Horace Mann

Before the speech, California did the same, and for the same reason.

Since the speech, the people of New Mexico have prohibited slavery in their constitution, because they knew it to be possible among them.

Webster had always held, that slavery would invade the new territories if not barred out of them by positive law.

Once make it as clear as any law of physical nature, that slavery can never transgress the bounds of the new territories, and there is not a man so demented that he would any longer contend either for the proviso, or against it.

Otherwise it would be the most nonsensical and nugatory discussion ever engaged in out of a lunatic asylum.

The present six months’ contest, in the Senate and House, between the north and the south, is conducted solely on the conviction that slavery may exist in the territories; and that it will or will not exist there, according as the law…

Polk’s administration, and all its southern friends, adhered to their original purpose of obtaining new territory for slavery.

This demonstrates that they thought slavery could exist there.

In negotiating for the cession of California and New Mexico, the Mexican commissioners strove to introduce a prohibition against slavery into the treaty.

It is well known that the war with Mexico was provoked, and violently precipitated upon the country, in order to extend the domain and the power of slavery.

How stands the evidence, then, on the question, whether “California and New Mexico,” from their geology, their geography, or their Asiatic scenery, are inaccessible or not, to the invasion of slavery?

But what must satisfy every man whose blindness is not of the soul rather than of the senses, is the fact that the people of New Mexico, in the constitution which they have just framed, have embodied a prohibition of slavery in their…

Davis, of Massachusetts, said, that however it might be with regard to employing slaves in New Mexico for raising crops of corn or cotton, there was still one purpose to which they might be applied,--the most odious of all purposes,--to…

But however this may be, all accounts concur in representing New Mexico to be rich in mines; and mines are the favorite sphere for slavery, as the ocean is for commerce.

It would be like the testimony sometimes offered in court, which ruins the cause and dishonors the counsel.

We are informed neither of the character of the author nor of his means of information; and if this authority is as fallacious and deceptive as the preceding, it is a great deal worse than nothing.

The whole body of southern influence, now that mining is a mania, would combine to pour an immense colony of slaves into New Mexico.

The doctrine of the slaveholding states, in regard to their domestic institutions, is non-intervention; but with regard to yours, it is instant intervention, to set at nought the prohibition of slavery, which you brought with you into the…

The most formidable part of this combination against you is that which originates in the slave interest.

Now what possible excuse can be offered for these misleading citations?

But his citation of authorities is among the most surprising of all his aberrations from fact.

Webster declared it to be a natural impossibility that African slavery could ever exist “in California or New Mexico.” (p. 42.) He now defines the southern boundary of New Mexico.

Is it not as palpable a case of alteration, as to change the date of a note of hand in order to take it out of the statute of limitations, or to obliterate the description of the premises in a deed, and put a more valuable estate in its…

The original passage in his speech read as follows: “I would not take pains to reäffirm an ordinance of Nature, nor to reënact the will of God.” This was the sentiment I criticized.

In professing to quote, from his 7th of March speech, a passage on which I had made a criticism, he alters the passage so as to evade the criticism, and then condemns me for making it.