and establish slavery, the repose, if not the se- | citizens, whose rights it will not, and cannot curity, of the Union may be endangered; all impair. the States south of the river Ohio, and west of Pennsylvania and Delaware, will be peopled with slaves, and the establishment of new States west of the river Mississippi, will serve to extend slavery instead of freedom over that boundless region. Such increase of the States, whatever other interests it may promote, will be sure to add nothing to the security of the public liberties, and can hardly fail, hereafter, to require and produce a change in our government. Besides there is nothing new or peculiar in a provision for the exclusion of slavery; it has been established in the States northwest of the river Ohio, and has existed from the beginning in the old States where slavery is forbidden. The citizens of States where slavery is allowed, may become inhabitants of Missouri, but cannot hold slaves there, nor in any other State where slavery is prohibited. As well might the laws prohibiting slavery in the old States become the subject of complaint, as the proposed exclusion of slavery in Missouri; but there is no foundation for such complaint in either case. It is further urged, that the admission of slaves into Missouri would be limited to the slaves who are already within the Unit On the other hand, if slavery be excluded from Missouri, and the other new States which may be formed in this quarter, not only will the slave markets be broken up, and the principles of freedom be extended and strengthened, but an exposed and important frontier will pre-ed States; that their health and comfort would sent a barrier which will check and keep back foreign assailants, who may be as brave, and, as we hope, will be as free as ourselves. Surrounded in this manner by connected bodies of freemen, the States where slavery is allowed will be made more secure against domestic insurrection, and less liable to be affected by what may take place in the neighboring colonies. It ought not to be forgotten, that the first and main object of the negotiation which led to the acquisition of Louisiana, was the free navigation of the Mississippi; a river that forms the sole passage from the western States to the ocean. This navigation, although of general benefit, has been always valued and desired, as of peculiar advantage to the western States, whose demands to obtain it, were neither equivocal nor unreasonable. But with the river Mississippi, by a sort of coercion, we acquired, by good or ill fortune, as our future measures shall determine, the whole province of Louisiana. As this acquisition was made at the common expense, it is very fairly urged that the advantages to be derived from it should also be common. This, it is said, will not happen if slavery be excluded from Missouri, as the citizens of the States where slavery is permitted will be shut out, and none but citizens of States where slavery is prohibited, can become inhabitants of Missouri. But this consequence will not arise from the proposed exclusion of slavery. The citizens of States in which slavery is allowed, like all other citizens, will be free to become inhabitants of Missouri, in like manner as they have become inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, in which slavery is forbidden. The exclusion of slaves from Missouri will not, therefore, operate unequally among the citizens of the United States. The constitution provides, "that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States;" every citizen may, therefore, remove from one to another State, and there enjoy the rights and immunities of its citizens. The proposed provision excludes slaves, not be promoted by their dispersion, and that their numbers would be the same whether they remain confined to the States where slavery exists, or are dispersed over the new States that may be admitted into the Union. That none but domestic slaves would be introduced into Missouri, and the other new and frontier States, is most fully disproved by the thousands of fresh slaves, which, in violation of our laws, are annually imported into Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. We may renew our efforts, and enact new laws with heavier penalties against the importation of slaves: the revenue cutters may more diligently watch our shores, and the naval force may be employed on the coast of Africa, and on the ocean, to break up the slave trade-but these means will not put an end to it; so long as markets are open for the purchase of slaves, so long they will be supplied;-and so long as we permit the existence of slavery in our new and frontier States, so long slave markets will exist. The plea of humanity is equally inadmissible, since no one who has ever witnessed the experiment, will believe that the condition of slaves is made better by the breaking up, and separation of their families, nor by their removal from the old States to the new ones; and the objection to the provision of the bill, excluding slavery from Missouri, is equally applicable to the like prohibitions of the old States: these should be revoked, in order that the slaves now confined to certain States, may, for their health and comfort, and multiplication, be spread over the whole Union. That the condition of slaves within the United States has been improved, and the rigors of slavery mitigated, by the establishment and progress of our free governments, is a fact that imparts consolation to all who have taken pains to inquire concerning it. The disproportionate increase of free persons of color, can be explained only by the