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EIGHTH EDITION.
THE WILMOT PROVISO
IS ABOLITION, AGGRESSIVE, REVOLUTIONARY, AND SUBVERSIVE OF
THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS GUARANTIES TO THE
SLAVEHOLDING STATES.
A
VOICE FROM THE SOUTH:
COMPRISING
LETTERS FROM
GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS,
AND TO
THE SOUTHERN STATES.
WITH AN
APPENDIX
CONTAINING AN ARTICLE FROM THE CHARLESTON MERCURY ON THE WILMOT PROVISO, TOGETHER
WITH THE FOURTH ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW OF CONGRESS,
THE NULLIFICATION LAW OF PENNSYLVANIA, THE RESOLUTIONS OF
TEN OF THE FREE STATES, THE RESOLUTIONS OF VIRGINIA,
GEORGIA AND ALABAMA, AND MR. CALHOUN'S RESOLUTIONS
IN THE SENATE OF THE
UNITED STATES.
BALTIMORE:
SAMUEL E. SMITH,
PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER,
SUN BUILDINGS,
No. 57 Baltimore street, S. E. corner of Gay.
1848.
WILL THE SOUTH SUSTAIN A LITERARY JOURNAL?
THE WESTERN CONTINENT,
A POPULAR SOUTHERN FAMILY NEWSPAPER,
At
a time when nearly every publication that emanates from the northern press—literary, religious and political—is impregnated with sentiments
hostile to the interests, and insulting to the feelings of the people of the South,
—when the enemies of Southern Institutions are organizing for a bold and formidable invasion of Southern Rights, and when professed Abolition papers are sustained within our borders by contributions from Northern Societies,—when the most important political issues of the day, are being merged in that of Abolitionism,—the vital necessity of AT LEAST ONE POPULAR MEDIUM, in which Southern views may be uttered, and Southern interests vindicated, free from the bias of political or sectarian prejudice, must be apparent to all.
With a view to supply such a journal, the
Western Continent
has been established in Baltimore. This position was selected as being the furthest Southern point which offered the necessary facilities for a
successful competition
with the large weeklies of the Northern cities. The success of the paper thus far has abundantly attested the correctness of our views, and we feel that is only necessary to make the
Continent
known to the public to whose interest it is devoted, to secure for it a general circulation.
The
Western Continent
is a paper of the largest size, printed on good paper and with fair type, and in all the characteristics of a
POPULAR FAMILY JOURNAL
Will compare favorably with the best weeklies of the country. It has been the aim of the editors to preserve a
high moral tone,
and to maintain an elevated standard of literary excellence, giving to its contents such varied character as to interest and instruct all minds, and please all tastes.
THE CURRENT NEWS OF THE DAY—Foreign and Domestic, is carefully compiled for the
Continent,
special pains being taken to comprehend every thing of interest to the Southern reader.
TALES, SKETCHES, ESSAYS AND POEMS—Original and Selected, of the highest merit, will always be found in the colums of the
Continent,
it being our fixed determination to admit none others.
THE LADIES' DEPARTMENT—With a view to make this department useful and entertaining to our Lady readers, we have secured the aid of an accomplished and talented YOUNG LADY of this city, who will preside over the columns devoted to their interests.
MAJOR JONES edits the Humorous Department, in which will be found, every week, original stories and sketches from his pen and from his numerous correspondents, as well as his choicest selections from various sources, with his comments on matters and things in general.
DOMBEY AND SON.—This popular work, justly classed among the ablest productions of Mr. Dickens, is given in entire parts immediately on its arrival in this country.
Our close proximity to the great Political, Commercial and Literary Emporiums o the country, enables us to disseminate the LATEST INTELLIGENCE on all subjects as promptly as any of our northern cotemporaries; and as our paper is as
large, cheap,
and we trust as
good,
we feel that we have at least an equal claim with the worthiest of them to the patronage of the Southern Public, to whose peculiar interests our Journal is especially devoted. Determined to do all in our power to merit their patronage, it is most respectfully solicited. Address, post-paid,
W. T. THOMPSON, Editor.
Single copy of the Continent one year, $2—Three copies, $5—Seven copies, $10—Twelve copies, $15—Seventeen copies, $20.
A VOICE FROM THE SOUTH.
A
VOICE FROM THE SOUTH:
COMPRISING
LETTERS FROM
GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS,
AND TO
THE SOUTHERN STATES.
WITH AN
APPENDIX
CONTAINING AN ARTICLE FROM THE CHARLESTON MERCURY ON THE WILMOT PROVISO, TOGETHER
WITH THE FOURTH ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW OF CONGRESS,
THE NULLIFICATION LAW OF PENNSYLVANIA, THE RESOLUTIONS OF
TEN OF THE FREE STATES, THE RESOLUTIONS OF VIRGINIA,
GEORGIA AND ALABAMA, AND MR. CALHOUN'S RESOLUTIONS
IN THE SENATE OF THE
UNITED STATES.
BALTIMORE:
WESTERN CONTINENT PRESS.
1847.
The
interest with which the following letters have been generally read, and the claims of the South, to a fair hearing at the bar of public opinion, upon the all-exciting subject of Slavery, have induced us to place them in a permanent form. We think they will commend themselves to every candid and impartial reader, both as to their style and matter. We do not profess to be an impartial judge of their merits, Southern as we are in all our feelings; but we hardly think we are so far biased by our prejudices, as to misjudge when we say, that most readers will rise from the perusal of this pamphlet more favorably disposed towards Georgia than Massachusetts.
In order to a proper appreciation of these letters, the reader must remember that the Author speaks throughout, in the character of a
Sovereign State,
which had long been abused by the Abolitionists, and which had received some personal aggressions from Massachusetts, in regard to her Slave property and other things; as indeed had Virginia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Massachusetts may well be considered the mother of Abolitionism; indeed her State Abolition Society lays claim to this honor for her; and no one will dispute it with her. She has been the most restless agitator upon this subject by far, of any State in the Union.
But a few years back, a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a citizen of Georgia, and one of the most holy, zealous Christians belonging to that Church, and distinguished for the extent and the success of his labors among the Blacks, married a lady who owned Slaves, which upon his marriage he made over to her. At the next General Conference of that Church, he was arraigned for this act by the Abolitionists, and by a vote of the Anti-Slaveholders, he was required to desist from his official duties until he should absolve himself from his connection with Slavery. This produced a division of that Church; thirteen Annual Conferences and about five hundred thousand members, moving off from the old, and forming a new Ecclesiastical connection. About the same time a split occurred in the Baptist Church, by reason of plain encroachments of the rights of Southern members, on the ground of Slavery. In the mean time, Congress had been harassed atAdams
was usually made the conduit-pipe—upon the subject of Slavery, over which every body who is not wilfully blind knows Congress has no authority. At length came the
Wilmot
Proviso, a copy of which is appended to these letters. About the time that it was in progress, we wrote to the Author of Georgia's Letters, informing him among other things, of the stand which we had taken upon the subject of Abolitionism, and of the alarming extent to which it was growing, and of which we knew the people of Georgia were generally profoundly ignorant; for Abolition papers are excluded from that State by statute. This brought him out in the character and in the defence of Georgia. This character he sustains throughout, and of course he speaks with the independence and severity of a Sovereign State long trampled upon and insulted by one that was but an
equal
to say the least of it.
Georgia's position would have justified even the most intemperate recrimination, in addressing Massachusetts—for Massachusetts was the chief agent in fastening Slavery upon her; and if this fact, as one of the British Reviews says, does not justify a Slave State in supporting Slavery, it certainly justifies her in looking for
courtesy
from those who fastened the institution upon her, and in demanding silence from them, until they will point out some practicable mode of getting rid of it. No such mode does any of them point out—nothing like courtesy does she receive from any of them. She has a right to demand of all the Free States, whose Slaves have been sold at the South, that they shall each at fair prices purchase back as many as they sold, with their proportionate increase, before they abuse her and complot her ruin, by endeavoring to hem in the whites and blacks until they cannot live on the same territory. This openly avowed purpose, is monstrous—shocking; and when we consider that it was actually in a course of experiment by the
Wilmot
Proviso when Georgia took the pen, we will rather wonder at her temperance and self-command than at her severity. She is the greatest cotton growing State in the Union, and to her Cotton is Massachusetts mainly indebted for what she is worth. If she would return to Georgia all that she has made by manufacturing her produce and carrying it to market, and trading with her, with interest on it, Georgia would this day be able to buy Massachusetts, and yet have enough to live on. We are ourselves, to a certain extent, protectionists, and we do not believe that Georgia has suffered as much by that system, as she thinks she has; but in reading these letters, we must remember what
Georgia
thinks, and has ever thought. Her opinion has ever been that the constantly descending price of her great staple is owing to the tariff; and if this be true, she has lost millions annually for thirty years by the very policy which has built up Massachusetts. This, all must accord to her; that she has asked nothing but to be let alone in the management of her own concerns. Now, with these views, to find herself abused by
Massachusetts,
and the Northern States making common cause with Massachusetts against her, and in their attacks unsettling the very foundations of the Government, was well calculated to drive her to desperation; and every candid reader will, as we have intimated, rather admire her equanimity, than condemn her severity, cutting and excoriating as some of her remarks are. We think her vindication of herself complete; and that when the storms of Abolitionism shall have blown over, or overset the Republic, history will not place her below Massachusetts, in anything that constitutes the real worth of a nation.
It was not the original intention of Georgia, to have done more than to have vindicated herself from the attacks of the Abolitionists, and to have compared herself with Massachusetts, in those traits of character which distinguish them as
members of one family;
but upon learning that her letters would be pamphleted, (and perhaps upon our request to extend them,) she determined to make her defence more complete; and to extend it to the many false rumors and impressions which were current in the world in regard to Slavery, and its effects upon Southern character.
If these letters affect others as they have us, we think Georgia has laid the Southern States under lasting obligations to her. The force of them lies in this: that they are true to the letter; and will be found so upon the strictest examination of impartial history.
This way of bringing the States in comparison with each other, is well calculated to have a fine moral effect upon the States themselves, as it will teach them to be careful how, for a time-serving purpose, they depart from the line of rectitude. Georgia says in one of her letters to us; “I am obnoxious to some pretty severe raps for my own past conduct, which I suppose I shall get. Well, let them come; they will teach me better for the future; and teach others, that in the end, the strait course is always the best course. What I have said, however, will be found true, viz: that my faults have been such as affect no body but myself; those of Massachusetts have been obtrusive, contagious, and I fear are likely to become mortal to the body politic. I thought the time had come for some one to speak in defence of the South, if her sons did not intend to be fibbed out of their character as well as choused of their rights.”
In another letter Georgia says: “Writing under a sense of wrongs, long continued and unprovoked—and in full view of the dangers which threaten the country from these wrongs, and with the branding-iron of Abolitionism still upon me, (hear them talk of “Southern Intolerance!”) I find that I have been frequently betrayed into feelings too warm, and expressions too harsh.” Accordingly, upon learning that these letters were to be put in the present form, Georgia has softened some of the severer passages in them. We think she need not have been so scrupulous, for surely the South has borne enough, and long enough, to weary the patience of Job himself. It is a singular fact, that even
complaint
of Abolition encroachment on the part of any son of the South, is called “
Southern Intolerance;
” and we are given to understand, that even this will not be allowed by the North. Truly we have fallen upon strange times!
For the information of the Southern public, we have added, as a valuable Appendix to these Letters, the article from the
Charleston Mercury
of the 11th August, in which the aggressive and revolutionary tendency of the
Wilmot
Proviso is most ably set forth by the editor. The Appendix also contains article 4, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing the Rights of the South; the Law of Congress of 1793, giving Protection to the Slave Property of the South; the Law of Pennsylvania in effect nullifying that Law of Congress, and in open violation of the spirit of the Constitution; the
Wilmot
Proviso, withCalhoun's
Resolutions in the Senate.
Editor Western Continent.
LETTER I.
Dear Sister Mass:
Read this letter, attentively, patiently, and candidly; and when you shall have read it, place it among your archives, where History may find it, when Abolitionism, of which you are the mother, and the chief supporter, shall have accomplished its now undisguised purpose. In addressing you, I shall endeavor to observe the respect due to an elder sister; but, at the same time, I must guard you against confounding truths which prove you to be entitled to no respect at all, with a breach of courtesy. Certainly, after the unsparing and unprovoked abuse which you have heaped upon me and my neighboring sisters for many years, I might be pardoned for the most bitter recriminations; but if I were not deterred from them by self-respect, and the dread that I have of being thought like you in any respect, I should certainly forbear them now that I am about to give to the world so much of your history as involves my interests, and the points of difference between us; for if you be not invulnerable, this will inflict a wound upon you, deep enough, and painful enough, to appease even malignity itself; and I am sure I have not a particle of that in my composition. It will irritate you, I know, sister Mass.—what that comes from the South does not? But to this I am indifferent; not because I delight in provocation, but because it will give you some little apology for wrath which you have enkindled without cause, and cherished without excuse, for many long years. Some things that I have to say to you will be equally applicable to your neighbors, who have imbibed your principles. To such I have a caution, but no apology to offer: the caution is, that they avoid the common fault of proselytes, which is to take to themselves an over-share of the disgrace which may attach to their new faith, in the belief that this will entitle them to an over-share of its honors.
