Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

the south, the division of the territories was very nearly equal, and eminently equitable and just, and therefore it preserved the peace and harmony of the United States for about thirty years, and until ■ contest arose about the proper division as between the free and slave states of territory subsequently acquired, lying west of the Mississippi river.

SEC. 22. PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA, AND THE TERMS OF THE TREATY

OF PURCHASE.

In 1803, Mr. Jefferson, then president of the United States, purchased of Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, the vast country then known as the Province of Louisiana, comprising the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, and Oregon, the Indian territories west of Arkansas, the territories of Nebraska, Dacotah, and Washington, and a portion of the present territory of Colorado. The 3d article of the treaty was as follows, viz:

Art. III. The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.

That article was introduced by Napoleon to secure to the French and Spanish inhabitants, (who were Catholics), their civil and religious rights and liberties, and their eventual incorporation into the American Union. Slavery then existed in all the French and Spanish settlements, and was legalized and established by the laws and usages of the province. Under the 3d article of the treaty and the laws of the province, African slaves were regarded as property, and the rights of their masters to retain and hold them as property was as fully guaranteed to them, by the treaty, as their rights to any other kind of property. But that guaranty had reference only to the slaves then in the province, and not to slaves that might thereafter be purchased and introduced from other states ar countries, nor to those that might be thereafter born in the province. That article did dot inhibit congress, nor limit their power to prohibit the further introduction of slaves into that country, nor to provide that all children thereafter born of female slaves should be free, nor to adopt a system of emancipation by

compensating the masters for the loss of their property in the slaves that might be emancipated. The sole object and effect of so much of the article as protected the slave property of the inhabitants, was to save their rights, so that they should not be despoiled of their property in slaves, which they then held in the province, acquired under the protection and sanction of the laws thereof. It did not prohibit any reasonable prospective legislation upon the subject of slaves and slavery. It did not contain any such inhibition as the deeds of cession of North Carolina and Georgia. [See ante. p. 135, 136, and 137.]

SEC. 23.

TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENTS AND LAWS ESTABLISHED IN
AND FOR THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE.

Congress passed an act which was approved by President Jefferson, March 26th, 1804, entitled "An act erecting Louisiana into two territories, and providing for the temporary government thereof.” It provided for the establishment of a territoral government for so much of that country as now constitutes the state of Louisiana -calling it the territory of Orleans, and calling all the remaining portion of the province the district of Louisiana; and providing that the latter should be subject to, and governed by, the governor and judges of the Indiana territory.

The 10th section of the act prohibited, under severe penalties, the importation into the territory of Orleans, of any slave or slaves from beyond the limits of the United States. The 11th section of the act applying to the territory of Orleans, was as follows, viz:

Sec. 11. The laws in force in said territory, at the commencement of this act, and not inconsistent with the provisions thereof, shall continue in force until altered, modified, or repealed by the legislature.

The 13th section, applying to the district of Louisiana, was as follows, viz:

Sec. 13. The laws in force in said district of Louisiana, at the commencement of this act, and not inconsistent with any of the provisions thereof, shall continue in force until altered, modified, or repealed by the governor and judges of the Indiana territory, as aforesaid.

Slavery having been previously established in the province of Louisiana by the Spanish and French laws, those laws and the whole pro-slavery code of laws, usages, and customs, as well as statutes and royal ordinances, which constituted laws, were recognized by the treaty of purchase, and ratified and confirmed by the

11th and 13th sections aforesaid, of that organic act; whereby congress directly recognized and confirmed slavery, and the laws relating thereto, in the whole Louisiana purchase, and at the same time exercised their sovereign power to prohibit the further introduction of slaves from Africa, or any state or country beyond the limits of the United States.

Under an act of congress, approved March 3d, 1805, a territorial government, separate from Indiana, was established for the district of Louisiana, calling it the Territory of Louisiana. The 9th section of that act provided that the laws and regulations then in force therein, should continue in force until altered, modified, or repealed by the legislature of the territory.

The effect of those two organic acts, of March 26th, 1804, and March 3d, 1805, was to approve the slave laws of the territory, to recognize their application to large districts of country having no white settlements, and to sanction the introduction of slaves into all parts of the territory, north to the 49th degree of latitude, and west to the Pacific ocean; though there were not, at either of those periods, perhaps ten slaves north and west of the present limits of the state of Missouri. Congress and President Jefferson made a very great mistake in sanctioning such laws; and the same grave error was again repeated by congress and President Madison, in reorganizing the territorial government in 1812.

