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JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 A SKETCH. 
 
 WALTER BUELL 
 
 " I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept 
 the faith." 
 
 f L Off / ^i-' 
 
 CLEVELAND: 
 
 WILLIAM W. WILLIAMS. 
 
 1882. 
 
Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1882, 
 
 By WILLIAM W. WILLIAMS, 
 in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
GiDDiNGS, far rougher names than thine have grown 
 
 Smoother than honey on the hps of men; 
 And thou shalt aye be honorably known, 
 
 As one who bravely used the tongue and pen 
 As best befits a freeman ; — even for those 
 
 To whom our laws' unblushing front denies 
 A right to plead against the life-long woes 
 
 Which are the negroes' glimpse of freedom's skies. 
 Fear nothing and hope all things, as the right 
 
 Alone may do securely; every hour 
 The thrones of ignorance and ancient Night 
 
 Lose somewhat of their long usurped power; 
 And freedom's lightest word can make them shiver 
 
 With a base dread that clings to them forever. 
 
 — William Cullen Bryant. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Read any page of the history of the final strug- 
 gle m and out of Congress which culminated in the 
 war of the Rebellion, and resulted in the abolition 
 of slavery in the United States, and you will en- 
 counter the name of Joshua R. Giddings. The 
 history of that contest is given elsewhere in this 
 volume and must convey, to one who reads it, a 
 sufficient understanding of the relation of parties 
 and the bearings of the all important question in 
 1838, when Mr. Giddings entered the House of 
 Representatives. The present generation is intol- 
 erant of any theory of affairs which supposes a 
 providential agency ; like the French of the great 
 revolution, it has taken down the Holy Image 
 
 from the temple, and in the empty niche placed 
 
 9 
 
lO JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 the brazen figure of Chance. Were it not so, 
 had we half the practical and literal faith of a hun_ 
 dred years ago, it would be difficult to doubt 
 that Giddings was chosen before his birth for 
 the great work to which he devoted the best 
 years of his life ; that his clearness of brain and of 
 moral vision was given him that he might see the 
 right, and seeing it, unfalteringly uphold it in the 
 face of the bitter opposition, the deadly personal 
 hatred, the venomous slanders and malice of his 
 opponents. When he was born, the old struggle 
 against the slave trade was not yet passed. 
 Throughout his youth the engrossing demands of 
 war and the inactivity which followed a victory 
 gained by the friends of the negro, in the in- 
 terdiction of the slave trade, kept the subject 
 in abeyance. In the prime of his early man- 
 hood, while he was receiving the discipline of legal 
 practice and serving an apprenticeship in the coun- 
 cils of his own State, there entered the House of 
 Representatives a venerable and noble man, who 
 took up the burthen which the old champions of 
 liberty had left by the wayside, and, almost single- 
 handed, carried the war into the country of a 
 united and powerful enemy. That man was John 
 Quincy Adams — scholar, diplomat, and, in the 
 best sense of the word, statesman. He stood 
 not entirely unsupported in his advocacy, but so 
 far in advance of the few of his inclining as to be 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I I 
 
 quite alone — the single target of all the blows of a 
 most malignant foe. Thus he remained until 1838, 
 when Joshua R. Giddings entered Congress. Gid- 
 dings accepted his election and took his seat, in- 
 tending for one session at least, to learn and vote 
 — not to talk. On an early day following the organi- 
 zation of the House, the proposal of the infamous 
 Atherton gag rule, the object of which was to deny 
 the right of anti-slavery petition and discussion, 
 was, by the united vote of Southern slavocrats 
 and Northern doughfaces, forced upon the House. 
 This outrage set the young man to thinking ; other 
 high-handed measures in the House, and the sight 
 of some of the lesser abuses of the slave system 
 without, made him think the more, until he saw 
 his duty clearly, cast his lot — and with him such 
 an act was irrevocable — with the little band of anti- 
 slavery men, and Adams, already seventy-three 
 years old and feeling the infirmity of body which 
 never touched his mind, found standing beside him, 
 with brawny shoulder to his own, an unknown 
 champion. 
 
 For a year or two Giddings was a learner, yet 
 he drew from the gray head of his tpaster many a 
 blow, and when, nine years after his entry upon 
 the arena, Adams fell in his place, the mantle, the 
 inspiration, and the guardianship of the cause 
 which he had held so dear, fell to the younger but 
 not less earnest man. Congress was then divided 
 
12 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, 
 
 among slaveholders, their Northern sympathizers, 
 the doughfaces who had no principles or, having 
 them, feared to acknowledge them, and the little 
 band of anti-slavery advocates — a forlorn hope in- 
 deed — which, when Adams fell, would certainly, 
 for the time, have ceased to be an appreciable 
 element in the problem, had not Giddings stood 
 ready to lead it. No man in Congress save he, 
 had at once ability, courage, and honesty in the 
 measure demanded for the task. Of all these qual- 
 ities he possessed enough and to spare. He car- 
 ried the contest on until the tide was turned, the 
 once despised cause had become popular, until the 
 question was ripe for the stern arbitrament by 
 which it was finally decided. If his birth, educa- 
 tion, election, choice of place and splendid service 
 were but a series of chances, then indeed was the 
 goddess kind to the American people. 
 
 Joshua R. Giddings was remotely of English 
 stock, an ancestor having emigrated from Eng- 
 land in 1635, and settled at Gloucester, Massa- 
 chusetts. His great-grandfather removed from 
 Massachusetts to Lynn, Connecticut, in 1725, and 
 there Joshua Giddings, father of the future Con- 
 gressman, was born. Later the family lived at 
 Howland, Connecticut, and in 1773, Joshua Gid- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 3 
 
 dings, having married, followed the westward tide 
 of emigration, settling in Bradford county, Penn- 
 sylvania, at the little town of Tioga Point, where 
 Joshua R. Giddings was born on the 6th day of 
 October, 1795. Pennsylvania can not be said to 
 have made any considerable direct contribution to 
 the spirit and taste of the boy, for he was but six 
 weeks of age when his father, who was endued with 
 the characteristic spirit of an American pioneer, 
 again broke up his home and moved to the village 
 of Canandaigua, New York, then standing very 
 near the western limits of civilization, and holding, 
 as it did for many years after, an unquestioned 
 place as the social and intellectual capital of west- 
 ern New York. 
 
 At Canandaigua the family remained until the 
 spring of 1806, when, having made an exchange 
 of his farm at that place for a large tract of wild 
 land in what is now Wayne township, Ashtabula 
 county, the family, save the father and the eldest 
 son, who had preceded, set out, with farm stock 
 and household goods, upon the weary journey in- 
 to the heart of the Ohio wilderness. Hon. A. G. 
 Riddle has written graphically of that journey, as 
 follows : 
 
 "The 1 6th of June, 1806, was noted for a total 
 eclipse of the sun. Darkness came down on an 
 emigrant train of four oxen slowly moving a wag- 
 on in which were a middle-aged woman, a fresh 
 
14 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 young girl, a bride, whose young husband drove the 
 cattle and guided the movement, aided by a youth 
 and attended by a lad often. Just across the Ohio 
 and Pennsylvania line were they when darkness 
 came down and they were obliged to camp in the 
 woods. They journeyed all the way from Canan- 
 daigua, for weeks, on the road ; from Buffalo much 
 of the way on the lake beach, beaten hard by the 
 waves ; one night they camped in the forest, caused 
 by the breaking of the wagon. They were kept 
 awake by the howling of the near wolves, the 
 most melancholy and plaintive sound of all the 
 wilds. At nightfall of the 2ist they crossed a 
 stream called by the natives Pymatuning; on the 
 bank they found a deserted wigwam, where they 
 passed the night not far from the famous Omica's 
 town. The next day they made their way across 
 the woods to where the center of Wayne nov/ 
 is, in Ashtabula county, where they found a new 
 rude cabin, without hearth, chimney, or window, 
 surrounded by a small clearing, prepared by the 
 father and eldest son, who had preceded them." 
 
 The life of the Giddings family during those 
 first years in Ohio has been described a thousand 
 times ; for only in detail does it differ from that 
 of any other of the hundreds who emigrated at 
 nearly the same time. The greater part was made 
 up of hard, constant, wearing toil against all the 
 odds of nature, which had been for ages entrench- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 5 
 
 ing itself upon the virgin soil. Neighbors were 
 few and distant. Time, too, was precious; when 
 leisure came arms were tired and eyes heavy ; 
 the woods were trackless in the gloom or deep 
 with snow. So there was little society save 
 that of the home circle, and the independence or 
 self-dependence, which the father had learned in 
 Pennsylvania and New York, came practically and 
 naturally to the sons. This independence was not 
 merely a matter of spirit ; it extended to all the 
 practicalities of life. Food they won from the ever- 
 enlarging clearing, from the forest, with gun or 
 line ; their corn and wheat they at first ground in 
 a mortar hollowed in the top of a stump, by 
 means of a stone pestle attached to a pole above 
 it ; later, when a mill was built in the * ' neighbor- 
 hood" — and neighborhood meant anywhere within 
 fifty miles — the grist was carried thither on horse- 
 back. Clothing was the product of their own soil 
 and flocks; was carded, hatcheled, spun, and 
 woven by the women of the house; and thus there 
 was a necessary self-sufficiency in the life that 
 taught self-denial as well as self-reliance. The 
 story does not need re-telling in these pages. Call 
 on any one of the fast diminishing number of 
 pioneers; tell him your curiosity to know how 
 he and his fared seventy years ago. With a ready 
 hospitality that went out of date with home-used 
 spinning wheels, and cards, he will bid you stay, 
 
l6 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 will draw you near the fire and tell you the very 
 story that would be written here were the fortunes 
 of young Giddings to be followed day by day from 
 that June morning when he first reached his 
 father's new home until he came to maturity. 
 
 The uncleared farm in Wayne lay at the very cen- 
 ter of the Western Reserve, — which, years after, 
 stump speakers and writers of political editorials 
 among the southern Democrats and the ''dough- 
 faces," were wont to sneer at as a State separate 
 and distinct from Ohio. It lay not at the geo- 
 graphical center but at the moral center. About it 
 there grew up on all sides a community so firm 
 and fearless; so impatient of wrong and injustice; 
 so hard-headed, practical and sensible ; so liberal 
 and enlightened, that from it spread the influ- 
 ence which the Western Reserve so early began 
 to exert over the opinions and in the counsels of 
 State and Nation, and which has known no change 
 or diminution since that day. 
 
 We are tempted to give the Western Reserve 
 credit for having made such men as Giddings, 
 Wade, and Garfield. It is not so. Giddings, 
 Wade, and Garfield, their fathers, brothers, and 
 friends, those hundreds who thought as rightly 
 and spoke as strongly in the counsels of towns and 
 villages and in the circle of the home, as did these 
 others in the broader arena of American affairs, 
 made the Reserve, as surely as the Puritans made 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, 1/ 
 
 Massachusetts, the CavaHers Virginia, or the Dutch 
 New Amsterdam. Yet back of all this there is 
 an indebtedness of the individual to the spirit of 
 the place. The Giddings family came to Ohio, 
 people of broad and cosmopolitan taste and 
 view, as compared with most of their neigh- 
 bors. They had as a family come in contact, 
 before their removal to Ohio, with many com- 
 munities in four States — Massachusetts and Con- 
 necticut, where they laid the best o^ all founda- 
 tions of character and opinion, in a genuine New 
 England atmosphere; Pennsylvania, rude and 
 ready, and if prejudiced, prejudiced in a channel 
 quite different from that of the Puritans; and 
 then New York, where modified Massachusetts 
 and mollified Connecticut had merged into a 
 society far in advance of any west of the old 
 towns on the Mohawk and Hudson. Coming 
 thus to Ohio after so diverse a life, the Giddings 
 family had learned more than half the lesson which 
 their neighbors, coming directly from the old Con- 
 necticut soil, were to study for a lifetime. There 
 is surely something in western air and life which 
 seems to melt the intellectual and moral starch of 
 the New Englander and, after a generation, pro- 
 duces from the fully acclimated stock a something 
 which, while it has not the reckless, swaggering 
 freedom of Kentucky or Texas, is as far from the 
 grim and somewhat repellant stiffness of Connect- 
 
1 8 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 icut ; and, like most social resultants, is superior to 
 either of the elements which produced it. 
 
 There is no doubt that much of Giddings' influ- 
 ence and success as a representative of his district 
 arose from his thorough sympathy with and appre- 
 ciation of the opinions and spirit of his constitu- 
 ents. Every day of his boyish life, on the farm 
 and in the woods of Ashtabula county, contributed 
 to this result. He may almost be said to have 
 been present at the birth of the Western Reserve, 
 and he grew up in the midst of the formation and 
 development of the distinctive social and political 
 faith which, in its maturity, made the opinions 
 and the votes of his neighbors and friends so far 
 transcend in influence their mere numerical value. 
 He never had need of feeling the pulse of his con- 
 stituents, for it beat in his own body ; he never 
 erred in forecasting their views upon any political 
 question, for, giving due latitude for minor differ- 
 ences, it was always his own. 
 
 Riddle has given us an a postei'iori picture of 
 Giddings as a boy, evolved from his familiarity 
 with him in later life — "a tall, raw, shapeless boy, 
 with pleasant face, frolicsome gray eyes and an 
 abundance of light curly hair that grew dark, fair- 
 ish until the sun tanned him." He had everything 
 to learn save the alphabet, when he came to Ohio: 
 the subduing of the forest which stood between 
 the farmer and his future crops, the care of the 
 
JOSHUA R, GIDDINGS. I9 
 
 cattle, and the never ceasing round of farm duties 
 called for every hand, and no small share of the 
 lighter labor fell to his lot. There was little op- 
 portunity for systematic education for any one; less 
 for the busy son of a poor man, but the boy had 
 that in him of more worth than tutors, scholar- 
 ships, or wealth — an insatiable appetite for knowl- 
 edp-e, which p^rew in the face of difficulties, fed and 
 thrived upon the smallest food, and found new 
 keenness in the very discouragement of the quest. 
 We are told that the entire time passed by him at 
 school was not beyond a few weeks. With the 
 small capital which his knowledge of the alphabet 
 gave him he worked out his own intellectual salva- 
 tion. Books were very few in the country about ; 
 of such as there were he became possessed as 
 owner or borrower. If he heard of some new 
 treasure, no miles of walking through woods and 
 across fords, wet or dry, winter or summer, could 
 deter him from its pursuit. He was omniverous ; 
 nothing was too dry, too profound, too stupid for 
 him. Not only did he read everything that came 
 in his way but, v/ith the mental digestion of an 
 ostrich, he mastered and assimilated the very 
 broken glass and old iron of philosophy, theology 
 and science. With such a heterogeneous collection 
 of matter he acquired a most catholic taste. Trav- 
 els, biography, poetry, fiction — he read them all, 
 was thankful, but, like the young raven of the 
 
20 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 wilderness, ever opened his mouth for more. In 
 some way he became possessed of an old copy of 
 Lindley Murray's grammar — surely not an enticing 
 book ; this he studied and mastered, making him- 
 self thoroughly conversant with the how, and so 
 far as any person not inspired can know, the why 
 of the English tongue. 
 
 All this time he was laboring in the fields or 
 roaming the woods with gun and rod, not as an 
 idler, but as a purveyor for his family ; he was 
 growing to be a young giant in frame and in 
 strength as well. In all matters of manly skill he 
 yN'd.'B, facile princeps among his fellows — the quickest 
 shot, the most expert angler, an invincible wrest- 
 ler, a swift and tireless runner. While he was 
 lamenting that he had not more books, their very 
 lack was giving him time to lay up in reserve the 
 physical power which was to be so sorely taxed 
 during more than twenty years of constant strug- 
 gle. Rev. Harvey Coe gave him primary instruc- 
 tion in mathematics and he carried himself well 
 forw^ard in the science, studying by the firelight or 
 the flickering of a torch at home, or, at spring time, 
 by the light of the blazing logs in the sugar camp, 
 possessing none of the conveniences and luxuries 
 of study — only the text book, the will, and the 
 appetite. This process of self-education had not 
 advanced thus far, when there came to the little 
 home in the woods first an indefinite whisper, 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 21 
 
 then certain news of war. The Indians, who had 
 hved quietly and amicably about them, silently 
 disappeared to join the enemy, leaving behind 
 deserted wigwams and an imminent fear. There 
 was news that the enemy was on th^ Maumee, 
 plundering, burning, murdering, and moving east- 
 ward. Then came the disasters of the summer 
 of 1812; Detroit and all Michigan were lost and 
 there was a call for volunteers. Giddings, though 
 but sixteen years of age, responded, joined Colonel 
 Hayes' regiment and marched to the Huron, thence 
 to the stockade later famous under the name of 
 Fort Stephenson. While at this fort a small scout- 
 ing party was sent out upon the peninsula with 
 orders to bring to camp a quantity of provisions 
 which had been left at Sandusky during Hull's 
 occupancy of Detroit. During this scout a con- 
 siderable body of Indians was discovered in posses- 
 sion of the farm of one Ramsdell, at Two Harbors 
 on the shore of the lake. The force of the Indians 
 was estimated by the whites at not far from fifty, 
 but information received from the French, at the 
 mouth of the Maumee, during the ensuing spring, 
 placed the number at no less than one hundred and 
 fifty. This discovery was the first intimation of 
 the presence of an enemy in the vicinity and the 
 little scouting party, retiring unobserved, hastened 
 to the stockade and reported the facts. The gar- 
 rison, originally but one hundred and fifty in num- 
 
22 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 ber, had been so reduced by sickness that every 
 man was obHged to stand guard one-third of the 
 time. The necessity of still further weakening this 
 slender force was a sad one, but the officer in 
 charge, recognizing the importance of attacking 
 the enemy before he could be reinforced, made 
 a call for volunteers for the dangerous service. 
 Young Giddings was just coming in from guard 
 duty, when he encountered the drummer beating 
 up volunteers, and joined the party. But thirty 
 minutes was given for supper and preparation ; 
 then the little party of seventy-two men, com- 
 manded by Captain Cotton, set out in boats and 
 landed soon after sunrise at Middle Orchard, near 
 where the enemy had been seen. 
 
 Leaving a guard of eight men with the boats, the 
 remainder of the party pushed forward to attack. 
 During their absence, the Indians, who had deserted 
 their position, approaching in canoes, stumbled 
 upon the guard which had been left with the boats 
 and, though the men escaped in safety to a neigh- 
 boring island, it was at the expense of the two 
 larger and more important boats. It is probable 
 that this encounter was the first intimation which 
 reached the enemy that they were liable to attack. 
 
 Finding the expected battle ground deserted 
 Cotton set his face toward the boats, taking the 
 fortunate precaution of throwing out a flanking 
 party. When still some distance from his destina- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 23 
 
 tion he was suddenly attacked by the savages who 
 rose from the deep grass before him. The men 
 dispersed behind shelter and the fight was kept up 
 sharply for some time after the arrival of the 
 flankers, when it ceased as if by mutual consent, 
 neither party having obtained any definite advan- 
 tage, though the Indians lost more heavily than 
 the whites, of whom but three were killed. Con- 
 tinuing his march toward the boats, Cotton was 
 again attacked when near the place of landing, and, 
 finding his boats destroyed, was obliged to take 
 shelter in an old log house, from which the Indians 
 were unable to dislodge him. About thirty of the 
 whites passed, unobserved, to the shore, were 
 taken off by the boat guard which came over from 
 the island where it had taken refuge, and thus 
 almost miraculously escaped massacre. A party 
 was sent on to the fort, assistance obtained, and 
 Cotton and his men rescued from their perilous 
 position. The Indians then deserted the peninsula. 
 These two skirmishes were the first engagements 
 fought in Ohio during the War of 1812, and were 
 overlooked by all historians of the war until, in 
 1843, Mr. Giddings himself contributed an account 
 from which the above particulars are gleaned, to 
 Squire's History of the Fire Lands. 
 
 Five months after enlistment Mr. Giddings was 
 mustered out of the service with his regiment and 
 returned to his home life. Several times there- 
 
24 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 after, during- the war, the Reserve was menaced, 
 but it never was attacked, and the young man was 
 not called upon to take further part. His assist- 
 ance in fact was sorely needed at home, for his 
 father had invested his all in the lands upon which 
 he had settled and spent so much labor, and, the 
 title failing, he was thrown upon the world in 
 poverty, a misfortune from which he never re- 
 covered. 
 
 Though, as this sketch has sufficiently shown, 
 young Giddings' education was very desultory, it 
 was broad and exact enough to earn him the ex- 
 ceptional place among his neighbors which, in those 
 simple pioneer communities, was readily awarded 
 to one whose knowledge extended beyond the 
 "three r's." He was consulted in matters of law 
 and business, at the age of nineteen, was re- 
 quested to teach a school in the neighborhood and 
 accepted the post. Like many other men and 
 women striving for self-enlightenment, he gained 
 doubly in his efforts to instruct others, systematiz- 
 ing his knowledge, so that it was always afterward 
 available, grasping principles where he had before 
 recognized only the facts which were their outward 
 manifestation, and, while he showed his scholars 
 how to creep, himself making great strides toward 
 the broad and liberal plane which he sought. 
 
 For four years he lived thus — a farmer, more a 
 teacher, most of ah a student. He never for a 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 25 
 
 moment vegetated, but constantly grew. His 
 was not a receptive but an aggressive mind ; he 
 was no doubt ambitious, for no man ever did such 
 work as his to whom ambition was not a birth- 
 right, yet he was no dreamer of dreams or builder 
 of castles. With him to know good was to covet 
 it, and to covet it meant, by the means nearest his 
 hand, to strive for its possession. 
 
 At the age of twenty-three he made choice of 
 his life work and entered the law office of Elisha 
 Whittlesey, of Canfield, Ohio, as a student. 
 Whittlesey was himself a man of no common parts 
 and, judging from results, must have possessed to 
 a marked degree that rare tact which makes the 
 successful teacher, for many of the lawyers whose 
 brilliant powers contributed to make the bar of 
 Ashtabula county one of the most notable in the 
 State, came from his office, and bear, in their 
 methods and ideas, the marks of his training. 
 There is no memorial of Giddings' student life in 
 that office, save that spread by his subsequent 
 achievements upon the records of the court. This 
 would tell us, if the character and habits of the 
 man did not do so, that his work was constant and 
 systematic, that his enthusiasm never flagged, that 
 he read widely and deeply, and, at the end of his 
 two years' clerkship, stood at the threshold of his 
 noble profession, well prepared to enter and to 
 honor it. 
 
26 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 11. 
 
 The professional reputation of Mr. Giddings 
 rests upon the labor of the seventeen years from 
 1 82 1, when he was admitted to the bar and began 
 practice at Jefferson, the county seat of Ashtabula 
 county, until 1838, when he entered Congress, 
 and, to all intents and purposes, abandoned his pro- 
 fession forever. No lawyer could have made bet- 
 ter arguments before a court in banc, than did he in 
 Congress, when discussing the legal and constitu- 
 tional bearings of the slavery question ; nor more 
 moving appeals at nisi prius, than were his in be- 
 half of the same cause from stump and rostrum ; 
 but these efforts, impossible for any but a learned 
 advocate to make, still contribute to his repute as 
 a statesman, not as a lawyer. 
 
 A country practice is to-day the best training 
 school for the general lawyer ; in those years this 
 was more emphatically true than now. Then 
 lawyers mounted their horses and rode the circuit 
 with the judge, working side by side, and under 
 mutual criticism day after day and week after 
 week. Every cause was tried in the presence of a 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 2/ 
 
 large proportion of the bar, — friends, rivals, and 
 enemies, — and this professional audience was atten- 
 tive as well as critical. Men more often came late 
 into causes, accepting a retainer perhaps when the 
 case was actually called, and relying upon general 
 knowledge, wit, and the inspiration of an auditory 
 for success. There was less of technicality, per- 
 haps less of scholarship, than now ; certainly there 
 was more dependence upon eloquence and per- 
 sonal magnetism than upon cold argument. Peo- 
 ple having no direct interest in a cause flocked to 
 the court room as they now go to the theater, for 
 amusement, attracted by the prospect of a pleasur- 
 able intellectual excitement, rare enough in their 
 lives. They crowded the court room while the 
 cause was tried, and gossiped concerning it about 
 the tavern and village store at night. The man 
 who was in those days a leader at the bar was in- 
 deed a leader among men. With however much 
 of justice the people judged the quarrels among 
 their fellows, they estimated lawyers by one stern 
 rule — that of success. They cared more for re- 
 sults than for methods ; they delighted to see elab- 
 orate preparation set at naught by ready wit, and 
 learning defeated by expedient. 
 
 These little knots of fireside gossips were the 
 makers or spoilers of a lawyer's name, and for 
 their approval there was an emulation as keen as 
 ever rose between knights tilting for a lady's favor. 
 
28 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 Specializing was then almost or quite unknown. 
 Of course natural bent had its effect, but the lead- 
 ing lawyer of the bar might be seen, like an actor 
 of the same time, in drama, tragedy, farce, bur- 
 lesque, and pantomime, — defending a murderer, 
 defining a boundary line, prosecuting a slander 
 suit, trying a horse case — all in turn. Such a prac- 
 tice made lawyers — many sided, versatile, ready 
 lawyers — and gave a preparation for political and 
 legislative service beyond any that now exists. 
 
 It was into such association as this that Gid- 
 dings was thrown at the outset of his profes- 
 sional career. This was more than sixty years' 
 ago; the generation of lawyers which saw the 
 beginning of his professional career, has passed 
 away ; the gray-headed fathers at the bar of to-day 
 were but neophytes when he ceased to practice 
 and there is little save tradition to guide us in 
 picturing him personally. Some of these tradi- 
 tions have been so well crystallized by Mr. Riddle, 
 in his sketch already quoted, that his words may 
 again be borrowed with profit: 
 
 "With the first collection of the Ohio statutes, 
 known as ''the sheepskin code," and such other 
 books as he could command, such clients and cases 
 as came, the young lawyer procured a horse and 
 portmanteau, joined his few professional brethren 
 and started with the presiding judge on the com- 
 mon pleas circuit, through mud and forest, legal 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 29 
 
 lance in rest, stopping at log cabins and settling 
 grave cases in log temples of justice. Those were 
 the days of free manners, free lives, and practical 
 jokes ; though the Grand River presbytery ex- 
 pressed their disapproval of gathering sap on Sun- 
 day. The commanding figure, six feet two in 
 moccasins, massive head, laughing gray eyes, and 
 frank manner of the young lawyer, with a reputa- 
 tion for great physical strength, agility, and cour- 
 age, made him a favorite with the primitive people 
 who flocked from all parts of the country, and 
 crowded the court rooms to hear and see the 
 lawyers and to treasure up and repeat their sayings, 
 and tell absurd stories of them to their less fortu- 
 nate neighbors at home. Those were not the days 
 of long trials nor of great speeches. Court began 
 at eight in the morning and sat until ten at night. 
 The young lawyer soon became noted for the 
 thoroughness with which he studied his case itself, 
 the tact with which he brought out his evidence, 
 and shrew^dness in dealing with witnesses on the 
 other side. Bland and wary, an inflexible will, a 
 passionate earnestness lay seemingly passive 
 under a suavity of manner not easily disturbed. 
 With his industry, application, and power of 
 physical and mental endurance, he grew rapidly — 
 for good lawyers grow rather than are made — to 
 be an accomplished lawyer of his day and his name 
 was mentioned at points outside of his circuit with 
 
30 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 admiration and respect. His strength was in the 
 care and thoroughness of his preparation, his tact 
 and skill in conducting the trial of his case so that 
 the final argument was really a summing up — a 
 condensed statement of points already brought out 
 in a forcible and happy arrangement. His knowl- 
 ■edge of the law, in the range of the cases of his 
 time, was thorough, his method of presentation to 
 the court clear and logical. He had some difficul- 
 ties to overcome in his addresses to juries, but be- 
 came a persuasive, ingenious advocate, knowing 
 exactly the quality and calibre of his men and the 
 reasons and motives that would control them." 
 
 The quotation is sufficient to give an idea of 
 what Mr. Giddings was, in manner and method, 
 at that day. He was fortunate in early securing 
 retainers in cases which excited general public in- 
 terest and in winning unexpected success in nearly 
 all. This made him talked of, and to be talked of 
 is half the country lawyer's battle. Thus in the 
 celebrated malpractice case of Williams vs. Haw- 
 ley. Dr. Hawley was a physician and surgeon of 
 much prominence and wealth, surrounded by in- 
 fluential friends. Mrs. Williams, the plaintiff, was 
 the wife of a poor man. By an accident she fract- 
 ured one of her legs, but in such a manner that the 
 limb might easily have been set and made as use- 
 ful as ever. Dr. Hawley, with unaccountable stu- 
 pidity, brutality, or ignorance, removed a portion 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 3 I 
 
 of the bone and made the unfortunate woman a 
 hopeless cripple. Mr. Giddings was retained by 
 the injured woman and her husband, and instituted 
 a suit for damages against Hawley. The profes- 
 sional reputation of the defendant was at stake ; 
 to him defeat meant irreparable ruin. His money, 
 position, personal influence — everything that he 
 could command that might give a feather's weight 
 of assistance in the cause, was brought to bear in 
 one of the most determined and stubborn defenses 
 ever known in Ashtabula county. The physicians 
 of the vicinity, moved by a natural esprit dtt coj'ps, 
 were, to a man, witnesses for the defendant ; the 
 cause was tried and a considerable verdict given 
 the plaintiff An appeal was made to the supreme 
 court, which then tried causes in the first instance 
 and with a jury a new trial was had and again the 
 plaintiff won a verdict. The defendant carried 
 an appeal before the court in banc, made strong 
 representations, that., on account of popular feeling 
 in the case it was impossible for him to obtain jus- 
 tice in Ashtabula, advanced technical grounds for a 
 reversal, and obtained it, with an order changing 
 the venue to Trumbull county. In this third trial 
 the celebrated John C. Wright, of Cincinnati, 
 was retained to assist the defense, and the evidence 
 of the most famous physicians of New York and 
 Philadelphia was introduced, yet the plaintiff again 
 recovered a verdict, heavy for the time and carry- 
 
32 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 ing with it the costs. None of this money, it is 
 said, did Giddings claim or receive. He was at 
 that time young in years and young at the bar, 
 and his triumph over such an array of legal and 
 medical talent as was opposed to him was prob- 
 ably of more real advantage to him, than would 
 have been the entire amount recovered without 
 the reputation. 
 
 Retained for the defense in the cause of Ohio 
 vs. Barnes, the prisoner being indicted for the 
 murder of a young girl in the Kirtland woods, 
 Giddings broke through a seemingly fatal web of 
 circumstantial evidence, and secured an acquittal, 
 although public opinion, appearances, and all the 
 fortuitous circumstances which have so great an 
 effect in such cases were against the prisoner. 
 Many believed then and the few now living who 
 remember the occurrence agree with them, that 
 the extraordinary skill and tact of Mr. Giddings 
 saved a life that richly deserved to be forfeited. 
 In this case the able prosecuting attorney was 
 assisted by Sherlock J. Andrews, one of the most 
 successful trial lawyers in the West. 
 
