Fugitive Slave Bill passed by Congress shall remain the law of
the land, and be faithfully executed."
Both you and Mr. Webster admit that the Constitution permits a jury
trial to the fugitive. Should Congress, in its wisdom, and in obedience
to the wishes of the great mass of the Northern population, and in the
exercise of its constitutional power, elevate property in a human being
to the same level with that in a horse, and permit a jury to pass upon
the title to it,--_the Union must be dissolved_.
2. "The Wilmot Proviso, that monstrous thing, shall not be revived." It
was not courteous, certainly, in Mr. Foote thus to characterize Mr.
Webster's thunder. The claim to this thunder was made in his speech,
September, 1847, at the Springfield Convention, which nominated him for
President; and the Convention, in his presence, thus declared their
devotion to his missile. "The Whigs of Massachusetts now declare, and
put this declaration of their purpose _on record_, that Massachusetts
will never consent that Mexican territories, however acquired, shall
become a part of the American Union, unless on the _unalterable_
condition that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
otherwise than in punishment for crime." The next year Mr. Webster
launched his thunder over the Territory of Oregon, and thus in his
speech (10th August, 1848) vindicated it from the character now given to
it by Mr. Foote:--
"Gentlemen from the South declare that we invade their rights when we
deprive them of a participation in the enjoyment of territories acquired
by the common services and common exertions of all. Is this true? Of
what do we deprive them? Why, they say that we deprive them of the
privilege of carrying their slaves as slaves into the new territories.
Well, Sir, what is the amount of that? They say, that in this way we
deprive them of going into this acquired territory with their property.
Their property! What do they mean by this 'property'? We certainly do
not deprive them of the privilege of going into those newly acquired
territories with all that, in the general estimate of human society and
common and universal understanding of mankind, is esteemed property. Not
at all. The truth is just this. They have in their own States peculiar
laws which create property in persons.... The real meaning, then, of
Southern gentlemen, in making this complaint, is, that they cannot go
into the territories of the United States carr
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