Slavery, Freedom, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act: An Address Delivered in Chicago, Illinois, on October 30, 1854
SLAVERY, FREEDOM, AND THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS,
ON 30 OCTOBER 1854
Frederick Douglass' Paper, 24 November 1854. Other texts in New York Herald, 4
November 1854; Frederick Douglass' Paper, 10 November 1854; Julia Ward Howe, ed,
Masterpieces of American Eloquence (New York, 1900), 473-77; Frederic May Holland,
Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator, rev. ed. (1891; New York, 1969), 234-39,
misdated early September 1854; Foner, Life and Writings, 2: 316-32.
Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854 sent political shock waves
throughout the North. The bill’s sponsor, Illinois senator Stephen A. Doug-
las, found his home state transformed into a “battleground of the Nebraska
question” when he returned to campaign for party candidates in the 1854
congressional elections. In mid-October Frederick Douglass arrived from
Rochester to stump northern Illinois in cooperation with Salmon P. Chase,
Joshua Giddings, Cassius M. Clay, and other political abolitionists. Douglass
delivered speeches at Jonesville, Aurora (where his presence caused the II-
linois senator to cancel a scheduled address), Galena, and Rockford. On the
evening of 30 October a crowd of fifteen hundred men and women filled
Chicago’s Metropolitan Hall to hear Douglass speak, in a rather hoarse voice.
on “the politics of the day.” According to the Chicago Tribune his speech
“was received with the greatest enthusiasm.” At times the applause was
“unremitting for several moments,” while at other points the audience‘s
“deep silence,” “fixed countenances,” and “dewey eyes” testified to the
emotional impact of Douglass’s remarks. After leaving Chicago, Douglass
continued his speaking tour through Wisconsin and Ohio. By December he
had resumed his editorial duties in Rochester after an absence of some seven
weeks. FDP, 29 September, 20, 27 October, 3, 17 November, 1, 8 December
1854; Washington (DC) National Era, 26 October 1854; Sewell, Ballots for
Freedom, 254-65; George Fort Milton, The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A.
Douglas and the Needless War (Boston and New York, 1934), 173-74, 178:
Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings, 229-30.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: A great national question, a question of
transcendent importance—one upon which the public mind is deeply
moved, and not my humble name—has assembled this multitude of eager
listeners in Metropolitan Hall1Boastful Chicagoans called Metropolitan Hall, dedicated only a month before Douglass spoke there, a “Temple of Art" and “the best Hall west of New York." The Hall itself was located on the third floor of the Metropolitan Block at LaSalle and Randolph streets. Constructed on “acoustic principles," its furred walls and double-laid floors prevented echoes and rendered “each footfall as noiseless as if upon marble." The seating capacity was thirteen hundred, “but by crowding, the Hall may be made to hold an audience of two thousand. “ Until the opening of Bryan Hall in the 1860s, Metropolitan Hall accommodated many of Chicago‘s principal bazaars, balls, concerts, and other public entertainments. Chicago Daily Tribune, 26 September 1854; Frederick Francis Cook, Bygone Days in Chicago: Recollections of the "Garden City" of the Sixties (Chicago, 1910), 176. this evening. You have come up here in
obedience to a humane and patriotic impulse, to consider of the require-
ments of patriotism and humanity, at an important crisis in the affairs of this
nation.
In this patriotic and holy purpose, I hail your presence here with
grateful, sincere, and heart felt pleasure. I am anxious to address you on the
great subject which has called you together—and will do so—but circum-
stances will justify me in saying a few words first of a personal nature.
I have the misfortune of being deemed an intruder by some of your
fellow citizens. My visit among you is thought to be untimely, and to savor
of impudence, and the like.2The Illinois State Register complained that “foreign abolitionists, with the negro Douglass in their lead, are called in to. . . teach the people of Illinois their duty in national affairs. . . . Hired by the day, for money, this negro traitor is to traverse the state, with abolition on his lips, to tell the white men of Illinois that they have hitherto erred. That their devotion to the Union has been a sham, and that he, the representative of the abolition disunion sentiment of northern fanaticism, only teaches the true faith. “ Springfield Illinois State Register, 29 September 1854. Upon this matter I have a word to say in my
own defence. A man that will not defend himself is not fit to defend a good
cause.
And first, ladies and gentlemen, I am not sure that a visit on my part to
Chicago would at any time, afford those who are now complaining of me
any special pleasure. But, gentlemen, I am not ashamed of being called an
intruder. I have met it a thousand times in a thousand different places, and
am quite prepared to meet it now—and here, as I have met it, at other times
and in other places.
Every inch of ground occupied by the colored man in this country is
sternly disputed. At the ballot box and at the altar—in the church and in the
State—he is deemed an intruder. He is, in fact, seldom a welcome visitor
anywhere. Marvel not, therefore, if I seem somewhat used to the charge of
intrusiveness, and am not more embarrassed in meeting it. Men have been
known to get used to conditions and objects which, at the first, seemed
utterly repulsive and insufferable. And so may I.
One reason why I am not ashamed to be here is this: I have a right to be
here and a duty to perform here. That right is a constitutional right, as well
as a natural right. It belongs to every citizen of the United States. It belongs
not less to the humblest than to the most exalted citizen. The genius of
American institutions knows no privileged class or classes. The plebeian
and the (would be) patrician stand here upon a common level of equality,
and the last man in the world who should complain of this is the earnest
advocate of popular sovereignty.
I have a right to come into this State to prosecute any lawful business in
a lawful manner. This is a natural right, and is a part of the supreme law of
the land. By that law the citizens of each state are the citizens of the United
States, with rights alike and equal in all the States. The only question of
right connected with my case here respects my citizenship. If I am a citizen,
I am clothed all over with the star spangled banner and defended by the
American Constitution, in every State of the American Union. That con-
stitution knows no man by the color of his skin. The men who made it were
too noble for any such limitation of humanity and human rights. The word
white is a modern term in the legislation of this country. It was never used
in the better days of the Republic, but has sprung up within the period of our
national degeneracy.
