FREEDOM v. SLAVERY
SPEECH
OF
JOHN HUTCHINS, OF OHIO.
Delivered in the U. S. House of Representatives, May 2, 1860.
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Mr. Chairman: When the distinguished Senator from New York, [William H. Seward,] in his Rochester speech in 1858, defined the antagonism between free and slave labor to be an irrepressible conflict, he announced a truth inherent in the two systems, and (illegible text) with slavery. The same idea has been frequently expressed in different forms by the opponents and advocates of slavery, in their discussions of the subject. If Mr. Seward, in the statement of this truth, is entitled to the claim of originality, it is in the use of words expressive of the idea. He has been represented as originating the antagonism, instead of defining it. He in apt words clearly defined what is patent to a student of history and to a careful observer of passing events, namely: that there is an irreconcilable antagonism between freedom and slavery. It is being demonstrated, if it never were before, by the logic of events now transpiring. The words freedom and slavery are expressive of opposite ideas; and wherever the two systems come in contact, there must necessarily be conflict and antagonism. A line of policy which would encourage free labor would discourage slave labor; hence the conflict as to measures in the legislation of Congress, affecting the two systems of labor. When, in fixing a tariff of duties upon imports, with a view to make the annual revenues of the Government equal its annual expenditures, a discrimination is made upon such articles as free labor produces, so as to afford incidental protection, then we find the advocates of free labor and the advocates of slave labor in antagonism on this floor. When it is proposed to encourage free labor by inviting it to occupy and improve our unoccupied public domain, by the passage of a homestead law, then we encounter the same antagonism. And so it is with every measure proposed, having the least relation to either system of labor. The establishment of the fact of a conflict between freedom and slavery does not, as a logical sequence, determine which is |
right or which is wrong. I propose, therefore, briefly to examine that question, and address myself to that inquiry. The advocates of slavery upon this floor have frankly and ably presented the question for our consideration; and I propose to meet it. If the system of free labor, as it exists in the free States of this Union, is wrong, we ought, as honest men, to abandon it, and adopt that higher type of civilization, as it is claimed, which exists in the slave States. If the system of slave lsbor, as it exists in the slave States, is right, we ought, under the Constitution of the United States, to extend to it that protection which its advocates claim for it. I maintain that slavery, as it exists in the slaveholding States, is wrong in every aspect in which it can be viewed; wrong to the slave; wrong to the slaveholder; an injury to the material, industrial, political, social, educational, moral, and religious prosperity of any people who encourage or tolerate it; and, like all other sins which afflict society, the sum total of its results is evil, and only evil. Slavery originated in motives of selfishness, of avarice, and of ambition; in an age when, by the teachings of those motives, might was a synonym for right—when the weak and unfortunate, and the conquered, had no rights which the strong were bound to respect. It is sustained at the present day, in and out of this Hall, by the same logic, and by the same motives. When the colonists of this country were experiencing the oppressive effects of the tyrannical measures of the Parliament and King of England, tending to reduce them to political slavery, they naturally began to inquire into the inherent rights of man, as a subject of civil government; and that inquiry, with the discussion incident to it, in the light of the learning which the progress of society up to that time had developed, resulted in the adoption of "a platform" of political principles, in harmony with the Divine law, which was incorpo- |
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