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MR. WEBSTER TO COMMODORPE STOCKTON.
WASHINGTON, March 22, 1850.
MY DEAR SIR:
I send to you,~as an old friend, a copy of my late speech
in the Senate. It relates to a subject quite interesting to the
country, as connected with the question of proper governments
for those new territories which you had an important agency
in bringing under He power of the United States.
I would hardlyask your opinion of the general sentiments
of the speech, although I know you are a very competent judge;
but that, being   t of the strife of politics, your judgment is not
likely to be bi'ssed and that you have as great a stake as any
man in the preservation of the Union, and the maintenance of
the Governnt on its true principles.
I am, dear sir,
With great respect, yours,
DANIEL WEBSTER.
COMMODORE STOCKTON.
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REPY OF COMMODORE STOCKTON.
PRINCETON, March 25.
DEAR SIR:
I thank you for your letter and a copy of the recent speech
delivered by you id the Senate of the United States.
I need say noth i in commendation of your course, which has
been so generally approved, and will proceed (without referring
to any difference/ opinion that may seem to exist between us on
the subject), to emmunicate to you my candid and long-cherished
opinions on the subject of slavery as it exists in the United
States, and the duty of the Government and the people in connection with,it.
In view of a national crisis in the affairs of Great Britain, one
of her eminent statesmen once said: "In order to be prepared
for the triis of these times, we should be possessed of a prompt
facility of adverting in all our doubts to some grand and comprehensive truth. In a deep and strong soil must that tree fix its
roots, the height of which is to reach to heaven, and the sight of
it to the ends of the earth."
A great crisis presents itself in the path of the Republic.
Interests of incalculable consequence are involved in it-to you,
to myself, to every citizen-consequences not  limited  to our
times, but extending onward to all future generations; and, if
there is anything in the hopes that have been cherished of the
universally progressive principles of liberty, to the world for ages
e 
COMMODORE STOCTON
to come, "There are times,  (says another eminent person,)
when the assertion of great principles is the best service a man r
can render society," and this is such a time.  We  are all cai J
upon to pause at the present crisis, and consider well whafare
the demands of duty.  It is no time to palter about party, tinctions or sectional differences; now, if ever, it becomes   to feel
that we are Americans, only Americacs. It is no time to calculate questions of personal popularity;  that sacrifie  which any
citizen may make is as nothing, if it contributes to save his
country.   A  Jerseyman myself, born on one of those proud
battle-fields where American liberty was purchsed;  bearing a
life devoted to the service of the Union-I canvithhold nothing
from the cause of that Union with which I solemnly believe
liberty is herself identified, " one and inseparable."
It appears to me that the polar truth to which the view of our
fellow-citizens should be directed in the present emergency, is
thisThat God works in the affairs of nation, and shapes them
to His purposes; and that to ascertain His will we must study in
the school of His  Providences, and  take counsel from the
observation of His ways to regulate our of.   The  destinies
of men and of nations are in the bosom l the Most High.
He lives in the history of the past; He will live in the history of
the future; and he who has most deeply reflected upon the
records of the past, has most clearly seen that th: —eat characteristics which have marked the progress of every nation, in every
age, have eventually resulted in the          accomplishrnnt of some
grand design in which the hand of Providence, though for a time
obscured by shadows, has been at last clearly and distinctly
seen.
Of this our own history furnishes a luminous example. The
preparation for the erection of the great temple of civil and religious liberty we now inhabit, began in the discoveries and convulsions of the 15th century. The materials for it were found in
men schooled by providential trials, and disciplined to the work
they were to commence; and it is as rational to suppose the world
was the production of chance, as to suppose that the combination
of events which led them to this continent, which cherished and
protected their infant colonies, which brought about the Revolution and its results, and has made us what we are, was the
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work of chance; it is this which inspires me with hope, that
He who founded the Republic will save it-that He  has great
parposes to accomplish yet, and that they will be unfolded
th:ih successive years for ages to come, in perfecting  the
institutions of a rational freedom here, and in extending them to
al otheri-ontinents.
Though:~men were the instruments, the American Revolution
was the work of an unseen Power-the actors in it themselves
looked back with astonishment at the course they had taken, and
the results that %ad been accomplished. The greater the event,
the more clearl has the hand of Providence always been seen
in it-the greater the hero, the more heartfelt always has been
his acknowledgment that a superior destiny controlled his actions.