I claim to be an American citizen. The constitution knows but two
classes: Firstly, citizens, and secondly, aliens. lam not an alien; and I am,
therefore, a citizen. I am moreover a free citizen. Free, thank God not only
by the law of the State in which I was born and brought but free by the laws
of nature.
In the State of New York where I live, I am a citizen and a legal voter.
and may therefore be presumed to be a citizen of the United States. I am
here simply as an American citizen, having a stake in the weal or woe of the
nation, in common with other citizens. lam not even here as an agent of any
sect or party.3In an editorial entitled “The Crusade of ‘Black Republicanism'—Fred Douglass called to the assistance of Illinois Fusion, "the Illinois State Register charged that Douglass had joined Salmon Chase and Joshua Giddings “to preach abolitionism and the beauties of fusing the whig party and their own, as a conglomerate, to be entitled the Republican party." Springfield Illinois State Register, 29 September 1854. Parties are too politic and sects are too sectarian, to select one
of my odious class, and of my radical opinions, at this important time and
place, to represent them. Nevertheless, I do not stand alone here. There are
noble minded men in Illinois who are neither ashamed of their cause nor
their company. Some of them are here to-night, and I expect to meet with
them in every part of the State where I may travel. But, I pray, hold no man
or party responsible for my words, for I am no man’s agent; and I am no
parties’ agent; and I beg that my respected friends—the Reporters—will be
good enough to make a note of that. I have a very good reason for making
this request—a reason which I may some day give to the world, but which I
need not give now.
One other remark; and it shall be in regard to a matter about which you
wish to hear at once. It touches the matter involved on my mission here. I
wish not only to stand within my rights as a man, but to stand approved at
the bar of propriety as a gentleman, when, as in this case, I can do so
without the sacrifice of principle. It has been given out, I believe, by some
friends and also by some of the enemies of the principles I am here to
sustain that I have come into this State to confront in public debate, my
distinguished namesake, the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas.4Noting that the “Black Douglas and the White “ would be in Aurora, Illinois, on the same day. the Kenosha (Wisc.) Weekly Telegraph reported that “Fred proposes to follow Steve in debate. when it is supposed there will be another martyr Stephen added to the list." An Illinois correspondent to the National Era observed that there was “a great desire manifested to have the black Douglass on the stump against the white Douglas . . . an issue that would well suit the b'hoys, and add much to the zest of the canvass, and prolong the relish for fun which has been gigling at the heels of the unfortunate champion of Slavery and Nebraska since his arrival in this State." Before his departure, Douglass himself wrote: “Ebony and ivory are thought to look better standing together than when separated. A white Douglas, canvassing the State for slavery, has suggested the idea of having black Douglass there to canvass the State for freedom." Kenosha (Wisc.) Weekly Telegraph, 19 October 1854; Washington (DC) National Era, 26 October 1854; FDP, 29 September 1854; ASB, 7 October 1854.
Fellow citizens, I wish to disclaim so much of this report as can
possibly imply the slightest disrespect for the talents of your honorable
Senator. His fame as an orator, and as a man of energy and perseverance,
has not risen higher anywhere than in my own judgment. He is a man of the
people. He came up from among them, and that by the native energy of his
character and his manly industry. I am ever pleased to see a man rise from
among the people. Every such man is prophetic of the good time coming. I
have watched him during the past winter, when apparently overwhelmed
with learning and eloquence, rise again, and with more than the tact and
skill of a veteran, drive all before him. There is perhaps something in a
name, and that may possibly explain the peculiar interest with which I have
watched and contemplated the fortunes of Mr. S. A. Douglas.
This feeling, I think, you will admit, is quite natural. No man likes to
read in a newspaper of the hanging of a man beating his own name.5Returning to Illinois in the summer of 1854 when anti-Nebraska feeling was at its height, Senator Douglas discovered “I could travel from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigy. All along the Western Reserve of Ohio I could find my effigy upon every tree we passed." Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 451.
On the other hand, no man bearing the name of Douglas, would think
less of his name, if this great nation should. in the abundance of goodness
be pleased to place that name in the scroll of its Presidents; and this,
notwithstanding the trite saying, that a rose by any other name would smell
as sweet.
But the times, the times bid us to have done with names. Names have
lost their significance, in more ways than one—deeds, not words, are the
order of the day; names are valued so long as they are associated with
honor, justice and liberty; and become execrable when associated with
falsehood, treachery and tyranny.
It is alleged that I am come to this State to insult Senator Douglas.
Among gentlemen, that is only an insult, which is intended to be such, and l
disavow all such intention. I am not even here with the desire to meet in
public debate, that gentleman. I am here precisely as I was in this State one
year ago6Douglass spent most of October 1853 touring Illinois. He delivered speeches in Chicago, Geneva, St. Charles, Elgin, Freeport, Rockford, Aurora, Joliet, Princeton, and Ottawa. FDP, 28 October, 18 November 1853; Freeport (III.) Journal, 21 October 1853; Lib., 18 November 1853.—with no other change in my relations to you, or to the great
question of human freedom, than time and circumstances have brought
about. I shall deal with the subject in the same spirit now as then; approving
such men and such measures as look to the security of liberty in the land and
with my whole heart condemning all men and measures as serve to subvert
or endanger it.
If Hon. S. A. Douglas, your beloved and highly gifted Senator, has
designedly, or through mistaken notions of public policy ranged himself,
on the side of oppressors and the deadliest enemies of liberty, I know of no
reason, either in this world or any other world, which should prevent me, or
prevent any one else, from thinking so, or from saying so.