 Trumbull county then included what is now 
 Mahoning, and Geauga what is now Lake county. 
 Over the three counties of Trumbull, Geauga, and 
 Ashtabula, Mr. Giddings' reputation and practice 
 rapidly extended until, by the time he had been 
 ten years at the bar, there was rarely an important 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 33 
 
 cause in any of the three, upon one or the other 
 side of which he was not retained. He was, in 
 fact, nearly or quite at the head of the bar ten 
 years after he took his place at its foot. At that 
 time there was in Ashtabula county a bright young 
 man of whom the world has since heard much — 
 Benjamin F. Wade. With him., in 183 1, Mr. 
 Giddings formed a law partnership, than which 
 none could have been more fortunate for either. 
 Mr. Wade had then but recently come to the bar, 
 having studied in the office of Mr. Giddings' old 
 preceptor. He was a young man of acknowledged 
 ability, a thorough lawyer by instinct, but, so it is 
 said, the victim of a modesty and lack of self con- 
 fidence which, for more than a year after the for 
 mation of the partnership, prevented his appear- 
 ance in court. He devoted his time to the prepa- 
 ration of cases and showed such learning and skill 
 in this department of the business that he left Mr. 
 Giddings free to devote himself to the work of the 
 courts. The possibilities of the practice were 
 greatly increased by this fact, and clients came in 
 such numbers as to soon force Wade from his re- 
 tirement behind digests and statute books and to 
 speedily advance the practice, until it became by 
 far the largest in the district and one of the largest 
 in the State. The result of this increased client- 
 age was that both partners, living in simple village 
 style, accumulated money which called lor invest- 
 
34 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 ment. Money was then very plentiful, an era of 
 wild land speculation was upon the country, values 
 were artificial and confidence unbounded. Both 
 Giddings and Wade made large land purchases, 
 principally in Toledo, and entered with great zest 
 into town lot speculations. Taking his posses- 
 sions at their estimated value Mr. Giddings con- 
 sidered himself rich enough to warrant his re- 
 tirement from practice, and in 1836 dissolved his 
 partnership with Mr. Wade, his place in the firm 
 being taken by Rufus P. Ranney, who had been a 
 student in the office and was newly admitted to 
 practice. 
 
 Scarcely was this change made when came the 
 panic which invariably follows such artificial in- 
 flation of values as had characterized the land 
 market for some time, the bubble burst, the price 
 of land fell much below its real value, land could 
 not be sold, purchasers were bankrupt and 
 could not pay. Mr. Giddings owed certain 
 sums upon his purchases and found himself 
 seriously embarrassed. Making the best settle- 
 ment possible he returned to his profession to re- 
 pair damages and in 1837 formed a partnership 
 Avith Mr. Flavel Sutliffe, a brilliant young man 
 whose prospects were blighted two years later by 
 insanity. With such reputation as Mr. Giddings 
 held at the bar and after so short an absence, it is no 
 difficult matter to acquire a practice and so it proved 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 35 
 
 in this case. The new firm had scarcely estab- 
 hshed itself before it was overrun with business 
 and Mr. Giddings was again in his old place before 
 the people. 
 
 This prosperous course was not destined to con- 
 tinue without interruption. Elisha Whittlesey, of 
 Canfield, was elected to the Eighteenth Congress, 
 in December, 1823. Having served continuously 
 until 1838, he was appointed fourth auditor of the 
 treasury and resigned his seat in the Twenty-fifth 
 Congress in the midst of his term, to accept the 
 post. To the place thus vacated Giddings was 
 nominated by the district Whig convention over 
 the Hon. Seabury Ford, and was elected for the 
 remainder of the Twenty-fifth and later for the 
 Twenty-sixth Congress, serving thereafter, contin- 
 uously, save for a few weeks, until the end of the 
 Thirty-fifth Congress. 
 
 Mr. Giddings did not go to Congress entirely 
 without legislative experience. He had been in 
 1826 elected a member of the Ohio House of Rep- 
 resentatives, had served a single term, declined 
 a re-election, made a run for the State Senatorship 
 and, in the latter attempt, had sustained the only 
 defeat he ever met at the polls. The Ohio Legis- 
 lature was not at the time pressed with important 
 business nor were its chambers often the scene of 
 exciting incidents. The State was young, the 
 Legislative duties were largely routine and the only 
 
36 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 significance attending Mr. Giddings' service in the 
 house was the familiarity with parHamentary usage 
 which it gave him — a matter of no small import- 
 ance for the reason that he was scarcely in his seat 
 at Washington before he began to take active part 
 in legislation. 
 
III. 
 
 A right understanding of the subjects and dis- 
 cussions collaterally involved in this sketch, calls 
 for at least a primary knowledge of the history of 
 African slavery as related to North America. So 
 complex is the subject, so voluminous is its litera- 
 ture, and so numerous are the recorded efforts of 
 individuals and associations for its repression and 
 abolition that to exhaustively treat it would require 
 the labor of half a lifetime and the filling of vol- 
 umes with the saddest and most pitiful story in 
 the history of Anglo-Saxon civilization. 
 
 The thoughtless reader and observer of our own 
 time is apt to regard the agitation which resulted 
 in the release of the negro from bondage within 
 the limits of the United States as a comparatively 
 recent one, and it is not uncommon to hear a cer- 
 tain political party charged with responsibility for 
 the civil war, by reason of its espousal of the abo- 
 lition cause. So far is this from the truth that the 
 same discussion which made memorable the days 
 when Joshua R. Giddings stood as the champion 
 of right and humanity in the House of Represent- 
 
38 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 atives, arose in England in 1562 when Elizabeth, 
 under the protest of her conscience, sanctioned 
 the first removal of African slaves from the then 
 doubly dark continent, by Englishmen. The argu- 
 ment which the Queen then used to quiet her own 
 scruples, that the slave trade, being carried on by 
 Spain, Portugal, Holland, and other maritime 
 powers, was a commercial necessity to England, 
 grew gray with age. It was made to justify the 
 traffic in American bottoms after the Independ 
 ence, and only gave way when the outraged sense 
 of a more enlightened century refused to recog- 
 nize its conclusiveness, condemned the slave trade 
 as a piracy and compelled the American advocates 
 of the hideous wrong to look elsewhere for a soph- 
 ism which might partially cover their awful sins. 
 Then there came into being, full-grown and readily 
 accepted by those whose interest it subserved, the 
 awful, the impious lie, that slavery is a divine in- 
 stitution, and he that raises his voice against its 
 continuance or his hand to strike the shackles from 
 a single black man is defying God and should be 
 an outcast in this world as such must be in the 
 world to come. 
 
 From 1562 until 1863 there was never a day or 
 night when good men and women were not pray- 
 ing and striving that the curse of slavery might 
 pass from the world. Elizabeth expressed her 
 fear that some of the neeroes mieht be carried off 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 39 
 
 *' without their free consent, " and said '* it would 
 be destestable and call down the vengeance of 
 heaven upon the undertakers. " Morgan Godwyn 
 and Richard Baxter as early as 1650, Dr. Primett, 
 Dr. Atkins, the Reverend Griffith Hughes, Ed- 
 mund Burke, Bishop Warburton, and Adam 
 Smith — these are some of the men who, In Eng- 
 land and previous to 1765, were the advocates of 
 the African cause. 
 
 In 1765 Mr. Grenville Sharp, an English lawyer, 
 took up the case of Jonathan Strong, an Ameri- 
 can negro, taken to England as a slave, with a 
 view to prevent his compulsory return to America. 
 This he accomplished, but on special grounds, and 
 was not satisfied, as he had determined to secure 
 from a court of last resort the broad declaration 
 that ' * as soon as a slave set foot in Eyigland lie is 
 free.'' To this end he tried a number of cases, 
 finally, in 1772, obtaining the desired judgment in 
 the famous cause of James Somerset, and winning 
 the first distinct and substantial victory ever se- 
 cured for the negro in England. To illustrate the 
 utterly sodden condition of judicial sentiment up- 
 on the subject, it is only necessary to say that Mr. 
 Sharp, in 1783, secured the arrest of the captain 
 and mate of the slaver Zong, upon charge of hav- 
 ing thrown overboard one hundred and thirty-two 
 live negroes. The object of the men was to de- 
 fraud the underwriters, and, though the offense was 
 
40 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 clearly proven — in fact admitted — no conviction 
 was obtained. This enormity, so exposed, though 
 unpunished, was not without its effect. There 
 seemed an immediate quickening of the public 
 sense and feeling; hundreds wrote and spoke 
 strongly against the crime of slavery, and Cowper 
 wrote, from the fullness of his tender heart, the 
 often quoted lines: 
 
 " We have no slaves at home; then why abroad? 
 And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave 
 That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd. ^ 
 
 Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs 
 Receive our air, that moment they are free; 
 They touch our country and their shackles fall. 
 That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
 And jealous of the blessing; spread it then, 
 And let it circulate through every vein 
 Of all your empire — that, where Britain's pow'r 
 Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy, too." 
 
 In 1783 the sentiment of the Society of Friends, 
 which had been, since the days of George Fox, 
 unitedly opposed to the theory of slavery, took 
 definite form in a petition to the House of Com- 
 mons, urging the passage of a bill, then pending in 
 Parliament, for the restriction of the African slave 
 trade, and praying also for the extension of the 
 provisions of the act so that it might be practically 
 prohibitory. This petition came from the yearly 
 meeting of the Friends, and was an official declara- 
 tion of the principles of the sect. It was respect- 
 fully received, read, and laid on the table "on ac- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 4I 
 
 count of the advanced progress of the session." 
 Lord North, then prime minister, said that the ob- 
 ject of the petition should recommend it to every 
 humane breast, but that the slave trade was, ' ' in 
 a commercial view, a necessity to almost every 
 nation in Europe." 
 
 In 1783, having presented its petition with the 
 result stated, the Society of Friends organized, with- 
 in its own membership, an association having for 
 its aim systematic labor in behalf of African 
 freedom. This society — the first of its kind in 
 England, the second in the world — was an impor- 
 tant agent in securing the results for which it was 
 organized. Its existence was kept secret, and its 
 members, appreciating how fatal to their object was 
 the public indifference on the subject of slavery, 
 set deliberately and patiently to work to create a 
 popular opinion in harmony with their own. To 
 this end they appointed several of their clearest 
 thinkers and best writers to state and reiterate, 
 through the public prints and by pamphlets, the 
 moral, religious, and constitutional arguments 
 against slavery; every incident of the trade and 
 system which came to their knowledge and could 
 be brought to account in exciting public sympathy, 
 was published, commented upon, circulated, and 
 repeated, until not only the reading people of En- 
 gland, but laboring men lounging at inn doors, and 
 apprentices at their work-tables, knew that a great 
 
42 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 wrong was being" committed with the assent of the 
 EngHsh people and under the protection of their 
 flag. The vakie of all this quiet and apparently- 
 spontaneous agitation was not at once made evi- 
 dent by any definite public action, but the Friends 
 found themselves gaining new allies, who supple- 
 mented and extended their work, and by this 
 gradual accession there grew up a party and a pub- 
 lic sentiment, so strong as not only to render possi- 
 ble, but to compel the action which tardily fol- 
 lowed. Co-operation was established without 
 regard to sect; correspondence was opened with 
 sympathizers in France, America, and elsewhere; 
 the cloak of secrecy was thrown off, and, finally, 
 in 1788, Mr. Wilberforce opened, in the House of 
 Commons, the parliamentary struggle, which was 
 destined to continue for twenty years, to result in 
 placing Great Britain in a position of permanent 
 antagonism with slavery — to finally lead to the 
 abolition of the slave trade. On the 9th of May, 
 in the year named, he presented a motion pledg- 
 ing the House at an early day in the coming ses- 
 sion ' ' to take into consideration the circumstances 
 of the slave trade complained of, . . and what 
 may be fit to be done thereupon." 
 
 This long and weary struggle cannot be followed 
 here. As always in the conflict with slavery, the 
 pecuniary interest of the kingdom and of individ- 
 uals, was arrayed against fundamental moral truths 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 43 
 
 which no man could deny and none not so blinded 
 could oppose. The Society, through whose efforts 
 the matter had come before Parliament, was untir- 
 ing in its efforts to strengthen the hands of the 
 friends of freedom within that body. Its agents, 
 spent years of time and great sums of money in 
 traveling, observing and collecting facts and statis- 
 tics upon which might be founded arguments in 
 their behalf; the horrible traffic was followed to 
 its source and to its ultimate extent, that its mur- 
 derous cruelty and deep degradation might tell 
 their own story in the councils at Westminster. 
 Whoever else supported or opposed the cause, 
 Wilberforce was always faithful and indefatigable ; 
 he devoted his entire time, thought, influence, and 
 much of his money to its advancement, and, after 
 many rebuffs, delays, and temporary defeats, none 
 of which disheartened him for an hour, won the 
 first seeming parliamentary advantage, when, on 
 the 25th of April, 1792, the House of Commons 
 agreed to a gradual emancipation of all slaves 
 held in British colonies, to be complete in 1796. 
 On the 8th of May, 1792, the House of Lords 
 met to consider the resolution, abandoned the ex- 
 amination almost at the outset, laying it over un- 
 til the next session and, in that next session, did 
 little more. The matter having been postponed it 
 was necessary to secure its reconsideration in the 
 House of Commons that it mieht be reaffirmed. 
 
44 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 Moving for this reconsideration Mr. Wilberforce 
 met a rebuff, the House of Commons taking 
 advantage of a technicahty to defeat its own reso- 
 lution. 
 
 This single episode is related to give some faint 
 idea of the constant disappointment against which 
 these brave men so long struggled to final victory. 
 This victory came in a preliminary form by the 
 passage on the 31st day of March, 1806, of a bill 
 intended to prevent the employment of British 
 capital and bottoms in the slave trade ; on the 5th 
 of January, 1807, the final and more definite reso- 
 lution was passed in the House of Lords ; it was 
 sent to the Commons, amended, returned to the 
 Lords, approved by them, passed by both Houses 
 on the 24th of March, 1807, and, on the 25th, 
 received the assent of the king and became a law. 
 It provided that no vessel should clear for slaves 
 from any port in the British dominions, after May 
 I, 1807, and no slaves be landed within British 
 jurisdiction after May i, 1 808. 
 
 The men by whose tireless efforts the first grand 
 step had been accomplished, were not disposed to 
 accept this half success as an excuse for idleness. 
 Their labors, in and out of Parliament, procured the 
 advance of the slave trade from a misdemeanor, 
 punishable by fine, to a felony, punishable by 
 transportation or imprisonment at hard labor for 
 fourteen years, and this penalty, as well, proving 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 45 
 
 ineffectual, the offense was through their efforts de- 
 clared piracy, with the penalty of death. So it con- 
 tinued from 1824 until 1837, when a too merciful 
 administration again reduced its punishment to im- 
 prisonment for life. 
 
 Still unsatisfied, the devoted advocates of human 
 liberty continued their efforts until they were 
 crowned with a full and final reward, in 1833, when, 
 on the 28th day of August, slavery was absolutely 
 and summarily abolished throughout British do- 
 minions. 
 
 The somewhat over-long discussion of the anti- 
 slavery movement in England has not been given 
 space without an object. It conveys the best pos- 
 sible means of estimating the work accomplished 
 by the great champions of American liberty. It 
 accounts for the bitter rancor, the personal and 
 class hatred, the proscription of the individual, 
 the sinking of principle in selfishness, the debase- 
 ment of society, the corruption of the church, and 
 final war in our own country. It shows how ter- 
 rible was the task undertaken by Adams, Slade, 
 and Giddings, for, if it required twenty-eight years 
 for the British Parliament to prohibit the slave 
 trade and forty-six years to free but little more 
 than seven hundred thousand slaves — when the in- 
 terest of the members of that body were related 
 to slavery only as were those of the free States in 
 America, through channels of trade and com- 
 
4^ JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 merce — what wonder that the four milhons of 
 American negro bondmen should have remained 
 in slavery so long; that a Congress, morally con- 
 trolled by their masters and numerically by their 
 enemies, should have failed of liberating them ; 
 that Adams should have died with his hopes un- 
 realized ; that Sumner should have been stricken to 
 the ground because he dared advocate their cause ; 
 that John Brown should have been hanged ; that 
 America should have suffered the bloodiest civil 
 war of modern times ! 
 
 Slavery in North America was first introduced 
 in 1620 by the landing of a cargo of negroes at 
 Jamestown, Virginia, from a Dutch ship. There 
 was probably little thought among the settlers as 
 to the moral bearing of the act — little anticipation 
 of the extension and growth of the institution, 
 which they were unwittingly instrumental in estab- 
 lishing — only the pressure of a present necessity, 
 the sad lack of hands to subdue for them the 
 wilderness which lay beyond them. For forty 
 years the colony of Virginia went on, from day to 
 day, receiving an occasional cargo of slaves from 
 the Dutch, utilizing them as they came, but not 
 until 1660 were the negroes enough in number or 
 importance, to call for any colonial enactment for 
 the protection or definition of the system. 
 
 Mr. George W. Julian, in a valuable article 
 published under the title of "The Genesis of Mod- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 47 
 
 ern Abolition," in the International Review for 
 June, 1882, says: "It is gratifying to know that the 
 evils of American slavery were never without their 
 witness. As early as the year 1688 some Germ.aii 
 Quakers in Pennsylvania lifted up their voices 
 against the traffic in men. This was seconded by 
 the official action of the yearly meeting of the 
 colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 1696. 
 The earliest action of the New England Quakers 
 against the slave trade was in 17 1 5. William 
 Burling was the first anti-slavery Quaker of any 
 note in this country, and was followed by Ralph 
 Sandiford w^ho wrote against slavery in 1729, and 
 by Benjamin Lay who wrote and spoke against it 
 in 1737. The labors of these anti-slavery apostles 
 were followed by those of the untiring and ever 
 faithful Anthony Benezett, and his powerful coad- 
 jutor, John Woolman, whose traveling ministry of 
 more than twenty years bore witness to his faith- 
 fulness, and largely aided the complete emancipa- 
 tion of the Society of Friends from the evil of 
 slavery, which was accomplished in the colonies in 
 which he labored, soon after his death." 
 
 The original body of law, adopted by the colony 
 of Massachusetts, prohibited slavery in general 
 terms, but left a wide latitude for construction in 
 the reservations : "Unless it be lawful captives, 
 taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly 
 sell themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall 
 
48 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 have all the liberties and Christian usages which 
 the law of God, established in Israel, requires. " 
 The literal construction of this Mosaic exception 
 gave sufficient warrant to the shrewd colonists for 
 the introduction of the convenient system cf 
 African bondage, and it was early taken advantage 
 of Connecticut followed with a legalizing act in 
 1650 ; The Dutch of the New Netherlands intro- 
 duced a mild form of negro bondage in 1650, and 
 left it as an heritage to the colony of New York. 
 
 So, from colony to colony, north and south, as 
 the settlement advanced, there were carried along 
 with it the seeds of wrath from which, so long 
 after, the nation, then unborn, was destined to reap 
 a retribution so terrible. As the planting and 
 growth of slavery advanced, so did the provision 
 for its control and defense ; laws were enacted re- 
 garding slave property, defining its nature, liability 
 to seizure for debt and distribution in cases of in- 
 testacy; enactments were made, too, fixing the 
 right of the master to his slave, the punishment 
 of offences against slave property and, in the 
 South, laying the foundations of that divine system 
 to the beneficence of which two generations of 
 Southern orators in Congress and on the stump 
 bore so eloquent witness. 
 
 The spread of the institution and its abolition 
 at the North cannot be followed here. Both are 
 matters of history, and the present work has only 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 49 
 
 to do with the account of those repressive meas- 
 ures which paved the way for, and defined the 
 labors of, Joshua R. Giddings. 
 
 The North never took kindly to slavery. Though 
 it accepted the temporary advantage to be gained 
 from the use of the slaves, there was something in 
 the constitutional tendencies and the religious and 
 social feeling of all who lived in New England, or 
 moved westward from those mother colonies, essen- 
 tially opposed to permanent human bondage. 
 Pennsylvania, too, was, by reason of its large 
 Quaker population, very impatient of the existence 
 of slavery and took early ground against its spread. 
 In 1705 an act was passed by the assembly of that 
 colony deprecating the further importation of negro 
 and Indian slaves, and, in 17 12, a second act im- 
 posing a duty of twenty pounds each upon all 
 slaves so imported. This duty was so great as to 
 be, as was doubtless intended, essentially prohib- 
 itory. These early attempts at regulating the 
 slave trade were annulled by royal edict. New 
 England, New Jersey, and New York also took 
 repressive steps at about the same time with no 
 better result. 
 
 The first and most important effective legislative 
 action toward the limitation and control of slavery 
 was taken in 1787 by the last Continental Congress, 
 which, in prescribing a system of laws for the gov- 
 ernment of the territory of the United States north- 
 
50 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 west of the Ohio river, included a perpetual prohi- 
 bition of the introduction within its bounds of slav- 
 ery or involuntary servitude, save as a punishment 
 for crime. 
 
 The committee previously appointed by Con- 
 gress, for the framing of an ordinance for the gov- 
 ernment of all the territory of which the sov- 
 ereignty remained in the confederation of colonies, 
 viz: all not included within the actual limits of one 
 of the original thirteen colonies, had introduced a 
 similar clause drawn by Thomas Jefferson, its 
 chairman, but as the territory included all the 
 region adjacent to Virginia and the colonies to 
 the southward, the slave-holding class, already 
 jealous of any measure which might possibly 
 abridge the spread of the institution in the South, 
 defeated the provision, striking it out from the or- 
 dinance. The limitation of the effect of the latter 
 article, as passed in 1787, to territory northwest of 
 the Ohio, disarmed this antagonism and secured 
 to the free North and West a safeguard from the 
 encroachments of slavery, without which it is 
 doubtful whether its advance could have been 
 checked. 
 
 This brings us to the year 1787, when assembled 
 at Philadelphia the convention to revise the articles 
 of confederation of the colonies and which framed 
 the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 At that time few people contemplated the per- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 5 I 
 
 manency of slavery, fewer defended it, and none 
 dared justify it on abstract grounds. Expediency 
 and convenience were its best friends. Had the 
 Southern delegates to the convention foreseen the 
 future, slavery would have been recognized and dis- 
 tinctly approved; had the North possessed the 
 same prevision it would have been condemned and 
 irrevocably forbidden; had both appreciated the 
 full importance of the subject, it is probable that 
 no Constitution would have been adopted, and 
 a union of the States would have proved impossi- 
 ble. 
 
 As it was, slavery gained but three concessions 
 in the Constitution. The first was a provision that 
 Congress should not prohibit the slave trade before 
 1 808 ; the second, that persons held to service or 
 labor in one State, under the laws thereof, and es- 
 caping into another, should not be thereby dis- 
 charged from such service or labor, but should be 
 delivered upon claim of the person to whom such 
 labor was due ; the third that, for purpose of rep- 
 resentation in Congress, three-fifths of the slave 
 population should be enumerated. The granting 
 of these three concessions on the part of the North- 
 ern men was, in reality, to quote the word used 
 at the time, in pursuance of a "bargain," in con- 
 sideration of which the South, especially and di- 
 rectly interested in the cheap transportation of 
 goods to Europe, consented to surrender to the 
 
52 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 General Government the right to prescribe laws 
 to regulate navigation, thus opening the doors to 
 the protection of New England vessel owners, at 
 the expense of Southern producers. 
 
 The only right of limiting the slave trade re- 
 served to the United States previous to 1808, was 
 conveyed in a clause which empowered it to im- 
 pose a tax upon such importation of not more 
 than two dollars per head. During the session of 
 the first Congress of the United States, determined 
 efforts were made to secure the imposition of this 
 tax, all of which were defeated. The South op- 
 posed the tax on general principles. Many North- 
 ern men disapproved of it as in a measure recog- 
 nizing slavery and, in effect, declaring the negro a 
 commodity of trade. The same fate awaited a 
 similar effort made in the second Congress. Both 
 sessions were marked by stirring debates concern- 
 ing anti-slavery petitions received from various 
 societies throughout the United States. The first 
 of these came from the Pennsylvania society, or- 
 ganized in 1787, of which Benjamin Franklin was 
 the first president. The memorial in question was 
 signed by him officially, his participation in the 
 matter being one of the last acts of his busy life. 
 Nearly all these petitions were drawn, circulated, 
 and forwarded to the House, by Quakers, and the 
 discussion of the subject by Southern members 
 degenerated i/ito a bitter abuse of that sect. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 53 
 
 The subject of slavery was constantly before 
 Congress in one form or another. In 1793, in 
 pretended accordance with the constitutional pro- 
 vision, a law providing for the surrender of fugi- 
 tives from justice passed Congress, attracting little 
 or no attention or opposition. The first clause of 
 the bill was substantially that now in force, pro- 
 viding for the surrender, upon requisition, of escaped 
 persons charged with or indicted for the commis- 
 sion of crime. The second clause gave to the 
 owner of any slave, or his agent, power to seize 
 the slave, wherever found within the United States, 
 to bear him before any magistrate or justice of the 
 peace when, upon presenting to such officer proof, 
 oral or written, to tJie satisfaction of such magistrate^ 
 that the prisoner was an escaped slave, the com- 
 plainant should be entitled to convey him to such 
 point as he chose, protected by a legal certificate. 
 This statute lay almost unnoticed for some time, 
 and only when it was enforced did" the opponents 
 of slavery recognize how egregiously they had been 
 duped. That the act transcended both the letter 
 and the spirit of the Constitution, there is no ques- 
 tion ; that it opened the door to endless injustice 
 and cruelty, perjury, fraud, and, — according to the 
 view of the day — theft, is amply attested by the 
 history of its enforcement. In 1797 there was a 
 futile effort to forbid the institution of slavery in 
 the proposed new Territory of Mississippi ; in 
 
54 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 1803 ^ determined movement was made to suspend 
 or repeal that portion of the compact relating to 
 the Northwest Territory which inhibited slavery, 
 so far as the same related to Indiana. The pro- 
 posal was vigorously opposed and eventually 
 defeated. In 1805 and 1806 this attempt was 
 renewed in many forms, all that self-interest could 
 suggest, and ingenuity and eloquence further, was 
 done for its success, but its defeat in the latter 
 year was final, and the safeguard so happily erected 
 in 1787 remained thereafter untouched. 
 
 In 1807 President Jefferson, anticipating the 
 expiration of the constitutional limitation over the 
 power of Congress to abolish the slave trade, 
 recommended in his annual message that that body 
 should at once take steps to absolutely forbid it. 
 This portion of the message was referred to a 
 special committee of the House, and that commit- 
 tee reported a bill " to prohibit the importation or 
 bringing of slaves into the United States or the 
 Territories thereof, after the 31st day of December, 
 1807." Then ensued one of the most exciting 
 debates ever known in Congress up to that time. 
 Southern members threatened to defy the bill, 
 abused its framers, and came out more openly than 
 ever before, in an abstract advocacy of slavery. 
 In spite of all these efforts the bill passed, thus 
 freeing America from the stigma of the slave trade 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 55 
 
 at almost the same time when England wiped out 
 the same disgrace. 
 
 The bill as passed provided heavy fines, and 
 imprisonment for from five to ten years, for the 
 various forms of participation in the slave trade, 
 made the knowing purchaser of a slave imported 
 contrary to the provisions of the act a particeps 
 criniinis, subject to fine, and provided for the con- 
 fiscation of every vessel engaged in the trade. 
 
 Mr. George W. Julian, iii the opening of the 
 paper already quoted, says : " The anti-slavery 
 movement of this country may properly be dividea 
 into two dispensations. The first had its begin 
 ning soon after the introduction of slavery into 
 the colonies, and ended, with only partial results, 
 near the close of the last century. The second 
 began early in the second century; just as slavery 
 was entering upon its baleful career of domination, 
 and closed with its destruction by the power of 
 war. . . ." That the writer suggests a just 
 and very obvious distinction in these words,is beyond 
 a doubt, but there seems to be less reason for assign- 
 ing the latter part of the last century, as the time 
 when closed the first dispensation, than for placing 
 it at the year 1807. With the passage of the 
 law interdicting the slave trade, the object, which 
 had been paramount in the early anti-slavery effort 
 of the United States, was attained ; from that time 
 there was a rearray of forces and a revision of 
 
55 JOSHUA R. GIUDINGS. 
 
 issues. As has been shown, the effort of the anti 
 slavery people from colonial times until 1807. had 
 been largely for the suppression of the slave trade 
 and the mitigation of slave conditions. The 
 northern states held slaves — New York as recently 
 as 1830. Ideas had not been crystallized ; few men 
 were bold enough to advocate, even if they favored, 
 an immediate freeing of all slaves. The majority 
 of anti-slavery sympathizers favored a gradual 
 emancipation as proposed by Jefferson. Many 
 who desired the prohibition of the slave trade, to 
 prevent an increase of slavery, were willing to 
 accept the existing institution, as an evil, but as one 
 necessary to our social and industrial condition. 
 The wisest of the friends of the negro were willing 
 to be content with one battle at a. time. 
 
 On the part of the South the opposition to act- 
 ive anti-slavery measures in all these early days, 
 was temporizing ; nearly ajl admitted slavery to be 
 wrong in the abstract, and tacitly admitted that 
 the time for its abolition must come. Church 
 bodies, afterward the most formidable champions 
 of the system, were its opponents and mere tem- 
 porary necessity and advisability, were usually its 
 excuse. By the year 1807, the public conscience 
 of the slave-holding section was seared ; the poison 
 of the pernicious sore upon the body politic was 
 coursing in its veins. Men found the negro a 
 good thing to have, to breed, to sell and speculate 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 57 
 
 in. Indeed, the desire of Virginia "breeders" to 
 profit by the stoppage of importation, at the ex- 
 pense of Southern States, was a valuable assistance 
 in securing the suppressive legislation. Slavery 
 now ceased to have apologists, having at last found 
 defenders, who quoted Mosaic law, Greek history, 
 and Latin classics, to prove that God had intended 
 Rhode Island skippers and Spanish free-sailers to 
 steal men and women on the Guinea coast and 
 sell them to the Southern planter. They told this 
 lie until they believed it, and, from the time when 
 ended the first dispensation, with the lopping off the 
 boughs, until 1863, the attack and defense of the 
 root of slavery never ceased. 
 
 This was the second dispensation, which com- 
 menced with the year 1808. 
 
 From 1808 to 18 18 no vitally important step 
 was taken in regard to slavery, in or out of Con- 
 gress. The anti-slavery spirit was growing in 
 every Northern State, and those demands were 
 formulating, which contemplated the absolute aboli- 
 tion of the system. In March, 18 18, the delegate 
 from the Territory of Missouri, which embraced 
 the present States of Missouri and Arkansas, sub- 
 mitted a petition for the admission of so much of 
 the Territory as now bears the name of Missouri, 
 as a State. Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, pro- 
 posed an amendment to the bill, which provided 
 against the introduction of slavery in Missouri, 
 
58 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 and for the freedom of all children born within its 
 limits, after admission, upon reaching the age of 
 twenty-five years. Mr. Tallmadge and Mr. Fuller, 
 of the same State, supported the amendment in 
 able yet moderate speeches. It is curious to read 
 to-day the words of these then advanced thinkers, 
 and note their disclaimers of any intention to in- 
 terfere with the status quo in existing States ; to 
 see how readily they accepted the Southern exten- 
 sion of the interpretation of the Constitution, 
 which was claimed to recognize and protect the 
 institution of slavery. Moderate as were these 
 speeches, they called forth an outburst of fury from 
 the Southern members, that rivaled the best efforts 
 of the later Lecompton days. One member from 
 south of Mason and Dixon's line, rather inconse- 
 quently, though eloquently, dragged in Caesar and 
 the ides of March ; another accused Tallmadge of 
 talking to the galleries and endeavoring to excite 
 a servile rebellion ; a third said that the member 
 had kindled a flame which oceans of blood could 
 not quench. Mr. Tallmadge, goaded beyond the 
 point of policy, then made a speech which was 
 one of the first, having the true, manly, independ- 
 ent ring, ever made in Congress in the slavery con- 
 test. This redoubled the fury of a debate already 
 sufficiently bitter. The struggle continued until 
 the month of March, 1820. Every expedient 
 known to legislation was brought to bear for and 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 59 
 
 against the amendment, and a later one of the same 
 tenor. Early in 1820, Maine being a candidate 
 for admission to the Union, the bill to that effect 
 was loaded down with a rider giving unconditional 
 admission to Missouri. Then a bill was introduced 
 prohibiting forever the establishing of slavery north 
 or west of the Territory of Missouri. 
 
 The restrictionists had a small working majority 
 in the House; the anti-restrictionists in the Senate. 
 In the House the restricting amendment was 
 adopted, the Senate disagreed, and, as neither 
 body would recede from its position, a conference 
 committee was appointed and a settlement effected, 
 upon the basis of which Missouri was admitted. 
 This was the famous Missouri Compromise. By 
 its provisions Missouri was to be admitted as a 
 State, and Arkansas erected as a Territory without 
 any anti-slavery condition. In consideration of 
 this concession it was agreed that slavery be for- 
 ever prohibited in all the territory north and west 
 of Missouri and Arkansas. This compromise was 
 effected in March, 1820, the House giving a vote 
 of ninety in its favor to eighty-seven opposed. Of 
 the ninety, but fourteen were from free States ; of 
 the eighty-seven all were from free States. 
 