supposition that the practice of emancipation is gaining ground; a practice which there is reason to believe would become more general, if a plan could be devised by which the comfort and morals of the emancipated slaves could be sat- | Slavery cannot exist in Missouri without the consent of Congress; the question may therefore be considered, in certain lights, as a new one, it being the first instance in which an inquiry respecting slavery, in a case so free from the influence of the ancient laws, usages, and manners of the country, has come before the Senate. dangers of domestic insurrection, or of foreign aggression? Will this manner of executing the great trust of admitting new States into the Union, contribute to assimilate our manners and usages, to increase our mutual affection and confidence, and to establish that equality of benefits and burdens which constitutes the true basis of our strength and union? Will the militia of the nation, which must furnish our soldiers and seamen, increase as slaves increase? Will the actual disproportion in the military service of the nation, be thereby diminished? A disproportion that will be, as it has been, readily borne, as between the original States, because it arises out of their compact of Union, but which may become a badge of inferiority, if required for the protection of those who, being free to choose, persist in the establishment of maxims, the inevitable effect of which will deprive them of the power to contribute to the common defence, and even of the ability to protect themselves. There are limits within which our federal system must stop; no one has supposed that it could be indefinitely extended-we are now about to pass our original boundary; if this can be done without affecting the principles of our free governments, it can be accomplished only by the most vigilant attention to plant, cherish, and sustain the principles of liberty in the new States, that may utmost caution in this respect, it may still be justly apprehended that the General Government must be made stronger as we become more extended. The territory of Missouri is beyond our ancient limits, and the inquiry whether slavery shall exist there, is open to many of the argu-be formed beyond our ancient limits: with our ments that might be employed, had slavery never existed within the United States. It is a question of no ordinary importance. Freedom and slavery are the parties which stand this day before the Senate; and upon its decision the empire of the one or the other will be established in the new State which we are about to admit into the Union. If slavery be permitted in Missouri with the climate, and soil, and in the circumstances of this territory, what hope can be entertained that it will ever be prohibited in any of the new States that will be formed in the immense region west of the Mississippi. Will the coextensive establishment of slavery and of the new States throughout this region, lessen the But, if instead of freedom, slavery is to prevail and spread, as we extend our dominion, can any reflecting man fail to see the necessity of giving to the General Government greater powers, to enable it to afford the protection that will be demanded of it? powers that will be difficult to control, and which may prove fatal to the public liberties.* See the speech, on the Missouri Bill, by William Pinkney, in the subsequent pages of this volume. JAMES A. BAYARD. JAMES A. BAYARD was a descendant of Pierre du Terrail Bayard, who is familiarly known as the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. His ancestors were Huguenots, who, fearing the fanatical tendencies of the age, abandoned their estates in France, some time prior to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and emigrated to America. They settled in New York, and, at a subsequent period, one of them removed to Maryland, and there established his residence. From this branch of the family the subject of this sketch was descended. He was born in Philadelphia on the twenty-eighth day of July, 1767. His father, Doctor James A. Bayard, was a practitioner of medicine of great promise and an increasing reputation at the time of his death, in 1770. His uncle, Colonel John Bayard, occupied a prominent position in the councils of Pennsylvania, during the war of the Revolution, and for many years was speaker of the Legislature of that State. After the death of his parents, young Bayard was placed in the care of this uncle, and continued as a member of his family for a long period. He prepared for college under the supervision of the Reverend Mr. Smith, a respectable clergyman of Lancaster county, and a private tutor, in his uncle's family, and in 1780, matriculated at the College of New Jersey. From this institution, he graduated in 1784, with distinguished honor, and gave a pledge of future eminence, in the reputation he carried with him into the more extended scenes of life. Having decided to pursue the profession of the law, he commenced his studies under the direction of General Joseph Reed, and on his decease, removed to the office of Jared Ingersoll, where he remained until the close of his legal course. He selected the State of Delaware as the theatre for the pursuit of his profession, and, in the year 1787, was admitted to the bar of the Court of Common Pleas for the county of New Castle. The first years of his professional life were spent in severe study, at the same time acquiring the principles of general jurisprudence, and a thorough knowledge of political science, both of which were of the greatest service to him at the bar and in the halls of legislation. In