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"In presenting these petitions he would say, on the part of the State of Ohio, that she went to the entire extent of the opinions of the senator from South Carolina on one point. We deny, said he, the power of Congress to legislate concerning local institutions, or to meddle in any way with slavery in any of the States; but we have always entertained the opinion that Congress has primary and exclusive legislation over this District; under this impression, these petitioners have come to the Senate to present their petitions. The doctrine that Congress have no power over the subject of slavery in this District is to me a new one; and it is one that will not meet with credence in the State in which I reside. I believe these petitioners have the right to present themselves here, placing their feet on the constitution of their country, when they come to ask of Congress to exercise those powers which they can legitimately exercise. I believe they have a right to be heard in their petitions, and that Congress may afterwards dispose of these petitions as in their wisdom they may think proper. Under these impressions, these petitioners come to be heard, and they have a right to be heard. Is not the right of petition a fundamental right? I believe it is a sacred and fundamental right, belonging to the people, to petition Congress for the redress of their grievances. While this right is secured by the constitution, it is incompetent to any legislative body to prescribe how the right is to be exercised, or when, or on what subject; or else this right becomes a mere mockery. If you are to tell the people that they are only to petition on this or that subject, or in this or that manner, the right of petition is but a mockery. It is true we have a right to say that no petition which is couched in disrespectful language shall be received; but I presume there is a sufficient check provided against this in the responsibility under which every senator presents a petition. Any petition conveyed in such language would always meet with his decided disapprobation. But if we deny the right of the people to petition in this instance, I would ask how far they have the right. While they believe they possess the right, no denial of it by Congress will prevent them from exercising it."

Mr. Bedford Brown, of North Carolina, entirely dissented from the views presented by Mr. Calhoun, and considered the course he proposed, and the language which he used, exactly calculated to produce the agitation which he professed to deprecate. He said:

"He felt himself constrained, by a sense of duty to the State from which he came, deeply and vitally interested as she was in every thing connected with the agitating question which had unexpectedly been brought into discussion that morning, to present, in a few words, his views as to the proper direction which should be given to that and all other petitions relating to slavery in the District of Columbia. He felt himself more especially called on to do so from the aspect which the question had assumed, in consequence of the motion of the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun], to refuse to receive the petition. He had believed from the first time he had reflected on this subject, and subsequent events had but strengthened that conviction, that the most proper disposition of all such petitions was to lay them on the table, without printing. This course, while it indicated to the fanatics that Congress will yield no countenance to their designs, at the same time marks them with decided reprobation by a refusal to print. But, in his estimation, another reason gave to the motion to lay them on the table a decided preference over any other proceedings by which they should be met. The peculiar merit of this motion, as applicable to this question, is, that it precludes all debate, and would thus prevent the agitation of a subject in Congress which all should deprecate as fraught with mischief to every portion of this happy and flourishing confederacy. Mr. B. said that honorable gentlemen who advocated this motion had disclaimed all intention to produce agitation on this question. He did not pretend to question the sincerity of their declarations, and, while willing to do every justice to their motives, he must be allowed to say that no method could be devised better calculated, in his judgment, to produce such a result. He (Mr. B.) most sincerely believed that the best interests of the Southern States would be most consulted by pursuing such a course here as would harmonize the feelings of every section, and avoid opening for discussion so dangerous and delicate a question. He believed all the senators who were present a few days since, when a petition of similar character had been presented by an honorable senator, had, by their votes to lay it on the table, sanctioned the course which he now suggested. [Mr. Calhoun, in explanation, said that himself and his colleague were absent from the Senate on the occasion alluded to.] Mr. B. resumed his remarks, and said that he had made no reference to the votes of any particular members of that body, but what he had said was, that a similar petition had been laid on the table without objection from any one, and consequently by a unanimous vote of the senators present. Here, then, was a most emphatic declaration, by gentlemen representing the Northern States as well as those from other parts of the Union, by this vote, that they will entertain no attempt at legislation on the question of slavery in the District of Columbia. Why, then, asked Mr. B., should we now adopt a mode of proceeding calculated to disturb the harmonious action of the Senate, which had been produced by the former vote? Why (he would respectfully ask of honorable gentlemen who press the motion to refuse to receive the petition) and for what beneficial purpose do they press it? By persisting in such a course it would, beyond all doubt, open a wide range of discussion, it would not fail to call forth a great diversity of opinion in relation to the extent of the right to petition under the constitution. Nor would it be confined to that question alone, judging from an expression which had fallen from an honorable gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tyler], in the course of this debate. That gentleman had declared his preference for a direct negative vote by the Senate, as to the constitutional power of Congress to emancipate slaves in the District of Columbia. He, for one, protested, politically speaking, against opening this Pandora's box in the halls of Congress. For all beneficial and practical purposes, an overwhelming majority of the members representing the Northern States were, with the South, in opposition to any interference with slavery in the District of Columbia. If there was half a dozen in both branches of Congress who did not stand in entire opposition to any interference with slavery, in this District or elsewhere, he had yet to learn it. Was it wise, was it prudent, was it magnanimous, in gentlemen representing the Southern States, to urge this matter still further, and say to our Northern friends in Congress, 'Gentlemen, we all agree in the general conclusion, that Congress should not interfere in this question, but we wish to know your reasons for arriving at this conclusion; we wish you to declare, by your votes, whether you arrive at this result because you think it unconstitutional or not?' Mr. B. said that he would yield to none in zeal in sustaining and supporting, to the extent of his ability, what he believed to be the true interest of the South; but he should take leave to say that, when the almost united will of both branches of Congress, for all practical purposes, was with us, against all interference on this subject, he should not hazard the peace and quiet of the country by going on a Quixotic expedition in pursuit of abstract constitutional questions."