 In November of the same year Missouri applied 
 for admission, providing in her constitution for the 
 permanent protection of slavery, and forbidding 
 the residence of any free colored man within her 
 
60 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 limits. The latter provision was stricken out, and 
 Missouri admitted, slavery gaining its first great 
 advantage against a North so nearly united, only 
 by the aid of the votes of the weak-kneed North- 
 ern members. This compromise paved the way 
 for the Kansas and Nebraska troubles and the Le- 
 compton outrage. Randolph of Virginia, a de- 
 voted opponent of restriction, voted and argued 
 during all the earlier stages of the contest against 
 any measure which imposed the smallest condition 
 upon the admission of Missouri, and, in debate, 
 coined the famous phrase ''dough face," applying 
 it to those who favored compromise. 
 
 The years from 1820 to 1838 were characterized 
 by a deepening antagonism between the parties to 
 the great struggle. Abolitionist societies grew 
 and multiplied; a National society of the kind was 
 formed; petitions from these rained constantly 
 upon Congress. Many residents of the District 
 of Columbia petitioned for the gradual abolition of 
 slavery in that district. The whole subject involved 
 in the petitions was referred to a committee of 
 which Pinckney, of South Carolina, was chairman. 
 That committee reported that Congress had no 
 constitutional power to abolish slavery in any 
 State; that its abolition in the District of Colum- 
 bia was inexpedient and dangerous; that any me- 
 morials or petitions upon the subject thereafter re- 
 ceived, be at once laid upon the table, without read- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 6 1 
 
 ing, publication, reference, or other attention. 
 This precious report was adopted. 
 
 The Senate, not to be behind in wisdom and 
 hberahty, and in coiyiphance with a sapient sug- 
 gestion in the annual message of the President, 
 passed a bill prohibiting the circulation of any 
 abolition document, paper, book or picture, through 
 the mails in any slave State, prescribed heavy pen- 
 alties for mailing such matter, forbade postmasters, 
 under special penalties, to deliver it, and provided 
 that it be burned. John C. Calhoun drew this in- 
 quisitorial bill and Van Buren gave a casting vote 
 in its favor. 
 
 Such is, in mere outline, the history of the anti- 
 slavery struggle in England and the United States, 
 up to the time when Mr. Giddings was elected a 
 Representative in Congress. The social and polit- 
 ical condition of the United States-was at its worst. 
 Every day of the century had given slavery a new 
 advantage. Society in the North as well as the 
 South, was corrupted by its fatal influence ; the 
 people had proved the truth and wisdom of Pope's 
 warning against vice ; familiarity had made slavery, 
 first viewed with horror and aversion, the dearest 
 sin of its partisans, while to the masses in the 
 No-rth it was an object of indulgent apology or 
 indifference. 
 
 Open opposition to the institution meant ridi- 
 cule, scoffing, and ostracism in the North ; hatred, 
 
62 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 slander, abuse, assault, and death in the South. 
 The friends of slavery were united in Congress and 
 at the polls ; they commanded splendid legislative 
 ability, which was supplemented by the toadyism, 
 cowardice and indifference of the North, until they 
 controlled a majority, upon every question involv- 
 ing their cherished institution. Every Northern 
 man who surrendered to them they used, patron- 
 ized, and despised ; such as refused subservience, 
 they strove to silence by fair means or foul. They 
 swaggered in the halls of legislation, with pistols, 
 bowie knives, and canes, — ready to piece out argu- 
 ment with violence and murder ; they goaded sensi- 
 tive men to anger — then killed them in duels ; they 
 sought to crush out free speech and the right of 
 petition, and to make the councils of the American 
 people pander to their lust for power, wealth, and 
 ease. 
 
 The church, formerly opposed to slavery, was 
 corrupt to the core ; pulpits were disgraced by the 
 impious sophisms which were daily and hourly 
 repeated in Congress and in the prostituted columns 
 of the Southern press. The first chapter of 
 Romans gives a picture which is scarcely too strong 
 for transfer to this page of American history. 
 
 To such a Congress Giddings went as the Rep- 
 resentative of an anti-slavery constituency, which 
 liad shortly before been moved to its depths upon 
 the subject, by the pictures and appeals of Wells, 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 63 
 
 the devoted advocate of abolition. Himself in 
 warm sympathy with the cause, he could not have 
 found in the United States a constituency more 
 loyal and consistent in its support, nor could that 
 constituency have found a man more fit to bear 
 their colors to the field. 
 
64 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was on the 24th day of November, 1838, that 
 Mr. Giddings set out for Washington, to assume 
 the seat which he was destined to fill for twenty- 
 one years, with so much honor to himself and so 
 great advantage to his country and to the cause of 
 humanity. He went, a novtis homo, to a body 
 which had lived half its alloted term ; to duties 
 far beyond any he had ever assumed, to a life and 
 atmosphere as alien to that of his home and State 
 as could well be imagined. His capital was clear- 
 ness of brain, strength of body, honesty of pur- 
 pose, and a deep and solemn sense of responsibility 
 to his God, to himself, and to his constituency. 
 Beyond all this he had retained, to a degree very 
 rare in these over-sophisticated days, a simplicity 
 and faith in men and motives which were destined 
 to be sadly shocked by his early months of contact 
 with the legislative world. To his honor be it said 
 that, while he was compelled, by later experience, 
 to modify his estimate of others, he was never less 
 simple, less strictly and sternly conscientious in 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 6$ 
 
 his dealings with himself, never less single-minded 
 than when he left his pleasant home in Jefferson 
 on that raw and inclement November day. 
 
 Upon setting forth he opened a journal intended 
 for the refreshment of his memory and the amuse- 
 ment of his own family. With the directness and 
 lack of reserve which can be found only in such 
 records, he continued to set down, throughout 
 this first session, simple outlines of his plans, 
 thoughts, impressions, and experiences, which 
 constitute the best possible index to his character. 
 Much contained in its pages is now trite and irrele- 
 vant ; much can not be published without a breach 
 of the confidence of the illustrious man who penned 
 its lines, well toward a half century since, but there 
 remains enough available for use in these pages to 
 well repay the care with which it has been pre- 
 served. 
 
 The journal tells little save of the monotonous in- 
 cidents of the journey until, having left Wheeling 
 and crossed the Alleghanies by coach, the traveler 
 and his companions encountered at Frederick an- 
 other party of Congressmen hastening to Washing- 
 ton. Under date of Novemiber 29th, Mr. Gid- 
 dings says of this meeting : 
 
 "This morning, soon after breakfast, we were 
 joined by a number of members of Congress who 
 had traveled night and day, without any stopping, 
 except to eat their meals. Among them I was 
 
66 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 introduced to a gentleman by the name of Crockett, 
 a name familiar to most of our American people, 
 for, I think, few among us are ignorant of the bi- 
 ography of David Crockett, his father. The son 
 appears to possess few of the leading traits of char- 
 acter which distinguished his father. He seemed 
 to be a modest, unassuming man, and is said to be 
 very amiable in his character and disposition. 
 Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, also formed one of the 
 company. He is a man of middle size, well built, 
 with dark complexion and black eyes. He was 
 born in the lower walks of life, and up to the time 
 *he was two-and-twenty, probably never thought of 
 rising from obscurity. In i8 12 he was a wagoner 
 in the Northwestern army. At that time, it 
 is said his unrivalled wit and the brilliancy of 
 his imagination used to draw around a lazy throng, 
 during the long evenings, and he then prided him- 
 self as much, probably, on attracting the notice and 
 admiration of teamsters and soldiers, as he now 
 does on standing forth as one of the most brilliant 
 orators in the councils of the nation." 
 
 This description is interesting as showing the 
 first impression made upon Mr. Giddings by a 
 man with whom he was destined for so many years 
 to be constantly associated. 
 
 The following bit of description of the ride over 
 the Baltimore & Ohio railroad to Washington, 
 which was evidently Mr. Giddings' first journey by 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 6/ 
 
 rail, is also worth quoting. It follows the forego- 
 ing passage, under the same date : 
 
 "At II o'clock about one hundred and twenty 
 passengers seated in three cars, carrying from forty 
 to sixty passengers each, started upon the Balti- 
 more & Ohio railroad, for Washington. The cars 
 are well carpeted, and the seats cushioned. We 
 had also a stove in each car which rendered them 
 comfortably warm. Thus seated, some conversing 
 in groups, others reading newspapers, and some 
 from loss of sleep in traveling, sleeping in their 
 seats, we were swept along at the rate of fifteen 
 miles per hour. At the usual hour our candles 
 were lighted, and we presented the appearance of 
 three drawing rooms filled with guests, traveling 
 by land. At about 7 o'clock we arrived at Wash- 
 ington city. The moment we stopped, we were 
 surrounded on every side with runners, porters, 
 hackmen, and servants — one calling to know if you 
 would go to Brown's, another if you would take a 
 hack, etc. They are a source of great annoyance 
 which the police ought to prevent." 
 
 On the evening of Saturday, December ist, a 
 caucus of the Whig members of the House was 
 held, preliminary to organization. This Mr. Gid- 
 dings attended, but passes in his journal with no 
 further comment than the remark, **I was pleased 
 with the talent, foresight, and acumen exhibited by 
 the leaders of our party: Sergeant, of Pennsyl- 
 
6S JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 vania; Bell, of Tennessee, and Evans, of Maine, 
 are among the leaders. 
 
 On the following Monday, the 3d of December, 
 the House organized, and Mr. Giddings with other 
 new members, presented his credentials, was 
 sworn, and took his seat. After passing very 
 briefly the formalities which preceded adjournment 
 for the day, Mr. Giddings continued, in his journal, 
 as follows: " I this day, for the first time, had an 
 opportunity of observing many of the distinguished 
 men of the Nation, and I confess I was disap- 
 pointed in their appearance. There was not that 
 dignity of carriage about them which I expected. 
 Among them was John Q. Adams, formerly Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and now Representative 
 from Massachusetts. He was, strictly speaking, 
 educated a politican, and has continued in political 
 life from his youth up to this time. He is said to 
 have spent more than twenty-eight years of his 
 life at foreign courts. He has held many respon- 
 sible offices under the Government, and is said 
 always to have acquitted himself with honor. 
 He is about five feet eight inches in height, very 
 bald, low forehead, and nothing about the shape of 
 his head that indicates unusual talent, yet his 
 physiognomy has something of an intellectual 
 appearance. He is truly regarded as a venerable 
 personage." 
 
 Mr. Adams was at that time for various reasons 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 69 
 
 the most notable man in the House. The second 
 President of his family, a man of the highest cult- 
 ure and widest knowledge ; and who had been all 
 his life a student of books and a student of men ; 
 at once scholar, poet, man of affairs, diplomat, and 
 statesman, with the polish given by years of resi- 
 dence at the most polite courts of Europe, laid upon 
 such a foundation as nature and early culture had 
 given, he came to the House of Representatives the 
 first ex- President of the United States who had ever 
 taken a seat in its membership. He nominally 
 represented a Whig constituency, but he admitted 
 the right of no party to dictate his action; he sat, 
 as few have ever done, a true representative of the 
 people, knowing no law but that which imposed 
 upon him the obligation to do right and to shun 
 wrong, fearless and feared, imperious, dictatorial, 
 just — what wonder that the grand old man was 
 the foremost figure in that chamber, and that the 
 novice upon the threshold of political life, should 
 have paused, amid all the excitement of his entry, 
 to draw a portrait of him. Neither then knew 
 that the vigorous young westerner had come into 
 the field to relieve the guard which the brave 
 veteran had so long maintained in the cause of 
 humanity ; that the two were destined for a time to 
 serve side by side, then the mantle of the elder to 
 fall upon his comrade's shoulders ; that the achieve- 
 ments of the two should represent to posterity 
 
70 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 more efficient service in the cause of the negro 
 slave than any other record. 
 
 An entry in the journal, under the date of De- 
 cember 4th, clearly illustrates the honesty and 
 straightforwardness of Giddings. It is as follows : 
 ' ' I also learned to-day that a resolution was passed 
 at the last session of the present Congress, appro- 
 priating to each member a copy of certain books, 
 to the number of some sixty volumes, and of the 
 value of from five to ten hundred dollars, and, be- 
 ing a member of this Congress, the question is 
 now in my mind, whether I ought to take the 
 books. In this way some forty to fifty thousand 
 dollars of the public funds have been extracted 
 from the public treasury and given to members, by 
 way of perquisites, over and above their compen- 
 sation. Now, if the pay of members is not suffi- 
 cient, I would raise it; if it be sufficient, why take 
 more without letting the people know it ? But 
 the members seem to think it of little import- 
 ance." 
 
 Read what he says in his entry for December 
 14th: " It is a fact, which every man of observa- 
 tion must see, by spending a few days in the Repre- 
 sentatives' hall, that there is a vast difference in the 
 character of the members from the North and South. 
 During this week every person present must have 
 witnessed the high and important bearing of the 
 Southern men; their self-important airs, their over- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. /I 
 
 bearing manners, while the Northern men, even on 
 the subject of slavery, are diffident and forbearing. 
 I have myself come to the honest conclusion that 
 our Northern friends are, in fact, afraid of these 
 Southern bullies. I have bestowed much thought 
 upon the subject; I have made inquiry, and think 
 we have no Northern man who dare boldly and 
 fearlessly declare his abhorrence of slavery and 
 the slave trade. This kind of fear I never experi- 
 enced, nor shall I submit to it now. When I came 
 here I had no thought of participating in debate 
 at all, but particularly I intended to keep silence 
 this winter, but, since I have seen our Northern 
 friends so backward and delicate, I have determined 
 to express my own views and declare my own 
 sentiments, and risk the effects. For that purpose 
 I have drawn up a resolution calling for informa- 
 tion as to the slave trade in the District of Colum- 
 bia, which, among other things, calls for a state- 
 ment of the number of slaves who have murdered 
 themselves within that District during the last five 
 years, after being sold for foreign markets, and the 
 number of children who have been murdered by 
 their parents during said time, under the apprehen- 
 sion of immediate separation for sale at a foreign 
 market, and the amount of revenue collected on 
 sale of licenses to deal in human flesh and blood. 
 1 showed the resolutions to several friends, who 
 advise me not to present them on two accounts : 
 
72 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 first, that it will enrage the Southern members; 
 secondly, that it will injure me at hom.e. But I 
 have determined to risk both, for I would rather 
 lose my election at home than suffer the insolence 
 of these Southerners here. Mr. Fletcher, of Bos- 
 ton, is the only man that consents to my present- 
 ing the resolutions. This morning a friend called 
 on me to show me a scurrilous attack made upon 
 me in the Government paper of to-day. I am in 
 some doubt whether to call the public attention to 
 it or not. However, it seems to render a full 
 declaration of my sentiments more necessary and 
 proper." 
 
 Only two weeks in Congress, a stranger among 
 men of years of experience in legislation and poli- 
 tics, yet ready to throw down the gauntlet to 
 slavery, knowing that such an act would call down 
 upon his head the rage of all the South, and warned 
 that it would weaken him at home! Only two 
 weeks in Congress and those passed in silence, yet 
 already marked for abuse by the journals of the 
 opposition! The words quoted were embodied in 
 no stump speech, newspaper communication nor 
 even in a confidential message to a friend. It 
 was a sacred pledge made with his own con- 
 science, and spread upon a page which no eye 
 was intended or expected to see. Nor was it 
 the ignorant bravado of inexperience, destined to 
 disappear at the first danger, but a solemn self- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 73 
 
 dedication, to which he never for a moment proved 
 false. Almost ten years later, on the 4th day of 
 December, 1848, after meeting the daily tempta- 
 tion and demoralization of life in Congress long 
 and constantly enough, to have lost at least the 
 freshness and sentiment of the debutant, he wrote 
 in his journal: 
 
 " News from Columbus shows that our friends, 
 the Free-soilers, are separating from each other. 
 
 Mr. writes me that he shall attend no more 
 
 Free-soil meetings, and seems to think that the 
 party will, of course, dissolve into its original ele- 
 ments in consequence of his leaving it. I am 
 disgusted with the vanity and want of principle 
 that characterize all his thoughts. Men appear 
 to think of nothing, talk of nothing, and act with 
 no purpose, but that of party. Attempts are made 
 to get me to go into the Whig party in order to 
 secure an election to the Senate. Thank God, I 
 have never for one moment entertained the desire 
 of such an election at the sacrifice of principle." 
 
 Could anything ever recorded in the way of a 
 declaration of motive and intent, give a clearer 
 picture of the maker? Honesty, singleness of pur- 
 pose, fidelity to his principles and to himself — all 
 these stand out in every line, and one may labori- 
 ously read every sentence of every speech made by 
 Joshua R. Giddings, in Congress, or upon the 
 stump, from the time he penned these first quoted 
 
74 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 words, until his earthly account was closed, and find 
 no sentiment inconsistent with the high and unsel- 
 fish standard which he then set for himself. He 
 loved approbation, — and what man does not? — yet 
 he never condescended to the most harmless act of 
 the demagogue; he loved place and power, and 
 both might have been his in barter for his silence ; 
 no place of all in the gift of an American President 
 or Congress, but would have been held well paid 
 for by the vacancy of his seat, yet he never had an 
 ambition that he did not bid to get behind him, 
 that he might go forward in poverty and through 
 contumely preaching to men the gospel of justice 
 and humanity. 
 
 From day to day this journal of Mr. Giddings* 
 is full of bits of naif and characteristic criticism of 
 men and methods , which it is difficult to resist quot- 
 ing. He tells with quiet humor how the respecta- 
 bility of a Washington man while living, is judged, 
 after his death, by the number of carriages which fol- 
 low him to the grave, and how, also, many of these 
 carriages go empty. Then he says : *' If a mem- 
 ber of Congress dies, the usual procession is con- 
 stituted of all the hacks in the city, which are 
 employed to follow the hearse whether they have 
 any passengers in them or not. A monument, 
 costing sometimes ;^300 or ^400, is also erected, 
 and the whole expense is paid from the public 
 treasury, including 1^150 to the family where the 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. 75 
 
 member dies," After telling of the funeral of a 
 member which occurred at Baltimore in 1837, when 
 " members of both Houses took seats in the cars, 
 followed the corpse to Baltimore, staid over night, 
 had their dinners and wines, lodgings and break- 
 fast, all at the expense of the Nation," he adds: 
 "If members can go to Baltimore at the public 
 expense, I do not see why they cannot take a trip 
 to Philadelphia, or New York, or even go to Bos- 
 ton or beyond the mountains." Subsequent events 
 have justified this forecast. 
 
 Mr. Giddings, himself a man of rare dignity, 
 shows constant signs of displeasure at the lack 
 of that quality in his fellows. He also laments 
 the serious waste of time and of money in- 
 volved in an adjournment over Saturday as well 
 as Sunday, ' ' when hundreds of people are living 
 in want, because Congress has not time to pass 
 upon their just claims. " One more quotation from 
 the pages of this diary relating to the impressions of 
 those first days must suffice. On December loth he 
 wrote : ' ' The subject of moving a petition regarding 
 Haytian independence occupied the day. It is 
 amusing and yet astonishing to see the views enter- 
 tained by most of the members on the subject of 
 abolition. At the South it is the general impres- 
 sion that it is designed to create a general rebellion 
 among the slaves, and have them cut their masters' 
 throats. At the North they have no idea as to 
 
y^ JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 what constitutes abolition. Northern men seem 
 to be afraid to come out and declare their senti- 
 ments. They appear to feel great delicacy on the 
 subject. Instead of stating the question of abolish- 
 ing slavery in the District of Columbia, and the 
 slave trade between the States, they keep at a dis- 
 tance from the subject, and, as yet, no one has 
 come forth, and, with plainness set forth the claims 
 at the North and all seem afraid so to do." 
 
 On the 29th of December Mr. Giddings spoke 
 for the first time. He says: "The subject of 
 granting pensions came up in debate ; it being a 
 subject upon which I thought myself possessed 
 of tolerable information, and the House being thin, 
 I ventured for the first time to address the House. 
 I expected to be greatly embarrassed and to have 
 my voice tremble, but was surprised to find my 
 voice full and to be able to make myself heard 
 through the whole hall. I spoke but a moment, 
 not intending to occupy time, but wishing to try 
 my voice." 
 
 On the nth day of December, Mr. Atherton, 
 a New Hampshire, doughface, arose in his place 
 and offered a series of resolutions denying the con- 
 stitutional right of the General Government to in- 
 terfere with slavery in the various States, 01' in the 
 District of Coliwibia, denouncing persons who had 
 forwarded anti-slavery petitions to the House, for 
 endeavoring to accomplish, by indirect means, what 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 7/ 
 
 could not be constitutionally done, and, finally, re- 
 affirming more stringently the Pinckney resolution, 
 providing that all petitions upon the subject of 
 slavery be laid upon the table, without reading, ref- 
 erence, printing, or debate. These are the measures 
 which have passed into history as the ' ' Atherton 
 gag resolutions." On the succeeding day they 
 were put to a vote separately, and passed by a vote 
 of one hundred and twenty-six yeas, to seventy- 
 three nays, Mr. Giddings voting, as a matter of 
 course, in the negative. This was the first impor- 
 tant measure upon which he gave a vote. The 
 diary entry of the nth says: "The rules were 
 then suspended and Mr. Atherton arose to sustain 
 his resolutions by a written speech, at the close of 
 which he called for the previous question. Ex- 
 citement now arose, . . hisses and murmurs 
 of contempt for the ma/i and t/ie act became audi- 
 ble. . . ." These italics, which are Mr. Gid- 
 dings', convey very eloquently his own endorse- 
 ment of the opinions expressed in those hisses and 
 murmurs. He did not then write much ; he said 
 nothing, only recording by his vote his estimation 
 of the matter. Yet there is no question that his 
 being brought thus face to face at the very outset 
 of his career in Congress, with the arrogant as- 
 sumption of the slave power, had much to do with 
 inducing him to take instant and firm position as 
 
78 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 an avowed opponent of the system, its champions, 
 and their Northern lackeys. 
 
 On the evening of December 31st, Mr. Giddings 
 attended a party given by Mr. Gules, to Whig 
 Senators and Representatives. There he met, 
 and talked with Adams, Clay, Preston, and other 
 famous men. Already his few weeks' observation 
 of Adams had made Mr. Giddings a devoted 
 admirer of that great man. He notes in his 
 account of the party, that he "took the earliest 
 opportunity to engage in conversation with the 
 venerable ex-President." Proceeding with the 
 account of the entertainment, he describes the 
 lavish luxury of the table, the profusion of wines, 
 and the flow of wit and wisdom, closing with this 
 philosophical comment: "The morality of these 
 parties may well be doubted, but they appear 
 necessary, in order to bring the members into that 
 acquaintance with each other which is desirable." 
 
 On New Year's day Mr. Giddings, conforming to 
 the usual custom, paid a number of formal calls. 
 He describes minutely his reception at the White 
 House, with all the splendor of its semi-royal 
 appointments, which was naturally impressive to 
 one so recently removed from the simplicity of the 
 West. He then made some unimportant calls, 
 concluding his day with one which must be 
 described in his own words: "Still one more call 
 remained to be paid on this New Year's day. I 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 79 
 
 had been invited to call upon our venerable ex- 
 President. To his residence I now bent my way. 
 In a retired mansion we found him and his lady, 
 surrounded by some dozen friends, who showed, in 
 their countenances and conversation, that they had 
 called in reality, to pay their respects to this great 
 man, whose name will hereafter fill the brightest 
 page of American history. Here we met and 
 saluted the aged statesman, in a large and comfort- 
 able drawing room, with his matronly lady, her 
 sister, a daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. 
 We found him in the midst of a truly domestic 
 circle; no noise or bustle interrupted that expres- 
 sion of good will which we all felt toward him. 
 His countenance glowed with benevolence, and 
 kindness towards his friends around him. We 
 were introduced to the members of his fam- 
 ily, sat awhile, and, after some interesting con- 
 versation, we left this interesting man, feeling 
 that we had seen a specimen of true greatness con- 
 nected with genuine republican simplicity. Mr. 
 Adams belongs to no local district, to no political 
 party, but to the Nation and to the people; he is 
 elected by his district in Massachusetts, comes here 
 with his family during the sessions of Congress, 
 and keeps house by himself. While in the House 
 of Representatives, he consults with no one, takes 
 the advice of no one, and holds himself account- 
 able to no one but the Nation. He belongs as 
 
80 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 much to the former age as to this — perhaps he 
 may be said to be the connecting hnk between the 
 former generation and the one now in active hfe." 
 So closely does this description apply to the atti- 
 tude taken by Mr. Giddings in his Congressional 
 career, so evident is the admiration which is shown 
 in every word which he wrote regarding Mr. 
 Adams, that we have good warrant for believing 
 that the influence of the elder man was decisive in 
 determining the course of his young friend. 
 Friends, indeed, they soon became. Their first 
 meeting, their gradual warming to each other, and 
 the full measure of their reciprocal affection are 
 amply witnessed by Giddings letters and journals. 
 In an autograph album kept by Mr. Giddings during 
 the year 1844, and written in a trembling, almost 
 illegible hand, are the following lines, embody- 
 ing an expression of true and sentimental affection, 
 rarely felt and more rarely expressed, between men. 
 They have never been published, and the transcript 
 here given is exact and entire. 
 
 TO JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, 
 
 OF JEFFERSON, ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO. 
 
 When first together here we meet 
 
 Askance each other we behold 
 The bitter mingling with the sweet. 
 
 The warm attempered by the cold; 
 We seek, with searching ken to find 
 
 A soul congenial to our own, 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 8l 
 
 For mind, in sympathy with mind, 
 
 Instinctive dreads to walk alone. 
 And here, from regions wide apart, 
 
 We came our purpose to pursue, 
 Each with a warm and honest heart, 
 
 Each with spirit firm and true. 
 Intent, with anxious aim to learn. 
 
 Each other's character we scan. 
 And soon the difference discern 
 
 Between the fair and faithless man. 
 And here, with scrutinizing eye, 
 
 A kindred soul with mine to see 
 And longing bosom to descry 
 
 I sought, and found at last — in thee. 
 Farewell, my friend ! and, if once more 
 
 We meet within this hall again, 
 Be ours the blessing to restore 
 
 Our country's, and the rights of 7nen. 
 
 John Quincy Adams, 
 
 of Quincy, Massachusetts. 
 H. R. U. S., Washington, 17 June, 1844. 
 
 Anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill. 
 
 When these hnes were written Adams was 
 nearly seventy-eight years of age, too sober, too 
 wise, also too great a man to pen a page of verses 
 in idle compliment. He loved the younger man 
 whom he had taught so much, and that love was 
 returned with a warmth and veneration that made 
 the friendship between these two — representing 
 the antipodes of education, training, experience, 
 and social surroundings — one of the most remark- 
 able and touching in history. Simply the recog- 
 nition of mutual honesty, sincerity, devotion, and 
 power, in connection with a cause which both held 
 sacred ; simply the standing together against 
 
82 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 "the whips and scorns of time; 
 the oppressers' wrong; the proud man's contumely," 
 
 had been sufficient to overcome all the influences 
 and circumstances which combined to render 
 friendship or love between them a thing most un- 
 likely. 
 
 Although, as before stated, Mr. Giddings had 
 once briefly addressed the House, his real debut 
 was made on the 5th of January, 1839. His 
 own account of the matter is given in full, for the 
 reason that the speech then made was effectual 
 in establishing him in the esteem of his colleagues, 
 as a man of unusual boldness and ability, and be- 
 cause the simple and unreserved statement gives 
 an excellent key to his character. 
 
 * ' Friday, January 4th. This day nothing oc- 
 curred worthy of notice, except as its transactions 
 connected myself with proceedings which may 
 hereafter bring my name before the public. Mr. 
 Jones, who claimed a seat here as delegate from 
 Wisconsin, had been elected in 1836, served two 
 years, as limited by the organic laws, and, at the 
 expiration of his term, which was in October 
 last, again appeared in the field as a candidate 
 and was defeated. This defeat was mostly attrib- 
 uted to his connection with the duel in which 
 Mr. Cilley fell last winter in this city. After his 
 defeat he came to this city and claimed to hold his 
 seat in the House during the present Congress, 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 83 
 
 urging that his time did not commence until De- 
 cember, 1837, ^^^^ t^"^^t his service and receiving 
 pay in 1836 were all in his own wrong. I merely 
 believe his object to be the travel fees from Wis- 
 consin and his /^r dt'ejn, which amount to about 
 two thousand dollars, and think that he ought not 
 thus to carry off the National treasure. I have 
 tried to g-et some older member to introduce a 
 resolution denying his right to compensation, 
 which I know he has already drawn. But, as no 
 older member will do it, I have determined to 
 take it upon myself, and, thinking that justice to 
 him required me to apprise him of my design, 
 have written him a note, stating my intention, and 
 conveyed it to him through the medium of the 
 post-office. 
 
 "Saturday, January 5th. I spent the whole 
 morning in preparing to sustain the resolution 
 which I intended to present to the House. I had 
 yet many misgivings as to my success before that 
 body; whether I should not be so much embar- 
 rassed as to be unable to proceed. Mr. Jones is 
 a professed duelist ; his conduct in the matter I 
 considered disgraceful ; if I spoke I knew I should 
 speak my mind as soon as I should become 
 warmed with my subject. Many of the members, 
 I knew, dared not speak as they thought, on ac- 
 count of Mr. Jones' dueling character. Of this I 
 entertained not the slightest fear ; all my appre- 
 
84 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 hensions were lest I should not succeed as well 
 as I intended, in exposing what I deemed a gross 
 abuse of the situation he held. I went to the 
 House with fear and trembling. I had written 
 Jones that I should bring forward the resolution, 
 so now I could not retreat. The House was called 
 to order and the clerk was reading the journal. I 
 had my resolution written, and when the clerk had 
 finished reading was on my feet with my* resolu- 
 tion in my hand and called the Speaker's name, 
 but he responded to the call of Mr. Mason, who 
 sent to the chair a resolution almost in the very 
 words of the one I held. I felt relieved from my 
 embarrassment, and when the resolution was read, 
 the Speaker remarked that he had a communica- 
 tion from. Mr. Jones. The reading was called for. 
 In it Mr. Jones stated that he had drawn his mile- 
 age and pef diem, but on the evening previous had 
 received a note from Mr. Giddings which he there- 
 with transmitted to the Speaker, together with the 
 funds he had drawn from the treasury. When my 
 name was mentioned, all eyes were turned upon 
 me ; I was a new member, and all seemed to look 
 with astonishment at the course I had dared to 
 take. Some of my friends came to me and 
 enquired why I had done as I did ; others appeared 
 to think me too diffident to carry out what I had 
 commenced, and came to me to encourage and 
 urge me forward. General Mason took the floor, 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 8$ 
 
 of course. When he was speaking I was advised 
 to withdraw and let the older members manage 
 the matter. When General Mason was through I 
 tried to get the floor and failed, Mr. Bouldin, of 
 Virginia, obtaining it. I soon saw that he had no 
 correct view of the subject, and felt somewhat 
 emboldened. He spoke for half an hour, and 
 when he ceased I strove for the floor again, but 
 Mr. Wise obtained it, and I saw that Mr. Thomas, 
 of Maryland, an old member, and one who spoke 
 often, was determined to get it next, and of course 
 I knew he would get it, as he is the leader of the 
 Van Buren party, and a favorite of the Speaker. 
 I went to him and requested the privilege of speak- 
 ing before he did ; this he refused, and I deter- 
 mined that, if I followed him, he should hereafter 
 be at least a little careful in throwing himself be- 
 fore me or in my way. My friends now came and 
 urged me to insist upon having the floor, but, as 
 I expected, Mr. Thomas obtained it. I took notice 
 of his argument, and when he sat down I succeeded 
 in getting the floor, and, to my utter surprise, 
 found my voice full and clear. I felt a little em- 
 barrassment, but cared nothing for that while my 
 voice should appear natural. Having made my 
 introduction, I proceeded to answer the argument 
 of Mr. Bouldin. I had hardly stated the position 
 he had taken, when he saw the light in which I 
 was about to place him, and at once requested the 
 
86 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 floor to explain. I yielded ; he explained. I pro- 
 ceeded in my argument, but in less than five min- 
 utes Mr. Bouldin and Mr. Wise were both on 
 their feet wishing to explain. Cries of "No!" 
 "No!" were heard, but I yielded. By this time 
 I had thrown off my embarrassment, and, when 
 they resumed their seats I let fall a good-natured 
 joke, which drew forth a burst of laughter. I 
 proceeded to the argument of Thomas; he, too, 
 was on the floor, and I refused to yield it. I pro- 
 ceeded ; he again solicited the floor, and I yielded 
 it. My friends now loudly remonstrated against 
 my yielding the floor any more. Thomas ex- 
 plained and sat down. I proceeded with a deter- 
 mination to scorch him for his want of delicacy in 
 not permitting me to precede him in the argu- 
 ment. I took ample vengeance on him, and finally 
 got through the argument with tolerable satisfac- 
 tion to myself, and, I am told, to the satisfaction 
 of my friends. " 
 
 The effect of this speech upon Mr. Giddings 
 himself and upon his fellow members is indicated 
 in his journal entry of January 7th. He says: 
 * * A member of Congress, when he comes unknown 
 to Washington, attracts little attention among his 
 fellow members. With citizens and officers of 
 Government his official character is a sufficient 
 recommendation to command their highest respect 
 and constant attention. But with his fellow mem- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 8/ 
 
 bers he attracts no notice whatever, until he 
 makes some display of his powers, tact, or of po- 
 litical management. I have now fairly made my 
 debut and to-day I fancied myself, on entering the 
 hall, greeted more warmly than heretofore; mem- 
 bers w4io had previously barely paid the passing 
 salutation, now came to my seat, with great polite- 
 ness inquired after my health, and many of them 
 congratulated me upon the favorable reception of 
 my speech. ... I now felt that I had fairly 
 entered upon the business of a member. I felt 
 myself entitled to express my views more freely 
 than I had heretofore done. Many of the most 
 celebrated lawyers in the House and of the Na- 
 tion, took occasion to express their high grati- 
 fication at the manner in which I had * wound up ' 
 (as they said) the chairman of the judiciary com- 
 mittee." 
 
