Shall Slavery Take Possession of the Nation,
or shall Freedom Rule?Columbus, Ohio, State Journal [Republican](11 March 1857)
Many good-natured, Union-loving men hoped
that the administration of Buchanan would be
an improvement upon that of Franklin Pierce.
We were not of that number. We at one time
believed that the administration of John Tyler
would stand forever in the history of this country,
as the worst that could be, so far as the rights
of the Free States were concerned. We were
mistaken. The Slave power has increased
rapidly ever since that time, and now it has reached
a point which is fearful to contemplate. First,
it subdued the Executive Government; second,
the Legislative; and now it grasps the Judiciary.
The grand object of the oligarchs has
been perfected. They have made Slavery
National, Freedom Sectional.
According to the recent decision of the
Supreme Court, there is not one foot of free
territory belonging to the Union, outside of the
free States. The Wilmot Proviso applied to
Oregon and Minnesota, has fallen lifeless to the
earth, and slaves can now be taken there and
worked, with the shield of the Federal Constitution
to guard and protect their masters in the
management of this, their property. The Territories
have become one great slave pen. How
long it will be before this power will apply the
same principles to the States? Colored men
are now declared not to be citizens of the United
States, they are outlawed from all claims to
citizenship in the land of their nativity, in the
home of their fathers. Like the Bohemian
Magraubin, "they have no home, no country." They
are simply property; they are as horses and
cattle. They can be bought and sold, but they
cannot be citizens.
Buchanan's Inaugural foreshadows his policy.
His administration will carry out the "principles
of the Constitution" as expouned by a slave-holding
Supreme Court. Even Squatter sovereignty
has had fetters put upon its fetlocks by
the Inaugural. It now means that the people
of a Territory can only exclude slavery when
they came to make a State Constitution, not
before. Until that hour arrives, there is no
power in our government, or in the people to
prevent the extension of the curse, and when
that hour arrives, they will be strong enough
to have slavery acknowledged and protected.
To carry out this infernal doctrine, the whole
power of the general government during the
administration of Buchanan will be brought,
and if the people of the free States submit to it,
all is lost. But they will not submit. From
this day forth, the spirit of resistance, legal,
constitutional, popular resistance will be
organized. Even the most prejudiced of the
Democratic party must see that unless the North
speaks, unites, resents, acts, in opposition to
this aristocracy of slaveholders, the whole
government will become a mere instruments to
oppress poor, downtrodden humanity, and to
cover our whole continent with slavery, as the
waters cover the sea.
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