Salmon P. Chase quote: “No more slave States; no slave Territories.”

“But bear this in mind: if this demand had been acceded to, that meant that every territory in the United States which would become a state—and remember, there were then 33 states and there would be 50 states eventually—but every other state would become a slave state. Because if one slave owner went to North Dakota with his slave, the federal police power would follow him to make sure that he could hold that slave securely in that place.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

“And Lincoln said that if you believe in the Fugitive Slave Act being required by Article IV, you must also believe that the protection of the slave owner and the territories deserves federal protection; the two arguments were perfectly parallel. Douglas said it didn’t matter how the Supreme Court in the abstract decided the question of slavery in the territories; if the slave owner went to the territory, he had to get local regulations to protect his property.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

“The seven states of the Deep South, the same seven states that seceded after Lincoln's election and before his inauguration, demanded as a plank in the Democratic platform, without which they would not support Douglas, a slave code for the territories.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

“The Alabama Democratic convention [instructed] its delegates to walk out of the national convention if the party refused to adopt a platform pledging a federal slave code for the territories. Other lower-South Democratic organizations followed suit. In February, Jefferson Davis presented the substance of southern demands to the Senate in resolutions affirming that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common territories.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153655 (1988) p. 214
1980s

“The Alabama Democratic convention [instructed] its delegates to walk out of the national convention if the party refused to adopt a platform pledging a federal slave code for the territories. Other lower-South Democratic organizations followed suit. In February, Jefferson Davis presented the substance of southern demands to the Senate in resolutions affirming that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could 'impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common territories.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153655 (1989), p. 214.

“The testimony of all religious societies in the slave states is that the slaves are heathen and it is an utter impossibility to Christianize them and civilize them by this process.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA198 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 198
1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

“What were these rights and liberties for which Confederates contended? The right to own slaves; the liberty to take this property into the territories.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153655 (1988) p. 241
1980s

“The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care-not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: (1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro in every possible event of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." (2) That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made not to be pressed immediately, but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois or in any other free State.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Attributed to Tubman in Dorothy Winbush Riley, My Soul Looks Back 'Less I Forget https://books.google.com/books?id=KpcLAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22c.+1865%22 p. 148 (1993). Riley gives a date of "c. 1865" but offers no citation. No source from earlier than 1993 is known. Quoted in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999) by Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, p. 299. Tubman specialists like Jean H. Humez and Kate Clifford Larson deem this one completely spurious. See "Bogus Tubman," by Steve Perisho http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2014/03/bogus-tubman-i-freed-thousands-of.html.
Disputed
Variant: I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.

“What we are slaves to will prevent us from praying to God. If we are slaves to all the thoughts we think, if we are slaves to everything our eyes see, if we are slaves to all the music our ears hear, if we are slaves to everything the nose smells and the tongue tastes, if we are slaves to everything the body wants, then how can we ever reach a state of peace? We can never know peace or tranquility this way. We have to escape from this slavery and become a slave only to God.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

“No more slave States; no slave Territories.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Salmon P. Chase 7

Related quotes

Related topics