On the admission of the state of Louisiana into the Union, congress passed an act, approved June 4th, 1812, to change the name of the territory of Louisiana, and to call it Missouri, and to reorganize the government thereof, giving it full legislative powers, vested in a general assembly, consisting of the governor, appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, and a house of representatives, to be elected by the people for two years, and a legislative council of nine, to be appointed as follows, viz: from eighteen persons nominated by the house of representatives of the territory, the president of the United States should select, and by and with the advice and consent of the senate, appoint and commission nine, as members of the legislative council, for five years. An absolute veto was given to the governor over the acts of the legislature.

It was provided in the 16th section, "that the laws and regula tions in force in the territory of Louisiana, at the commencement of this act, and not inconsistent with the provisions thereof, should continue in force until altered, modified, or repealed by the general assembly."

Slaves had been introduced by the French and Spanish settlers into all the settlements in the province of Louisiana, including those in Missouri. Slavery was sanctioned by the laws of the province and of the subsequent territory, and by the 16th section of said organic act, congress ratified and confirmed the slave code of the territory, for the third time, and recognized and confirmed slavery therein, and gave the territorial legislature power to regulate or abolish it.

By the census of 1810, Louisiana territory, then comprising Missouri and Arkansas had 17,227 white inhabitants, 607 free colored persons, and 3,011 slaves; total, 20,845; more than five sixths of whom were within the present limits of Missouri, mostly on the Mississippi river and its tributaries, in the immediate vicin ity of that river. It may well be doubted if there were a thousand slaves within the present limits of Missouri, in 1803, when it was purchased, or even in March, 1805, when the first territorial government was established for it, separate from the territory of Indiana. Then was the time, when the compromise principle in relation to slavery, which obtained at the organization of the government, should have been applied to the new purchase; the compromise line should have been extended west from opposite the mouth of the Ohio river or in that vicinity; and the further introduction of slaves, north of that line, should have been prohibited. By thus carrying out the original compromise policy of the government, and dividing the newly organized territories nearly equally between the people of the free and the slave states, Missouri would have been thereafter settled by free men only, from the slave as well as from the free states, and would have become, and been admitted as a free state.

That was the first great error upon the subject of slavery, which was committed by the congress of the United States; and that error was again repeated, June, 1812, when congress reorganized the territorial government, and for the first time called it the terri

tory of Missouri. The slaves were so few in number at those periods, that there would have been no great practical difficulty in extending the compromise line west of the Mississippi, and thus saving Missouri from the dominion of slavery; and if presidents Jefferson and Madison had been as anxious to limit and extinguish alavery as many republicans now seem to think, there is no reason to doubt that it would have been done. In 1820, the slaves in Missouri had increased to 10,222, which rendered it impossible for congress to abolish slavery therein, or to exclude its admission into the Union as a slave state, without dissolving the Union itself.

Under an act of congress, approved March 2d, 1819, a new territory was formed of the southern part of Missouri, which was then called Arkansas territory, and a separate territorial government was organized for the same. By the 10th section of the act, it was provided that the laws in force in the territory of Missouri, on the 4th of July, 1819, applicable to Arkansas, and not inconsistent with that act, should continue in force in Arkansas territory, until modified or repealed by the legislative authorities of the territory.

SEC. 24. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

In pursuance of several petitions of the inhabitants, praying the admission into the Union as a state, of a portion of Missouri territory, nearly corresponding with the present state of Missouri, a bill was reported by a select committee of the house of representatives, on the 3d of April, 1818, to authorize the people of the territory to form a constitution and a state government, and for the admission of such state into the Union, on an equal footing with the original states. The bill was read a first and second time, and referred to the committee of the whole, but did not come up for consideration until the next session. On the 13th of July, 1819, the house went into committee of the whole upon the bill, and after a warm debate, adopted the following amendment as a proviso to the bill, viz:

And provided also, That the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall be duly convicted; and that all children of slaves, born within the said state, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free, but may be held to service until the age of twenty-five years.

« ZurückWeiter »