It was referenced earlier in the thread and on another thread too. Circa spring 1860 editorial.
The point remains, and one can argue the hypothetical about the application of slavery to mining, that the southern leadership stilled eyed the southwest.
"You are repeating here a charge which has been previously challenged by my quotation of Rhett's other manifesto, 'The Address of the People of South Carolina, Assembled in Convention, to the People of the Slaveholding States of the United States'."
I have been looking for an old post I made about that a couple of years ago. I have not yet located it. For the moment, I will just say that when Rhett issued his "manifesto" his audience had changed. Prior to that time he was agitating for any sort of secession attempt. His own South Carolina (naturally) had complied, and now he needed to build on the momentum. So the tone of his argument changed in some degree. The message was similar to that being delivered around the South by the "Apostles of Disunion."
Not after Lincoln got elected. That's when the Southerners detonated the explosive bolts and jettisoned everything. Without control of their political destiny, they couldn't do anything.
That, by the way, is what an uncontrolled and unrestricted immigration policy eventually gets you. But that's another thread.
Re Robert Rhett's editorial, I think we have to discern two things, one, its timing well before Lincoln's election (and even before the Republican convention) and two, its intended general audience, which gives it something more in the nature of a political billboard or "dream sheet", than his address to the political leadership of the Southern States that he composed almost a year later, under very different circumstances.
Every state offered two senators, even those with no potential for slavery.
Here is something offered for debate.
SOURCE: John Remington Graham, A Constitutional History of Secession, pp. 242-47.
Popular historians have sought to attribute monumental significance to the Wilmot Proviso, which was an attempt to exercise, in territories ultimately ceded by Mexico, the power of Congress which had first been employed in the reenactment of the Northwest Ordinance in 1789. But failure of the attempt, on the contrary, did not have the slightest importance.
In Texas, slavery never really got beyond the Nueces River, which flowed as an arch considerably to the north and east of the Rio Grande into the Gulf of Mexico at Corpus Christi. Slave labor was expensive to maintain, because masters were obliged to provide comprehensive care of the wants and needs of their workers from cradle to grave. This feature acquitted slavery, as it was called, of most charges of inhumanity lodged against it, and simultaneously made the system unable to compete whenever cheap seasonal labor was readily available. Between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, free [nc: cheap?] Mexican labor has always been found in abundance, and for this reason slavery never was or could be established there.
The land belt separating the two rivers served as a buffer zone, because slavery was prohibited in Mexico. Aside from its incapacity to compete successfully with free Mexican labor, slavery could not flourish beyond the Nueces River for the further reason that escape across the Rio Grande brought freedom forever, and so slave property was there unsafe to hold. Nor were the wildest dreams of expanding slavery into Mexico or other parts of Latin American anything but delusions, because, aside from the impossibility of not only conquering but keeping hold of those regions, the huge supply of cheap native labor eager to be hired made slavery entirely out of the question.
Likewise out of the question for the expansion of slavery was western Texas, New Mexico, the Indian lands, Utah, and any part of the Louisiana Purchase north of the line drawn by the Missouri Compromise. In all these regions, the land was largely semi-arid and unforested, or too far from navigable rivers and other means of transportation, or otherwise unfit to implant slavery in any meaningful degree. And coming technology was a further death knell to the future of the institution.
Most politicians in the United States may not yet have come around to the reality, but at the time California petitioned for admission to the Union, neither the Federal territories nor any other lands within reach could absorb any significant expansion of the planter way of life in the old South. The unmistakable trends of immigration, an impossible and moribund system of capitalization of labor, the forthcoming creation of new free States, and generally the beckoning call of the future all weighed irreversibly toward the natural extinction of slavery.
The moment had arrived for the South to negotiate while time remained, exacting a price while a price could still be fetched, and making advantageous transactions for the future. There was one man in the South who could see the future clearly, as before Henry Clay, then representing Kentucky in the Senate. But he was getting on in years. The best the old master could do was get some breathing space for the South, and then hope that someone with sense might take his place before it was too late.
The Senator from Kentucky introduced eight resolutions in the Senate for resolving the conflicting interests of the country, as occasioned by the petition of California for admission to the Union. And out of these resolutions grew the basic statutory elements of the Compromise of 1850: -- California was admitted to the Union as a free State.
