which our army and our navy give to our nation, but our army and navy are impotent in such a crisis as this.

Mr. PRESIDENT, even England herself has been shaken to her centre by rebellions in her North with which she has been forced to contend. In Paris, too, I have myself seen regiment after regiment throw down their arms and rush into the arms of the people, of their fellow-citizens, and thus oppose, by military strength, the government under which their organization was formed. Will you repeat such occurrences here? Will you 'destroy the imperishable renown of this nation'? No! I answer for you all -you will not. Now, we, representatives of the South and of Virginia, ask of this Convention, the only body under heaven that can do it, to interpose and save us from a repetition of the scenes of blood which some of us have witnessed.

Our patriotic committee have labored for two weeks-have labored earnestly and zealously. Their report, though not satisfactory to Virginia in all respects, will yet receive her sanction, and the sanction of the border States. The representatives of Virginia know they are yielding much, when they tell you that they will support these propositions. We will do it because they will give peace to the country. Now, sir, when we are just in sight of land, when we are just entering a safe harbor, shall we turn about and circumnavigate the ocean to find an unknown shore? No, sir! no! Let us enter the harbor of safety now opened before us.

Mr. PRESIDENT, I know Massachusetts well. She is a powerful Commonwealth. She has added largely to the wealth, the power, and glory of this Union. I respect the gentleman who has addressed this Convention in her behalf; but when he went out of his way and stated that he abhorred slavery, the statement grated harshly on my ears. We of the South, we of Virginia, may not and do not like many of the institutions of Massachusetts, but we cannot and we will not say that we abhor them. Let me recall to the gentleman from Massachusetts who has addressed us, a fact from history. Let me show him that his own State was powerful in colonial times in extending the time for the importation of slaves! Let me tell him that his State has helped to fasten the institution of slavery upon a portion of this nation. Is it for a son of Massachusetts now to complain of

the result of the acts of his own State? Is it for him to use these reproaches, which, if not ungrateful, are at least wanting in charity? It was a representative of Massachusetts, Mr. GORHAM, through whose motion and influence the time for the importation of slaves was extended in that period of our colonial history. Virginia ever, in every period of her colonial existence, exerted herself to close her ports against the importation of slaves. It was the veto of her Royal Master alone that rendered her efforts nugatory. It was New England that fastened this institution upon us. Shall she reproach us for its existence now?

Mr. BALDWIN :-At the time of the adoption of our present Constitution, it was well understood that Georgia and South Carolina would not enter the Union without slavery. The only question then was, should slavery have an existence inside the Union or out of it.

In

Mr. RIVES:-No, sir! The gentleman is mistaken. the Constitution, as first proposed to the Convention, an unlimited right was given to import slaves. Mr. ELLSWORTH declared that it would be an infraction of State rights to prohibit this importation. New England, engaged in commerce, found an advantage in the right of importation, and she endeavored to force it upon the South.

I regard the present course of New England as very unfair. She is herself responsible for the existence of slavery-she is now our fiercest opponent; and yet New Jersey and Pennsylvania, who have not this responsibility, have always stood by the South, and I believe they always will.

It is not by abhorring slavery that you can put an end to the institution. You must let it alone. We are responsible for it now, and we are willing to stand responsible for it before the world. We understand the subject better than you do. It has occupied the attention of the wisest men of our time. In fact, it is not a question of slavery at all. It is a question of race. We know that the very best position for the African race to occupy is one of unmitigated legal subjection. We have the negroes with us; you have not. We must deal with them as our experience and wisdom dictate; with that you have nothing to do. The gentleman from Massachusetts may congratulate himself that there are no negroes in that Commonwealth. I ask him what he

would do, if he had the race to deal with in Massachusetts as we have it in Virginia?

I said, twenty years ago, in the Senate of the United States, and my whole experience since having confirmed the truth of the statement I repeat it now, that candid minds cannot differ upon this proposition, that the present position of the negroes of the United States is the best one they could occupy, both for the superior and inferior race.

And to the people of New England I have this to say: Your ancestors were most powerful and influential in fastening slavery upon us. You are the very last who ought to reproach us for its existence now. We do not indulge reproaches toward you. It is unpleasant for us to receive them from you. Their use by either can only serve to widen the unhappy differences existing between us. Let us all drop them, and, so far as we can, let us close up every avenue through which dissensions may come. We call upon you to make no sacrifices for us. It will cost you nothing to yield what we ask. Say, and let it be said in the Constitution, that you will not interfere with slavery in the District, or in the States, or in the Territories. Permit the free transit of our slaves from one State to another, and in the language of the patriarch, "let there be peace between you and me."

