H. OF R.] Admission of Arkansas-Supplementary Report. [JUNE, 1836. admission of the State of Arkansas into the | the Union was again taken up; the amendment Union. moved before the call of the House was renewed, discussed, and rejected; other amendments were proposed, and shared the same fate. About six o'clock in the morning a motion was made that the committee should rise, and report the bills, when Mr. ADAMS moved an amendment to the eighth section of the bill.for the admission of Arkansas; to understand the import and bearing of which it may be necessary to quote the part of the section into which he proposed its insertion. In the following citation, the words proposed by him for insertion are those enclosed in brackets. "SEC. 8. And it is further enacted, That the State of Arkansas is admitted into the Union upon the express condition that the people of the said State shall lands within the said State, nor shall they levy a tax never interfere with the primary disposal of the public on any of the lands of the United States within the said State; and nothing in this act shall be construed as an assent by Congress [to the article in the constitution of the said State in relation to slavery and the emancipation of slaves, or] to all and any of the propositions contained in the ordinance of the said convention of the people of Arkansas, nor to deprive the said State of Arkansas of the same grants, subject to the same restrictions, which were made to the State of Missouri, by virtue of an act entitled an act to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal in certain Territories, approved the 6th day of March, footing with the original States, and to prohibit slavery The bill for fixing the northern boundary of the State of Ohio, and the conditional admission of Michigan into the Union, was first taken up for consideration, and gave rise to debates which continued till near one o'clock of the morning of Friday, the 10th of June: repeated motions to adjourn had been made and rejected. The committee had twice found itself without a quorum, and had been thereby compelled to rise, and report the fact to the House. In the first instance, there had been found within private calling distance a sufficient number of members, who, though absent from their duty of attendance upon the House, were upon the alert to appear and answer to their names to make a quorum to vote against adjourning, and to retire again to their amusement or repose. Upon the first restoration of the quorum by this operation, the delegate from Arkansas said that if the committee would only take up and read the bill, he would not urge any discussion upon it then, and would consent to the committee's rising, and resuming the subject at the next sitting of the House. The bill was accordingly read; a motion was then made for the committee to rise, and rejected; an amendment to the bill was moved, on taking the question upon which there was no quorum. The usual expedient of private call to straggling members was found ineffectual. A call of the House was ordered, at one o'clock in the morning. This operation, to be carried through all its stages, must necessarily consume about three hours of time, during which the House can do no other business. Upon this call, after the names of all the members had been twice called over, and all the absentees for whom any valid or plausible excuse was offered had been excused, there remained eighty-one names of members, who, by the rules of the House, were to be taken into custody as they should appear, or were to be sent for, and taken into custody wherever they might be found, by special messengers appoint-gressional district which I represent, from my ed for that purpose. At this hour of the night own constituents, male and female; for, in New the city of Washington was ransacked by these England and elsewhere, the vote of the men is special messengers, and the members of the the vote of the women; and I consider the House were summoned from their beds to be wives and daughters of the men who vote at brought in custody of these special messengers, my election, whether for me or for any other before the House, to answer for their absence. person, as much my constituents, for all purAfter hearing the excuses of two of these mem-poses by which I can, as their representative, bers, and the acknowledged no good reason of a third, they were all excused in a mass, without payment of fees; which fees, to the amount of two or three hundred dollars, have of course become a charge upon the people, and to be paid with their money. By this operation, between four and five o'clock of the morning, a small quorum of the House was obtained, and, without any vote of the House, the Speaker left the chair, which was resumed by the chairman of the Commit tee of the Whole. The bill for the admission of Arkansas into 1820." When the amendment had been read by the Clerk, and the question stated, Mr. ADAMS addressed the chairman of the committee to the following effect: Mr. Chairman: On Monday last I had the honor of presenting to this House twenty-two memorials and remonstrances, most of them numerously signed, by citizens of the States. of Ohio, of Pennsylvania, and of Massachusetts. Twelve of these memorials were from the con serve them in this House, as if every individual had deposited in the ballot-box a vote in my favor. I was, then, bound in duty to present these memorials and remonstrances to the House; and if that duty was of perfect and irremissible obligation, with regard to those which came from my own immediate constituents, I felt it as not less imperative with regard to those which, proceeding from remoter distances, and from persons entirely unknown to me, carried