the autumn of the year 1796, he was elected a member of the House of Representatives, and remained in public life, from that moment, through all the vicissitudes of party triumph and defeat, until the time of his death. Actively engaged in political and professional duties, he contrived to reconcile their endless varieties, and evinced a rare and happy aptitude for both. At the same moment one of the most conspicuous supporters of the Federal administration, and a leader of acknowledged ability in the House of Representatives-and the chief ornament of the forum, where he had chosen to excel. At once the profound jurist and the accomplished statesman; the acute, ingenious, and dexterous advocate, and the eloquent and dignified occupant of the parliamentary floor. The same efforts of industry, and powers of genius, that qualified and calculated him for superiority in the less magnified but intricate controversies of individuals, readily enabled him to extend his intellectual grasp to the comprehension of more enlarged topics of general interest, which involved the duties and the policy, the happiness and the rights of nations. The study and practice of the law is calculated to add vigor to a mind naturally strong. In a country emphatically subject to the government of the laws alone, the remark is peculiarly obvious and perpetually illustrated; and from the multitude of the profes sors of that science, who have borne the weight of public councils, and successfully endeavored to ennoble by their efforts the national character, it derives irresistible weight and authority. To Mr. Bayard's early adoption and active and vigorous pursuit of this profession, are to be ascribed, in no unimportant degree, the method of his arguments, and the logical accuracy of his inferences. In July, 1797, a short time after his appearance in Congress, Mr. Bayard was appointed one of a committee to prepare and report articles of impeachment against William Blount, a United States senator; and in the following session of that Congress he was a member of the committee to conduct the impeachment, and finally was elected chairman of that body. In the trial, Mr. Blount pleaded to the jurisdiction of the Senate, upon the principle that a senator is not a civil officer, within the meaning of the constitution; and that the courts of common law were competent to the cognizance, prosecution, and punishment of the said crimes and misdemeanors, if the same have been perpetrated, as has been suggested and charged by the said articles." The preliminary question growing out of this plea was to be discussed, and the direction of this delicate and interesting inquiry, was submitted to the chairman, and Mr. Harper, one of the managers. The subject underwent a laborious and ingenious discussion, in which the constitution was thoroughly sifted, and the doctrines of the common law of England bearing a remote or close analogy to the point in controversy, were made tributary to the talents of the respective advocates. The decision was adverse to the managers; a majority of fourteen to eleven senators deciding "that the matter alleged in the plea of the defendant is sufficient in law to show that this court ought not to hold jurisdiction of the said impeachment, and that the said impeachment is dismissed." The efforts were abortive, because the cause was insupportable; but the exertion was not the less honorable, nor the display of genius and erudition the less brilliant, because success did not crown them. John Adams, a short time previous to the expiration of his presidential term, appointed Mr. Bayard minister to the French republic, but owing to the delicate position in which he was placed, by the part he had taken in the contest which terminated in the election of Mr. Jefferson, he declined the proffered honor.* In a letter on this subject, addressed to a near relative and one of his earliest friends, he thus explained his motives for the refusal. "Under proper circumstances, the acceptance would have been complete gratification; but under the existing circumstances, I thought the resignation most honorable. To have taken eighteen thousand dollars out of the public treasury, with a knowledge that no service could be rendered by me, as the French Government would have waited for a man who represented the existing feelings and views of this government, would have been disgraceful. Another consideration of great weight, arose from the part I took in the presidential election. As I had given the turn to the election, it was impossible for me to accept an office, which would be held on the tenure of Mr. Jefferson's pleasure. My ambition shall never be gratified at the expense of a suspicion. I shall never lose sight of the motto of the great original of our name."† At the first election of President Jefferson, an extraordinary scene was displayed. The constitution provides, that "the person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such a majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President." In that situation stood the candidates, and the election devolved of consequence upon the House of Representatives. No less than thirty-six times was the vote ineffectual, each party, equally zealous, and equally numerous, adhering to its candidate. The federalists of the House adopted, as they believed the less evil, the side of Mr. Burr, and persevered during so many abortive efforts to give him their votes. It was at length perceived, that a pertinacious adherence to this course of conduct might expose the country to greater embarrassment and difficulty than even the selection of a President who was considered dangerous; and some of the federalists determined to withdraw from him their opposition, without giving him direct countenance and support. They accordingly threw into the box blank votes; and the election of Mr. Jefferson was thus obtained. By a sacrifice of personal feeling and judgment, which required no ordinary firmness and magnanimity, Mr. Bayard, by this means, principally contributed to place in the Executive chair, the decided enemy of the men and measures that he personally approved; and removed to a distance, apparently insurmountable, the fulfilment, if they existed, of his own political aspirations. But the good of the country required it, and the sacrifice was made.