-- The western boundary of Texas was adjusted. Land was taken from the State, with its consent, and fitted into Federal territory, in consideration of $10,000,000 in bonds of the United States.
-- All territory acquired from Mexico, aside from Texas and California, was organized into the New Mexico Territory, just to the west of Texas and to the east of California, beneath 37 degrees north latitude, and also the Utah Territory, which was the remainder above 37 degrees north latitude. Each of these territories was made subject to the provision, "That when admitted as a State, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as its constitution may prescribe at the time of admission."
-- There had been an old fugitive slave law, enacted by Congress when George Washington was President. This old act was amended to give the courts of the Union exclusive jurisdiction, thereby relieving the courts of unwilling States of any duty to participate in this unpleasant business. Criminal penalties were prescribed for obstructing the execution of the act.
-- And the slave trade, but not slavery, was abolished in the District of Columbia.
The legislative engineering of this compromise took many months. In the United States Senate, three famous speeches were delivered, the first by John Calhoun of South Carolina on March 4, 1850, -- the next by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts on March 7, 1850, -- and the last by William Seward of New York on March 11, 1850.
Calhoun delivered his message twenty-seven days before his death, and at the time he was so weak and wan that a colleague from Virginia was obliged to read the text for him. "The North has only to will it to accomplish it," he concluded, "to do justice by conceding to the South an equal right in the acquired territory, and to do her duty by causing the stipulation relative to fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation of the slave question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision into the constitution, by an amendment, which would restore to the South in substance the power she possessed of protecting herself before the equilibrium was destroyed by the action of the government."
In 1860, a full decade after Calhoun had been laid to rest, there were probably less than a hundred slaves within the boundaries of Texas beyond the Nueces River, nor did the territories to the north and west of Texas offer any attraction to planters. Slavery had expanded to its furthest natural extremity in those directions.
The new fugitive slave law was of little practical significance, because there were so few runaways, and those slaves who managed to escape were nearly always impossible to find. It was seldom worth the cost and effort even to make an attempt at recovery.
And the act abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia was likewise cosmetic. The whole slave population in the city of Washington and its immediate surroundings could not much have exceeded a few hundred domestic servants. The slave market there had almost ceased to exist by the middle of the century.
[nc note: the 1860 census indicates there were 3,185 slaves in the District of Columbia.]
Calhoun's great precept of the need for constitutional safeguards against exploitation of minority interests was still sound, but the winds of change were bringing about new alignments within the country, and for this reason the old equilibrium Calhoun spoke of was no longer a serviceable balance for this purpose. There was instead a need to calm the sea of agitation over slavery, let the institution die naturally, and accommodate new alliances of power which were sure to arise.
Daniel Webster was damned in Boston for his "seventh of March" speech. "I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause!" were his famous opening words as he supported the resolutions of Henry Clay. The thrust of his discourse was an answer to the declamations of the North against the peculiar institution of the South. He did not defend slavery so much as expose hypocrisy, for he had approved of the Wilmot Proviso, but for him the real concern was to avoid further division within the United States. And for this he was lambasted mercilessly. Webster, it was said, had sold his soul to the devil.
Webster was shrewd enough to see what Clay had in mind by his stipulation on New Mexico and Utah: the object was to let the South enjoy a nominal concession which posed no real threat whatever for the expansion of slavery into the West. The need was to build strength of the whole on a foundation of peace among the several States to terminate the cultural insults against the South, and to work on solid progress within the Union. And he was eminently correct.
William Seward opposed Clay's resolutions. He rested his case with grandiloquence: "And now, the simple, bold, and awful question which presents itself is this: -- Shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions, -- shall we, who know by experience the wise and the just, and are free to choose them, and to reject the erroneous and unjust, -- shall we establish human bondage, or permit it by our sufferance to be established?" It sounded glorious, but it was one of the most meaningless political speeches in American history. For never was a single slave held in all the vast stretches of the New Mexico Territory or the Utah Territory.
[nc note: the 1860 census indicates there were 29 slaves in Utah, 15 in Nebraska, 44 total slaves in the territories. In addition, there were 303 free blacks in the territories -- CO, NE, NV, NM, UT, WA]
The triumvirate of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster provided an arrangement made up of legal symbols designed to keep the country cool and occupied, while two political niceties were gracefully addressed: California was admitted to the Union, and the South was reassured of its safety within the Union.
