In 1857 the Indiana General Assembly moved both positively and negatively against the freedoms of the African American ex-slaves. Six years before the federal Emancipation of the slaves and 37 years after Indiana state outlawed slavery within its borders, the matter of dealing with the freed slaves was still an on-going debate. Even freed slaves were not quite free to live as they wish. What we can learn from the 39th general assembly is that the south viewed the northern freedom as mess of poverty, because the working class northerner was no better off than a southern slave. Secondly, that freed slaves in Indiana were still under sever restrictions. They were not quote equal under the law yet. Even worse, the northern state's difficulty of integrating ex-slaves into society was drawing sharp criticism from southern states who were condemning the north for allowing whites to be brought down to the level of the negros.
One amendment passed early on in the assembly made it illegal for a negro to travel unless given consent by the nearest slave owner.
**Senate bill No. 67. A bill to repeal sec. 9 of an act entitled*
"An act to enforce the 13th article of the constitution by providing a penalty for the importation of negroes and mulattoes in the State of Indiana, contrary to the provisions thereof."
*Was read a second time. On motion by Mr. Kinley, the bill was amended by adding the following section : Sec, —. Any negro or mulatto who shall be known to use his ordinary powers of locomotion, so as to transfer himself from one place to another within this State, without the consent of the nearest slaveholder, either in principal or practice, within or without the State, he, the said negro or mulatto, shall, without trial or delay be hung by the neck to the nearest tree, until he is stone dead.**
The bill as amended was ordered to be engrossed.
The Indiana senate also moved to prevent anyone of African decent from being able to hold office. More remarkably, they moved to have the official record falsely state that the resolution to now allow negros in the senate was approved by existing negros already in the senate. They made it appear as though the African American senators (if any) were in agreement with this resolution, yet knowing fully that none were in the senate.
**Mr. Heffi-en offered the following preamble and resolution:*
*WHEREAS, It is the true intent and meaning of the constitution of this State that no negro or mulatto shall be elected senator or , representative in the General Assembly of this State; AND WHEREAS, the common meaning and acceptation of the term, "African," implies a negro ; and whereas, it appears by a vote, as reported in the Indiana State Journal of the 9th inst., among the proceedings of this body by Barton D. Jones, a reporter of said Journal, and admitted upon this floor as reporter by a vote of this Senate; and whereas, an editorial in said journal says that a certain measure "received the support of every African senator present," now, therefore, be it resolved that the committee on unfinished business are hereby directed to inquire into and report what senator or senators upon this floor are of negro blood or are "African," and also whether such senators, if any there should be, are eligible under the constitution to hold their seats.**
Despite the still present racism within the Indiana legislature, some senators used their time to make passionate speeches against the treatment of the ex-slaves. One long-winded speech recounted how to the south has repeatedly accused the northern states of being a pool of poverty and immorality, claiming that in the end even the whites will be enslaved because of northern poverty. This speech is given below.
To set the stage for this remarkable speech, the reader must know that at some point there had been a skirmish in the assembly and many congressmen started leaving the session, seemingly out of contempt for the overtly racist resolutions being voted on or in the face of opposition. It is not fully clear in the record. At one point Senator Griggs gets up and asks to be excused from the voting because a member of Grigg's party has been removed from the floor and the imbalance of votes are adding to the "old party line". The Old Party Line is referring to the conservatives against abolition. He begins his speech with the following declaration: "the party is subversive of the best interests of our common country. I cannot directly or indirectly aid in strengthening the power of the Party which holds the following doctrines : "
Griggs then goes on to list the abominable beliefs of the Old Party which are the same as the one held by terrible slave-holding states.
**The Richmond Examiner, one of the leading Democratic papers in Virginia, ardently supporting Mr. Buchanan, holds the following language in a late issue :*
"Until recently, the defense of slavery has labored under great difficulties, because its apologists (for they were mere apologists) took half-way grounds. They confined the defense of slavery to mere negro slavery ; thereby giving up the slavery principle, admitting other forms of slavery to be wrong. ''The line of defense, however, is now changed. The South now maintains that slavery is right, natural and necessary, and does not depend on difference of complexion. The laws of the slave states justify the holding of white men in bondage"
Another Buchanan paper, the leading one in South Carolina, says :
"Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, whether white' or black. The great peril of Northern free society is, that it is burdened with a servile class of mechanics and laborers, unfit for self-government, yet clothed with the attitudes and powers of citizens. Master and slave is a relation in society as necessary as that of parent and child ; and the Northern States will yet have to introduce it. Their theory of free government is a delusion."
The Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, Mr. Buchanan's confidential organ, and considered by the Democratic party as its ablest paper in the South, speaks as follows in a recent number :
"Repeatedly have we asked the North 'has not the experiment of universal liberty failed ? Are not the evils of free society insufferable !' And do not most thinking men among you propose to subvert and reconstruct it? Still no answer. This gloomy silence is another conclusive proof added to many other conclusive evidences we have furnished, that free society in the long run, is an impracticable form of society ; it is everywhere starving, demoralizing and insurrectionary. "
"We repeat, then, that policy and humanity alike forbid the existence of the evils of free society to new people and coming generations. Two opposite and conflicting forms of society cannot, among civilized men co-exist and endure. The one must give away and cease to exist, the other become universal. If free society be unnatural, immoral, unchristian, it must fall, and give way to a slave society—a social system old as the world, universal as man."
And the Muscogee (Ala.) Herald, says:
"Free Society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern men and especially the New England States are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meet with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body servant. This is your free society which Northern hordes are trying to extend into Kansas."
S. W. Downs, late Democratic Senator from Louisiana, in an elaborate and carefully prepared speech, published' in the Washington Globe, says:
"I call upon the opponents of slavery to prove that the white laborers of the North are as happy, as contented, or as comfortable as the slaves of the South. In the South the slaves do not suffer one-tenth of the evils endured by the white laborers of the North. Poverty is unknown to the southern slave; for as soon as the master of slaves becomes too poor to provide for them, he sells them to others who can take care of them. This, sir, is one of the excellencies of the system of slavery, and this the superior condition of the southern slave over the northern white laborer."
Senator Clemens, of Alabama, declared, in a speech in the U. S. Senate, that 'the operatives of New England were not as well situated, nor as comfortably off as the slaves that cultivate the rice and cotton fields of the South."
In a recent speech by Mr. Reynolds, candidate for Congress from Missouri, that gentleman distinctly asserted that —
"The same construction of the power of Congress to exclude slavery from a United States Territory, would justify the government in excluding foreign-born citizens—Germans and Irish, as well as niggers."
''We rejoice that the great issue in the canvass will turn on this doctrine, because it will force the South into defending slavery on principle. She contends now for its equal extension with other social forms, and must contend that it is equally worthy of extension. Her old grounds of apology and excuse will avail her nothing. She must examine history and statistics, and prove that slaves are as well provided for, as happy and contented in general, as hired laborers. She can easily show that they are better off in all these respects than hirelings, and, besides, far less addicted to crime. She must also show that slave owners are the equals in morality, piety, courage and intelligence, to bosses and employers. It will be easy to prove that they are their superiors. It will only remain for her to show that the bible sanctions slavery, and the victory will be complete." —Richmond Enquirer, Juno 13. 1856.
Senator Butler, (the uncle of Preston S. Brooks,) declared in a speech in the U. S. Senate, this session:
"That men have no right to vote unless they are possessed of property as required by the constitution of South Carolina. There no man can vote unless he owns ten negroes, or real estate to the value of ten thousand dollars."
In reference to the murder of Keating. the Irish waiter, at Willard's Hotel, Washington City, by Hon. Philip T. Herbert, the Charleston Standard says :
"If white men accept the office of meinials, it should be expected that they will do so with an apprehension of their relation to socioty, and the disposition quietly to encounter both the responsibilities and liabilities which the relation imposes."
The Alabama Mail, in commenting on the same, says:
"It is getting time that waiters at the North were convinced that they are servants, and not ' gentlemen ' in disguise. We hope this Herbert affair will teach them prudence."
"But the worst of all these abominations is the modern system of free schools. The New England system of free schools has been the cause and prolific source of the infidelities and treason that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, and her land into the common nestling places of howling bedlamits. We abominate the system because schools are free."
The Washington Union, the national organ of the "Democratic" party, says that the honest and heroic free laboring men of Kansas, "are a miserable, blear-eyed rabble, who have been transferred like so many cattle to that country."
The New York Day Book, one of the two papers in New York city that supported James Buchanan, proposes to enslave poor Americans, Germans, and Irish, who may fall into poverty and be unable to support their families. Here are the Day Book's exact words, in speaking of the poor white people:
*"Sell the parents of these children into slavery. Let our legislature pass a law that whoever will take these parents and take care of them and their offspring, in sickness and in health—clothe them, feed them, and house them—shall be legally entitled to their service ; and let the same legislature decree that whoever receives these parents and their children, and obtains their services, shall take care of them as long as they live."**