 On the 2 1 St of January Mr. Adams created a 
 decided sensation in the House, by arising to a 
 question of privilege and giving a statement of his 
 views on the subject of abolition. He said that 
 he had lately received several letters threatening 
 his life, and had decided it was proper to place him- 
 self distinctly before the people in the matter. 
 Permission being granted he explained that his 
 general views squared with those of other aboli- 
 tionists; that he favored the interdiction of the 
 slave trade between the States, and the recognition 
 
88 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 of the independence of Hayti, but was not pre- 
 pared to favor the abohtion of slavery in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia. He would, however, did he 
 not doubt the constitutionality of such a measure, 
 approve of the removal of the capital to some 
 place where slavery did not exist. 
 
 Mr. Giddings says of the matter: " His speech 
 created a great sensation. It seemed to con- 
 vince the South that Mr. Adams was not so 
 great an enemy to them as they had supposed, 
 and some of the Northern members appeared 
 to think he had not been as strongly opposed 
 to slavery as they had thought him to be; 
 others said that he had but expressed the same 
 views which they had always understood him 
 to possess. Mr. Slade, of Vermont, who is the 
 greatest Abolitionist in the House, seemed to 
 be very apprehensive that the speech would have 
 a bad influence on the subject of abolition. He 
 drew up interrogatories to Mr. Adams, for the pur- 
 pose of drawing from him further explanations, 
 and submitted them to me. This I considered 
 useless, having no hope that Mr. Adams would 
 make further disclosures of his views to Mr. Slade 
 than he had to the world. I am, however, fully 
 of the opinion, from the language used by Mr. 
 Adams, and the cautious manner in which he ex- 
 pressed himself, that his want of readiness to 
 abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, is not 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 89 
 
 owing to any doubt as to the power of Congress 
 to do so; nor to any other reason other than a 
 question as to the policy of such action. The dif- 
 ficuhy that has often presented itself to my mind 
 is, that if Congress should pass a law to abolish 
 slavery in the District, before it could take effect 
 the slaves would all be taken out of the District 
 and the law would find none here to take effect 
 upon. But, if Congress should first pass a law 
 prohibiting the taking of any slave out of the Dis- 
 trict, that would keep them here, and, when a law 
 to abolish slavery should pass, it would have the 
 effect to liberate from nine to ten thousand slaves. 
 Of Mr. Adams' views beyond what he has pub- 
 licly expressed, I know nothing, but these 
 thoughts have often run through my own mind. 
 I think, them worthy of serious reflection by the 
 philanthropic." 
 
 "Thursday, January 29. While in committee of 
 the whole on the state of the Union members 
 speak with perfect freedom. Indeed, it does not 
 seem to be of any importance whether a speech 
 made while in such committee has any relation 
 whatever to the subject under debate. 
 Seeing the wide range of debate it struck me as a 
 favorable place to bring forward the subject of 
 slavery, which is prohibited while in the House, 
 For this purpose I digested and reduced to paper 
 
90 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 a plan for commencing an attack upon the slave 
 trade in the District of Columbia. 
 
 Mr. Giddings failed to obtain the floor, and was 
 obliged for the time to defer his speech. 
 
 On Wednesday, January 30, he made the fol- 
 lowing journal entry: ''This day Mr. Slade, of 
 Vermont, came to me with an expression of great 
 anxiety in regard to the exposition which Mr. 
 Adams had made of his views concerning slavery. 
 He appears to apprehend great results from these 
 disclosures. Not feeling any very serious appre- 
 hensions on the subject, I told him that the opin- 
 ions of Mr. Adams would pass off like the opinions 
 of any other man. That I intended to give my 
 own opinion as a counterbalance to that of Mr. 
 Adams. He desired to know how I should bring 
 the matter forward, and I told him how. He was 
 at first incredulous as to the feasibility of my plan, 
 but soon agreed that I was correct and, before he 
 left, promised to make an effort himself, upon 
 the same plan." 
 
 Then follows a short description of a scene 
 which excited Mr. Giddings' indignation to the 
 highest pitch, put a keen edge upon his purpose, 
 and had an effect in determining his future action : 
 "This day a coffle of about sixty slaves, male and 
 female, passed through the streets of Washington, 
 chained together, on their way South. They were 
 accompanied by a large wagon, in which were 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 9I 
 
 placed the more feeble females and children of 
 such tender years as to be unable to walk. A 
 being, in the shape of a man, was on horseback, 
 with a large whip in his hand, with which he oc- 
 casionally chastised those who, through fatigue 
 or indolence, were tardy in their movements. This 
 was done in the day time, in public view of all 
 who at the time happened to be so situated as to 
 see the barbarous spectacle." 
 
 " Monday, February 4th. This being petition day 
 I had determined on raising a question as to the 
 abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 This I communicated to my friend Fletcher,''^ whcv 
 was incredulous as to getting up the question, but 
 pledged himself to sustain me provided I would 
 get the subject before the House. At about 3 
 o'clock the State of Ohio was called on for peti- 
 tions. I obtained the floor, and, after presenting 
 some others on various subjects, I brought for- 
 ward one for the abolition of slavery in the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia, and moved that it be referred 
 to the committee on said District. The chair, at 
 this time occupied by Mr. Briggs, of Massachu- 
 setts, decided that the petition must lie on the ta- 
 ble. From this decision I appealed, and the chair 
 having stated the appeal, I obtained the floor and 
 proceeded to argue the question of the prohibition 
 of petition by resolutions of the nth and 12th of 
 
 * Richard Fletcher, of Massachusetts. 
 
92 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 December. Mr. Garland, of Louisiana, called me 
 to order. There was much uneasiness apparent 
 among the members. The speaker, Mr. Polk, re- 
 sumed the chair and desired me to state distinctly 
 the motion I had made. This I did, when he pro- 
 nounced me in order. I then proceeded with my 
 remarks. I went on, mentioned the resolutions, 
 and showed that they did not extend to the peti- 
 tion under consideration. After this I pronounced 
 the resolutions opposed to the Constitution and 
 ipso facto void, and proceeded to demonstrate that 
 position." After much confusion and technical 
 skirmishing, Mr. Giddings, finding that he was 
 actually blockading the House, withdrew his ap- 
 peal from a declaration of the chair that he was 
 out of order, and let the matter drop, having ac- 
 complished his purpose in defining his own posi- 
 tion and entering a protest against the outrageous 
 Atherton gag and its predecessors. 
 
 On the 7th of February, Mr. Clay, then a can- 
 didate for the Presidency and under the party lash, 
 made a speech in the Senate, attacking the Aboli- 
 tionists in Congress and the country. Mr. Clay 
 had, in certain youthful speeches, declared himself 
 in favor of universal human liberty. In this dec- 
 laration he was no doubt sincere, but the leaders 
 of his party demanded as a condition of their sup- 
 port in the Presidential race, that he should clear 
 bis skirts of the imputation of being a sympathizer 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 93 
 
 with the negro. The speech in question was the 
 result; while it earned him the commendation of 
 Calhoun and men of that ilk, it lost him much of 
 the respect of the North and was a most unfortu- 
 nate utterance. Mr. Giddings had at that time 
 met Mr. Clay several times in company, and had 
 once dined with him. There was between them 
 no intimacy. Clay was the Senator from Ken- 
 tucky, one of the foremost in the upper house, an 
 exponent of popular opinions, an unsurpassed or- 
 ator, the idol of a great constituency, and, in all 
 particulars, one of the leading men of the day. 
 Giddings was a Representative of but two months' 
 standing, who had only become known as the ally 
 of a weak and despised minority. The following 
 words from the journal of the day will illustrate as 
 well as any act of Mr. Giddings his fearless bold- 
 ness in the cause of right and justice : ' ' My friend 
 Fletcher came to me and gave me a description of 
 the speech. He stated that Mr. Clay had said, 
 substantially, that Congress had no right to abolish 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, unless it were 
 necessary for the accommodation of Congress, or 
 the benefit of the people of the District. This was 
 different from what I had before understood, and 
 I knew would disappoint the expectations of the 
 people whom I represent. I had publicly avowed 
 my adherence to Mr. Clay for President, in prefer- 
 ence to Mr. Van Buren, and I felt that the speech 
 
94 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 would place me at home in an attitude unexpected 
 by me and by my friends. Before I left my seat 
 therefore, I dispatched a note to Mr. Clay de- 
 manding distinctly whether * he believed Congress 
 to possess the right of abolishing slavery in this 
 District ivJien no otJiei' reason existed for it than mere 
 henevolence to the Jmvian family .' " 
 
 Every effort was made by the friends of Mr. 
 Clay to induce Mr. Giddings to withdraw his note. 
 In conversation upon the floor of the House the 
 latter stated that he regarded the speech as indis- 
 creet and imprudent. Being charged, by a friend 
 of Mr. Clay, with showing great assurance in crit- 
 icizing such a man, Mr. Giddings retorted that 
 he would not allow Mr. Clay, or any other man, to 
 ridicule and misrepresent his constituents, and that 
 iie would take the earliest opportunity to disabuse 
 the public mind of the false impression conveyed. 
 The result was that Mr. Clay, having called once 
 in the House to see Mr. Giddings and failed to find 
 him, came again, said that he had made the speech 
 at the request and with the advice of Northern 
 Whigs, and that he thought its declarations were 
 sufficient to cover the question conveyed in Mr. 
 Giddings' note. The latter disagreed with this and 
 the gentlemen parted coldly, Mr. Clay having lost 
 a most valued adherent. It is stated that, as a re- 
 sult of this note, the Kentucky Senator modified 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 95 
 
 his Speech very essentially in preparing it for pub- 
 lication. 
 
 On Friday, the I2th of February, Mr. Giddings 
 took his most important step of the session. A 
 bill was introduced in the House providing for the 
 appropriation of $30,000 to build a bridge over 
 the Anacosta river. 
 
 There had, on the same day, come a petition 
 from citizens of the District of Columbia, praying 
 that no notice be taken of the thousands of anti- 
 slavery petitions which had been presented to the 
 House, denouncing them as * * seditious memorials," 
 and their authors as ''fanatics," and praying that 
 such petitions be not even received. This gave 
 Mr. Giddings excuse and opportunity for doing 
 what he had long wished — striking a blow at 
 sfevery in the District. Hence he moved to strike 
 out the enacting clause of the bill, and gave his 
 reasons in a speech, portions of which are well 
 worthy of quotation, and which is interesting as 
 the first connected and distinct anti-slavery speech 
 ever made by its author. He said: "But, sir, 
 I wiir assign my reasons for believing that the seat 
 of government will be removed. It is known, sir, 
 that the slave trade, in its worst -and most abhor- 
 rent forms, is being carried on here tc an alarming 
 extent. (Here Mr. Giddings was called to order, 
 but the chair decided him in order.) We are told 
 by some honorable gentlemen, that the subject of 
 
96 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 its continuance cannot be discussed in the House ; 
 that a dissolution of the Union would follow as the 
 inevitable consequence of any interference with 
 the traffic on the part of Congress. On the other 
 hand, I have come to the conclusion that Northern 
 men, who have from their infancy been bred up in 
 the love of liberty, where every precept impressed 
 upon their youthful minds, every principle of their 
 matured years, has habituated them to think of 
 the slave trade with disgust and abhorrence, to con- 
 template it as only existing among barbarians and 
 uncivilized nations, to look upon it with horror ; 
 I say, sir, that it is my opinion that such men can 
 never consent to continue the seat of government 
 in the midst of a magnificent slave market. I say 
 it distinctly to the committee, to the Nation, and 
 to. the world, that Northern men will not consent 
 to the continuance of our National councils where 
 their ears are assailed, while coming to the capitol, 
 by the voice of the auctioneer publicly proclaiming 
 the sale of human, of intelligent beings." (Sev- 
 eral gentlemen here called Mr. Giddings to order, 
 and he was again sustained by the chair.) He then 
 resumed: '*I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your 
 cool and impartial decision of the question of 
 order. I will remark that I was assigning my own 
 reasons — not those of any other gentleman. I say, 
 distinctly, that I have not commenced these re- 
 marks with feelings of unkindness to any man, or 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 9/ 
 
 to any part of this Nation, I have been induced 
 to embrace the present opportunity by a deep and 
 solemn sense of justice, which I think is due to the 
 district which I represent, and to a large part of 
 the Northern States. They, sir, feeling an honest 
 abhorrence of the slave trade, have sent in their 
 petitions against it. I have myself presented the 
 petitions of many thousands of Northern freemen 
 on the subject, but their petitions have been dis- 
 regarded, and the voice of American freemen, in 
 favor of liberty, has been silenced. Their repre- 
 sentative sent here with authority to act for them, 
 to speak their views, to express their wishes, has 
 been bound, hand and foot, with a sort of legisla- 
 tive straight-jacket, so far as the subject of this 
 slave trade is concerned, and his lips have been 
 hermetically sealed, to prevent him from a 
 declaration of their views, and from demanding 
 their rights. Sir, (in an undertone) upon this floor 
 I have heard gentlemen — honorable gentlemen — 
 say that those citizens who have thus petitioned 
 this House, should be hanged if found in Southern 
 States. I pass any such remarks; they were made 
 under feelings of excitement and did not express 
 the real feelings of their authors. But, sir, while 
 the voices of Northern freemen are silenced upon 
 this floor, and their Representatives here are not 
 permitted to declare the sentiments of those who 
 sent them, we are called on to make heavy appro- 
 
98 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 priations of th^ir money for the benefit of this 
 District. Many thousands of our people have 
 endeavored to express to this House their views of 
 the slave trade as carried on here. We refuse to 
 hear them; we treat their petitions with contempt, 
 but, in answer, say ' Your money shall be taken 
 for the improvement of this city, although it be 
 a slave market ; we will not hear your objections 
 to the slave trade, but we will tax you to build a 
 slave market.' This, sir, is wrong; it is pal- 
 pably wrong. But, sir, I was sa}nng that the 
 .appropriation was for the benefit of this District 
 principally; it is to be made for the benefit of the 
 people of this District, and what is their language 
 to those whose funds are now sought to be appro- 
 priated? The language of the people of this Dis- 
 trict is expressed in their memorials, lately pre- 
 sented to both houses of Congress. In those me- 
 morials the free and independent citizens who peti- 
 tion us in regard to the slave trade of this District 
 are termed 'a band of fanatics;' their petitions 
 are termed 'seditious memorials;' their efforts 
 to stop the inhuman and barbarous practice of 
 selling men, women, and children, are termed 'foul 
 and unnatural.' Congress is prayed not only to 
 refuse a reading or reference of these petitions, 
 but we are requested not to receive such petitions. 
 This, sir, is the language of the people of this 
 District toward those whom I am supposed to 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 99 
 
 represent; whose sentiments on this subject of the 
 slave trade I openly and unequivocally avow. I 
 sir, have been honored with the high trust of rep- 
 resenting the people thus stigmatized, and I would 
 deem myself unworthy of the trust if I permitted 
 such language to pass unnoticed. Honorable gen- 
 tlemen have presented the memorials of the peo 
 pie here in both houses of Congress, and have 
 advocated the principles, repeated and enlarged 
 upon the language used. Sir, under all this abuse, 
 I am asked now to contribute from the funds of 
 the people thus abused, to the improvement of 
 this city and for the benefit of those who thus 
 assail their motives and stigmatize their acts. I 
 object to the appropriation, under these circum- 
 stances. I protest against it and I repeat, that 
 while this state of things remains, I shall be 
 opposed to all appropriations in this District, not 
 necessary for the convenience of Government. I 
 take my stand here. I now avow my firm deter- 
 mination to give my vote for no further appropri- 
 ations for this District, until the voice of these 
 petitioners be heard and acted upon, and their 
 prayers granted or refused — I say no appropria- 
 tions except such as are really necessary for the 
 comfortable continuance of the Government. 
 
 **I want to be understood and not misrepresented 
 It is the slave trade to which I now allude ; not 
 to slavery. That is another subject. On that I 
 
lOO JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 may at some other time give my views ; but let no 
 man accuse me of now saying anything in regard 
 to his right of holding his fellow man as property, 
 or of now saying anything concerning it. What 
 I have said and what I intend to say will refer to 
 nothing but the slave trade. I intend to disarm 
 my opponents of all cause in regard to the consti- 
 tutional right or the power of Congress over the 
 subject. I am aware of the feeling which gentle- 
 men have on this subject, and I assure them of my 
 intention not to say anything offensive to them, 
 further than duty requires. I hope that, whoever 
 may become excited, I may speak and act from the 
 convictions of sober judgment. I once alluded to 
 the statement of honorable gentlemen that we 
 cannot interfere with the slave trade in this District 
 without a dissolution of the Union. This threat, 
 sir, I beg leave to say, I disregard. I will not 
 condescend to argue the question of the dissolu- 
 tion of the Union, for such reasons. I will leave 
 that question to be discussed by those who deem 
 the slave trade in this District of more importance 
 than the continuance of the Union. But, should 
 a dissolution take place, the appropriation now in 
 question would surely be of little importance. 
 
 I, sir, have alluded to the fact that, on the beau- 
 tiful avenue in front of the capitol, members of 
 Congress, during this session, have heard the harsh 
 voice of the inhuman auctioneer, publicly selling 
 
Joshua' R. giddings. ioi 
 
 human beings, while they were on their way to the 
 capitol. They have also been compelled to turn 
 aside from their path, to permit a coffle of slaves, 
 males and females, chained to each other by their 
 necks, to pass on their way to this National slave 
 
 market." 
 
 At this point Mr. Giddings' speech was brought 
 prematurely to an end, as related in his diary: 
 
 ''After I had spoken a few moments, Mr. How- 
 ard said he would call me to order. I demanded 
 the question to be reduced to writing. The chair 
 decided that I had the right to have it so reduced, 
 and from this decision Mr. Howard appealed. 
 Much debate and confusion followed, several mem- 
 bers speaking at the same time, each calling the 
 other to order, and each insisting that he was right. 
 Much excitement prevailed, and the House became 
 a scene of perfect confusion and uproar. Some 
 appeared to enjoy this much; among these the 
 venerable ex-President laughed most heartily, and, 
 coming to my seat, advised me to insist upon my 
 rights; not be intimidated by the course taken by 
 the Southern men. This confusion lasted about 
 one hour, and, as I suppose, for the purpose of 
 restoring order, the chairman, without taking the 
 vote of the committee on the appeal, decided that 
 I was out of order. ... A vote was then 
 taken on my motion, and carried, the enactmg 
 clause of the bill being stricken out." 
 
102 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 The effect of such a bold stand, taken, with so 
 great success, by a young member,may be imagined. 
 The Southern men were furious; the doughfaces 
 dumbfounded; the citizens of the District panic- 
 stricken; the friends of the slave jubilant. Mr. 
 Giddings was insulted on the floor of the House, 
 abused by the Administration press, and implored 
 by residents of the District to reconsider his deter- 
 mination. A few men of the House congratulated 
 and encouraged him. 
 
 Giddings was then for the first time exposed to 
 the fires of hatred and envy, the temptations of 
 wily lobbyists and the scarcely less dangerous 
 approbation of delighted friends, which he was 
 destined to endure for more than twenty years, and 
 from which he escaped unscathed, unspoiled, reso- 
 lute, honest, and true as when he first came to 
 Washington. He passed the Southern men who 
 cut him in the House, with a contempt real as 
 was theirs assumed; he put away from him the 
 prize of personal popularity and party advancement, 
 offered him on condition of adhesion to the party 
 of slavery ; he assured the waiting delegations of 
 citizens of the District that, if they would withdraw 
 their offensive memorials, he would cease to 
 oppose the particular bill in question, but would 
 give no guaranty as to his future course. He met 
 newspaper and personal assaults jpon his honesty 
 of motive, with perfect dignity and absence of irri- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. IO3 
 
 tation. In a word, he at once established himself 
 in the affection of friends, made himself respected 
 by his enemies, taught interested opponents that 
 he could neither be driven by abuse nor led by 
 bribes. The session was drawing to a close, he 
 had spoken but thrice, yet his more than twenty 
 years' service in the House changed the estimate of 
 him thereafter only in degree — not at all in kind. 
 Upon the threshold of Congressional life he had 
 yet found a recognition that gave him a distinct 
 claim upon the House. 
 
 But little more than two weeks of the Twenty- 
 fifth Congress remained, and that time was occu- 
 pied in hurrying through appropriation bills and 
 other formal business. But one further entry of 
 the diary of Mr. Giddings remains to be quoted, 
 and that not for its intrinsic significance, but 
 because it shows that with all his aggressive bold- 
 ness, with all his fearlessness he was a man of kind- 
 ness of heart and of a sensitive, practical sympathy. 
 The entry made on March 2d, the day preceding 
 the adjournment of Congress, tells its own story : 
 
 '*An incident occurred in my view that illus- 
 trates the difficulty of obtaining justice from the 
 Government. A man named Nye has claimed 
 about six thousand dollars from the Government 
 for several years, and has himself personally pressed 
 the matter for some sessions past. During the 
 last session Mr. Whittlesey, chairman of the com- 
 
104 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 mittee on claims, reported against it, although the 
 Senate had reported in favor of it. Mr. Whittlesey 
 was looked upon as an infallible authority on the 
 subject of claims. Nye was put in jail for want of 
 money, and suffered much. His claim again passed 
 the Senate, and was referred to the House com- 
 mittee on claims. Nye himself wrote an able 
 review of Whittlesey's report, and pointed out its 
 errors, but many things intervened to prevent the 
 committee from passing on it until to-day. I 
 agreed with two or three others that we would get 
 together and pass upon this claim, provided that it 
 were possible to get a quorum to the committee 
 room. This we effected, and agreed to report the 
 bill giving him his whole claim. This was done as 
 late as 2 o'clock p. M. When we left the room, I 
 was in front, and Nye was at the door. I told him 
 we had agreed to report his bill for the amount 
 claimed. He attempted to thank me, but tears 
 choked his utterance, and I felt deeply myself, so 
 much so that I found tears were running down my 
 own cheeks, and unwilling that my weakness 
 should be discovered, I averted my face to disguise 
 my feelings from those passing by me in front. 
 As I turned my face, my eye rested upon Mr. 
 Chambers, our chairman, who, though a man of 
 rough exterior, and who has been through many 
 a bloody battle, was so wrought upon by Nye's 
 feeling that he wept profusely." 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 10$ 
 
 And so the Congress adjourned, and Mr. Gid- 
 dings returned to his constituents to receive a wel- 
 come which was well appreciated, as it was fully 
 deserved. 
 
 From this point no such accurate account 
 of the exciting scenes through which Mr. Gid- 
 dings passed as has thus far been given, will be 
 possible ; such a relation would occupy more space 
 than may be devoted to it, and beyond that, while 
 the official records give sufficient data for an ac- 
 count of the public acts of Mr. Giddings, there 
 exists in no other years of his official life so reli- 
 able and satisfactory an index to his private views, 
 motives, and ambitions, as the much quoted jour- 
 nal of the session of 1838-1839 gives. The free- 
 dom with which matters apparently trifling, have 
 been transferred to these pages from that journal 
 needs no apology. The mental photograph fur- 
 nished is as true a likeness of the Giddings of 1855 
 as of him of 1839; the lines are deeper — there are 
 marks of thought, struggle, and sorrow ; there are 
 scars of conflict, but, in everything, it is only a 
 deepening, not a change of feature. Had these 
 journals been continuous, their value at this day 
 would have been incalculable, but from 1839 to 
 1849 we have an interval of ten years which leaves 
 no personal record, save that found in an occasional 
 letter or newspaper article — all else is official. 
 During a portion of two sessions beginning in 1848 
 
I06 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 Mr. Giddings kept a second journal which has 
 been preserved, and will be hereafter used, but 
 even this, as it is the record of an older and busier 
 man and member, lacks the spontaneousness, free- 
 dom and detail of the earlier one ; it tells perhaps 
 more tersely and correctly of events, but less of 
 men and especially less of its author. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 10/ 
 
 V. 
 
 The Twenty-sixth Congress, which convened in 
 December, 1839, ^^"^^ ^^"^ which Mr. Giddings took 
 his seat, was, as is invariably the case with the 
 session preceding a Presidential election, a strong- 
 ly partisan body, and one in which each party 
 strove, with an immense show of zeal and indus- 
 try, to do nothing, unless to avoid compromising 
 itself upon any vital question, and to force its op- 
 ponents to make for themselves such an injurious 
 record, as might be useful against them in the com- 
 ing campaign. Such legislative fencing is amusing 
 to the galleries, but it is fatal to business, and the 
 advocate of a measure, whether he be a lobbyist 
 with a private bill to urge, or a legislator represent- 
 ing, as did Mr. Giddings, a vital principle, has need 
 of no small degree of patience and philosophy to 
 submit to the inevitable with due calmness. The 
 anti-slavery cause was very far from popular. 
 Southern men did not hate it less or less openly 
 oppose it; Northern men feared it more, as the 
 time for nomination and election drew near. Mr. 
 
lOS JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 Riddle has well stated the political and social 
 conditions of the time in these words: ''Seth 
 M. Gates, of Genessee, New York, was a member 
 of this Congress, of profound anti-slavery convic- 
 tions, and completed the quartette — Adams, Slade, 
 Giddings, and Gates. Many Northern Whigs 
 sympathized, but none stood by or voted with 
 them on slavery issues. Public morals were at a 
 low ebb. Peculation and defalcation marked the 
 civil service, as never before or since, as Wv. now 
 know. Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, proclaimed 
 in the Senate, in 1817, that governments are not 
 bound by moral law. This had been reaffirmed 
 by Calhoun, and was illustrated by the course of 
 men in office. The Democrats charged the Whigs 
 with affiliation with abolition, and pointed to the 
 four gentlemen named above, as of their party. 
 To parry this Mr. Clay, in the Senate, claimed that 
 the leading writers in defense of slavery were 
 Whigs, and cited a work exposing the fallacy of 
 abolition, the review of Channing, "Abolition a 
 Sedition"; "Thoughts on Domestic Slavery," and 
 other valuable aids to human progress. Again he 
 received the fatal commendation of Mr. Calhoun. 
 The Florida war lingered ; the Maroons found 
 shelter in the unconstitutional everglades. The 
 United States entered into an alliance with the 
 bloodhounds of Cuba, and American soldiers were 
 led by dogs. Petitions against this mode of war- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 10^ 
 
 fare could not penetrate the moral atmosphere of 
 the House. They accumulated in the Senate and 
 the Whigs scored one against Mr. Van Buren." 
 
 In July, 1837, th^ slaver Aviistad, laden with 
 negro slaves, sailed from Havana, for a point on 
 the southern coast of Cuba; the slaves arose in a, 
 body, killed the captain and a number of the crew, 
 gained control of the vessel, and ordered the 
 owners, who were on board, to steer the ship for 
 Africa. Relying upon the ignorance of their cap- 
 tors and the fogginess of the weather, the Span- 
 iards headed, instead, for the coast of the United 
 States, making a landing at the eastern extremity 
 of Long Island. An officer of the coast surve)^ 
 took possession, and began proceedings by a libel 
 for salvage, against both vessel and cargo. This 
 suit was such as to bring the status of the negro 
 slave distinctly to an issue before the court. The 
 Spanish minister claimed the negroes as criminals, 
 and their owners demanded their delivery as run- 
 away property. Pending all these comflicting 
 claims, the blacks were thrown into jail and kept 
 in close confinement. Was ever a more anomalous, 
 case ? The Spanish government, in claiming an 
 extradition, admitted moral and civil responsi- 
 bility ; the owners, — Spanish citizens, — confounded 
 this claim by demanding possession of mere chat- 
 ties, and the American libelant proceeded pre- 
 cisely as though he had saved a cargo of cotton. 
 
no JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 The President favored the extradition claim, and, 
 so confident was he that the court would sustain 
 it, that he sent a United States man-of-war to 
 New Haven, with orders to take the negroes from 
 the custody of the civil officers, so soon as judg- 
 ment was rendered, before an appeal could be 
 made by their counsel, and deliver them to the 
 Spanish authorities. This was the first cause of 
 the kind which had ever been tried in the North, 
 it having always been customary to hustle cap- 
 tured negroes to the South, and try them, as an- 
 other has said, ** before a jury of his peers." Mr. 
 Adams at once saw his duty and opportunity, and 
 introduced a resolution inquiring of the President 
 why these men, though charged with no crime, 
 were thus im.prisoned. The resolution was lost, 
 though it accomplished its purpose of placing the 
 slavery element of the House again on record. 
 After a prolonged trial the prisoners were liber- 
 ated. This was the first important judicial victory 
 won by the friends of the negro in the United 
 States. 
 
 During the Presidential campaign of 1840 Mr. 
 Giddings was placed in a peculiar and uncom- 
 fortable position. Ostensibly a Whig, he was 
 never really a party man in the ordinary sense of 
 the word. His constituency was first anti-slavery 
 then Whig, in sentiment, and he held the same 
 position. He was no fanatic, and recognized the 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. Ill 
 
 importance of proper tools with which to do his 
 work ; he knew that, in order to do anything sub- 
 stantial in the cause of abolition he must work 
 through a party organization. The Democrats he 
 recognized as hopelessly committed to slavery; in 
 the Whig party he saw the possibility of regenera- 
 tion. In this he differed from the Abolitionists, 
 who had given up hope of attaining substantial 
 results through Whig agency, and nominated a 
 Presidential ticket of their own. Mr. Giddings 
 recognizing the impossibility of electing this ticket, 
 and the practical necessity of securing at least the 
 lesser evil, supported Harrison, and thus bitterly 
 disappointed the Anti-slavery party. His treat- 
 ment by Harrison after election was not such as to 
 give him any great personal pleasure in the success 
 of that gentleman. 
 
