by the
higher law of nature and of God his chains of
servitude fell of, and be walked the earth a
freeman. / understand this to have been the
settled doctrine of the country until very re-
cent period.
In the instrument which confederated the ihir-
teen States, and made them an empire of SOW
ereignties, single clause was admitted, provi-
ding for the rendition of persons who should, by
fight, defraud others of labor or service which
WAS their rightful due. Beyond this single
point, tortured of late into an implied power
In one man to claim another az slave upon
soil foreign to his State, the Constitution is
| silent, and guiltless of the barbarous and IN.
christian doctrine that one man can righifully
chattelze another. Like the several free.State
sovereiguties, it stood, with the Declaration of
Independence, the embodiment of the doctrine
of universal Freedom, the practical expounder
of the great, primal, God given, selfevident
truth, tha. all men were created free and
equal" having an impartial endowment of
| rights. These were asserted to be the glorious
trinity-life, liberty. and the pursuit Of that
happiness which is the desire of all.
Such, sir, from the nature of those instru-
ments, and from cotemporsneous testimony,
understand to be the great principles which I'M
derle cur system of government. The people
of my State, sir, hold those views to-day.
Taught them by their revolutionary sires, and
by that written history of the country with
which almost every youth among US is as ia
miar as is any gentleman upon this floor, they
oh oh md u.ll oh, hu tho, -;
Slavery they are AntiSlavery they glory in
being; unbought by the offers of political syco-
plants, unsullied by the seducions of cotton
and commerce, and the wealth which they
impart uninhuenced by the crazy threats Of
frstricidal fanatics who proclaim disunion, or
unsubdued by any fear
Sir, my constituents, and the State which
have the pride of representing in part, ask moth.
ing more of their sister sovereignties, than that
they abide by the terms of the original COM
pact. Their history is lifelong pledge of
their fealty to it. But with the crazy scheme
of the Slavery-extenders of this day they have
no sympathy, aud to the doctrine they will
grant no quarter. They have from time to time
scquiesced in those compromise measures which
have been adopted, with the xpectation that each
one was to be the last. When the black tide
of Slavery has thrown another and still another
federated dominion, they have protested against
the sacrilege in language becoming to free
men, and demanded a cessation of these at
tscks. But when the leading spirits of the ma
ton have, through expediency, proposed mu-
tual yielding, In order to give a common repose
the citizens of my State have been the first to
| acqulesce, while at the same time they changed
not, In single iota, their views of the nature
of this evil or its true municipal position in this
country. No single step has been taken in this
aggressive march of Slavery towards national
existence, or the founding of an empire whose
base should be the bowed necks and crushed
souls of men whom God made portion of the
human brotherhood, which has not met the
stern, opposing judgment and conscience of my
constituents. Loving Freedom at the FIRST,
they broke every manacle within the State
Before you can force them into an acknowledge
ment of its existence there, you must turn the
army of Xerxes upon them, and crush the
wall of human hearts, which, flying from the
| cottages and palaces within its borders, will
| close up in solid column for the defence of
| their sovereign rights. Sir, man stealing is q
| crime of magnitude in our State. Even the
making of q claim to the possession of another
human body, containing living soul, subjects
| the claimant to arrest and trial under our stat
| ute. Such is the love of liberty and the sense
| of equal justice In the bosoms of our people
| esteem it one of the proudest acts of nv life.
that by the SURFACES of my own townsmen /
was enabled, by my vote in the Legislature. 10
give that spirit vitality in statute law: and
| that, too, because, in common with nv fellow.
citizens, believe that the rights of all men are
| the gift of God, and the claims of property are
not to be mentioned in the same breath.
Sir, when the Convention which framed our
Federal Constitution had under adyisement
that portion of the report Of the committee of
detail which recommended tax upon the i'm.
portation of certain persons, (meaning slaves. y
one OF the brightest lights of our State-whose
legal power was second to none in the com.
| ry-of whose name and fame every son of
Connecticut is proud, arose in his place in Oh.
| position to themeasure, simply upon the ground
that implied they ioere property" Not
that it was asserted in the provision, but simply
that it might thereafter be implied. Who. sir.
rises up to convict the purehearted. clear. head.
ed Roger Sherman, in these utterances of the
sentiments of the people of our State, so long
ago as 1887? When, in the furtherance of the
mad schemes of Slavery propegandists. in l8 IA.
| the broad acres of the Louisiana purchase
| were devoted to chsttel servitude. and when. in
1919, the peninsula of Florida was added a. a
stace State to our Confederation, the people Of
| Connecticut stood in opposition. And in the
| exciting scenes which convulsed the oountrv.
over the admission OF Missouri as slave State,