Slavery was set on the path of ultimate extinction by the Compromises of 1820 and 1850. And the people of the South were generally satisfied with the results, as appears from the defeat of secessionists in the Southern elections in 1851. If a little moderation and patience had been shown there would have been a natural and beneficial transformation within the Dixie States and throughout the Union.
By the end of 1852, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster all slept in their graves. And, unfortunately, there were meddlesome politicians, power-brokers, and judges who could not leave well enough alone. Not much time had to pass before the trouble began.
Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois had ambitions of becoming President. Given the realities of popular election, which have usually been more a matter of financial backing than anything else, Douglas became indebted to a group of financiers whose offices were mainly in New York and Philadelphia. They wanted to build a transcontinental railroad along a central route cutting across Federal territories somewhat above the line of the Missouri Compromise. And, in order to obtain necessary support for the favorite project of these financiers, Douglas used his power as Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Territories to engineer a bill containing an element which was deceptively attractive to the South.
The bill established the Kansas Territory, lying to the west of the State of Missouri, from 37 to 40 degrees north latitude, and also the Nebraska Territory consisting of all portions of the Louisiana Purchase then still unorganized and above 40 degrees north latitude. Under Section 8 of the Act of March 6, 1820, slavery was excluded from these territories, but Douglas agreed to repeal this provision in exchange for temporary relin-quishment by senators and representatives in the Southern States of their demands that a transcontinental railroad should be built through Louisiana and Texas. This bait secured enough political support for the central route.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed on May 30, 1854. Section 14 stated that "the true intent and meaning of this Act is not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." This idea was called "popular sovereignty." It had a pious ring, but it was a certain recipe for civil war, as was foreseen by Senator Sam Houston of Texas, who pleaded on March 4, 1854, "I adjure you to regard the contract once made to harmonize and preserve the Union. Maintain the Missouri Compromise! Stir not up agitation! Give us peace!" He was the sanest man in the United States when he spoke those words, but he was unheard.
In the great cession from Mexico between Texas and California, there was nary a square mile which settlers from both the North and the South would compete to acquire, and for this reason it was not so important to draw a line between free soil and slave soil in the Federal territories covered by the Compromise of 1850.
But in the lands other than the State of Missouri lying above 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude in the Louisiana Purchase, there was a limited region along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, in which a few crops other than cotton, such as hemp and tobacco, might profitably be grown by slave labor. And so, for the sake of domestic peace, a line was established by the Compromise of 1820. The region in question was not very large, and could hardly be expected to support more than a sparse population in bondage. Moreover, as between competing streams of immigrants from the North and from the South, it was a foregone conclusion, dictated by the offerings of geography and the weight of numbers, that Kansas would eventually become a free State.
In fact, this small domain was so minor in value to planters that it was unworthy of any strenuous exertions of the South. Yet there lay a segment of land in eastern Kansas, which Douglas opened up to Dixie squatters for the sake of a railroad. The consequences were disastrous. It caused an explosion of ill-feeling and misunderstanding which had mercifully been laid to rest by Henry Clay's last triumphant act of statesmanship in 1850.
Lincoln certainly didn't. One of the schemes he was cooking up in 1862 involved shipping all the blacks down to Panama for use in a coal mine that supposedly existed there but turned out to be too poor in quality for use. Of course he didn't call it "slavery" - he dressed it up with better sounding names like "colonization" and "emigration," but the effect was similarly coercive. The contract he signed (which is in the national archives today) even stipulates that the blacks would be given into the custody of an overseer who was contracted for the project and that he could punish them as he saw fit - in short, treating them like children with no real freedom.
Article 9th - To provide against the United States being compromised by this contract in any manner in its treaty stipulations with New Granada or the U.S. of Colombia it is agreed that the said Thompson is to be responsible for the good behavior of persons of color whom he may recieve from the United States upon his lands, or employ in his mines, or in works of improvement, and if any of said persons become (illegible) by reason of bad behavior or refuse to obey the laws and authorities, they are to be restrained or removed by said Thompson.
Imagine that, capitan. Sending blacks to Panama and into the custody of a private individual for the explicit purpose of working on that private individual's lands and in his mines and also giving that same private individual full private control over the punishment, restraint, and removal of his recieved "workers" while they are there.