The Abolition of Slavery | Page 2

again to the example of Gen. Jackson.
What are you now about in Congress? You are about passing a grant to
refund to Gen. Jackson the amount of a certain fine imposed upon him
by a Judge, under the laws of the State of Louisiana. You are going to
refund him the money, with interest; and this you are going to do
because the imposition of the fine was unjust. And why was it unjust?
Because Gen. Jackson was acting under the laws of war, and because
the moment you place a military commander in a district which is the
theatre of war, the laws of war apply to that district.
I might furnish a thousand proofs to show that the pretensions of
gentlemen to the sanctity of their municipal institutions under a state of
actual invasion and of actual war, whether servile, civil or foreign, is
wholly unfounded, and that the laws of war do, in all such cases, take

the precedence. I lay this down as the law of nations. I say that military
authority takes, for the time, the place of all municipal institutions, and
slavery among the rest; and that, under that state of things, so far from
its being true that the States where slavery exists have the exclusive
management of the subject, not only the President of the United States,
but the Commander of the Army, has power to order the universal
emancipation of the slaves. I have given here more in detail a principle
which I have asserted on this floor before now, and of which I have no
more doubt than that you, sir, occupy that chair. I give it in its
development, in order that any gentleman from any part of the Union
may, if he thinks proper, deny the truth of the position, and may
maintain his denial; not by indignation, not by passion and fury, but by
sound and sober reasoning from the laws of nations and the laws of war.
And if my position can be answered and refuted, I shall receive the
refutation with pleasure; I shall be glad to listen to reason, aside, as I
say, from indignation and passion. And if, by the force of reasoning,
my understanding can be convinced, I here pledge myself to recant
what I have asserted.
Let my position be answered; let me be told, let my constituents be told,
the people of my State be told--a State whose soil tolerates not the foot
of a slave--that they are bound by the Constitution to a long and
toilsome march under burning summer suns and a deadly Southern
clime for the suppression of a servile war; that they are bound to leave
their bodies to rot upon the sands of Carolina, to leave their wives
widows and their children orphans; that those who cannot march are
bound to pour out their treasures while their sons or brothers are
pouring out their blood to suppress a servile, combined with a civil or a
foreign war, and yet that there exists no power beyond the limits of the
slave State where such war is raging to emancipate the slaves. I say, let
this be proved--I am open to conviction; but till that conviction comes,
I put it forth not as a dictate of feeling, but as a settled maxim of the
laws of nations, that, in such a case, the military supersedes the civil
power; and on this account I should have been obliged to vote, as I
have said, against one of the resolutions of my excellent friend from
Ohio, (Mr. Giddings,) or should at least have required that it be
amended in conformity with the Constitution of the United States.

THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
We published, not long ago, an extract from a speech delivered by John
Quincy Adams in Congress in 1842, in which that eminent statesman
confidently announced the doctrine, that in a state of war, civil or
servile, in the Southern States, Congress has full and plenary power
over the whole subject of slavery; martial law takes the place of civil
laws and municipal institutions, slavery among the rest, and "not only
the President of the United States, but the Commander of the Army, has
power to order the universal emancipation of the slaves."
Mr. Adams was, in 1842, under the ban of the slaveholders, who were
trying to censure him or expel him from the House for presenting a
petition in favor of the dissolution of the Union. Lest it may be thought
that the doctrine announced at this time was thrown out hastily and
offensively, and for the purpose of annoying and aggravating his
enemies, and without due consideration, it may be worth while to show
that six years previous, in May, 1836, Mr. Adams held the