 The greater portion of the Twenty-sixth Con- 
 gress had passed before Mr. Giddings had oppor- 
 tunity to make any important effort in opposition 
 to slavery. It w^as during the second session, and 
 on the 9th day of February, 1841, that the calling 
 up of a bill in the committee of the whole, appro- 
 priating ^100,000 for the benefit of such Seminole 
 chiefs as would surrender and remove to the West, 
 gave him this opportunity. He then delivered 
 his first elaborate set speech, and one which may 
 be considered worthy to rank with any of his life. 
 He showed that the refusal of the Seminoles to 
 
112 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 migrate was accounted for by the fear that the 
 negroes, who had so long constituted a part of their 
 tribe, would be seized by the Creeks ; that the de- 
 sire to capture these negroes was the sole cause of 
 an unrighteous war, and the same desire inspired 
 the measure then introduced. He was called to 
 order under the Atherton gag rule ; the chairman 
 pronounced him in order. He was called to order 
 for irrelevancy, but again sustained. The burden 
 of his argument was that, laying aside all question 
 regarding slavery as an institution, the United 
 States could not wage a war in its behalf He 
 showed how lawless Georgians had crossed the 
 border, seized and enslaved free men. He uttered 
 (and this short quotation will give an idea of the 
 tone of his speech), among others, the following 
 words: "And, sir, our army was put in motion 
 to capture negroes and slaves. Our officers and 
 soldiers became slave catchers, companions of the 
 most degraded class of human beings who inhabit 
 that slave-cursed region. With the assistance of 
 bloodhounds they tracked the flying bondman 
 over hill and dale, through swamp and everglade, 
 until his weary limbs could sustain him no longer. 
 Then they seized him, and, for the bounty of ;^20, 
 he was usually delivered over to the first white 
 man who claimed him. Our troops became expert 
 in this business of hunting and enslaving mankind 
 I doubt whether the Spanish pirates, engaged in 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. II3 
 
 the same employment on the African coast, are 
 more perfect masters of their vocation." Beyond 
 the condemnatory satire and bitter irony sug- 
 gested by this extract, the speech was a careful 
 and logical argument, based upon a perfect mas- 
 tery of the subject, replete with apt quotations, 
 thoroughly digested, and entirely conclusive. Mr. 
 Giddings was constantly interrupted ; the House 
 was in the wildest confusion. Southern members, 
 and the delegate from Florida arose in turn, os- 
 tensibly to answer Mr. Giddings, in reality to cover 
 him, Mr. Adams, Mr. Slade, and the cause they 
 represented, with the vilest abuse, quite unmixed 
 with argument. Thompson, of South Carolina, a 
 Whig, became alarmed for his party, and said that 
 the Whigs were not responsible for the utterances 
 of the obscurest of the obscure individuals in their 
 ranks. Mr. Giddings replied that it was not in 
 the power of Mr. Thompson to assign him a place. 
 It would be quite all he could do to choose his 
 own. That the gentleman knew very well that 
 neither Mr. Giddings' constituents nor his own 
 conscience would allow him to seek redress for in- 
 sults, after the barbarous fashion of the South, and 
 quoted a saying of a veteran in the service of his 
 country, who, grossly insulted by another for the 
 purpose of evoking a challenge, as he wiped his ene- 
 my's spittle from his face, replied: "Could I as 
 easily wipe your blood from my soul, you should not 
 
114 JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. 
 
 live an hour. " A Southern member, Alford, of 
 Georgia, rushed toward Mr. Giddings, intending to 
 assault him, but was placed under arrest. Down- 
 ing, of Florida, was filthily abusive, but was not 
 complimented with a word of reply. A day or 
 two afterward he addressed Mr. Giddings in the 
 presence of a number of gentlemen. The latter 
 refused to recognize the bully, and warned him 
 never to speak to him again, save upon official bus- 
 iness. 
 
 President-elect Harrison was greatly annoyed on 
 account of this speech. When Mr. Giddings called 
 to pay his respects, h:^ was so coldly received as 
 to prevent his repeating the visit, and one of the 
 first acts of Harrison's Presidential career was to 
 reward Thompson's insolence with the Mexican 
 mission. The Twenty-sixth Congress may be 
 thus dismissed. 
 
 President Harrison called an extra session of 
 Congress to oe convened in May, 1841. Before 
 that time he died and Tyler took the oath of office. 
 Then came an evil day for the Wliig party, and 
 the session was rendered remarkable by the attacks 
 made upon the best men of the House, John 
 Quincy Adams and Joshua R. Giddings, in the 
 interest of the slave-holding power. Upon the 
 organization of the House, Wise, of Virginia, 
 moved the adoption of the old rules; Adams 
 moved that the twenty-first rule — the Atherton 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I 15 
 
 crag — be exccDted. A warm debate followed, in 
 which Giddings took a prominent part, and, we are 
 told, from that day he was not recognized by a 
 dozen Southern members. Mr. Adams' resolution 
 Avas laid upon the table. 
 
 In January, 1842, Mr. Adams, having presented 
 petition after petition to the House, all directed 
 against slavery, but ingeniously worded to evade 
 the twenty-first rule, presented one from Southern 
 citizens, denouncing him as a monomaniac, and 
 praying for his removal from the committee on 
 foreign relations. From this he sought to defend 
 himself, but the confusion of the House — such as 
 had never before been known — made this almost 
 impossible. For minutes at a time his voice was 
 inaudible. During all this scene Gates, of New 
 York; Slade, of Vermont, and Giddings, of Ohio, 
 were the only members of all the House who 
 stood by and defended him. At last he was fairly 
 drowned out, and comparative order was only re- 
 stored, when he abandoned his defense and pro- 
 ceeded to present other petitions. Among these 
 was one signed by Benjamin Brewster and forty- 
 six citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying 
 for the dissolution of the Union "on the ground 
 of the great inequality of benefits enjoyed by the 
 different sections. " This Mr. Adams moved be 
 referred to a select committee, with instructions to 
 report the ' reasons why its prayer should not be 
 
Il6 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 granted. Marshal, of Kentucky, offered resolu- 
 tions censuring Adams in the severest manner for 
 presenting such a petition. A motion to lay these 
 on the table was defeated, Adams himself voting 
 against it. Then followed a debate which occupied 
 the House from the 24th of January until the 7th 
 of March. During its continuance Mr. Adams 
 made one of the most remarkable defenses ever 
 known in the House, and procured the rejection 
 of Marshal's resolution by a vote of one hundred 
 and six to ninety-three. During this debate 
 Adams had spoken for three days in terrible ar- 
 raignment of slavery, when he was asked by a 
 Southern member, how long it would be before he 
 would conclude. He answered: ''I think I may 
 finish in about ninety days.'' Such was his spirit. 
 Yet how nearly alone he stood, when a call for a 
 meeting of Whigs to devise means for his defense 
 brought only eight men to Mr. Giddings' room ! 
 
 Three weeks after this victory, Mr. Giddings pre- 
 sented a petition from citizens of Austinburg, 
 Ohio, praying for an amicable division of the 
 Union, separating the free from the slave States. 
 He made the same motion for its disposal which 
 Mr. Adams had made in the case of the Haver- 
 hill petition. The House refused to receive the 
 petition, declaring it disrespectful, and a futile at- 
 tempt was made to secure a declaration that, there- 
 after, the presentation of such a petition should 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 11/ 
 
 ipso facto constitute such an act of disrespect as to 
 subject the member making it to censure. So the 
 matter dropped. 
 
 It seemed, however, that Mr. Giddings was not 
 to escape the censure of the House for a length of 
 time. During the winter of 1842 there came up 
 again a famihar question of international law be- 
 tween Great Britain and the United States. The 
 brig Creole sailed from Hampton roads for New 
 Orleans, with a cargo of slaves; these rose upon 
 the crew, compelled the vessel to be sailed to Nas- 
 sau, and landed, free men. Mr. Webster made the 
 paradoxical demand of England, that the negroes 
 be delivered up ''as mutineers and murderers, and 
 the recognized pivperty of citizens of the United 
 States.'' This Great Britain refused to do, hold- 
 ing that property in human beings was not recog- 
 nized in international law, and that the negroes 
 were not murderers, as they were justified in kill- 
 ing their captors. Mr. Giddings arose in his place 
 on the 2 1st of March and presented a series of 
 resolutions which declared, in effect: that prior 
 to the adoption of the Constitution the several 
 States had complete power over slavery within their 
 own borders, and surrendered none of it to the 
 Federal Government by the adoption of the Con- 
 stitution ; that they did surrender to the General 
 Government all power on the high seas ; that 
 slavery, being an abridgement of human rights, 
 
Il8 JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. - 
 
 existed by force of municipal law, and must hence 
 be confined to the jurisdiction of the State which 
 created it ; that a ship, when it leaves the waters 
 of a State and enters upon the high seas, ceases 
 to be under the laws of that State, but is, with the 
 persons on board, under the laws of the United 
 States; that when the Creole left the jurisdiction 
 of Virginia, the slave laws of that State ceased to 
 be of force over the persons aboard; that when 
 such persons asserted their personal rights, they 
 violated no law of the United States, and all at- 
 tempts to re-enslave them were unwarranted by 
 the Constitution or law of the United States, and 
 incompatible with National honor ; that all at- 
 tempts to place the coast slave trade under the 
 protection of the Government were subversive of 
 the rights of the people of the free States, injuri- 
 ous to their feelings, unauthorized by the Consti- 
 tution, and prejudicial to the National character. 
 
 The effect of the presentation of these resolu- 
 tions was almost beyond our appreciation at this 
 day. No blow so boldly and fearlessly directed 
 at slavery had ever been struck in Congress ; no 
 man had ever dared to take so great a risk of 
 political ruin and bodily injury. Those were the 
 most fiery days of the slave domination. Mr. 
 Giddings had scarcely ceased to speak, before a 
 Southern member approached the aisle where he 
 was standing and violently attempted to push 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I I9 
 
 him out of it. As Mr. Giddings turned around 
 to see who his assailant was, the latter passed 
 close by him, with his right hand inside his vest, 
 apparently taking hold of his bowie knife. He 
 came back within four feet of Mr. Giddings, and 
 placed himself in a menacing attitude directly in 
 front of him. Mr. Giddings inquired : ''Did you 
 push me?" looking him directly in the eye. "I 
 did," was the reply. "Intentionally?" asked Mr. 
 Giddings. "Yes." " For the purpose of insult?" 
 demanded Mr. Giddings. "Yes," was again the 
 answer. "Well, sir," replied Mr. Giddings, **we 
 are in the habit of leaving those men who wanton- 
 ly insult others, to the contempt of public opin- 
 ion." By this time the friends of the member- 
 interfered, and led him from the hall. 
 
 Black, of Georgia, approaching with a cane 
 raised to strike, challenged a repetition of one ex- 
 pression made by Mr. Giddings; his request was 
 promiptly and emphatically complied with, when 
 considerate friends removed him from the hall ; 
 
 Dawson, of Georgia, arose and shouted, "D n 
 
 him, I'll shoot him," but made no movement to 
 carry his threat into effect. The previous ques- 
 tion was moved ; a motion to lay the resolutions 
 upon the table was made and lost. Holmes, of 
 South Carolina, began a speech with the words: 
 "Certain topics, like certain places, are sacred: 
 
 ' Fools rush in where anirels fear to tread.' " — 
 
I20 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 After this promising beginning he was cut off 
 by a reminder that the previous question had been 
 moved. The previous question was about to come 
 to a vote. Mr. Everett, of Vermont, expressed 
 ''his utter abhorrence of the fire-brand course of 
 the gentleman from Ohio." Several requests to 
 be excused from voting were made on the ground 
 that the subject was of too grave importance to be 
 disposed of so summarily. Mr. Caleb Gushing 
 viewed the resolutions as " a British argument, and 
 an approximation to a treasonable view of the sub- 
 ject." Mr. Giddings declared that he had distinctly 
 stated that the resolutions were important and that 
 he merely desired to lay them before the House, 
 and rather than have so hasty a vote taken upon 
 the subject he would withdraw them. 
 
 But the sensitive honor of the slavocrats was 
 too keenly hurt by the plain language of the reso- 
 lutions to permit of dropping the matter at such a 
 stage. Mr. Botts, of Virginia, asked and ob- 
 tained leave to offer a resolution, saying that, as he 
 intended to move the previous question upon its 
 adoption, he would refrain from making any re- 
 marks. He then presented the following pream- 
 ble and resolutions : 
 
 ** Whereas, The Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, the 
 member from the Sixteenth Gongressional District 
 of the State of Ohio, has this day presented to the 
 House a series of resolutions touching the most 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 121 
 
 important interests connected with a large portion 
 of the Union, now a subject of negotiation between 
 the United States and Great Britain of the most 
 deHcate nature, the result of which may eventually 
 involve those nations, and perhaps the whole civ- 
 ilized world, in war ; and, 
 
 ''Whereas, It is the duty of every good cit- 
 izen, and particularly the duty of every selected 
 agent and representative of the people, to discoun- 
 tenance all efforts tiJ^-ere^e excitement, disaffec- 
 tion, and divisii^if among the p^ple of the United 
 States; and,-'' ___ -""^'"' ^x, \ 
 
 ''Whereas, Mutiny and murder are in the said 
 9«^es of rcsolutions-}w.stified and approved in terms 
 shocl>iivg to all sense of la\V, order/land humanity, 
 the tjfepjd^lT^ of all which r^quire^ (rom this House 
 an id^i«€4iate,^and~unequii^ocal/ expression of its 
 senti^li^t^Wh^refore^""'^^- ' 
 
 ''RcS^c'ed, ThaFThis^ouse dissents from, and 
 emphaticall;^:condercHis the propositions contained 
 in the-said resc^dtion, whicli favorably prejudge 
 and excuse .^n act . of unquestionable homicide ; 
 justify and defend, without-a denial of the alleged 
 facts, parties' cliatged^ith cold-blooded murder; 
 instigate, by a pledge of legislative protection and 
 indemnity, crimes which may involve a large por- 
 tion of our common country in rapine and mas- 
 sacre, and the whole of it in tumult, affliction, and 
 disgrace ; wantonly interfere with the legitimate 
 
122 JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. 
 
 proceedings of another branch of the Government 
 and its guardianship of the Nation's rights and 
 honor ; and invite to treasonable leagues those 
 who may be disposed to levy war against the 
 United States, holding out promises of adhering 
 to their enemies, and giving them aid and com- 
 fort. 
 
 ^'Resolved, That this House holds the conduct 
 of the said member as altogether unwarranted and 
 unwarrantable, and deserving the severe condem- 
 nation of the people of this country, and of this 
 body in particular." 
 
 Mr. Botts moved a suspension of the rules and 
 failed to obtain it, the vote being 128 to 68. Ohio 
 being regularly in order, Mr. Weller, of that State, 
 offered Mr. Botts' resolution and moved the pre- 
 vious question, in order to cut off debate. 
 
 The speaker ruled that Mr. Giddings was en- 
 titled as a matter of privilege to make his defense 
 at once, but the House reversed the ruling and the 
 previous question was seconded. Mr. Giddings 
 desired a postponement for two weeks, to permit 
 of his preparing a defense ; this was refused. He 
 was offered the privilege of a defense upon condi- 
 tion of making it then and there, but with great 
 dignity refused to bargain for his constitutional 
 rights. At last there appeared to be a unanimous 
 voice of the House in favor of hearing the defense, 
 and, urged by his friends, Mr. Giddings said: 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I 23 
 
 ''Mr. Speaker, I stand before the House in a pe- 
 culiar position , " when Mr. Cooper, of 
 
 Georgia, interposed an objection to his being heard. 
 He then took his seat, and, although the objection 
 was immediately withdrawn, refused to resume. 
 The resolution of censure was then adopted by a 
 vote of 125, to 69. 
 
 On the same day Mr. Giddings sent to the 
 National Intelligencer the following communica- 
 tion : 
 To the reporter of the Intelligencer : 
 
 When I rose so often during the confusion of the 
 proceedings of the House this day, and v/as so 
 often called to order, the last time by Mr. Cooper, 
 of Georgia, I had written, and desired to state to 
 the House, what follows : 
 
 " Mr. Speaker : — I stand before the House in a 
 peculiar situation. It is proposed to pass a vote 
 of censure upon me, substantially for the reason 
 that I differ in opinion from the majority of the 
 members. The vote is about to be taken without 
 giving me time to be heard. It would be idle for 
 me to, say that I am ignorant of the disposition of 
 the majority to pass the resolution. I have been 
 violently assailed in a personal manner, but have 
 had no opportunity of being heard in reply. I do 
 not now stand here to ask any favor or to crave 
 any mercy at the hands of the members. But, in 
 the name of an insulted constituency, — in behalf 
 
124 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 of one of the sovereign States of the Union, in be- 
 half of these States and the Federal Constitution — 
 I demand a hearing, agreeably to the rights guar- 
 anteed to me, and in the ordinary mode of pro- 
 ceeding. I accept of no other privilege. I will 
 receive ho other courtesy." 
 
 The happiness of the advocates of slavery, in 
 and out of Congress, already great at the humilia- 
 tion of their fearless enemy, was increased by his 
 resignation, which followed his censure as a matter 
 of course. He returned to Ohio, and was received, 
 not as a punished wrong-doer, but as a champion 
 who had maintained his cause in the lists against a 
 multitude of opponents, and deserved the praise, 
 the encouragement, and the vindication of his 
 constituents. At every town through which he 
 passed on his homeward way — at Cleveland, Paines- 
 ville, Ashtabula, Jefferson, Chardon, — he met an 
 ovation. Resolution after resolution was passed 
 by various societies throughout the land, and by 
 mass meetings called for the purpose of express- 
 ing approval of his course and condemnation of 
 his censure, and forwarded to the House. Gov- 
 ernor Corwin named the 26th day of April as the 
 time of holding a special election to fill the vacancy 
 which the resignation had created. The result was 
 a foregone conclusion. Though it was a special 
 election and no one doubted the return of Mr. 
 Giddings, his course had excited so great enthusi- 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. 125 
 
 asm as to sectire for him a majority of about three 
 thousand and five hundred, quite unprecedented 
 in such a case. 
 
 This majority, large as it was, would have 
 been greater but for a very characteristic trick 
 played by the Democrats of the district. They 
 allowed it to be understood, until but a very few 
 days before the election, that no opposition would 
 be made to the return of the candidate. Then 
 having previously made a careful and very quiet 
 canvass, they placed a candidate in nomination, 
 hoping to take the Whigs by surprise and secure 
 a victory. On the morning of the day of election 
 Mr. Weller, the same doughface who offered in 
 the House the resolutions of censure prepared by 
 his master, Mr. Botts, published and circulated 
 throughout the Sixteenth district an attack upon 
 Mr. Giddings, bitter and malignant as it was 
 untruthful. With the fairness shown in the matter 
 of the censure, Mr. Weller published this com- 
 munication too late to permit of answer or denial. 
 As a result of all their planning, the Democrats 
 had the satisfaction of adding to themselves the 
 mortification of defeat to the sting of rebuke. 
 The effort to crush the intrepid Ohioan had failed, 
 and not only failed, but had reacted upon its pro- 
 jectors ; Giddings, coming back with all the pres- 
 tige of an endorsement, was a man of National 
 repute and weight. The blind fury of the South 
 
126 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 had sent home, bearing the stigma of a censure, 
 the Congressman from a rural Ohio district. In 
 five weeks its exultation was changed to humilia- 
 tion, by his return reinforced, strengthened, doubly 
 formidable. On Thursday, May 5, 1842, he took 
 the oath ; seventeen years later, speaking before 
 the New York anti-slavery society, in New York 
 City, he said: 
 
 "When I returned to that hall and marched up, 
 to the altar, again to take tiie oath to maintain the 
 Constitution of the country, I say to you, in the 
 presence of Heaven, that I meant what I said. If 
 I have failed to maintain that Constitution may 
 God forgive me, for, if I have failed, it has been 
 through my want of intelligence and not from any 
 intention on my part. As I looked around upon 
 those who, five weeks before had gazed upon me 
 with such arrogance, and attempted to look into 
 their faces, I could not catch the eye, in that vast 
 hall, of one of them who could look me in the 
 face. Then I felt the power of truth ; I felt the 
 power of him, who, clothed in its panoply, main- 
 tains those doctrines of freedom which lie so near 
 to every human heart." 
 
 Thus ended one of the most dark and dis- 
 graceful chapters in the history of American legis- 
 lation. Historians of the Southern inclining do 
 not relish the subject. The journal of the House 
 was toned down for the sake of decorum, and 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDUIXGS. 12/ 
 
 Benton, in those remarkable historical productions, 
 the Condensed Debates of the Thirty Years in 
 Congress, though he devoted space to the Creole 
 case, forgot to mention that G id dings was ever 
 censured, ever resigned, or was ever returned after 
 such resignation. 
 
 The tone of the public press of the North, rep- 
 resenting whatever party, was almost uniformly 
 condemnatory of the high-handed course taken by 
 the House. A large section was positive in its 
 approval of Mr. Giddings' course; a lesser one, 
 while affecting to doubt the wisdom of his action, 
 as tending to inflame the South and affect diplo- 
 matic negotiations, admitted his honesty and 
 strongly disapproved of the censure. Even the 
 Democratic press, when not servilely partisan, rec- 
 ognized and admitted- the fact that the House had 
 by its action exceeded the authority of the Consti- 
 tution and far transcended all precedent To 
 the last-named class belonged the New York Even- 
 ing Post, and from its editorial comments upon the 
 matter the following portion may well be ex- 
 tracted : 
 
 ' ' In censuring Mr. Giddings for the doctrines 
 laid down in his resolutions the House has over- 
 stepped its powers. Mr. Giddings is not respon- 
 sible to them for any opinions he may entertain 
 or avow ; nor have they the right to reprimand 
 him for not agreeing with them. They have no 
 
128 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 such right either derived from the Constitution or 
 from the necessity of the case. They are not in 
 any sense his masters, nor is he bound to submit 
 his views to their censorship before he declares 
 them. He is one of the representatives of a 
 Northern State, and, speaking in the name of his 
 constituents, he has a right to declare openly their 
 views on any question of public policy, without 
 being answerable to any one but them, and with- 
 out the hazard of any fear of punishment, except 
 their disapprobation. Any attempt to inflict upon 
 him a mark of disgrace for the opinions he pro- 
 fesses, is an attack not only upon the liberty of 
 speech, but upon the rights of his constituents, — 
 an invasion of the sovereignty of the State which 
 he represents. 
 
 "Mr. Giddings does well in resigning and ap- 
 pealing to his constituents. We hope that they 
 will send him back by a unanimous vote. If we 
 lived among them, we w^ould lay aside all party 
 preferences to vindicate the rights which have been 
 so arbitrarily wrested from their representative." 
 
 It remained for the utterly subservient Northern 
 papers and for the Southern papers at large to 
 throw to the winds all fairness, truth and common 
 sense, and exult in the censure and resigna- 
 tion; to assail Mr. Giddings and his defenders 
 with abuse which no other vocabulary nearer than 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 29 
 
 Billingsgate would render possible, and, finally, to 
 subside into a mortified silence under the rebuke 
 of his endorsement and re-election. 
 
130 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Coming again to Washington — thus reinforced 
 and approved — more than this, affirmatively di- 
 rected by his constituents to continue his war 
 against slavery and the slave power, and to re-pre- 
 sent the resolutions which had evoked his censure — 
 Mr. Giddings was in a position to do more effective 
 work than ever before. He came, free from the 
 suspicion of being a demagogue; he could speak 
 as one having authority — the chosen and approved 
 mouthpiece ot ninety thousand citizens. Then, 
 too, the agitation of the sluggish pool of Northern 
 sentiment had tended to crystallization, and while 
 the definite and aggressive anti-slavery opinion was 
 yet that of a minority, it was definite and aggress- 
 ive as never before. So there was an unquestioned 
 gain. 
 
 The second session of the Twenty-seventh Con- 
 gress closed in August, 1842. Up to that time 
 Giddings was assiduous in his efforts to carry out 
 the will of his constituents, by again introducing 
 the then noted resolutions. But the majority, like 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. I3I 
 
 the great cardinal, finding- the lion's skin too short 
 pieced it out with that of the fox. Having failed 
 to crush, as intended, the herald of everlasting 
 truth and justice, they attempted by all manner of 
 legislative arts and devices to prevent him from 
 carrying out his intentions. Resolution days were 
 systematically devoted to other purposes ; the call 
 of States, which would have given him an oppor- 
 tunity, never came. Thus he was eventually com- 
 pelled to change his tactics, and when, on the 4th 
 day of June, 1842, a proposition to reduce the 
 army, embraced in a bill before the House, was 
 opposed on the ground that war might grow out 
 out of the Cirole transaction, he arose in support 
 of the bill, made a complete defense of himself, 
 arraigned the majority and the administration, and 
 so clearly exposed the legal and constitutional fal- 
 lacies of the slave holding evangelists that the ne- 
 gotiation with England, regarding the Creole dam- 
 ages, Vv^as dropped and never renewed. This 
 speech, his last of importance during that session, 
 was, in all respects — for clearness of statement, 
 clearness of argument, and eloquence — one of the 
 most notable of his many efforts upon the floor of 
 the House. A short extract may profitably be 
 transferred to these pages: 
 
 "The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
 Gushing) asserts that ' we have a question of 
 honor with the British government, growing out 
 
132 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 of the Creole question,' and therefore objects to a 
 reduction of the army. I entertain a different 
 opinion. I deny that this Government either has, 
 or can, constitutionally have anything to do with 
 this transaction. The Creole was engaged in the 
 atrocious employment of importing slaves and we 
 cannot honorably lend any encouragement or sup- 
 port to ' that execrable commerce in human flesh.' 
 Every principle of morality, of National honor, 
 forbids that we should lend any aid or assistance 
 to those engaged in traffic in the bodies of men, 
 women, and children. If we prostitute our in- 
 fluence in behalf of persons thus engaged, we shall 
 dishonor ourselves and the people whom we repre- 
 sent. Sir, I would not retain a single soldier in 
 service to maintain this slave trade ; on the con- 
 trary, I should rejoice if every slave shipped from 
 our slave breeding States could regain his liberty, 
 either by the strength of his own arms, or by 
 landing on some British island. . . . But 
 the honorable Secretary of State, speaking of these 
 people, in his letter to our Minister, at London, 
 refers to them as guilty of mutiny and murder. 
 Had he made demand for them as murderers, or 
 mutineers, the British government would, in all 
 probability, have surrendered them, in order that 
 they might suffer the penalty attached to those 
 crimes, under our laws. But he has made no such 
 demand. He merely demands payment, in dol- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I 33 
 
 lars and cents, for their blood and bones, their 
 muscles and sinews. His zeal and anxiety are in 
 behalf of the slave holders, not of justice ; he de- 
 mands pay, not punishment, and the question very 
 naturally arises : Why did that officer attempt to 
 stigmatize those people as guilty of mutiny and 
 murder? .... These persons had 
 suffered the hardest of slavery under the laws of 
 Virginia ; while in that State, the whole power of 
 the Commonwealth had been arrayed against them, 
 to hold them in bondage. At length their owners 
 carried them beyond the jurisdiction of these slave 
 laws. They were upon the high seas subject only 
 to the laws of Congress. These piratical dealers 
 held them in subjection, without law, and in vio- 
 lation of justice and the dictates of humanity. 
 In the spirit and dignity of their manhood, they 
 rose and asserted the rights with which the God 
 of nature had endowed them. The slave holder 
 thrust himself between them and their freedom, 
 and attempted to disrobe them of the liberty which 
 God had given them, and to subject them to his 
 will. They defended their lives and their liberty ; 
 they slew him, for which you and I and all man- 
 kind honor them. We applaud their heroism ; 
 the whole civilized world will say they did right. 
 Not a slave holder present will say they did wrong. 
 Would the honorable Secretary in their situation 
 have done less ? Would he, with a craven heart 
 
134 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 and a dastardly soul, have quietly submitted to be 
 carried to the barracoons of New Orleans, and 
 sold like a beast of burthen ? If so, he would not 
 have deserved the name of man. They possessed 
 no moral right to surrender the liberty of them- 
 selves and offspring for all coming time ; to doom 
 their descendants forever to sighs, and chains, and 
 tears, and suffering. .... Sir, the 
 doctrines advanced by the Secretary of State are 
 unworthy of the reputation he sustains and the po- 
 sition he holds. They are in conflict with the spirit 
 of the age in which we live, and of the religion we 
 profess ; they are opposed to the Constitution, and 
 to the humane promptings of our nature ; they 
 are hostile to the public sentiment, and to the in- 
 terest, of the people. The people love freedom ; 
 they admire justice ; but they hate oppression, and 
 detest crime." 
 
 During the recess which followed the close of 
 the session, extending from August until Decem- 
 ber, 1842, Mr. Giddings was far from idle. He 
 busied himself with the preparation of that series 
 of political tracts written by him, and published 
 over the signature '' Pacificus, " which at that time 
 made so great a stir both among the supporters 
 and opponents of slavery. It seems strange to-day 
 to think that any considerable sensation could 
 have been created by the promulgation of the 
 opinions conveyed in these tracts, for they have 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I 35 
 
 now earned such universal recognition as to seem 
 almost axiomatic; then, however, they were suffi- 
 ciently radical. Riddle has epitomized their princi- 
 pal arguments, as follows : 
 
 "The dominant ideas were those of the Creole 
 resolutions. Slavery — a wrong — could only exist 
 by virtue of positive law, and was wholly within 
 the power and control of the State enacting the 
 law. That the people of the free States were in 
 no way responsible for slavery in the slave States, 
 either to uphold or destroy. Freedom was their 
 institution ; as they were not responsible for slavery 
 in the States, so they must be held free from the 
 cost and infamy of it. That the Federal Govern- 
 ment could no more abolish one than the other 
 within the States ; that everywhere outside the 
 States, where their laws could not go, the author- 
 ity of the Federal Government was supreme, and 
 that it must be used to secure the ends and pro- 
 mote the objects of its creation, as set forth in the 
 Constitution." 
 
 These papers were widely read and copied, 
 evoked much discussion in private circles and in 
 the public prints, drew forth vigorous set an- 
 swers, and, when all was done, provided, in place 
 of the vague sense of wrong and injustice which 
 had been common to thousands in the North, a 
 definite declaration of principles, — a creed which 
 was almost universally accepted by those of that 
 
136 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 inclining. It must be remembered that the Aboli- 
 tionists were a very small, and not a practical, 
 element in the slavery contest at that time ; in 
 other words, that the unquestioned constitutional 
 obstacles, and the countless practical difficulties, in 
 the way of abolition had, in 1842, caused the 
 majority of the friends of the negro to be for the 
 time content with repressive measures. They 
 would have welcomed very gladly any substantial 
 chance for abolition ; they looked for the day, as 
 devout Jews look for a corporeal return to Jerusa- 
 lem, when, by purchase or at the expiration of a 
 certain long and fixed period, slavery might be 
 forever at an end in the United States, but the 
 fruition of that hope could only come in the dim 
 future. As it was, the best of them were prepared 
 to accept Mr. Giddings' statement of principles. 
 The ultra Abolitionists were somewhat dissatisfied 
 that it did not go further; the Northern Whigs, 
 while individually assenting to its doctrines, were not 
 yet prepared, as an organization, to commit them- 
 selves to anything so radical. Hence the anti- 
 slavery cause had not yet a party of strength and 
 significance behind it — only the small but earnest 
 band of men calling themselves the Liberty party, 
 but these more united and determined than ever 
 before. 
 
 Giddings, at the time of his censure, was chair- 
 man of the important Committee on Claims ; upon 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 37 
 
 his resignation, the place was filled, according to 
 custom, for the remainder of the session. Hence, 
 upon the assembling of the third session of the 
 XXVIIth Congress, White, of Kentucky, then 
 Speaker, who had opposed and condemned the 
 censure, promptly replaced Giddings at the head of 
 his committee, against the protest of Southerners 
 of both parties. The original rule of the House 
 was that each committee should choose its own 
 chairman, but the usage which now controls, that 
 the person first named by the Speaker in appoint- 
 ing the committee should be its chairman, was 
 then well recognized and in force. A combina- 
 tion was made by the members of the committee 
 hostile to Mr. Giddings to compass his removal, 
 by action of the committee. Giddings was 
 warned and advised to resign, but declined so to 
 do, and the plot against him failed. 
 