Let us all agree that there shall be landmarks between us; the same which our fathers erected. Let us say that they shall never be removed. I think upon this point I can cite an authority that will command universal respect. I discovered it in my researches into the history of the very Constitution we are now considering.

Mr. RIVES here read an extract from a letter written by Mr. MADISON after his retirement from public life. I have not a copy of this letter, but the substance of the portion read by Mr. RIVES was a statement by Mr. MADISON, that upon the passage of the Missouri Compromise, President MONROE was much embarrassed with the question of the constitutionality of the prohibition clause; that he took counsel with Mr. MARTIN, who declared that, in his judgment, Congress had no power over the subject of slavery in the territories.

Mr. JAMES:-Will you leave that question just where the Constitution leaves it, upon your construction of that instrument?

If so, we will agree to give you all necessary guarantees against interference.

Mr. RIVES:-No! I will not leave it there, for it would always remain a question of construction. I prefer to put the prohibition into the Constitution.

The gentleman from Massachusetts speaks for the North. Massachusetts does not constitute the North. I venerate the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I have many friends there. I look with pride upon her connection with the Revolution; upon her public men, her manufactures, her public institutions. Her people who have accomplished so much, will not turn a deaf ear to our wants now. We wish to go to her people and obtain their judgment upon our propositions. But Massachusetts is not all the North. Rhode Island constitutes a part of it. She has always spoken for us. She will speak for us to-day. What does New Jersey say? What does the great State of Pennsylvania and the greater Northwest say? Surely they do not echo the sentiments of the gentleman from Massachusetts. They are with us, and we will trust to them.

I dislike this way of answering for sections of the country. I have heard similar language from Mr. CALHOUN. He was fond of saying, "The South says-The South thinks-The South will do," this or that. I did not like it then. It stirred up all the rebellious sentiments of my nature; for I knew the statement was not true. I do not like such language better now. Let the people of Massachusetts speak. I know they will not refuse to fulfil the compact of their fathers.

We are brothers. I feel we can settle this important question which portends over us like an eclipse; we can leave this glorious country to our posterity. Once more let me refer to the noble and eloquent counsels of MADISON, and I am done. As children of the same family, as fellow-citizens of a great, glorious, and proud Republic, he invoked the kindred blood of our people to consecrate our common Union, and to banish forever the thought of our becoming aliens.

Mr. EWING:-I have never in any manner countenanced the discussions of slavery and the questions connected with it, at the North. I have always, so far as possible, discouraged those discussions. No good can possibly come from them. Is the

North the censor morum of the South? We have faults enough ourselves; let us consider and try to correct them, before we interest ourselves so much in those of our neighbors.

If there was any danger that slavery would be extended at the North, I would oppose its extension there, and I would teach my sons to oppose it. But this danger has never existed. Does any one fear that slavery will go into New York or Massachusetts ? No sane man thinks or ever thought so.

But it exists, and we must deal with it as it is. As one northern man, I do not want the negroes distributed throughout the North. We have got enough of them now. I have watched the operation of this emigration of slaves to the North. Ten negroes will commit more petty thefts than one thousand white men. We cannot permit them to come into Ohio. Wherever they have been permitted to come, it has almost cost us a rebellion. Before we begin to preach abolition I think we had better see what is to be done with the negroes.

Thirty years ago the subject of abolishing slavery was agitated in Virginia. Some of the most eloquent speeches were made in favor of the abolition movement that I ever read. The act providing for gradual abolition, was, I believe, lost by a single vote. I thought then that the result was an unfortunate one. But there is something to be said on both sides of the question. Had the act passed, the negroes would have been sent South, and we should have had plantation slavery, instead of the humane form which now exists in Virginia. But Virginia would have had one great, one powerful advantage. Her power would have increased tenfold. Free labor would have come in to take the place of slave labor, and the banks of the Potomac and the James would have blossomed as the rose.

The North has taken the business of abolition into its own hands, and from the day she did so, we hear no more of abolition in Virginia. This was but the natural effect of the cause. Now, we can never coerce the Southern States into abolitionism. It is not the way to convert them to our views by saying that we abhor their institutions. But these northern men will not listen to reason. They keep on making eloquent speeches their pulpits thunder against the sin of slaveholding. All grades of speech and thought are made use of, and the sickening sentimentalism