Mr. King, of Georgia, was still more pointed than Mr. Brown in deprecating the course Mr. Calhoun pursued, and charging upon it the effect of increasing the slavery agitation, and giving the abolitionists ground to stand upon in giving them the right of petition to defend. He said:

"This being among the Southern members a mere difference of form in the manner of disposing of the subject, I regret exceedingly that the senator from Carolina has thought it his duty (as he doubtless has) to press the subject upon the consideration of the Senate in such form as not only to permit, but in some measure to create, a necessity for the continued agitation of the subject. For he believed, with others, that nothing was better calculated to increase agitation and excitement than such motions as that of the senator from South Carolina. What was the object of the motion? Senators said, and no doubt sincerely, that their object was to quiet the agitation of the subject. Well, (said Mr. K.,) my object is precisely the same. We differ, then, only in the means of securing a common end; and he could tell the Senators that the value of the motion as a means would likely be estimated by its tendency to secure the end desired. Would even an affirmative vote on the motion quiet the agitation of the subject? He thought, on the contrary, it would much increase it. How would it stop the agitation? What would be decided? Nothing, except it be that the Senate would not receive the particular memorial before it. Would that prevent the presentation of others? Not at all; it would only increase the number, by making a new issue for debate, which was all the abolitionists wanted; or, at any rate, the most they now expected. These petitions had been coming here without intermission ever since the foundation of the government, and he could tell the senator that if they were each to be honored by a lengthy discussion on presentment, an honor not heretofore granted to them, they would not only continue to come here, but they would thicken upon us so long as the government remained in existence. We may seek occasions (said Mr. K.) to rave about our rights; we may appeal to the guaranties of the constitution, which are denied; we may speak of the strength of the South, and pour out unmeasured denunciations against the North; we may threaten vengeance against the abolitionists, and menace a dissolution of the Union, and all that; and thus exhausting ourselves mentally and physically, and setting down to applaud the spirit of our own efforts, Arthur Tappan and his pious fraternity would very coolly remark: 'Well, that is precisely what I wanted; I wanted agitation in the South; I wished to provoke the "aristocratic slaveholder" to make extravagant demands on the North, which the North could not consistently surrender them. I wished them, under the pretext of securing their own rights, to encroach upon the rights of all the American people. In short, I wish to change the issue; upon the present issue we are dead. Every movement, every demonstration of feeling among our own people, shows that upon the present issue the great body of the people is against us. The issue must be changed, or the prospects of abolition are at an end.' This language (Mr. K. said) was not conjectured, but there was much evidence of its truth. Sir (said Mr. K.), if Southern senators were actually in the pay of the abolition directory on Nassau-street they could not more effectually co-operate in the views and administer to the wishes of these enemies to the peace and quiet of our country."

Mr. Calhoun was dissatisfied at the speeches of Mr. Brown and Mr. King, and considered them as dividing and distracting the South in their opposition to his motion, while his own course was to keep them united in a case where union was so important, and in which they stood but a handful in the midst of an overwhelming majority. He said:

"I have heard with deep mortification and regret the speech of the senator from Georgia; not that I suppose that his arguments can have much impression in the South, but because of their tendency to divide and distract the Southern delegation on this, to us, all-momentous question. We are here but a handful in the midst of an overwhelming majority. It is the duty of every member from the South, on this great and vital question, where union is so important to those whom we represent, to avoid every thing calculated to divide or distract our ranks. I (said Mr. C.), the Senate will bear witness, have, in all that I have said on this subject, been careful to respect the feelings of Southern members who have differed from me in the policy to be pursued. Having thus acted, on my part, I must express my surprise at the harsh expressions, to say the least, in which the senator from Georgia has indulged."