 The session was notable for some of the strong- 
 est work ever done by Mr. Giddings for the ob- 
 struction and defeat of slavery legislation. The 
 first occasion was upon the presentation of a bill, 
 indemnifying masters for slaves lost in Florida. 
 Giddings opposed the measure with all the re- 
 sources which his great knowledge of the subject, 
 his earnest persuasion of the iniquity of the meas- 
 ure, and his ability as a debater, gave him. So 
 close and exciting was the contest that it called to 
 his feet the *'01d Man Eloquent," Adams, whose 
 
138 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 voice was then but rarely heard in the hall. His 
 arguments and those of Mr. Giddings were suffi- 
 cient to defeat the bill, of which the passage had 
 been deemed a foregone conclusion. 
 
 The second case was one in which Mr. Giddings 
 was obliged to use one of the devices of the pro- 
 fessional legislator — a very unusual thing for him. 
 During the administration of Jackson, Great Brit- 
 ain had been induced to pay ninety-five thousand 
 dollars for the loss of slaves freed by being wrecked 
 on British soil. This matter seems to have been a 
 little private enterprise of Old Hickory and Van 
 Buren, his friend and heir-at-law. The indemnity 
 came directly into the hands of the former, and 
 was by him largely distributed among the claim- 
 ants whom he deemed entitled to it. The re- 
 mainder passed to Van Buren, and the payments 
 made during his administration reduced the bal- 
 ance to the insignificant sum of four thousand 
 dollars. This amount was transferred by Van 
 Buren to the Secretary of the Treasury, and a re- 
 ceipt was given by that officer. In 1843 ^ bill was 
 introduced ordering the Secretary of the Treasury 
 to pay from this fund the claims of certain persons, 
 then tardily presented, which he had refused to 
 recognize without the explicit direction of Con- 
 gress. This bill Giddings resolved to oppose, 
 not that he had any hope of defeating it, or 
 any great desire to prevent the payment of so 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 139 
 
 insignificant a sum, but because he wished to make 
 a formal protest against the recognition by Con- 
 gress, at so late a day, of an iniquitous transaction 
 in which it had taken no early part. Giddings 
 explained to Stanley, one of the promoters of the 
 measure, what was his view of the case, and said 
 that he would not oppose a bill to return the 
 money to the Executive, thus restoring the matter 
 to its original status. Stanley expressed himself 
 satisfied. A bill in accordance with Giddings' sug- 
 gestion was substituted and passed, but, when the 
 matter reached the Senate, was amended by strik- 
 ing out the bill as passed by the House, and sub- 
 stituting the original and objectionable one. When 
 the bill as amended was returned to the House, 
 Stanley presented it, and demanded the previous 
 question, to cut off debate. This was evidently a 
 gross breach of faith, and justified extreme meas- 
 ures on the part of Giddings. The latter voted 
 for the bill, when it was put upon its passage, and 
 immediately moved a reconsideration, explaining, 
 at the same time, that his affirmative vot'e had 
 been given purely for the purpose of securing an 
 opportunity to be heard in opposition, of which 
 an attempt had been made to defraud him. Then 
 he followed with a splendidly simple but con- 
 vincing argument in support of his position. It 
 was a futile effort, but so brave a one as to com- 
 
140 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 mand admiration and to excuse the quotation of 
 a portion : 
 
 '*We are called on to interpose our legislative 
 powers in aid of certain individuals of this city and 
 of South Carolina who, in 183 1, entered into a 
 commercial speculation in the bodies of men, 
 women, and children. Many of them were born 
 here under our laws, and were entitled by every 
 principle of humanity to our protection. Here, 
 sir, in view of this hall, under the shadow of the 
 ' star spangled banner ' which floats over this edi- 
 fice, consecrated to freedom, to the maintenance 
 of the undying truth that * governments are insti- 
 tuted to secure all men in the enjoyment of life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' these huck- 
 sters in human flesh critically examined the bodies 
 and limbs, and judged of the age, the qualities, 
 and the marketable value of fathers, mothers, 
 sisters, brothers, and children. I doubt whether 
 any slave market in Africa was ever attended by 
 more expert dealers in human chattels, than was 
 the market of this city, which profanes the name of 
 Washington. But, sir, their victims were born 
 and bred under our laws for the very purpose ; this 
 city and the surrounding country have been familiar 
 to them from their earliest recollection ; here 
 were the scenes of their childhood, to which they 
 had become attached ; here they had formed their 
 associations ; in our churches they had listened to 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. I4I 
 
 the preaching of the gospel, and there they had 
 been admitted to church fellowship; there they 
 had partaken of the holy communion as members 
 of our various Christian denominations. Such were 
 the people whose bodies were made merchandise 
 under our laws. Such were the people purchased 
 by these slave dealers, who now ask us to aid them 
 in carrying out these speculations in the bodies of 
 Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Episco- 
 palians. . . . But the bill goes farther, and 
 directs the treasurer to pay to the owner of each 
 slave 'such sum as he is entitled to receive.' 
 By this form of expression, I suppose it was in- 
 tended to give to each the value of the person 
 claimed. How will you estimate the value of a 
 man? Does it depend upon his complexion? for, 
 sir, there are all grades of color in this market; 
 or which is deemed the more valuable, black or 
 white, or a mixture of both? Or, shall the officer 
 be governed by the genealogy of the slave in esti- 
 mating his value? ■ If he have descended in the 
 paternal line from one of the best families in the 
 "Old Dominion," shall he be deemed of greater 
 value than though he were of pure African blood ? 
 Does such mixture improve or deteriorate a man? 
 These, sir, are all of them 'delicate questions,' 
 which I should like to hear answered by some of 
 the friends of the bill. . . . Sir, place the 
 subject in whatever attitude you please, throw 
 
142 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 around it whatever sophistry the human intellect is 
 capable of calling into exercise, yet the disgusting 
 fact will stand portrayed to the world in coming 
 time, that, in the year 1843, this American Con- 
 gress sat gravely legislating in aid of this traffic in 
 human flesh. Let it go upon record; let the 
 archives of this body bear to coming generations, 
 the proof that two hundred and forty-two Ameri- 
 can statesmen were, on this day, engaged in grant- 
 ing relief and encouragement to persons engaged 
 in that execrable commerce, which Mr. Jefferson 
 declared had 'rendered us the scoff of infidel 
 nations. ' But let not my name be found among 
 its advocates. Let not my descendants in future 
 years be called to blush for their ancestor, in read- 
 ing the record of this day's proceeding. Sooner, 
 far sooner, would I have it erased from the records 
 of this House ; yea, sooner would I have it blotted 
 from existence than see it placed on record in 
 favor of the bill before us." 
 
 This long extract is given for the reason that it 
 embodies, in comparatively small compass, several 
 specimens of the style of Mr. Giddings as a de- 
 bater. It would be interesting and profitable, 
 were it possible, to multiply examples, but, with 
 some very slight exceptions, those already given 
 must suffice to place Mr. Giddings before the 
 reader as he stood in the House, week after week, 
 and year after year, while infants grew to be 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I43 
 
 men, parties changed, and principles were rc-cast, 
 ever clinging to his one resolve, and, through evil 
 and good report alike, letting fall upon the seem- 
 ingly solid rock of sin and prejudice, the drops of 
 appeal, of logic, and of argument, which did so 
 much to make the way for the great reform of 
 the future. At the conclusion of the speech, 
 Black, a half-civilized member from Georgia, at- 
 tacked Mr. Giddings in one of the most indecent 
 harangues ever heard upon the floor of the House; 
 it contained no pretense at argument, — only scur- 
 rility, profanity, and abuse. At the conclusion of 
 the tirade Mr. Giddings said: '*I am not sent 
 here by my constituents to notice the low, vulgar, 
 and indecent attacks of which this out-pouring is 
 a fair example," and turned away. Then Daw- 
 son, a drunken bully from Louisiana, who had 
 once before deliberately insulted the Ohio Con- 
 gressman, came down the aisle, as Mr. Giddings, 
 with his face turned away, was conversing with 
 Mr. Wise, of Virginia, and pushed the former 
 rudely, at the same time halting, with his hand 
 on the hilt of his knife, to await an answer. Mr. 
 Giddings, turning to Dawson, said: "Was that 
 intended as an insult to me?" "It was," an- 
 swered Dawson, at the same time muttering a 
 
 threat to " Kill the d d Abolitionist." Then 
 
 Mr. Giddings, addressing the chair, said: "He 
 speaks of chastisement and personal violence. 
 
144 JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. 
 
 Now, sir, I attack no man ; I am not a bully, but 
 that I can and will defend myself, if occasion re- 
 quires, shall be demonstrated when any of these 
 threats shall be attempted to be carried into exe- 
 cution. ". Mr. Giddings, a ver>^ powerful man, was 
 capable, with a fair use of Nature's weapons, of 
 demolishing half a dozen Dawsons and Blacks, 
 and seeing him determined, friends of the gentle- 
 men considerately interposed, and took them be- 
 yond harm's reach. 
 
 Before the close of the Twenty-seventh Con- 
 gress^. the scheme for the annexation of Texas was 
 already formed, and its entire import, the deep 
 laid plan for the perpetuity of slavery, by a south- 
 ern extension of the United States, looking as far 
 as Mexico and Cuba, fully recognized. At the 
 very close of the Twenty-seventh Congress, under 
 date of March 3, 1843, was promulgated the 
 famous address of the twenty members of Con- 
 gress, to * ' The People of the Free States of the 
 Union," exposing the annexation scheme in its 
 true light, and calling for the support of the peo- 
 ple in an effort to defeat it. Of the twenty 
 naiTies signed to this address, the first were those 
 of John Q. Adams, Seth M. Gates, William Slade, 
 William B. Calhoun, and Joshua R. Giddings. 
 The paper was drawn by Mr. Gates, and was cir- 
 culated everywhere throughout the North, prac- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, I45 
 
 tically opening- the bitter contest on the subject 
 which marked the next Congress, 
 
 The Twenty-eighth Congress, which met at 
 Washington, in December, 1843, found Giddings 
 with greater responsibihties and better fitness to 
 sustain them than ever before. Adams, it is true, 
 was yet in his place, but the labor of years had 
 made him an infirm old man, still well fitted to 
 give counsel, but little able to lead in a prolonged 
 and violent parliamentary struggle ; Slade and 
 Gates, his old-time allies, had retired, and he was 
 the only speaking member left to represent the 
 anti-slavery cause. The contest, if somewhat more 
 decorous than that of his earlier service, was more 
 intense and bitter. At the outset of the session 
 Mr. Adams reopened his old battle against the de- 
 nial of the right of petition, embodied and en- 
 forced in the rule of the House, commonly known 
 as the Atherton gag rule. For two weeks this gal- 
 lant veteran, of seventy-six years, held his place 
 in an exceptionally bitter and intense debate, with 
 all his old quickness and effectiveness ; his mind 
 lacked nothing of power to carry the contest to the 
 end against this old wrong, which he so anxiously 
 desired to see righted before he died, but, at the 
 end of those two weeks, bodily fatigue and weak- 
 ness compelled him to give over to Mr. Giddings 
 his own place in the battle. The latter carried the 
 contest to a successful issue, following Mr. Adams* 
 
146- JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 points SO closely that even a hostile majority feared 
 to insist upon retaining upon the books so iniqui- 
 tous a rule. The speech made by Mr. Giddings 
 on the 14th of February, 1844, which practically 
 closed the debate on his side, was, as many think, 
 the finest constitutional argument ever made by 
 him. 
 
 So long as Giddings had been comparatively in- 
 significant, his unpopularity in Washington society, 
 and in the House in particular, had only extended 
 to those persons actually threatened or affected by 
 his efforts ; he was but one of a large body, and 
 bore only his share of odium. By 1844 he had 
 risen to a place of unquestionable leadership — not 
 of a party, but of a sentiment. He was the em- 
 bodiment of hope to the anti-slavery people of the 
 North ; the incarnation of all that was contemp- 
 tible to the slave holding element, and to the 
 Northern doughfaces. The Whig party was not 
 gifted with prevision, and did not recognize how 
 inevitable was a contest which should rest fairly 
 upon the slavery issue. Its leaders, whatever their 
 private feelings and belief on the subject of slavery, 
 dreaded an agitation which might injure them in 
 the Presidential campaign, then approaching. They 
 confounded the instrument with the power which 
 wielded it, and, not recognizing that Giddings was 
 but a medium for the manifestation of the un- 
 changeable laws of justice, — that eternal truth was 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I47 
 
 forcing itself to a hearing from his Hps, — they con- 
 demned and avoided him as a marplot and a dema- 
 gogue. In such an anomalous position was he 
 placed ; admittedly the most prominent figure in 
 the House of Representatives, he was still denied 
 his old place, at the head of the Committee on 
 Claims, and only recognized by an appointment 
 far down in the membership of the Committee on 
 Revolutionary Pensions ; a kindly, social, and 
 sympathetic man, he was ignored in society, save 
 that of the little knot of those who thought as he 
 did. With power and influence to oppose, and 
 sometimes overrule, a legislative majority, the 
 doors of Washington homes were closed against 
 him, public prints maligned him, and men whom 
 he had known for years, passed him in the lobbies, 
 and on the street, without recognition. All this, 
 so far from weakening his allegiance to his own 
 conscience, seemed to nerve him for the greater 
 struggles that were before him. Indeed, those 
 were dark and threatening days for the Republic, 
 and there was need of men of such heroic mold 
 as his. The dark plots which resulted in the theft 
 of Texas, and the iniquitous war with Mexico, 
 were even then laid ; before, though yet unsus- 
 pected, were the abrogation of the Missouri Com- 
 promise, the Lecompton outrage, presenting the 
 spectacle of a Government waging war against its 
 own people, to force slavery upon them against 
 
148 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 their will ; then the California and Oregon troubles, 
 and, finally, secession and war. 
 
 The first of these succeeding and cumulative dan- 
 gers was at hand, Texas was already slave terri- 
 tory, but English philanthropists had long been en- 
 deavoring to secure the abolition of slavery within 
 its limits. In 1843 these efforts had taken more 
 definite form than ever before. The South became 
 alarmed, and President Tyler began a correspon- 
 dence with the Texan authorities, looking to the an- 
 nexation of the vast territory under their control. 
 The arguments soberly advanced in favor of such 
 a measure, were that the existence of a free and 
 independent territory, contiguous to our Southern 
 borders, would endanger the existence of slavery 
 in the United States, while the possession of 
 Texas would give an Outlet for the surplus slave 
 population. The second reason explains the whole 
 matter: the South had determined to secure Texas, 
 and as much additional territory to the southward 
 as possible; colonize it, establish slavery upon a 
 firm basis, eventually obtain the admission of 
 slave States to be carved out of the new territory, 
 and, thus offsetting the westward development 
 upon free soil, perpetuate the political control of 
 the Nation by the South. This was the plan. 
 Southern men had long been urging, in Congress 
 and through the press, the desirability of such an 
 acquisition; an annexation propaganda had been 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I49 
 
 quietly at work upon the interest of the South, 
 and the cupidity and creduHty of the North. The 
 address of the twenty Congressmen was the first 
 warning on the subject. The second came on the 
 2 1 st of May, 1844, when, the naval appropriation 
 bill being under discussion in committee of the 
 whole, and a treaty of annexation being already 
 framed and agreed upon, before the Senate, Mr. 
 Giddings took advantage of the latitude of debate 
 allowed under the circumstances, and embodied 
 in a speech, the first protest ever made in Congress 
 against this contemplated wrong, which the whole 
 civilized world has since recognized and united in 
 condemning. To do this duty required an amount 
 of courage, — personal and moral, — difficult for us, 
 in these more settled days of the Republic, to appre- 
 ciate. It was done, and well done. Mr. Giddings 
 was uncompromising. He showed how Texas was 
 in revolt against Mexico, a friendly power, by rea- 
 son of Mexico's effort to abolish Texan slavery; 
 he looked for a motive for the desire of Texas for 
 annexation, and found it to exist in the dual fact 
 that she had a war with Mexico, which she desired 
 us to fight, and a debt of ten millions of dollars, 
 which she wished us to pay. He pointed out the 
 facts that the United States was called upon to as- 
 sume this war, and pay this sum for the avowed pro- 
 tection of an institution which could not be consti- 
 tutionally recognized, an institution hateful to the 
 
I^O JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 North; that the North would be compelled to pay its 
 share of the cost,not only without benefit, but to its 
 positive disadvantage; and tested the justice of the 
 measure, by reversing the proposition, and asking 
 how the South would view a project, emanating 
 from the North, which contemplated annexing 
 Texas at a large cost, that her slaves might be set 
 free, and slavery weakened in the South. He 
 said, further, " We have passed more than half a 
 century under our present Constitution, and now 
 the President assumes to himself the power of 
 making slavery a National instead of a State insti- 
 tution, and of extending the power and influence 
 of the Federal Government to its support. He 
 has brought our army into the field, in hostile atti- 
 tude toward a friendly power, with whom we are 
 on terms of perfect amity, and has sent a fleet to 
 insult and provoke that government to hostilities. 
 He has, by his secret orders, without the consent 
 of the people of the Nation or their representa- 
 tives, and without deigning even to consult his 
 constitutional advisers, suddenly plunged us into 
 a war for the openly avowed object and purpose 
 of extending and perpetuating slavery. These 
 profligate acts, these usurpations of power, these 
 violations of the Constitution, can be characterized 
 by no term of milder signification than tirason, 
 treason against the rights of this people, treason 
 against the Constitution, treason against humanity 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 151 
 
 itself. I feel it my duty to declare it such in the 
 presence of this House and of the country. 
 
 . . . . The gentleman from Alabama said, 
 rather sneeringly, I thought, that there is a class of 
 public men who deny the constitutional power of 
 the Federal Government to annex Texas to this 
 Union. He then went on to say that such were 
 the views of the Abolitionists, and that their candi- 
 date for President (James G. Birney) had started 
 this doctrine. Now I beg leave to differ with the 
 gentleman, as to the authorship of this doctrine. It 
 had been put forth long before Mr. Birney's letter 
 was written. It was put forth by a greater aboli- 
 tionist than Mr. Birney — by a man whom I have 
 always regarded as a far greater man, and for whose 
 opinions I have, from my youth up, been taught 
 to pay the highest respect. (Cries: 'Who is it? 
 Who is it?') He was the author of the first aboli- 
 tion tract ever published in the United States, and, 
 in my opinion, the best ever put forth. (Cries, 
 ' Name him !') I borrowed my own abolition senti- 
 ments from his writings; I have cherished them, 
 and shall continue to do so, from respect to his 
 memory, if from no other motive. His name was 
 Thomas Jefferson, and his abolition tract was 
 called the Declaration of Independence." 
 
 This speech being made in committee of the 
 whole, and not to any question, was merely an ex- 
 pression. It was purely impromptu ; Mr. Gid- 
 
152 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 dings when the sitting began, had no idea of speak- 
 ing and he used neither note nor reference. As 
 an example of ex tempore oratory it bears, as a 
 whole, favorable comparison with any ever de- 
 livered in the House. There may have been more 
 brilliant and eloquent speeches, — few clearer, more 
 forcible or better calculated to impress any person 
 open to conviction. 
 
 Of the Texas project and Mr. Giddings' con- 
 nection with it, more hereafter. The Presidential 
 campaign was at hand. Mr. Giddings was again 
 placed in an embarrassing position, for, while his 
 sympathy was all with the Liberty party, he had 
 no faith in their ability, at the stage of affairs then 
 existing, to accomplish results ; his supreme desire 
 was to bring something practical to pass, and he 
 believed that that result could only be accom- 
 plished through the agency of one or the other of 
 the existing parties, until something should happen 
 to cause a re-array of forces. The Democrats were 
 irretrievably committed to the cause of slavery ; 
 the Whigs had never been organically identified 
 Avith the anti-slavery cause, but their attitude had 
 been dictated more by policy than by sentiment. 
 A large proportion of the Northern men included 
 within the Whig lines were, theoretically at least, 
 opposed to slavery. Mr. Giddings did not despair 
 of the conversion of the Whig party, especially 
 if the Texas scheme should result in the forma- 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. I 53 
 
 tion of a distinct issue. Hence, in the campaign 
 of 1844, he opposed Polk because he hated the 
 Democratic party ; he opposed Birney because he 
 saw no prospect of electing him ; he favored and 
 supported Clay, because, in a Whig success, he 
 thought existed the best practical chance for the 
 cause to which he was devoted. Never did he 
 come so near sacrificing the faith and affection of 
 his constituents. The anti-slavery spirit was 
 stronger in the Western Reserve, than in any other 
 territory, of equal extent, in the United States. 
 The young Whigs had gone, almost to a man, in- 
 to the Liberty party. Their blood was hotter and 
 their reason not so clear as that of Giddings. They 
 blamed him for supporting Clay, as did the Birney 
 organs the country over, and he was bitterly 
 abused by those who had always been his warmest 
 friends and admirers. He had not, however, 
 faced that early "Solid South" for years, to be 
 much affected by abuse or misrepresentation. 
 Election came. Every school boy now knows the 
 result. Polk was elected, Clay defeated, and 
 Birney buried. Clay beat himself by indiscreet 
 utterances, and his friends were loud in mourning 
 that it was so ; but, in looking back at the cam- 
 paign from the standpoint of to-day, it seems as 
 though Polk's election was indeed the most for- 
 tunate possible result. We now see that there 
 was even then an irrepressible conflict between 
 
154 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 North and South; that war was foreordained; 
 that the poison of slavery was in the Nation's 
 blood, and something must come to bring it 
 out or the country was doomed. Polk took his 
 seat ; Texas was annexed, the Mexican war came ; 
 the Whigs were routed, the Republican party was 
 formed; slavery took the sword and slavery per- 
 ished by the sword. So close was the sequence of 
 events. It all must have come in the end, but 
 Polk, perhaps, hastened that end by more than 
 one decade. 
 
 One feature of Mr. Giddings' attitude in this 
 campaign, was peculiarly characteristic of the man. 
 His support of Mr. Clay he required to be based 
 upon knowledge, — the knowledge that Clay was 
 clearly committed to opposition to the Texas an- 
 nexation scheme, and as clearly an advocate of the 
 theory that slavery was purely a State institution. 
 Clay wrote an open letter on the annexation ques- 
 tion, which was quite satisfactory to Giddings and 
 the Ohio Whigs, but he was unwise enough to 
 follow it with another, which seemed on the surface 
 to radically modify the matter. Giddings wrote him 
 in regard to the subject, and a long and confiden- 
 tial correspondence ensued, which is of great his- 
 torical interest. One of Clay's letters may well 
 be reproduced in this place, for the reason that it 
 ckarly defines his position and foreshadows his de- 
 feat. It is as follows: 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 155 
 
 " Confidential. 
 Ashland, iithSept., 1844. 
 "Your friendly letter of the fourth instant, which 
 I have just received, affords me a good opportu- 
 nity of writing to you, which I much desired. I 
 am extremely sorry that my letters to Alabama 
 should have produced any unfavorable impressions 
 in your portion of Ohio. It was not my intention, 
 in those letters, to vary the ground in the smallest 
 degree which I assumed in the Raleigh letter. It 
 had been represented to me that in that letter I 
 had displayed a determined opposition to the an- 
 nexation of Texas to the United States, although 
 the whole Union might be in favor of it, and it 
 could be peacefully and honorably effected, upon 
 favorable terms. It was my purpose in those 
 Alabama letters to say that no personal or private 
 motives prompted me to oppose annexation, but 
 that my opinion in opposition to it was founded- 
 wholly upon public and general considerations. I 
 therefore said that if, by common consent of the 
 Union, without National dishonor, without war, 
 and upon just conditions, the object of annexation 
 could be accomplished, I did not wish to be con- 
 sidered as standing in opposition to the wishes of 
 the whole Confederacy, but upon the supposition 
 stated would be glad to see those wishes gratified. 
 Could I say less? Can it be expected that I 
 should put myself in opposition to the concurrent 
 
156 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 will of the whole Nation, if such should be its 
 will? . . . My position is very sin- 
 
 gular. Whilst at the South I am represented as a 
 liberty man, at the North I am decried as an ultra 
 supporter of slavery, when, in fact, I am neither 
 one nor the other. This peculiarity of position 
 exposes me to a cross-fire from opposite directions, 
 and rendered it indispensably necessary that I 
 should come out, a few days ago, with a note in 
 relation to the letter of Cassius M. Clay, Esq., 
 just published in the Tribune. 
 
 You, I trust, will be satisfied with the position 
 taken in my note, that the existence, maintenance, 
 and continuance of the institution of slavery, 
 depend exclusively upon State power and author- 
 ity. As you had expressed regret that my Raleigh 
 speech should have omitted that principle, I 
 thought the occasion a suitable one for reassert- 
 ing it. 
 
 "I am, with great respect, 
 
 Your friend and ob'd't serv't, 
 
 H. Clay." 
 Hon. J. A. Giddings. 
 Scarcely had Congress reconvened, when the 
 Texas question came up again. Benton had op- 
 posed and defeated Calhoun's original treaty of 
 annexation, the discussion of which in the Senate 
 was coincident with the speech of Giddings already 
 referred to. Benton desired the annexation, but 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 157 
 
 was frightened at the high-handed and unconstitu- 
 tional action of the President to that end. He 
 opposed not the end but the means, and at the 
 first opportunity offered a joint resolution provid- 
 ing for the annexation. Resolution after resolu- 
 tion, amendment after amendment, was offered. 
 The contest was really as to the payment of the 
 Texan debt, and as to the immediate admission of 
 the new territory as a State, by a provision of its 
 annexation. Mr. Giddings, while taking part from 
 day to day in the almost constant debates, made 
 no set speech on the subject during the session, 
 until the 22d of January, 1843, when certain let- 
 ters of Calhoun, Secretary of State, to our Minis- 
 ters at Versailles and St. James, arguing that 
 slavery was a humane and beneficent institution, 
 came before the House in connection with the 
 Texan question. Mr. Giddings never suffered 
 such a challenge to his conscience to pass, and 
 obtaining the fioor, he delivered a masterly speech, 
 in which he considered the economical, moral, and 
 constitutional bearings of the question. He showed, 
 with a clearness that had perhaps never been 
 equalled, the inconsistency of the South, which in 
 one breath declared slavery to be an institution 
 purely under the control of the several States in 
 which it existed, and in the next demanded that 
 the Federal Government annex the territory of an 
 independent power, assume a vast debt, and face 
 
158 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 the certainty of war — all for the protection of this 
 same institution, which it could not control or 
 abolish. By the simple recital of incidents, and 
 use of vital statistics, he excoriated Mr. Calhoun 
 and exposed his falsehood and hypocrisy to the 
 contempt of the world. 
 
 In spite, however, of all efforts to the contrary, 
 Texas was, by joint resolution, passed February 
 28, 1845, annexed and admitted to the Union as a 
 State, with an immediate representation of two 
 members, pending an apportionment. So was 
 completed the preliminary step of a great and 
 costly wrong. A short extra session was held ; 
 Polk was inaugurated, and Congress adjourned 
 sine die. 
 
 At the threshold of the Twenty-ninth Congress 
 stood the champions of the slave power, resolved 
 to find a new way by which to silence petitions, 
 which the defeat of the infamous Atherton gag 
 threatened to shower upon them. Their first step 
 was to secure a speaker without conscience or iden- 
 tity apart from their own. Him they found in 
 John W. Davis, of Indiana. Davis so made up his 
 committees as to insure the death of any petition 
 relating to slavery, which might be referred to 
 them. During that session, at least, the anti- 
 slavery men found themselves but little better off 
 for their ostensible victory. 
 
 The overweenincr interest of the session was the 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 59 
 
 Oregon question, suggested by the astute Polk in 
 his message, and soon crystallized. First, how- 
 ever, the annexation of Texas, agreed to by the 
 last Congress, was consummated. Then a resolu- 
 tion was passed, directing that the Secretary of 
 State give notice to England that the joint occupa- 
 tion of Oregon by Great Britain and the United 
 States, should be forthwith terminated, and that the 
 United States claimed right and title to the whole. 
 The Territory then embraced all the country west 
 of the Rocky mountains, north of the forty-second 
 parallel, and extending, according to the programme 
 adopted, to 54^" 40" north latitude — far into the 
 present British possessions. This demand, if 
 adhered to, meant war with England ; and the 
 South, not satisfied with its Mexican imbroglio, 
 was mad for war. Giddings and Adams, while 
 never favoring such a demand, or desiring war, 
 saw the advantage of their position over that of 
 the South. On the 5th of January, 1846, Mr. 
 Giddings addressed the House, favoring the 
 absorption of Oregon as proposed, in a speech 
 which cut the South to the quick. He turned back 
 at them the batteries which they had used against 
 him in the Texan debate. He showed how a war 
 with England, if successful, could only end in the 
 acquisition of the whole of Canada by the United 
 States ; how that territory would be naturally a 
 non-slave holding one ; how, in the event of a 
 
l60 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 continued union of the States, free States would be 
 erected, and anti-slavery Representatives and Sena- 
 tors returned to Congress therefrom. In the event 
 of a division between the North and South, the 
 acquisition would, he admitted, be of infinite 
 value to the former. He also showed that such a 
 war could but be one of emancipation ; that Eng- 
 land would attack us from the West Indies, with 
 regiments of blacks; proclaim freedom for all 
 slaves joining her force, that a servile insurrection 
 must follow, and, whatever the issue of the war, 
 slavery would be upset. Hence he favored the 
 measure. 
 
 Adams followed in the same tone, but, had he 
 not done so, Giddings' speech would have killed 
 the bill. Great Britain proposed a compromise, 
 offering the forty-fifth parallel as a boundary line. 
 The Senate, in an ague, advised Polk to accept the 
 offer, which he at once did, thus closing one of the 
 most brilliant exhibitions of legislative, executive, 
 and diplomatic finesse that has ever distinguished 
 our country. Whoever originated the plan carried 
 out by Giddings and Adams, it was beautifully 
 executed. Some credit for simultaneous discovery, 
 at least, is evidently due the Hon. Thurlow Weed, 
 then as always a long-sighted and clear-headed m.an. 
 Witness the following letter : 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. l6l 
 
 **AsTOR House, New York, \ 
 December 24, 1845. / 
 ''Dear Sir: If the President in his message 
 plays the game of war, why not out-trump him? 
 Wars are sometimes National blessings, though 
 generally the reverse. But are there not worse 
 things than war? The Mexican war, though cause- 
 less and ugly, yet contained jewels. If war with 
 England would give us a tariff, Canada, and free- 
 dom, shall we refuse it ? 
 
 ''But it has another aspect — the duplicity of 
 the administration. Were you to take this ground, 
 in one of your strong, vigorous fifteen-minute 
 speeches, it would blow the war and the adminis- 
 tration sky-high. 
 