with them a manifestation of confidence reposed in me by the memorialists, which it was not JUNE, 1836.] less my sacred duty to justify by a grateful return. [H. OF R. Admission of Arkansas-Supplementary Report. ciple, into the Union. Louisiana was purchased as a country wherein slavery was the establishI felt it, therefore, my further duty to invite ed law of the land. As Congress have not the House to listen to these memorials and re- power in time of peace to abolish slavery in monstrances, to examine their complaints, and, the original States of the Union, they are equalso far as might be consistent with the duties of ly destitute of the power in those parts of the the House to their other constituents and to the territories ceded by France to the United States nation, to relieve the complainants, and to re-by the name of Louisiana, where slavery existmove the grievances against which they remon-ed at the time of the acquisition. Slavery is strate. In the memorials from my own district I recognized among the signatures the names of persons well known to me as citizens, for intelligence, integrity, and benevolence, surpassed by none others in this Union. I had made inquiries concerning the characters of others of the memorialists, not known to myself, and had received testimonials from sources entitled to unqualified credence, and from persons in nowise favoring the purposes of the memorialists; testimonials to their integrity and repectability which could leave in that respect not the shadow of a doubt upon my mind. The memorials and remonstrances, differing somewhat from one another in their language and phraseology, all complained of one article in the newly-formed constitution of Arkansas; and all the remonstrances were against the admission of Arkansas into the Union as a slave State. The obnoxious article of the constitution of Arkansas is the first section of the second division of the ninth article, and is in the words following: "SEC. 1. The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to this State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States. They shall have power to pass laws to permit the owners of slaves to emancipate them, saving the rights of creditors, and preventing them from becoming a public charge. They shall have power to prevent slaves from being brought to this State as merchandise, and also to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity." Mr. Chairman, I cannot, consistently with my sense of my obligations as a citizen of the United States, and bound by oath to support their constitution, I cannot object to the admission of Arkansas into the Union as a slave State; I cannot propose or agree to make it a condition of her admission, that a convention of her people shall expunge this article from her constitution. She is entitled to admission as a slave State, as Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama, and Missouri, have been admitted, by virtue of that article in the treaty for the acquisition of Louisiana, which secures to the inhabitants of the ceded territories all the rights, privileges, and immunities, of the original citizens of the United States, and stipulates for their admission, conformably to that prin VOL. XIII.-3 in this Union the subject of internal legislation in the States, and in peace is cognizable by Congress only, as it is tacitly tolerated and protected where it exists by the Constitution of the United States, and as it mingles in their intercourse with other nations. Arkansas, therefore, comes, and has the right to come, into the Union with her slaves and her slave laws. It is written in the bond, and, however I may lament that it ever was so written, I must faithfully perform its obligations. I could not, therefore, propose or support the specific measure desired by the memorialists, which was to impose a restriction upon the people of the State of Arkansas, by requiring of them, as a condition of their admission into the Union, that they should expunge from their constitution the article concerning slavery. I do not think it within the legitimate powers of Congress, under the present existing circumstances, to impose upon the State of Arkansas any restriction whatever, with relation to slavery, in the formation of her constitution. Upon the same principle, I had been opposed to the proposal of restriction upon the State of Missouri, at the time of the first Missouri question; for there were two Missouri questions, differing much from each other, and which were debated at two successive sessions of Congress. The second was that finally adjusted by the compromise. The first was that in which the restriction was proposed, and my opinion had at the time been freely expressed against it. But then I disapproved, as I now disapprove, of slavery as a civil institution. As a citizen, and as a man, therefore, I disapprove of that article in the constitution of Arkansas, the object of which is to perpetuate slavery. In voting for the acceptance of that constitution, and for the admission of the State into the Union, I do not hold myself bound to approve of all its internal regulations; but doctrines have been recently broached, and are now countenanced by the transfer of the lawful possessions of Michigan to the State of Ohio, which make it, in my judgment, proper, and perhaps necessary, that Congress, the representatives of that federation, compounded partly of slaveholding and partly of entirely free States, should disclaim all approbation of, or assent to, that article in the constitution of Arkansas. I propose no restriction upon her. I am content to receive her as one of the slaveholding States of this Union; but I am unwilling that Congress, in accepting her