The American CNnstitution is the result of a fearful struggle.
Its full price was by no means  the sufferings undergone in the
* conflict. The series of events by which it was accomplished,
we are now able to trace distinctly back, through the privations
and trials of the early colonists, to the days when popular free  dom first began the contest with arbitrary power in the civil wars
of England-and its pathway is everywhere marked with patient
endurance and costly sacrifice.
Things penneantly good are of slow growth-the  offipring
of hardship, they are made strong through suffering. So uni versal is this law, that the most hasty minds have a secret mis giving of the efficacy of hasty products; and we would as soon
expect undisciplined troops to be equal to the hardships and
perils of a dangerous campaign, as that an undisciplined com munity could triumph in that fiercest of all warfares, the war fare which &aarks everywhere the pathway to national existence,
greatness and virtue.
More than two centuries have passed since the events which
were tojesult in founding the Republic were put in motion; and
who does not perceive, both in our colonial and constitutional
history, that the process by which we have, within a compara tively few years, come to the full achievement of a distinctive
nationality, has been one mainly of forbearance and self-denial t.
Nor have we been the only sufferers.  When our ancestors came
to this country, they found it in the possession of another race.
That race has had their day. A great continent, fitted by na
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COMNIMODORE  STOCKTON
ture for large developments in the progress of humanity, had
been for centuries committed to their keeping, and they  had f
proved faithless to their trust.  It was manifest from the co-.
mencement of the struggles, that one of the two races mus   ve
way to the other, and no one doubts the beneficence of that Pro vidence which decided for the Anglo-Saxon race.   et  how
touching is the story of the red man'* wrongs! We commiser ate his sufferings, while we clearly see that the deoree by which
his race wastes away before the advancing footsteps of civiliza tion, is the fiat of Infinite Wisdom.
The same all-pervading Providence has brought us in contact
with still another race-the African; but under widely different
circumstances. Out of this circumstance, and the events connected with it, the crisis we are now considering has grown.
Three millions of that race, scattered through fifteen of the
States of the Union, are in the condition of servitude. Individ-, 
uals in the non-slaveholding States have not only been long in
the habit of denouncing the holding of slaves as a sin, as,
indeed, among the worst of crimes, but have insisted on immediate and unconditional abolition-have carried on the work of
agitation-have encouraged slaves to desert their masters —have
protected fugitive slaves from pursuit and reclamation, and have
even gone so far as to declare that it was cause for separating
from the South altogether.
The general Government has been agitated; compromise after
compromise has been made, and proved, as was to _be expected,
only the means of postponing, rather than of settli'g the question; until at last things have reached a condition that real
danger to the Union seems to be apprehended by the wisest men
of both sections of the country. It is time for men now to speak
out, calmly but fearlessly. Whatever has been wrong should be
made right, and the question settled now and forever.   We
should not meanly shrink from our just responsibilities and put
them upon our children.
Now, in reference to the relation of master and slave, it is
proper we should bear in mind that African slavery was introduced into this country by no act of ours. For its introduction
the American people are in no just sense responsible. Its introduction  here ws  the  act of Great  Britaim, while we were
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her colonies. She engrafted this system into our communities
at a time when these communities (then in their infancy) were
unable to make any effectual resistance. Our ancestors, at the
time, and through all the process by which it was accomplished,
remonstratcd and protested against it; but their remonstrances
and protests were unheeded. Its introduction was considered by
te early colonists an evil-a measure of oppression to them as
well as to the slave-but they were as po(verless to resist it as
the slave himself.
So far as we are concerned, this circumstance in our condition
is Providential.  If we would presume to scrutinize and judge
the ways of Providence, we are driven back to first principles.
God rules in the affairs of nations and of men as an absolute
sovereign, and shapes all human events to his great purposes.
The purposes He designed to accomplish in all this, may be in volved in comparative darkness now; but if it shall appear here after that this was the means by which in the lapse of centuries, iHe
accomplished the redemption of Africa herself, who will say that
the means He chose were inconsistent with his wisdom or his
goodness?.