 "Very truly yours, 
 
 "Thurlow Weed. 
 "Hon. J. Giddings." 
 So much for Oregon. 
 
l62 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 VIL 
 
 The causes which led to the Florida wars were 
 not, so late as 1846, entirely removed. Particu- 
 larly was this true with the Seminole tribe of In- 
 dians. Large numbers of escaped negro slaves 
 had fled to Florida during the earlier years of the 
 century, had been adopted by the Seminoles as 
 members of their tribe, and had intermarried with 
 them. These people and their descendants were 
 still with the tribe, when the Government at last 
 compelled the Seminoles to follow the Creeks and 
 Cherokees across the Mississippi river. The res- 
 ervation selected for them was within the jurisdic- 
 tion and territory of the Creeks, who were crea- 
 tures of the slave-holders, and, fearing that the 
 Creeks would seize the African and half-breed 
 members of their tribe, many of the Seminoles 
 refused to proceed, and settled upon the lands of 
 the Cherokees. This made trouble between the 
 Cherokees and Seminoles, and a treaty was se- 
 cretly made with the latter, whereby they were to 
 proceed to the reservation intended for them, and 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I63 
 
 all disputes between the tribes, as to any pToperty 
 owned or claimed by eithei-, were to be submitted 
 to the arbitrament of the President of the United 
 States. Of this secret treaty Giddings managed 
 to obtain a copy, and when, in February, 1846, 
 the sum of forty thousand dollars was included in 
 the Indian appropriation bill, for the purpose of 
 carrying out its provisions, he astonished the 
 Southern supporters of the bill by opposing it, 
 and assailing them from the text of a treaty which 
 they supposed to be hidden in the archives of the 
 department. The chairman of the Committee on 
 Ways and Means made a lame reply, but could 
 not deny a single allegation, and was obliged to 
 leave the President of the United States before 
 his people and the world in the light of an umpire 
 between barbarian slave stealers and the no less 
 barbarous defenders of a right which he did not 
 recognize. In the meantime, the prophecies of 
 the opponents of slavery regarding the Mexican 
 matter were being more than fulfilled. War had 
 come, and every student of history knows the 
 story of its prosecution. Our part in the war was 
 principally apparent in its effects upon the treas- 
 ury, and in disasters to armies sent into an alien 
 country, to fight the battles of a foreign state, for 
 the benefit of a section of our own people. Gid- 
 dings, who had opposed the war in its inception, 
 and had been one of the first to expose the dan- 
 
l64 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 gers involved in the measure from which it sprung-, 
 was as constant and consistent in opposing its 
 prosecution. It was never aught but a war of ag- 
 grandizement, worthy of Nero or Alexander in its 
 conception, but executed as if by a parcel of 
 school-boys. The war was commenced by the 
 President, who sent Taylor and his troops into 
 Texas with orders to proceed to the Rio Grande, 
 and, if deemed wise, to cross that stream and 
 press into the territory of Mexico. It was months 
 before Polk made any communication to Congress 
 on the subject. When he did so, Taylor and his 
 army were in Mexico, ostensibly to guard against 
 Indian outbreaks on the border, really to wage a 
 war of conquest. The Mexican troops opposed 
 this outrage. Then Polk sent a communication to 
 Congress, announcing that war existed by the act 
 of Mexico. A resolution to that effect Avas intro- 
 duced into the House and forced through without 
 debate, under a movement of the previous ques- 
 tion — the House of Representatives of the United 
 States actually allowing itself to be compelled to 
 declare war against a neighboring power without 
 a word of discussion. The bill came up, however, 
 in committee of the whole, on the I2th day o{ 
 May, 1846, when Mr. Giddings threw himself into 
 the debate, and made the first of a series of 
 speeches which did very much to disgust the peo- 
 ple of the United States with the war, and to 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 65 
 
 place clearly before them, and before the world, the 
 true responsibility for its inauguration. Some 
 small quotations from this speech may not be 
 amiss : 
 
 "I apprehend that Mexico has maturely consid- 
 ered the subject, and enters upon the war with a 
 solemn conviction that her existence as a nation 
 depends upon her resistance to our aggressiveness. 
 The correspondence before us proves the fact ; 
 conclusively proves it. Why, sir, look at General 
 Taylor's report, and you will see a devotion mani- 
 fested by the officers and peasantry of Mexico, 
 that speaks in thunder tones to those who regard 
 the conquest of that people as a trifling matter. 
 See the females and children at the approach of our 
 troops leave their homes, consecrated by all the 
 ties of domestic life, and, while they are fleeing to 
 the Mexican army for protection, see the husbands 
 and fathers apply the torch to their own dwellings, 
 and then fly to arms in the defense of their insti- 
 tutions. I confess I was struck with deep solem- 
 nity when that communication was read at your 
 table ; and, in imitation of William Pitt, I was 
 ready to swear that, if I were a Mexican, as I am 
 an American, I would never sheathe my sword 
 while an enemy remained upon my native soil." 
 
 Such was the bold stand taken by Mr. Giddings, 
 upon the proposal to declare the war begun by 
 Mexico. But the bill making such declaration 
 
1 66 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 passed. The war dragged its slow length along. 
 Near the close of the session the Government 
 asked that three million dollars be placed at the 
 disposal of the President to enable him to force 
 the war to a speedy and honorable termination. 
 Mr. Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, on the 8th. of Au- 
 gust, 1846, moved an amendment to the bill 
 making the appropriation, that slavery be forever 
 prohibited in any territory which might be acquired 
 from Mexico as a result of the war. The matter 
 came up at the next session and, in February, 
 1847, Mr. Giddings advocated the amendment in a 
 speech, in the course of which he said: 
 
 " Gentlemen from the South, with deep emo- 
 tions, have solemnly warned us, that, if we per- 
 sist in our determination, the Union will be dis- 
 solved. I do not doubt their sincerity. But I 
 would rather see this Union rent into a thousand 
 fragments, than have my country disgraced, and 
 its moral purity sacrificed, by the prosecution of a 
 war for the extension of human bondage. Nor 
 would I avoid the issue were it in my power. For 
 many years I have seen the rights of the North, 
 and the vital principles of our Constitution, sur- 
 rendered to the haughty vaporings of Southern 
 members. For many years I have exerted my 
 humble influence to stimulate Northern members 
 to the maintenance of our honor and of the Con- 
 stitution. And now I devoutly thank that God 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 16/ 
 
 who has permitted me to witness the union of a 
 portion of Northern members, of both poHtical 
 parties, upon a question so vital to our interests 
 and honor, as well as to humanity." 
 
 The amendment was adopted by the House but 
 rejected by the Senate, and the three million dol- 
 lars followed other millions that had gone before, 
 without condition ; yet the Wilmot proviso was 
 fruitful in its death, for it furnished at last the 
 common basis upon which, from the discontented 
 elements of the Whigs and Democrats, meeting 
 with the small and ineffective Liberty party, was to 
 be evolved the Free Soil party, which, while it 
 never elected a President, still came, as the sound 
 of a voice crying in the wilderness, to prepare the 
 way for the Republican party and the final over- 
 throw of slavery. 
 
 There was one and but one other notable oppor- 
 tunity for Giddings during that session. In March 
 the perennial Ainist ad C2iSQ came to the House in 
 a new form. An appropriation bill came back 
 from the Senate, saddled with an amendment pro- 
 viding for the payment of fifty thousand dollars to 
 the owners of the negroes liberated from that ves- 
 sel. Giddings made an attack upon the amend- 
 ment and concluded, when lo ! in his place, arose 
 the tottering veteran, John Quincy Adams, 
 aroused like an old warrior at the bugle call, and 
 with his still peerless eloquence attacked the 
 
l68 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 outrage sought to be committed. Every ear in 
 the galleries was strained, every member ceased 
 his occupation and listened, many gathered about 
 the place of the orator, and not a sound was heard 
 save the quavering voice of the speaker. There 
 seemed in this attention, so impartially paid, some- 
 thing almost like prevision, for in truth the voice 
 of the "Old Man Eloquent" was there raised for 
 the last time, and raised in the cause which, for 
 more than sixteen years, he had constantly and 
 consistently advocated. 
 
 The amendment was lost by an overwhelming 
 majority. The second session of the Twenty- 
 ninth Congress may be thus dismissed, and few 
 have there been in the history of that body which 
 it is a greater pleasure to pass by. 
 
 Already the probabilities for the Presidential cam- 
 paign of 1848 were outlined. Polk was too 
 hopelessly imbecile to be named for re-election. 
 Taylor, in Mexico, was posing for the nomina- 
 tion. Giddings and his friends saw that his elec- 
 tion would give an administration which would be 
 like the last, with all the bad points emphasized. 
 Giddings had opportunity and excuse enough to 
 oppose Taylor in the House. This he did, con- 
 sistently and openly. Anything like reservation 
 or pretense was foreign to him in politics as in 
 his private life. After the adjournment he wrote 
 a strono- letter to the same effect to the New York 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. 169 
 
 Tribune. Greeley published the communication, 
 but sent a personal letter to Mr. Giddings, of 
 which the following is a copy: 
 
 ''Hon. J. R. Giddings: 
 
 " Dear Sir : I think you seriously err in making 
 a fight against Taylor in the spirit of your letter, 
 which I have printed this morning. Nothing can 
 be more fragile than such a popularity as his, un- 
 less it may be his life. A hasty plate of soup 
 may upset him in a twinkling. Now your mode 
 of opposing him will exasperate those who have 
 taken him up, from thoughtlessness, or a belief in 
 his popularity, and they will oppose our man at 
 all events, and probably adhere to Taylor. It is 
 surely not wise. I want a Whig Congress now, 
 and am willing to take North Carolina, Tennessee, 
 and Kentucky Whigs to make it up. Are not 
 you ? Then I want a Whig President. Corwin is 
 my first choice — but I prefer almost any Whig to 
 a loco-foco. Let us commend our own man, or 
 set forth the qualities we require, rather than assail 
 another. Yours, 
 
 Horace Greeley." 
 
 Henry Wilson, however, writing under date of 
 April loth, of the same year, and speaking of the 
 Taylor movement, says : ' ' Can we not defeat 
 this movement? We must, if possible. I would 
 
I/O JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 not submit to it, come what may. , . . Let 
 the party be divided, rather than submit to have 
 any man who is a slaveholder, or in favor of slave 
 territory, elected. Can we not, if Taylor is forced 
 upon us, call a convention of the Whigs of the 
 free States, and put up two good and true men — 
 make a full declaration of principles — and appeal 
 to the country, and nominate electors, and con- 
 test every district in the free States?" 
 
 This was Giddings' view as well. He saw that 
 the time had come to accept defeat upon a good 
 platform, rather than victory at the expense of a 
 compromise with Satan. He probably had little 
 or no hope of immediate success, but he had faith 
 to believe that there were enough voters of his 
 own view on the subject of slavery and the Wil- 
 mot proviso, to form the nucleus of a new party, 
 which would ultimately win success. 
 
 The Thirtieth Congress commenced in Decem- 
 ber, 1847. Giddings and some of his friends de- 
 termined to make at least a protest against the elec- 
 tion of a speaker who would galvanize the Atherton 
 gag, and give it a post viorteni efficiency. Hence, 
 when Winthrop, a hopeless doughface, was nom- 
 inated for speaker, Giddings procured Palfrey to 
 write the candidate a letter, asking him if he would, 
 in the event of his election, so arrange the com- 
 mittees as to procure a respectful hearing for pe- 
 titions from the free States. To this no answer 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I/I 
 
 came, and Giddings, with several of his associates, 
 gave him no votes. For this, Giddings was as- 
 sailed by the Whig press in a most violent man- 
 ner. The Cleveland Herald was peculiarly bitter 
 and unreasoning in its denunciations, and Mr. 
 Giddings made an answer which justified his action 
 so clearly and unquestionably as to fairly force 
 Mr. Winthrop into print in his own defense. 
 Winthrop was elected, and when the House com- 
 mittees were named, they were such as to settle 
 any doubts which might have existed as to the 
 truth of Mr. Giddings' statements ; they were, from 
 first to last, brought into being with the evident 
 mission of serving the South, and denying right 
 and justice to the friend of the negro. So, again, 
 silence was insured in Congress, so far as petitions 
 and protests against slavery were concerned. 
 
 Not much was done in Congress during the 
 earlier weeks of the session. The House and 
 Senate thanked Taylor, by joint resolution, for his 
 services at Buena Vista, and tendered the same 
 compliment to Scott, for his gallantry at Vera 
 Cruz. Giddings alone, of all in the House, voted 
 against this testimonial to Taylor. Taylor men 
 had been astute and politic, and were satisfied. 
 
 On the 2 1 St of February the House convened 
 as usual. Some not very important business was 
 under consideration, when there was a sudden flut- 
 ter in one portion of the room, a prostrate man 
 
1/2 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 was tenderly raised and carried to the speaker's 
 room, the House adjourned, and soon the Senate. 
 John Quincy Adams had been stricken with paraly- 
 sis, and lay senseless, and all but dead. For two 
 days thp anxiety continued ; House and Senate 
 daily met, and immediately adjourned — then the 
 great man died, and all met to do him honor. 
 Even beside his cold body, party feeling was not 
 forgotten, for Giddings, the friend and disciple of 
 the dead chief, was ignored, — was not named to 
 share the burden of the bier. He followed him to 
 Quincy, among the throng, stricken with a grief 
 deep and sincere as any which paid the tribute of 
 tears beside the grave. 
 
 In April, 1848, between seventy and eighty 
 slaves attempted to make their escape from the 
 District of Columbia, on board the schooner Pearl. 
 The negroes, as well as the captain and mate of 
 the vessel, were captured, returned to Washington, 
 and imprisoned in the jail. On the foUow^ing morn- 
 ing, Mr. Giddings, as always fearless of danger, 
 visited the prisoners in the jail. An infuriated 
 mob at once collected, forced the outer gate of the 
 jail, and ascended to the one which opened into the 
 hall, where the Congressman was conversing with 
 Dayton, captain of the Pearl. There they halted, 
 and demanded that Giddings leave the jail at once, 
 on peril of his life. This he refused to do, con- 
 tinued and concluded his conversation, and, wheji 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 173 
 
 entirely prepared, passed through the door and 
 stood, quite undefended, in the face of the armed 
 and angry mob. For one moment they stood op- 
 posing his passage, then, as if unable to resist his 
 spleiidid dignity and bravery, parted to right and 
 left, and suffered him to pass, like the Apostle of 
 old, from the prison gates. Mr. Palfrey offered, in 
 the House, a resolution inquiring into the facts, 
 and a debate followed, which, for bitterness and 
 vileness of abuse, rivals any that disgraces the 
 journal of that body. Of all this, Mr. Giddings 
 was personally the target, and for two days he sat 
 in silence under it. On the third, he spoke — not 
 in his own defense, for he had nothing to defend — 
 but in bitter arraignment of his assailants, and in 
 bold defiance of their power to injure him or his 
 cause. Many of Mr. Giddings' utterances, upon 
 the floor of Congress, have been quoted in these 
 pages, but, as no words of the author can so well 
 contribute to a clear understanding of the man and 
 his motives, some portion of this speech may well 
 be given here. He said, in the course of his 
 speech: **Mr. Speaker, I will inform that gentle- 
 man, with all sincerity, that it is too late in the day 
 to attempt to seal the lips of Northern Representa- 
 tives, in regard to the slave trade, or on any other 
 subject which comes before this body. I give 
 notice to that gentleman, and to all others, that I 
 shall speak just what I think, on any, or every sub- 
 
174 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 ject which comes before us. It is my intention to 
 call things by their right names, to speak, so far 
 as I am able, in such direct, plain, and simple lan- 
 guage as to be understood. It is true that free- 
 dom of speech has been put down in this hall ; it 
 was for years trampled under foot by the slave 
 power. I sat here during several sessions of Con- 
 gress, in degrading silence, and often listened to 
 the supercilious tirades of the slavery members 
 against myself, and against the advocates of liberty, 
 while I was not permitted to reply. The slave 
 power then reigned triumphant in this body. Sir, 
 it is well known, that for asserting in this House 
 some of the plainest principles of constitutional 
 law, I was censured and driven from my seat here. 
 But, thank God, after years of toil and effort, we 
 have regained the freedom of debate. And now, 
 I say to the slaveholders present, we shall never 
 again surrender it. . . . . Why, does 
 
 the gentleman from Tennessee expect that I shall 
 ask him, or any other member, when I shall speak, 
 what I shall say, and how I shall say it? Do 
 Southern gentlemen suppose that they can bring 
 into this body the practices which they pursue on 
 their plantations ? Sir, they forget the theater in 
 which they are acting. They forget that they are 
 among freemen ; they surely think themselves 
 among slaves, accustomed to crouch and tremble 
 at their frowns. This hall is not the place for the 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1/5 
 
 display of supercilious dictation. 
 When this proposition, to restrain the freedom of 
 debate, is published in my district, the school boys 
 will laugh at it. But the gentleman thinks that 
 my language in this hall has excited a love of lib- 
 erty among the slaves. As to that, I have made 
 no inquiry. If it has imparted to them informa- 
 tion, or inspired in them a desire to regain the 
 rights which God has given them, I shall rejoice at 
 it. I would not desist from speaking truth in this 
 hall, if all the slaves in the universe were listening 
 to me. No, sir, if I had the power, I would, from 
 this forum, give to every slave south of Mason and 
 Dixon's line a perfect knowledge of his rights. I 
 would explain, to their understanding, the oppres- 
 sion that weighs down their intellects, and shuts 
 out truth from their comprehension. I would 
 explain to them the outrage which has robbed 
 them of their humanity, reduced them to the level 
 of chattels, and which subjects them to sale, like 
 brutes, in the market.^ Could my voice be heard 
 by them from this hall, I would teach them that 
 they came from the hand of the same Creator as 
 ourselves, and were endowed by him with the 
 same inalienable rights as those who now lord it 
 over them." 
 
 The time for the Presidential convention was 
 approaching, and Taylor was evidently to be the 
 nominee of the Whigs. From the time when the 
 
170 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 shadow of this event first fell across the political 
 course, Giddings had never wavered in his deter- 
 mination to refuse, in any event, to vote for or in 
 any manner support a man who, to his mind, rep- 
 resented the incarnation of the Mexican wrong, 
 and could not but be recognized as a devotee of 
 slavery and of the slave power. He was far from 
 being alone in his determination, though few held so 
 strongly against Taylor as did he. Greeley wrote 
 him a note in April, strongly urging the address 
 of a letter, signed by the anti-slavery men in Con- 
 gress, to every prospective Presidential candidate, 
 asking the views of each upon the issue raised by 
 the Wilmot proviso. Greeley was at that time, and 
 always, opposed in feeling to Taylor. 0;i the 7th 
 of June, 1848, Taylor was nominated by the 
 Whigs in convention at Philadelphia, without any 
 previous announcement of principles. These were, 
 in fact, but too well known. Cass was nominated 
 by the Democrats. He had opposed the Wilmot 
 proviso, and the choice between the two was a 
 hard one for the Free Soilers. Giddings was de- 
 termined upon an independent nomination. Many 
 were with him, but some, whose action was biased 
 by personal considerations, were less adventurous. 
 Greeley wrote, under date of June 20th, as follows: 
 ''I have yours of the 17th. I have now waited 
 twelve days for such demonstrations of free senti- 
 ment, as ought to have followed the Baltimore and 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. I // 
 
 Philadelphia nominations. The truth is there is 
 no deep devotion to principle among any large 
 portion of the American people. Each man has 
 a keen regard for his own rights, and for whatever 
 may palpably affect them, but for the rights of 
 * niggers ' who cares ? . . . The Free 
 
 Soil platform will hardly carry a State. It might 
 serve to elect Cass, but would only throw all the 
 anti-slavery element of both parties out of Con- 
 gress, and enable the extensionists to carry slav- 
 ery to the Pacific, without a struggle in Congress. 
 It is idle to stand, when Webster, and Calhoun, 
 and Ashmun, and Wilson, give in. To be sacri- 
 ficed for the sake of principle will do. To court 
 ruin for the benefit of Cass, I do not find so invit- 
 ing. Of course I do not ask to influence your 
 course ; I but indicate my own. All I have is 
 embarked in the Tribune, v/ith a great deal more, 
 belonging to others. I cannot wreck it all in a 
 course, of which the fullest contemplated success 
 would seem to be the triumph of Cass. My pres- 
 ent purpose is to say and do veiy little with regard 
 to the Presidency, but to act generally with the 
 Whig party." 
 
 Charles Sumner had no newspaper, and hence 
 took a different course. At the conclusion of a 
 letter written to urge Mr. Giddings to speak in 
 Boston, he says: ''I have just met Abbot Law- 
 rence. I said to him : ' I am glad you were not 
 
jyS JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 nominated for the Vice-Presidency. ' ' That is a 
 doubtful compHment, ' said a bystander ; ' I would 
 not have Mr. Lawrence's name,' said I, 'desecrated 
 by association with General Taylor.' He then 
 said, * Do you know where 5/ou are going? You 
 will have to support Martin Van Buren.' 'I am 
 ready,' was my reply. So I am. If the Utica* 
 Convention nominates him, will he not be our 
 man? He has suffered in the cause of anti- 
 Texas." 
 
 Unaffected by the discouragement of the doubt- 
 ers, Giddings, on the 30th of June — the war appro- 
 priation being under discussion — made a speech in 
 which he embodied a declaration of independence 
 on the part of the Free Soil party, and practically 
 gave notice that he and his friends would not sup- 
 port Taylor. The history of the campaign, the 
 nomination of Van Buren and Adams by the Free 
 Soilers, and the election of Taylor do not need 
 rehearsal. The Free Soilers did not secure an 
 electoral vote, and the effect of their campaign, 
 though important in its influence upon public sen- 
 timent and the future, had nothing to do with the 
 imm<ediate result. 
 
 The second session of the Thirtieth Congress 
 began in December of the year 1849. Mr. Gid- 
 dings took his seat with a heavy heart. Adams 
 
 *The Convention was held at Buffalo. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 79 
 
 was dead, and while many new supporters of the 
 great cause had arisen, he felt the loss of his old- 
 time friend and counsellor most keenly. Then, 
 too, he came in the shadow of a defeat, and in 
 deep anxiety for the fate of his country, since 
 the helm seemed to be indeed in the hands of 
 its enemies. The solitude of his life he knew 
 would be great, for absolute social ostracism 
 awaited him, now that he had cut the slender 
 thread which had bound him to the Whig party. 
 His own constituency, and the old-line Whigs of 
 northern Ohio, who had mostly supported Van 
 Buren, were still with him, and the little circle of 
 Free Soil Representatives and Senators afforded 
 him almost the only break in his lonely life. The 
 year was notable to him for the unsuccessful effort 
 made by his friends in Ohio to elect him to the 
 Senate from that State, an effort which failed for 
 the reason that, while all men admitted his hon- 
 esty, many feared to send to the Senate one who 
 avowedly held his principles above his party. 
 
 Mr. Riddle has well said that there is small rea- 
 son to regret this result, for Giddings was needed 
 in the House, and had a work to do there, which 
 must have been abandoned had he attained to the 
 greater dignity of the Senatorship. Neither he 
 nor the people could have afforded the exchange. 
 Then, too, to again borrow from Riddle, the place 
 was held for Wade, a man who had his mission to 
 
l80 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 perform, and might never have found the field, but 
 for the defeat of his neighbor and friend. In 
 Congress the Southern men were organized and 
 combative. They held conferences with closed 
 doors, and finally formulated and promulgated their 
 famous address to the people of the United States. 
 For the brief period from the beginning to the 
 close of 1849, it is possible for us to catch a few 
 glimpses of Mr. Giddings' personality, of which 
 his modesty and singleness of purpose, when in 
 the House, keep us so much in ignorance. The 
 second and last existing of what was probably a 
 complete series of private journals, covers these 
 months. It is interesting to notice the evident 
 change in manner of thought, the ripening and 
 development, since J 838-9, when the journal 
 previously quoted was kept, and at the same time 
 to see how, in the seclusion of his chamber and in 
 the frankness of this private record, he gives evi- 
 dence of having carried with him, during the ten 
 years of his public life, an unchanged devotion to 
 the cause which he had made his own. Never 
 was a man so engrossed without bringing something 
 to pass, and the world owes to his constant putting 
 aside of every less weighty thought and measure, 
 the effect which his labors produced. 
 
 The Whigs did not ostracize Mr. Giddings 
 without giving him a chance. He was promised 
 the Ohio Senatorship upon the one simple and 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. l8l 
 
 easy condition, of declaring his fealty to the party 
 which held the bauble up to him, but, though five 
 minutes' time, a few lines scrawled and signed, 
 would have given him the prize, he never thought 
 of taking it at such a cost. 
 
 In December, almost at the beginning of the 
 session, came before the House the old question of 
 slavery, and the old effort to induce Congress to 
 recognize slaves as property, in the form of a bill 
 to pay Antonia Pacheco the value of a slave lost 
 in the public service. Upon this measure Mr. Gid- 
 dings made one of the most powerful speeches of 
 his life, thus defeating it. Later, the vote by which 
 it was lost, was reconsidered, and the bill passed 
 the House, but was never brought up in the Senate. 
 Mr. Giddings' journal gives so clear a view of the 
 difficulties under which he labored, the conscien- 
 tiousness of his effort, and the methods which he 
 adopted in preparing for this debate, that it will 
 bear quotation, as furnishing a valuable contribu- 
 tion to our knowledge of the man. On the 3d of 
 January he made the following entry: 
 
 "The ordinary business of legislation was re- 
 sumed to-day. Several members called on me to 
 assure me that the bill for the relief of Pacheco 
 will pass, and that I am wTong in entertaining the 
 doctrine that there is no property in man. Among 
 those w^ho appeared thus determined to adhere to 
 
1 82 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 cherished errors, was Horace Greeley, of the New 
 York Tribune. 
 
 ''January 4th. My motion to reconsider the re- 
 port upon the engrossment of the bill to pay 
 Antonia Pacheco for a slave, came up to-day in 
 order, but I postponed it to give opportunity to 
 pass the bill to establish a board of private claims. 
 From different parts of the country the papers 
 teem with abuse of myself, and it is quite evident 
 that the doughfaces here are trying to prepare 
 theniselves and others to sustain the bill of Pa- 
 checo, against my opposition. The subject rests 
 with so much weight on my mind that I cannot 
 sleep at night, and it is visibly affecting my 
 health. I have prepared the argument with much 
 labor, and never entered upon a case with better 
 preparation. My friend, Horace Mann, of Massa- 
 chusetts, advises me to pass over the Constitu- 
 tional arguments, and make a strictly legal effort. 
 Mr. Palfrey advises me to go into a Constitutional 
 investigation. I feel that I am to speak to the 
 country, and I shall, therefore, address the reader 
 of my speech, rather than the hearer; posterity, 
 rather than the House of Representatives. 
 
 "January 6th. The first business in order this 
 day was my motion to reconsider the vote on the 
 Pacheco bill. I went to the House trembling with 
 fear of a failure. My health was poor. Mr. 
 Rockwell, of Connecticut, appealed to me to post- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 83 
 
 pone the matter. I could not do so without en- 
 dangering my health, and hence I proceeded with 
 my speech. I soon saw that I had the ear of the 
 House. Certain slaveholders and some dough- 
 faces attempted to keep up conversation and 
 laughter for awhile, but I soon saw the deep-seated 
 feeling that worked in their breasts. I had no 
 lack of words or of thoughts, and the appearance 
 of the House indicated that my argument told. 
 When I sat down I felt that I had never made a 
 more effective speech. . . . Some 
 
 friends came to me and said that I had surpassed 
 all expectation, and had undoubtedly killed the 
 bill. Some members who had not spoken to me 
 for weeks, came to my seat and congratulated me 
 on my effort. The slaveholders looked solemn 
 and perplexed. In order to save time and test 
 the full effect of my remarks, I withdrew my mo- 
 tion to reconsider, and took the vote on the pass- 
 age of the bill. The scene that followed I will not 
 attempt to describe, but leave it to the newspapers; 
 but when I saw the speaker constrained to give a 
 vote on the bill — the House being divided eighty- 
 nine to ninety — I rejoiced greatly, and really now 
 think those among the happiest moments of my 
 life. . . . At evening I met our Free Soil 
 friends at Dr. Palfrey's. They all congratulated 
 me upon the manner in which I had acquitted my- 
 
1 84 JOSHUA R, GIDDINGS. 
 
 self, and were united in the opinion that it had 
 been a great day for freedom." 
 
 Men are apt to be honest with themselves. If 
 there be any egotism about a person it is very likely 
 to come out in his journal, but the child-like 
 modesty and simplicity of the statement which 
 Mr. Giddings makes of what was, in truth, a great 
 achievement, are characteristic of him, and are never 
 once belied in all the pages of journals and corre- 
 spondence. He was accused of being overbear- 
 ing; overbearing he was, but only with the stern 
 boldness which his cause gave him. It was not 
 he^ but the truth speaking in him, which made him 
 capable of the persistent and almost dogged re- 
 sistance which carried his work to its final fruition. 
 Of this modesty no better example can be found 
 than the entry made in his journal, while his pros- 
 pects for election to the Ohio Senatorship were 
 being canvassed. On the 24th of January he 
 writes : 
 
 " By the mail of this evening I received several 
 letters from Columbus which speak cheerfully of 
 my prospects for the Senate. One from Dr. 
 Townsend gives me some little hope of election, 
 for which, however, I do not feel anxious, as I 
 think I can do more good in the House, where I 
 have established an influence, than I can in the 
 Senate, where I should meet with intellects of a 
 higher order ; men of nerve, experience, and of far 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. 185 
 
 greater intelligence. But the moral effect of my 
 election would be great, and on that account I feel 
 a desire to succeed to that office. " 
 
 On February 23d, the news reached Washington 
 that Chase was elected to the Senate, and Mr. Gid- 
 dings dismissed what cannot but have been an at- 
 tractive possibility, in these few words : "In the 
 Intelligencer of this morning I found the news of 
 Mr. Chase's election to the Senate. I was so far 
 from being mortified at this result, that I may truly 
 say it gave me pleasure. I felt that it would prob- 
 ably promote the cause more than my own eleva- 
 tion to that office. Mr. Palfrey seemed to feel 
 some degree of mortification, and expressed regrets 
 at my failure. This gave me more pain than I felt 
 at the defeat of my election." 
 
 As ''misfortunes never come singly," the even- 
 ing of the day on which Mr. Giddings received 
 news of his defeat at Columbus, the ex-com- 
 mander and President-elect, General Taylor, 
 reached Washington. Mr. Giddings dismisses 
 this event in* much the same tone ascribed by 
 Shakespeare to Marullus, when rebuking' the 
 populace for their ovation to Caesar. These were 
 his words: "General Taylor was to arrive at 
 half-past seven o'clock p. m., but did not reach the 
 city until half-past eight. A large number of peo- 
 ple gathered at the depot, as he approached — several 
 cannons were fired, rockets were sent up, and the 
 
1 86 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 multitude raised a shout. I was taking a walk and 
 had reached the west front of the Capitol when 
 the cars arrived. I listened to the senseless 
 clamor, then walked to my lodgings with a lower 
 estimate of mankind than I had previously enter- 
 tained. " 
 
 That Mr. Giddings was almost completely cut 
 off from the society of the Capital, has already 
 been stated. The journal for the winter of 1848— 
 49 abounds in references to the fact, and the phil- 
 osophical acceptance of it is at once amusing 
 and to a degree pathetic. There was surely a 
 great struggle in the mind of a proud and sensi- 
 tive man, before he brought himself to write these 
 words: ''This evening the speaker had a party, 
 and I suppose all the members of both parties were 
 invited except myself I occupied the evening in 
 writing out a speech which I hope will tell against 
 him and his party." 
 
 The Southern manifesto, to which reference has 
 already been made, was adopted, and excited the 
 deep interest, while it did not involve the personal 
 record of Mr. Giddings. He tells how he sat in 
 his room, watching the lights in the Capitol, and 
 expecting a message regarding the result, until 
 sleep overcame him and he retired to rest, leaving 
 the conference still in session. "The mountain 
 labored and gave birth to a ridiculous mouse,'* 
 for, when these night sessions were over, and the 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 8/ 
 
 result was promulgated to the world, it was but a 
 restatement of old fallacies; a reaffirmation of 
 threadbare lies. 
 
