country is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun disappear almost unobserved, and die off? No, sir! no, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the States; but, sir, I see it as plainly as I see the sun in heaven I see that disruption must produce such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold characters.

Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 31 Cong., I sess. (John C. Rives, Washington, 1850), 272-276 passim, March 7, 1850.

21. "Thy Glory is Departed" (1850)

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Whittier early became identified with the anti-slavery crusade. The pathetic earnestness of these verses on Webster's supposed apostasy in his seventh-of-March speech is typical of the feeling with which the speech was received among the antislavery radicals, who had previously considered Webster a stanch advocate and defender of all constitutional measures against slavery. - For Whittier, see W. S. Kennedy, John G. Whittier, the Poet of Freedom; Contemporaries, III, No. 178. — Bibliography as in No. 19 above.

O fallen so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore !

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, nought
Save power remains -

A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled :

When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;

Walk backward, with averted gaze,

And hide the shame!

John G. Whittier, Ichabod, in his Songs of Labor, and other Poems (Boston, 1850), 93–94.

22. An Appeal to the Higher Law (1850)

BY SENATOR WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD

The compromise measures of 1850 caused the only great debate in which the statesmen of both the second and third generations after the Revolution took part. Seward, destined to play so important a part for the next fifteen years as senator and secretary of state, in this discussion made his first appearance as a national legislator. His speech is typical of the moderate northern view; it attracted great attention for the argument given in this extract, an appeal which voiced a stronger moral feeling than Seward intended. For Seward, see Channing and Hart, Guide, § 25. — Bibliography: Frederic Bancroft, Life of Seward, I, 243–263.

T is insisted that the admission of California shall be attended

I AM OPPOSED TO ANY SUCH COMPROMISE, IN ANY AND ALL THE FORMS IN WHICH IT HAS BEEN PROPOSED, because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises radically wrong and essentially vicious. . . .

Nor would success attend any of the details of the compromise. And,

first, I advert to the proposed alteration of the law concerning fugitives from service or labor. . . .

We deem the principle of the law for the recapture of fugitives . . unjust, unconstitutional, and immoral; and thus, while patriotism withholds its approbation, the consciences of our people condemn it.

You will say that these convictions of ours are disloyal. Grant it for the sake of argument. They are, nevertheless, honest; and the law is to be executed among us, not among you; not by us, but by the Federal authority. Has any Government ever succeeded in changing the moral convictions of its subjects by force? But these convictions imply no disloyalty. We reverence the Constitution, although we perceive this defect, just as we acknowledge the splendor and the power of the sun, although its surface is tarnished with here and there an opaque spot.

Your Constitution and laws convert hospitality to the refugee, from the most degrading oppression on earth, into a crime, but all mankind except you esteem that hospitality a virtue. The right of extradition of a fugitive from justice, is not admitted by the law of nature and of nations, but rests in voluntary compacts. . . .

. . . The law of nations disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them. Armed power could not enforce them, because there is no public conscience to sustain them. I know that there are laws of various sorts which regulate the conduct of men. There are constitutions and statutes, codes mercantile and codes civil; but when we are legislating for States, especially when we are founding States, all these laws must be brought to the standard of the laws of God, and must be tried by that standard, and must stand or fall by it. . . .

To conclude on this point: We are not slaveholders. We cannot, in our judgment, be either true Christians or real freemen, if we impose on another a chain that we defy all human power to fasten on ourselves. You believe and think otherwise, and doubtlessly with equal sincerity. We judge you not, and He alone who ordained the conscience of man and its laws of action, can judge us. Do we, then, in this conflict, demand of you an unreasonable thing in asking that, since you will have property that can and will exercise human powers to effect its escape, you shall be your own police, and in acting among us as such, you shall conform to principles indispensable to the security of admitted rights of freemen? If you will have this law executed, you must alleviate, not increase, its rigors.

It

But there is yet another aspect in which this principle must be examined. It regards the domain only as a possession, to be enjoyed, either in common or by partition, by the citizens of the old States. is true, indeed, that the national domain is ours; it is true, it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation; but we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether acquired lawfully, or seized by usurpation. The Constitution regulates our stewardship; the Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defence, to welfare, and to liberty.

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory is a part- no inconsiderable part of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure, in the highest attainable degree, their happiness.

...

This is a State, and we are deliberating for it, just as our fathers deliberated in establishing the institutions we enjoy. Whatever superiority there is in our condition and hopes, over those of any other "kingdom" or "estate," is due to the fortunate circumstance that our ancestors did not leave things to "take their chance," but that they "added amplitude and greatness" to our commonwealth, "by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs, as were wise." We, in our turn, have succeeded to the same responsibilities; and we cannot approach the duty before us, wisely or justly, except we raise ourselves to the great consideration of how we can most certainly "sow greatness to our posterity and successors."

And now the simple, bold, and even awful question which presents itself to us, is this: Shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions shall we, who know by experience the wise and the just, and are free to choose them, and to reject the erroneous and unjust shall we establish human bondage, or permit it, by our sufferance, to be established? Sir, our forefathers would not have hesitated an hour. They found slavery existing here, and they left it only because they could not remove it. There is not only no free State which would now establish it, but there is no slave State, which, if it had had the free alternative, as we now have, would have founded slavery. . . .

Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 31 Cong., I sess. (John C. Rives, Washington, 1850), 262-265 passim, March 11, 1850.

CHAPTER IV-CONDITIONS OF SLAVERY

23. The Poor Whites (1850)

BY EMILY P. BURKE

The writer of the reminiscences from which this extract is taken was a New Hampshire teacher, who taught school in various parts of Georgia between 1840 and 1850. Though she looked at things through New England eyes, her descriptions are eminently fair. Bibliography: Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 186, 204.

A

LTHOUGH praise-worthy attempts have been made in various parts of Georgia, to diffuse the means of education more extensively than was formerly thought necessary, still there is a class of people in that State, as also in the Carolinas, who have never been benefitted by any of these privileges; and these individuals, though degraded and ignorant as the slaves, are, by their little fairer complexions entitled to all the privileges of legal suffrage. These people are known at the South. by such names as crackers, clay-eaters, and sand-hillers. I have previously mentioned the circumstance from which they derived the appellation of crackers. They are called clay-eaters, because all this class of people, from the oldest to little children, are as much addicted to the eating of clay as some communities are to the use of tobacco and snuff. This senseless habit is indulged in to such an extent, that when a person has once seen a clay-eater, he can, ever after, instantly recognize any one of their number by their sickly, sallow, and most unnatural complexions, let them be seen in never so large a crowd. Children, by the time they are ten or twelve years of age, begin to look old, their countenances are stupid and heavy and they often become dropsical and loathsome to the sight. Those who survive this practice thirty or forty years, look very wrinkled and withered, their flesh shrunken to their bones like that of very aged people. They are also called sand-hillers from the grounds they usually occupy, which are the barren and sandy districts of Georgia and South Carolina, to which these poor wretched beings have been driven by the powerful and rich planters, who have wealth and avarice sufficient to secure to themselves all the best soil.