When I first settled in this country, as you may remember, I proclaimed to the world that I intended to have nothing to do with Slavery; and I adhered steadfastly to my resolution, until it was overpowered by the complaints of my children. They compared my situation with my sister's on the other side of the Savannah. I was gaining but a bare subsistence, they said, by the labor of my children, while she was growing rich by the labor of slaves. Her sons were sent over to England, to receive a liberal education, while mine were kept constantly employed delving for bread in my unhealthy lowlands, or nursing silk-worms on my arid barrens. They censured my squeamishness in regard to Slavery, and pointed to all the other sisters of the family, especially to you and sister Penny, who made great pretensions to piety, as entertaining no scruples upon that subject. Indeed, the prevailing opinion of the whole family at that time was, that it was a mercy to the African race toMan stealers,
who are verily complimented by the name, as you would readily admit, had you seen them, as I have seen them, coming into port with an escort of sharks, and landing their cargoes of naked, starving, sick, and dead, and dying human beings, from the most infernal fetid pits that man ever lived in or ever died in. I have often seen my children weep over these wretched victims of Yankee avarice, while yours drove their trades, with all that same self-sufficiency, pertness, humor and disgusting suppleness, which marks the character of your Pedlars at the present day. I have known these miserable wretches, when just from the hands of the Britton and the Yankee, to dispute with the vultures for the half-devoured carcass that lay by the highway, and with difficulty restrained from feeding upon the loathsome mass of putrescence. Indeed the first care of the purchaser from the slave-ship used to be, to prevent them from killing themselves by surfeit. For the part which my sons took in these shocking scenes, God may, for aught I know, have judgments in reserve for me; but I cannot believe that he will ever use you as the instrument for executing them. That my children, in purchasing slaves from yours, delivered them from the most cruel bondage that man ever groaned under, is most true—that there was pity and compassion on the side of the purchasers, and none on the side of the venders, is equally true; but for these things I give them no credit, because selfishness and not humanity urged them to the traffic. But if they be guilty, they who never owned a slave ship or sailed on board of one—they who never enslaved a freeman—they to whom the slave rushed with joy from the cruelties of your sons—they who would not look into the floating dungeons, from which your boys daily drew their famished dead, for many long weeks—in mercy's name, where do you
stand? Of all the sisterhood, you should be the first to sympathize with me and the last to upbraid me. But you are the file-leader in this modern crusade upon Southern rights; and the end of it will be just what might be expected from such a leader in such a cause—trouble to us both, but a thousand times more trouble to you than to me. Laugh at the prediction if you please—but bear it in mind,
the result of your movements will be more disastrous to you and your allies, than to me and mine.
Why, I thus judge, will be disclosed in the sequel, when I shall return to this subject. As a proper introduction to it, let us pursue your history in order.
You and mother Brit, having “put the price of human flesh in your pockets,” went off glorying in your profits—leaving me to manage this flesh as I could. In process of time, the Old Lady grew weary of making money by the slow process of traffic with her daughters; and she determined to get it in a more summary way—by virtue of her authority. Accordingly she issued her orders that we should all be taxed. This was a direct approach to the seat of your sensibilities, and of course you became desperate. You called upon us all to unite with you in resisting her exactions. The other sisters responded promptly to the call; but what was I to do? I was very young, and very weak. Father
Oglethorpe
had with difficulty saved my life from the Spanish sword. My mother had for a long time, as I have intimated, kept me poor, by confining me to the silk business, instead of letting me choose my own occupation. I was surrounded by Indian tribes, numerous and warlike. Your importations of “flesh and blood” had by this time increased upon me to rather an alarming extent—and of course I was in no situation to throw off parental authority and meet the inevitable consequences. Withal, I was just beginning to gain health and strength. My affairs were intrusted to the supervision of
James Wright,
a most amiable, excellent, prudent man, who left me no ground of complaint. As for the tax, it did not hurt me: for the plaintea,
not one in a hundred of my children ever used it; and most of them, I believe, had never seen it. To espouse your cause under these circumstances, was, it seemed to me, to sacrifice everything and to gain nothing. And yet to stand by and see you flogged into submission, to unrighteous exactions, was abhorrent to every principle of my nature. I did what you never do—I sacrificed interest to principle and joined you—I say I joined
you:
for you were the only one of the family who had come to blows with our mother. The rest of us were foolishly hoping for a compromise; but you took the better course. Convinced of the justness of your cause, you resisted oppression at its first approach; and you did well, as the event clearly proved. In cases of doubtful right, compromises are excellent things; but where there is flagrant injustice, cruelty and extortion on the one hand, and clear right on the other, a compromise is no better than a reward to iniquity for its daring, and a promise to double the premium at short payment, when it becomes doubly villainous. He is a fool, or a suicide, or both, who tries to appease the bloodhound by giving him a lap of his blood; and man bereft of every moral sense, is but a bloodhound with human sagacity. You did right, therefore, sister Mass, in resisting oppression
in limine,
though it seemed a desperate adventure at the time. My support of you, ruined me for a time.
We conquered, and having severed the connexion with our unnatural parent, we were now all, by common consent, at liberty to manage our own affairs in our own way. Not one of the sisters dreamed that she had any right to intermeddle with the domestic concerns of another. Withal, these were days of decency and courtesy, which protected each from the intrusions of another. That such was the gener I understanding at that time, was proved beyond question by the fact, that when tae social compact was formed, two of the sisters refused for a time to unite in it; ahd during this time they were considered by all as entirely independent of the ren. This was “
the Government of the People,
” as we learn from high judicial astthority, which three millions could not enforce upon four hundred and sixty tho?sand, and which eleven communities could not enforce upon two! I beg you uo remember these things for future uses. Absolved from maternal authority, we agreed to band together for the common defence and general welfare. To this end w?e drew up articles of confederation, in which we confided to deputies chosen by us all, the management of our foreign relations, and such matters as were of general interest; while we reserved to ourselves individually the entire management of our local concerns. It was in settling these articles that you and I divided for the first time; and as we have never agreed since, I beg leave to submit to the judgment of the world the points of difference between us, with the course of us both in our opposition. You were for clothing the Deputies with powers to
force
us to a perpetual union, and to revise, if not to direct, all our household movements. You supposed there would be a perpetual tendency in the sisterhood to fly from each other, and you would have made the Deputies “
whippers in
” to us. Indeed, I think I would hazard nothing in saying, that you would gladly have adopted the Old Lady's system of government which we had just thrown off. Nor have I a scruple of blame to attach to you on this account. They were strange views, to be sure, under the circumstances, and in point of
consistency,
in perfect keeping with your views ever since; but then they were sincere, and therefore they received from me the most liberal indulgence—an indulgence which I would gladly have repeated, had you afforded me an opportunity like favorable, within the last fifty years.
On the other hand, I believed that the ties of friendship, kindred, and common interest would keep us together in love and harmony, without the aid of a driver's thong—our children intermingling and intermarrying, I could not conceive how we were ever to fall out. Nor could I see, nor can I yet see, the propriety of keeping any sister in the family, who might wish to leave it. My dread was of the Deputies. Power I knew to be self-sustaining and self-increasing. All history had proved this. My plan, therefore, was to clothe the Deputies with just powerhave supposed,
that you possessed modesty enough to await the decisions of experience, upon the questions of differences between you, and a large majority of the family. Not you, however. That your judgment was not considered authoritative, seems to have been considered an ample apology to yourself, at least, for laying aside all modesty, all courtesy, all decency, and all consistency, when you stept into the confederacy. As you could not have the articles cut to your pattern, you determined to stretch them to it; and accordingly you have been for sixty years, engaged in the singular employment of fitting your rejected suit to the Deputies, and then abusing them most unmercifully, for wearing it—or to speak without a figure—you have ever been laboring to increase the powers of the Deputies, by construction; and yet ever complaining, most bitterly, of their abuse of power. Counting out
Washington's
administration, about which there is a sanctity, which none of us dare invade, you have quarrelled with every other save one; and that one every body else quarrelled with. It was but recently your son John cried out, “we have been under slave domination for forty years:” and yet, you are as ripe for increasing that power as ever you were. And here lies the secret of your desperate abolition efforts. That you have not half the sympathy for the slave that I have, I will prove to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced mind. I could excuse your zeal in behalf of freedom, if you had wit enough to conceal its true object. But so palpably does selfishness—a yearning for the loaves and fishes, evince itself, in all your mock philanthrophy, that to credit you for the virtue which you feign, would be to discredit myself for common sense. But let me not anticipate.
The confederation established, we all got along pretty well. Your children came in great numbers to my domain, and I received them kindly. I did not like their ways in all respects—they were too forward, too tricky, and too covetous; but as these were hereditary faults, that I knew would soon wear away in this latitude, and as they possessed some redeeming virtues, I gave them a hearty welcome. They tarried with me, married into my family, and raised a numerous progeny, who now carry in their veins the blood of us both. Let me impress this fact upon your memory, as it has an important connection with what I have yet to say.
We had not long set up for ourselves, before the war between France and England commenced. The blood of the first had hardly dried up from your fields, and the stripes of the last had hardly cured up on your back, and yet you took sides with the latter. This you did before you could plead the horrors of the Revolution as an apology for your unnatural preference. Indeed those horrors were the results of mis-directed zeal in a really good cause; like your burning down Catholic Churches to advance the cause of Religion. France was your ally, England was your enemy. The first, struggled for the people; the last struggled for kings. The one, lighted the torch of freedom at your own altars; the other, at the same altars, mingled your blood with your sacrifices. The one was a reformer; the other was an intermeddler. And yet you took sides with the latter! I could not follow you, and here we split again. In that contest both trampled upon our rights, but it was for the last to seize our children and make them lift the sword against their benefactors.
Our children,
did I say! Not
ours,
but
yours.
Not one did I lose by this daring assumption; but you lost many. For this and many other insults and wrongs, we declared war against Britain. And where were you now? There were your own sons really “bondsmen” in the hands of “man-stealers;” and there was your property confiscated by their “masters.” You, of course, warmly espoused the war which was declared to punish these outrages; did you not? Not you: you opposed it, you denounced it, and you interposed every barrier to its success that you possibly could. With one eye upon Bunker's Hill, and the other upon Yorktown, you lauded
George
the Third, and calumniated
Madison;
and when you found that all your efforts to arrest the war proved abortive, you sent one portion of your children to plot a dissolution of the Union, and another to your waterfalls to supplant your beloved friend in manufactures.
The war ended, we next find you making your congès to that much abused government, and humbly soliciting a little protection for those
generous
sons of yours, who had
magnanimously
stept forward, in the time of distress, to supply the country with clothing. You told us that if the government which you had
so kindly befriended,
would only fling its protecting arms about them for a few years, you would release it from further obligation, throw yourself, like other people, upon your own resources, and make a wonderful return for the boon extended to them. It was granted; and surely, after what had transpired, if you could stoop to ask it, they who granted it may be excused on the score of heroism, if not of justice and policy. The favor granted, you returned to your abuse—
the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.
The time expired, you again appeared before the Deputies, not to verify your former promises, but to ask for a little
increase
of protection. This time you told many inconsistent stories; but as they were matters of course, little was thought of them; and you were again favored. In a few years you were back again, supported by sister Conny and sister Rhody, who had got a sip of the pap upon which you fattened so lustily, and who had become as ravenous of it as yourself. Here was now exhibited to the world a sublime moral spectacle—the Hartford Convention assembled at the City of Washington—not “to take measures to protect their citizens from forcible draughts, conscriptions. and impressments,” (so our military requisitions were called,) but modestly to request the American family to tax themselves for the third time with increased severity, in order that this darling Triplet might do a money-making business.
But I must conclude this long letter. I thought, when I commenced it, that it would, within less space, contain all that I had to say; but I find that it will not; and to do you and myself justice, I must address you again. In the mean time, let me say to your children who have opposed your strange and wayward course, that so far from attaching blame to them, I look upon them as among the noblest, if not the very noblest spirits of the land. To stick to their country and to principle, amidst the influences which surround them, argues a moral character and a moral firmness, which deserves the highest praise, and, of course, a better parentage.
Your injured sister,
GEORGIA.
LETTER II.
* As the letters which we have already received from Georgia contain some things which Mr.
Calhoun has said in substance, it may be well to remark that all of them were written before Mr. C. made his speech on the “Three Million Bill.”
Dear Sister Mass:
You may remember that I left you, with your colleagues of the Hartford Convention, paying your third visit to Washington, in quest of protection. About this time the sisters of the South began to become impatient of your importunities, and to protest sternly against any further concessions to them; but you had now enlisted so many in your favor, that you were gratified once more. Still in the prosecution of your suit, you preserved the semblance of modesty at least; though your spirit manifestly rose with your strength. It was not long before you were back again upon the same errand, with a strength that was irresistible. And now ensued a scene, which for the honor of my connexions, I blush to record. Your children thronged the Council-chamber, with an effrontery, which in mine, would cover me with shame, and demanded the old dish, according to their own recipes. Everysugar
thrown in, to conciliate sister Louisa. Your son John (Q,) was selected to preside over the mingling and simmering process, and your son Dan, was “to do it up brown” with garnishments to his own taste. John, who is really a good man at heart—wonderfully good, considering his origin and calling—commenced his work; but before he had completed it, the better feelings of his nature repeatedly prevailed over his servility, and he was several times in the very act of putting in an element or two, to make it palatable, or at least, less offensive to the South, when the purveyors o nu oecddpwuupon him like harpies, and compelled him to plumb the line of their prescriptions! It was passed through the furnace and finished to order.
Such scenes in the very temple of liberty, shocked and incensed the whole Sisterhood of the South, and they talked boldly of seeking relief from this miscalled
protection,
by self-protection. At first, you tried to convert them to your faith, as you do the heathen, by a liberal distribution of tracts among them, in which you set forth the blessings of the tariff with peculiar force and ingenuity. But finding them incorrigible, you told them plainly, that the slave labor of the South should not come in competition with the free labor of the North; and you gave them to understand, that if argument could not reduce them to order, Northern muskets would. My neighboring Sister Caroline, in the meantime, began to assume an alarming attitude, and civil war or the fall of the tariff seemed the only alternative. This state of things found you at your old employment of abusing the government, but most of all,
Andrew Jackson,
who was then at the head of our affairs. Of all men in the country, this was the man against whom you had lifted up the warning voice loudest, and upon whom you had poured out your bitterest anathemas. As the clouds gathered and darkened over our political hemisphere, you threw yourself into this man's arms. If he smiled, you tittered—if he bent, you bowed—if he threatened, you bristled—and so fast, and all-confiding grew your friendships, in the course of a few weeks, that
you moved
to clothe him with almost despotic power, in order to meet the emergency. I say that
you moved;
for your son Dan does nothing without your orders, expressed or implied. The cannons were loaded, the matches were lighted, and nothing was wanted, but the word “
fire,
” to deluge the country with blood, when, by the interposition of Mr.
