Joint Resolution of the Georgia Georgia Assembly

Feb. 8, 1850

REPORT OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE STATE OF THE REPUBLIC.

The Joint Committee on the State of the Republic, to which was referred those portions of the Governor's Message and the several bills and resolutions relating to the subject of slavery, introduced into either branch of the Legislature, beg leave to report; That they have given the most deliberate and solemn attention to the various suggestions embraced in propositions submitted to them, referring to the subject of slavery, and have, with minds fully impressed with the great significance that must be given to any action whatever on this matter at the present hour, arrived at the conclusion that we should, as far as the State of Georgia is concerned, recommend such action as shall compose the public mind, suppress any further agitation of a controversy in which for more than twenty years the South has been constantly worsted, or propose some efficient and practical measures that shall prove the sincerity of our complaints, and at the same time redress our wrongs. It is vain to deny that we, the injured party, have, for a series of years, by a vacillating and temporising policy, only assured the courage of our assailants, and invited, by an excessive sensibility, on the subject of the ultimate consequences of decisive action, further and still more iniquitous experiments upon our forbearance and patience.

The best defence of liberty is the first blow stricken in its defence, and for the first right violated. With all the accumulated injury of fifteen years that we have had to endure from the anti-slavery States, and that we so sensibly feel to-day, we yet do not feel more keenly, nor do we express more forcibly our sense of this outrage, than did the legislature of Georgia twenty-two years ago upon the bare proposition of the friends of colonization to vote an appropriation for the removal of free negroes to Liberia. yet the Joint Committee on the State of the Republic in the year 1827 declared, in reference to this subject, so harmless in the comparison with the audacity of recent legislation, "that they could not help reprobating the cold-blooded selfishness or unthinking zeal which actuates many of our fellow-citizens in other States to an interference with our local concerns and domestic relations totally unwarranted either by humanity or constitutional rights.