The people in whose cause I come here to-night, are not among those
whose right to regulate their own domestic concerns, is so feelingly and
eloquently contended for in certain quarters. They have no Stephen Arnold
Douglas—no Gen. Cass, to contend at North Market Hall for their Popular
Sovereignty.7The doctrine of popular sovereignty asserted the right of the people of a territory to decide the slavery issue themselves without interference from Congress, although at what stage in a territory's political development it should be implemented was always open to differing interpretations. Senator Daniel S. Dickinson and Representatives Caleb Smith and Sheldon Leake suggested the general principle during debates on the Wilmot Proviso, but it was Lewis Cass who presented the first full exposition of the doctrine in a widely reprinted letter of December 1847 to Alfred O. P. Nicholson of Tennessee. Stephen A. Douglas endorsed the idea and in 1854 incorporated it into the Kansas-Nebraska Act. On 20 October 1854, Cass, speaking before a large gathering at Chicago's North Market Hall, defended the doctrine and “stripped the question of all the misrepresentation which abolitionism and fusion have thrown around it." Lewis Cass to A. O. P. Nicholson, 24 December 1847, in Niles' National Register, 8 January 1848; Springfield Illinois State Register, 24 October, 6 November 1854; FDP, 3 November 1854; James B. Ranck, “Lewis Cass and Squatter Sovereignty," Michigan History Magazine, 14: 28-37 (Winter 1930); Potter, Impending Crisis, 57-59, 171-74. They have no national purse—no offices, no reputation,
with which to corrupt Congress, or to tempt men, mighty in eloquence and
influence into their service. Oh, no! They have nothing to commend them
but their unadorned humanity. They are human—that’s all—only human.
Nature owns them as human—God owns them as human; but men own
them as property! Every right of human nature, as such, is denied them—
they are dumb in their chains! To utter one groan, or scream, for freedom in
the presence of the Southern advocate of Popular Sovereignty, is to bring
down the frightful lash upon their quivering flesh. I know this suffering
people; I am acquainted with their sorrows; I am one with them in experi-
ence; I have felt the lash of the slave driver, and stand up here with all the
bitter recollections of its horrors vividly upon me.
There are special reasons, therefore, why I should speak and speak
freely. The right of speech is a very precious one, especially to the op-
pressed.
I understand that Mr. Douglas regards himself as the most abused man
in the United States, and that the greatest outrage ever committed upon
him, was in the case in which your indignation raised your voices so high
that his could not be heard. No personal violence, as I understand, was
offered him. It seems to have been a trial of vocal powers between the
individual and the multitude; as might have been expected, the voice of one
man was not equal in volume to the voice of five hundred.8On the evening of 1 September 1854, Senator Douglas opened his Illinois tour at an outdoor meeting in Chicago, where opposition to his recent policies was concentrated. During the afternoon, flags in the harbor flew at half-mast, church bells tolled, and a rumor circulated that an armed “Irish bodyguard" would “compel silence while Douglas spoke." At “early candle-light" an “eager and excited" crowd of eight thousand persons, including anti-Nebraska men, Know-Nothings, and German immigrants prepared to express their displeasure with the senator, gathered outside North Market Hall. Douglas attempted to explain the Kansas-Nebraska Act “in its true light," but, reported the Chicago Tribune, “every proslavery sentiment that he uttered was received with indignation, and was disarmed with cries of no, groans, and hisses." Efforts to maintain order failed, and Douglas and the crowd began to exchange insults. The Chicago Times, a Douglas paper, blamed the disruption on “a gang of abolition rowdies," while the Tribune charged that Douglas precipitated the outburst when he “lost his temper" and “began to denounce the assemblage as a mob." While the crowd continued to try to shout him down, Douglas read a letter he had received predicting violence if he attempted to speak in Chicago, attacked the Know-Nothings, and accused the Tribune of creating the climate for disorder. After nearly four hours, Douglas defiantly hurled one final insult and left the platform, “shaking his fist at the audience." Springfield Illinois State Register, 4, 5 September 1854; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 453-54; Milton, Eve of Conflict, 175-76.
I do not mention this circumstance to approve it; I do not approve it; I
am for free speech as well as for freemen and free soil; but how ineffably
insignificant is this wrong done in a single instance, and to a single indi-
vidual, compared with the stupendous iniquity perpetrated against more
than three millions of the American people, who are struck dumb by the
very men in whose cause Mr. Senator Douglas was here to plead. While I
would not approve the silencing of Mr. Douglas, may we not hope that this
slight abridgment of his rights may lead him to respect in some degree the
rights of other men, as good in the eyes of Heaven, as himself.
Let us now consider the great question of the age; the only great
national question which seriously agitates the public mind at this hour. It is
called the vexed question; and excites alarm in every quarter of the country.
Efforts have been made to set it at rest. Statesmen, and political parties,
and churches have exerted themselves to settle it forever. They sought to
bind it with cords; to resist it with revolutions, and bury it under platforms;
but all to no purpose. The waves of the ocean still roll, and the earthquakes
still shake the earth, and men’s hearts still fail them for fear of those
judgments which threaten to come upon the land.
Fellow Citizens: some things are settled, and settled forever—not by
the laws of man, but by the laws of God; by the constitution of mankind; by
the relations of things and by the facts of human experience.
It is, I think, pretty well settled, that liberty and slavery cannot dwell in
the United States in peaceful relations; the history of the last five and
twenty years settles that.
It is pretty well settled, too, that one or the other of these must go to the
wall. The South must either give up slavery, or the North must give up
liberty. The two interests are hostile, and are irreconcilable. The just de-
mands of liberty are inconsistent with the overgrown exactions of the slave
power.
There is not a single tendency of slavery but is adverse to freedom. The
one is adapted to progress, to industry, and to dignify industry. Slavery is
anti-progressive—[it] sets a premium on idleness, and degrades both labor
and laborers. The fetters on the limbs of the slave, to be secure, must be
accompanied with fetters on society as well. A free press and a free gospel,
are as hostile as fire and gunpowder—separation or explosion, are the only
alternatives.
