Their
misfortune, or their fault, is that they have lent a too easy ear to the
insinuations of those who are our mortal enemies, while they would not
hear us.
Now I wish to inquire, in the first place, honestly, candidly, and
fairly, whether the Southern gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber
that complain so much, have any reasonable grounds for that complaint--I
mean when they are really informed as to our position.
Northern Democrats have sometimes said that we had personal liberty
bills in some few of the States of the North, which somehow trenched
upon the rights of the South under the fugitive bill to recapture their
runaway slaves; a position that in not more than two or three cases,
so far as I can see, has the slightest foundation in fact; and even if
those where it is most complained of, if the provisions of their law are
really repugnant to that of the United States, they are utterly void,
and the courts would declare them so the moment you brought them up.
Thus it is that I am glad to hear the candor of those gentlemen on the
other side, that they do not complain of these laws. The Senator from
Georgia (Mr. Iverson) himself told us that they had never suffered any
injury, to his knowledge and belief, from those bills, and they cared
nothing about them.
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