Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1860-03-17

ed it. They even adjusted it so that it
might have given us much less than our
present disquiet, had no circumstances af-
terward occurred which they, as wise as
they were, had not clearly foreseen. Altho'
they had inherited, yet they generally con-
demned the practice of slavery, and hoped
for its discontnuance. They expressed this
when they asserted, in the Declaration of
Independence, as a fundamental principle
of American society, that all men are Great
ed equal, and have nalienable rights to life.
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -
Each State, however, reserved to itself ex-
elusive political power over the subject of
slavery, within its own borders. Neverthe-
less, it unavoidably presented itself in their
consultations on bond of Federal Union.
The new Government was to be a represen-
tative one. Slaves were capital in some
states, in Others capital had no investments
in labor. Should those slaves be represent
ed as capital or as persons, taxed as capi-
tai or as persons, or should they not be re-
presented or taxed at all 4? The Fathers dis
agreed, debated long, and compromised at
last. Each state, they determined shall
have two Senators in Congress. Three
ffths of the slaves shall be elsewhere repre-.
sented, and be taxed as persons What
should be done if the slave should escape
into labor state Should that state con
fess him to be a chattel, and restore him
as such, or might it regard him as person,
and harbor and protect him as man ? -
They compromised again. and decided that
no person held to labor or service in one
state, by the laws thereof, escaping into
another, shall, by any law or regulation of
that state, be discharged from snch labor
or service, but shall be delivered upon claim
to the person to whom such labor or service
shall be due.
Free laborers would emigratc, and slaves
might be imported into the United States
The fathers agreed that congress may es-
tabish uniform laws of naturalization, and
it might prohibit the importation of per-
sons after 1908. Communities in the south
west, detached from the southern states,
were growing up in the practice of slavery
to be capital states. New states would soon
grow up in the northwest while as yet cap
ital stood aloof, and labor had not lifted the
ak to begin there its endless but benefcent
task. The fathers authorized congress to
make all needful rules and regulations con-
corning the management and disposition of
the public lands, and to admit new States
So the constitution, while it does not dis
turb or affect the system of capital in slaves
existing in any state under its own laws,
does, at the same time, recognize every hu-
man being when within any exclusive sphere
of Federal jurisdiction, not as capital but
as person.
What was the action of the fathers in Con-
gress They admitted the new States of
the Southwest as capital States, because it
was practically impossible to do otherwise,
and by the ordinance Of 1887, confirmed in
1889, they proved for the organization and
admission of only labor States in the North
west They directed fugitives from service
to be restored, not as chattels, but as persons.
They awarded naturalization to immigrant
free labors, they prohibited the trade in
African laborer, This disposition Of the
whole subject was in harmony with the con.
dition of society, and, in the main, with the
spirit of the age. The seven Northern
States contentedly became labor Safes by
their own acts. The six Southern States,
with equal tranquility and by their own de-
termination remained capital States.
The circumstances which the fathers did
not cleary forsee were two, manly: the
r,invigoraHon of Slavery consequent on the
increased consumption of cotton, and the
extension Of the national domain across the
Mississippi, and these occurred before 1920.
The state of Louisiana, formed on slave
holding French settlement, within the newly
acquired Lousianan Territory, had then al.
ready been admitted into the Union. There
remained, however, vast region, which in
clnded Arkansas and Missouri, together
with the then unoccupied even unnamed
Kansas and Nebrska. Arkansas, slave
holding community, was nearly ready to
apply, and Missouri, another such territory,
was actually applying for admission into
the Federal Union. The existing CAPITAL
states seconded these applications, and
claimed that the whole Louisianan Terrific
ry was rightfully open to slavery, and to the
organization of future slave states. The
labor states maintained that congress had
supreme legislative power within the domain
and could and ought to exclude slavery
'holO Ih0 du0sllOh LDuS opened was one
which related not at all to slavery in the
existing capital states 1t was purely and
simply a national question whether the
common interest of the whole Republic re-
quired that Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and
Nebraska, should become capital states,
with all the evils and dangers af slavery, or
be Labor states, with all the security, bene-
fits, and blessings Of freedom On the de.
cisison was suspended the question, as was
thought, whether ultimately the interior of
this new continent should be an asylum for
the oppressed and the exile, coming year
after year, and age. after age, voluntarily
from every other civilized land, as well as
for the children of misfortune in our own,
or whether through the renewal of the
African slave trade, those magnificent and
luxriant regions should be subjected to the
control of capital, wringing out the fruit Of
the earth through the impoverishing toll of
negro slaves. The question of 1920 was
identieally the question of 1860, so far as
principle, and even the field of its application
was concerned. Every element Of the con-
troversy now present entered it then the
rlghtIulness or the wrongfulnes of slavery
us eneets, present and future the Constitu-