No people in this country better understand this peculiarity than the
slaveholders themselves. Hence the repeated violations of your Post Office
laws in Southern towns and cities; hence the expurgations of Northern
literature, and the barbarous outrages committed upon the persons of North-
ern travellers in the Southern States.9Alarmed by the aggressive abolitionist mail campaign of 1835, southemers pressed vigorously but unsuccessfully for a federal law authorizing the states to identify and prohibit the circulation of “incendiary publications" designed to undermine slavery and encourage servile insurrections. Congress instead passed a postal act in 1836 that specifically forbade postmasters from interfering with the delivery of any mail. Southern states avoided compliance by acting on the theory that federal jurisdiction ended once the mail had reached its destination. States without them soon adopted laws regulating the publication and distribution of antislavery propaganda. Acquiesced in and eventually legitimatized by sympathetic federal officials, these laws were applied not only to the literary output of the antislavery societies but also to such “objectionable” northern publications as Harper's Magazine, the Circleville (Ohio) Religious Telescope, and the New York Tribune. Northern textbooks and fiction also aroused suspicion. Many southern communities organized vigilance committees to employ “all energetic means in ferreting out, and detecting any person or persons that may attempt to circulate. .. any pamphlet, tract, or other seditious publication... or tampering with slaves, with a view to excite insurrection." The committees burned books, offered rewards for the apprehension of leading abolitionists, and fined, banished, whipped, lynched, or tarred and feathered suspected “incendiaries.” Visitors from the North were especially distrusted. Harriet Martineau reported that “[u]pon a mere vague report, or bare suspicion, persons travelling through the South have been arrested, imprisoned, and, in some cases, flogged or otherwise tortured, on pretence that such persons desired to cause insurrection among the slaves. More than one innocent person has been hanged." By the 1850s the vigilance committees had become tightly organized and extremely effective instruments of suppression. Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830-1860 (East Lansing, Mich, 1949), 54-69, 139-56; Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 2 vols. (London, 1837), 2: 349; Eaton, Freedom-of-Thought Struggle, 196-215; idem, “Mob Violence in the Old South,” MVHR, 29: 351-70 (November 1942); John Hope Franklin, The Militant South (Cambridge, Mass, 1956), 80-95; Craven, Southern Nationalism, 255-56. Light and love, justice and mercy,
must be guarded against in a community where the cruel lash is the law, and
human lust is religion.
For a long time, it has been seen that the ideas and institutions of
liberty, if allowed their natural course would finally overthrow slavery.
That slaveholders themselves would after a while come to loath it.
Selfishness combined with this knowledge has at length ultimated into
the formation of a party, ranged under the very taking appellation of
NATIONAL—the greatest business of which is to hold at bay, and restrain,
and if possible to extinguish, in the heart of this great nation every senti-
ment supposed to be at variance with the safety of slavery.10Douglass here refers to the political stance taken by the Whig and Democratic parties in 1852.
This party has arisen out of the teachings of that great man of perverted
faculties, the late John C. Calhoun. No man of the nation has left a broader
or a blacker mark on the politics of the nation, than he. In the eye of Mr.
Calhoun every right guaranteed by the American constitution, must be held
in subordination to slavery. It was he who first boldly declared the self-
evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, self-evident falsehoods.
He has been followed in this by Mr. Benton’s11Possibly Thomas Hart Benton. D. D. from Indiana.12Douglass probably alludes to John Pettit, whose Senate speech on 20 February 1854 labeled the Declaration’s statement of equality “a self-evident lie."
The very spirit of Mr. Calhoun animates the slavery party of to-day.
His principles are its principles, and his philosophy its philosophy. He
looked upon slavery as the great American interest. The slavery party of
to-day so esteem it. To preserve it, shield it, and support it is its constant
duty and the object and aim of all its exertions. With this party the right[s]
of free men, free labor, and a free north are nothing. Daniel Webster never
said a truer word than at Marshfield, in ’48—“Why the North? There is no
North!”13On 1 September 1848, Daniel Webster addressed the citizens of Marshfield, Massachusetts. Alluding to a popular belief that the South had triumphed over the North by securing the annexation of slave territory, Webster emphasized that “northern votes, in full proportion," had contributed to such acquisitions. “We talk of the North," he told his audience, but "[t]here has for a long time been no North. I think the North Star is at last discovered; I think there will be a North; but up to the recent session of Congress there has been no North, no geographical section of the country, in which there has been found a strong, conscientious, and united opposition to slavery. No such North has existed." Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 4: 135. But there is a South and ever has been a South controlling both
parties, at every period of their existence.
The grand inauguration of this slavery party took place in the Summer
of 1852. That party was represented in both the great parties; and demanded
as a condition of their very existence, that they should give their solemn
endorsement, as a finality to the compromise measures of 1850. Its power
was felt in their conventions. Abhorrent as were its demands, and arrogant
and repulsive as was its manner of pressing them—that party was obeyed.
Both conventions took upon the mark of the beast; and called upon the
whole North to do the same. The Democratic party consented to be branded
thus:
“That Congress has no power, under the constitution, to interfere
with, or control the domestic institutions of the several States; and that such
States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their
own affairs, not prohibited by the constitution—that all efforts of the
Abolitionists or others to induce Congress to interfere with the question of
slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead
to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts
have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and
endanger the stability and permanency of the Union; and ought not to be
countenanced by any friend of our political institution[s].
“Resolved, That the foregoing proposition covers and was intended to
embrace the whole subject of slavery agitation in Congress; and, therefore,
the Democratic party of this Union, standing on this National platform, will
abide by, and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts known as the
compromise measures, settled by the last Congress—the act of reclaiming
fugitives from service or labor included, which act being decided to carry
out an express provision of the constitution, cannot, with fidelity be re—
pealed or be changed as to destroy, or impair its efficacy.
“Resolved, That the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renew—
ing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under
whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."14Douglass quotes from the 1852 Democratic party platform. Johnson and Porter, National Party Platforms, 17.
Gentlemen: Such was the Democratic mark, and such was the Demo—
cratic pledge. It was taken in sight of all the nation, and in the sight of God,
only two years ago. Has it kept that pledge? Does it stand acquitted to day at
the bar of public honor? Or does it stand forth black with perfidy towards
the North, while it wallows in the mire of deeper servility to the South? Has
the Democratic party a single claim on your confidence, more than any
notorious liar would have upon your credulity? Can you believe in a party
that keeps its word, only as it has no temptation to break it? Is there a single
man that can pretend to say that the Democrats—the Baltimore platform
Democrats—have been true to their solemn declarations? Have they not
renewed, and, in a manner to peril the cause of liberty—the agitation of
slavery, which they solemnly promised to resist? Do you say they have not?
Then there is no longer an intelligible proposition in the English
language—nor is it possible to frame one.
