Slavery Legislation Quotes
This proposed Constitutional Amendment was debated just before Abraham Lincoln would take office. The South wanted to tie his hands on the Slavery issue, and wanted to end what had become a constant polarized Congressional debate over slavery. Of course, their idea of ending the debate was to Constitutionally prohibit further attempts to outlaw or otherwise interfere with slavery in the Southern states. A number of Northern members of Congress voted for it realizing that there was little or no chance of obtaining the ratifications of ¾ of the states and they wanted to buy some time for the Southerners to calm down over their fear of Lincoln and his upstart Republican party. The Amendment never obtained the needed votes though a few states did ratify it. Secession and the Civil War mad the amendment moot. The Southern position was so rigid, that they would compromise in no way on the slavery issue, and ended up of course losing more than they ever thought was possible by succeeding. Another reason this proposed amendment is historically important, is that it is yet another strong piece of evidence that the issue of the Civil War was slavery and not differences in political and economic philosophies as many Southerners have claimed since then. If States Rights in general were the great concern, would have been no reason to single out slavery if it were not the major issue. Yet the last phrase, “including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State” does just. Similar evidence is given by the Secession Resolutions of the Southern States and the debates around them. It is clear that slavery was the issue that the South fought over.
Van Buren was Ambassador to England at the time.
In June of 1850, a bipartisan group of Southern politicians met in Nashville, TN for the purpose of organizing strategy and tactics to ward off and defeat the growing aggressiveness of Northern politicians and other leaders in trying to abolish slavery. They issued an address to the people. This is one of the clearest statements of the position of most of the Southern Politicians on the increased efforts to abolish or curtail slavery. They felt that a deal had been made by the founding fathers and the first Congress not to deal with the slavery issue, and that deal must be honored in perpetuity. Most Northerners agreed that a deal had been made, but it was not binding forever—that a Congress could not limit the scope of a future Congress except via a Constitutional Amendment. The deal on Slavery was a deal not to address it for a while. It was not a deal to accept the Southern point of view. And none of it was written into the Constitution because opinion was even then split and a majority could not be mustered for a compromise that would write legal slavery into the Constitution. But many Southerners believed that its absence implied that it could not be addressed by the government. They demanded the right of their states to choose slavery if they so wished. Time was not on the side of the South and the Southerners who insisted on State’s Rights regarding slavery opposed States Rights for Northern States who wished to disallow fugitive slaves to be returned to owners. The more fugitive slaves there were, the more hypocritical the Southern position became as they needed Federal preemption on the issue of Fugitive Slaves, else slavery would end by escape and non-return of slaves.
He also quoted this pledge in his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1837. Van Buren was a New Yorker but took this position to curry favor with the South and the merchants of New York City who made a great deal of money on the cotton trade of the Southern slave plantations. He kept his immoral pledge as the issue of slavery moved the nation closer and closer to the Civil War.