Clay,
a compromise was effected. I now flattered myself that this ever-inflaming subject was put to rest; and certainly it ought to have been; for conceding the benefits of a protective tariff, it is but a matter of policy at last, and no demands of policy will justify a breach of faith. But this is not your ethics, Sister Mass, and it is with you alone that I have to do upon this occasion; though, as I said before, I shall not cover your faults, from courtesy to others who share them with you. The compromise was hardly effected before you began to throw out hints, (Irish hints) that you did not mean to abide by it. Who that knew you, supposed you would? I did not dream of it, though I hoped that others, more trust-worthy, would not permit you to violate it. So far as I have been enabled to discover, you have never considered it as involving any higher moral obligation, than the concluding acknowledgements of a friendly epistle:—“your most obedient, humble servant.” Having brought you to this compromise, which I had mainly in view in giving the history of the tariff, and in reaching which, I followed the order of events directly connected with it, regardless of the order of time, let me now take up the history of some other compromises to which you were a party.
While the articles of our confederation (which for the sake of brevity, we will hereafter call the Constitution,) were under discussion, a very knotty question arose, which had like to have defeated the Union. Considering the views of the parties at that time, it was a very curious one. You of the North considered slaves
as mere chattels,
and, therefore, not to be represented in the Common Councils. We of the South, admitted the fact, but drew an opposite conclusion from it, upon the ground that taxation and representation should be proportioned to each other. Thefirst
is, to leave the obnoxious clause untouched, but to stifle it by stretching other clauses over it. The
second
is, to crowd the master and the slave within such a narrow compass, that they cannot both live in it. The
third
(which is subservient to this,) is, to receive no new member into the Union, but upon the condition of her repudiating slavery. The
fourth
(which is of like character,) is, to stop all egress of slaves from their present limits; hence the refusal of yourself and your confederates to receive them when emancipated by their masters; and hence your opposition to the Colonization Society. These are startling designs, Sister, to be conceived against those who spent their blood and treasure in defence of the liberty which you enjoy; but I shall not furnish you with a pretext for them by “blustering” over them, as I confess with shame, my children are too much in the habit of doing. And here I will disclose a family secret, which may be of service to you, not long hence, and which some of the members of some of the churches in your neighborhood may be able to avouch. It is this: So long as we
bluster,
you have not much to fear; but when you see our children looking calmly, with compressed lip and reddened cheek, at your encroachments, be assured there are perilous times at hand for all of us. And when once they gather for the flight, let them go—you never can conciliate them afterwards. We are idolaters of the Union, and will bear much before we give it up; but only convince us that it is a golden calf which the profane grow rich by mutilating, and the devout grow lean by worshiping, and we will crush it to atoms, and grind it to powder with as little remorse as did Moses, the calf of old.
In pursuance of the plans just suggested, you opposed the admission of Missouri into the Union, except upon the condition of her renouncing slavery. Here was an unblushing infraction of the compromise you made when the Constitution was framed, and a direct violation of the spirit of that instrument, in all its provisions. A storm of course was raised, which was settled as usual by a compromise. So long have you been in the habit of breaking compromises, and so utterly indifferent to them have you become, that you cannot now wait for a suitable opportunity to break them; and you are at this moment engaged in breaking this last, by anticipation. In the last war, you withheld your troops from the service of the country, and afterwards demanded pay from the government to the amount of more than a million of money, for
their services
in marching and counter-marching about in your own territory. In this war, you lay hold of the purse-strings of the nation, and vow you will never let go until you get a pledge from the whole family, that
if
we are not driven or starved out of Mexico, and
if
we should make a treaty with her, and
if
by the terms of that treaty she should stipulate to pay the expenses of the war, and her old debt, and
if
she should pay it in land, and
if
that land should become settled, and become populous enough to be admitted into the Union, and claim to be admitted, without of its own choice objuring slavery—it shall not be received into the Union.
This makes your conduct in the first war resplendently virtuous; but that any other Sister in the Union, without the case-hardening through which you have gone, should, at a single leap, reach the platform on which you stand, and ever raise her head afterwards, is, to me, inexpressibly amazing. In looking down to the far-off position which you occupy, I feel that you are entitled to some credit for your ingenuity and enterprise in getting there; but as to
your companions,
they seem to me to have taken your character, only to add to it a new blemish—namely, rashness. The determination which you have formed to allow no more slave territory to come into the Union, apart from the
principle
involved in it, is, of all movements of abolitionism,may
conquer territory, which
may
give rise to unpleasant difficulties—is to surrender in advance more than we could lose by the threatened contest—to anticipate a breach of faith by removing at our expense the inducement to it, and to throw the honor of the nation and the army into the bargain. If we do not conquer Mexico, will her territory ever become a part of the Union?
Your abolition petitions, and your missions to Charleston and Orleans to stir up law suits about your black
citizens,
are part and parcel of the plans already exposed.
While you have been rushing on in your mad career, you have been unsparing in your abuse of me and my neighboring Sisters. I cannot call to mind that you ever breathed one kind sentiment, uttered one kind word, turned one kind look towards us. To Virginia, your elder Sister, and your great benefactor, you have been signally abusive and vindictive, because, to the sin of slavery, she has added the still greater sin, in your estimation, of exerting more influence in the councils of the nation, and producing more Presidents than any other member of the family. But “man-stealers,” “kidnappers,” “traders in blood,” “tyrants,” “murderers,” are the common appellations by which we are introduced to the world by the devout, meek, gentle, lamb-like sons of the “Pilgrim Fathers.” Engrave them, if you please, Sister, on Plymouth Rock, in this form:
MASSACHUSETTS,
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THE SERVICES RENDERED TO HER,
BY HER BELOVED SISTERS:
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia,
In Rescuing her from the Cruelties
OF AN UNNATURAL MOTHER,
Records upon this Consecrated Rock,
The distinguishing Virtues of these Affectionate Sisters:
Maryland—
The Man-Stealer.
Virginia—
The Kidnapper.
North Carolina—
The Trader in Blood.
South Carolina—
The Tyrant.
Georgia—
The Murderer.
And now what have we done, Sister, to merit this unkind treatment? What would you have us do, to save ourselves from further injury and insult, and you, from further self-abasement? There is but one answer to these questions, namely: “You own slaves and you refuse to emancipate them.” Well, let us discuss the matter calmly. I confess it will cost me a struggle to do it, for reasons apparent through your whole history; but I think, for the country's sake, I can forget who you are and what you are long enough to discuss the subject with you not only calmly, but fairly.
I own slaves, and I sin in so doing.
Suppose that this is all true; now what must I do? “
Why, emancipate them of course.
” Well, let us see the end of this course.
I own two hundred and eighty-one thousand slaves.But you should send them away.
” Well, I turn to my benevolent Sisters, who are moving heaven and earth to abolish slavery, and not one of them will receive them. Oh! think of the
Randolph
negroes, and
try to think
how I feel, at the abolition cry from Ohio. “
But send them to Africa.
” True; I have no ships of my own, and I apply to you, the greatest ship-owner in the Union, to transport them for me. And you exclaim:—“Be off! I am the most mortal enemy to Colonization on the Globe, and not a finger will I raise to promote it.” “
But keep them yourself, and furnish them with the means of living.
” Exactly! For how long, Sister? Not more than a year, I suppose. As they could not embark in the learned professions, I must furnish them with an outfit for agriculture. You would not think a half pound of meat a day, and a peck of corn a week, an over allowance for each, would you? Calculate the amount, if you please, Sister. But those capable of labor must have at least ten acres of land a piece, I suppose. Of these there are one hundred and forty thousand. We must give them, therefore, one million four hundred thousand acres. But they must have horses, ploughs, hoes, axes, &c., or the land will be of no avail to them;—and they must be clothed for a year, besides. I intended to have calculated the amount in money of all these things; but this would consume unnecessary time. You can do it; and you will see, that to furnish these means my own children must be beggared. All this proceeds upon the supposition, you perceive, that when I free the slaves, I am bound to provide these
freemen
with a living. Upon this head I have my doubts; but that the care of them, in this way, would dissolve all my social relations, break up my commerce, my schools, my colleges, my churches—in short, restore me to a state of nature, I have no doubt. Nor, if the clamorous Sisters of the abolition faith would receive them, could I endure the trouble and expense of transporting them—nor could I possibly send them abroad, if I would. Now, when these things are spread out before you, and you shut your eyes to them, and still persist in your machinations and railing against me, to what conclusion must the most unbounded charity be driven? We will reach it anon.
* I here follow the census of 1840, for the sake of the relative ages. The number is now over 300,000.
Another long letter is written, and yet I have not concluded what I have to say! Bear with me, Sister. I have permitted the account between us to run on for a long time, without a settlement; and, as is usual in such cases, it requires a longer time to settle than either of us supposed.
Your persecuted Sister,
GEORGIA.
LETTER III.
Dear Sister Mass:
In my last, I plainly showed you, how utterly impossible it was for me to emancipate my slaves. Why, then, am I denounced and vilified by
any one
for not doing it? But why are
you
among the number who thus treat me? Does it become the
Mother
of Slavery to revile the
Heir
of Slavery? Every non-slave-holding Sister should sympathise—deeply sympathize—with me, seeing that none of my children now living had anything to do with it in its inception. You all agree that it is a great evil—the direst curse that can befall a nation—how, then, should you all act to an innocent Sister, or, at least, to the innocent children of an erring Sister, who is under the curse? Imbitter it by harsh words and unkind treatment?—cut off her rights?—withdraw from her society? Will this mitigate its sorrows? Will this remove it? Why, Sister, am I, who am only your accessory in guilt, and who became thus far implicated only under the sorest temptation—why am I treated with less civility by you than the Turk, the Algerine, or the Russian? I hear of no efforts made by you to emancipate the slaves of these people, nor have I ever heard you speak harshly of them upon this score. This seems to be adding cruelty—unnatural, ungrateful, wanton cruelty—to your usual inconsistency.
Let us, in the next place, examine your system of warfare against Slavery. I omit your town-meetings, and the agencies used in them, because they are all within your legitimate prerogative; they are good schools for declamation, and excellent things for
abolishing
the distinctions of sex and color, while they are very harmless to me. Your first plan is to disregard all compromises entered into upon this subject, and to twist the Constitution out of joint as a part of this plan. Believe me, Sister, a project thus begun, never can succeed. How shall I address to you the reasons for this opinion without seeming to calumniate you? For myself, I look upon a compromise, entered into for the peace of the country, as involving a sanctity which is exceeded only by that which attaches to the communion and matrimonial vow. I should instinctively recoil from the wretch who would ask me to violate it. I think I might defy you to produce a case in which a clear breach of faith has ever been productive of ultimate good to the party guilty of it. On the other hand, I could produce hundreds, in which this conduct has been followed by the utter ruin of the perfidious party. When a cabinet council was held in France, in order to deliberate upon the propriety of violating a treaty, the treaty was read to the members in turn; all gave their opinions to the King, in which they unfolded the great advantages that he would derive from violating it. After hearing them all through, the Duke of Burgundy closed the conference by saying: “
Gentlemen, there is the Treaty!
” You must admire this sentiment, Sister, keen as is its reproof to you, unless, forsooth, you have worked in kitchens so long that you have lost your relish for the moral sublime.
But what shall we say to a deliberate infraction of a treaty made to bind together in peace and harmony, the several members of one great family! Surely, it is more sacred than a treaty between distinct nations. Now, add to it the sanction of an oath, which every member of the family who is called to the management of its local or general concerns, is obliged to take; and then measure the extent of its obligation if you can. To pervert its meaning, is to violate it in the worst of all ways. To keep within the letter and to violate its spirit, is to cover perfidy with meanness. You ask me indignantly whether I charge you with this vile conduct? Why—no: not yet, at least. I am only speaking of your clearly revealed plans, and it
is possible
that you may repent of them before you carry them into execution—or, which is more probable, you may be prevented from executing them.
Your next device is to contract the area of Slavery in the country. Ingenious as you are, Sister, especially in the pursuit of money, if millions were staked on it, you could find but one object in this project, and it is this: to confine mas?ers and servants to such a narrow territory, that in a little time they both cannot live on it. Thus far I can follow you; but what you hope for, when this point is reached, God only knows. At that point the whites must yield their territory to the blacks, and move away; or the whites must put the blacks, or the blacks must put the whites. to the sword. There is no other alternative; for, as you have seen, we could not remove them now—much less able will we be to do so then. Now, which of these issues do you yearn for, Sister? When I find all your sympathies on the side of the blacks—when I see them admitted to your pulpits and communion tables, and the whites excluded—when I witness your exasperation at the whites, and hear your ever streaming abuse of them, I am constrained to believe that you prefer the third alternative—that the blacks cut the throats of the whites. But when I hear you avowing that slave labor shall not come in competition with free labor—that no territory shall be added to the country, into which the free born sons of the North will have to commingle with the slaves of the South—with much more, which implies that the blacks, in your estimation, are a degraded race, not to be put on a level with whites—I am led to infer that when the throat-cutting tragedy comes off, you hope to see the whites the victors. Whatever you may desire, this will certainly be the end of that drama; and if you really sympathize with the slaves, you could not pursue a worse policy than to contract the area upon which the two races are to live, until want drives them to war. As to our giving the slaves our possessions, and moving to the free States, that, of course, will not be done; and if it were done, they would soon all perish. The only rational conclusion that I can draw from your conduct in this regard, is that you care for neither master nor slave, and that the true aim of this circumscribing policy is to weaken the power of slaveholders in the councils of the nation.