But let me read to you the resolution imposed on the Whig National
Convention, as the vital condition of its existence; and which was given to
the world as the faith of that great organization, touching the matter of
slavery. Here it is:
“That the series of acts, of the 31st Congress, known as the com-
promise, including the fugitive slave act, are received and acquiesced in by
the Whig party of the United States, as a final settlement, in principle and
substance, of the dangerous and exciting subjects which they embrace; and
so far as the fugitive slave law is concerned, we will maintain the same,
and insist upon its strict enforcement, until time and experience shall demon-
strate the necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the
laws on the one hand, and the abuse of their powers on the other—not
impairing their present efficacy—and [we] deprecate all further agitation of
the questions thus settled, as dangerous to our peace; and we will dis-
countenance a continuance or renewal of such agitation, whenever, wher-
ever, or however, the attempt may be made; and we will maintain this
system as essential to the nationality of the Whig party, and the integrity of
the Union."15Douglass quotes and paraphrases the 1852 Whig party platform. Johnson and Porter, National Party Platforms, 21.
Now, fellow-citizens: In those platforms, and in the events which have
since transpired, it is easy to read the designs of the slave power. Some-
thing is gained when the plans and purposes of an enemy are discovered.
I understand the first purpose of the slave power to be the suppression
of all anti-slavery discussion. Next, the extension of slavery over all the
territories. Next, the nationalizing of slavery, and to make slavery re-
spected in every State of the Union.
First, the right of speech is assailed, and both parties pledge themselves
to put it down. When parties make platforms, they are presumed to put
nothing into them, which, if need be, they may not organize into law.
These parties on this presumption, are pledged to put down free discussion
by law—to make it an offence against the law to speak, write, and publish
against slavery, here in the free States, just as it now is an offence against
the law to do so in the slave States. One end of the slave ’s chain must be
fastened to a padlock in the lips of Northern freemen, else the slave will
himself become free.
Now, gentlemen, are you ready for this? Are you ready to give up the
right of speech, and suppress every human and Christ-inspired sentiment,
lest the conscience of the guilty be disturbed?
Our parties have attempted to give peace to slaveholders. They have
attempted to do what God has made impossible to be done; and that is to
give peace to slaveholders. “There is no peace to the wicked, saith my
God."16Douglass adapts Isa. 48: 22. In the breast of every slaveholder, God has placed, or stationed an
anti-slavery lecturer, whose cry is guilty, GUILTY, GUILTY; “thou art
verily guilty concerning thy brother."17Douglass paraphrases Gen. 42: 21: “We are verily guilty concerning our brother."
But now let me come to the points of this great question which touch us
most nearly to-night.
I take the case to be this: The citizens of this State are now appealed to,
to give their sanction to the repeal of the law, by which slavery has been,
during a period of thirty-four years, restricted to the south of 36 deg[rees]
30 min[utes] of north latitude, in the territory acquired by the purchase of
Louisiana.18Missouri's application for admission to the Union as a slave state touched off a heated congressional debate in 1819 over the legal status of slavery in the territory purchased from France in 1803. On 13 February 1819 Representative James Tallmadge of New York introduced an amendment to the enabling legislation that would have prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and required the eventual emancipation of all slaves born after admission. It passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. Congress also rejected an attempt to restrict slavery in Arkansas Territory, then being organized. Such proposals offended the sensibilities of Southerners, raised constitutional questions, and threatened to upset the carefully maintained balance in the Senate between free and slave states. In late 1819, when Maine also petitioned for statehood, a negotiated compromise became possible. On 3 March 1820 the “Missouri Compromise" Act passed Congress. This measure admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. and forbade slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30'. Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819-1821 (Lexington, Ky., 1953), 41-47, 59-64, 84-89, 115.
This is but a simple and truthful statement of the real question.
The question is not, whether “popular sovereignty” is the true doc-
trine for the territories[;] it is not whether the chief agents in the repeal of
that line, acted from good or bad motives; nor is it whether they are able or
feeble men.
These are points of very little consequence in determining the path of
duty in this case.
When principles are at stake, persons are of small account; and the
safety of a Republic is found in a rigid adherence to principles. Once give
up these, and you are a ship in a storm, without anchor or rudder.
Fellow-Citizens: The proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise,
was a stunning one.19The much-amended bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska originally was introduced into Congress by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The measure allowed residents of these territories to decide whether or not they would permit slavery on the “popular sovereignty" principle. In the final version passed on 30 May 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act voided the Missouri Compromise's provisions restricting slavery within the old Louisiana Purchase and established the doctrine of congressional nonintervention with slavery in the territories. Congressional Globe, 33d Cong., 1st sess., 2228-32; Ray, Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 16, 182-87. fell upon the nation like a bolt from a cloudless sky.
The thing was too startling for belief. You believed in the South, and you
believed in the North; and you knew that the repeal of the Missouri Com-
promise was a breach of honor; and, therefore, you said the thing could not
be done. Besides, both parties had pledged themselves directly, positively
and solemnly against reopening in Congress the agitation on the subject of
slavery; and the President himself had declared his intention to maintain the
national quiet.20In his first annual message to Congress on 5 December 1853, President Franklin Pierce announced that it was not his “purpose to give prominence to any subject which may properly be regarded as set to rest by the deliberate judgment of the people." Alluding to “the sense of repose and security" that followed the passage of the Compromise of 1850. Pierce declared: “That this repose is to suffer no shock during my official term, if I have power to avert it, those who placed me here may be assured." Israel, State of the Union Messages, 1: 871. Upon these assurances you rested, and rested fatally.
But you should have learned long ago that “men do not gather grapes
of thorns, nor figs of thistles."21An allusion to Matt. 7: 16: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" It is folly to put faith in men who have
broken faith with God. When a man has brought himself to enslave a child
of God, to put fetters on his brother, he has qualified himself to disregard
the most sacred of compacts—beneath the sky there is nothing more sacred
than man, and nothing can be properly respected when manhood is de-
spised and trampled upon. Now let us attend to the defence made before the
people by the advocates of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.
They tell us that the bill does not open the Territories to slavery, and
complain that they are misrepresented and slandered by those charging
them with flinging open the Territories to slavery. I wish to slander no man.