This fact, then, is undisputed, that when the battles of the
Revolution had been fought-when the North and the South had
passed shoulder to shoulder through that long and bloody and
self-sacrificing struggle, and the independence of their country
was achieved, the institution of slavery, planted by other hands
in our midst, existed. A very large number of our citizens, both
in the North and South, were slaveholders. Property is the
creature of the law, and slaves had been made property by law been so held for ages. What was to be done? The general
welfare-the preservation of all that had been gained-the law of
self-defence, required that a Government should be established,
and that this Government should embrace and combine in one in dissoluble union, all the liberated colonies. If that had not been
accomplished, all would have been shipwrecked together.
The men of the Revolution saw this plainly. They were men
equal to the crisis. They considered the question as a whole.
They sacrificed on the altar of concession their different views
and interests as to particulars, that they might reach harmoniously
the grand result. The articles of confederation, and subsequently
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COMMODORE STOCKTON
the constitution, were the results of compromise-and whatever
politicians may say-the spirit-the intent-the fair construction of
that compromise is, that the institution of slavery belongs ex clusively to the States, as a matter of State regulation, and tht
the general government has nothing to do with it.
No power over it was delegated by the Constitutions the
general Government (except as to the importation of Slaves into
the States,) nor was any such power'prohibited by it to the
States. It was expressly provided that persons held to service or
labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another,
should not be discharged from such service or labor, but should
be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor might be due; and by an amendment to the Constitution,
adopted in 1791, it was provided that the powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.
Such is the Constitution-such the compromise upon which it
was formed-such the imperative necessity of that compromise:
and even if that compromise and that Constitution were the result of a mistake, it is binding now, and as long as it shall remain
unaltered, on every law-abiding man.
If the toleration of slavery-if the permission for its existence
in any part of the Union was a great national crime-when and
by whom was that crime committed 1 At the formation of the
government, at the adoption of the Constitution, and by the
Washingtons, the Roger Shermans, the Hamiltons, the Madisons, the Franklins, the Pinkneys of the land-by such men as
Livingston and Paterson, Brearly and Dayton of my own native
State, approved and sanctioned with unparalleled unanimity by
the North and South.  Under its auspices I need not say with
what giant strides the republic has advanced to greatness and
prosperity, nor that Heaven has smiled propitiously upon -our
common heritage.
Now, the question which has come up with such a threatening
aspect before the country, is in my judgment one of morals not of
politics-questions always the most difficult and dangerous to deal
with-because they do not lie in notions of expediency, but in
matters of conscience. They are always liable to run into fanaticism, and are always mingled with questions of religious faith
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and moral obligation. The question is one of mdrals, and as
such it is to be settled, if settled permanently at all.  Out of this
aspect of the case have sprung, as incidents, all the questions that
have heretofore been and are now the subjects of discussion.
The convention of'87, the Missouri compromise, the contested
question of abolition petitions in Congress, the agitations in the
North, the recriminations of the South, the difficulties about
fugitive slaves, and latterly, the California question and the
Wilmot Proviso, are all but branches of one fruitful tree-the
question as to the moral character of slavery as it exists in the
States, and the' moral duty consequent upon that character. In
reference to those phases or incidents of this question, which
involve the action of the government, they never would have
been unsettled, or at any rate never would have come up in their
present embarrassing forms, if the general government had
adhered, as it ought in my opinion to have adhered, from the
beginning, to a strict construction of the Constitution.   The
framers of this instrument meant to exclude, and by the language
of the instrument did exclude the national government from all
action upon the subject.
They granted no such power, they expressly excluded all
powers not granted.   Whenever  the  doctrine of  inferential
powers-that latitudinarian doctrine-comes fully to be insisted
on and adopted, the Constitution will become itself a thing of
wax, to be moulded by the ever-changing opinions of men, into
whatever shape those opinions happen to take-the majority will
become supreme-its will, the Constitution, and everything
conservative, will be liable to be broken down.   Suppose a
measure oppressive-ruinous to one portion of the Union, is
adopted by a mere constitutional majority, and in constitutional
form-it is said the party complaining and denying its constitutionality, has an appeal to the Supreme Court. But to argue that
that is always to be regarded as a place of absolute security, is to
argue that it is infallible. It undergoes the process of change by
death; the new incumbents are apt to partake of the views of the
Constitution held by a majority of the government, and the Court
to become itself the advocate of those views. Beyond this are
the rocks, the breakers of revolution; the dernier resort of an
oppre      people.   The Constitutioen itself was originally in
it
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COMMODORE STOCETON
tended to be the cable and anchor of the Union and all its parts and nothing, you may rely upon it, but the doctrine of a strict
construction can ever preserve it what it was intended to be.
