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course by a southern Member, he replied, "Did the gentleman think to frighten me from my purpose by his I am not threat of a grand jury? He mistook his man. to be frightened from the discharge of a duty by the indignation of the gentleman, nor by all the grand juries in the Universe."

As slavery demanded for its protection, the suppression of the right of petition and the liberty of speech, he freely canvassed its claims to such sacrifices, on the part of the free states. He spoke of it as "The God-defying institution." Mr. Clay had contended that that was pro"The soul of man," said

perty which the laws made sp. Mr. Adams, "cannot by human laws, be made the property of another. The owner of a slave is the owner of a living corpse; but he is not the owner of a man." He declared, “unyielding hostility against slavery is interwoven with every pulsation of my heart. Resistance against it, feeble and inefficient as the last accents of a failing voice may be, shall still be heard, while the power of utterance shall remain." In the presence of the slaveholding members he avowed, that in his prayers to Almighty God he daily invoked Him for the abolition of slavery. The internal traffic did not escape his anathema: If," said he, "the African slave trade was piracy, the American slave trade could not be innocent, nor could its aggravated turpitude be denied." From the admitted wickedness of the African slave trade, he very logically deduced the wickedness of slavery itself. "If," said he, "the African slave trade be piracy, human reason cannot resist, nor can human sophistry refute, the conclusion, that the essence of the crime consists not in the trade, but in slavery. Trade has nothing in itself criminal by the law of nature.”

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At a time when politicians and pretended patriots were endeavoring to suppress the discussion of slavery, as fatal

to the preservation of the Union, he delivered a Fourth of July address, in which he declared, that the "free and unrestrained discussion of the rights and wrongs of slavery, far from endangering the union of these States, is the only condition upon which the Union can be preserved and perpetuated. Are you to bless the earth beneath your feet because it spurns the footstep of a slave, and then to choke the utterance of your voice lest the sound of liberty should be re-echoed from the Palmetto groves, with the discordant notes of disunion? No! No!"

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In a letter to his constituents, he thus described the state of the country: What see we now? Communities of slaveholding braggarts of freedom, setting at defiance the laws of nature and of nature's God, restoring slavery where it had been extinguished (Texas), and vainly dreaming to make it eternal. Forming in the sacred name of liberty, constitutions of government, and interdicting to the legislative authority, the most blessed of all human powers, the power of giving liberty to the slave! Governors of States urging upon their legislatures, to make the exercise of the freedom of speech to propagate the rights of the slave to freedom, felony without benefit of clergy. Ministers of the Gospel, like the priest in the parable, coming and looking at the bleeding victim of the highway robber, and passing on the other side! or baser still, perverting the pages of the sacred volume, to turn into a code of slavery the very Word of God! Infuriated mobs murdering the peaceful minister of Christ, for the purpose of extinguishing the light of a printing press, and burning with unhallowed fire, the hall of freedom, the orphan school, and the Church devoted to the worship of God! and last of all, both Houses of Congress turning a deaf ear to hundreds of thousands of petitioners, and quibbling away their duty to read and listen

and consider in doubtful disputations whether they shall receive, or, receiving, refuse to read or hear the complaints of their fellow-citizens and fellow-men!" In a letter to the people of the United States, he avowed his humiliation in beholding "the ignominious transformation of the people who had commenced their career by the Declaration of Independence, into a nation of slaveholders, and slavebreeders."

Addressing the slaveholders on the floor of Congress, he said, "I know well that the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal,' is held at the South as incendiary doctrine, and deserves lynching that the Declaration itself is a farago of abstractions. I know all this perfectly, and that is the very reason I want to put my foot upon such doctrine, that I want to drive it back to its fountain-its corrupt fountain-and pursue it, until it is made to disappear from this land, and from the world. Sir, this philosophy of the South, has done more to blacken the character of this country in Europe, than all other causes put together. They point to us as a nation of liars and hypocrites, who publish to the world that all men are born free and equal, and then hold a large portion of our own population in bondage." Again, “ As its (slavery) basis rests exclusively upon physical force, to physical force will it resort, not only to sustain its own institutions, but to encroach upon the institutions of freedom elsewhere. This disposition is already manifested in many ways in the brutal treatment experienced by citizens of the free States, if but suspected of favoring abolition in the slaveholding jurisdictions, in the insolvent demands upon the free States to deliver up their citizens for alleged offences against the slave laws-in the conspiring of American slaveholders in a foreign land against the life of one

of the great champions of human liberty*--in the ruffian threats of assassination addressed to members of Congress for daring to present your petitions-in the surrender of the post-office to lynching law-in the murder of Lovejoy -in the burning of Pennsylvania Hall-in Southern commercial conventions to force the National channels of trade from North to South-in Southern railways and banking companies combined to link the mammon of the West, to to the Moloch of the South-and in the strains of commendation upon all land-robbing practices of the AngloSaxons, and their virtuous abhorrence of Custom-Houses, embellished by their blackleg revenue and punctuality for their debts of honor."

Utterly discarding the base sentiment, "Our country, right or wrong," he denounced the foreign policy of the administration, in resisting the claim made by Great Britain to visit vessels bearing the national flag, and suspected of being engaged in the African slave trade, to ascertain whether the flag was not fraudulently assumed. He asserted that measures were systematically pursued or projected to force the country into a war with England, for the protection of the slave trade. "Under the pretext of resisting the right of search, the most false principles have been advanced as the law of nations. Great Britain has never claimed the right to search American vessels. No such thing-on the contrary, she has explicitly disclaimed any such pretension, and that to the whole extent we can possibly demand. We deny to her the right to board pirates who hoist the American flag-yes, to search British vessels, too, that have been declared pirates by the law of nations-pirates by the law of Great Britainpirates by the laws of the United States-that is the de

* In reference of the attempt of Mr. Stevenson, from Virginia, and Hamilton, of South Carolina, made in London to force Daniel O'Connell into a duel.

mand of our late Minister to London. Now, behind all this exceeding zeal against the right of search is the question not brought to view, and that is, the support and perpetuation of the African slave trade. That is the real question between the ministers of America and Great Britain-whether slave-trading pirates, by merely hoisting the American flag, shall be saved from capture. I must say, that if it be true that the interference of our Minister in France (General Cass) was the occasion of the refusal by France to ratify the Quintuple treaty (for the suppres- . sion of the African slave trade), I do not hold that procedure in much admiration; it comes too near success in doing wrong."

Now it should be recollected, that this denial of the right of visitation, and the interference of General Cass, were both sustained by the Whig party, through Mr. WEBSTER then Secretary of State.

Mr. Adams astounded the southern members, by insisting, in a formal argument, that in case of war, or insurrection, the General Government had a discretionary power to manumit the slaves, and also by his audacity in asking leave to propose the following amendment to the Constitution, to be submitted by Congress to the several States, viz. From and after the 4th day of July, 1842, there shall be, throughout the United States, no hereditary slavery, but on and after that day every child born in the United States shall be free."

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A bill having been brought in, giving the right of suffrage "to all free white males," of the age of twentyone years, and who had resided a certain time within the limits of Alexandria, he moved to strike out the word white, and supported his motion in an able and sarcastic speech. He asked "If this principle of universal suffrage was to be adopted, admitting paupers, idiots, lunatics, and

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