from Observations of Rufus King, on the Missouri Bill
Born in Scarborough, Maine (then part of Massachusetts) and educated at Harvard, Rufus King (1755–1827) fought in the American Revolution, helped draft the Constitution, and had a long career as a politician and diplomat. His slavery politics were complex. In the 1780s he supported the exclusion of slavery from the Northwest Territory and emphatically opposed the admission of slave states to the Union, but he seemed willing to tolerate slavery in existing states and endorsed colonization schemes for freed blacks. In the pamphlet excerpted here, based on two speeches delivered while a U.S. senator from New York, he leaves aside moral issues to argue against slavery on political and economic grounds. His remarks resonated long after the Missouri crisis. In 1822 Denmark Vesey was partly inspired by his pamphlet to lead a slave insurrection, and in 1848 it was reprinted by Free Soil advocates.
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The existence of slavery impairs the industry and the power of a nation; and it does so in proportion to the multiplication of its slaves: where the manual labour of a country is performed by slaves, labour dishonours the hands of freemen.
If her labourers are slaves, Missouri may be able to pay money taxes, but will be unable to raise soldiers, or to recruit seamen, and experience seems to have proved that manufactures do not prosper where the artificers are slaves. In case of foreign war, or domestic insurrection, misfortunes from which no states are exempt, and against which all should be seasonably prepared, slaves not only do not add to, but diminish the faculty of self defence: instead of increasing the public strength, they lessen it, by the whole number of free persons, whose place they occupy, increased by the number of free men that may be employed as guards over them.
The motives for the admission of new states into the union, are the extension of the principles of our free government, the equalizing of the public burdens, and the consolidation of the power of the confederated nation. Unless these objects be promoted by the admission of new states, no such admission can be expedient or justified.
The states in which slavery already exists are contiguous to each other: they are also the portion of the United States nearest to the European colonies in the West Indies;—colonies whose future condition can hardly be regarded as problematical. If Missouri and the other states that may be formed to the west of the river Mississippi are permitted to introduce and establish slavery, the repose, if not the security of the union may be endangered; all the states south of the river Ohio and west of Pennsylvania and Delaware will be peopled with slaves and the establishment of new states west of the river Mississippi will serve to extend slavery instead of freedom over that boundless region.
Such increase of the states, whatever other interest it may promote, will be sure to add nothing to the security of the public liberties; and can hardly fail hereafter to require and produce a change in our government.
On the other hand, if slavery be excluded from Missouri, and the other new states which may be formed in this quarter, not only will the slave markets be broken up, and the principles of freedom be extended and strengthened; but an exposed and important frontier will present a barrier, which will check and keep back foreign assailants, who may be as brave, and, as we hope, will be as free as ourselves. Surrounded in this manner by connected bodies of freemen, the states where slavery is allowed will be made more secure against domestic insurrection, and less liable to be affected by what may take place in the neighbouring colonies.
It ought not be forgotten, that the first and main object of the negociation which led to the acquisition of Louisiana, was the free navigation of the Mississippi; a river that forms the sole passage from the western states to the ocean. This navigation, although of general benefit, has been always valued and desired, as of peculiar advantage to the western states; whose demands to obtain it, were neither equivocal nor unreasonable. But with the river Mississippi,—by a sort of coersion, we acquired by good or ill fortune, as our future measures shall determine, the whole province of Louisiana. As this acquisition was made at the common expense, it is very fairly urged, that the advantages to be derived from it should also be common. This it is said will not happen, if slavery be excluded from Missouri, as the citizens of states where slavery is permitted will be shut out, and none but citizens of states where slavery is prohibited can become inhabitants of Missouri.
But this consequence will not arise from the proposed exclusion of slavery: the citizens of states, in which slavery is allowed, like all other citizens, will be free to become inhabitants of the Missouri, in like manner as they have become inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, in which slavery is forbidden. The exclusion of slaves from Missouri, will not therefore operate unequally among the citizens of the United States. The constitution provides, “that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several states”—every citizen may therefore remove from one to another state, and there enjoy the rights and immunities of its citizens. The proposed provision excludes slaves, not citizens, whose rights it will not, and cannot impair.
Besides there is nothing new or peculiar in a provision for the exclusion of slavery: it has been established in the states north west of the river Ohio, and has existed from the beginning in the old states where slavery is forbidden. The citizens of states where slavery is allowed, may become inhabitants of Missouri, but cannot hold slaves there, nor in any other state where slavery is prohibited. As well might the laws prohibiting slavery in the old states become the subject of complaint, as the proposed exclusion of slavery in Missouri; but there is no foundation for such complaint in either case.
(1819)