Upon the question of domestic slavery in the States and in tCi
territories, non-intervention is the true principle.   There the
letter of the Constitution placed it, and there it should be left.
The law of nature, fixing the bounds of the institution by the
unalterable constitution of the colored face; the temperature of
the climate and nature of the soil, and the will of the people
acting through the State Legislatures upon their several States,
are the true and legitimate regulators; and all interference,
except moral suasion, the power of argument, the free expression 
of opinion, ought to be excluded
I now come to the main question-the question which lies
back of all the others. 1st. Is domestic slavery a sin, or an
unmitigated evil? and  2d-What is the duty of  the people
of the non-slaveholding States, respecting it!  These questions
go to the root of the whole difficulty.
1st. Is domestic slavery a sin, or an unmitigated evil 1 In
order to arrive at an intelligent conclusion respecting the right or
the wrong of any complex scheme or any existing institution,
we must be careful not to array our feelings against our reason;
nor ought we to allow our displeasure at particular cases of
excess to interfere with a fair and deliberate consideration of the
general working and tendency of the system as a whole. It
belongs to this question to consider, first-the condition of the
colored man as it would have been had he been left in Africa.
2d. The circumstances under which we  find him  here.   3d.
The necessity, if such there be, of his present continuance in
the condition in which  we  find him.    4th. The  ultimate
tendency of what may seem to be a Providential arrangement of
this state of things.
1st. Of all the races of men with which history and travel
have acquainted us, there is none so sunk beyond all hope of
self-restoration as the African, on his wide continent. In ignorance so utter, that he is elevated little above the brute; in
superstition so gross, that it drags him even lower than the
brute; without a thought of liberty, he is the sport of tyranny in
its lowest, meanest, and most oruel forms; he has nothing he
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can call his own; he has no idea of God, of justice, of moral
obligation, of the rights of persons or property. In a word,
"Africa has long forgotten God and God has abandoned Africa"
-but not, I trust, forever. From such a land and such a con  dition-sold, bartered away by his countrymen-the slave was
brought to these shores while we were colonists, and subject to
British law. Here he is in a civilized and Christian country;
he has more opportunities of enlightenment than he would have
had in Africa; he is, as a general rule, treated with kindness;
he is protected from want in sickness and old age; and is, on the
whole, better off, safer, happier, than he would have been in his
native country.
2d. But in the second place, with the moral character of the act
bringing the slave to this country, we have now nothing to do.
We find him herethe thing is done.  So far as the slave trade
is concerned; we have acted on that, and abolished it. Slavery
was introduced in other times and under other auspices.   It
existed when the  government was established; an institution
which could not be got rid of-which had of necessity to be
tolerated. Slaves had been made property in the Colonies by
British law.  The Government found  it an existing institution,
and the Constitution left it so-of necessity,  imperative and
uncontrollable-to be enacted on exclusively by the States;
subject to the moulding and changing and controlling opinions
and consciences of those concerned. These have not been inactive.
In many of the States the institution has been abolished; in
others, meliorated; in all, it is a question for opinion and
conscience to act upon. As the General Government has no
power to abolish it, so it has no power to prevent any State from
abolishing it.
3d. In the third place, every considerate man sees, that in the
present condition of things, slavery cannot be immediately and
absolutely abolished. We must reason about things as they
are-not as we might wish them to be. The slave is property;
he became so.by a law of our common ancestors; he was left in
that condition by the law of our common fathers who founded
the Republic. The burden of this purchase should be borne in
all justice, equally by our citizens, and we are not ready to pay
the price. But if we were ready, he is not in a condition to
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COMMODORe  STOCKTON
take care of himself. He has not the culture, the training, the
experience, necessary to self-dependence.   And where is he
to go? No reflecting man is prepared to say he is willing to
have three millions of slaves turned loose in the States, to fill
the prisons and poor-houses and alms-houses of the country, or
to live by plunder on the community. What, too, is to-be his
lot for the future in such a case? Is he to live in our midst as a
marked and degraded being, through all time, or are we prepared to place him on an equality with us, civilly and socially.
Are we ready for amalgamation?
There seems under those circumstances to be a necessity for
his continuance at present in the condition in which he is placed.
In the fourth place, the hand of Providence seems to be clearly
pointing out an ultimate design in all this arrangement of things.