Such interference is becoming every day more determined and more alarming. It commenced with a few unthinking zealots, who formed themselves into abolition societies, was seized upon by more cunning and designing men for political purposes, and is supported by more than one of the States, as is evident from the amendments to the constitution proposed by legislative bodies, and so frequently and indeed insultingly presented for our approbation. The result of such interference, if persevered in, is awful and inevitable. The people of Georgia know and strongly feel the advantages of the Federal Union. As members of that Union, they are proud of its greatness; as children born under that Union, they will ever defend it from foes internal as well as external; but they cannot and will not, even for the preservation of the Union, permit their rights to be assailed, they will not permit their property to be rendered worthless, they will not permit their wives and children to be driven as wanderers into strange lands, they will not permit their country to be made waste and desolate by those who come among us under the cloak of a time-serving and hypocritical benevolence. How then is the evil to be remedied? Only by a firm and determined union of the people and the States of the South, declaring through their legislative bodies, in a voice which must be heard, that they are ready and willing to make any sacrifice rather than submit longer to such ruinous interference, and warning their enemies that they are unwittingly preparing a mine, which once exploded will lay our much beloved country in one common ruin." Such language as this the patriotic guardians of our State thought the crisis of 1827 justified. Who now, with the lights of 1849 before him, and the enormities of the Northern aggression since the days of this remonstrance, but feels that either the grievances of twenty years ago were vastly exaggerated, or we have suffered that quick resentment and sensibility to wrong to fall into decay, and our minds to become patient and calm under inflictions which would have been intolerable to the high spirits of that day. But it may be urged in defence of the long suffering of the south, that her attachment to this Union has been akin to a sacred devotedness, that from no huxtering spirit of profit or of lucre-loving have we clung to it with such tenacity that a quarter of a century of outrage upon our rights and of paltering with our capability of endurance, has barely been enough to induce us to count the value of it. With the whole South this Union has been regarded as dear to us from a higher, a nobler appreciation that because it "promotes the general welfare." It has been dear to us because purchased with the blood of our fathers, because transmitted to us with their benedictions and because we had hoped under its sway to see human liberty and human progress advanced to that point that should give the name of American freedom as a guaranty for any future experiments in self-government. Though often charged with a reckless and restless spirit, which was not submissive to constitutional restraints, that South boldly meets this charge by asking when did we ever cause collision between members of the Union by any aggressive legislation, by a distrustful, a self-seeking or a domineering policy? When did the South, by stretching the powers of the government, excite alarm or jealousy? When did she insult the self-respect of any member of this confederacy by contemptuous comparisons or by a pragmatical and patronising interference with the internal policy and interest of any State? Or when did her pulpit lend itself to fan the flame of civil discord, or when in our borders was the temple of the living God made the theatre of display for the rancorous hate of brother against his brother? Let these reproaches fall where they are deserved. The South has no dread of them. From the earliest date of the slavery controversy, the South has evinced a yielding and conciliatory spirit, for it will be hard indeed for any one to show the slightest mutuality in the concession made on the part of the South of all representation of two-fifths of her slave population. Can any fair reason be urged why the South should have not entered this Confederacy claiming a full representation for this species of property? If taxation implies a correlative right of representation, then was the Southern slaveholder unjustly treated, when it was demanded of him that before he could enter this Union as a citizen he must first surrender the right of having two-fifths of this slaves represented, when that two-fifths were as certainly taxed on all articles of their consumption as were their masters. But yet the South yielded this point. She consented also to abolish the foreign slave trade, by which she might have cheaply supplied herself with salve labor; and when the northernmost slave States thought fit to abolish the institution in their borders, she interposed no obstacles or vexatious hindrances, though it might been clearly foreseen that this result would have been fruitful of trouble to those States that would find their necessities or their convenience demanding a continuation of the system. In every interference with the question of domestic slavery by the North, she has failed and failed signally to justify her course by any reason of purely political character, and much less by such political reasons as are to be found in or tolerated by our Constitution. There could be no other complain reasonably urged by the north against the existence or the extension of the slave property of the South, but that the federal representation claimed for it was unequal and therefore unjust towards the North; but as we have seen the only inequality in this thing is against the South, and not in her favor, it then resolves itself into this, that this government so restricted in the exercise of all power, is to be allowed to turn propogandist [sic], and devote its best energies to the driving through,, against all resistance of plighted faith, of constitutional law, against all claims of right, justice or fraternity, a moral reform that has first and last for its object a forcible ejectment from our midst of what is denounced as a gross immorality, and a determination to give practical effect to the idea that this government as a government entertains the sin of slavery. It is the first and last instance furnished by our history in which this government has thought it rightful or expedient to subsidize religious agencies by the strong arm of political power. It would require but one short step further in this attempt to regulate a matter of conscience, to see our duty clearly dictating a union of Church and State. We feel it to be unnecessary to trace this controversy step by step to its present critical if not perilous stage. If we should do so with the minutest fidelity, its history would at every turn only show how reluctant the South has been to bring the grave matters in issue to that extremity which would leave the true friends of harmony and union nothing to hope. It has been our fault that we in every instance invited imposition by indicating a yielding disposition which only required to be hard pressed to grant the most extravagant requisitions. So it was in the controversy with the anti-slavery States which gave birth to the Missouri Compromise. In this misnamed surrender of Southern rights, who can show a particle of consideration passing to the South? Where, in this one-sided Compromise, is there to be found the least reciprocity? Yet we gave in to this unreasonable and unjust requirement, and avowed a love for this Union which would not suffer us to part with it, though the North was seeking to make us pay in valuable and unrighteous concessions for every day of its existence.