constitution, should even lie under the imputation of assent H. OF R.] Admission of Arkansas-Supplementary Report. [JUNE, 1836. ing to an article in the constitution of a State | the intercourse of public or private life, I hold which withholds from its Legislature the power of giving freedom to the slave. In this very section of the bill now before the committee, Congress refuse their assent to propositions, made by the convention of the people of Arkansas which formed their constitution, and were transmitted with it. My proposed amendment, very short and simple, is in perfect accordance and keeping with the remainder of the section, as it stands in the bill now before the committee; and although I cannot flatter myself that it will be satisfactory to those of my constituents and fellow-citizens who have thought proper to commit their memorials and remonstrances to me, it will at least secure to me the consciousness of having discharged my duty to them, to my country, and to that reverence for the rights of mankind, which rejects, without reserve, the principle that, by the law of nature or of God, man can be the property of man. in higher esteem an adversary of such a character, than the political vane upon the steeple, whose friendship and whose opinions swing round the compass with every variation of the winds, and are steadfast only to the breath of the breeze. One of the gentleman's questions which I heard was, from whence this amendment came? I answer him directly that it came from me, and from me alone, without consultation with any other human being. There was no abolition gunpowder plot in it; but, in claiming it as all my own, I shall not record a specification of it in the Patent Office as for an ingenious invention or a profound discovery. It laid in my way and I took it up. A respectable portion of my constituents, and many others of my fellow-citizens, had charged me with the duty of presenting their memorials against the slavery article in the constitution of Arkansas. Multitudes of others had entrusted to me their petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Great numbers of petitions, memorials, and remon Upon this topic I will not enlarge. Were I disposed so to do, twenty hours of continuous session have too much exhausted my own physical strength, and the faculties, as well as the in-strances, of the same purport, had been presentdulgence of those who might incline to hear me, for me to trespass longer upon their patience. When the bill shall be reported to the House, I may, perhaps, again ask to be heard, upon renewing there, as I intend, the motion for this amendment. [Mr. ADAMS resumed his seat, and Mr. WISE addressed the committee. The debate was continued by Mr. BRIGGS, Mr. CUSHING, Mr. HOAR, and Mr. HARD of New York, and by Mr. WISE, in reply, particularly, to Mr. CUSHING. There was great disorder and confusion in the hall, occasioned chiefly by calls for order and vociferations of the word "question." Personal reflections passed between some of the members, and an affair of honor afterwards followed between two Southern gentlemen, which was, however, finally adjusted without bloodshed. The chairman of the committee, with great and indefatigable exertions, succeeded so far in restoring order that Mr. HOAR was heard with respectful attention. After he took his seat, as the question was about to be put, Mr. ADAMS addressed the committee to the following import:] Mr. Chairman: It was not my intention to have troubled the committee with another word upon the subject of my proposed amendment. But the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. WISE) has been pleased to propound to me a number of direct questions, two or three of which I heard, and to them I am willing to give direct and explicit answers. For, however widely I differ in opinion from him on this and most other occasions of common deliberation in this hall, I will do him the justice which he has done me, and say that there is nothing of indirection or ambiguous giving out in him. His course is straight forward, and you may always know where to find him. And, sir, in ed by my colleagues, and by other members of the House. I had been earnestly solicited to support, as far as my very slender influence in this House might extend, and as far as my own convictions of truth and justice would admit, the prayer of those petitions, and the purpose of those remonstrances and memorials. I could not support the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. I could not resist the admission of Arkansas, notwithstanding the slavery article in her constitution, into the Union. But there was a point of concession to the slaveholding interests of the South, from the representatives of none but freemen in this House, where it appeared to me not only just, but indispensably necessary, to stop. Slavery, taking advantage of political influences, operated just at this time at the North upon the prospects of the presidential election; taking advantage (I must say no very generous advantage) of that kind, friendly, and compassionate feeling of Northern freeman for their brethren and fellow-citizens, the slaveholders of the South, which, during the last twelve months, had universally pervaded the Northern region of the country, and urged our people sometimes even to riotous excess against the peaceable, warm-hearted, but honest-hearted enthusiasts of human liberty: slavery, I say, in the confidence of her temporary reinforcement from sources foreign to her own character, had changed her tone, and was aiming blows of deadly intent at the freedom of her Northern associate itself. She had struck at the right of petition and the freedom of speech in this House; she had struck