Yonder is Africa, with her one hundred and fifty millions of
miserable, degraded, ignorant, lawless, superstitious idolaters.
Whoever has stood upon her sands, has stood upon a continent
that has geographical and physical peculiarities which belong to
no other of the great divisions of the globe.  The latter appear,
upon the face of them, to have been adapted to draw out the
energies of the natives in their inequalities of temperature, soil,
and surface, inviting the ingenuity and enterprise of man to
overcome them, and in the varieties of their products tempting
the interchanges of commerce; thus affording ample encouragement to the progress of civil and social improvement. But
Africa is still, as of old, a land of silence and of mystery. Like
the interminable dreariness of her own deserts, her' moral wastes
of mind lie waiting for the approach of influences from abroad.
No savage people have ever advanced to a civilized state without
intercommunication with others. All the continents of the world
have, in their turn, been occupiel and civilized by means of
colonies; but in no one of them did it appear so inevitably'
necessary, from a previous examination of circumstances, as in
that of Africa. It is plain to the very eye, that Africa is a land
to which civilization must be brought. The attempt has been
made over and over again by devoted missionaries and others to
penetrate that land, and seek to impart the blessings of civilization and Christianity to her savage hordes. But the labor has
been spent in vain, The white man cannot live in Africa,. The
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ON SLAVERY.
annals of the Moravians, of Cape Colony, of Sierra Leone, of
Liberia, contain the records of the sacrifice of some of the best
men that have lived to grace the pages of any people's history, in
the vain attempt to accomplish something for her redemption
through the instrumentality of white men. Who, then, is to do
this work?
o Let now any calm, reflecting spectator of the present state of
the world be asked to look at Africa, andthen, from among the
nations point out the people best calculated to do this work  and when-his eye falls upon the descendants of the sons of that
continent now in America, will he not say, These are the people
appointedfor that tworkA?
The ways of God are mysterious. So Joseph was sold a slave
into Egypt; so his father and his brethren were driven thither
by providential circumstances; so their generations remained as
slaves in Egypt for four centuries and a half; and when the
appointed time had come, in His own appointed way, the Ruler
of nations led them to the accomplishment of His great purposes.
And it is not to be forgotten, that it was not the act of holding
this people in bondage for so many years, that Pharaoh and the
Egyptians were punished; but their crime was this: that when
the Divine Being had prepared all things for the event he pro posed to accomplish, and demanded, by an accredited ambassador,
that they should be allowed to depart, "they would not let the
people go."
The great progenitor of the Israelites was a slaveholder; the
Israelites, after their emancipation, became slaveholders. Nothing is clearer than that under the Mosaic dispensation, slavery
was lawful; the institution was recognized and regulated by the
law of Moses; and the founder of Christianity and his disciples
(though Judea and all the provinces of the Roman empire were
in their times full of slaves, and slaves subjected to the most
rigid laws), never forbade or even denounced the relation as
sinful, or exhorted masters to liberate their slaves; but enjoined on masters the principles of humanity and justice, and on
slaves obedience and contentment; and those notions of morality
may well be questioned, which in our days disallow what Christ
and his apostles did not disallow."
Such an Exodus as that of the Jews from Egypt may not be
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COMMODORE  STOCKTON
within the purpose of the Deity in relation to the children of
Africa now in this country, or their descendants. But has He
no purpose in all this arrangement that has been going on, in the
gathering of a vast family of these people here, in their condition of servitude, endurance, discipline-in the difficulties with
which their emancipation is surrounded-in the natural impossibility that the whites ever will or,can consent to raise them
to a condition of equality? No purpose in casting their lot in a
country so free for the interchange of opinion, and where opinion
is so enlightened and progressive, and there is so much benevolence and Christian enterprise t. Has he not a purpose in all
this, to accomplish (in some way of his own, through this instrumentality) the regeneration of the millions of benighted Africa?
