header by Emerson Taymor, 2005
1. The Colonial Era: 1607-1763
2. The Revolutionary Era: 1763-1789
3. The Early National Period: 1789-1824
4. Jacksonian America: 1824-1848
5. Antebellum America: 1848-1860
6. The Civil War Era: 1861-1877
9. The Twenties
10. Depression and New Deal: 1929-1939
14. The Sixties
Chase, Defining the Constitutional Limits of Slavery
from a speech against the Compromise of 1850 in the Senate; Chase had been a member of the Liberty Party and a Free-Soiler before becoming a Republican
I think, Mr. President, that two facts may now be regarded as established: first, that in 1787 the national policy in respect to slavery was one of restriction, limitation, and discouragement. Second that it was generally expected that under the action of the State Governments slavery would gradually disappear from the States.
Such was the state of the country when the convention met to frame the Constitution of the United States….The framers of the Constitution acted under the influence of the general sentiment of the country. Some of them had contributed in no small measure to form that sentiment. Let us examine the instrument [the Constitution] in its light, and ascertain the original import of its language.
What, then, shall we find in it? The guarantees so much talked of? Recognition of property in men? Stipulated protection for that property in national territories and by national law? No, sir: nothing like it.
We find, on the contrary, extreme care to exclude these ideas from the Constitution. Neither the word “slave” nor “slavery” is to be found in any provision. There is not a single expression which charges the National Government with any responsibility in regard to slavery. No power is conferred on Congress either to establish or sustain it. The framers of the Constitution left it where they found it, exclusively within and under the jurisdiction of the States. Wherever slaves are referred to at all in the Constitution, whether in the clause providing for the apportionment of representation and direct taxation [I, 2], or in that stipulating for the extradition of fugitive from service [IV, 2], or in that restricting Congress as to the prohibitation of importation or migration [I, 9], they are spoken of, not as persons held as property, but as persons held to service, or having their condition determined, under State laws. We learn, indeed, from the debates in the Constitutional Convention that the idea of property in men was excluded with special solicitude….
Unhappily…the original policy of the government and the original principles of the Government in respect to slavery did not permanently control its action. A change occurred—almost imperceptible at first but becoming more and more marked and decided until nearly total….It was that the unity of the slave interest strengthened by this accession of political power, should gradually weaken the public sentiment and modify the national policy against slavery….Mr. President, I have spoken freely of slave state ascendancy in the affairs of this Government, but I desire not to be misunderstood. I take no sectional position. The supporters of slavery are the sectionalists….Freedom is national; slavery only is local and sectional….
What have been the results…of the subversion of the original policy
of slavery restriction and discouragement…instead of slavery being
regarded as a curse, a reproach, a blight, an evil, a wrong, a sin, we
are now told that it is the most stable foundation of our institutions;
the happiest relation that labor can sustain to capital; a blessing to
both races…this is a great change, and a sad change. If it goes on,
the spirit of liberty must at length become extinct, and a despotism will
be established under the forms of free institutions….There can be
no foundation whatsoever for the doctrine advanced…that an equilibrium
between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding sections of our country has
been, is, and ought to be, an approved feature of our political system….I
shall feel myself supported by the precepts of the sages of the Revolutionary
era, by the example of the founders of the Republic, by the original policy
of the Government, and by the principles of the Constitution.