victed; and all persons held to service or
labor, as slaves, are hereby declared free,"
Mr. BROWN submitted the following amend-
ment :
Add the following: " And the Legislature
shall make provision from the Treasury
of the State for the comfortable support and
maintenance of the helpless and paupers
hereby emancipated.
Mr. ABBOTT. That is for the counties to
do, and not for the Legislature.
Mr. PUGH. I have some remarks to offer
to the original article; will they be in order
at this time?
The PRESIDENT. The Chair considers the
original article and the amendment as both
before the Convention.
Mr. PUGH. Nations as well as individual
men pass through certain periods of change
or convulsion, called crises.
Such periods in the case of nations are
frequently characterized by upheavals of lire
general surface of society, by serious disar-
rangement of social order', by a disturbance
of commercial and financial relations, by a
rupture of many of the bonds of natural
union, by a violation of what are known in
quiet times to be private rights, by more or
less disaster, distress, and terror. These at-
tending conditions are aggravated or modified
by the circumstances under which they arise ;
they may or may not be terrible according
as they extend to the more intimate social re-
lations, or are confined only to the mere po-
litical organization of society; and yet in a
Government like ours, so completely inter-
woven are the political with the social] rela-
tions, so sensitive is each to an injury done
to or a benefit withheld from the other, that
it is impossible for the purposes of this con-
sideration to distinguish them.
We hereto-day are assembled in the midst
of one of these convulsions, A convulsion
even in view of the history of all nations of
far more than ordinary force, likely to pro-
duce results of far more than ordinary
moment—results involving nothing less than
the remodelling, to some of us, of our do-
mestic relations; cothing less than the up-
rooting of some of our dearest prejudices
and passions; nothing less than the total ig-
noring or abolishment forever of some of
the old land marks of the State; nothing
less than, as it appears to moat of us", the or-
ganizing out of disorder and threatened
anarchy—security and happiness; safety to
the State and the nation.
It is a convulsion of which we as a State only
form apart, and by the unsurpassed violence
of which we might be overwhelmed; a con-
vulsion so universal in its effect that the
world is shaken by its throes. To inquire
immediately into the cause or causes of it,
and to apply the remedy without the least
delay, is our duty as men,
We have inquired, years of recorded in-
|
quiry are at hand, and the evidences of our
own senses attest the fact, that the system
of negro slavery, being as it is called a pe-
culiar institution, is the prime cause of the
civil war now ranging, and which is but
the bloody expression of the crisis that is
upon us and in the presence of which we
stand appalled. All other causes are inci-
dental and subordinate to this the prime one.
Is there, earn there he a man in this House
who doubts it? Whether it was as claimed
by some through an unjustifiable interference
with this institution on the part of Northern
men, or whether it was an inordinate demand
for further support for it upon the part of
slaveholders in the South, or whether it is in
the nature of the institutions itself to give rise
to convulsions in the State by reason of its
being an unnatural condition of society;
whichever manner of its operation is con-
ceded, it must be admitted that in one way
or another, or through all these ways com-
bined, it is the prime cause of the crisis; and
it becomes our duty to decide whether, in view
of the troubles that surround us, the institu-
tion shall not be uprooted and every vestige
of it buried, enshrouded in constitutional
parchment, and sunken fathoms deep in the
free soil of Maryland forever; and when that
is done may all comini; ages echo with curses
upon the man who seeks its resurrection,
This is not spoken in bitterness of spirit.
It is the expression of deliberate conviction.
There is much less excitement here than has
been suggested by some gentlemen. I pro-
nounce the prayer in the fullness of its force,
and no patriot can look upon this question as
1 do and fail to utter it or indorse it. And
it is a question for us to determine and to de-
termine now.
We seem to forget the conditions that sur-
round us, and I only say seem, for it can
hardly be possible that we do.
What .mean these researches into the past,
to rake up from the cobwebs there, authority
tor the inviolability of the right to private
property for instance? And, by the way,
did it occur to the gentlemen who traced this
right back to the period of the origin of what
are known as natural rights, that there are
one or more other natural rights, such as
freedom and the right to maintain it to the
death? Did it occur to them that that vested
right was hardly a natural one which, under
a favorable change of conditions, can stand
up and knock its owner down and reverse the
relations?? Possibly not, since they failed to
mention these trifling matters.
Why, I say, do we have these endless ref-
erences to authorities, which, when examined,
only show that there were men otherwise wise
enough who upon this subject were simply in
error ?
Men did thus and so under circumstances
that surrounded them. Were those circum-
stances similar to those of our day? We are |