 One more thing remained for the slave-holding 
 and slave-favoring majority of the House to at- 
 tempt, and that was the admission of California 
 and New Mexico as slave States. Mr. Giddings 
 was not now, as of old, standing almost alone in 
 the cause of liberty ; about him was a little band of 
 the best and most brilliant men in Congress. 
 Palfrey, the learned, polished, and devoted mem- 
 ber for Massachusetts ; Root, of Ohio, one of the 
 subtlest and most able debaters in the House ; 
 Tuck, of New Hampshire; Wilmot, of Pennsyl- 
 vania; these, and others like them, stood at his 
 side. Perhaps Charles Francis Adams deserves 
 the credit of being far-sighted enough to discern 
 what were the plans of the South, for in Mr. Gid- 
 dings' diary, under date of February 9, 1849, 
 appears a statement that a letter had been received 
 by Mr. Palfrey from Mr. Adams, warning the anti- 
 slavery men that an effort would probably be 
 made, at the close of the session, to secure a terri- 
 torial extension in the interest of slavery. From 
 that time until the adjournment, the forces of the 
 anti-slavery party slept on their arms, and when, 
 on the second of March, but one day before the 
 adjournment, the California admission was pressed 
 as a clause of the civil and diplomatic bill, it found 
 
1 88 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 the anti-slavery men, headed by Mr. Giddings, 
 opposed to it, with determination enough, and 
 votes enough, to block the wheels of legislation 
 rather than allow it to pass. The journal says, 
 under date of March 2d: 
 
 ''At the assembling of the House this morning 
 I was told that the President elect had been elec- 
 tioneering with the members to sustain the amend- 
 ment to the Civil and Diplomatic bill, which, in 
 effect, extends slavery into California. Soon after 
 the House was called to order, the committee on 
 Ways and Means reported an amendment to the 
 Senate's amendment . This I much regretted, as 
 it admitted the correctness of placing this import- 
 ant measure in an appropriation bill. When the 
 vote was taken in committee of the whole, on a 
 question of order, I obtained a decision which 
 strikes out the Senate's amendments entirely, and 
 this brought down upon me the censure of the 
 whole Whig party, who raised the cry that I had 
 defeated the whole object of the committee on 
 Ways and Means. But the vote of the House 
 showed my correctness. We rejected the amend- 
 ment by one hundred and fourteen to one hun- 
 dred." 
 
 It should be understood that there was a dead- 
 lock between Senate and House on the subject of 
 California, a clear majority of the Senate favoring 
 the slave-holders' side of the question, and the 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 1 89 
 
 House Opposing it. It should also be understood 
 that the fate of the Territory of New Mexico, 
 about to be erected, hung also in the balance. Let 
 Mr. Giddings' journal of the 2d of March tell the 
 remainder of the story : ' ' When we met this 
 evening, we learned that the committee of confer- 
 ence had failed to asrree. The doubt which hune 
 
 over the subject became painful. Men became 
 excited and forgot other business. The House 
 proceeded in the ordinary course of business. The 
 committee of conference reported their disagree- 
 ment at about 3 o'clock p. m. At this point great 
 excitement was manifested in all parts of the 
 House. The galleries were filled to suffocation, 
 every part of the House was crowded, and a con- 
 test ensued for the purpose of obtaining parlia- 
 mentary advantage. The House receded from its 
 former amendment, and then proceeded to amend 
 the Senate's amendment, by providing for the con- 
 tinuance in force of the Mexican laws. At this 
 point the excitement became intense. Several 
 gentlemen had abandoned their former position 
 and voted with the South. Southern men were 
 boisterous ; many Northern men were so excited 
 that they appeared to know little what was going 
 
 on. My friend, Mr. , of Illinois, came over 
 
 to the Whig side of the House, where I was sit- 
 ting, and told me that, if violence occurred on 
 their side of the House, I must not forget them 
 
190 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 nor leave my friends there to suffer. He left me 
 and returned to his seat. I soon after crossed over 
 and found him sitting silent. I inquired if they 
 were as good-natured as the Whigs on our side of 
 the House were. He said not; that threats were 
 made to take their hearts out. I made a light re- 
 ply. Mr. Meade, of Virginia, was standing by, 
 and remarked to another gentleman, that there 
 was no way to manage them, but to put them in 
 personal fear. I remarked : * That is not a very 
 good way.' He looked pale, his lips quivered, 
 and, shaking his fist in my face, he began to 
 threaten me, at the same time seizing me by the 
 collar with his left hand. Looking him coolly in 
 the face, I told him not to be excited, when other 
 gentlemen interfered and took him from me." 
 
 Then follows a statement of the amendments of 
 the bill. 
 
 Mr. Giddings continues: ''I then visited the 
 Senate chamber. Several members of that body 
 were greatly intoxicated — too much so to appear 
 in public. A long discussion on the amendment 
 took place, which occupied until 5 o'clock on 
 Tuesday, March 4th, when they receded from 
 their amendment, and the bill was sent to the 
 President for his signature. So ended the Thir- 
 tieth Congress, amid drunkenness and disgraceful 
 confusion." 
 
 The opening of the Thirty-first Congress was 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDIXGS. I9I 
 
 sufficiently uneventful. The election of Speaker 
 occupied the time of the House until the 22d of 
 December. Mr. Howell Cobb was the candidate 
 of the Democrats, Mr. Winthrop of the Whigs. 
 Neither would give a pledge to make up the com- 
 mittees fairly, and hence the eight Free Soil votes, 
 which would have elected either, were withheld 
 and usually gwQ:r\,pcrfonna, to Mr. Wilmot. At 
 last, in pursuance of a Democratic resolution that 
 the candidate having a plurality vote should be 
 declared elected, Mr. Cobb became Speaker, hav- 
 ing one hundred and two votes to Winthrop's 
 ninety-nine. Though this result was accomplished 
 through the medium of a resolution offered by a 
 Democrat, the disappointed journals of the Whig 
 party did not scruple to charge the Free Soilers 
 with the responsibility for the result, and Mr. Gid- 
 dings, as their leader, came in for a large share 
 of personal abuse. Mr. Giddings answered in the 
 House. Slavery was the topic of the session. 
 The Free Soil members unremittingly pressed the 
 subject, hanging their recurring motions and reso- 
 lutions upon the admission of California, and the 
 erection of New Mexico, with a prohibition of 
 slavery, and upon the question of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia. The immediate effect was 
 to keep the Whigs and Democrats in a state of 
 constant irritation and fear. However determined 
 the friends of slavery might be to support their 
 
192 TOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 peculiar institution to the last, they were very 
 averse to the constant discussion of the subject 
 which was thus forced upon them, compelling 
 them, day after day, to commit and recommit them- 
 selves in the matter, and, as they could not but 
 see, awakening the North and strengthening the 
 anti-slavery party by the force of agitation. 
 
 The secondary effect was to drive the Southern 
 members into a position of aggression. Day after 
 day the Senate talked of nothing but the Clay and 
 the Bell compromise resolutions. The debattson 
 these subjects crowded all legitimate legislation, 
 from that body. Webster threw himself, body 
 and soul, into the fight for the extensionist cause, 
 and closed, when the session was very old, by 
 advocating and assisting to a passage, the infamous 
 fugitive slave law,* which disgraced that session. 
 Texas was bribed with ten million dollars, to con- 
 sent to surrender territory that was never her own, 
 and these two great wrongs finally had, to offset 
 them, only the defeat of slavery in California and 
 New Mexico, and the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia. Giddings never worked 
 
 *These are Giddings' words regarding this bill: "The fugitive slave 
 law is unconstitutional, is an outrage upon the rights of freemen, 
 which, if enforced, will lead to civil war. It cannot be executed; it 
 shall be repealed. Sooner than have the North submit to such degra- 
 dation as to pass under the yoke of slavery, and pay tribute to slave- 
 drivers for their runaways. I would see every slaveholder in the Nation 
 hanged." 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. I93 
 
 harder than at that session. He was constantly in 
 debate, and no less than four of the set speeches 
 which he selected for publication in the volume 
 issued by him in 1853, were delivered during that 
 session. The first was the defense of the Free 
 Soilers against the charge of having thrown the 
 Speakership into the hands of the Democrats ; the 
 second was on the California matter, the third in re- 
 lation to New Mexico, and the last that reviewing 
 the President's message. In the first-named 
 speech he quite vindicated himself and his party, 
 and incidently obtained a last opportunity to pay 
 his devoirs to Mr. Winthrop. A copy of this 
 speech he sent to Charles Sumner, and received 
 the following reply: *T ought sooner to have 
 thanked you for the satisfaction I have derived 
 from your speech. Like everything from you it 
 is solid in matter, and in style also. It is a con- 
 tribution of real value to our cause. Your vote 
 against Winthrop is completely vindicated. I 
 cannot disguise the deep regard and reverence with 
 which your unselfish devotion to high principles 
 has filled me. John Q. Adams said to me that 
 you were the most valuable member of Congress. 
 He said the truth." 
 
 Thus the first session of the Thirty-first Con- 
 gress came to an end, with the burthen of legisla- 
 tion decidedly favorable to slavery, and a feeling 
 
194 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 of confidence on the part of the South, propor- 
 tioned to the depression of the North. 
 
 From this point to the close of his career, it is 
 far more difficult to trace the minute particulars of 
 the life of Mr. Giddings than heretofore. Mr. 
 Riddle, in his excellent sketch so often quoted, 
 has acknowledged the same difficulty which meets 
 the author here. The available private records 
 are exhausted, no journals and but few of the let- 
 ters of the Ohio veteran can be found. Letters of 
 others addressed to him exist in great numbers, 
 and offer a rich and tempting field to the historian, 
 but one which must be left mostly untouched by 
 the author of a work of this scope. Then, too, 
 though Giddings was greater in every sense than 
 in the earlier years of his services in the House, 
 his was no longer a solitary greatness. 
 
 Webster had committed poHtical suicide by his 
 stand on the fugitive slave law and kindred sub- 
 jects, and, beginning with the Thirty-second Con- 
 gress, Charles Sumner took the seat which the or- 
 ator of Massachusetts had so long held, and with 
 him were Chase, of Ohio, Seward, of New York, 
 and, shortly after. Wade, of Ohio. In the House, 
 Palfrey, Tuck, and Root already, and, year by year, 
 others as devoted and conscientious, were added to 
 the Free Soil ranks, so that Giddings was no longer 
 compelled to fight all the battles of freedom, or to 
 fight any of them single handed, as in the days 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I95 
 
 following his investment more than a dozen years 
 before. To follow closely his part in affairs for 
 the seven years which intervened from the meet- 
 ing of the Thirty-second Congress, until the end, 
 would be intrinsically difficult, foreign to the ob- 
 ject of this unpretentious little work, and of doubt- 
 ful profit. The master in science will take one 
 fossil bone of an extinct and unknown animal, 
 and, so beautiful and consistent is the work 
 of nature, that from this dumb and expression- 
 less bit of matter, he will construct by synthe- 
 sis a counterfeit presentment of the animal of 
 which it was a part. So with Giddings. No one 
 who has followed these pages thus far could hesi- 
 tate in assigning to him his proper place in rela- 
 tion to every question which arose during the re- 
 maining years of his service. The few concluding 
 pages of this book will hence be devoted to de- 
 scribing the episodes of those last years, rather than 
 to attempting farther to follow the thread of his 
 life. 
 
196 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The legislature of Ohio determined to defeat the 
 re-election of Giddings, and why it is hard to say. 
 Perhaps he was not enough of a party man ; per- 
 haps he thought too little of appropriations — at all 
 events, during the session of i85i-i852a ''gerry- 
 mander" of the State was so made as to throw 
 Giddings into the Twentieth District of Ohio, 
 consisting of the counties of Ashtabula, Trumbull, 
 and Mahoning, in which his enemies were confident 
 he could not secure an election. Cuyahoga, 
 Geauga, and Lake counties, held the old number, 
 and were known as the Sixteenth District. When 
 time brought the fall election of 1852, Giddings 
 was the candidate of the Free Soil party, and 
 found two men in the field against him. Of these 
 one, Woods, received 4,428 votes ; the other, 
 Newton, 4,169; while the old champion surprised 
 his friends, and confounded his enemies, by secur. 
 ing a vote of 5,752, and an election, in a hostile 
 territory. A great dinner was given at Painesville 
 
JOSHUA K. GIDDINGS. 1 9/ 
 
 in his honor. The wisest and best men in the 
 United States were bidden to the feast ; many came, 
 and many more sent, by telegraph or mail, kind and 
 appreciative messages, which must have cut the 
 narrow-minded enemies of the brave old man to 
 the quick. And so again he returned in triumph 
 to Washington, this time triumphant over the 
 enemies who were of his own household, and with 
 him went Edward Wade, of Cleveland, a brother 
 of Ben Wade, and a man in thought and method, 
 after Giddings' own heart, whom the scheme which 
 was intended to unseat him, had made Representa- 
 tive from the new Sixteenth District. 
 
 At the same election, with Pierce, Scott, and 
 Hale in the Presidential field, the Whig party died 
 the death ; the polished, useless administration of 
 Pierce followed, and the Free Soil party made 
 grand progress, by the very agency of defeat, 
 towards its final triumph, under the Republican 
 name. 
 
 The Thirty-second Congress, came with slavery 
 exulting over the so-called compromise measures, 
 and the fugitive slave law, — never so arrogant and 
 overbearing. There seemed to be a union of Whigs 
 and Democrats, upon the specious compromise 
 platform, and both parties united in saying that 
 abolitionism was dead, and slavery at last certain 
 of definite and absolute recognition. Giddings 
 and the Free Soilers saw further, and thought, as 
 
198 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 they did not hesitate to say, that there could never 
 be lasting peace between parties which had been 
 for years so bitterly and radically opposed to each 
 other. And so it proved. Almost in the same 
 breath which boasted that slave agitation had been 
 compromised out of existence, began the bicker- 
 ing between the parties concerning the credit for 
 that result, neither wishing the other to gain polit- 
 ical capital. Then Giddings, a member of the 
 Committee on Territories, introduced a bill for the 
 admission of Kansas. To this he attached no 
 condition regarding slavery, for he held the inhi- 
 bition of the Missouri compromise to be all suf- 
 ficient. The bill passed the House, was held in 
 the Senate, and when, during the early days of 
 the next Congress, the subject again came up, the 
 South, with its Northern contingent, consummated 
 the greatest political outrage in the history of the 
 United States, by the repeal of the Missouri com- 
 promise, the solemnly adopted compact against 
 the Northern progress of slavery, which should 
 have been as inviolable as the Constitution. The 
 brood of wrongs and crimes which grew from this act, 
 cannot, and need not, here be specified. Through 
 all the days of the discussion, in and out of Con- 
 gress, while the outrages of the bastard legisla- 
 ture and false Constitution of Lecompton were 
 leading to the murder of free American citizens, 
 by the long-haired ruffians of Missouri, and, worse. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. I99 
 
 by the soldiery of the United States, Giddings 
 was instant, in argument, protest, and invective. 
 The volume of his published speeches gives some 
 glimpse of this work ; the journal of the House 
 gives more. One incident of the excitement is 
 worthy of notice, as showing how naturally the 
 friends of freedom turned to the old champion in 
 those hours of trial, and, also, as related to sub- 
 sequent events — that is the fact that there was a 
 correspondence between Mr. Giddings and John 
 Brown. The tone of the two letters appended is 
 sufficient to show that, at that time certainly, no 
 intimate relations existed between Brown and 
 Giddings. The first is as follows : 
 
 City of Weston, Missouri, January 27, 1856. 
 
 Hon. J. R. Giddings, 
 
 Washington City. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I presume an apology is unnecessary, in ad-, 
 dressing a letter to one so warmly interested as 
 yourself on the great question of the day, viz : the 
 freeing of this great country from the curse of 
 slavery. Sir, six months ago I left my native 
 State, York, for a home in Kansas. I settled, on 
 my arrival in the territory, about four miles from 
 Lawrence, and built me a good house, where I re- 
 sided until the border ruffians invaded the terri- 
 tory. They, knowing my adherence to the cause 
 of freedom, and my being a Northern man, took 
 
200 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 me a prisoner and kept me as such for four days, 
 treating me worse than one of their slaves. After 
 my release they told me I must leave the country. 
 I did not do it, but went to Eaton, and remained 
 there quietly until last Friday week, the day of 
 election. They then sent their minions out to 
 disturb our election, which they did. They killed 
 two men for us. How long are we to be treated 
 like dogs? General Pomeroy promised us men 
 and means to carry on the war. Sir, are we to 
 have them, or are we to be driven from the terri- 
 tory, after all the sacrifices of time and money we 
 have made? Will you, sir, inform me if we are to 
 have the means to drive the last B. R. from the 
 country ? I, for one, am ready to stay if we are. 
 If we do not have them soon we will be driven 
 from the land. Answer requested immediately. 
 I must close for fear of interruption. 
 
 Respectfully yrs., 
 
 John Brown. 
 
 The second, still more urgent, reads thus: 
 
 OsAWATOMiE, Kansas Territory, 20th 
 February, 1856. 
 Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I write to say that a number of the United 
 States soldiers are quartered in this vicinity, for the 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 20I 
 
 ostensible purpose of removing intruders from 
 certain Indian lands. It is, however, believed 
 that the administration has no thought of remov- 
 ing the Missourians from the Indian lands, but 
 that the real object is to have the men in readiness 
 to act in enforcement of the hellish enactments of 
 the (so-called) Kansas Legislature ; absolutely 
 abominated by a great majority of the inhabitants 
 of the territory and spurned by them up to this 
 time. I confidently believe that the next move- 
 ment on the part of the administration and its pro- 
 slavery masters will be either to drive the people 
 here to submit to those infernal enactments or to 
 assume what will be termed treasonable grounds, 
 by shooting down the poor soldiers of the country, 
 with whom they have no quarrel whatever. I ask 
 in the name of Almighty God; I ask in the name 
 of our venerated forefathers ; I ask in the name of 
 all that good or true men ever held dear, will Con- 
 gress suffer us to be driven to such "dire extrem- 
 ities " ? Will anything be done? Please send me 
 a few lines at this place. Long acquaintance with 
 your public life and a slight personal acquaintance 
 incline and embolden me to make this appeal to 
 yourself. Everything is still on the surface just 
 now. Circumstances are, however, of a most sus- 
 picious character. 
 
 Very Respectfully Yours, 
 
 John Brown. 
 
202 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 Anticipating events, it may here be said that, 
 when John Brown lay wounded and a prisoner, 
 after his capture at Harper's Ferry, Mason, of Vir- 
 ginia, and Vallandingham, with the true chivalry 
 and honor of their home and party, went to the 
 prisoner, conversed with him, and then gave forth 
 a pretended confession of the brave old martyr, 
 implicating Giddings in his plan against Virginia. 
 The latter cut off a denial of this lie by Brown, 
 but Giddings stamped it as false, in terms as with- 
 ering and bitter as any ever applied, even to Val- 
 landingham. Riddle tells us that a reward was 
 offered in Richmond for Giddings, or for his head; 
 well would it have been for the South had they 
 had a few such heads. 
 
 To return: in December, 1855, the Thirty-fourth 
 Congress convened. During all the long fight 
 made by Mr. Giddings and his friends, from the 
 adoption of the Atherton gag, in 1838, no sub- 
 stantial success had ever been made in securing 
 freedom of petition on the subject of slavery, and 
 justice in consideratian of petitions and memorials 
 so received. To be sure, the gag rule had been 
 stricken from the manual, but, failing to keep 
 silence by legislation, the same result had been 
 secured by organization. When the Thirty-fourth 
 Congress opened, Mr. Giddings took up the old 
 battle, which he had waged at the organization of 
 every Congress since his first opposition of Win- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, 203 
 
 throp. A coalition was effected of the Know- 
 Nothings, numbering forty votes, and the Free 
 Soilers, far more numerous. Resolutions were 
 adopted by these allies, declaring that they would 
 give their votes for speaker to no man who would 
 not pledge himself, in advance, to so make up the 
 committees as to insure fair and just treatment to 
 all. No such pledge could be obtained from the 
 candidates of the old parties, hence, Nathaniel P. 
 Banks, a fearless and outspoken enemy of slavery 
 — a man who then used his tongue as he later used 
 his sword, was nominated. The battle was fierce 
 and long; December and January passed, and Feb- 
 ruary came, finding the House still unorganized. 
 Finally, on the 4th day of February, 1856, and on 
 the one hundred and thirty-third ballot. Banks was 
 declared elected, the anti-slavery cause had won a 
 fair fight, and was ever afterwards a power. Well 
 might Giddings then have said : ' ' Now let thy 
 servant go in peace," for the beginning of the end 
 had come. Riddle's description of what follows is 
 too graphic to be passed by. He says: "Then 
 the grand figure of the hero of so many fights, 
 and now the victor, with his full locks of silvery 
 white hair, came forward, as the father of the 
 House, to crown with the oath of office the young 
 speaker. The galleries recognized him, and spon- 
 taneous cheers greeted him. Standing just within 
 the inner row of desks in the old hall, with up- 
 
204 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 raised hand and swelling voice, having the thrill 
 of emotion in it, he administered the oath in the 
 form of the Puritans." And so was consummated 
 the first great organic triumph of freedom in Con- 
 gress. 
 
 Giddings was one of the leading spirits of the 
 Philadelphia convention of 1856. He drew a 
 portion of the platform, and divided with Preston 
 King the christening of the infant Republican 
 party, begotten in the days of his darkest dis- 
 couragement, and born in the travail of the Le- 
 compton time. Fremont was not, Buchanan was, 
 elected, and the Thirty-fifth Congress opened. 
 It was to be the last of Giddings' legislative 
 career, and while he left his mark upon its record, 
 his course needs not be followed here. Early in 
 1857, he fell one day, in his place, stricken with 
 heart disease. He did not die, as all thought he 
 would, at once, but rallied, and, in a measure, re- 
 covered. He served the session out; his friends 
 in Ohio thought nothing human more certain than 
 his renomination ; he neither cared for it, nor 
 made an effort to secure it. He was old in years, 
 weary with service, and shattered in health. No 
 one represented him at the convention, and a 
 quietly but perfectly organized opposition de- 
 feated his nomination by one vote. Perhaps it 
 was as well. 
 
 He seems to have left Congress when his work 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 20$ 
 
 was fully done, as he entered it, to fill a place that 
 was providentially awaiting him. 
 Has not some one wisely said 
 
 " Happy is he who is not born too soon, 
 And whom the Gods vouchsafe a timely death " ? 
 
 Perhaps the change of tone, the change of issues, 
 which came with secession and war, might have 
 left the noble old leader an incumbrance upon the 
 field ; surely they could not have failed to bring him 
 much sorrow and heaviness of heart. 
 
 From the many expressions of respect, affec- 
 tion, and regret that were received by Mr. G id- 
 dings, upon his retirement, the author cannot re- 
 frain from quoting two. They speak for them- 
 selves : 
 
 William H. Seward writes from Auburn, New 
 York, under date of October i, 1858: 
 
 " I shall have some curiosity to see the bold 
 man that is to come into your place at Washing- 
 ton. He will come there under prodigious respon- 
 sibilities. I sincerely hoped that your time of ser- 
 vice, protracted as it has been, might not end before 
 my own. But you have nothing to regret. You 
 have overcome sentiments the most prejudiced and 
 violent, and have established for yourself a name 
 that the friends of humanity will never suffer to 
 perish." 
 
 The following letter deserves quotation entire. 
 It was sent, not after Giddings' final retirement 
 
206 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 from Congress, but after the attack which pros- 
 trated him in the House. It furnishes a good 
 index of the feelings of his closest friends towards 
 
 him : 
 
 Washington, January 25, 1857. 
 
 My Dear Friend : 
 
 I cannot permit you to leave this place for 
 your home under the existing circumstances, with- 
 out expressing to you, in this emphatic manner, 
 the very great satisfaction I have enjoyed, in your 
 acquaintance and friendship for so many years, and 
 the admiration and respect I entertain for the 
 patience, courage, fidelity, and ability, with which 
 you have, through your Congressional life, main- 
 tained a just but an unpopular cause. There are 
 very painful considerations connected with the 
 necessity, which at this time compels a suspension 
 if not a final termination of your very valuable 
 labors in the House, but they are not all so. 
 There is a pleasant and cheerful aspect which it 
 presents; you or myself do not believe that acci- 
 dents, strictly speaking, ever occur, but that the 
 minutest incidents in the physical world are parts 
 of that chain of events, by which the natural and 
 the spiritual worlds are connected, and that what 
 men blindly call accidents, are the results of laws 
 fixed and unerring as those by which the universe 
 moves in its course through the illimitable regions 
 of space. In the light of such a faith, the highest 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 20/ 
 
 wisdom is to learn the teachings of every event. 
 And what, my dear sir, is the palpable instruc- 
 tion of the severe teaching which you have just 
 had? Is it not manifestly this, that God has just 
 now no more work for you to do in the particular 
 field in which you have so long labored, but that 
 you are to be transferred to another and less excit- 
 ing, but not less profitable sphere of action ? And 
 if there has ever lived, since Paul, a man who, 
 without arrogance, might appropriate to himself 
 the words of the apostle, when he declares, * * I 
 have fought a good fight; I have kept the faith," 
 I believe you are the one, I hope and trust that 
 many years and years of physical and mental vigor 
 may be added to your life, but, whether your 
 future years be few or many, whether they be 
 years of feebleness or strength, I have no doubt 
 that you will ever enjoy the affection of many 
 friends, the respect of your opponents, and the 
 prayers and blessings of the unfortunate and 
 oppressed, in whose behalf you have done so 
 much. But, whatever the future may have 
 in store for you, your success in life is no longer a 
 problem. You have succeeded, for 
 
 " They never fail who die 
 " In a good cause; the block may lick their gore; 
 Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs 
 Be strung to city gates and castle walls- - 
 But still their spirit walks abroad, though years 
 Elapse, and others share as dark a doom ; 
 
208 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts 
 Which overpower all others, and conduct 
 The world at last to freedom." 
 
 Very sincerely, your friend, 
 
 John P. Hale. 
 
 Hon. J. R. Giddings. 
 
 Only once more does he come prominently be- 
 fore the American people. Then, a delegate to 
 the Chicago convention of i860, the second of 
 the Republican party, he sought in vain for a place 
 upon the committee on resolutions. This was 
 denied him, for even then the party doubted the 
 advisability of making slavery an issue in the cam- 
 paign. The resolutions, as reported, had not a 
 word to say against slavery. He moved such a 
 declaration as an amendment ; his motion was lost, 
 he withdrew from the convention ; George Wil- 
 liam Curtis re-presented the amendment, and, by 
 his magnificent eloquence, secured its adoption. 
 Then Giddings returned to his seat. 
 
 In 1861 Lincoln offered him the consul general- 
 ship of Canada, which he accepted. At Montreal, 
 performing diligently and well his consular duties, 
 working upon his ' ' History of the Rebellion ; Its 
 Authors and Causes," which was never published, 
 he spent the remainder of his days, passing at 
 last, into the ** undiscovered country," on the 
 27th day of May, 1864. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 2O9 
 
 The history of Joshua R. Giddings, as a pubhc 
 man, was practically ended when he retired from 
 the House of Representatives. The old proverb 
 that '* Every bullet has its billet," may well be 
 applied to men. All men have missions; some 
 fail by reason of inherent weakness, of careless- 
 ness, or the overwhelming- force of circumstances, 
 to assume their burthens, or to carry them to 
 the end of the road ; but he who meets life's work 
 bravely and performs it to the last, may find it 
 done before life's allotted years are quite passed. 
 So it was with Giddings. In the old farm days in 
 Jefferson ; as a student, in the face of all difficul- 
 ties; as a teacher of the primitive frontier school; 
 as a lawyer upon the circuit ; as a Representative 
 in the Legislature of his State ; as a Congressman 
 for twenty-one years, his life was a unit. He had 
 a certain work to accomplish, and it was vouch- 
 safed that he should carry it to such point that, as 
 he had, with profit to the cause of humanity, re- 
 lieved the guard of John Quincy Adams, so, in 
 turn, younger men than he might well assume the 
 burthen of his beloved cause. The appointment 
 in Canada, the term of service there, the sudden 
 fall, — but a fulfillment of the dread prophecy of 
 185/, — the story of all this has been told almost in 
 as many sentences. Little then remains to say. 
 Much of the history of the long and busy life 
 has been omitted for the reason that this work is a 
 
210 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 sketch and not a biography. Giddings for years 
 was in fact the editor of the Ashtabula Sentinel, 
 defining its policy, making it his mouth-piece for 
 the utterance of many a truth, that the power of 
 wrong would not permit to be told in Con- 
 gress ; giving it an influence in the cause of liberty 
 beyond that of any similar paper in the land. His 
 work found its way into the columns of many 
 other journals, both of his own and opposite In- 
 clining. Upon the stump and the rostrum he 
 spoke often, not only in his own district, but 
 throughout the North and East, — spoke, too, 
 always fearlessly and well, earned reputation, and 
 exerted influence in the most intellectual circles of 
 the United States, and everywhere, in season and 
 out of season, struck stalwart blows hi the cause 
 which he had made so peculiarly his own. All 
 these Incidents of his laborious life must be dis- 
 missed with a word. 
 
 Then, too, with all that has been told, this un- 
 pretentious sketch has given few glimpses of Gid- 
 dings as a man — socially and in domestic life — 
 so far has his work overshadowed his personality. 
 He was a man of rare kindness, broad sympathy, 
 benevolence and simple modesty. Every line of 
 his private journals and correspondence proves his 
 deep feeling, his love for home, his devotion to 
 friends and family. 
 
 It is not difficult for one who has seen all these. 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 211 
 
 to persuade himself that, had he not found work to 
 do in Washington — had the issues of the day been of 
 less vital importance, he would have chosen the 
 quiet of home life, and the gain which waited on his 
 professional skill, in preference to the empty honor 
 of membership in a routine Congress. His letters 
 to his wife, so mixed with private matters, and so 
 open in their confidence, as to forbid quotation, 
 tell again and again of loneliness, heart sickness, 
 and the home-longing, which follows a good man 
 from the threshold of his door until his steps again 
 cross the magic line. There are, too, letters to 
 his young daughters and granddaughters — children 
 too young to "read writing," — laboriously printed 
 in Roman text. He remembered, as did Sydney 
 Smith, when abroad, not only the members of his 
 family, and their individual interests, but the very 
 animals upon the place, and the smallest incidents 
 of the quiet life at Jefferson. 
 
 Then, too, while eager to carry home the news 
 of a success, to share it with those whom he loved, 
 he v/as as anxious to shield them from fear or 
 mortification. When he had left the House, on 
 the 6th of February, 1845, after Black, of Georgia, 
 and Dawson, of Louisiana, had menaced him with 
 death, he at once wrote his son a full account of 
 the affair, deprecating the idea that it was serious, 
 and concluded with these words: "Now, I sup- 
 pose there will be all sorts of stories, as usual, and 
 
212 JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 
 
 perhaps your mother may be alarmed, but you 
 can assure her that I view the matter coolly, and 
 that there is, in fact, no danger whatever. Do not 
 let her know anything of it, unless it reaches her 
 by the papers." This is but one of many such 
 indications of thoughtfulness and affection. 
 
 The author's work has been but clumsily done if 
 many words are needed to guide the reader to a 
 true knowledge of the character of Giddings. 
 His contemporaries made estimates of him as vari- 
 ous as were the conflicting interests of the day. 
 Some called him a demagogue; some a fanatic. 
 Some conceded his honesty but denied his sense ; 
 others admitted his shrewdness but would allow 
 him no principle. What was he in fact? Not a 
 demagogue, for he chose for years the thorns 
 and hunger of the wayside rather than the easy 
 bed and sumptuous fare that sacrifice of what 
 he believed to be truth would have earned him ; 
 not a fanatic, for, whatever others advocated or at- 
 tempted, he worked strictly within the boundaries 
 of right and of constitutional authority. When his 
 heart was breaking with the pity and indignation 
 that slavery excited in every just and generous 
 man, he sorrowfully admitted that only Providence 
 could open a way to abolition ; that, under the 
 Constitution which he daily invoked, the Federal 
 Government had nothing to do with slavery in any 
 State. His life work was defined by the determi- 
 
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 213 
 
 nation that, so far as it lay in him to prevent it, 
 slavery should not be perpetuated by the introduc- 
 tion of new slaves, or by the pollution of new ter- 
 ritory, and that the Federal Government should 
 not be made to stand sponsor to its wrongs. He 
 no more hesitated in 1S44 in offending the Liberty 
 party by refusing to support Birney, than he did 
 four years later in supporting Van Buren against 
 Taylor, and thus drawing down upon himself the 
 anathemas of the Whigs. If he was a fanatic, 
 then such is every man who prefers the right, to 
 the winning of wealth, ease, place, and praise, at 
 the sacrifice of principle ; if he was a demagogue, 
 then so was St. Paul when, at the command of the 
 Lord, he turned in the dusty highway and obeyed 
 the heavenly voice, casting aside all the advantage 
 of station and the favor of power, to go forth and 
 preach the truth to men. 
 
H23 81 ^ 
 

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