The declaration of this overwhelming majority against the South brought a great number of the non-slaveholding senators to their feet, to declare the concurrence of their States with the South upon the subject of slavery, and to depreciate the abolitionists as few in number in any of the Northern States; and discountenanced, reprobated and repulsed wherever they were found. Among these, Mr. Isaac Hill of New Hampshire, thus spoke:

"I do not (said he) object to many of the positions taken by senators on the abstract question of Northern interference with slavery in the South. But I do protest against the excitement that is attempted on the floor of Congress, to be kept up against the North. I do protest against the array that is made here of the acts of a few misguided fanatics as the acts of the whole or of a large portion of the people of the North. I do protest against the countenance that is here given to the idea that the people of the North generally are interfering with the rights and property of the people of the South.

"There is no course that will better suit the few Northern fanatics than the agitation of the question of slavery in the halls of Congress – nothing will please them better than the discussions which are taking place, and a solemn vote of either branch denying them the right to prefer petitions here, praying that slavery may be abolished in the District of Columbia. A denial of that right at once enables them, and not without color of truth, to cry out that the contest going on is 'a struggle between power and liberty.'

"Believing the intentions of those who have moved simultaneously to get up these petitions at this time, to be mischief, I was glad to see the first petition that came in here laid on the table without discussion, and without reference to any committee. The motion to lay on the table precludes all debate; and, if decided affirmatively, prevents agitation. It was with the view of preventing agitation of this subject that I moved to lay the second set of petitions on the table. A senator from the South (Mr. Calhoun) has chosen a different course; he has interposed a motion which opens a debate that may be continued for months. He has chosen to agitate this question; and he has presented that question, the decision of which, let senators vote as they may, will best please the agitators who are urging the fanatics forward.

"I have said the people of the North were more united in their opposition to the plans of the advocates of antislavery, than on any other subject. This opposition is confined to no political party; it pervades every class of the community. They deprecate all interference with the subject of slavery, because they believe such interference may involve the existence and welfare of the Union itself, and because they understand the obligations which the non-slaveholding States owe to the slaveholding States by the compact of confederation. It is the strong desire to perpetuate the Union; it is the determination which every patriotic and virtuous citizen has made, in no event to abandon the 'ark of our safety,' that now impels the united North to take its stand against the agitators of the antislavery project. So effectually has the strong public sentiment put down that agitation in New England, that it is now kept alive only by the power of money, which the agitators have collected, and apply in the hiring of agents, and in issues from presses that are kept in their employ.

"The antislavery movement, which brings in petitions from various parts of the country asking Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, originates with a few persons, who have been in the habit of making charitable religious institutions subservient to political purposes, and who have even controlled some of those charitable associations. The petitions are set on foot by men who have had, and who continue to have, influence with ministers and religious teachers of different denominations. They have issued and sent out their circulars calling for a united effort to press on Congress the abolition of slavery in this District. Many of the clergymen who have been instruments of the agitators, have done so from no bad motive. Some of them, discovering the purpose of the agitators – discovering that their labors were calculated to make the condition of the slave worse, and to create animosity between the people of the North and the South, have paused in their course, and desisted from the further application of a mistaken philanthropy. Others, having enlisted deeply their feelings, still pursue the unprofitable labor. They present here the names of inconsiderate men and women, many of whom do not know, when they subscribe their papers, what they are asking; and others of whom, placing implicit faith in their religious teacher, are taught to believe they are thereby doing a work of disinterested benevolence, which will be requited by rewards in a future life.

"Now, sir, as much as I abhor the doings of weak or wicked men who are moving this abolition question at the North, I yet have not as bad an opinion of them as I have of some others who are attempting to make of these puerile proceedings an object of alarm to the whole South.