This Compromise, by which we bought our peace for more than a quarter of a century, we observed with punctilious honor; and when in the course of events it came to the turn of this portion of the Union to be benefited by the operation of that law, we find the Northern States unblushingly repudiating their own contract, and when called upon to reaffirm their own long expressed ratification of this Compromise, they refused to do so, and as evidence of their deliberate purpose to evade their plighted faith, they sought to organize a territory embraced in the spirit of this Compromise, (by which every thing had been for years secured to them,) upon the anti-slavery basis, in the unmitigated and obnoxious shape of the Wilmot proviso. The North now disavows the Missouri Compromise, because of the inevitable implication involved in that law, that if north of 36[°] 30['] slavery is prohibited, south of that line it may exist. Passing over the insincerity now so transparent, with which the anti-slavery States opposed to the 21st Rule of the House of Representatives, their specious attacks against that wholesome and conservative check upon fanaticism under the guise of a zeal for the right of petition, we come to the more recent legislation of Congress on the subject of slavery. And now can any Southern man at all conversant with the history of the abolition movement from its inception, longer doubt that the first aim of that agitation was a total and final emancipation of our slave property? Why should we doubt it? Because of the bad faith involved, was ever treachery and selfishness so blended before in the public conduct of any civilized State as it is involved in the course the North has pursued in regard to this Compromise we have just spoken of? Because of the daring violation of private rights or constitutional provisions and guarantees, can the perfidy of man go further than several of the Northern States have gone in their practical nullification of the laws securing to the South the priviledge of reclaiming her refugee slaves; or can any Vandalism improve upon the savage proposition of the last Congress to permit the slaves of the District of Columbia to vote themselves the equals of their masters? This bring our enemies in one step of the goal they have kept their eyes steadily fixed upon for twenty years, and has brought us too in one step of the last dishonor that can be reserved for us. They have but to lay their hands on slavery in the States, and we make one more submissive and feeble remonstrance, and the great work is finished. In view therefore of the past history of this war upon the peace, the rights, and the safety of the South -- in view of its present aspects, and in anticipation of its future progress, we report to the House for its action the following preamble and resolutions, accompanied by a bill providing for the call of a Convention of the sovereign people of this State.

Whereas the people of the non-slaveholding States have commenced and are persisting in a system of encroachment upon the Constitution and the rights of a portion of the people of this confederacy, which is alike unjust and dangerous to the peace and perpetuity of our cherished union: be it

1st. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Georgia in General Assembly convened, That the Government of the United States is one of limited powers, and cannot rightfully exercise any authority not conferred by the Constitution.

2d. Resolved, That the Constitution grants no power to Congress to prohibit the introduction of slavery into any territory belonging to the United States.

3d. Resolved, That the several States of the Union acceded to the confederacy upon terms of perfect equality; and that the rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Constitution belong alike to the people of each State.

4th. Resolved, That any and all territory acquired by the United States, whether by discovery, purchase, or conquest, belongs in common to the people of each State, and thither the people of each State and every State have a common right to emigrate with any property they may possess; and that any restriction upon this right which will operate in favor of the people of one section to the exclusion of those of another, is unjust, oppressive and unwarranted by the Constitution.

5th. Resolved, That slaves are recognized by the Constitution as property; and that the Wilmot Proviso, whether applied to any territory at any time heretofore acquired, or which may be hereafter acquired, is unconstitutional.

6th. Resolved, That Congress has no power, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia.

7th. Resolved, That the refusal on the part of the non-slaveholding States to deliver up fugitive slaves who have escaped to said States, upon proper demand being made therefor, is a plain and palpable violation of the letter of the Constitution, and an intolerable outrage upon Southern rights; and that it is the imperative duty of Congress to pass laws providing for the enforcement of this provision of the Constitution by federal, judicial, and ministerial officers responsible to the Federal Government.

8th. Resolved, That in the event of the passage of the Wilmot Proviso by Congress, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the admission of California as a State in its present pretended organization, or the continued refusal of the non-slaveholding States to deliver up fugitive slaves as provided in the Constitution, it will become the immediate and imperative duty of the people of this State to meet in convention, to take into consideration the mode and measure of redress.

9th. Resolved, That the people of Georgia entertain an ardent feeling of devotion to the union of these States, and that nothing short of a persistence in the present system of encroachment upon our rights by the non-slaveholding States can induce us to contemplate the possibility of dissolution.

10th. Resolved, That his Excellency the Governor be requested to forward copies of these resolutions to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress, to the Legislatures of the several States, except Vermont and Connecticut, and to the President of the United States.

Assented to, February 8th, 1850.

Source: Ga. Laws 1849-50, pp. 405-410.

(c) Carl Vinson Institute of Government, The University of Georgia

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