APRIL, 1850.]

Mr. Bell's Resolutions.

[31ST CONG.

was a mode of suppressing, or banishing, branches of the Bank of the United States, once resorted to, in order to get rid of that institution, in some of our western States. The abstinence in Congress to exercise this undisputed power-the fact that no northern member has ever proposed or hinted it-this great fact of not using this undisputed power, when it might, should be received by all candid minds as the highest earthly evidence that Congress has no disposition to usurp disputed powers, much less to commit flagrant violations of the constitution, to harass or destroy slave property in the slaveholding States of this Union.

again is a subject which I would not touch. | now! Yet it would be a mode of taxation to The slave States are much agitated about it; oppress the slaveholding States, because the but without reason and against reason. Con- burden of it would fall exclusively upon them. gress has done nothing to alarm them, and much It would be a mode of annoying the slave to quiet them. Disclaimer of power-dis- States from the right it would involve to count claimer of desire; sixty years' refusal to touch and value the slaves, and verify returns by acit is the highest evidence which Congress can tual inspection. It might be a mode of abolgive of its determination to abide the constitu- ishing slavery, upon the principle of suppresstion and its duty. This ought to be satisfac-ing, by fining, under the name of taxing; which tory to all slaveholders. If any one is not satisfied with this test, let him try another; let him go to the market-that quick and truthful reporter of all danger to property; and he will quickly find, from the price that is offered him, that nobody is afraid of abolition but himself. No, sir! These four last-named subjectsabolition of slavery in the District-its abolition in the forts and arsenals, dock-yards and navy-yards-its abolition in the States-and the suppression of the slave trade between the States all belong to a class of subjects not to be touched-which Congress never has touched, and has no disposition now to touch. They are subjects which require no additional guarantees from congressional compromises. The constitution is the compromise. It is the binding compromise, and has been faithfully kept by every Congress from 1789 to 1850; and there is no reason to suppose it will not continue to be kept. If it shall not be kept, it will be time enough after the breach is committed, to think of the remedy-the remedy of disunion. We should no more look ahead for causes of disunion, than we should look ahead for causes of separation from our wives or for the murder of our mothers.

These are all the specified causes of alarm to the slave States from any conduct or apprehended conduct on the part of Congress, of which I have heard complaint. I do not trouble myself with those who have no power to act-with individuals or societies. Congress is the effective power-the representation of all the States and of that I speak, and say that I know of nothing in its conduct which can give the slave States any cause for complaint or alarm.

But we do not stop at forbearance-at abstinence from using undisputed power to annoy the slave States. We do not stop at negative proof to show the just and kind disposition of Congress towards these States. We proceed to positive acts, and by them prove the same thing. And here let us be precise. The year 1835 is named as the year of the commencement of the slavery agitation, and the aggressions upon the South. Granted, as to the time. Granted, also, as to individuals and societies. But how was it as to States and Congress? That is the point. And the answer is, that so little was Congress affected by the abolition societies-so little inclined to abolish slavery, or to restrict its area-that it actually increased it; and that repeatedly and largely, and within the obnoxious time. It was in the year 1836-the very year after this slavery agitation is dated, and the very year after the leading papers in the South had made it a question of time only for a convention of the slaveholding States to assemble and provide for a southern confederacy, that Congress actually increased the area of slavery in one of the largest of the slave states; and that at a

line, and by the actual conversion of a large extent of free soil into slave soil. I speak of the annexation of the Platte country to the State of Missouri. By that act of annexation, a part of the Missouri compromise line-one hun

Undefined complaints of aggressions, encroachments, and oppressions are made from some parts of the South. So far as these un-sacrifice of a part of the Missouri compromise defined complaints apply to Congress, and the northern States, I know of no foundation for them. Some legislative resolutions are offensive, but they do not amount to aggression, encroachment, oppression. But I do know of forbearance in Congress to exercise an undis-dred miles of it on a straight line-was abolputed power which might be exercised to the annoyance and oppression of the South. I allude to the power of direct taxation. The slave property of the slaveholding States is estimated at more than a thousand millions of dollars. It would be a rich subject of taxation. No Government in the world leaves such a mass of wealth untaxed. We have taxed it, and when it was worth much less than now-taxed it in 1798 and in 1813. No one dreams of it

ished; and a new line substituted, near three hundred miles long on its two sides, cutting deep into free soil, and converting it into slave soil. The six beautiful counties of the Platte country were gained to Missouri by this operation-gained to a slave State, and carved out of free territory, made free by the compromise of 1820-and all by the help of northern votes. I say by the help of northern votes, and without referring to the journal; for the fact proves

