The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1882-11-08
Slavery and the Constitution.

. From Judge Tourgee's "Hot PIowshares'
in Our Continent.
The South demanded that the insti
tuition most favored by the Constitution
and especially nourished and protected
by the laws of the States in which il
in the Territories of the United State;
not yet organized under municipal forms
or erected into self governing States.
They claim that the government
which allowed the citizens to hold a
certain species of property under the
laws of certain States of the Union,
was bond to protect him in the enjoy
ment of that property upon its unas-
signed domain, of which he and his fel-
low slave-owners were joint proprietor.
in common with the nOn-slaveholding
citizens of the NortherO States.
1t is not enough to say that this claim
was specious one. Not only has it
never been fairly answered but it is not
susceptible of logical refutation if its
premises are granted. The argument
against the right of slavery to exist, to
be defended and to extend itself, was
always incomplete and unsatisfactory
when it was based upon the written
word of the Constitution. To hold that
instrument sacred above all things else
and yet deny the slave-owner's legal
right to his human chattel was impossi-
sible Many a lover of liberty and
righteousness tried to do it and failed.
To doubt the one was sacrilegious, To
admit the other seemed little less than
sin. The Constitution was admittedly
inspiled. To question that was treason.
A curse too fearful to be uttered
rested upon anyone who should query
its lightest word. Ali that it contained
was not only just and true, but there
was nothing of governmental justice
and truth that it did not contain, if not
in the full ear of explicit declaration at
least in the fecund germ of necessary
implication. Tried by the declaration
on which it rested, there could be no
slave beneath its egis. But the ''per-
son held to service or labor in one State,
under the laws thereof, escaping into
another" could be nothing but the slave
fleeing from bondage toward the hope of
freedom. Men gravely argued that this
might mean apprentices. The quibble
was never worthy even of the contempt
poured upon it, though it found favor
with minds that nothing but the desper-
alton of dilemma could have induced to
harbor it. In very truth the argument
was all with the stakeholder when it
o1v haf hn q I II. /
ton was infallible. Standing upon the
''person held to service or labor" clause,
slavery was impregnable. Right or
wrong, the Constitution covered it by |
unavoidable implication. Grounded
upon that, who should assail it? Had |
not the blood of the fathers sanctified
its provisions? Did not Washington
commend it to our jealous care ?
Had not every patriot whose memory
we cherished regarded it as talisman
of our liberty-the sacred scroll on
which our destiny depended?
But for this single clause in the con-
stitution, slavery would have withered
before the glare of conscience long
before even the time of which we write.
The bulwark of the constitution was its
moral as well as legal cover from assault.
A thousand quirks and quibbles were
devised to avoid the potency of this
claim, which had the merit unusual
among political dogmas, of never being
tinetured with doubt in the minds of
those who put it forward. As to his
moral right to buy and sell and hold
human beings as slaves, the Southern
man might doubt-many of them did.
AS to his legal right there was never
any question. The Northern mind
innumerable pleas against it,
chiefly based upon specious use of the
word ''man," meaning in one part of
The argument slave, and in the other
premise a free man. The impetuous
ogic of the South was right when it
sermed them all makeshifts and evas-
ons. IF the constitution meant any
hing it guaranteed in the most emphatic
manner not only the right to hold
slaves, but to hunt them. IF it gave
hat privilege in one State it was a right
If property which the citizen was en-
titled to carry with him and exercise in
he national domain.
This was not contemplated by the |
ramers of that instrument, because
hey were affected by human conditions
md could not foresee the future. 1t I
ollowed, however, as certainly and inde-
cassidy as the right. of the merchant to II
,ffer his wares, of the tradesman to
exercise his calling, or the farmer to till j
he soil-admitting always that the Con- /,
titution is the complete compendium of
political truth These quibbles served
,nly as excuses for feeble brains and !,
imid conseiences. There were those
Who did not stop to speculate on the !
of picketing state lines against
runaway apprentices, or who easily
the fact that Benjamin Frank 1
in, himself an absconding apprentice,
igned the instrument. There we're
,thers who, halting betweent their reyer-
.nce or the sacred charter and the die
ates of conscience, needed only for
nal quibble to satisfy them that their |
convictions of right did not contravene
he letter or the spirit of the Constitu
ion. From first to last the Constitution
vas the Gibraltar of slavery. and the
reverence felt for that instrument was
he last stronghold which its opponents
Fere never able 70 storm until its adv0-
,ates had thrown down its walls upon
Fl
a RECENT Census Bulletin shows the
lumber Of persons living IN the United
States who were born In this country,
nd the number living here who were
,orn elsewhere. The total native pop
IIation Is 43. 3.475,e40, leaving 1913,
q. = e.-.s.... ..n4s..strr. flf tI,o .rla4frea