This conclusion is strengthened by many considerations:—your many complaints of that power—your attempts to reduce it during the last war—your opposition to the Colonization Society—your refusal to give a dollar to free the slave from bondage—your contempt of him when put in comparison with
Northern
freemen—the little encouragement you give him to come to your land—the coldness with which you treat the black who does go there—and the few privileges you allow him when he gets there. To reconcile such conduct, with either respect for the master or humanity to the slave, is beyond my ingenuity. And yet to suppose any being capable of such utter abandonment, as this conclusion would imply, for the paltry purpose of gaining a little brief authority, is to suppose that Vice has yeaned anew, and brought forth a monster that startles even Vice herself. I pray you, Sister, have mercy upon your reputation for justice, truth or sanity. Do not so speak, and so act as to bring them all in question; or to make them bring each other in question. If you really would emancipate the slave, without affecting the master, extend the area of slavery as widely as possible. Remember, if you please, (what I should be ashamed to confess my ignorance of,) that to extend the
area
of slavery, is not to increase the number of slaves. It is not to increase their burdens. Just the reverse. By as much as you widen the field of slavery, by so much do you increase the proportion of whites to blacks within its limits. By as much as this proportion is increased, by so much is the divisor of ownership increased, and the fewer must be the number which each white man will own. The fewer that each owns, the better will he treat them—the more certainly will he instruct them, and the more ready will he be to emancipate them. 1st, because he will have a warmer regard for them, from his closer intimacy with them, and 2d, because he can do it at a less sacrifice. Surely, there is no refinement or subtlety in this reasoning. Every body knows that the man who owns but three slaves, treats them better than does the man who owns fifty or a hundred. And if the whole number could be divided in the proportion of three to one, every man in the country would liberate his slaves, and give them a start in the world, the moment that he could supply their places with white servants. For verily,aims
and the
tendency
of them. Let us now look to the
fruits
of them, so far as they have been gathered.
First.
—You have paralized the Colonization Society; an Institution which united North and South, in the laudable enterprise of abolishing slavery without periling freedom, of blessing the black man without cursing the white, of seperating master and servant by a power which drew their hearts together as it drew their bodies asunder, and of changing the civil relations of the country, without violence to the constitution, or intrusion on either side. I have asked myself, why did God permit an Institution which promised so much good, to be the first victim of a fell spirit which threatened so much evil? Am I to take it as an indication of his favor, to these self-infurated fanatics? And I have found consolation, if not truth in the answer: that on this wise has he often permitted his own most benevolent designs to be met by the worms for whose benefit they were intended. Even our holy religion began with the crucifixion of its great Head, and the martyrdom of his disciples. He was of the seed of Abraham? And who was Abraham?—Be not alarmed Sister, I am not going to speak of his
household,
but his progeny—Who was Abraham? The man to whom the second promise of the Messiah was made; the father of the people to whom the Old Testament dispensation was committed. But how strange its beginning! Its dawn found that very people in the most abject slavery that ever afflicted man—at least, so I understand the Scriptures. A slavery foreordained by God himself, and continued for centuries. A strange precursor of the light which these people were to spread through the world! From these things, and others to which I might advert, I infer that the shock which the Colonization Society has received, is no proof that God does not mean to prosper it yet; or that he does mean to prosper the Vandalism which laid violent hands upon it. May it rise again with renewed vigor and strength, and may the good of all latitudes sustain it and defend it, as the ark of our political covenant. I am strengthened in the opinion just advanced by the fact that Abolitionism, after nearly thirty years' travail, has not yet produced even a mouse. Not a man has it liberated—not a blessing has it produced.
Secondly.
—You have severed the Churches, and thus, at one blow, cut the nerves of Protestantism, and the strongest bond of the Union. I speak of the first consequence, not
as
a Sectarian, but
to
a Sectarian, a recruiting sergeant of the Anti-Slavery League—(I have this moment read the announcement that the
Wilmot
proviso has passed the House—of course, I am not in a frame of mind to write temperately. Excuse me, until the return of better feelings. There you are, Mass, first in the breach of the Constitution.)—Nearly a day has rolled away, and I am again prepared to resume my letter.
You have sundered the Churches, and thereby produced a state of feeling as unpropitious to the cause of religion, as your political movements have been to the stability of the Union. And here I find great encouragement, in view of the revolution which your abolitionism is soon to produce.
In every instance in which we have dissolved our association with you, our peace and happiness have been greatly promoted. Can you say as much, Sister?
Thirdly.
—You have forced yourself almost entirely from the affections of your Southern Sisters, and led them to look with a cold, suspicious eye upon all your children who come hither. Many who would have received a hearty welcome years ago, and have been promptly introduced into a lucrative business, now wander
Fourthly.
—You have really rendered yourself contemptible to many of the slaves themselves. Of this I could give you some striking proofs. Forty years ago anything looking to the emancipation of our slaves, was spoken of only in whispers, and was printed only in asterisks; now, we all talk as openly and freely about the abolitionists and their aims, as we do of almost any other subject. The truth is, they have heard so long, and so much about abolitionism, and seen so little good result from it—that they begin to think that you really care nothing for them, or that your friendship is not worth having. The soundest philosophy that ever emanated from a negro's brain.
Fifthly.
—You have spread your incendiary principles abroad, and with them the spirit which you breathed into them, until your proselytes can overleap the barriers of the Constitution, with as little scruple as you feel in violating common promises. You smile at their proficiency, not perceiving that you are breaking down the only safeguard which you have from the fast growing power of the West, and establishing precedents which will come in vengeance upon you at no distant day. Not perceiving that you are putting the scourge, of which you have been complaining for forty years, into hands from which you never can wrest it again. Believe me, Sis, it will not be long before you will want the help of the much abused South, against whom you have been practicing your political witchcraft and diabolical incantations with so much success. You admit, do you, the power of Congress to say what must be the character of the people, and what their private relations, and what conditions they must have in their Constitution, before they can be admitted into the Union. Very well. For the poor consolation of being thought, by and by, wiser than my very shrewd and self-conceited Yankee Sister, permit me
to enter my solemn protest against this novel, startling, revolutionary doctrine. By the Shade of
Hamilton,
your Mentor in politics, and
Madison,
mine—joint architects of the splendid political fabric under which we live—I protest against it! I pronounce it an open, flagrant violation of a double obligation—the Missouri Compromise and the Constitution.
What would have been thought of the man, who, when North Carolina consented to come into the Union, should have proposed to exclude her, on the ground of her owning slaves? Nothing could have saved him from universal execration, but the plain indication in the proposition itself, that the man was deranged. But such is abolitionism, which regards no law human or divine. Of all the maladies that ever seized on man, it is the most remarkable. It is a disease in which there are no stages—no gradations. Its first symptoms are, a dethronement of the reason, a deadening of the sympathies, an oblivion of friendships, and abandonment of shame, a forgetfulness of vows, an extinction of patriotism, a recklessness of consequences, and a rabid fury, which knows neither bounds nor decency. Its victim is no sooner seized than he springs up like a galvanized corpse—glares horribly upon his guiltless friends—banishes them from his heart—strikes down his compatriot—raves at his Christian brother—snatches the eucharistic elements from his hand—drives him from the pulpit—strips him of his official robes—appropriates his contributions—spends them for weapons to wound him—rushes to the arms of the negro—then screams out “that he is ruled by slaves”—and calls on Anarchy, in the name of Justice, to absolve him from their tyranny. Approach him kindly, and he insults you. Ask him what you must do for him, and he is mute. Tell him you know not what to do, and he gives you the lie direct. Administer to his cravings, and he craves the more. Deny what he asks, and he usurps it. He seems to believe himselffavor
—courtesy,
condescension
—privileges,
concessions;
and with an arrogance, that despotism would blush to assume, he proclaims what in Church and State he will tolerate, and what he will never allow! He feeds and fattens on what he professes to abhor, and drives from his borders what he professes to love. With the eye of the eagle by day, and of the owl by night, he pries into kitchens, quarters and shanties, for something to snap at; and when driven hence, he sets up a pitious howl of persecution. He shrieks out at slavery, and calls on the Catholic to help him crush it. He shrieks out at Popery, and calls on the slave-holder to help him crush it—then hurls a firebrand into the habitation of the one, and the Church of the other. He begs, and abuses his government—stretches its power and rebels against it. receives its largesses, and strikes at its pillars. And, what is not the least remarkable circumstance attending this unheard of malady, the world seems to consider the name of it a sufficient apology for all its extravagances. “
He is an Abolitionist,
” covers all guilt, quiets all fear, excuses all insults, pardons all injuries. At home and abroad, on sea and on land, in peace and in war, in trade and in treaties, Abolitionism must receive the first courtesies, and then the interests of the nation.
Such are the fruits of Abolitionism, and such is Abolitionism
itself.
Its
promises
in my next. In the meantime be it remembered, that the coun try owes it to you, as it does mainly, the servitude which it was intended to remove. Thus, by your lust, you engendered a disease, which, by your quackery, you have turned into a cancer.
Your outraged Sister,
GEORGIA.
LETTER IV.
Dear Sister Mass:
Having shown you what abolitionism
has
produced, I am now to show you what it
will
produce. It will produce a dissolution of the Union! This is inevitable, unless God interposs to arrest its progress; for it is manifest that this, or destruction, is the only alternative left to the South. She has tried to arrest its progress by threats, (poor expedients,) concessions and compromises; and they have produced no other effect than to embolden aggression. Nearly twenty years ago, one of my sons told his brethren in particular, and the sons of the South in general, to quit their party wrangling, for a time at least, and to unite in some precautionary measures against Abolitionism. He told them to draw a line which they all could agree upon, and say to the abolitionists, as with the voice of one man, “the moment you reach that limit we leave you for ever.” As that, when slavery should be abolished in the District of Columbia—or when a certain number of abolitionists should get into Congress—or when that body passed the first act in relation to slavery—or anything else that would enable the abolitionist to know before hand just how far he might go, and the South to move in a body as soon as he overstepped the limits. The same person said that abolitionism would inevitably grow, and grow rapidly, at the North—that the pious would espouse it from principle, and the politician from interest; and that, as soon as it became general at the North, nothing could keep it from oppressing the South intolerably, but the assurance that theyour
ruin.” And, Madam, suppose this true—would that afford you any gratification? I verily believe it would; for unprovoked malignity and persecution are never satisfied, until they see their victim at the rack or the stake.
But let us calmly examine this thing. We shall hardly separate before we shall be involved in war. The aggressions which drive off the South will not cease at the separation; they will rather be more flagrant, because wrath will then take the place of sophistry, on the strong side, and that wrath will be stimulated by envy at the peace and prosperity of the South, and by disappointment of all your expectations as to the result of your mischievous projects. War will probably ensue. But it will be a war in which the South will be united to a man, and emboldened by the thorough conviction that they have been the objects of unrelenting persecution and oppression. The North, on the other hand, will be divided. There will be a vast difference in paying the expenses of a war out of your own pockets, and paying it out of Uncle Sam's, especially when your revenue is to be collected from your own foreign commerce. Withal, very many of your people even now see that you are decidedly in the wrong; and many abolitionists, when they see the results of your course, will wake from the dream into which your oily tongued politicians have lulled them.
Voting
down slaveholders, and
cutting
down slaveholders, will be very different things to them.
As for you, Sister Mass., you will be the very first to bolt from the war-party. You never have supported your country in a war, and you never will: for this plain reason, that it always brings your love of money and your love of country in direct conflict; or, if I mistake the
reason,
the
fact
is enough for my purpose, as I think you are now too old to change your habits. With us it will be victory or death—with you, it will be only victory or disgrace; and as by that time victory will cost you something, and disgrace nothing, your own good sense would lead you to choose the latter. We will be united, then, and you will be divided. We will be on the right side and you on the wrong. This, to my mind, settles the issue of the war at once. “But you would have the marine, and you would lay hands upon our cotton, rice and tobacco.” Not so fast, Sister. About this time, when your factories are shut up, and your “free labor” is in the field, you will be amazed to see how the Abolitionism of England cools. She will be exceedingly respectful to you as her old ally in benevolent enterprises; but then she will tell you, that she never thought of abolishing slavery in any other way, than by the moral agencies of religion
“But we would blockade your ports, and then what would you do?” Why, then, the British carrying trade must stop—her cotton factories must stop, and an immense trade must be stifled. She would, therefore, tell you, “that while she was ever disposed to respect the rights of beligerents, yet when the conduct of one of the parties was so manifestly leveled at her interest, she never could submit to it, unless it was in the strictest conformity to the law of nations. If, therefore, you did not put a force at every Southern port greater than she could put there, then you would be considered without the pale of that principle of international law, which considers no blockade valid unless it be by a force sufficient to sustain the blockade. But still, as her sense of justice always weighed down every other consideration in her estimation, and as the question might be settled by the best of arguments, a practical experiment, she would propose to you to try the force of your one seventy-four and three frigates, against her eight seventy-four's. And if your force proved sufficient to sustain the blockade, why then with all courtesy she would yield her trade and her factories, in deference to the law of nations.”
But all this is upon the supposition, that upon the division, you help yourselves as your churches have done, to all the joint property. But this may not be the case. What your best men have already done (or plainly mean to do,) it is very natural, you may wish to do; but then there is such a mixture of officers and men from both sections, in the army and navy, and the several departments of State, and such a dispersion of the joint property all over the Union, that in the scramble we should be certain to get some. All the ports and arsenals within our limits of course we should get; and in the breaking up, the chances for the army and navy would be in favor of that side on which justice lay: for these servants of the nation at large have none of your abolition notions. They would lean to the side of the injured party; or at least they would be apt to divide according to their domestic relations.