"Of all the vehicles, tracts, pamphlets, and newspapers, printed and circulated by the abolitionists, there is no ten or twenty of them that have contributed so much to the excitement as a single newspaper printed in this city. I need not name this paper when I inform you that, for the last five years, it has been laboring to produce a Northern and Southern party – to fan the flame of sectional prejudice – to open wider the breach, to drive harder the wedge, which shall divide the North from the South. It is the newspaper which, in 1831-'2, strove to create that state of things, in relation to the tariff, which would produce inevitable collision between the two sections of the country, and which urged to that crisis in South Carolina, terminating in her deep disgrace —

"[Mr. Calhoun here interrupted Mr. Hill, and called him to order. Mr. H. took his seat, and Mr. Hubbard (being in the chair) decided that the remarks of Mr. H. did not impugn the motives of any man – they were only descriptive of the effects of certain proceedings upon the State of South Carolina, and that he was not out of order.]

"Mr. H. resumed: It is the newspaper which condemns or ridicules the well-meant efforts of an officer of the government to stop the circulation of incendiary publications in the slaveholding States, and which designedly magnifies the number and the efforts of the Northern abolitionists. It is the newspaper which libels the whole North by representing the almost united people of that region to be insincere in their efforts to prevent the mischief of a few fanatical and misguided persons who are engaged in the abolition cause.

"I have before me a copy of this newspaper (the United States Telegraph), filled to the brim with the exciting subject. It contains, among other things, a speech of an honorable senator (Mr. Leigh of Virginia), which I shall not be surprised soon to learn has been issued by thousands and tens of thousands from the abolition mint at New-York, for circulation in the South. Surely the honorable senator's speech, containing that part of the Channing pamphlet, is most likely to move the Southern slaves to a servile war, at the same time the Channing extracts and the speech itself are most admirably calculated to awaken the fears or arouse the indignation of their masters. The circulation of such a speech will effect the object of the abolitionists without trenching upon their funds. Let the agitation be kept up in Congress, and let this newspaper be extensively circulated in the South, filled with such speeches and such extracts as this exhibits, and little will be left for the Northern abolitionists to do. They need do no more than send in their petitions: the late printer of the Senate and his friends in Congress, will create enough of excitement to effect every object of those who direct the movements of the abolitionists."

At the same moment that these petitions were presented in the Senate, their counterparts were presented in the House, with the same declarations from Northern representatives in favor of the rights of the South, and in depreciation of the number and importance of the abolitionists in the North. Among these, Mr. Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, was one of the most emphatic on both points. He said:

"This was not the last memorial of the same character which would be sent here. It was perfectly apparent that the question must be met now, or at some future time, fully and explicitly, and such an expression of this House given as could leave no possible room to doubt as to the opinions and sentiments entertained by its members. He (Mr. P.), indeed, considered the overwhelming vote of the House, the other day, laying a memorial of similar tenor, and, he believed, the same in terms, upon the table, as fixing upon it the stamp of reprobation. He supposed that all sections of the country would be satisfied with that expression; but gentlemen seemed now to consider the vote as equivocal and evasive. He was unwilling that any imputation should rest upon the North, in consequence of the misguided and fanatical zeal of a few – comparatively very few – who, however honest might have been their purposes, he believed had done incalculable mischief, and whose movements, he knew, received no more sanction among the great mass of the people of the North, than they did at the South. For one, he (Mr. P.), while he would be the last to infringe upon any of the sacred reserved rights of the people, was prepared to stamp with disapprobation, in the most express and unequivocal terms, the whole movement upon this subject. Mr. P. said he would not resume his seat without tendering to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Mason), just and generous as he always was, his acknowledgments for the admission frankly made in the opening of his remarks. He had said that, during the period that he had occupied a seat in this House (as Mr. P. understood him), he had never known six men seriously disposed to interfere with the rights of the slaveholders at the South. Sir, said Mr. P., gentlemen may be assured there was no such disposition as a general sentiment prevailing among the people; at least he felt confidence in asserting that, among the people of the State which he had the honor in part to represent, there was not one in a hundred who did not entertain the most sacred regard for the rights of their Southern brethren – nay, not one in five hundred who would not have those rights protected at any and every hazard. There was not the slightest disposition to interfere with any rights secured by the constitution, which binds together, and which he humbly hoped ever would bind together, this great and glorious confederacy as one family. Mr. P. had only to say that, to some sweeping charges of improper interference, the action of the people of the North at home, during the last year, and the vote of their representatives here the other day, was a sufficient and conclusive answer."