I wish to misrepresent no man. They point us to the bill itself as proof that
no such opening of the Territories to slavery is contemplated, or intended
by it. I will read to you from the bill itself, to see what is relied upon at this
point:
“It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery
into any Territory or State; nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the
people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institu-
tions in their own way; subject only to the constitution of the United
States."22Douglass quotes a passage that is included in Sections 14 and 32 of “An Act to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas," approved by President Pierce on 30 May 1854. The emphasis is Douglass's. Congressional Globe, 33d Cong., 1st sess., 2230, 2232.
One part of this declaration is true and carries the evidence of its truth
on its face. It is true that it is no part of the true intent and meaning of the act
to exclude slavery from any Territory or State. If its true intent and meaning
had been otherwise, it would not have repealed the law, the only law,
which had excluded slavery from those territories, and from those States
which may be formed out of them. I repeat, this part of the bill needs no
explanation. It is plain enough already. There is not a slaveholder in the
land, however ardent an advocate of slavery extension he may be, who has
ever complained that the true intent and meaning of the Kansas-Nebraska
bill was to exclude slavery from the territories in question, or from any
States which might be formed out of them. Slaveholders do not so under-
stand the bill. Had they so understood it, they would never have gone in a
body to sustain the bill. It is very significant that on this part of this “stump
speech” in the declaration, the country is agreed, everybody understanding
it alike, while on the other hand, the words in the bill, directly preceding it,
are the subject of controversy. Why is this so? You are told that it is owing
to the perversity of man’s understanding. But this is not the answer. I will
tell you why it is. The people, like the old rat, do not deny that the white
dust they see here is meal—real and genuine meal—but under the meal they
detect the treacherous form of the cat. Under that smooth exterior there
are the sharp teeth and destructive claws, and hence they avoid, shun and
detest it.
But again: it is claimed that the Nebraska bill does not open the ter-
ritories to Slavery for another reason. It is said that Slavery is the creature of
positive law, and that it can only exist where it is sustained by positive
law—that neither in Kansas nor in Nebraska is there any law establishing
Slavery, and that, therefore, the moment a slaveholder carries his slaves
into those Territories they are free, and restored to the rights of human
nature. This is the ground taken by General Cass. He contended for it in the
North Market Hall, with much eloquence and Skill. I thought, while I was
hearing him on this point, that slaveholders would not be likely to thank
him for the argument.23In his speech of 20 October 1854 Lewis Cass emphasized that slavery could not exist in any locality where there was no law establishing and protecting it. He further assumed that slavery had never entered any area where such positive municipal law was lacking. At the close of the meeting a call went up to have Douglass, who was in attendance, deliver a reply. Douglass declined and left, but the effect of the request “was as exciting as if a bombshell had been thrown into the room." Supporters and opponents of the Nebraska Act exchanged insults and challenges. Not until the gas had been turned off and “something of a row" subdued, did the audience “in a tolerably good humor," go home. Springfield Illinois State Register, 24 October 1854; Kenosha (Wisc.) Weekly Telegraph, 26 October 1854; FDP, 3 November 1854; ASB, 4 November 1854. Theoretically the argument is good, practically the
argument is bad. It is not true that slavery cannot exist without being
established by positive law. On the contrary, the instance cannot be shown
where a law was ever made establishing slavery, where the relation of
master and slave did not previously exist. The law is always an after-coming
consideration. Wicked men first overpower, and subdue their
fellow-men to slavery, and then call in the law to sanction the deed.
Even in the slave States of America, slavery has never been established
by positive law. It was not so established under the colonial charters of the
original States, nor the constitution of the States. It is now, and always has
been, a system of lawless violence.
On this proposition, I hold myself ready and willing to meet any
defender of the Nebraska bill. I would not even hesitate to meet the author
of that bill himself.24Senator Stephen A. Douglas. I insist upon it that the very basis upon which this bill
is defended, is utterly and entirely false as applied to the practice of slavery
in this country. The South itself scouts the theory of Messrs. Douglas and
Cass at this point, and esteems it simply as a gull trap in which to catch the
simple. They look upon it simply as a piece of plausible stump oratory, and
censure it as such. But that slavery is not the tame creature of law, as
alleged, I will not rely solely on my own declaration.
Senator Mason,25James Murray Mason. of Virginia, the author of the Fugitive Slave bill, and
one of the most influential members of the American Senate, during the
debate on the Fugitive Slave bill in 1850, scouted such a basis for slavery,
and confessed that no such existed. He said, and I quote his own words:
“Then again, it is proposed, (by one of the opponents of the bill), as a
part of the proof to be adduced at the hearing after the fugitive has been
recaptured, that evidence shall be brought by the claimant to show that
slavery is established in the State from whence the fugitive has absconded.
Now, this very thing, in a recent case in the city of New York, was required
by one of the judges of that State, which case attracted the attention of the
authorities of Maryland, and against which they protested, because of the
indignities heaped upon their citizens, and the losses which they sustained
in that city. In that case, the Judge of the State Court required proof that
slavery was established in Maryland, and went so far as to say that the only
mode of proving it was by reference to the statute book. Such proof is
required in the Senator’s amendment; and if he means by this that proof
shall be brought that slavery is established by existing laws, it is impossible
to comply with the requisition, for no such proof can be produced, I
apprehend, in any of the slave States. I am not aware that there is a single
State in which the institution is established by positive law. On a former
occasion, and on a different topic, it was my duty to endeavor to show to the
Senate that no such law was necessary for its establishment; certainly none
could be found, and none was required in any of the States of the Union."26Adding his own emphasis. ,Douglass quotes from a Senate speech of 19 August 1850 in which Mason urged the passage of his revised Fugitive Slave Bill and the rejection of an amendment—originally introduced in June by Daniel Webster and resubmitted by William Dayton of New Jersey—that would have required proof of slavery's establishment in the state "from which the fugitive absconded." Congressional Globe, 31st Cong. 1st sess., 235, 248, 1111, Appendix, 1583-84; Julius Yanuck, “The Fugitive Slave Law and the Constitution" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1953), 55n.
There you have it. It cannot be shown that slavery is established by law
even in the slaveholding States. But slavery exists there—and so may it
exist in Nebraska and in Kansas—and I had almost said that this is well
known to the very men who are now trying to persuade the people of the
north that it cannot.
