The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government | Page 8

1808. This act was passed with
great unanimity. In the House of Representatives there were one
hundred and thirteen (113) yeas to five (5) nays; and it is a significant
fact, as showing the absence of any sectional division of sentiment at
that period, that the five dissentients were divided as equally as
possible between the two sections: two of them were from Northern
and three from Southern States.[5]
The slave-trade had thus been finally abolished some months before the
birth of the author of these pages, and has never since had legal
existence in any of the United States. The question of the maintenance
or extinction of the system of negro servitude, already existing in any
State, was one exclusively belonging to such State. It is obvious,
therefore, that no subsequent question, legitimately arising in Federal
legislation, could properly have any reference to the merits or the
policy of the institution itself. A few zealots in the North afterward
created much agitation by demands for the abolition of slavery within
the States by Federal intervention, and by their activity and
perseverance finally became a recognized party, which, holding the
balance of power between the two contending organizations in that
section, gradually obtained the control of one, and to no small degree
corrupted the other. The dominant idea, however, at least of the
absorbed party, was sectional aggrandizement, looking to absolute
control, and theirs is the responsibility for the war that resulted.
No moral nor sentimental considerations were really involved in either
the earlier or later controversies which so long agitated and finally
ruptured the Union. They were simply struggles between different
sections, with diverse institutions and interests.
It is absolutely requisite, in order to a right understanding of the history
of the country, to bear these truths clearly in mind. The phraseology of

the period referred to will otherwise be essentially deceptive. The
antithetical employment of such terms as freedom and slavery, or
"anti-slavery" and "pro-slavery," with reference to the principles and
purposes of contending parties or rival sections, has had immense
influence in misleading the opinions and sympathies of the world. The
idea of freedom is captivating, that of slavery repellent to the moral
sense of mankind in general. It is easy, therefore, to understand the
effect of applying the one set of terms to one party, the other to another,
in a contest which had no just application whatever to the essential
merits of freedom or slavery. Southern statesmen may perhaps have
been too indifferent to this consideration--in their ardent pursuit of
principles, overlooking the effects of phrases.
This is especially true with regard to that familiar but most fallacious
expression, "the extension of slavery." To the reader unfamiliar with
the subject, or viewing it only on the surface, it would perhaps never
occur that, as used in the great controversies respecting the Territories
of the United States, it does not, never did, and never could, imply the
addition of a single slave to the number already existing. The question
was merely whether the slaveholder should be permitted to go, with his
slaves, into territory (the common property of all) into which the
non-slaveholder could go with his property of any sort. There was no
proposal nor desire on the part of the Southern States to reopen the
slave-trade, which they had been foremost in suppressing, or to add to
the number of slaves. It was a question of the distribution, or dispersion,
of the slaves, rather than of the "extension of slavery." Removal is not
extension. Indeed, if emancipation was the end to be desired, the
dispersion of the negroes over a wider area among additional
Territories, eventually to become States, and in climates unfavorable to
slave-labor, instead of hindering, would have promoted this object by
diminishing the difficulties in the way of ultimate emancipation.
The distinction here defined between the distribution, or dispersion, of
slaves and the extension of slavery--two things altogether different,
although so generally confounded--was early and clearly drawn under
circumstances and in a connection which justify a fuller notice.

Virginia, it is well known, in the year 1784, ceded to the United
States--then united only by the original Articles of Confederation--her
vast possessions northwest of the Ohio, from which the great States of
Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota,
have since been formed. In 1787--before the adoption of the Federal
Constitution--the celebrated "Ordinance" for the government of this
Northwestern Territory was adopted by the Congress, with the full
consent, and indeed at the express instance, of Virginia. This Ordinance
included six definite "Articles of compact between the original States
and the people and States in the said Territory," which were to "for ever
remain unalterable unless by common consent." The sixth of these
articles ordains that "there shall be neither slavery