The Shadow Conspiracy

To properly understand the condition of things preceding the great war of the Rebellion, and the causes underlying that condition and the war itself, we must glance backward through the history of the Country to, and even beyond, that memorable 30th of November, 1782, when the Independence of the United States of America was at last conceded by Great Britain. At that time the population of the United States was about 2,500,000 free whites and some 500,000 black slaves. We had gained our Independence of the Mother Country, but she had left fastened upon us the curse of Slavery.

Indeed African Slavery had already in 1620 been implanted on the soil of Virginia before Plymouth Rock was pressed by the feet of the Pilgrim Fathers, and had spread, prior to the Revolution, with greater or less rapidity, according to the surrounding adaptations of soil, production and climate, to every one of the thirteen Colonies.

But while it had thus spread more or less throughout all the original Colonies, and was, as it were, recognized and acquiesced in by all, as an existing and established institution, yet there were many, both in the South and North, who looked upon it as an evil-an inherited evil-and were anxious to prevent the increase of that evil. Hence it was that even as far back as 1699, a controversy sprang up between the Colonies and the Home Government, upon the African Slavery question-a controversy continuing with more or less vehemence down to the Declaration of Independence itself.

It was this conviction that it was not alone an evil but a dangerous evil, that induced Jefferson to embody in his original draft of that Declaration a clause strongly condemnatory of the African Slave Trade-a clause afterward omitted from it solely, he tells us, "in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never* attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it," as well as in deference to the sensitiveness of Northern people, who, though having few slaves themselves, "had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others" a clause of the great indictment of King George III., which, since it was not omitted for any other reason than that just given, shows pretty conclusively that where the fathers in that Declaration affirmed that "all men are created equal," they included in the term "men," black as well as white, bond as well as free; for the clause ran thus: "Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying of former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of our people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

[Prior to 1752, when Georgia surrendered her charter and became a Royal Colony, the holding of slaves within its limits was expressly prohibited by law; and the Darien (Ga.) resolutions of 1775 declared not only a "disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America" as "a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our Liberties (as well as lives) but a determination to use our utmost efforts for the manumission of our slaves in this colony upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves."]

During the war of the Revolution following the Declaration of Independence, the half a million of slaves, nearly all of them in the Southern States, were found to be not only a source of weakness, but, through the incitements of British emissaries, a standing menace of peril to the Slaveholders. Thus it was that the South was overrun by hostile British armies, while in the North-comparatively free of this element of weakness-disaster after disaster met them. At last, however, in 1782, came the recognition of our Independence, and peace, followed by the evacuation of New York at the close of 1783.

The lessons of the war, touching Slavery, had not been lost upon our statesmen. Early in 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States her claims of jurisdiction and otherwise over the vast territory north-west of the Ohio; and upon its acceptance, Jefferson, as chairman of a Select Committee appointed at his instance to consider a plan of government therefor, reported to the ninth Continental Congress an Ordinance to govern the territory ceded already, or to be ceded, by individual States to the United States, extending from the 31st to the 47th degree of north latitude, which provided as "fundamental conditions between the thirteen original States and those newly described" as embryo States thereafter-to be carved out of such territory ceded or to be ceded to the United States, not only that "they shall forever remain a part of the United States of America," but also that "after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States"-and that those fundamental conditions were "unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress assembled, and of the particular State within which such alteration is proposed to be made."

But now a signal misfortune befell. Upon a motion to strike out the clause prohibiting Slavery, six States: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, voted to retain the prohibitive clause, while three States, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, voted not to retain it. The vote of North Carolina was equally divided; and while one of the Delegates from New Jersey voted to retain it, yet as there was no other delegate present from that State, and the Articles of Confederation required the presence of "two or more" delegates to cast the vote of a State, the vote of New Jersey was lost; and, as the same Articles required an affirmative vote of a majority of all the States-and not simply of those present-the retention of the clause prohibiting Slavery was also lost. Thus was lost the great opportunity of restricting Slavery to the then existing Slave States, and of settling the question peaceably for all time. Three years afterward a similar Ordinance, since become famous as "the Ordinance of '87," for the government of the North-west Territory (from which the Free States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have since been carved and admitted to the Union) was adopted in Congress by the unanimous vote of all the eight States present. And the sixth article of this Ordinance, or "Articles of Compact," which it was stipulated should "forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent," was in these words:

"Art. 6. There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor, or service, as aforesaid."

But this Ordinance of '87, adopted almost simultaneously with the framing of our present Federal Constitution, was essentially different from the Ordinance of three years previous, in this: that while the latter included the territory south of the Ohio River as well as that north-west of it, this did not; and as a direct consequence of this failure to include in it the territory south of that river, the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, which were taken out of it, were subsequently admitted to the Union as Slave States, and thus greatly augmented their political power. And at a later period it was this increased political power that secured the admission of still other Slave States-as Florida, Louisiana and Texas-which enabled the Slave States to hold the balance of such power as against the original States that had become Free, and the new Free States of the North-west.

Hence, while in a measure quieting the great question of Slavery for the time being, the Ordinance of '87 in reality laid the ground-work for the long series of irritations and agitations touching its restrictions and extension, which eventually culminated in the clash of arms that shook the Union from its centre to its circumference. Meanwhile, as we have seen-while the Ordinance of 1787 was being enacted in the last Congress of the old Confederation at New York-the Convention to frame the present Constitution was sitting at Philadelphia under the Presidency of George Washington himself. The old Confederation had proved itself to be "a rope of sand." A new and stronger form of government had become a necessity for National existence.

To create it out of the discordant elements whose harmony was essential to success, was an herculean task, requiring the utmost forbearance, unselfishness, and wisdom. And of all the great questions, dividing the framers of that Constitution, perhaps none of them required a higher degree of self abnegation and patriotism than those touching human Slavery.

The situation was one of extreme delicacy. The necessity for a closer and stronger Union of all the States was apparently absolute, yet this very necessity seemed to place a whip in the hands of a few States, with which to coerce the greater number of States to do their bidding. It seemed that the majority must yield to a small minority on even vital questions, or lose everything.

Thus it was, that instead of an immediate interdiction of the African Slave Trade, Congress was empowered to prohibit it after the lapse of twenty years; that instead of the basis of Congressional Representation being the total population of each State, and that of direct taxation the total property of each State, a middle ground was conceded, which regarded the Slaves as both persons and property, and the basis both of Representation and of Direct Taxation was fixed as being the total Free population "plus three-fifths of all other persons" in each State; and that there was inserted in the Constitution a similar clause to that which we have seen was almost simultaneously incorporated in the Ordinance of '87, touching the reclamation and return to their owners of Fugitive Slaves from the Free States into which they may have escaped.