But there is another defence set up for the repeal of the Missouri
restriction. It is said to be a patriotic defence, supported by patriotic rea-
sons. It is the defence which Senator Douglas uses with much effect wher-
ever he goes.
He says he wants no broad black line across this continent. Such a line
is odious and begets unkind feelings between the citizens of a common
country.
Now, fellow—citizens, why is the line of thirty-six degrees thirty min-
utes, a broad black line? What is it that entitles it to be called a black line? It
is the fashion to call whatever is odious in this country, black. You call the
Devil black—and he may be, but what is there in the line of thirty-six
degrees thirty minutes, which makes it blacker than the line which separates
Illinois from Missouri, or Michigan from Indiana? I can see nothing in the
line itself which should make it black or odious. It is a line, that’s all.
If it is black, black and odious, it must be so not because it is a line, but
because of the things it separates.
If it keeps asunder what God has joined together—or separates what
God intended should be fused, then it may be called an odious line, a black
line; but if on the other hand, it marks only a distinction—natural and
eternal—a distinction, fixed in the nature of things by the Eternal God, then
I say, withered be the arm and blasted be the hand that would blot it out.
But we are told that the people of the North were originally opposed to
that line, that they burnt in effigy the men from the North who voted for it,
and that it comes with a bad grace from the North now to oppose its repeal.
Fellow-citizens, this may do in the Barroom. It may answer somewhere
outside of where the moon rises, but it won’t do among men of
intelligence.
Why did the North condemn the Missouri line? This it was: they
believed that it gave slavery an advantage to which slavery had no right. By
establishing the Missouri Compromise line, slavery got all south of it. By
repealing that line it may get all north of it. Now are any so blind as not to
see that the same reasons for opposing the original line, are good against
repeal.
Allow me to illustrate. Thirty-four years ago, a man succeeds in getting
a decision unjustly, by which he comes in possession of one half of your
farm. You protest against that decision, and say it is corrupt. But the man
does not heed your protests. He builds his house upon it, and fences in his
lands and warns you to keep off his premises. You cannot help yourself.
You live by his side thirty-four years. You have lost the means of regaining
your lost property. But just at this time there comes a new Judge, a Daniel,
a very Daniel,27Douglass alludes either to the central figure of the Book of Daniel or to the individual mentioned in Ezek. 28: 3. The latter was possibly a Phoenician or Canaanite king remembered for his remarkable righteousness, wisdom, and sense of justice. The name Daniel means “God has judged." The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 4 vols. (Nashville, 1962), 1: 761; The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, Oxford study ed. (New York, 1976), 898n, 917n. and he reverses so much of the judgment by which you lost
the first half of your farm, and makes another decision by which you may
lose the other half.
You meekly protest against this new swindle. When the Judge in
question, with great affectation of impartiality, denounces you as very
difficult to please, and as flagrantly inconsistent.
Such, gentlemen, is the plain and simple truth in the matter.
By the Missouri Compromise, slavery—an alien to the Republic, and
enemy to every principle of free Institutions, and having no right to exist
anywhere—got one half of a territory rightfully belonging to Freedom.
You complained of that. Now a law is repealed whereby you may lose the
other half also, and you are forbidden to complain.
But hear again:
It is said with much adroitness by the advocates of the Nebraska bill,
that we are unnecessarily solicitous for the rights of negroes, that if the
people of the territories can be trusted to make laws for white men, they
may be safely left to make laws for black men.
Now, gentlemen, this is a favorite point of the author of the Nebraska
bill. Under its fair seeming front is an appeal to all that is mean, cowardly,
and vindictive in the breast of the white public. It implies that the opponents
of the Nebraska bill feel a deeper concern for the negroes as such, than for
white men, that we are unnaturally sensitive to [the] rights of the blacks,
and unnaturally indifferent to the rights of the whites.
With such an unworthy implication on its face, I brand it as a mean,
wicked and bitter appeal to Popular Prejudice, against a people wholly
defenceless, and at the mercy of the public.
The argument of Senator Douglas at this point, assumes the absurd
position that a slaveholding people will be as careful of the rights of their
black slaves as they are of their own. They might as well say that wolves
may be trusted to legislate for themselves, and why not for lambs, as to say
that slaveholders may do so for themselves, and why not for their slaves?
Shame on the miserable sophistry, and shame on the spirit that prompted
its utterance! There is nothing manly or honorable in either. Take another
specimen of senatorial logic; a piece of the same roll to which I have just
referred.
Senator Douglas tells you, that the people may be as safely left to make
laws respecting slavery, as to regulate theft, robbery, or murder. Very
well—so they may. There is no doubt about that; but as usual, the Hon.
Senator fails to bring out the whole truth. To bring out the whole truth here,
is to cover him with shame.
To put the matter in its true light, let us suppose that in the Southern
States of this Union, the people are so benighted as to practice and support
“theft,” “robbery,” and “murder,” but that in the other States that prac-
tice is loathed and abhorred.
Suppose, also, that up to a certain line in a territory belonging alike and
equally to all the States, these wicked practices were prohibited by law;
and then, suppose a grave Senator from a State where theft, robbery, and
murder are looked upon with horror, rising in his place in the national
legislature and moving to repeal the line excluding “theft,” “robbery,”
and “murder,” and demanding that “theft,” “robbery,” and “murder,”
be placed upon the same footing with honesty, uprightness and innocence.
I say, suppose this, and you have a parallel to the conduct of Senator
Douglas, in repealing the line of 36 deg[rees] 30 min[utes].
But the grand argument, and the one which seems to be relied upon as
unanswerable and overwhelming, is this: The people of the territories are
American citizens, and carry with them the right of self-government; that
this Nebraska bill is based upon this great American principle of Popular
Sovereignty, and that to oppose this principle, is to act as did King
George28George III (1738—1820). towards the American colonies.
Let me answer this argument. It may not need an answer here in
Chicago, for it has been answered here, and answered well. Nevertheless,
let me answer it again, and prove by the bill itself, that it is a stupendous
shame with every motive to deceive without the power.
