Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do: Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio

In Short

Delivered on the floor of the House of Representatives in April 1860, this Congressional address by Ohio Representative Cydnor Bailey Tompkins confronts the aggressive political demands of Southern slaveholders. Tompkins argues that the American Founders universally condemned slavery as a moral and social blight intended for gradual extinction. He traces how the rise of lucrative cotton production corrupted Southern politics, leading to violent territorial aggressions in Kansas and threats of disunion. The speech endures as a powerful, historically grounded defense of the Republican platform to halt slavery's expansion and preserve Western territories for free labor.

The Story

The argument opens with a sharp defense of the Republican party against accusations of provoking national discord. Representative Tompkins places the blame for Congressional hostility squarely on pro-slavery politicians, who spent the opening months of the session launching bitter personal attacks and promoting disunion. Establishing his right to respond, Tompkins sets out to demonstrate that the nation's Founders—both Northern and Southern—were deeply anti-slavery in principle and intended for the institution to die out rather than spread.

To prove his premise, Tompkins reviews foundational American history. He quotes anti-slavery resolutions passed in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia during the 1770s, alongside explicit statements from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Lafayette. He highlights how early American leaders consistently viewed slavery as an infernal traffic, a curse on white morals and industry, and a practice entirely incompatible with human liberty.

Tompkins then charts the moral and political degeneration of the Southern slaveholding class. He attributes this shift not to enlightened statecraft, but to economic avarice. As cotton exports exploded, Southern leaders abandoned the ethics of the Founders, embracing a doctrine where financial profit dictates moral rightness. To illustrate the domestic damage wrought by this institution, Tompkins cites Southern statesmen who documented how slavery ruined white working populations, impoverished arable soil, and eroded public literacy.

The middle of the address catalogues a series of deliberate aggressions committed by the slave power against the nation. Tompkins details the annexation of Texas, the imposition of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He vividly recounts the violent border ruffianism in Kansas, where free-state settlers suffered arson, assault, and murder in an attempt to force slavery onto free territory.

In its final movement, the speech exposes the ultimate ambitions of the pro-slavery faction. Tompkins explains that slaveholders do not merely seek equal access to Western territories; they demand the right to export their repressive local legal codes—laws that strip white laborers of free speech, a free press, and personal safety. He rejects threats of Southern secession as bluster, declaring that Republicans do not seek to invade existing slave States, but will unyielding plant themselves on constitutional rights to keep the Western territories free. Tompkins concludes by reaffirming that halting the slave trade and confining slavery within its current borders are the only ways to honor the Revolution's legacy.

How It Unfolds

The Founders' anti-slavery consensus Tompkins cites colonial resolutions and the personal writings of Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry to prove that the architects of the Republic abhorred slavery and worked toward its eventual abolition.

The corrupting influence of cotton The speech contrasts early American idealism with 1860 pro-slavery politics, arguing that the rise of profitable cotton culture caused Southern leaders to abandon moral truth for financial gain and political dominance.

The toll on white society Using census data and testimony from Southern commentators, Tompkins demonstrates that slavery degrades white labor, fosters widespread illiteracy among non-slaveholders, and leaves once-fertile lands depleted and abandoned.

A legacy of national aggression Tompkins enumerates the political and physical outrages committed by the slave power, culminating in the violent attempt to force slavery onto the free settlers of Kansas.

Defending free soil and constitutional rights The address closes by firmly rejecting Southern demands to take slave codes into federal territories, promising that Republicans will contain slavery within its existing borders while upholding free speech and free labor.

The People

• Cydnor Bailey Tompkins: The speaker and Republican Representative from Ohio. He positions himself as a plain-spoken defender of constitutional liberty, free labor, and the historical legacy of the Founders against Southern political aggression.
• The American Founders (Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason): Invoked as the ultimate historical authorities. They are depicted as virtuous statesmen who recognized slavery as an evil, refused to enshrine property in humans within the Constitution, and anticipated total emancipation.
• The Pro-Slavery Faction (represented by Curry, Lamar, and Clay): Southern politicians whose arguments Tompkins dissects. They represent a ruling class that prioritizes the economic interests of a hundred thousand slaveholders over the rights of millions of free citizens.
• Southern Non-Slaveholders: The working-class white population of the South. Portrayed by Tompkins as impoverished, denied education, and deprived of honest employment by the dominance of slave labor.

In Its Own Voice

"When a nation, led to greatness by the hand of liberty... descends to the ungrateful task of forging chains for her friends and children, and, instead of giving support to freedom, turns advocate for slavery and oppression, there is reason to suspect that she has either ceased to be virtuous, or is extremely negligent in the appointment of her rulers."

Tompkins reads an 1774 Continental Congress address to highlight how the pro-slavery politics of 1860 mirror the very British tyranny the nation once fought.

"If slave labor, then, is profitable, slaveholding is equitable. Thus it is decided, that whatever is profitable is also equitable: justice and injustice are mere matters of profit and loss; the morality or immorality of slavery a mere question of soil and climate."

With biting irony, Tompkins summarizes his opponents' view that economic gain rewrites moral law.

"A man may live in the swamps of the torrid zone, and escape the crocodiles, alligators, and other slimy and creeping things, but he cannot escape the miasma and poison of the atmosphere."

Tompkins uses this vivid metaphor to warn that free laborers cannot settle in territories where slave laws contaminate civic life.

What It's Really About

At its core, the speech is an argument over the true meaning of the American Constitution and the nation's founding principles. Tompkins insists that the Republic was built on an explicit commitment to universal liberty, which pro-slavery politicians actively subvert. The speech probes the moral compromise at the heart of American politics, demonstrating how financial self-interest can override long-standing national values. Furthermore, it defends the dignity of free labor, contending that an economy based on human bondage inherently degrades working people, restricts free expression, and undermines democratic self-government.

Why Read It Today

This speech offers an indispensable snapshot of the United States on the very brink of the Civil War. Delivered just months before the election of 1860, Tompkins's address captures the intense urgency, moral clarity, and high political stakes of a nation fracturing over the issue of human bondage. Readers interested in American history, political rhetoric, and constitutional debate will find a masterclass in how nineteenth-century statesmen used historical evidence to construct a persuasive political argument.

The text presents very few barriers to modern readers. Tompkins writes with a clear, direct, and energetic prose style that avoids the overly dense legalisms common to the period. While the speech reflects the intense partisan environment of the 36th Congress and includes stark historical references to antebellum racial violence, its central debate—over the soul of the American Republic and the preservation of democratic freedom—remains deeply compelling and historically resonant.