Letter from Wm. Shattuck.

Attainder considered—In what light it consists —Its exercise restricted by the Federal Constitution—The restrictions disregarded, &c.

Lexecographers, and all eminent writers on
jurisprudence, I believe, agree that attainder
is the legal attainting the blood of individ
uals, thereby depriving them of some, or all
of the common rights and privileges of so
ciety. But the following facts lead me to
query, whether the above definition is the one
recognized by our Government. In the 9th
section of the first article in the Federal
Constitution, Congress is prohibited from
passing any bill of attander; and in the 10th
section of the same article, the several states
are also prohibited in like manner. Yet we
find Congress passing bills authorizing sla
very, both in the Federal Districts and the
Federal Territories—also authorizing new
States, hereafter formed from the Terri
tories of Utah and New Mexico, to establish
slavery by their respective State Constitu
tions! Bills passed by the Slave States, en
slaving citizens from the Free States, for the
non-payment of jail fees for imprisonment,
are not only acquiesced in by the General
Government, but inforced by the Fugitive
Slave Bill, without process, Judge, jury or
evidence.

How do the people of the United States
reconcile those enactments with the Federal
Constitution? Those who sympathize with
slavery and slaveholders, would make us be
lieve that attainder is confined to the an
cient English practice, of taking, by statute,
from criminals and their children some or all
of their natural rights; but that the term
cannot apply to persons deprived of rights,
whose ancestors, or themselves, have not
been condemned for crime; therefore the
prohibition of attainders in the Constitution
aforesaid, does not prohibit the slavery en
actments! They ask us to infer that altho'
our ancestors shielded by a constitutional
provision criminals and their children, they
intentionally left the innocent victims of
cruel piracy, and their children to be chattel
ized and imbruted; and bound the nation to
assist in the hellish work! And this horri
ble absurdity is attempted to be proven from
the fact, that those States where slavery ex
isted when the Constitution was adopted, all
continued to exercise it as before, until some
of them abolished it by State laws.

Were we driven to judge of this subject
by extraneous or circumstantial evidence, I
acknowledge some difficulty might arise in
deciding it. There was a difference of opin
ion in the convention which drafted the Con
stitution; those from South Carolina and
Georgia were in favor of continuing slavery
for a time; those from the other States were
for its immediate suppression. All agreed
that it was contrary to justice and the foun
dation principles of our Government, and
should be finally suppressed. They well
understood that it had been decided in the
King's Bench of England in 1772 that slavery
was contrary to the Constitution of that Gov
ernment (of which we were then subjects)
and the common law. They also must have
known that slavery existed only by usurpa
tion, not having been established by any
statute either of England or America.^**This was virtually admitted by J. C. Calhoun on the floor of Congress. He contended that the Slave States held their slaves by the same tenure as they did their horses; that they derived their original title by purchase of legitimate importers. All,
therefore, which the friends of freedom
thought necessary to do on the subject of sla
very, was to draft just such an instrument as
if there had been no slavery in the land;
and those who were in favor of temporary
slavery, were willing to trust the subject (as
they had before) to usurpation, with perhaps
an understanding that a spirit of forbearance
on the part of the General Government
would suffer the States to continue the usur
pation which originated with the imposters
of England, until they could more conven
iently release their slaves, as each State be
came prepared for the charge. The Consti
tution has not the word slavery in it. The
convention was as careful not to recognize
it as a legitimate institution, as they were
highway robbery or common piracy. It is
evident they intended to give no counten
ance to slavery. But it is not what they said
or intended, but what they wrote and exhib
ited to the people, which now concerns us.
They sat with closed doors, and their delib
erations were not made public for many
years. The people examined and accepted
of what they wrote, and presented to them

and agreed to be bound by it. It not only
prohibits slavery, but all oppression. It pro
hibits South Carolina from imprisoning
Northern seamen—Virginia from driving
free people of color from the State-Indiana
and Illinois from prohibiting colored persons
from other States settling there, or purchas
ing or holding real estate.

I know that the above facts, and many of
the conclusions drawn therefrom, have been
better expressed by William Goodell, Lysan
der Spooner, Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. and others; but I
wish to stir up the pure mind by way of re
membrance. My lease is almost out; I wish
to do my duty in the premises quickly.-
Shall we petition Congress at its next ses
sion to take proper measures for carrying
into effect the prohibitions of the Constitu
tion against attainder? or is "Ephraim joined
to his idols?" Is our worthy, quick-sighted
friend, John Thomas, Esq., indeed correct in
viewing the two great political parties, in ef
fect, a conspiracy against freedom, and that
our Judiciary is pledged to carry it on? I
confess circumstances justify this awful con
clusion. But I would fain hope (almost
against hope) that a petition put into the
hands of freedom's peerless son, Gerrit
Smith, would at least do some good. It will
show the people that the dominent political
parties deprive millions of the rights for
which our Father contended, and which were
guaranteed by the Constitution.

WM. SHATTUCKShattuck, William

.