tself. The northern members were the majority; and without help from their votes, the law could not have passed to alter the compromise line. Their Senators were equal on this floor; and without help from them, the twothirds of the Senate could not have been obtained to ratify the treaty which removed the Indians from the ground promised to them for a permanent home, and which removal was indispensable to the annexation of the country to the State of Missouri. All this done, and by the help of northern votes, and in the very time laid as the period of northern designs for the abolition of slavery in the States! It was done without even an array of North and South. And so powerless were the abolitionists at home, so unable to make an agitation at home, that, so far as I am informed, they were not able to turn a single member out of Congress for the vote he gave in favor of the extension of slavery under such extraordinary circumstances. This is a fact which stands for an answer; and as such I produce it and leave it.

[APRIL, 1850,

of settling the whole slavery agitation, at the expense of her honor, dignity, and rights.

Having shown that the admission of California ought not to be mixed up with any other subject, I now come to the question of admission itself, and say that all the objections which have been made to her admission are groundless in fact, or insignificant in their nature. What are they?

1. That no act of Congress has been passed to authorize the people of California to form a State constitution. The fact is admitted, but its consequence is denied. Congress has full power over the admission of new States, and may dispense with all preliminary forms, when it pleases, and come direct to the question of admission. This is what it may do, and what it has done. It has admitted more new States without than with the previous authorization of an act of Congress to form a constitution. Eight have been so admitted-Vermont in 1791; Kentucky, 1792; Tennessee, 1796; Maine, 1820; Arkansas, 1836; Michigan, 1837; Florida, 1845; and Iowa, 1846. Eight in all-a majority of the whole number ever admitted

This is a great fact, but small in comparison to another. Behold that Texas ceded to the king of Spain by a southern administration in and stretching over a period of sixty years, 1819, recovered by the help of northern votes and reaching back to the venerable times of in 1844! the greater part of it slave territory. our early history, when Washington was PresiThis recovery carries slavery from the Sabine dent, and the fathers of our political church were to the Rio Grande-from the Red River to the still at the altar. Eight! and there would have Bay of Matagorda-from the frontiers of Loui- been another if Congress had not passed the act siana to the frontiers of New Mexico-ten de- in March, 1820, to authorize the people of Misgrees of longitude-above five hundred miles souri to assemble their convention to form a on a straight line! All this was done for the constitution. They would have assembled the extension of slavery, and by the help of north-convention themselves, as other territories had ern votes, and within five years past, and dur-done before them, if Congress had not passed ing the very time that the southern convention was under advisement on account of the designs of the northern people to abolish slavery in the States. This was done, and in that time. And now, away with idle fears and groundless accusations! They sink into nothing in the presence of such facts as these.

But this is not all-hardly the beginning of Congress legislation for the actual extension of slavery. Look at all the south-western and some of the western and southern States. Look at them as they were some thirty years ago. Look at Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Missouri; all of them more or less encumbered with an Indian population, keeping out the white man and his slave. Now, all redeemed from the Indian, and actual slavery extended where it could not go before! And all this again by the help of northern votes; for without that help the laws could not have been passed, nor the treaties have been ratified by which this great extension of actual slavery in so many great States has been accomplished. I say, then, that these fears are idle-this agitation groundless-that Congress has no design to disturb slave property-and that there is no necessity for any settlement or adjustment about it-no necessity for compromising California into the Union by a grand scheme

the act at the session it did. I was contemporary with that event, and know something about it. Certainly the authorization by Congress is a convenience-it regulates the process and pays the expense; but it is not a necessity, and may be dispensed with in all, and has been in a majority of the cases of admission, and ought to be in every case in which Congress does not do its duty by the territory. This was the case with California. She had been scandalously neglected-left without any legal government, or any American law, but a tax law; and she had no alternative but to make some sort of a government for herself. The choices lay between a provisional government-such as Oregon had established under similar circumstances and a State government. Her population and wealth, and the rapidity of her march to the rank of a great State, decided her in favor of the latter; and she decided well; I rejoiced when I heard it. It was the course which I deemed she ought to take from the moment Congress adjourned, 3d of March, 1849, without giving her a legal government, and which I then expressed to several persons, and among the rest to the present Secretary of State, Mr. Clayton. Sir, this is a subject which I have studied-twice studied; once in 1820, when the law for the Missouri Convention was so long delayed-and again in 1837,

Mr. Bell's Resolutions.

wise or crosswise. It is too narrow for one of these operations; and could not suffer the other without being cut through the heart.