Let us now come to the battle field. Here you think you would have greatly the advantage of us, because you look only at the numerical strength of the two parties. But what is numerical strength in modern warfare? Absolutely nothing, where both parties can carry to the field more than either can support there. We can muster into the field an army five times as large as Buonaparte conquered half Europe with, five times as large as Alexander conquered the world with, and larger than any nation upon the face of the globe ever carried to the field, save one; and that one was whipt by a little band, no braver than the Texan Rangers. It is almost a year since war was declared against Mexico, and yet with the whole numerical force of the Union at command, we have but a little over twenty thousand men in arms between the Rio Grande and the Pacific. The Government is already, even in the midst of victory, not a little embarrassed for means to carry it on; and many (you, as ever, among the foremost,) are complaining bitterly of the expenses of this war. You and your confederates would not hope to conquer me and mine with an armygood luck,
happen to conquer your one hundred thousand; why then you would have to recruit your army with new levies to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand in all. Now, when we saw you coming with one hundred and fifty thousand, we would meet them with two hundred thousand, and the same fortune might attend our arms as before. In the mean time, with a debt of six thousand three hundred and eighty-seven millions five hundred thousand dollars, and equipments to be furnished
de novo,
it would be very inconvenient for you to get up and support the new levies long enough to get to the battle-field. Do you not perceive, then, that to presume upon your numbers, is very great folly? Certainly the Southron who entertains any fears upon that head, must be a very great coward, or a very great simpleton. “But there is your internal foe; what would you do with that?” I answer, just keep it making supplies for the army. No man who is acquainted with the feelings and condition of this people, could suffer one moment's uneasiness, if you were to come to our borders and blow the blast of freedom as loud as three-fold thunder. I will put the case in the strongest possible light. Suppose, instead of our advancing to meet you upon your own territory, we allow you to advance into the very heart of Virginia, and that from every plantation that you pass, and from all others within three miles of you, you gather recruits of field-hands. Do you suppose, that ten, twenty and fifty miles from your track, there would be any insurrection at all? You may rest assured there would not be; for the plain and obvious reason, that these people can form no concert of action; and to rise by households or plantations at a time, without any arms, without discipline, without plan, would be to insure their destruction—a truth which, if they did not foresee, they would soon learn from the fate of those who should attempt a revolt. I put out of view all feeling of attachment from these people to their owners, which in thousands, and tens of thousands of instances, would be a certain guaranty against hostility from them under any circumstances. All that your armies could pick up and take care of, might follow you; but no more, my word for it. This is not mere speculation; it has been twice demonstrated by actual experiment. During the Revolutionary War, the British
were all through our country. Masters, for a time, of most of the territory of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia; but such a thing as the slaves taking sides against their masters, I never heard of. But I heard of thousands of instances, wherein they served them in battle, took care of the wives and children, bore them away from peril, (sometimes on their own backs,) kept watch for their safety, bore tidings of them to their masters by night, and performed ten thousand kind offices to them besides. During the last war, the British were all along my coast, landing when they would and where they would; and yet no one ever heard of a revolt of slaves occasioned by their presence or encouragement. They took off some, to be sure, and so might you, if you felt disposed to burden your armies with them; but the moment you dismissed them, to take care of themselves, that moment would they begin to perish, or go back to their masters. These facts should satisfy any reasonable being, that a revolt of the slaves is not at all to be dreaded. No people, profoundly ignorant of government, with no settled
Now, remove all danger of insurrection, and I think you will have to admit, that instead of being as you suppose, the weakest people in the world, we are the strongest people in the world. This is reducible almost to a demonstration. To illustrate it, let us suppose (as we can without an effort) that half your population were like the beasts, birds, and reptiles of Egypt, i. e. held sacred. That neither your friends nor your foes would under any circumstances, molest them. That they labored industriously from year's end to year's end, in the production of the most valuable commodities in the world, and that they gave all the profits of their industry, beyond a bare support to the other half—would not this half, other things being equal, be the most invincible people on the face of the globe? Most assuredly they would; for the unanswerable reason, that every man of them might take the field, without abstracting a scruple from the care and support of his family, the annual productions of the country, its agriculture, commerce, or manufactures. Who might not well afford to go to war, when others bore the expenses of it! Now, with the qualification just mentioned, (and which I think just no qualification at all,) we are precisely in this situation. Almost ever since the government was established, from a half to three fourths of the foreign commerce of the country has been sustained by Southern productions; productions, which left free to seek their own markets, and the revenues of which confined within our own limits, would make us as rich as we are powerful. If all foreign commerce were cut off, all our efficient industry might be turned to raising provisions and clothing for the army. But how is it with you, Sister? To go to war you must take your men from their families, turn your productive industry to consuming industry—close up your redundant factories—dismantle your shipping, and with your means of paying, thus reduced, accumulate an enormous debt upon your shoulders—not as great, I grant you, as I made it upon your son's data, by four-fifths; but far too great for you to endure. This, too, is a fact established by history. You pronounced yourself ruined by the war of 1812, when it was not a year old, and you pointed to your useless shipping, by which you had lived, as the proof. Hence it is, and only hence, that you ever have complained, and ever will complain of war. What nonsense is it then, for you to be bullying us with your freemen. The lion's skin cannot make the wearer a lion, as fable shows.
All these things have I known for many years past—but knowing my sons to be too impetuous any how, and that many of them thought of the issues of a war between us, as you think of them—that their error in this regard tended to the peace of the country, and to the perpetuity of that union which I revered as the ark of our safety, the pledge and the proof of our glory and our greatness, and the monument of our wisdom, I have hitherto forborne to disclose them. But the time has come, when silence in this regard becomes cowardice, and forbearance a decoy to you, treason to the country, desertion of my children, and desecration of the most holy relics of our fathers. By your magic art, a spirit has been waked up which baffles all description, and all philosophy. This—, what shall I call it? verily I am afraid to designate it. I was going to say “
hell-born
”—but it seems to haveEnthusiasm?
” It has too much of perdition in it for that—this
Massachusettsia,
this satanic puritanism, this puritanic satanism, is laying waste all that is great, and glorious, and good, and beautiful and lovely, in our Heaven befriended land. The bonds of religion, patriotism, kindred and party, all snap at its touch. Reason is lost on it, persuasion insults it, endurance provokes it. There is but one expedient left; which is to hold up the mirror of the future before it, and if this will not stay its onward march, why, then let it come; and when it shall have completed its work, and Despotism shall smile over its ruins, and exclaim, “I told you so!” I, at least, can reply with a clear conscience, “thou canst not say I did it.”
Your indignant Sister,
GEORGIA.
LETTER V.
Madam,
When I took up the pen for the first time to address you, I had not the most distant idea of extending my remarks beyond the limits of one or two letters at farthest; and here am I at the fifth. Well, bear with me; I have never troubled you before, and I do not expect ever to trouble you again.
I have brought your history down to the present time, and I have foreshown you the dreadful end of it. In so doing, I have often had to trace your windings through good company, who honestly espoused your principles—or rather your opinions—and who may perhaps feel themselves implicated by what I have said of you. If so, they do both themselves and me injustice. I have noticed your conduct in these connections only to show its peculiar features
in you;
such as cruelty, vindictiveness, inconsistency, ingratitude, and the like; and not to censure it
per se.
Thus, I have noticed your conduct during the last war, not because you opposed it, much less to cast reflections upon any who oppose this, but to show the
mode
and
manner
of your opposition—the unreasonableness of it, in the mother of half the impressed seamen of the country—and the unblushing confidence, not to say effrontery, with which you turned it to your own private and special interest; but more especially to show the precise time and place, at which you formed the resolution to crush the slave power at the South, or to crush the Union. This was one of the leading objects of the Hartford Convention, as one of its resolutions proves, and hence the perfect identity in policy and pursuit of the Trio who formed it. All since has been merely in subservience to this plan. This much, however, I will venture to say, that to oppose this war, or any other, declared by the constituted authorities of the country,
by withholding the means necessary to a successful prosecution of it,
argues a pride or an obstinacy of opinion, which extinguishes every noble and patriotic feeling of the human heart, and even this kind of oppression is magnanimous, when compared with that of Mr.
Wilmot.
I have adverted to your fawning on the Government for protection, not to cast reflections upon those who honestly espouse the restrictive system, (among whom are some of the wisest and the best) but to show your bearing and daring through the whole progress of the system. I meant to hold up the Arch-Abolitionist to the eyes of the world in her true character; and I did not mean to allow her to escape exposure by getting into genteel company. I think I see plainly that the days of this great and glorious Republic are numbered—that it is soon to become the victim of one of the most frightful, disgusting monsters, that ever reared its head among a Christian people. I consider you the mother of it; and I wish to leave your portrait to our common offspring, that they may know its lineage from its resemblance to its
And now, having closed your history, I have again and again, run my mind's eye over your life, to see if I could not find one magnanimous, noble, generous act to relieve its dark shading; and I cannot find one. If I could, I certainly would give you credit for it; for it would be wanton cruelty to do you injustice, when justice itself is little else than unmitigated castigation. You have erected a monument to be sure; and what barbarian has not done that? But what barbarian ever before raised a monument in honor of his ancestors, at the very moment when he was pulling down the most magnificent and hallowed structures of those very ancestors? What barbarian ever before commemorated by a monument the valor of his sires, at the very moment when he was proclaiming to the world, that the only fruit of that valor, was a government of slaves, hostile to the laws of God and nature, and achieved by the joint labors of their fathers and manstealers? Even your monument is a deception; for it does not indicate the true feelings of the builder. Had you taken the stones of it from your father's sepulchres, and ground up their bones to make the cement of it, it would have been a more truthful remembrancer. Then it would have proclaimed to unborn generations, the heroism of your ancestors, and the apostacy of their children. “There it stands!” exclaimed your son, triumphantly; when probably some of the very blood that it covered, would have been considered pollution to any pulpit in Boston. I, too, have erected a monument. Its place is in * During the war of 1812, Governor
† On the 13th June, 1813, the Senate of Massachusetts passed the following resolution: “
“
The last soil that the gallant
‡ The author doubtless alludes to Dr.
The one is
Greene,
the noble son of that ignoble mother, the dwarf of the Hartford Convention—she who now wars upon the land that contains his relics, and who would deny his children the common rights of American citizens. But when I launch a curse at her, which shall light upon him—when I come to treat the slaves of
Greene,
with more respect than the children of
Greene,
—when I defame the land from which I draw my chief support—When I yoke myself to a Jezebel, in her unholy war upon God's servants, God's altars, and man's most hallowed shrines—may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
The other is
Pulaski,
the distinguished Pole, who fell in defence of the city which now embosoms his cenotaph. His Mother, too, was set upon by tyrants, who first massacred and then quartered her. In her death-struggle, I did not justify her enemies and condemn her.Strong, of Massachusetts, in one of his Messages held this language, which was cordially approved by an overwhelming majority of the Legislature: “No State in the Union can have a greater interest, or feel a stronger desire to protect Commerce, and maintain the legitimate rights of Seamen, than this Commonwealth.
Owners of one-third of all the navigation, and furnishing one-half of all the seamen, &c.”—“Great Britain only claims the right of taking her own subjects from neutral vessels. In doing this, from similarity of language, our citizens have been sometimes subject to impressment. But, so far as I have heard, they have been discharged,
when application was made in their behalf, AND EVIDENCE FURNISHED OF THEIR CITIZENSHIP. In some instances there may have been a wanton exercise of power by impressing officers,
but it is impossible for the best regulated State wholly to control the action of its subjects, &c.” “She asserts that her seamen are essential to her safety; that though they are not liable to be taken from our national ships, and we have a right to protect them, while they remain within our territory; yet, if they pass into her dominions,
or if, in transacting their own affairs on the highway of nations they come within her power, she has a right to take them by virtue of her prior claim—that she never can relinquish the right, so long as we employ her seamen, without endangering the existence of her Navy. What hope of a peace, then, can reasonably be entertained,
when such a SACRIFICE
is required of her?” This from the mother of half the impressed seamen of the country, and the employer of half the British seamen on board our vessel!Whereas, a proposition has been made to this Senate for the adoption of sundry resolutions, expressive of their sense of the gallantry and good conduct exhibited by Captain
James Lawrence, Commander of the United States ship of war Hornet,
and the officers and crew of that ship, in the destruction of his Britanic Majesty's ship Peacock.
And whereas, it has been found that former resolutions of this kind, passed on similar occasions relative to other officers engaged in like service,
have given great discontent to many of the good people of this Commonwealth, it being considered by them an encouragement and excitement to the present
unjust, unnecessary and INIQUITOUS
war; and on that account the Senate deem it
their duty to refrain from acting on said proposition, &c.:Resolved, as the sense of the Senate of Massachusetts, that in a war like the present, waged
without justifiable cause, and prosecuted in a manner which indicates that conquest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a
moral and RELIGIOUS people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits, which are not immediately connected with our sea coast and soil.”Lawrence ever trod was the soil of Massachusetts. “Don't give up the Ship!” were his last words. Let them be the battle-cry of all who would keep the old Constitution afloat.Paul F. Eve, a distinguished Professor of Surgery in the Medical College of Augusta, Georgia, who was for a time Surgeon in the Polish Army.—
Eds.
All this is true, and it is no less true of me than of all my Southern Sisters. Can you say as much? No, madam, no. Take the string of acquittances and substitute
ever
for
never
in them, and you will have your character fairly but delicately drawn. And now to the point of all my letters. How comes it to pass, that the strongest of the sisterhood have banded with you, against me? This is amazing—astounding—soul-inflaming. “
We have a fellow-feeling upon the subject of Slavery.
” Granted; nobody censures you for that. But does a fellow-feeling upon the subject of Slavery, drown every other noble and generous feeling of the human heart? Does it abolish the distinctions of character—of virtue and vice—of truth and falsehood—of right and wrong? Does it reverse the edicts of conscience, the laws of Nature, the rules of society, and the canons of Divine truth? Does it turn insult, abuse, oppression, usurpation and aggression into virtues? Does it place a
Washington
and an
Arnold
upon the same level? Verily, from what is passing before our eyes, it would seem so. Saint and sinner, Christian and infidel, black and white, law-maker and law-breaker, magistrate and culprit, all band together in fraternal embrace, and cry out triumphantly, “See how we are united as one man upon this subject!” The Christian goes deliberately to work to root out Slavery from the bible—the fanatic to root it out of the church—the politician to root it out of the constitution, and the disorganizer too root everything out of the country which does not work against it. Out of such a compound no good can come. Of this I am almost as confident as if God had revealed it to me. An explosion is all that can be expected from it. An explosion, which I should not be at all surprised to see shaking down the pillars of Church and State at the North, while the sound thereof is hardly heard at the South. I think I see the elements at work which are to produce it. The grave and the reasonable of the Church—the
Waylands,
the
Bangs's,
and the
Rices
are clamored down—and the wild and boisterous enthusiast rules the Synod. The hand of Justice trembles when a Slave case is before her—Magistracy is awestruck when called to deliver up the fugitive to his master, and too often appeases the mob at the expense of the constitution. Rank violations of contract, followed by Heaven daring murder, find apologists, if not protectors, in men of note. The people are inflamed with harangues against Slavery, and, in theirmadness, set upon their fellow-citizens. Such is the state of things at the North. But this compacted phalanx is arrayed against the Slavery of the South, and we have seen its plan of attack. What now has it done—in all its unity of strength, what has it done? It has driven home Southern Christians, and seized on their property; and yet never was the Southern Church in a more healthful condition. It so happened (I will not say it was so ordered,) that of a single Church five hundred thousand moved off as if by one impulse—nearly as many more of another Church did the like. Thenceforward all has been peace among this people.