The germs of Colonies are already planted there, as the fruits of
this system of servitude. But the free African among us clings
to this country still, under all his disabilities, regardless of the
claims of the land of his fathers upon him; and may not slavery
and the necessity of migration as the condition of his release, be
the appointed instrument to produce compliance t. The colonies
we have settled in Africa would, ere this day, have become a
Republic of power, had the free negroes of the North been
willing to become citizens of it. But, like the Israelities of old,
who would but for the Divine interposition, have sacrificed their
liberators in the wilderness, and returned into Egypt, these
liberated descendants of Africa cannot be persuaded to look
toward the land of their fathers. The millions of their colored
bondmen there awaken  no sympathy  in their hearts.   Their
fixed and resoluted purpose appears to be to remain among
the whites, and force themselves by progressive steps into a
civil and social equality with them; and it is chiefly with a
view to strengthen themselves in these particular views and
aspirations, that they band together under the abolition flag, and
fill our cities with threats of vengeance against the white race, if
they shall dare to execute the laws in relation to fugitive slaves.
Now, when we come to reflect calmly and candidly upon all
these circumstances, in connection with the question-is domestic
slavery, as it exists at the South, a sin? it seems to me that
question must be answered in the negative.   The relation of
master and slave may be, and doubtless is, sometimes the occasion
.
16
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of cruelty and injustice. But this is also true of the relation
of husband and wife, parent and child, master and apprentice,
and of employer and employed in our system of labor. But the
abuses of a system or relation form no sound argument against
the system or relation itself. I am no apologist for abuse. I am as
ready a any man to denounce cruelty, unnatural separations, a
disregard of the domestic relations, or a deprivation of the means
of moral and religious culture to the slave, under our system of
slavery, as a crime. But the correction of these belongs to the
duties of the State Governments.  We, in New Jersey, have no
more right to interfere with South Carolina, than she with us,
in such matters-nor in fact have we in New Jersey any more
right to interfere with the slaves of South Carolina or Georgia,
than we have with the slaves of Russia or Austria. Each
Southern State being, in respect to this question, as absolutely
sovereign as are Russia and Austria. We are to reason about
the,nstitution of Slavery as we reason about every other human
institution, from its proper, humane, conscientious and lawful
use, when both parties discharge their mutual obligations.
Having established, as I think, that domestic Slavery, as it
exists in the Southern States, is not in itself sinful or an un mitigated evil, this subject is relieved from its greatest embarrass  ment, and now I proceed to consider: What is the duty of the
people of non-Slave-holding States respecting Slavery t?
Shall we attempt forcibly to break down this institution of
Slavery? To make the attempt is:
First. To violate the Constitution and its compromises. I care
not whether under color of inferential instruction-assuming
the Constitution to imply the power of interference- (which,
by the way, I unconditionally deny)-or acting regardless of it.
In either case, it is at best, the appeal to the mere majority
power, acting upon and forcing the minority.
Second. It is to attempt the liberation of the slave, and fail.
For by the effort the most we can do is to drive the South with
its slaves out of the Union without liberating a single slave;
and,
Third. It is to compel a dissolution of the Union. Have the
people considered the consequences implied in this branch of the
alternative?  Suppose,  after all, that in opposition to the play,
17
ON SL&VERY.
a 
COMMODORE STOCKTON
teachings of the Bible, and the judgment of God's holiest men,
they still hold that slavery is in itself sinful, and tlte owners of
slaves are men stealers, robbers and pirates, then, indeed, thi
question assumes a more serious aspect, and Mr. Calhoun may
no longer be denounced as either unpatriotic or extrwagant
in calling for an amendment of the Constitution, or any other
means that will secure his constituerfts from  imminent peril,
and his posterity from the calamities of civil war. But   Is there not, in this view, a crime of deeper and redder dye,
in marching over a desecrated Bible and a broken compact to shed
oceans of fraternal blood? Is it lawful, on their own principles,
to do evil that good may come-even if good could by it be accomplished? If they succeed in driving the South to a secession,
they inevitably kindle the fire of a conflagration which will burn
over this whole Republic, until it reduces to ashes the structure
which Providence has for centuries been preparing and rearing
up on this continent; and, in the conflagration, their own homes
and hopes will be mingled with the sacrifice.
