A Self-Evident Lie: Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom

7. Republicans, Northern Democrats, andthe Principle of Universal Liberty

120 a self-evident lie • 7 • Republicans, Northern Democrats, and the Principle of Universal Liberty shortly before the inauguration of James buchanan, Joshua r. Giddings captured northerners’ attention when he challenged his democratic colleagues in the House to uphold the principles of the declaration of independence: “i ask any member of the democratic party, north or south, whether that party is ready to stand by those principles? i pause for an answer. i hear no reply. sir, such is the response i always get to my well-defined interrogatories.” southerners unequivocally rejected universal liberty, he observed, while northern democrats sat in silence. in fact, the latter were in a most uncomfortable position. if they were to renounce the declaration, they would be cast off by their constituents; if they sustained it, they would be repudiated by the south. “Thus they vibrate between heaven and hell.” Giddings then took note of senator John Pettit’s characterization of the declaration as “a self-evident lie,” and contended that the entire democratic Party now sanctioned that libel, whether tacitly or explicitly.1 While southerners, under the banner of slavery’s beneficence, threatened American liberty by rejecting or qualifying the declaration of independence , northern democrats did the same under the banner of popular sovereignty. The latter could hardly define slavery as anything less than legitimate, given their adoption of douglas’s “care not” philosophy with respect to the institution’s future. consequently, as Giddings suggested, antislavery northerners believed that southerners and northern democrats both stood guilty of maligning and distorting the founding fathers’ legacy. And they offered the same arguments in response to northern democrats’ denials and qualifications of the declaration as they did to 120 Republicans, Northern Democrats, and the Principle of Universal Liberty 121 southerners’ denials and qualifications. in fact republicans and northern democrats both went to great lengths to align themselves with the revolutionary generation. it is important, therefore, to evaluate the purposes and historical accuracy of their respective arguments—with respect not only to their territorial policies, but also the differences that underlay their mutual opposition to secession. As a national policy, popular sovereignty implied national approval of the institution of slavery whenever and wherever a local majority wanted it. lincoln therefore contended that Pettit only said “what consistency and candor” required all of douglas’s supporters to say. indeed, Pettit was not the only northerner guilty of egregious apostasy. Antislavery northerners also denounced the influential massachusetts senator rufus choate. troubled by the sectional character of the republican Party, choate had declared for buchanan in 1856 and, in a letter to the Whig central committee of maine, had criticized republicans for quoting “the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the declaration of independence.” many new englanders expressed dismay that such a sentiment had come from one of their own. “Glittering generalities!” cried ralphWaldoemerson.“blazingubiquities,rather!”charlesFrancisAdams, the grandson of John Adams, likewise criticized choate for undermining the ideals of the revolution and subverting the people’s liberty with his “poison to freedom.”2 Although northern democrats may have had no love for the institution of slavery, their acceptance of its expansion and perpetuation logically compelled them to join the southern apologists who discarded the principle of universal liberty or qualified it to exclude blacks. in so doing, they sustained the host of arbitrary proslavery rationales, thereby destroying the assumption of human freedom and, therefore, the self-evidence of individual liberty. shortly after Pettit’s infamous speech, the New York Evangelist chastised the senator for his inability to distinguish mankind’s equality of rights from men’s inevitable inequality of condition. “The truth is, the doctrine of equality in original rights is founded upon a limited, and not on universal similarity among men. All are men; all rest upon the generic and central trunk of a common humanity, a common nature as intellectual and moral beings, a common origin and relation as the creatures of God. it is not necessary to be a senator in order to be a man; neither is it necessary to have a white skin, or an expanded intellect.” This universality of natural rights was necessary, explained the editor, given the transience 122 a self-evident lie of circumstance and the subjective lens through which human conditions could be viewed. strength, intelligence, wealth, and beauty were all fragile foundations for the enjoyment of personal freedom. “essential humanity as the basis and...