ought to be hung for only stealing a negro!" — a declaration received by the house with a loud laugh. "Those who buy are as bad as those who import, and deserve hanging just as much."
"We are told," said Theodore Dwight, of Connecticut, "that morality has nothing to do with this traffic; that it is not a question of morals, but of politics. The president, in his message at the opening of the session, has expressed a very different opinion. He speaks of this traffic as a violation of human rights, which those who regarded morality, and the reputation and best interests of the country, have long been eager to prohibit. The gentleman from North Carolina has argued that, in importing Africans, we do them no harm; that we only transfer them from a state of slavery at home to a state of slavery attended by fewer calamities here. But by what authority do we interfere with their concerns? Who empowered us to judge for them which is the worse and which is the better state? Have these miserable beings ever been consulted as to their removal? Who can say that the state in which they were born, and to which they are habituated, is not more agreeable to them than one altogether untried, of which they have no knowledge, and about which they can not even make any calculations? Let the gentleman ask his own conscience whether it be not a violation of human rights thus forcibly to carry these wretches from their home and their country?"
Clay insisted that capital punishment under this law could not be carried into execution even in Pennsylvania, of which state it had been the policy to dispense with the penalty of death in all cases except for murder in the first degree. But on this point Findley and Smilie expressed very decidedly an opposite opinion. This was a crime, they said, above murder; it was man-stealing added to murder. In spite, however, of all efforts, the substitution of imprisonment for death prevailed by a vote of sixty-three to fifty-two.
Another attempt was afterwards made by Sloan, of New Jersey, to strike out the forfeiture clause; but he could not even succeed in obtaining the yeas and nays upon it. Three days after, the bill having been engrossed and the question being on its passage, the northern members seemed suddenly to recollect themselves. Again it was urged that by forfeiting the slaves imported, and putting the proceeds into the public treasury, the bill gave a direct sanction to the principle of slavery, and cast a stain upon the national character. In order that some other plan might be devised, consistent at once with the honor of the Union and the safety of the slave-holding states, it was moved to recommit the bill to a committee of seventeen — one from each state. This motion, made by Bedinger, of Kentucky, was supported not only by Sloan, Bidwell, Findley, and Smilie, but also by Quincy, of Boston, and Clay, of Philadelphia, who seemed at length to have taken the alarm at the extent to which they had been playing into the hands of the slaveholders. It was urged, on the other side, that the bill, as it stood, was satisfactory to nearly or quite all the members from the southern states, who alone were interested in the matter, and that to recommit a bill at this stage was very unusual. Tho motion to recommit was carried, however, seventy-six to forty-nine.