What is meant by Popular Sovereignty? It is the right of the people to
establish a government for themselves, as against all others. Such was its
meaning in the days of the revolution. It is the independent right of a people
to make their own laws, without dictation or interference from any quar-
ter. A sovereign subject is a contradiction in terms, and is an absurdity.
When sovereignty becomes subject, it ceases to be sovereignty. When
what was future becomes the present, it ceases to be the future—and so
with sovereignty and subjection, they cannot exist at the same time in the
same place, any more than an event can be future and present at the same
time. This much is clear.
Now the question is, does the Kansas-Nebraska bill give to the people
of those territories the sovereign right to govern themselves? Is there a man
here who will say that it does?
The author of the bill, in his stump speeches in the country, says that it
does; and some men think the statement correct. But what say you, who
have read the bill?
Nothing could be further from the truth, than to say that Popular
Sovereignty is accorded to the people who may settle the territories of
Kansas and Nebraska.
The three great cardinal powers of government are the EXECUTIVE,
LEGISLATIVE and JUDICIAL. Are these powers secured to the people of
Kansas and Nebraska?
That bill places the people of that territory as completely under the
powers of the federal government as Canada is under the British crown.29In 1791 Britain divided Quebec into English-speaking Upper Canada and French-speaking Lower Canada. Fifty years later the two colonies. renamed Canada West (present-day Ontario) and Canada East (present-day Quebec), were politically reunited as the Province of Canada, an arrangement that lasted until 1867. In accordance with the theory of “responsible govemment" that was inaugurated during the govemorship of Lord Elgin (1847-54), the executive power of the province lay in the hands of ministers responsible to the popularly elected legislature. Britain retained control over Canada's foreign relations. but the province had the authority to regulate its own trade. J. Bartlet Brebner, Canada: A Modern History, new ed. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1970), 242, 263-65.
By this Kansas-Nebraska bill the federal government has the substance of
all governing power, while the people have the shadow. The judicial power
of the territories is not from the people of the territories, who are so bathed
in the sunlight of popular sovereignty by stump eloquence, but from the
federal government. The executive power of the territories derives its
existence not from the overflowing fountain of popular sovereignty, but
from the federal government. The Secretaries of the territories are not
appointed by the sovereign people of the territories, but are appointed
independently of popular sovereignty.
But is there nothing in this bill which justifies the supposition that it
contains the principle of popular sovereignty? No, not one word. Even the
territorial councils, elected, not by the people who may settle in the ter-
ritories, but by only certain descriptions of people are subject to a double
veto power, vested first in a governor, which they did not elect, and second
in the President of the United States. The only shadow of popular sover-
eignty is the power given to the people of the territories by this bill to have,
hold, buy and sell human beings. The sovereign right to make slaves
of their fellow—men if they choose is the only sovereignty that the bill
secures.
In all else, popular sovereignty means only what the boy meant when
he said he was going to live with his uncle Robert. He said he was going
there, and that he meant while there, to do just as he pleased, if his uncle
Robert would let him!
I repeat, that the only seeming concession to the idea of popular
sovereignty in this bill is authority to enslave men, and to concede that right
or authority is a hell black denial of popular sovereignty itself.
Whence does popular sovereignty take rise? What and where is its
basis? I should really like to hear from the author of the Nebraska bill, a
philosophical theory, of the nature and origin of popular sovereignty. I
wonder where he would begin, how he would proceed and where he would
end.
The only intelligible principle on which popular sovereignty is
founded, is found in the Declaration of American Independence, there and
in these words: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal and are endowed by their Creator with the right of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
The right of each man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is the
basis of all social and political right, and, therefore, how brass-fronted and
shameless is that impudence, which while it aims to rob men of their
liberty, and to deprive them of the right to the pursuit of happiness—
screams itself hoarse to the words of popular sovereignty.
But again: This bill, this Nebraska bill, gives to the people of the
territories the right to hold slaves. Where did this bill get this right, which it
so generously gives away? Did it get it from Hon. Stephen A. Douglas?
Then I demand where he got that right? Who gave it to him? Was he born
with it? Or has he acquired it by some noble action? I repeat, how came he
by it, or with it, or to have it? Did the people of this State, from whom he
derived his political and legislative life, give him this right, the right to
make slaves of men? Had he any such right?
The answer is, he had not. He is in the condition of a man who has
given away that which is not his own.
But it may be said that Congress has the right to allow the people of the
territories to hold slaves.
The answer is, that Congress is made of men, and possesses only the
rights of men, and unless it can be shown, that some men have a right to
hold their fellow-men as property, Congress has no such right.
There is not a man within the sound of my voice, who has not as good a
right to enslave a brother man, as Congress has. This will not be denied
even by slaveholders.
Then I put the question to you, each of you, all of you, have you any
such right?
To admit such a right is to charge God with folly, to substitute anarchy
for order, and to turn earth into a hell. And you know it.
Now, friends and fellow-citizens, I am uttering no new sentiments at
this point, and am making no new argument. In this respect there is nothing
new under the sun.
Error may be new or it may be old, since it is founded in a misap-
prehension of what truth is. It has its beginnings and has its endings. But
not so with truth. Truth is eternal. Like the great God from whose throne it
emanates, it is from everlasting unto everlasting, and can never pass away.
Such a truth is man’s right to freedom. He was born with it. It was his
before he comprehended it. The title deed to it is written by the Almighty on
his heart, and the record of it is in the bosom of the eternal—and never can
Stephen A. Douglas efface it unless he can tear from the great heart of God
this truth. And this mighty government of ours will never be at peace with
God until it shall, practically and universally, embrace this great truth as
the foundation of all its institutions, and the rule of its entire administration.
Now, gentlemen, I have done. I have no fear for the ultimate triumph
of free principles in this country. The signs of the times are propitious.
Victories have been won by slavery, but they have never been won against
the onward march of anti-slavery principles. The progress of these princi-
ples has been constant, steady, strong and certain. Every victory won by
slavery has had the effect to fling our principles more widely and favorably
among the people. The annexation of Texas—the Florida war—the war
with Mexico—the compromise measures and the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, have all signally vindicated the wisdom of that great God,
who has promised to overrule the wickedness of men for His own glory—to
confound the wisdom of the crafty and bring to naught the counsels of the
ungodly.