The newspaper named by Mr. Hill was entirely in the interest of Mr. Calhoun, and the course which it followed, and upon system, and incessantly to get up a slavery quarrel between the North and the South, was undeniable – every daily number of the paper containing the proof of its incendiary work. Mr. Calhoun would not reply to Mr. Hill, but would send a paper to the Secretary's table to be read in contradiction of his statements. Mr. Calhoun then handed to the Secretary a newspaper containing an article impugning the statement made by Mr. Pierce, in the House of Representatives, as to the small number of the abolitionists in the State of New Hampshire; which was read, and which contained scurrilous reflections on Mr. Pierce, and severe strictures on the state of slavery in the South. Mr. Hill asked for the title of the newspaper; and it was given, "The Herald of Freedom." Mr. Hill said it was an abolition paper, printed, but not circulated, at Concord, New Hampshire. He said the same paper had been sent to him, and he saw in it one of Mr. Calhoun's speeches; which was republished as good food for the abolitionists; and said he thought the Senate was well employed in listening to the reading of disgusting extracts from an hireling abolition paper, for the purpose of impugning the statements of a member of the House of Representatives, defending the South there, and who could not be here to defend himself. It was also a breach of parliamentary law for a member in one House to attack what was said by a member in another. Mr. Pierce's statement had been heard with great satisfaction by all except Mr. Calhoun; but to him it was so repugnant, as invalidating his assertion of a great abolition party in the North, that he could not refrain from this mode of contradicting it. It was felt by all as disorderly and improper, and the presiding officer then in the chair (Mr. Hubbard, from New Hampshire) felt himself called upon to excuse his own conduct in not having checked the reading of the article. He said:

"He felt as if an apology was due from him to the Senate, for not having checked the reading of the paragraphs from the newspaper which had just been read by the Secretary. He was wholly ignorant of the contents of the paper, and could not have anticipated the purport of the article which the senator from South Carolina had requested the Secretary to read. He understood the senator to say that he wished the paper to be read, to show that the statement made by the senator from New Hampshire, as to the feelings and sentiments of the people of that State upon the subject of the abolition of slavery, was not correct. It certainly would have been out of order, for any senator to have alluded to the remarks made by a member of the House of Representatives, in debate; and, in his judgment, it was equally out of order to permit paragraphs from a newspaper to be read in the Senate, which went to impugn the course of any member of the other House; and he should not have permitted the paper to have been read, without the direction of the Senate, if he had been aware of the character of the article."

Mr. Calhoun said he was entitled to the floor and did not like to be interrupted by the chair: he meant no disrespect to Mr. Pierce, "but wished the real state of things to be known" – as if an abolition newspaper was better authority than a statement from a member in his place in the House. It happened that Mr. Pierce was coming into the Senate Chamber as this reading scene was going on; and, being greatly surprised, and feeling much aggrieved, and having no right to speak for himself, he spoke to the author of this View to maintain the truth of his statement against the scurrilous contradiction of it which had been read. Mr. Benton, therefore, stood up —

"To say a word on the subject of Mr. Pierce, the member of the House of Representatives, from New Hampshire, whose statements in the House of Representatives had been contradicted in the newspaper article read at the Secretary's table. He had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with that gentleman, and the highest respect for him, both on his own account and that of his venerable and patriotic father, who was lately Governor of New Hampshire. It had so happened (said Mr. B.) that, in the very moment of the reading of this article, the member of the House of Representatives, whose statement it contradicted, was coming into the Senate Chamber, and his whitening countenance showed the deep emotion excited in his bosom. The statement which that gentleman had made in the House was in the highest degree consolatory and agreeable to the people of the slaveholding States. He had said that not one in five hundred in his State was in favor of the abolitionists: an expression understood by every body, not as an arithmetical proposition worked out by figures, but as a strong mode of declaring that these abolitionists were few in number. In that sense it was understood, and was a most welcome and agreeable piece of information to the people of the slaveholding States. The newspaper article contradicts him, and vaunts the number of the abolitionists, and the numerous signers to their petition. Now (said Mr. B.), the member of the House of Representatives (Mr. Pierce) has this moment informed me that he knows nothing of these petitions, and knows nothing to change his opinion as to the small number of abolitionists in his State. Mr. B. thought, therefore, that his statement ought not to be considered as discredited by the newspaper publication; and he, for one, should still give faith to his opinion."

In his eagerness to invalidate the statement of Mr. Pierce, Mr. Calhoun had overlooked a solecism of action in which it involved him. His bill to suppress the mail transmission of incendiary publications was still before the Senate, not yet decided; and here was matter read in the Senate, and to go forth as part of its proceedings, the most incendiary and diabolical that had yet been seen. This oversight was perceived by the author of this View, who, after vindicating the statement of Mr. Pierce, went on to expose this solecism, and —