Note 220 — Chapter V

Mr. Sumner has a great deal to say, in his speech, about "the memory of the fathers." When their sentiments agree with his own, or only seem to him to do so, then they are "the demi-gods of history." But only let these demi-gods cross his path or come into contact with his fanatical notions, and instantly they sink into sordid knaves. The framers of the Constitution of the United States, says he, made "a compromise, which cannot be mentioned without shame. It was that hateful bargain by which Congress was restrained until 1808 from the prohibition of the foreign slave trade, thus securing, down to that period, toleration for crime." . . . . "The effrontery of slaveholders was matched by the sordidness of the Eastern members." . . . . "The bargain was struck, and at this price the Southern States gained the detestable indulgence. At a subsequent day, Congress branded the slave trade as piracy, and thus, by solemn legislative act, adjudged this compromise to be felonious and wicked."

But for this compromise, as every one who has read the history of the times perfectly well knows, no union could have been formed, and the slave trade might have been carried on to the present day. By this compromise, then, the Convention did not tolerate crime nor the slave trade; they merely formed the Union, and, in forming it, gained the power to abolish the slave trade in twenty years. The gain of this power, which Congress had not before possessed, was considered by them as a great gain to the cause of humanity. If the Eastern members, from a blind and frantic hatred of slavery, had blasted all prospects of a union, and at the same time put the slave trade beyond their power forever, they would have imitated the wisdom of the abolitionists, who always promote the cause they seek to demolish.

If any one will read the history of the times, he will see that "the fathers," the framers of the Constitution, were, in making this very compromise, governed by the purest, the most patriotic, and the most humane, of motives. He who accuses them of corruption shows himself corrupt; especially if, like Mr. Sumner, he can laud them on one page as demi-gods, and on the very next denounce them as sordid knaves, who, for the sake of filthy lucre, could enter into a "felonious and wicked" bargain. Yet the very man who accuses them of having made so infamous and corrupt a bargain in regard to the slave trade can and does most eloquently declaim against the monstrous injustice of supposing them capable of the least act in favor of slavery!