"One great principle," says Dr. Channing, "which we should
lay down as immovably true, is, that if a good work cannot be
carried on by the calm, self-controlled, benevolent spirit of
Christianity, then the time for doing it has not come. God asks not
the aid of over vices.  He can overrule them for good, but they
are not the chosen instruments of human happiness." But if
we would adopt, as I sincerely do, the other alternative-that
with the institution of slavery as its exists in the South, we have
nothing to do-that we are not only prohibited by the Constitution from meddling with it, but that it is a question of conscience
to be settled by Southern men for themselves-a question upon
which good men may differ, and must be left to differ if they
will, whether in the North or South-a new train of thoughts,.
a new field of benevolent and Christian enterprise opens before
us. Going back to the great truth from which we started, and
regarding all the circumstances of the present state of things as
a part of the design of Providence to accomplish a great result
for Africa, there is a work and a great work for us to do. Let
the great heart of Christian benevolence in the North and the
South unite in selecting from this vast African family, this
nursery planted and growing on our shores, the proper subjects
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to be sent upon the mission of redemption to the land of their
ancestors, until the last slave shall have departed, and Africa's
long night shall have been dispelled by the sun of freedom and
eivilization. The philanthropist will find here enough to do to
satisfy the largest benevolence-in acts, in personal sacrifices, in
qpntribuons to the cause of humanity, without the violation of
person  or legal rights-doing good that bood may come.
Let the general government then retrace its steps-and instead
of provisos and compromise lines, and agreements to keep up
the balance of power-fall back upon the literal construction of
the Constitution-adopt the principle of total non-intervention,
now and forever-leaving the laws of nature, and the voice of
public opinion to adjust the limits of the institution, free, uncon trolled, and uninfluenced by the action of Congress, and all will
be safe.  The gordian knot will be dissolved-not cut-and the
ark of the covenant, with its sacred deposit, be borne on safely
to itwdestination.
The measures, in short, which I would propose, are   1st. A declarative.act in such form as may be deemed proper,
that the Constitution gives no power to the general Government
to act on the subject of domestic slavery, either with respect
to its existence in the States, the Territories or the District of
Columbia.
2d. The most efficient act that can be framed to enforce the
provisions of the Constitution in relation to fugitive slaves.
3d. That California, in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of her case, be admitted without the approval or disapproval of that part of her constitution which relates to slavery.
I believe these three positions, carried out, would settle the
question forever. They involve no concessions-no compromise
-they are no temporary expedient. They put the solution of
the difficulty on the eternal principles of right-the  law of the
Constitution.
I think the great majority of the North and South are prepared to place it there, and having placed it there, to stand by
and maintain the Union at all hazards.
I feel that I have already trespassed too long on your patience.
But it is a subject of vast importance, and I cannot close this
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ON SLAVERY.
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COMMODORE STOCKTW
letter without a few general remarks in reference to the foregoing views.
At such a time all good men will forbear, exchange opinions,
and reason in the spirit of conciliation.
Conscientious differences of opinion among men will always
exist in relation to moral questions.
Some conscientious men believe slavery to be a s'nther
conscientious men believe that the law of property which enables
one man to hold what they insist is the common gift of the
Creator to his creatures, is sin. Again, still, other-conscientious
men hold that to take a glass of wine is sin, and so on through
an endless variety of subjects.
If these conscientious opinions, or any of them, pervade the
majority, are all who do not hold them to be driven -vith fire and
sword out of the Union, or compelled to yield their opinions,
equally conscientious, to the majority? These notions are incon
sistent with a wise moderation; they come from an abuse ot
reason in the first place, and a proposed abuse of power in the
second.
Such arguments are always drawn principally from the
excesses of a system, rather than from the system itself, and there
lies the error; it is the error of fanaticism which always puts in
the plea of conscience, whether it burns the supposed heretic at
the stake, or hunts down witchcraft, or impales the Nestorian, or
fans the flame of civil war.
Instead of railing with infuriated declamation against a system,
because of its excesses, which are incident to every human instilution, we should calmly and dispassionately seek to extract
the truth from the general rule rather than from its exceptions.
The system of slavery, like every human system, has its excesses, its exceptions from the general rule. But it is quite
probable that there may exist in the one, as in the other, ali
absolute law, which is working out a beneficent result. If a
man wishes to fall under the delusion of a universal fanaticism,
it is only'necessary that he adopt the method of looking at the
special attendants of every system, to the exclusion of the general
law which regulates them, and the work is done; while he is
intent with some accident of the train, the train itself has long
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ON SLAVERY.
since passed on, leaving him to grow more and more' inflated with
conceit, indignation, unholy zeal and misanthropic railing;
all the natural results of so narrow minded a procedure.
Let every man run off with particular features out of the general
complexion of any subject or thought, and gaze at those features
lng enough and absorbingly enough, and the best thing within
the ra#e of human experience, will becofhe to him a bugbear.
