Author: Various
Editor: William Lloyd Garrison
Release Date: March 12, 2006 [EBook #17971]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of this project gutenberg
EBOOK abolition of slavery ***
Produced by the University of Michigan as part of
the
“Making of America” digital library
(http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa/).
By William Lloyd Garrison and Others
Extracts from the speech of John Quincy Adams, delivered
in the U.S. House of Representatives, April 14
and 15, 1842, on War with Great Britain and Mexico:—
What I say is involuntary, because the subject has
been brought into the House from another quarter,
as the gentleman himself admits. I would leave
that institution to the exclusive consideration and
management of the States more peculiarly interested
in it, just as long as they can keep within their
own bounds. So far, I admit that Congress has
no power to meddle with it. As long as they do
not step out of their own bounds, and do not put the
question to the people of the United States, whose
peace, welfare and happiness are all at stake, so
long I will agree to leave them to themselves.
But when a member from a free State brings forward
certain resolutions, for which, instead of reasoning
to disprove his positions, you vote a censure upon
him, and that without hearing, it is quite another
affair. At the time this was done, I said that,
as far as I could understand the resolutions proposed
by the gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Giddings,) there
were some of them for which I was ready to vote, and
some which I must vote against; and I will now tell
this House, my constituents, and the world of mankind,
that the resolution against which I would have voted
was that in which he declares that what are called
the slave States have the exclusive right of consultation
on the subject of slavery. For that resolution
I never would vote, because I believe that it is not
just, and does not contain constitutional doctrine.
I believe that, so long as the slave States are able
to sustain their institutions without going abroad
or calling upon other parts of the Union to aid them
or act on the subject, so long I will consent never
to interfere. I have said this, and I repeat
it; but if they come to the free States, and say to
them, you must help us to keep down our slaves, you
must aid us in an insurrection and a civil war, then
I say that with that call comes a full and plenary
power to this House and to the Senate over the whole
