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Description“Union and Freedom, Without Compromise.”In March 1850, with Congress consumed by the question of whether slavery would expand into the territories acquired from Mexico, newly elected Ohio senator Salmon P. Chase rose to answer Henry Clay’s proposed compromise.His answer was not particularly compromising.Delivered over March 26–27, this substantial 24-page Senate speech sets out Chase’s constitutional case against the national expansion of slavery. Chase accepts that Congress has no authority to abolish slavery within the states where it already existed—but argues just as forcefully that the federal government has both the power and the duty to prevent its extension into national territories and other places under exclusive federal jurisdiction.It is an important distinction. Chase was helping articulate the constitutional antislavery position that would become increasingly central to Free Soil and, later, Republican politics: slavery might exist by local state law, but the national government need not carry or protect it into free federal territory.From there, Chase takes Henry Clay’s compromise proposals apart piece by piece.He supports California’s immediate admission as a free state and objects to delaying it while Congress constructs a broader settlement over slavery. He challenges proposals to organize Utah and New Mexico without restrictions on slavery, arguing that doing so would amount to a concession to its extension.His argument reaches beyond the territories. Chase condemns the domestic slave trade and contends that Congress possesses constitutional power through the commerce clause to prohibit interstate trafficking in enslaved people. He also attacks proposals for stronger federal fugitive-slave legislation, arguing that the Constitution’s fugitive-service clause did not itself grant Congress legislative enforcement power.Much of the speech is historical. Chase reaches back through the Revolution, Jefferson, colonial opposition to the slave trade, the Northwest Ordinance, and earlier territorial debates to argue that resistance to slavery’s expansion was not a new sectional invention but part of an older American political tradition.The conclusion is defiant. Chase predicts that even if Congress succeeds temporarily in sacrificing restrictions on slavery’s expansion, the public will ultimately reverse that settlement. If lawmakers bury what he calls the “Ordinance of Freedom,” he says, its tomb will bear the word “Resurgam” — “I shall rise again.”The speaker would become one of the major political figures of the Civil War generation: Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury and, later, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Here, eleven years before joining Lincoln’s cabinet, Chase can be seen developing the constitutional and political argument against slavery’s national expansion that would help define the coming decade.A substantial primary-source document from the Compromise of 1850 crisis, connecting Salmon P. Chase, Henry Clay, California statehood, slavery in the territories, fugitive slaves, Free Soil politics, and the constitutional struggle that preceded the Civil War.Details- Author / speaker: Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873)
- Title: Union and Freedom, Without Compromise
- Full title: Speech of S. P. Chase, of Ohio, in the Senate of the United States, March 26–7, 1850, on the Compromise Resolutions Submitted by Mr. Clay on the 25th of January
- Delivered: March 26–27, 1850
- Place: Washington, D.C.
- Printer: Congressional Globe Office
- Date: 1850
- Edition / issue: Congressional Globe Office issue
- Pagination: 24 pages
- Complete
- Dimensions: Approximately 6 × 9.125 inches
- Subjects: Compromise of 1850, slavery expansion, Henry Clay, California statehood, Free Soil politics, fugitive slaves, interstate slave trade, territorial government, antebellum sectional politicsConditionComplete at 24 pages and disbound from a former bound volume, with visible binding and removal wear along the spine.The first page shows substantial age toning, staining and soiling, with edge wear, creasing, small tears and losses, and old pencil and ink notations. Additional toning, scattered spotting and staining, edge wear, marginal tears, and small losses occur throughout. Several leaves show heavier wear along the former binding edge. The final page has small marginal tears and spotting. Despite the considerable age and handling wear, the text remains strongly printed and readily legible throughout.Photographs form part of the description.
