The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power eBook
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may, if he thinks proper, deny the truth of the position,
and may maintain his denial; not by indignation, not
by passion and fury, but by sound and sober reasoning
from the laws of nations and the laws of war.
And if my position can be answered and refuted, I shall
receive the refutation with pleasure; I shall be glad
to listen to reason, aside, as I say, from indignation
and passion. And if, by the force of reasoning,
my understanding can be convinced, I here pledge myself
to recant what I have asserted.
Let my position be answered; let me be told, let my
constituents be told, the people of my State be told—a
State whose soil tolerates not the foot of a slave—that
they are bound by the Constitution to a long and toilsome
march under burning summer suns and a deadly Southern
clime for the suppression of a servile war; that they
are bound to leave their bodies to rot upon the sands
of Carolina, to leave their wives widows and their
children orphans; that those who cannot march are
bound to pour out their treasures while their sons
or brothers are pouring out their blood to suppress
a servile, combined with a civil or a foreign war,
and yet that there exists no power beyond the limits
of the slave State where such war is raging to emancipate
the slaves. I say, let this be proved—I
am open to conviction; but till that conviction comes,
I put it forth not as a dictate of feeling, but as
a settled maxim of the laws of nations, that, in such
a case, the military supersedes the civil power; and
on this account I should have been obliged to vote,
as I have said, against one of the resolutions of
my excellent friend from Ohio, (Mr. Giddings,) or
should at least have required that it be amended in
conformity with the Constitution of the United States.
THE WAR POWER OVER SLAVERY.
We published, not long ago, an extract from a speech
delivered by John Quincy Adams in Congress in 1842,
in which that eminent statesman confidently announced
the doctrine, that in a state of war, civil or servile,
in the Southern States, Congress has full and plenary
power over the whole subject of slavery; martial law
takes the place of civil laws and municipal institutions,
slavery among the rest, and “not only the President
of the United States, but the Commander of the Army,
has power to order the universal emancipation of the
slaves.”
Mr. Adams was, in 1842, under the ban of the slaveholders,
who were trying to censure him or expel him from the
House for presenting a petition in favor of the dissolution
of the Union. Lest it may be thought that the
doctrine announced at this time was thrown out hastily
and offensively, and for the purpose of annoying and
aggravating his enemies, and without due consideration,
it may be worth while to show that six years previous,
in May, 1836, Mr. Adams held the same opinions, and
announced them as plainly as in 1842. Indeed,
it is quite likely that this earlier announcement of