Southern power was to have been put down.
We have seen the fruits of this effort.
Slavery was to be hemmed in.
By means almost miraculous, the empire of Slavery has been extended beyond the stretch of any other empire on the globe in the same time. When the battle went North, defeat drove us back—now the battle goes South, victories, the most dazzling, cover our armies with glory.
Slavery was to be driven out of the country.
Thirty years' labor of Sphynx, and seven years' labor of the undivided band, has not emancipated one single slave, nor cut a thread of Slavery's bonds. But it has cut the bonds of the Union, riddled the Constitution, and disgraced the Country. Who but madmen or desperadoes would persist in it? Well, if it must be so, come on with your solidWilmot's
movement encourages me to hope for this much at least. By a single leap from—no one knows where—he has reached the fame in the political world, which his distinguished namesake, the Earl of Rochester, bears in the moral world. Let him henceforward be called “
My Lord,
” whatever the constitution may say to the contrary. This first and only breach of it, on the part of the South, will be pardoned in consideration of his matchless intrepidity. His achievement is a grateful presage to us that abolitionism is soon to assume a more tangible form. It will be a relief to us to be done with the everlasting irritants which you are applying to us, to know that we are through the blistering and cauterising process—and that your next visit is to be decisive of our fate for weal or for woe. Your
agitating,
from which you promise yourselves so much, and which you think has done so much, be pleased to remember is not the thing which annoys us. You may igitate until all the peculence of your community rises to the top, as it is fast doing, for aught that we care; if, in your shivers, you will be good enough to keep your hands off our bonds and title-papers. The agitation of a distant pack in full cry gives us no uneasiness; but the agitation of rats in the escritoir is insufferably tantalizing.
LETTER VI.
Madam,
I said in my first letter that if you pushed your abolitionism to the disruption of the Union (which I see plainly you mean to do,) the consequences would be far more disastrous to you than to me. This I asserted with much confidence, and I am now prepared to give you the reason of a prediction which seems so preposterous to you. I have already shown you that, with nothing to dread from our slaves, we of the South are better prepared for war than any people on the face of the earth; and I showed you that the Southron must be nothing but a hare in man's form, who entertains any fear from that quarter. I have none—not the least. I reminded you also, that the abolition cohorts never could stick together through a single campaign—that they never would bear the expense of it—and that of all others you would be the first to sneak out of the war upon this ground. You never have favored a war of your country yet, and you never will, until war becomes a money making business; and as to binding you to the common standard by
pledges
and
promises,
that is out of the question. You have no friend who would trust you a minute upon the faith of these. Wince not at this—you cannot cite me to a pledge that you ever kept. But these are not the grounds of my confidence—at least not the principal grounds. It rests upon the word of God. I approach this with solemn reverence, and I beg you for once to fling aside your theatrics and advance to it calmly with me. I confess, that if to hold slaves be a sin under all circumstances, I am a sinner and a great sinner; but God knows that I do not know how to rid myself of the sin, without committing what seems to me a still greater sin. But I am perfectly convincedyou,
and supposing you no
particeps criminis,
He would hardly sustain you in a war got up to punish my transgression. But on your part the war will not even have this slight justification. It will be a war growing out of a long course of political shuffling and duplicity, under the guise of anti-slavery—every step of which is marked by some petty meanness or God-defying sin.
I have to confess that some of my children have abused their authority over their slaves, and in some instances treated them with injustice and cruelty; but the scenes which your Abolition-libelers have pictured forth to stir the passions and move the heart—such as chaining the slave by his whole length to a prostrate log, and two men whipping him at the same time—putting him in a vat and turning a stream into it, which he could keep from drowning him only by bailing with immense and unremitted labor, without food or sleep for days—gibbeting him, and leaving his carcass to be devoured by vultures, with many other deeds of like kind, I never saw. The man who would do such a thing would be an object of universal detestation through the whole South, and would be amenable to the law as a murderer. The rule of my government is, that the master shall not exercise cruelty to his slaves; he shall allow them needful food and clothing, and he shall suffer death for the murder of them. Still, I confess, (for I will put down nothing here that history will not confirm,) that cruelties are sometimes exercised by the master upon the slave. Considering the number of masters and servants in this latitude, I cannot say that is
often
the case—in truth, it is very seldom the case. The reason is plain enough: it is not the master's
interest
to be cruel to his slave. And hence the slaves of the South have indulgences extended to them in hundreds and thousands of instances, that the white man never receives. They are hardly ever prosecuted but for the most heinous offences. Our penitentiaries are filled with whites, for offences which slaves commit every day almost with impunity. If you did not suppose us both fools and brutes, you would learn from this the absurdity of your slanders in regard to our cruelty towards this people. What man so stupid and so brutal, as in cool-blood, to murder himself out of six or eight hundred dollars? Still, at times, passion gets the better of judgment and interest, and my children are cruel to their slaves. Against all such, here stands the record: “And ye masters do the same things unto them,” (i.e., act from the same principle, with an eye to the will and glory of God,) “forbearing threatening,” (and of course abuse,) “knowing that your Master also is in Heaven”—“Masters give unto your servants that which is just and equal,” (or equitable,) “knowing that ye also have a Master in Heaven.” I have to confess, too, that in our courts, the rights of the slave are not as strictly regarded as the rights of the white man—not as strictly regarded I mean, by our
juries,
for as to our
judges,
if they lean at all, it is always on the side of the slave. I know of no case to the contrary. Against such juries the record speaks: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver,” &c., “and to reserve the unjust unto the day of Judgment.” “God shall smite thee, thou
whited
wall: for sittest thou to judge me-after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to law?” “Moreover, I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there; and I said in my heart: God shall judge the righteous and the wicked.”
I have to confess that some of my laws (very few,) are too severe upon slaves. If I am correct in my opinion here, this, at least, is my sin, whatever may be said of the others, which seem to me to belong to only a few of my children. These laws were deemed necessary to my safety at the time they were made, and are so
Let us examine your character, and that of your children, by the same rule. I cannot take up each offence, and apply the appropriate scriptures to it, for this would require a pamphlet, if not a volume. You and your children, then, have disobeyed the commands of your government—you have spoken evil of it in times and ways innumerable—you have abused its magistrates—you have plotted against its integrity—you have violated your vows to it repeatedly—you have abused its powers to your own selfish purposes—you have been ungrateful, malicious, void of natural affection, slanderous, backbiting, headstrong, deaf to reason, covetous, despisers of those that are good, persecutors, injurious, breeders of mischief, stirrers-up of strife—you have seduced servants from their masters, harbored the servant and insulted the master—you (or your colleagues, whose conduct you approved,) have violated the constitution in refusing to deliver up fugitive slaves. You have passed laws to uphold your children in violating the constitution—you have driven from your churches as good men as this land, if not this world, holds; and, if all signs fail not, you will take their contributions (the largest in the Lord's treasury,) and spend them on their persecutors and defamers. You have (as I believe,) grossly perverted the Word of God, and made it speak a language which its Author never meant to speak. You have set upon good men of both parties, honestly and peaceably engaged in ridding the country of Slavery, in a way grateful to both master and servant, and love-begetting in all engaged in it. You have crippled their energies, and thwarted the noble enterprise by every means in your power. You have sent incendiary papers and pamphlets to the South, well calculated to enkindle a servile war in our families. This you have done in the name of Religion and Freedom; but Religion returns you nothing but groans for your trouble, and Freedom moves not a hair's breadth to your embrace. Still you persist. No fruits yet, but the fruits of bitterness—no plan to be executed—no response to “What must we do?”—nothing before you but anarchy and bloodshed—nothing behind you but discord and desolation—and still you persist. Hear the word of the Lord—it seems to me prophetic, as well as denunciatory.
“This know, also, that in the last days
perilous times shall come.
For men will be lovers of their own selves—
covelous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers,—fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures
more than lovers of God;
having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:
from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses and lead captive
silly women,
laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth;
men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
But they shall proceed no farther, for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.
”
“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations: and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: but chiefly them that walk after the flesh, &c.,—and
despise government. Presumptuous
are they,
self willed; they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
These
are w?lls without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest,
to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.
For when they speak great swelling words of vanity,
they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them, who live in error.
While they promise them liberty,
they themselves are the
servants
of corruption
”—“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, &c., &c.,—
who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator,
who is blessed forever—being filled with all unrighteous—wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters—despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. Who knowing the judgment of God, (that they which commit such things are worthy of death,)
not only do the same,
but
have pleasure in them that do them.
”
“
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers; For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God
—Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath but also for conscience sake—Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”
“Submit yourselves unto every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the King as supreme; or
unto Governors,
as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and
not as using your liberty, for a cloak of maliciousness,
but as servants of God.”
“The works of the flesh are—hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies. (But the fruit of the Spirit, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law.)”
“A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither does a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit—For every tree is known by his own fruit, &c.—”
“Vow, and
pay unto the Lord your vows, &c.
” —“When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure, &c.;—pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, neither say thou before the Angel, it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands?”
“But let none of you suffer, &c., as an evil-doer, or as a
busy-body in other men's matters.
”
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
Relying upon these scriptures, I fear you not; nor all who may combine with you. I mark your gathering hosts, as calmly as I view the setting sun New York is your strongest ally. The plague spot is upon her. She has the guilt of kidnapping upon her skirts. It was but late ly, her sons collected the last bonds given to them by mine, for negroes, which they brought hither in chains from Africa. On her statute-book, may be seen laws more cruel to the slave, than any that are to be found on mine. Her Governors have overleaped the Constitution, to protect the slave, while the black freeman begs for bread in her streets.
Her religious press, is closed to the complaints and arguments of injured Christians, South. Her political press, holds up to scorn and contempt her noblest sons, because they will not forswear themselves to further a lawless warfare upon Southern rights. I do not fear New York.
Ohio is a strong and clamorous ally. Ohio permits the emancipated slave to buy land in her domain, pay for it, and then looks camly on, while her son's repel him penniless from her borders. Hear their tender breathings of mercy and compassion for hose in whose behalf she is laying waste Church and State:
“
Resolved,
That we will not live among negroes; as we have settled here first we have fully determined that we will resist the settlement of blacks and mulattoes in this county to the full extent of our means—
the bayonet not excepted.
“
Resolved,
That the blacks of this county be, and they are
respectfully
requestedwe pledge ourselves to remove them peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.
“
Resolved,
That we who are here assembled, pledge ourselves not to employ, or trade with any black or mulatto person, in any manner whatsoever,
or permit them to have any grinding done at our mills,
after the first day of January next.”
Abolition looks calmly, if not approvingly, upon all this, and reads us lectures on the demoralizing tendency of slavery!
“I wish,” said a Virginian to his brother, resident in Ohio, “to emancipate one hundred slaves, and I desire you to take them to Ohio.” “I cannot do it,” replied the brother. “The citizens of Ohio will not allow me to bring one hundred negroes among them to settle. But do you take them to Wheeling, and there place them on a steamboat for Cincinnati, and speak of taking them to New-Orleans; and while you are looking out for another boat, give the chance, and
the Abolitionists will steal the whole of them
and run them off, and then celebrate a perfect triumph over them. But if you take them to the same men, and ask them to receive and take care of them, they will tell you to take care of them yourself.” I do not fear Ohio.
Pennsylvania is another strong confederate. She too, if I mistake not, is an old kidnapper, though less guilty than New York, and both less guilty than yourself. This used to be the great slave market of the Union. Many a slave is now living who was sold from that State while its free laws were running to maturity. Thus did most of the confederates of the original household—make laws to emancipate their slaves at some distant day, and in the mean time sell all that could be sold to the trader. Hence the small black population in those States. Such a combination as this I never can fear until I distrust the truth of God. I could not fear it under any circumstances; much less can I fear it, when the proof stands prominently forth, that its aim is not
liberty,
but
power.
It works admirably to your purpose thus far; but take care, one and all of you, that the storm-spirit which you have raised does not spend its strength upon your heads, and leave us untouched, as I have already intimated. But few men among you have now moral firmness enough to brave its fury in defence of the Constitution, and they may be, probably will be, prostrated by it, but I shall be greatly disappointed if, like Aristides the Just, they do not live to see the demagogues who now revile them, doing homage to their virtues. Be this as it may, should they be doomed to fall to rise no more, history will deck their urns with her richest garlands, while she turns with loathing from the graves of the
Wilmots,
the
Gidding's,
et omne id genus.
A couple of bipeds, for whom the English language has no appropriate name that decency will tolerate, have published them to the world as “
Betrayers of Freedom,
” because, forsooth, they could not stretch their consciences to Mr.
Wilmot's
measure. This is by no means surprising. A dreadful moral disease has seized on the body politic North, the stench of which naturally allures such insects as
Greeley
and
McElrath,
which, in their disports over the infected carcasses, occasionally light, of course, upon the physicians, who, at the peril of life, and with a benevolence sublime, labor to arrest it. But at the close of a long lecture upon the anatomy of Massachusetts, I cannot longer fix my attention upon these muscæ, without the assistance of burnt sugar or chloride of lime. Leaving her to them and them to her, I turn to the pleasing task of re-publishing the names of those noble spirits, which the patrons of mobs, and the apologists of murderers, have dared to imprint upon their dirty sheet. I give the list with another heading—let Time determine which is the most appropriate:
LETTER FROM
THE
GOOD SAMARITANS,
WHO, FINDING
THEIR COUNTRY STRIPPED AND WOUNDED BY ABOLITIONISTS,
AFTER THE PRIEST OF THEIR OWN LAND HAD PASSED CARELESSLY BY HER ON THE ONE HAND, AND THE LEVITE ON THE OTHER,
HAD COMPASSION ON HER, AND BOUND UP HER WOUNDS,
AND
BORE HER TO A PLACE OF SAFETY.
BY THEIR VIRTUES,
WAS HER LIFE PROLONGED—
TO WHAT PERIOD, THE FUTURE MUST NEVEAL.