—Analectic, vol. 7, page 889. + Appendix of Sullivan's Familiar Letters on Public Characters. This work contains an able defence of the political course of Mr. Bayard. During the debates on the Judiciary system, in the early part of the year 1802, Mr. Bayard took an active part. "On this memorable occasion," says his biographer, "all parties united in paying homage to his abilities. It will not be invidious to remark, that in the constellation of talents that glittered in that transaction, none were more conspicuous than his. He was alike distinguished for the depth of his knowledge, the solidity of his reasoning, and the perspicuity of his illustration. On his own side of the House his range was pronounced to be 'commensurate with the extent of his own mighty mind, and with the magnitude of the subject,' which was declared to be as awful as any on this side of the grave. On the part of the majority he was termed the Goliath of the adverse party, and sarcastically, but with truth, denominated the high priest of the constitution." His speech on this occasion is included in this volume. In November, 1804, he was chosen by the legislature of Delaware, a senator of the United States, to fill a vacancy, and in February of the next year, was again elected to that dignified and honorable station, where he continued until the spring of the year 1813. During the session of Congress, he was generally at his post, the faithful supporter of the principles he brought with him into public life, and in the recess of legislative duty, he successfully pursued his professional labors, and maintained and increased the reputation he acquired at an early period of his life. In 1813, when the intelligence of the commencement of hostilities between the United States and Great Britain reached Europe, the Emperor of Russia offered his mediation to both nations. This offer was accepted by President Madison, and Mr. Bayard, Mr. Gallatin, and Mr. Adams, were appointed commissioners, "fully charged to conclude a peace upon the terms set forth in the declaration of war, and upon no others," and directed to proceed immediately to St. Petersburg. Early in May the negotiators sailed from Philadelphia, and on the twenty-first of July following, they arrived at the Russian court. Alexander, the emperor, under whose auspices the negotiation was undertaken, was with his armies in Germany, and intelligence of the sentiments of the British Government on the terms proposed, was not yet received. Mr. Bayard concluding that the hopes of peace were blasted, left St. Petersburg and passed over into Holland, from thence to return to America. In the mean time Lord Cathcart had communicated to the Russian court the non-acceptance by the Prince Regent of the interposition of the emperor as to the question which constituted the principal object in dispute between the two States, and his readiness, nevertheless, to nominate plenipotentiaries to treat directly with the American envoys. The Bramble was despatched to America with the view of communicating these circumstances; and proposing at the same time London or Gottenburg as the scene of operations. The proposal was accepted, and Gottenburg was selected as neutral ground. New commissions were issued, and Mr. Clay and Mr. Russel were despatched to join the other members of the mission. Mr. Bayard was now in England, and the negotiations having been transferred from Gottenburg to Ghent, he immediately proceeded to that place, where he arrived on the twenty-seventh of June, 1814. Here he found Mr. Adams and Mr. Russel, and in a few days they were joined by Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Clay. The British commissioners did not arrive until the early part of August. During the delay occasioned by their absence, Mr. Bayard wrote thus to a friend in America: "Nothing favorable can be augured from the delay in sending their commissioners to the rendezvous agreed to at their instance as the seat of the negotiations. Our commissioners have all been here more than a month, and we have not yet heard that theirs are even preparing to quit London. We expect them daily, but so we have done for twenty days past, and so we shall till they arrive, or till we learn that they do not mean to come at all. I assure you, between ourselves, my hopes of peace are very slender. The Government of England affect to despise us, but they know we are a growing and dangerous rival. If they could crush us at the present moment, they would not fail to do it; and I am inclined to think that they will not make peace till they have tried the effect of all their force against us. An united, firm, and courageous resistance upon our part, alone, in my opinion, can furnish hopes of a safe and honorable peace to the United States. I wish I could present you with different views; but what does it avail to deceive ourselves? By shutting our eyes upon danger we may cease to see it, |