In a speech to the House of Representatives that he delivered on Jan. 18 and 20, 1840, William Slade (1786-1859), made one of that era’s strongest defenses of the First Amendment right to petition and related rights. Slade was a graduate of Middlebury College who became a lawyer, served as editor of the Columbian Patriot, and was elected as a Whig congressman from Vermont.
Slade's speech in Congress
Slade delivered his speech in opposition to a congressional proposal that would have tabled and opposed any petition “for the abolition of slavery or the slave trade in any District, Territory, of State of the Union.” Congressman and former President John Quincy Adams and others had battled similar gag orders for many years, but Slade’s speech arguably rivaled that of Adams in its logic and eloquence.
Slade’s speech was particularly impressive for explicating the U.S. Constitution at a time when there were far few published materials about it than there are today.
Emphasis on the right to petition
Slade’s 45-page speech ranged over a wide field, but its central focus was the First Amendment, and particularly its right of petition.
Slade defined the right to petition as the right “To ask for something desired; and to ask of some being—individual or aggregate—who has ears to hear” (p. 5). He compared the right to petition to the right to offer prayers to the Almighty, whom Scripture promises His people that He would hear. Slade acknowledged that both English and American parliamentary law allowed representative bodies to reject petitions “for absurd, ridiculous, or practicable objects, presented in a spirit of mere wantonness” or for objects that were “flagrant and undeniably” unconstitutional, such as those that would abridge the Constitution itself (p, 6). However, he viewed such exceptions as relatively small and inapplicable to the matter under discussion.
“…the right of petition is, next to the right of suffrage, the most important and efficient of the political rights secured to the People. It carries with it a tremendous power; for, though it wears the modest garb of a right to request, it really possesses, by its moral influence, and by the consciousness of responsibility which it awakens in the representative body, the power almost of command." (p. 6).
Although the right of voting could only be exercised “periodically,” the right of petition could be exercised ”continually,” he said.
Slade observed that this right “is a standing constitutional medium of communication from the people to their Representatives. Its sacredness should be guarded, therefore, with the most wakeful jealousy; and it is thus guarded. There is no right concerning which the People are more jealous than this” (p. 6). In an argument addressing southern arguments in favor of states’ rights, Slade said that a limit on accepting petitions from individuals would also limit the rights of the sovereign states to petition on their own behalf.
Arguments about congressional power over slavery
Much of Slade’s speech involved the constitutional rights of the national government to ban slavery from the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories and centered on speeches, debates and legislation in early congresses that confirmed such a power. He effectively argued that the Constitution had referred to slaves as persons rather than as property and that when the Constitution was written and adopted even many southerners had expressed their view that it was a moral wrong and had expected that slavery would die out as it had in the North either on its own accord or through legislation.
Importance of First Amendment rights
Slade believed that natural rights of freedom trumped the rights of property enacted by human laws and that “these slaves, if they are black, are my brethren.” Citing the biblical affirmation [Acts 17:26] “that God made of one blood all nations of men,” Slade affirmed that “these slaves are men; and they have feelings, too, as well as I, and rights as well as I; and I can’t help feeling for them, and saying what I think about their being held in bondage. In fact, I don’t see why the men that pretend to own them might not just as well pretend to own me, and come here and take me” (p. 17).
Slade reaffirmed that individuals had the right to petition on behalf of such rights.“These rights of speaking, and writing, and printing, and petitioning, are great rights, which I am thinking these Constitution-makers would have had no business to stop the exercise of, even if they had put it in the Constitution; and certainly that it cannot be stopped merely because they stopped talking about slavery” (p. 17).
After again analogizing the right of petition to that of prayer, Slade observed “It’s a pretty great affair to take away these natural rights of speaking and printing and petitioning; and especially to take them away in such a case as this” (p. 15). He also ridiculed the idea that just because the framers of the Constitution, many of whom had viewed slavery as a moral evil, had left slavery in place where it then existed, they intended to cut off all future discussion of the subject.
In arguments like those of John Stuart Mill, Slade observed that instead of outlawing slavery, “the Constitution guaranteed to it [truth] a tongue and a press, and left to go forth to its mighty conflict with error” (p. 20). In words similar to those that Abraham Lincoln would later echo, Slade argued that suppression of First Amendment rights of free expression was more likely to dissolve than to preserve the Union and that slavery and First Amendment freedoms could not easily coexist. He rhetorically asked “is slavery to be put in competition with the freedom of speech, and of the press, and the right of petition? Which shall be surrendered, the slavery of the black man? Or the noblest freedom of the white man? If both cannot live together, which shall die?” (p. 21) Seeking to use the power of persuasion to eliminate slavery, he later said that dissolving the union would be “like jumping into the crater of a volcano to escape its smoke and cinders” (p. 33).
Slade believed that under the U.S. Constitution, the slave power (partly aided by the three-fifths clause, which had increased southern representation in Congress and in the Electoral College, had been growing rather than diminishing, He encouraged those who opposed slavery to “stand firm upon the ground of constitutional right and never surrender for one moment those great weapons of fair and honest warfare against slavery—freedom of speech—freedom of the press—and freedom of petition” (p. 33).
Abolitionists
Whereas other had criticized abolitionists, Slade argued that their attempt to liberate human beings was intended “to emancipate mind from complete human dominion, and raise it to freedom of thought, freedom of purpose, and conscious responsibility to the God of the Universe. It is to open the Bible, now shut to millions of human beings, and to give them the privilege, and aid them to enjoy it, of ‘searching the Scriptures,’ which are ‘able to make them wise unto salvation [quoted from 2 Tim. 3:15]’” (p. 33).
Although he did not approve of all abolitionist actions, he though that the movement was motivated by “Free Speech and a Free Press—a freedom restrained by truth and the spirit of the religion of Christ” (p. 34). He tied the movement to similar movements in Great Britain and France, and he believed it would ultimately succeed by appealing to the power of “conscience” (p. 38).
Much like Abraham Lincoln, Slade did not condemn all slaveholders. He observed that “There is One [God] that judgeth” (p. 38), but he commended “justice” over “expediency” in dealing with emancipation (p. 39) and made practical arguments in favor of immediate over gradual emancipation.
Need for moral reform and a new president
Although he not previously relied on the religion clauses of the First Amendment in his speech, Slade argued that “Abolition is eminently a moral and religious enterprise” that must begin with the church (p. 42). He would accordingly “place moral abolition in the front” and “political abolition . . . in the rear” (p. 42).
Slade arguably undercut his argument by endorsing William Henry Harrison, the Whig candidate who had not clearly stated his own views on slavery, in the presidential election against Martin Van Buren, the Democrat. He did so in part because he thought Van Buren was corrupt and in part because Harrison’s father had been one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, which, like contemporary abolitionists, had declared that all men are created equal (p. 44).
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.