A Defence of Virginia. Robert Lewis Dabney
Upon the supreme right of the States over the whole subject of slavery within their own dominions, upon the recognition of slaves as property protected by the federal laws, wherever slavery existed, and upon the fugitive slave law, not a voice was raised in opposition. But the Convention presumed (what subsequent history did not confirm,) that the main expenses of the federal government would be met by direct taxation; and some principle was to be adopted, for determining how slaves should rank with freemen, in assessing capitation taxes, and apportioning representation. The other question of difficulty was the suppression of the African slave trade, which, upon the return of peace, had been actively revived by New England, with the connivance of Carolina and Georgia. The Southern States, who expected to have nearly the whole tax on slaves to pay, desired to rate them very low; some members proposed that five slaves should count as equal to only one white freeman; others, that three slaves should count for one. The New England colonies generally desired to make a negro count as a white man, both for representation and taxation! After much difference, the majority of the Convention agreed to a middle conclusion proposed by Mr. Madison, that five negroes should count for three persons.[38] But the other question was not so easily arranged. The Committee of eleven appointed to draw up a first draught of a constitution had proposed that in Art. vii., § 4, of their draught, Congress should be prohibited from laying any import duty on African slaves brought into the country. The effect of this, so far as the federal government was concerned, would be to legalize the slave trade forever, and protect it from all burdens.[39] Maryland (by her legislature, then sitting,) to her immortal honour, and Pennsylvania and Virginia, exhibited a determination to change this section, so as to arrest the trade through the action of the federal government, either by prohibition or tax. The New England States, South Carolina, and Georgia, opposed them, and advocated the original section, assigning various grounds. The difference threatened to make shipwreck of the whole work of the Convention, when Gouverneur Morris adroitly proposed to commit the subject, along with that of the proposed navigation law, in order that disagreeing parties might be induced, by private conference, to combine mutual concessions into a sort of bargain. The subjects were accordingly committed to a Committee of one from each State. This Committee reported, August 24th, "in favour of not allowing Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves before 1800, but giving them power to impose a duty at a rate not exceeding the average of other imports." South Carolina (through General Pinckney) moved to prolong the importation from 1800 to 1808, and Massachusetts (through Mr. Gorham) seconded the motion. It was then passed, as last proposed, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, (the only New England States then present,) Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina, voting in the affirmative, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia in the negative.[40] The maritime States soon after gained their point, of authorizing Congress to pass, by a majority vote, a navigation law for their advantage.
Thus, by the assistance of New England, the iniquities of the African slave trade, and the influx of that alien and savage race into America, were prolonged from the institution of the federal government until 1808. Is it said, that New England had at this time no interest in slavery, did not value it, and was already engaged in removing it at home? This is true; and it is so much the worse for her historical position. It only shows that she desired to fix that institution which she had ascertained to be a curse to her, upon her neighbours, for the sake of keeping open twenty years longer an infamous but gainful employment, and of securing a legislative bounty to her shipping. In other words, her policy was simply mercenary. And these votes for prolonging the slave trade effectually rob her of credit for emancipation at home; proving beyond all peradventure, that the latter measure was wholly prompted by her sense of her own interests, and not of the rights of the negro. For if the latter motive had governed, must it not have made her the equal opponent of the increase of slavery in Carolina and Georgia?
But the agency of New England in that increase was still more active and direct. As though to "make hay while the sun shone," the people of that section renewed their activity on the African coast, with a diligence continually increasing up to 1808. Carey, in his work upon the slave trade, estimates the importations into the thirteen colonies between 1771 and 1790, (nineteen years,) at thirty-four thousand; but that between the institution of the federal government and 1808, he places at seventy thousand. His estimate here is unquestionably far too low; because forty thousand were introduced at the port of Charleston, South Carolina, alone, the last four years;[41] and within the years 1806 and 1807, there were six hundred arrivals of New England slavers at that place.[42] The latter fact shows that those States must have possessed nearly the whole traffick. And the former bears out Mr. De Bow, in enlarging the total of importations under the federal government to one hundred and twenty-five thousand, at least. For the average at one port was ten thousand per year. In 1860, there were ten-fold as many Africans in the United States as had been originally brought thither from Africa. But as many of these had been multiplying for four, or even five generations, this rate of increase is too large to assume for the importations of 1800, whose descendants had only come to the third generation. Assuming the half as nearly correct, which seems a moderate estimate, we find their increase five-fold. So that there were, in 1860, six hundred and twenty-five thousand more slaves in the United States than would have been found here, had not New England's cruelty and avarice assisted to prolong the slave trade nineteen years after Virginia and the federal government would otherwise have arrested it.
After the British, and even after the other governments of Europe, had abolished the trade in name, it continued with a vast volume. Whereas at the time of the abolition, in 1808, eighty-five thousand slaves were taken from Africa annually, nearly fifty thousand annually were still carried, as late as 1847, to Brazil and the Spanish Indies.[43] In this illicit trade, no Virginian (and, indeed, no Southern) ship or shipmaster has ever been in a single case implicated, although our State had meantime begun no inconsiderable career of maritime adventure. But adventurers from New England ports and New York were continually found sharing the lion's portion of the foul spoils. And to the latest reclamations of the British Government upon the Brazilian, for violations of the treaties and laws against the slave trade upon the extended shores of that empire, the answer of its noble Emperor has still been, that if Britain would find the real culprits, she must go to the ports of Boston and New York to seek them.[44]
But one more fact remains: When the late Confederate Government adopted a constitution, although it was composed exclusively of slaveholding States, it voluntarily did what the United States has never done: it placed an absolute prohibition of the foreign slave trade in its organic law.
CHAPTER III.
LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
It has been a favourite and persistent assertion of Abolitionists, that slavery in America was an exceptional institution, and contrary to the law of nature and nations. They represent it as owing its existence solely to the lex loci of the States where it was legalized by their own legislation; and hence they draw the conclusion, that the moment a slave passed out of one of these States into a free State, or into the territories of the United States, his bondage terminated of itself. Hence, also, they argue that slaveholders had no right to the protection of that species of property in the territories, which were the common possession of the citizens of all the States; and that the federal government could not properly permit the growth of, or recognize, new slave States. Their party cry was: "Freedom is national; slavery is local." It is plain that this proposition is the premise necessary to all the above assumptions. It will now be shown that this proposition is untrue. Slavery in the United States, instead of being the mere creature of lex loci, was founded on a basis as broad as that of the American Union, was in full accordance with the law of nature and nations as then recognized by the States and the federal government, and had universal recognition by the force of general law. The exclusion of slavery from any State was legally the exception, owing its validity purely to the lex loci, and to the recognized sovereignty of the States over their own local affairs. Hence, the rights of slaveholders stood valid, of course, in all the common territories of the United States, and everywhere, save where the sovereignty