: The Slavery Question Speech of Hon. John M. Landrum of La. Delivered in the House of Representatives April 27 1860 by Landrum John M John Morgan - Slavery United States Speeches in Congress

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it, for my precedents. I care not what their private opinions may have been; I want to know what their legislative conduct was when they were acting on oath, for they were men who regarded their oaths. They were men, sir, who did not believe that the Constitution they framed would be contrary to the higher law, and that it would be consistent with their oath of office to violate it.

The British "shall not carry away the negroes or other property belonging to the people of the United States."

Yet we are told that, according to the doctrine of our forefathers, there can be no such thing as property in man. The language I have quoted occurs first in the preliminary articles in 1782, and again in the treaty of peace which was signed in 1783.

Kentucky was admitted into the Union as a slave State, without objection, on the 4th of February, 1791. Now, if you had the right to exclude Missouri because she tolerated slavery, why did you not have the same right to exclude Kentucky? Why were conscientious scruples abandoned in the case of Kentucky, and the Territory of Virginia given, by the detaching of Kentucky, four Senators in the Senate of the United States, instead of two? Our forefathers--yours and mine--voted for the admission of Kentucky as a slave State. It will not do to say that slavery already existed in Kentucky; because, if slavery be a sin and a crime and a curse, then, according to your doctrine, it ought not to have been extended by giving the slave States additional representation and power in the Senate of the United States.

Why, sir, if it would have been bad faith to have excluded Kentucky, was it not bad faith to exclude Missouri? Because in the ordinance establishing the territorial government of Missouri, in 1812, there was no Wilmot proviso, no prohibition of slavery? But slavery was permitted, as we ask it shall be permitted now; it was protected by the courts, and no complaint was urged within the Territory of Missouri, in regard to this question of slavery until she applied for admission into the Union. If your anti-slavery party, which I charge is the cause of all the evils with which this country is afflicted, was right then in excluding Missouri, because she did not abolish slavery, your forefathers were wrong in admitting Kentucky. Either they were wrong and you are right, or you are wrong and they were right. Between the two I have no hesitation in my choice. Regarded as patriots, regarded as intelligent men, considered as men who regarded their oaths, I have no hesitation in saying I believe they were equally as honest as the Republican party of the present day.

In 1793 they gave us the fugitive slave law, there being only seven votes in opposition to it, and some of those were from the South, I think--a law, which if we attempt to enforce in the northern States we are met by mobs, and bloodshed frequently follows. No southern man dares go into some portions of the northern States and attempt to execute this law, except at the peril of his life.

Such was the action of the founders of the republic, whose example we are constantly called upon to imitate. Tennessee was admitted in 1796, with slavery. The Territory of Mississippi was organized in 1798, by the application of the ordinance of 1787 to that Territory, and the restriction as to slavery removed. That was legislation under the Constitution. These are the precedents we are to follow; and we are not to go behind the Constitution and follow the precedent of 1787, when the relation of the States to each other was entirely different from what it is now under the Constitution.

Ah! but you say, Mr. Jefferson thought slavery was a great wrong. But the acquisition of Louisiana in 1804 was a great right. Mr. Jefferson was then President of the republic. He represented the people of the free States, and he represented the people of the slave States; and no matter what his private opinion might have been upon the question of slavery, or upon the question of religion, or upon any other question, we, as legislators sitting in this Hall, acting under oath, as he did, have nothing to do with your private opinions upon the subject; but we have something to do with your legislative action; and I call upon you, acting under oath, as Jefferson did, to imitate his example. He acquired Louisiana through the instrumentality of Livingston and Monroe, who signed the treaty. Slavery existed in the Territory of Louisiana by the treaty by which she was acquired, and by that her inhabitants were guarantied their rights of property.

And yet we are told that we are the cause of all these mischiefs, because we do not join with you in the declaration that there can be no such thing as property in man; and that we have departed from the example of our forefathers in not joining in that declaration. Sir, I would not use an unparliamentary phrase; I would not say one word calculated to widen the breach which now exists between the different members of this Confederacy, for God knows no one deprecates it more than I do; but I do say that intelligent gentlemen who stand upon this floor and make that declaration, ignore the whole legislation of this Government, from the formation of the Constitution up to the Missouri difficulty, in 1820. I say, if they are familiar with the legislative acts of their forefathers, they must know they are uttering that which is not true, when they say their example teaches us that we should oppose slavery in every shape and form in which we have legislative power.

Mississippi was admitted into the Union in 1817, and no objection was raised that she was a slave State. But it was in 1819-'20 that the struggle began for which you propose to hold us responsible. Why, sir, after the Government had gone on thirty years without question, having never asked, when a State applied for admission, whether she was free or whether she was slave; while the whole country was living in harmony and brotherly love and affection; while the southern State was proud of the prosperity and happiness of the northern State, and the people of the northern States rejoiced at the prosperity of the people of the South, this hydra-headed monster of anti-slavery was then first produced; and from that day to this, it may be said,

"Black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"

and has shaken the bonds of this Union from one end to the other.

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