Facsimile
Transcription
[5]
out a shadow of crime defined against them on her own statute book. She denies that any thing can be called a privilege or im-
munity which is attended with so glaring a violation of the right of personal liberty. She now solemnly, and before the face of
Heaven, charges upon South Carolina a deliberate and palpable breach of that condition of the common compact, and she appeals
to the sense of justice and of right, both of the living and future generations, to answer, that THE CHARGE IS TRUE.
But had South Carolina any justification to make of her acts beyond the tyrant's plea; did she join issue with Massachusetts
upon the question, who are the citizens of each State entitled to enjoy the privileges and immunities referred to in the Constitu-
tion ; did she deny that the persons whom she claims the right to seize, to imprison, to whip or sell, without question, although
admitted to belong to Massachusetts ships, are Massachusetts citizens, there is provided for her, under the compact to which she
made herself a party, a grace tribunal, to which, in the last resort, every controversy between the States may be brought to a
peaceful end. The Constitution assigns to the judicial power of the United States the province of deciding controversies between
two or more States, between a State and citizens of another State, or between citizens of different States. Massachusetts has
taken every measure in her power to induce South Carolina to submit this question of the validity of these laws, so far as they ap-
ply to her citizens, to that power. The great object expected to be gained by the employment of a special agent, was, that the
necessary measure might be perfected within the territory of South Carolina, where only they could be taken, to procure an ulti-
mate decision. If Massachusetts be wrong in her view of her rights, she has no reason, from the constitution of that final tribunal,
to expect a scruple of partiality in her favor to weigh in arrest of judgment. But whether wrong or not, she has offered, and does
offer, to abide by the award, whatever it may be. And she insists upon her right, under the obligations of the common compact,
to demand the assent of South Carolina to the proposal. It is one of the most solemn considerations attending this controversy,
that the State has been willing to intrench herself behind every technical obstacle to such a decision; that her citizens, when
called upon professionally to take the ordinary steps to forward it in the federal courts, have all declined so to do ; that she has now
formally prohibited them from accepting any similar trust ; and that she has thought proper to threaten with personal violence, in
order to deter from acting, an individual sent from Massachusetts to do what her own citizens have refused to do. The evidence
necessary to prove her intent, is then at last complete. It must be assumed that South Carolina now deliberately refuses to recog-
nize the authority of the federal tribunal. She sets herself above the restrictions of the Consititution which she agreed to sustain,
and perseveres in the execution of her will at whatever cost. If it be once assumed that the government of the United States has
not either power or will to interpose, it becomes a grave question to consider, whether the citizens of Massachusetts can much
longer remain bound by their obligations to her under the compact. Such is the legitimate consequence of the policy she has
thought it proper to pursue. Massachusetts presents this view to each of the States, without seeking to encourage any use of the
unfortunate liberty which it might be construed to give.
It is true that once an attempt was made in the Congress of the United States to sustain by an elaborate report the position
which South Carolina has assumed, upon strictly constitutional ground. And inasmuch as that State, though refusing to submit
the argument upon which it rests to the judgment of the Federal Court, has taken the same general basis for the resolutions
passed by her Legislature, it acquires a degree of importance which may bring it within the notice of Massachusetts. The argu-
ment is, that in the clause of the Constitution granting to "the citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens in
the several States," South Carolina is bound to extend to them only the same degree of privilege and immunity that she does to
her own population at home "under the like circumstances." Hence it must follow, that if she retains to herself the right to
seize, imprison, lash and sell as slaves for life, without charging the commission of any crime or giving them any hearing, any part
of her freemen, she may constitutionally claim to exercise the same power over the freemen of other States "under the like cir-
cumstances." With all the inhumanity that ordinarily attends a code of slave laws, there will scarcely be found in them any
authority for such a proposition as this, and if there were, its publication in the face of the Christian world would at once be its
condemnation. No. Free negroes are safe from personal harm even in South Carolina, so long as they obey the laws and commit
no offence. But the free negroes of Massachusetts are liable, whenever they come into the harbors of Carolina in the vessels of
Massachusetts, to be seized, cast into prison, whipped and sold for slaves, notwithstanding that they may manifest no dispositions
whatever to touch her soil, or to commit the smallest act likely to draw down on them a suspicion. Are then the cases parallel
even upon the reasoning presented, and does South Carolina, by her own construction of the Consitution, extend to the citizens of
each State all privileges and immunities which she grants to her own "under the like circumstances"?
But the construction admitted for the sake of the argument, when analyzed, is proved fallacious to the last degree. It has
been made to rest upon a definition of citizenship nowhere found in the numerous works upon government which have usually been
recognized as authority during the last century, but drawn from a judicial opinion of a court in the State of Kentucky. It is due
to the present question to quote it entire as it stands in the original defence.
"The term citizen is derived from the Latin word civis, and, in its primary sense, signifies one who is vested with the freedom
and privileges of a city. If we go back to Rome, whence the term citizen had its origin, we shall find, in the illustrious period
of her republic, that citizens were the highest class of subjects to whom the jus civitatis belonged, and that the jus civitatis con-
ferred upon those who were in possession of it all rights and privileges, civil, political, and religious. When the term came to be
applied to the inhabitants of a State, it necessarily carried with it the same signification, with reference to the privileges of a
city ; and it is in this sense that the term citizen is believed to be generally, if not universally, understood in the United States.
This, indeed, evidently appears to be the sense in which the term is used in the clause of the Constitution which is under con-
Notes and Questions
Nobody has written a note for this page yet
Please sign in to write a note for this page