Mr. SCHLEY. I believe it was; but the prin-
ciple is the same.
Mr. CUSHING. I give notice that at the proper
time I shall offer the following substitute for
the section:
" The orphans' court of this State shall in
binding out as apprentices, negro or mulatto
minors emancipated by the provisions of this
constitution, give the preference to the for-
mer owners, if such persons are suitable per-
sons; but no such minors shall he bound out
if their parents are able to support them; nor
shall any such minor over ten years of age be
subject to such apprenticeship unless he or she
be a common vagrant."
My object in offering this is that I am sorry
to see this morning a movement in approval
of what has been the curse of our country,
for the last three years, and to aid in undoing
what has been done. The idea is announced
by the gentleman from Washington county
(Mr. Negley,) that he was willing to come
here and emancipate the slaves, to declare in
our bill of rights that every man had a right
to the proceeds of his own labor; and then, as
the gentleman himself announced, for the
purpose of giving some compensation lo the
man from whom these slaves were taken, that
be was willing to ignore the provisions of that
bill of rights, and up to the age of twenty-one
years deprive every such negro of the right to
the proceeds of his own labor. It has bee:,
announced on the floor of this house in elo-
quent terms by the gentleman from Caroline
(Mr. Todd,) that slavery was a sin in the sight
of God, and proved from holy writ.
What is slavery? The gentlemen of the
opposition told you what slavery was, when
they told you that it was a thing protected by
the constitution of the United States. which
tells you that slaves are persons held to ser-
vice for a term of years. Gentlemen have ar-
gued in favor of the right, regarding it as
guaranteed by the constitution of the United
States, to hold persons to labor for a term of
years. Yet the gentleman from Kent (Mr.
Chambers) ask? you this morning, how hold-
ing men to service for a term of years can be
called slavery, and denies that it is slavery.—
If it is not slavery what becomes of the argu-
ment of the gentleman of the opposition that
inemancipating the slaves interfere with
the right of the masters under the constitution
of the United States. The wording is
identical. Holding to service for a term of
years, is merely making slavery extend until
the man is twenty-one years of age; it is to
take away from him his whole youth; it is to
deprive him of the opportunity of providing
for his aged parents. It is to crush his life
out of him for his whole youth, and then
throw him upon the community with his best
powers exhausted. We have been told that
we were throwing upon the community help
less women and children. By this very sec-
tion it is proposed to take away the bone |
and sinew which might have helped to sup-
port the women and children. Having made
a provision in accordance with the high-
est claims of justice for emancipating man,
and after declaring in the bill of rights that
he is entitled to the proceeds of his own labor,
you deprive him even of the satisf action
of supporting his aged lather and mother who
have been released from slavery. You take
the able-bodied man of nineteen before your
orphans' court and bind him for two years an
apprentice to his former master, and he goes
to his master's quarter, while his father and
mother go to the almshouse of the county.—
Under the operation of this section, you take
the whole class of men and select from among
them the men that would contribute to support
the old, and aid to provide for the whole
class, you take away all its young men and
young women, all the able-bodied, and leave
the old and infirm. On what principles of
justice or right can this be urged?
Mr. President tell you, and gentlemen of the
convention I tell you, that it is the one thing
that has cursed the emancipation party of this
country; the one thing that has cursed the
Union party of this land, from the beginning
until now; (hint it has never gone one step
forward but straightway it made haste to go
two back. We have gone to men with the
knife at our throat, or with the bowie knife
ait our bosom, and begged them for God's
sake to take some sort of conciliation. De-
testing and scorning it, we dare not touch
the sacred thing of slavery, but we mil-it make
peace and stultify ourselves. That is the op-
eration and that alone. I doubt if the pro-
vision in, this section accomplishes any other
single thing more surely than to tell the peo-
ple of Maryland, as my colleague has said,
that we have sat here and heard the thunder
of the cannon on the border=0, and we have
heard the cries rising up from burning Cham-
bersburg, and we are scared. if it means
anything, it means, go to the people of the
State who sent you here hound by it solemn
oath to do your duty, who have said that ne-
gro apprenticeship under any special pro-
vision is a thing abhorred by them, and tell
them that you found it inexpedient to do what
they required; that you were afraid of press-
ing the emancipation principle in Maryland
to the wall.
The gentleman from Washington thought
proper in his second remarks to this house to
take back the assertion that lie did this for
the sake of compensation to the slaven owners
by telling us that he did. it for no one in par-
ticular. If then it is for the interest of no-
body—for no man can seriously get up and
argue that it is for the interest of the black
man, of the slave we have set free to put them
back—if the gentlemen who intend to vote
for it do not intend it for the interest of the
slaveholder, to whom they give this able-
bodied labor during the term of their appren |
