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![handle is hein.slavery/idcdps0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
The Issues: The Dred Scott Decision: The Parties.
SPEECH
OF
HON. ISRAEL WASHBURN, JUN.,
OF MAINE.
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Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 19, 1860.
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Mr. CHAIRMAN: I Under the influence of the truths which so
Queen Elizabeth equipped two vessels for her own sole filled and informed the minds of men at that
profit, in wich two vessels, escorted by the fleet under the time, and by the authority of the ngw sover-
command of Hwkins, were the first, unhappy blacks in-
veigled from thtic shores by Englishmen, and doomed to eignties, it was scarcely doubted in any quarter
end their lives in servitude. Elizabeth was avaricious and that the system, so inexpedient and full of evil,
cruel ; but a small segment of her heart had a brief sunshineo
on it, darting obliquely. We arc under a King [George, III] unprofitable and wrong, would die out or be
notoriously more avaricious; one who passes without a exterminated. It could not, men thought, be
Shulddr tho gibbetshis sign-manual has garnished- one who otherwise. In consequence of the unsettleel
sees on the fields of the most disastrous battles, battles in o
which he ordered his people to fight his people, nothing else and impoverished condition of the country, it
to be rcgretted than the loss of horses and saddles,of haver- would no doubt take some time to accomplish
zaics and jackcts. Trthis insensato and insatiable man even an end so desirable and so certain' but the
hears that Queen Elizabeth was a s[ave-dealor, he will assert
the inahenabic rights of the Cv'own, ,ud swamp your me- will and the determination should not-be want-
tion.1 Ing; an& so our ancestors, when the war was
I have read from :an Imaginary Conversa- over, set themselves at work earnestly and in
iou between Romifly and Wilberforce, by good faith to effect the amelioration and ulti-
Walter Savage Landor, the statement ot an mate extinction of this evil. By an ordinance
actual fact. The words are understood' to which Mr. Webster said should make its author
have been spoken by Romilly. immortal, they excluded slavery from all the
In the origii at draft of tble Declaration of territory of the Government lying north and
Independeuce, Thomas Jefferson wrote: west of the Qhio river. They framed a Con-
He [George 11I has waged cruel war against human stitution to establish justice, and secure
nature itself, violating its most sacred. rights of life ad lib-
erty, in the persons of a distant people, who never offended the blessings of liberty for themselves and
him , captivat ,g and carrying them into slavery in another their posterity; and among those by whose
bemisphere, or to incur miserable death n their transporta- the Constitu
tion thither. This piratical warfare, theopprobriu on VOteS tion wa& 2dopted, and for
del Powers, is the warfare of the (Jhriptian King of Great whom, as well as others, it must have been in-
Britain. Determined to keep a market where men should tetided, were colored men of African
be bought and sold, he has at length prostitued his negative c.
for suppressing any legislative attempt to prohibit and residing in' several of the States South and
restrain this execrable commerce. North. In that Constitution they sedulously
Thus we learn that under the authority and excluded the idea that men were, or could
by the aid of the sovereigns of Great Britain, rightfully be made, property; they would not
fr6n Elizabeth to the third George, black men dishonor that consummate fruit of their toils
were brought from Africa to the British Amer-! and sacrifices by the use o7the words slave
ican colonies, and reduced to the condition of and servitude; they treated human beings
slaves. And thus, at the close of the Revolu-! as persons-men, and not as things; they pro-
tionary war, chattel slavery existed in all the vided fbr the abolition of the slave trade at
States but one that were to form the new Con- the earliest practicable moment. While they
federacy. It was an undoubted evil; indeed, recognised no distinction of color or race, and,
its removal was one of the great objects for in the numeration of persons for purposes of
which the war was commenced and prosecuted. Federal representation, counted alike members
Reproduced with permission from the University of Illinois at Chicago](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/idcdps0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)