at the freedom of the press, and at the freedom of the post office, both in this and the other branch of the Legislature, and by the express recommendation of JUNE, 1836.] Admission of Arkansas-Supplementary Report. [H. OF R. (Mr. ADAMS,) if his amendment should prevail, the State of Arkansas would, by this bill, be admitted in the Union. Mr. ADAMS. Certainly, sir. There is not in my amendment the shadow of a restriction upon the State. It leaves the State, like all the rest, to regulate the subject of slavery within herself to her own laws; and how far that comes short of the concessions required from the slaveholding interest by the Missouri compromise, it is easy to judge by reference to the transactions of that time; for in the act of 6th of March, 1820, to authorize the people of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution and State Government, and for the admission of that State into the Union, slavery was and is forever prohibited in all the territory ceded by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes of north latitude, not included within the limits of the State of Missouri. And this was the first Missouri compromise; not the abolition, but the prohibition by Congress forever, of slavery in that portion of the Louisiana Territory where it had not then penetrated. And, secondly, when the Constitution of the State of Missouri was formed, there was an article on the legislative power, the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of which, defining the powers and duties of the General Assembly of the State, was in these words: "It shall be their duty, as soon as may be, to pass such laws as may be necessary, first, to prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to and settling in this State, under any pretext whatsoever." the Chief Magistrate of the Union; she had struck at the liberty and the life of a free citizen of a Northern State, by demanding that he should be delivered up, innocent of all offence, as he was, against the laws of the State in which he dwelt, to the tender mercies of her felony, without benefit of clergy. I had seen the twenty-two memorials and remonstrances which I had presented, and many others of the same import, the moment they had reached the hands of the Clerk, ordered by the Speaker to be laid on the table, without reading, without knowing what they contained, without the privilege of being considered, by a general stigmatizing interdict, more insulting than would have been an absolute refusal to receive them. The article in the constitution of Arkansas, cutting off the last hope of emancipation to the end of time, by withholding from the Legislature even the power of ordaining it, I strongly disapproved. The House had treated all these memorials and remonstrances in behalf of freedom as if they were afraid to hear them read, afraid to look them in the face, afraid even to squint at them. In reading this eighth section of the bill before the committee, it appeared to me that the amendment which I offered was so congenial to its spirit, that, if inserted at the place proposed, it would appear altogether as if it had been a part of the section as originally drawn up. The amendment falls infinitely short of the Missouri restriction, and is entirely congenial to the spirit of the constitution itself. Unable as I was to propose the restriction desired by the memorialists and remonstrants, yet, believing that the occasion required of me an avowal of those opinions and principles, the only guardians of the freedom of my constituents, I was desirous of manifesting them in the form the least offensive possible to the slaveholding portion of the community. I wished to plant the standard of freedom at the very lowest point of its elevation, and, by conceding to slavery every thing required by the common compact, yet adhering to those self-evident truths proclaimed in the declaration of independence, to utter the mini-atives of the United States of America in Congress mum of the sentiments which I believed my constituents would never resign but with the last drop of their blood. At every former period of our history, I should have expected that the representatives of the slaveholding States in this House would readily have accepted this, as far more favorable to them than the Missouri compromise. Now, my object is to fulfil the duty devolved upon me by my constituents, and to leave the decision where it properly belongs. I am not aware of any other question of the gentleman from Virginia, which requires an answer from me, particularly after the eloquent address of my colleague behind me (Mr. CUSHING) has already answered them so much more effectually than I could have done myself. Mr. WISE rose, and inquired whether in the opinion of the gentleman from Massachusetts, Nearly the whole of the second session of the 16th Congress was consumed in debates whether the State of Missouri should be admitted into the Union, without requiring of her that this clause should be expunged from her constitution, and the session terminated with her conditional admission, by a resolution of 2d March, 1821, in the following words: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Represent Union on an equal footing with the original States, assembled, That Missouri shall be admitted into this in all respects whatever, upon the fundamental conditions that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution submitted on the part of the said State to Congress, shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen of either of the States of this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United States: Provided, That the Legislature of the said State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of