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now in power, yet never can see that it has been violated anywhere else — if he desires to seek under this
South Carolina Government for his lost rights?
I do not intend to be personal.
I wish he were in his seat, for he knows that I have the greatest kindness for him. I am free to say, in connection with what I am about to observe, that I am a little selfish in this; because if I lived in
South Carolina, with these disabilities or qualifications affixed upon a member, I would not be eligible to a seat in the lower branch of the Legislature.
That would be a poor place for me to go and get my rights; would it not?
I doubt whether the
Senator from
Kentucky is eligible to-day to a seat in the lower branch of the Legislature of South Carolina.
I do not refer to him in any other than the most respecful terms, but I doubt whether he would be qualified to take a seat in the lower branch of her Legislature.
I should not be, and I believe I am just as good as any who do take seats there.
In looking further into the
Constitution of
South Carolina, in order to ascertain what are her principles of government, what do we find?
We find it provided that, in the apportionment of these representatives, the whole number of white inhabitants is to be divided by sixty-two and every sixty-second part is to have one member.
Then all the taxes are to be divided by sixty-two, and every sixty-second part of the taxes is to have one member also.
Hence we see that slaves, constituting the basis of property, would get the largest amount of representation; and we see that property goes in an unequal representation to all the numbers, while those numbers constitute a part of the property-holders.
That is the basis of their representation.
Sir, the people whom I represent desire no such form of government.
Notwithstanding they have been borne down; notwithstanding there has been an army of 55,000 men created by the Legislature ; notwithstanding $5,000,000 of money has been appropriated to be expended against the
Union; and notwithstanding the arms manufactured by the
Government, and distributed among the States for the protection of the people, have been denied to them by this little petty tyrant of a king, and are now turned upon the
Government for its overthrow and destruction, those people, when left to themselves to carry out their own government and the honest dictates of their own consciences, will be found to be opposed to this revolution.
Mr. President, while the Congress of the Confederate States was engaged in the formation of their Constitution, I find a protest from
South Carolina against a decision of that Congress in relation to the slave-trede, in
The Charleston Mercury of Feb. 13.
It is written by
L. W. Spratt, to “
the Hon. John Perkins, delegate from
Louisiana.”
It begins in this way:
From the abstract of the Constitution for the Provisional Government, published in the papers this morning, it appears that the slave-trade, except with the Slave States of North America, shall be prohibited.
The Congress, therefore, not content with the laws of the late United States against it, which, it is to be presumed, were readopted, have unalterably fixed the subject, by a provision of the Constitution.
He goes on and protests.
We all know that that Constitution is made for the day, just for the time being, a mere tub thrown out to the whale, to amuse and entertain the public mind for a time.
We know this to be so. But in making his argument, what does he say?
Mr. Spratt, a Commissioner who went to
Florida, a member of the
Convention that took the
State of South Carolina out of the
Union, says in this protest:
The South is now in the formation of a slave republic.
This, perhaps, is not admitted generally.
There are many contented to believe that the South, as a geographical section, is in mere assertion of its independence; that it is instinct with no especial truth — pregnant of no distinct social nature; that for some unaccountable reason the two sections have become opposed to each other; that for reasons equally insufficient, there is disagreement between the people that direct them; and that from no overruling necessity, no impossibility of coexistence, but as mere matter of policy, it has been considered best for the South to strike out for herself, and establish an independence of her own. This, I fear, is an inadequate conception of the controversy.
This indicates the whole scheme.
“ The contest is not between the North and South as geographical sections, for between such sections merely there can be no contest; nor between the people of the
North and the people of the
South, for our relations have been pleasant; and on neutral grounds there is still nothing to estrange us. We eat together, trade together, and practise yet, in intercourse with great respect, the courtesies of common life.
But the real contest is between the two forms of society which have become established, the one at the
North, and the other at the
South.”
The protest continues:
With that perfect economy of resources, that just application of power, that concentration of forces, that security of order which results to slavery from the permanent direction of its best intelligence, there is no other form of human labor that can stand against it, and it will build itself a home, and erect for itself at some point within the present limits of the Southern States, a structure of imperial power and grandeur — a glorious Confederacy of States that will stand aloft and serene for ages, amid the anarchy of democracies that will reel around it.
* * * * * *
“But it may be that to this end another revolution may be necessary.
It is to be apprehended that this contest between democracy and slavery is not yet over.
It is certain that both forms of society exist within the limits of the
Southern States; both are distinctly developed ”