The individual. however, who neglects the "great law of com pensation "'in judging of human affairs, has only to apply the
same method of judging to himself-and passing by his redeem ing qualities, and looking only at his own excesses and defects,
he will find in himself, if he is honest in the search, enough to
satiate his appetite for condemnation and hate. It is far easier
to condemn than to judge correctly-far easier to get into a
passion about a subject than to get a comprehension of it.
The idea that out of the institution of domestic slavery in
this fountry is to spring the regeneration of Africa, derives, it
seems to me, great force from the recurrence to past history.
We  invariably find that in the dispensation of Providence,
nations which have been called to act an important part in the
work of human progress, have been led through a long, previous
discipline of trial;  the restraints and endurance of youth have
preceded the power and efficiency of manhood. Primary subjection is the law of stable growth, and seems an indispensable
condition of the advancement of our race.
We have only to. look back through a few centuries to find the
evidences of this in the annals of our race. Our ancestors were
for centuries a down-trodden, enslaved and toiling people. The
Anglo-Saxon race have become what they are, by a long training
in the school of patient endurance; in the case of England, under
oppressive servitude to the Roman and the Norman; in the case
of America, under the oppression of our mother country and the
trying discipline of Colonial suffering. In the life of a nation,
hundreds of years may be as a day in the life of an individual.
It is often necessary for many generations to pass, before a new
influence can be made to affect the mass. If all were willing,
the work of national preparation might be more rapid; but
thousands are to be made willing-and by the Providential
adaptation of the means to the end.
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COMMODORE STOCKTON
It is conceded, on all hands, that the probation of the African
people, now in bondage on our shores, is to come to an end.
That while there is an interchange of benefits between the
parties, there is at the same time a community of evil, which
renders it better, both for the whites and the blacks, that it,hould
come to an end.
When  shall that time be, is the  reat question bef:  the
American people.
In seeking an answer to this question, we may be sure there is
some safer ground on which to take our stand, -than that of
political chicane, of fanatical prejudice, or of any merely tem porary or prudential expediency.
If slavery is to be abolished now,. then it is to be done in a
moment. That is to say, at one stroke a community oft three
millions of people, habituated to a certain way of life, are to be
thrown into new circumstances-a thing plainly preposterous, be cause no kind of society changes its customs suddenly and succeeds
in doing well. Great changes in society must come in with previous preparation, or they come in to little purpose.   Seven
years sufficed to fight the battles of the revolution, but many
more were spent in preparation for that event, and many more
will be required to perfect its results. If Providence rules in
the affairs of nations, the existence of slavery has some prospective purpose, only to be accomplished by prior preparation for it.
Let us not be impatient or presumptuous. These African
people are passing to their destiny along the same path which
has been trod by other nations, through a mixture of hardship,
of endurance, but in a land of light, and amid a civilized society.
They are preparaing to accomplish a work for their native
continent, which no other people in the world can accomplish.
Their plain mission is, ultimately to carry the gifts of society, of.
religion, of government, to the last remaining continent of the
earth-where these blessings are totally unknown.   Their work
is a great one, as it would seem to be connected essentially
with the final and universal triumph of civilization and Christianity, in the world. It is our duty to follow, not to attempt to
lead in the ways and purposes of Providence. We are to move
forward when the pillar of fire and cloud moves forward; and
tp rest when it rests.
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Doubtless there is a time for action; but it is characteristic of
all great changes that they make known their own seasons.
That time, in the present instance, has not yet come-for the
manifest reason that the way is not yet open for it.  When  the
time shall come, the way will come with it, the preparations for
i be complete. The North settled this question, easily, quietly.
Surely it is no great stretch of charity foP us to suppose that in
due time the same thing will be accomplished in the South. We
of the North have given no peculiar evidence of superior goodness
that we should suppose the South not to be possessed of as much
justice, charity, and good sense as ourselves.
I firmly believe that the hour for the complete enfranchisement of the Southern Slave, will be the hour of the complete
preparation for the work of African redemption and civilizationand that hour will make itself known in the removal of all obstacles here and there; in the preparation of the workmen and
the work; and I earnestly hope that guided by happier influences
than seem now to pervade the country, the pulpit, the press, the
people of the NorthAnd the South, may give their thoughts and
efforts to this subject in the spirit of Him, whose mission to our
earth was heralded by the proclamation of peace and good will.
With great regard, yours,
I
R. F. STOCKTON.
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