D. S.
Dickinson.
E. A.
Hannigan,
Jesse D. Bright.
Sidney Breese.
Lewis Cass.
Stephen Strong,
W. W. Woodworth
Joseph Russell.
Wm. W. Wick,
Robert D. Owen,
Thos. J. Henley.
James Thompson,
Rich. Brodhead,
James Black,
Jacob Erdman,
Henry D. Foster,
Wm. S. Garvin,
C. J. Ingersoll,
Moses McClean.
Joseph Edsall.
F. A. Cunningham,
Joseph Morris,
Isaac Parish,
Wm. Sawyer,
Henry St. John.
O. B. Ficklin,
S. A. Douglass,
Robert Smith,
A. M. M'Clernand.
S. Leffler.
J. S. Chipman.
From the above list it appears, that of six and twenty Senators from the Northern and North-western States, but
five
had firmness to support the Constitution, against the
Wilmot
onslaught; and that of one hundred and thirty-three Representatives, only twenty-six had firmness enough to do the like—a wonderful coincidence of proportions in both Houses. These are things of melancholy portent. If they do not open the eyes of the South to the perils of her situation, and silence the bickerings of her sons about Whiggery and Democracy, and unite them in some plan of systematic opposition to Abolitionism, why then let them take the consequences. I would rather see South Carolina moving in this matter than nobody; but I would rather see any other State in the Union taking lead in it than South Carolina—for obvious reasons. What I think should be done, hereafter.
GEORGIA.
LETTER VII.
Madam,
How strange, and yet how fortunate! I had just closed my last letter, with an earnest request to you to leave the Union, and a final adieu, when I received the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. It was exactly the thing I wanted—for it is an incontestible voucher of everything that I have written against you. I therefore withdrew the conclusion of my last letter and reserved it for another. The Report just mentioned, emanated from the Press of
Andrews
&
Prentiss,
No. 11 Devonshire street, Boston, on the 27th of January, 1847, after having been presented to the Society convened in Faneuil Hall, on the same date, by the Board of Managers. I regret that I cannot give the names of the Board of Managers, as an invaluable legacy to posterity. However, I suppose they are to be found in the following list of officers—and if not, they will readily be found among the archives of the Society. The officers are as follows:
President
—
Francis Jackson,
Boston.
Vice Presidents.
Seth Sprague,
Doxbury;
Andrew Robeson,
New Bedford;
Nathaniel B. Borden,
Fall River;
Stillman Lothrop,
Cambridge;
Amos Farnsworth,
Groton;
Adin Ballou,
Milford;
Jno. M. Fisk,
West Brookfield;
Joshua T Everett,
Princeton;
Effingham L. Capron,
Uxbridge;
Wm. B. Earle,
Leicester;
Jefferson Church,
Springfield;
Wm. B. Stone,
Gardner;
Oliver Gardner,
Nantucket;
Joseph Southwick,
Boston;
Saml. May,
Leicester;
Harris Cowdrey,
Acton;
Nathan Webster,
Haverhill;
Geo. Hoyt,
Athol;
Theodore P. Locke,
Westminster;
Jno. C. Gore,
Roxbury;
Caroline Weston,
New Bedford;
Linas Rhodes,
North Marlboro';
Benj. Snow,
Fitchburg;
Geo. Miles,
Westminster;
James N. Buffum,
Lynn;
Cyrus Pierce,
Newton;
Jno. T. Hilton,
Cambridgeport;
Thomas T. Stone,
Salem;
Bourne Spooner,
Plymouth.
Corresponding Secretary
—
Edmund Quincy,
Dedham.
Recording Secretary
—
Robert F. Wallcut.
Auditor
—
Edmund Jackson,
Boston.
Counsellors.
Wm. Lloyd Garrison;
Maria Weston Chapman;
Cornelius Bramhall; Henry Ingersoll Bowditch;
Eliza Lee Fallen;
Chas. K. Whipple; Wendell Phillips; John Rogers;
Anne Warren Weston;
Chas. Lenox Remond; Jno. M. Spear; Jas. Russell Lowell.
When it is considered that these are but the
officers
of the Society—that they come from all quarters of the State—that they hold their meetings in
her
metropolis—that almost all her public officers act in perfect accordance with the principles avowed by them—that every man from Massachusetts supported the
Wilmot
proviso without hesitation or scruple—we may consider this Society a very fair exponent of your principles. It professes to be engaged in
a Christian
enterprise, be it remembered—and to have no object but the emancipation of the poor slave. I have told you, with a delicacy widely disproportioned to your deserts, that this is not true. That your aim was
power
—and that the object of Abolitionism was to crush the
master,
not to emancipate the
slave.
That it was nothing but a political machine, designed to overthrow Southern power in the councils of the nation, or to overthrow the Government. Thus speaks the Report in its third and fourth sentences: “The tyrannic
omnipotence
of slavery, had been seen and felt for long years beforeits deadly opposite,
in the Modern Anti-Slavery Movement, of which this Society was the first organic embodiment. But the development of the purposes of the
Slave Power,
and the strides with which it has stalked towards its design, have been more undisguised and more rapid within the last fifteen years than ever before.”
That which is uppermost in the heart is sure to be first out of the mouth; and the order in which the heart delivers itself, is a pretty sure criterion of its interest in the matters delivered.
The complaints against slave power disposed of, the next thing which engages the attention of these
pious pilgrims,
is the Mexican War, and the Annexation of Texas, of which these
gentle Christians
speak as follows:
“Scarcely had Texas been welcomed into the society of these States, and taken her place among the legitimate daughters of the Revolution, and
the bastard brood they had before adopted,
when it became apparent, &c., that her dower of lands was not enough to satisfy, but only to stimulate the avarice of
our Southern masters?
” Here follows a detail of the events which led to the war, in which Mexico is applauded, and the United States abused. The history is brought to the action of Congress, which is introduced in these words: “Resolutions were introduced and passed almost by acclamation and without discussion, containing the double
falsehood
that war existed with Mexico, and that prompt action was necessary,” &c. Next come the probable issues of the war. “The parties which have so long distracted the internal economy of Mexico, appear to be united in opposition to this
insulting and infamous
invasion of her soil”—“What the result of the conflict may be, cannot exactly be affirmed; but
we fear
that the vastly greater resources of the United States for the supply of men and money, will sooner or later
extort
from their weaker neighbor their own terms of peace.
This event must be deprecated by every lover of humanity, of justice,and of freedom. The victories of the American armies are the triumphs of cruelty, of injustice, and slavery.
” “Every good and humane man, &c., must earnestly hope—that success may attend upon that Power which is striving to remove from its soil a
piratical horde of banditti,
whose purpose is to establish anew, within its borders, the slavery which it has had the consistency and the virtue to exclude from them forever.” Here follows a descant upon My Lord
Wilmot's
proviso, which, of course, is approved. “But,” it continues, “it is not to be believed that the
despotic
majority, who have it in their power to block all the wheels of the government—will relax their iron rule in a matter thus vital to the security of their own power”—“Slavery must, of necessity, be triumphant; it is too late to
Reform.
We have put it out of our power. There is no remedy but in
Revolution!
A revolution beginning like all such, in the hearts and minds of men;
but manifested in due time
in the disruption of the Union,
in the overthrow of our present
DECEPTIVE
Constitution, and the
ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW GOVERNMENT,
of which justice and equal rights shall be at once the end and means of its existence.
” Here the Legislature of Massachusetts are taken to task for not executing previous threats of that body against the government, in case of Annexation—which they consider “
a just occasion for the Dissolution of the Union.
” They then fall aboard of Governor
Briggs,
for saying, “that whatever the difference of opinion as to the origin or necessity of the war, the Constitutional authorities have declared that war exists”—and that all honorable means should be used to bring it to a speedy and successful termination; and they thus arraign him: “This, it seems, is the idea of patriotism and humanity entertained by the
Baptist Deacon of Pittsfield, & c.
”—“No matter what may be the origin or necessity of a war, provided a
profligate government
have embroiled us in one; humanity plainly dictates to us that we must fight it out!” They, therefore, quote with approbation the following resolution adopted by the
New England
Convention of Abolitionists:
“
Resolved,
That at the bar of Liberty and Humanity, we impeach
George N. Briggs,
&c.,
as perjured,
on his own principles, as
a traitor
by his own showing—as one,
before whose guilt the infamy of Arnold,
and of the
Missouri Compromisers,
Then follows a tirade of abuse of divers others, good citizens of Massachusetts, who could not subscribe to these revolutionary doctrines, which closes with a reference to some of their opposers, as follows:
“We shall watch with interest—what such men can do for the deliverance of the State from pro-slavery bondage; but we believe they will be compelled to come to the conclusion at last, that their deliverance is impossible,
as long as she remains a member of a Slave-holding Confederacy;
and that her real prosperity and true honor can only be secured
by the blow that shall sever the bond of the existing Union.
The next thing discussed is the triumph of Abolitionism (last year,) in New Hampshire, which is ascribed to Annexation. Then New York is peppered for rejecting the black-suffrage clause of her new Constitution; and the Tribune is applauded for having “
honorably
distinguished itself by its maintenance of the right.”
These matters disposed of, the melancholy rencounter at Richmond is introduced, and traced to the Annexation of Texas.—Dr. S—, the Abolition Editor of Baltimore, is complimented.—
Cassius M. Clay
is censured for quitting his Press and going into the army, and the National Era of Washington, Edited by Dr.
G. Bailey,
is brought under consideration.
This, it seems, from the Report, is professedly an Abolition Paper, which has created some alarms in the city authorities of Georgetown. The Report quotes the following paragraph from that paper, to show that they need be under no alarms from such an anti-slavery paper as that: “If we thought him (Gen'l.
Taylor,
) in danger, and that volunteers from this section were really needed to save him,
we should certainly postpone the articles we are now writing.
Heaven forbid that word or act of ours should have the remotest tendency to jeopard the safety of that noble officer and his brave army.” “When they come to learn this,” continues the Report—“they will not see in him a very dangerous enemy to their peculiar institution—We are bold to affirm, that a man who could entertain and express such feelings towards the
slaveholding leader
OF OUR NATIONAL BANDITTI, engaged in our
piratical
incursion into Mexico for the extension and perpetuation of slavery—that such a man, whatever else he may be, is
not
AN ABOLITIONIST, and need not be feared, and should not be encouraged as such!”
This brings us to the 31st page of the Report, where the question of gradual emancipation, with compensation to the owners of slaves, is discussed. Of course this mode of emancipation is repudiated upon the ground that the South is fully apprised of all the evils of Slavery, (which are enumerated,) but maintains it, not for the wealth but the power which it secures to her—and which, of course, she will never give up “except by a radical and
revolutionary
change in our political relations; either by a change of the Constitution (which, as matters now stand, is politically and morally impossible,) or by a
Dissolution of the Union.
” As there is no hope of a change in the present state of things, the Report declares that “
Disunion, religious and political, is the only remedy—for the distempered and disjointed times in which we live—for the deliverance of the slave, and for the enfranchisement of ourselves.
”
How my pious sister is going to liberate the
slave
by this oft-repeated remedy of “Disunion,” I confess I cannot see. Perhaps Mrs.
Vice President
Caroline Weston,
Mrs.
Counsellor
Maria Weston Chapman,
or Mrs.
Counsellor
Eliza Lee Fallen,
may enlighten me upon this head if they will. Your plan of abusing and terrifying all who take office, into perjury, may accomplish this end if you can get enough of your caste into Congress. They may snatch power by fraud, force and false swearing, sufficient to drive us from the Union, and then you may use that power in cutting our throats for the benefit of the slave; but, to my great delight, the Report seems to give up this plan as hopeless, and to contemplate secession on your part as the effectual remedy. In that case, I cannot see how the slave will be
The Report proceeds from this country to
England,
and immediately its style temper and spirit undergoes a visible change: “The Anti-Slavery history of England has been unusually full of various incident during the past year. The formation of the Anti-Slavery League, the Evangelical Alliance, the visit of Mr.
Garrison,
the extensive agitation of the Slavery question by his means, assisted by Mr.
Thompson,
and the American Abolitionists
—have made the last year of extraordinary Anti-Slavery animation and interest.—We believe that we could never
boast
of a larger and more devoted band of faithful friends in the Mother Country, than we now possess.—We have received elegant gifts from a
multitude
of other places, (besides London, Bristol, &c.) and are thus
put in communication
with
new
and
efficient friends.
” Then comes a list of the distinguished abolitionists of England who have died during the past year, with suitable compliments. Of the deceased
Edw'd. S. Abdy,
it says: “He was an abolitionists of the finest water. He alone of the English tourists in America was able to withstand the influence of our pro-slavery air—He separated himself from the Anti-Corn Law League when it sent complimentary gifts to Mr.
McDuffie
and Mr.
Calhoun,
and thus recognised ‘soul drivers, and negro jobbers—the enemies of personal freedom—as the friends of commercial freedom.’”
Scotland
is next introduced: “The conflict between the abolitionists of Scotland and the Free Church, in the matter of blood-money, has been carried on with even more vigor during the past year than ever before.—The haters of Slavery and lovers of
pure Christianity
have not had their sense of the comfort that was given to the one, and the injury that was done to the other, by the reception of the price of ‘slaves and the souls of men' into the treasury of the seceding Kirk, at all diminished by the experience of another year.”
Here follows a flattering account of the labors of Abolition Missionaries to England. Then comes
Ireland.
“The Irish contributions to the Bazaar, like those we have just enumerated, were of increased amount in quantity, elegance and value.
We accept
this annual increase of the tribute paid to the Image of God in chains, whose dungeon is this broad land, as a grateful evidence of an increasing and spreading sympathy with universal Humanity.”