[APRIL, 1850,

as words without intents. Words are sometimes deeds, and these now become so; and as such they deserve grave consideration.

5. Interference of the President. It is ob- The Senator from Kentucky is in favor of jected that President Taylor interfered to in- the proposition to couple the admission of Cali duce the people of California to make this State fornia with some other subject. I think he government. Even if he had so interfered, it limited himself to the territorial governments, would not vitiate the constitution which they and recommends that conjunction as the most have formed, and which is the only thing that speedy way of accomplishing the admission of we have to judge. Even if true in fact, the the young State. Sir, I say, honor first,-speed objection would be of no application to her afterwards. I say, an honorable admission, no constitution. It would be, as Judge Chase said matter upon what time, in preference to a disof the young lawyer's argument at Richmond, honorable one, no matter how speedy. The a non sequitur. But it is not founded in fact. | subjects proposed to be coupled with California President Taylor did not interfere. He was under the motion from which we move to exnot in California to interfere personally; he cept her, are all the subjects impending in the could only have done it vicariously; and ac- Senate, and which grow out of the institution cordingly he was so charged. But the imputed of slavery in the United States. If she goes agents deny the agency. And if they did not, to the intended grand committee of thirteen his character ought to stand for an answer to a under this proposition, she goes there to be vague accusation. He has the character of an coupled in the consideration, and weighed in honest and a fair man; and that character the balance, and mixed up in the concoction, should shield him from charges which have and brought out in the product, of all these nothing but suspicion (and that of adversaries, subjects moulded and amalgamated into one intent upon defeating a measure which he has measure, or into a system of measures of mutual responsibly recommended) to rest upon. This dependence, and called a compromise. I qualify objection, of Presidential interference, receives, this as dishonorable to California; and say that then, the twofold answer, of being unfounded the latest admission, without it, is preferable to in fact, and a non sequitur, if it was not. the speediest with it.

These are the named objections, strenuously urged at first, but more faintly now. In fact they seem to be abandoned, and a bargain offered for the admission of the State, with a threat of total defeat if the offer is not accepted. I allude to what was said by the Senator from Kentucky, who sits farthest over the way, (Mr. CLAY,) on Friday last, and which then had the effect of starting me from my tranquil seat. He said, as I find it reported, and I think correctly, in the morning papers:

"He would say now to those who desired the speedy admission of California, the shortest and most expeditious way of attaining the desired object, was to include her admission in a bill giving governments to the territories."

"He made this statement, because he was impelled to do so from what had come to his knowledge. If her admission as a separate measure be urged, an opposition is created which may result in the defeat of any bill for her admission."

"Another reason for such a course was that we are all aiming at a compromise, and whatever would be productive of harmony and peace to the distracted country, should be done."

These are the points of that Senator's remarks which struck me so forcibly as to spring me from my seat at the time they were delivered, and upon which, after full time for deliberation, I feel bound to comment now. I had heard such things before, but did not attach any very great practical consequence to them; but when I see them reproduced by that Senator-a man of head and nerve-a head to measure, and a nerve to master any danger; and see the consequence which he attaches to them, I can no longer consider thein VOL. XVI.-32

Speedy admission is doubtless desirable to California. Her position is anomalous, and disadvantageous. A young government without the means of living-without character to borrow-soliciting loans, and that in vain, at three per cent. a month. If she was a State of the Union, Wall street would relieve her of her bonds; but being as she is, without acknowledged legal existence, the capitalist eschews her; and this young State, rich in inherent resources, and sitting upon gold, is driven to the resource of State bonds, and a paper medium, which nobody will touch. All her operations are carried on at a disadvantage, for want of a fixed legal character. The sum of six hundred thousand dollars has been taken from the people, without law, and when they were without government, and ought to be paid back to the State-but being no State, in the law, her name cannot be put into a bill to pay it back. This six hundred thousand dollars refunded, would relieve the young State, and allow time for the development of her own resources. It is justly due, being illegally collected for duties when there was no law to warrant it, no correlative protection to justify taxation, and when the necessaries and comforts of life, were dear enough without being subjected to a military tariff. That money should be refunded, not to the merchant who paid it to the military chest, but to the people who restored it, with his per centum upon it, to the merchant; and who are the rightful party to have it back, and their State government their rightful agent to receive it.

Want of a branch mint; and before that could be got ready, an assayer to fix the value

Mr. Bell's Resolutions.