Oregon Bill Calhoun Analysis

Section I: Calhoun’s Oregon Bill Speech: A Denunciation of Natural Law in Defense of Slavery Presumptions of racial inequality and debates over the expansion of slavery intensified in Congress following the period of westward expansion in the United States. In 1830 during the Second Great Awakening activists like William Loyd Garrison increased their efforts to abolish slavery and prevent its expansion as the nation gained more territory. At the Philadelphia National Antislavery Convention Garrison and his followers avowed slavery was a violation of the founding principles of natural rights and contradicted the Bible. (Garrison, Declaration of the Antislavery Convention, 1833). Oregon's application for statehood like other requests from new
Calhoun believed Jefferson had been influenced by these principles of inalienable rights. As a result, according to Calhoun, Natural law “…caused him to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relationship of the black to the white race” (Calhoun, Oregon Bill, 1948). In particular he blamed Jefferson for the application of natural liberty to national policies of westward expansion. He criticized Jefferson for authoring the North West Ordinance which banned slavery in the Ohio territories which Calhoun saw as a byproduct of his subscription to natural rights. “To this political error, his proposition to exclude slavery from territory northwest of the Ohio may be traced…and through it the deep and dangerous agitation which now threatens to engulf [the nation]…”(Calhoun, Oregon Bill, 1948). Calhoun attributed the North West Ordinance as setting a national precedent for the exclusion of slavery in northern territories. Consequently this precedent then impacted the tradition of admitting new states formed by the Missouri Compromise and led to antislavery provision in the Oregon Bill. In Calhoun’s view preventing the extension of slavery and encouraging natural rights would disrupt the political order and lead to anarchy. To illustrate his point he argued that events like the French
He conveniently denied the existence of natural rights because he could not vindicate slavery without attacking the premise of its immorality. Calhoun’s arguments that dismissed blacks as unqualified to obtain liberty were based solely on racism and pseudosciences that promoted white superiority not scientific evidence. In reality, the failure of slaves to advance as a people was due to the condition of servitude they were forced to endure and not as a result of the lack of their physical abilities. Calhoun’s premise of liberty also failed to recognize that by governing man without his permission the very anarchy which he sought to prevent was more likely to ensue. The more liberty people were granted the less people there would be that were oppressed and therefore less people would be need to rebel. Furthermore, Calhoun ignored the cornerstone of the founding principles that helped develop the American understanding of constitutionalism. While the colonists did in fact believe their rights as Englishmen had men violated. The ultimate point of contention that led to the separation from Britain was their refusal to accept the absolute sovereignty of Parliament over the colonies. Consent became the sticking point for the founding generation which was