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providing for the representation of slaves might be removed from that instrument;1 and these were presented to Congress–in the House by the elder Adams, and not2 received.
In the Senate they were received with reluctance, and leave to print was refused.
King of Alabama3 termed them ‘a proposition to dissolve the Union,’ and4 so did the General Assembly of Virginia in a counter memorial, which was promptly printed by the Senate.5
John Quincy Adams, in conjunction with Giddings, Slade, Gates, Borden, and Hiland Hall, had, earlier in the year, issued an address to the people of the free States,6 warning them that an attempt would be made at the next session of Congress to annex Texas.
The ‘real design and object of the South,’ they declared, ‘is to add new weight to her end of the lever. . . . We hesitate not to say that annexation, effected by any act or proceeding of the Federal Government or any of its departments, would be identical with dissolution’—as being in violation of the national compact.
‘We not only assert that the people of the free States “ought not to submit to it,” but we say, with confidence, they would not submit to it.’7
1 Mr. Garrison had proposed this a dozen years before (ante, 1: 264).
7 William Slade, elected Governor of Vermont in 1844, discussed annexation at great length in his message to the Legislature, saying: ‘Upon the consummation of the threatened measure, I do not hesitate to say that it would be the duty of Vermont to declare her unalterable determination to have no connection with the new Union, thus formed without her consent and against her will. To carry out this determination would not be to dissolve the Union, but to refuse to submit to its dissolution—not to nullify, but to resist nullification’ (Lib. 14: 170). And John Quincy Adams, in an address at North Bridgewater, Nov. 6, 1844, held this language: ‘The hero [Andrew Jackson, Lib. 14: 181] enquires, who but a traitor to his country could appeal, as I have done, to the youth of Boston [Lib. 14: 169] to oppose by arms the decision of the American people, should it be favorable to the annexation of Texas to the United States. . . . No! the people of the United States will never sanction the annexation of Texas, unless under the delusion of such fables as the Erving treaty [Lib. 14: 165, 169, 182] ; and if the faction of its inventor, invested with the power of the nation, should consummate the nefarious scheme, by the semblance of the people's approbation, to imbrue their hands in blood for wicked conquest and the perpetuation and propagation of slavery, then I say to you my constituents, as I said to the young men of Boston: Burnish your armor—prepare for conflict—and, in the language of Galgacus to the ancient Britons, think of your forefathers—think of your posterity!’ （Lib. 14: 182.) Compare the position taken by Josiah Quincy in the House of Representatives, speaking to the bill for the admission of Louisiana, Jan. 14, 1811: ‘I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that, if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation—amicably if they can, violently if they must’ ( “Life of Josiah Quincy,” p. 206).
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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