HOW FREDERICK DOUGLASS DESTROYED JOHN C. CALHOUN WITH THE POWER OF JOHN LOCKE

ON MARCH 9, 1836, Sen. John C. Calhoun rose, not for the first time, to sing the praises of human bondage

Two months earlier, an Ohio senator had presented a pair of petitions sent by citizens of his state “praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.” Calhoun had promptly moved that the petitions be rejected. “Congress had no jurisdiction on the subject,” the South Carolina Democrat insisted, “no more in this district than the state of South Carolina.” Weeks of debate ensued.

In his March speech, Calhoun argued that Congress possessed no lawful power to limit slavery anywhere, not even within the geographical confines of Washington, D.C. He held fast to this view despite the inconvenient fact that Article I of the Constitution granted Congress the authority “to exercise exclusive legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over…the seat of the Government of the United States.” Calhoun’s principal argument was not so much legal as it was political. If the abolitionists succeeded in getting Congress to debate the merits of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, he reasoned, it would be only a matter of time before Congress got around to debating the merits of abolishing slavery in the states. And for Calhoun, that outcome was to be prevented at all costs.

“No one can believe that the fanatics, who have flooded this and the other House with their petitions, entertain the slightest hope that Congress would pass a law to abolish slavery in the District,” Calhoun observed. So “what then do they hope?” Simply this: that Congress should “take jurisdiction of the subject” and “throw open to the abolitionists the halls of legislation and enable them to take a permanent position.” At that point, “the subject of slavery would be agitated session after session” in Congress, “and from hence