Title:  Continental Monthly, Vol.  I, No.  VI, June, 1862 Devoted To Literature and National Policy

Author:  Various

Release Date:  June 29, 2005 [EBook #16151]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

Literature and national policy.

Vol.  I.—­June, 1862.—­No.  VI.

* * * * *

THE CONSTITUTION AND SLAVERY.

There are two sections of the United States, the Free States and the Slave States, who hold views widely different upon the subject of Slavery and the true interpretation of the Constitution in relation to it.  The Southern view, for the most part, is: 

1.  The Constitution recognizes slaves as strictly property, to her bought and sold as merchandise.

2.  The Constitution recognizes all the territories as open to slavery as much as to freedom, except in those cases where it has been expressly interdicted by the Federal Government; and it secures the legal right to carry slaves into the territories, and any act of Congress, restricting this right to hold slaves in the territories, is unconstitutional and void.

3.  Slavery is a natural institution, and not to be considered as local and municipal.

4.  The Constitution is simply a compact or league between sovereign States, and when either party breaks, in the estimation of the other, this contract, it is no longer binding upon the whole, and the party that thinks itself wronged has a right, acting according to its own judgment, to leave the Union.

5.  This contract between sovereign States has been broken to such an extent, by long and repeated aggressions upon the South by the North, that the slave States who have seceded from the Union, or who may secede, are not only right in thus doing, but are justified in taking up arms, to prevent the collection of revenue by the Federal Government.

These ideas are universally repudiated in the free States.  It is not my purpose to discuss the social or moral relations of slavery, but simply to consider under what circumstances the Constitution originated, and what was the clear intent of those who adopted it as the organic or fundamental law of the country.  The last assumption taken by the seceding States grows out of the first four, and therefore it becomes a question of vital interest, what did the framers of the Constitution mean?  We must remember that