James Buchanan: Remarks to Congress on Slavery

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Buchanan had risen through the ranks of the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania, exploiting his early support of Andrew Jackson to gain an appointment as minister to Russia in 1832. Some two years later he was elected to the U.S. Senate and took his seat at the end of 1834. The following year the United States witnessed a wave of violent outbreaks across the country attributed to the agitation of the slavery question by abolitionists. In Washington, D.C., there had been riots on the heels of news that a slave, intoxicated by alcohol and abolitionist propaganda, had attempted to murder his owner, a prominent Washington widow. President Jackson ordered his postmaster general to intercept abolitionist literature sent through the mails; when Congress met that December, its members debated how it should handle the avalanche of abolitionist petitions arriving in Washington, some calling for a complete end to slavery and others urging Congress at least to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. As newspapers across the nation reprinted congressional proceedings, considering these petitions in open session amounted to giving them free publicity throughout the Republic.

Buchanan addressed the threat posed by the mails campaign in December 1835. He argued that prudent and wise northerners would do whatever was necessary to suppress the circulation of literature that assailed southern sentiments or promised to arouse hostility and inspire violence, including a slave insurrection. For the moment, however, he advised the Senate not to act on any measure to explore the issue by establishing a select committee, lest it draw unwarranted attention to it. Several weeks later, on January 7, 1836, he rose again, this time to respond to a petition entrusted to him by Pennsylvania Quakers, who called for an end to slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

Buchanan admits that he is at pains to distinguish Quakers from abolitionists, whom he believed were intent upon disrupting southern society and inspiring insurrection. Still, he disagrees with their views. “If any one principle of constitutional law can, at this day, be considered as settled, it is, that Congress has no right, no power, over the question of slavery within those states where it exists,” he declares, adding that Congress had recognized that principle back in 1790. Moreover, he adds, “the Union will be dissolved, and incalculable evils will rise from its ashes, the moment any such attempt is seriously made by the free States in Congress.” Abolitionists, those “ignorant enthusiasts,” promise to incite insurrection; in response, slaveholders would reinforce the bonds of enslavement. To abolish slavery in the District of Columbia would simply establish a place of refuge and encourage such terrible scenes. At the moment he does not reject receiving such petitions, but he wants them referred to a special committee or the Committee on the District of Columbia. He finds the notion of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia extremely unwise and potentially dangerous, for it would establish a refuge for slaves who sought to escape their owners, especially from Virginia and Maryland, which bordered the District.

The next month Buchanan rose again to remind his fellow senators that he had no problem with receiving such petitions and then rejecting them outright or burying them by referring them to a committee. He understood that to refuse to receive such petitions would simply exacerbate the debate over slavery. He maintained his determined opposition to abolitionists, accusing them of seeking to incite insurrection, but he also maintained that it would violate the civil rights of Americans to reject their petitions. In taking this position Buchanan sought to remind white southerners that he sided with them on the issues of policy contained in the petitions while hastening to reassure northerners that he would not compromise their civil rights. In the case of the Quaker petition, he prevailed. When it came to the circulation of abolitionist publications through the mails, however, Buchanan argued that the federal government was well within its rights to prohibit the mailing of any material deemed to be incendiary, and he found that abolitionist literature fit his definition of incendiary.