the said State to the said President of the United States, on or before the fundamental conditions, and shall transmit to the fourth Monday in November next, an authentic copy of said act; upon the receipt whereof, the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact; whereupon, and without any further proceeding on the H. OF R.] Death of Ex-President Madison.. part of Congress, the admission of the said State into this Union shall be considered as complete." This was the second Missouri compromise; and, conformably to this resolution, the Legislature of the State of Missouri did, on the 26th of June, 1821, by a solemn public act, declare the assent of the State to this fundamental condition. A copy of this solemn act was transmitted to the President of the United States, who, after consultation with all the members of his administration, and after taking from each one of them his opinion in writing, issued, on the 10th of August, 1821, his proclamation, declaring that the admission of the State of Missouri into the Union was complete. Now, sir, there is in the amendment proposed by me nothing comparable, as concession from the slaveholding to the free States, to this Missouri restriction. I propose no restriction at all. I simply ask that my constituents, as parties to this compact of admission with Arkansas, may not be constructively held to have given their assent to this perpetuation of slavery, placing it beyond the reach of the legis lative authority. And this reservation is entirely conformable to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States. That instrument, containing in four different places arrangements having reference to slavery, does not, in any one of them, recognize the existence of slavery or of slaves; neither of the words is to be found throughout the constitution. Its founders were unwilling that the frame of Government, ordained expressly by the people, to secure to themselves and to their posterity the blessings of liberty, should be polluted even by the name of slavery. Thus, when they provided that the slaveholders should enjoy that most extraordinary privilege of representation of the persons of their slaves in this hall, they adopted a circumlocution, and, after enumerating free persons, those bound to service for a term of years, and Indians not taxed, including every description of human beings, slaves alone excepted, then endowed their masters with the right of representation for three-fifths of "all other persons." Thus, in the ninth section of the first article, which denied to Congress the power, prior to the year 1808, of prohibiting the slave trade, that detestable traffic was described, not by its proper name, but under the gentle denomination of "the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit." Again: the second section of the fourth article, which stipulates for the arrest and delivery up of fugitive slaves, does not name them as such. It says: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” And, in the fourth section of the fourth [JUNE, 1836. article, it is provided that the United States shall, on the application of the Legislature or of the Executive of any one of the States, protect the same against domestic violence; an expression, if not exclusively confined to servile insurrection, undoubtedly selected with special and emphatic reference to it. In no one of these four passages are slaves recognized as property. In the first three, where the reference to them is direct, they are expressly designated as persons-persons to be represented in Congress, not by themselves, but by the votes of their masters; persons whom the then existing States might think proper to admit; persons held to service or labor, to be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. Not only is there no recognition of slaves as property, not only are they constantly referred to as persons, but in every instance they are so described that the engagement contracted with relation to them might be applicable to classes of persons other than slaves; and this studious uniformity could only arise from the determination to exof language throughout the whole constitution clude from it any acknowledgment of slavery, as forming a component part of the supreme law of the land. It was in this spirit of mutual concession and conciliation that the Constitution of the United States was formed and adopted, and it is in this spirit that I offer the amendment now before the committee. I will trespass no longer upon their indulgence, but will submit a few observations more upon the subject, when the bill shall be reported to the House. THURSDAY, June 30. Death of Ex-President Madison. On the Speaker's resuming the chair, at 4 o'clock, he announced the following Message from the President of the United States: WASHINGTON, June 30, 1836. To the Senate and House of Representatives : It becomes my painful duty to announce to you the melancholy intelligence of the death of James Madison, ex-President of the United States. He departed this life at half-past six o'clock on the morning of the 28th instant, full of years and of honor. I hasten this communication, in order that Congress may adopt such measures as may be proper to testify their sense of the respect which is due to the memory of one whose life has contributed so essentially to the happiness and glory of his country, and to the good of mankind. ANDREW JACKSON. The Message having been read, Mr. PATTON, of Virginia, said that the particular relation in which he stood, as his immediate representative and personal friend, towards the great public benefactor whose decease, "full of years and full of honors," had just been announced by the Message of the |