A word to thee, Ireland, in passing. We do not forget that you are far away from us, and that you are ignorant of the true state of things in this country; and therefore we rather admire than censure your liberality to an enterprize which we know
you believe
to be philanthropic. It fills my soul with noble emotions, and my eyes with the best tears they ever shed, when I see your national generosity unextinguished by famine, and your free hand stretched across the broad Atlantic to relieve those whom you think in greater distress than yourself, while your own children perish by hundreds at your doors. But, oh God, what shall I say of that horde of Monsters who, in a land overflowing with plenty, can seize these last drainings of your noble soul, and spend them in fitting out a band of noisy vagrants to stir discord between the two countries, desolate this Eden of peace, and to persuade your famishing children to die, rather than eat the bread which our charity places in their hands! In recording these things, I feel that I am bidding a long farewell to the honor of my country—that the pride which I used to feel at being called an American is humbled forever—and that I would almost change places with Ireland, to change names with her. Land of our champion,
Burke,
and mother of some of our noblest foster-children, we excuse thee. Reject our charities if you will; but we will offer them as long as we see thee in distress, and no harsh words which your intemperate sons may give us in return, shall deaden our sympathies for you, silence our prayers in your behalf, or tear you from the most consecrated seat in our affections. We know you to be deceived. But I never can excuse that nest of artful spiders that caught you in their web, and then sucked your dying blood. I did not suppose that even Abolitionism could go thus far. It is to be hoped that it can go no farther. After combining all that is despicable in man, with all that is shocking
GEORGIA.
LETTER VIII.
Madam.
I left the Report at the introduction of Ireland. The next thing in order is a long account of Mr.
Garrison's
Mission to Great Britain, with his wonderful works there.
The Evangelical Alliance,
comes next; which is handled without gloves, for allowing certain Slaveholding Ministers to take seats with the body. Their feelings soon began to be lacerated by Anti-Slavery movements, which they bore with such meekness as to call from Sir
Cullen E. Smith
a high compliment; and he expressed “his admiration of the grace of God in enabling them to listen to what must cut them to the heart's core, with such Christian meekness.” Of this remark, these
pious
Abolitionists speak thus: “
Whether the grace of God was exhausted,
or whether the silence of the American brethren was only owing to their not having had a chance to speak, we cannot affirm.” They proceed: “An amendment was moved by the Rev.
Jno. Nelson.
peremptorily excluding slaveholders. It was, however, rejected.”—“VERILY, THEY ARE ALL ONE BROTHERHOOD OF THIEVES!” (The last words printed as they are in the Report.)
The Anti Slavery League,
is then brought upon the carpet: “Its object is to act for the abolition of Slavery in every land; but
with special reference to the United States,
in concert with
uncompromising
Abolitionists, who compose the American Anti-Slavery Society.”—“There exists a large amount of Anti-Slavery feeling, and a warm sympathy with the American Society in
its principles and measures
throughout Great Britain and Ireland; but there has been wanting, hitherto, a fitting medium through which this feeling and this sympathy could make themselves
heard and felt.
This has now been provided, and we cannot doubt that the benefits of intelligent co-operation will soon be perceived in the aspect and the progress of the cause.”—“A bond of Union has been created between the true Abolitionist of the Old World, whose links extend across the Atlantic and unite them in a
tangible tie
of brotherhood with the New. Facilities of
spreading the knowledge
of the condition and the necessities of the cause
in this country
will be greatly increased, &c., &c.”—“One of the chief advantages which we anticipate from it is the
increased
opportunities it will give for
creating
and
expressing
a yet stronger abhorrence of
American Slavery
in the
British Islands
than that which now exists there.”—“Let the general mind
of England
become thoroughly possessed of the facts of American Slavery, and obey the
impulses
which such facts must create in every generous bosom, and the hand of destiny will have written the words of doom upon the walls of
our
Babylon.
When public sentiment is such in the
British Islands
that no slaveholder shall be received into any pulpit or at any communion table—at court, in a public capacity—the church—the dinner table—the circle of fire which has already been kindled round the scorpion, will grow hotter and hotter and close nearer and nearer, until it will be compelled to bury its sting in its own brain, and rid the world
by a blessed suicide
of its monstrous existence.
It is to promote this state of public feeling and to direct it in the wisest manner that
the League has been instituted.
”
This, Madam, is just what I have said was your project; though I did not know that it had been so publicly avowed. Let me just remind you, that such fires asHancock,
in the city which he immortalized: “We can only promise, on the behalf of the American Abolitionists, that we will do our best
to deserve the confidence
and co-operation of those on the other side of the Atlantic,
by a strenuous continuance of our own agitation.
”
In the next place we are introduced to
The American Anti-Slavery Society,
in New York, at which President
Garrison
“took the ground that it was the duty of all those whom he addressed, to refuse to have anything to do with a war waged by Slavery upon a nation whose chief crime was that she had abolished Slavery.” “The Society re-affirmed its testimonies of former years as to the pro-slavery character of the Third Political Party, and of the Colonization Society—expressed its sense of the value of the services of our American friends in
Great Britain,
and their zealous coadjutors, and its opinions on various matters of
National and Local Politics
connected with Slavery—and adjourned.”
Then comes an account of the
New England Convention of Abolitionists.
This was the Convention which passed the resolution concerning Governor
Briggs,
already mentioned; and this, with another quoted below, seems to have been about all they did. Alderman
Preston,
it seems, had
at that time
firmness enough to tell these traitors, after
three days
moral rioting, that they could no longer have the Hall (Fanuel) for their meetings. They took him to task next day, through the press, and concluded their address as follows:
“We would ask our fellow citizens, whether he would have dared thus to insult
any
political party, or any
other
philanthropic movement?”
These
philanthropists,
be it remembered, had just passed a resolution pronouncing the Governor of the State a perjured villain; and another introduced by
Wm. H. Channing
“denying the existence of any lawful Government of the United States, of any Union, of any obligation of allegiance or countenance to either, and pledging themselves to give no aid or support to the Mexican war, and to do
all in our power to form a New Union and a New Constitution.
” This resolution was sustained, amidst mingled cheers and hisses, by Mr.
Channing,
the Rev.
Theodore Parker,
Mr.
Redmond,
and others,
and enthusiastically adopted.
” Was it not cruel in the Alderman to deny these gentle spirits the privileges that he allowed to
political parties?
Next comes an account of “
Northern Prisoners at the South.
” It opens with the intelligence that “the number of victims to slave-holding vengeance—has been diminished since the last report.” Here they had but small capital, and of course they made the most of
Torrey's
case. Mr.
Burr,
a prisoner in Missouri, had been discharged, and the Parkersburgh case had been decided by a
Virginia
Court in favor of Ohio. It is really a source of pride and exultation in me to see the Southern Magistracy holding the scales of justice with a steady hand in such a case, while Abolition Governors, Judges, and Congressmen, in like cases, forget all the obligations of justice, patriotism, and duty, with the most reckless indifference.
The next subject discussed is the “
Anti-Slavery Press.
” They speak in high terms of
The Liberator,
the National
Anti-Slavery Standard
published in New York,
The Pennsylvania Freeman,
and the
Anti-Slavery Bugle
published in the West, by Mr. and
Mrs.
Jones.
“The West,” continues the Report, “has been again the scene of extensive agitation, under the direction of
Samuel Brooke.
We have no room for particulars—we can only say that they are
in the highest degree gratifying and encouraging.
”
Anti-Slavery Fairs
come next in order, which are declared to be increasing in number and contributions. Then,
Kidnapping at the North.
Under this head, we have an account of a “slave who had secreted himself on board the brig Ottoman, at New Orleans, and was not discovered until she had put to sea. The Captain,
James W. Hannum,
kept him in custody on board the ship, and afterwards landed him on Spectacle Island, for the purpose of returning him to New Orleans.” The slave escaped, but was retaken and sent back to the owner. “As soon as it was known that there was such a slave in our waters, a writ of
habeas corpus
was granted by Judge
Hubbard,
of the Supreme Court, and a warrant issued to arrest
Hannum
on the charge of kidnapping,” but he was gone.
I stop here to make a remark or two before I record what follows. The writ of
habeas corpus
must have been granted on the affidavit of some one who swore that the slave was in illegal custody, at least; and if a
warrant
was issued, as we shall presently see it was, some person must have sworn that
Hannum
had kidnapped the slave. But the slave obtruded himself on board the vessel which
Hannum
commanded, and the Constitution of the United States required that the fugitive should be delivered to his master, by the constituted authorities of the State of Massachusetts. What was done? The Report tells us: “But though it was too late to save the slave, it was not too late for Boston to express its sense of this outrage on the laws of Humanity,
of Massachusetts,
and of God. Accordingly a public meeting was called to meet in Fanuel Hall, on the 17th of September, to utter its voice in this behalf. The Hall was crowded to its remotest nook and corner. Never did such ‘a sea of upturned faces’ fill that vast Hall before. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (!) took the Chair, amid deafening acclamations, and expressed his happiness in thus bearing his personal testimony in a case of personal liberty. Dr.
S. G. Howe
stated the case, the Hon.
Stephen C. Phillips
spoke—
Charles Sumner,
Esq.,
Wendell Phillips, George B. Emerson,
Esq., Hon.
Charles F. Adams,
Rev.
Theodore Parker,
and
Rev.
Thomas T. Stone,
filled up the rest of the evening.
The enthusiasm was immense, and was never greater than when
Wendell Phillips
pointed out to the meeting
its inconsistency in sustaining a Constitution of Government,
by virtue of which a scrap of paper with the name of the owner of the slave, in
Hannum's
and
Pearson's
possession” (
Pearson
was the owner of the vessel,) “would have made the act a legal one; and when he indicated DISSOLUTION” (I print it as it is,) “as the only rightful and efficient remedy for these evils. If a vote could have been taken at that moment on the question of DISUNION, we are convinced that it would have been carried by acclamation. Resolutions branding
Pearson
with the ignominy he deserved, expressing a determination that no more illegal seizures should be made, and appointing a Vigilance Committee of Forty to see to it that there were not, were passed unanimously—signal proof of the change in public sentiment since the Anti-Slavery movement which caused it first began.” Thus were
Pearson
and
Hannum
treated by the citizens of Boston; and we afterwards learn that indictments were actually prefered against them, for the Grand Juries that refused to find true bills against them are severely censured.
Here, then, we have the Ex-President of the United States, a number of distinguished Jurists and Statesmen, divers Clergymen, and throngs of Citizens, giving countenance to two bold oaths, (to say the least of them,) a gross violation of the Constitution, branding with infamy men who obeyed the laws of the land, enthusiastically applauding revolutionary sentiments, and ripe to vote for a disruption of the Government. The Ex-President returns thanks for the honor of presiding at such a meeting! I did not know of this when, in a former letter, I complimented his goodness of heart:—“ Whose keepeth the law” (says Solomon) “is a wise son; but he that is a companion of riotous men, shameth his
father.
” I hope we shall hear no more of the Abolitionists being a little insignificant band, unworthy of notice. The “
law
” of “Massachusetts,” which
Hannum
and
Pearson
were considered as outraging, the reader will be pleased to remember, is a law of that State, passed toacts which she believed to be unconstitutional
—the whole Union was arrayed against her; and Massachusetts, as we have seen, stept forward to clothe the President with extraordinary powers, in order to reduce her to submission; but when Massachusetts herself passes a law to defeat the operation of an unquestionable clause of the Constitution, not a word is said about it! The Report proceeds:
“A case similar to this, but more fortunate in its termination, occurred not long before in New York—. Although the Mayor and all the police of the city were at the disposal of the kidnapper—yet Judge Edmonds,
did himself and the Bench honor by judging
justly, and deciding that there was no authority by which the slave could be deprived of his liberty.” So it seems that Judge
Edmonds'
legal learning has not yet reached the 3d paragraph, 2d Sec., IV Art. of the Constitution, which he swore to support when he took his commission.
We have now advanced seven and thirty pages farther in the Report, and no plan yet proposed to relieve the poor slave of the South.
“
The Caste Schools
” come next in order. The Report regrets that the negro and white children are kept in seperate Schools, but sees the dawn of better times.”
“
The Political Parties.
”—The objection to them is thus expressed: “They are all equally ready to swear to support the Constitution, and if true to their oath, to do the work which the Constitution, as explained by its authentic expounders, requires of those supporting it”—. “It is still the heaviest of the chains that bind the slave to his despair; the iron which enters into our own souls who have consented to hold it.”
“
The Church,
(p. 72) under this head (the last but three) the Churches are arraigned for not warring against the Constitution and the Government, under the names of the “
Bulwark of Slavery,
” and the “
American Bastille.
” The Churches, “almost every one of them, expands its doors to welcome the pious robber of the poor—and scarcely any but rejoice to have the bread of life broken unto them by reverend men-stealers, with their hands dripping with their brother's blood. The wisdom of the action of the Southern Methodist Episcopal Churches, in dissolving the jurisdiction of the Southern and Southwestern Conferences, and erecting them into a separate Ecclesiastical Connection, styled the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, has been justified by the result. The Southern Church, has gained everything,” (except its property) “and lost nothing. It has banished the importunate spirit of Abolitionism from its Great Councils, and at the same time has lost none of its ecclesiastical brotherhood with the Northern Churches.” Here the Baltimore Conference is taken to task, for disclaiming fellowship with Abolitionists, and determining not to hold connection with any ecclesiastical body which shall make non-slaveholding a condition of membership in the Church. After speaking of the support which that Conference has received from some other Conferences and organs North; the Report proceeds in the following reverential strain—“Thus the guilt of slaveholding is piously transferred from the shoulders of * * * * * * & Co.to those of the Almighty which are supposed to be strong enough to bear it.
” Shocking!
* The names are given in the Report; but they are not Methodists.
The New School Presbyterians and the Methodist Protestants, are then brought to account for a like sin. But amidst these discouragements, a ray of light breaks in upon them: “Three hundred and three Universalist Ministers—have protested against the system of American Slavery, as utterly wrong, and confess their obligation to use all justifiable means to promote its abolition.” And an encouraging address has appeared from the
Irish Unitarian Christian Society to their Christian brethren of America,
in which they protest against slavery. A lash or two upon
“
Our Spirit.
”—“The bad spirit of the Abolitionists has always been a main ground of complaint against them. It has from the beginning been made the excuse of the cowardly and time-serving, for not joining our ranks, or doing their duty out of-them—We are content that men should say what they like of our spirit, so that they cannot well deny our works.”
“
Our Philosophy.
”—“Our Philosophy is not one hard to understand, though it may be difficult to receive. It is simply the philosophy of personal separation from an evil which we wish to destroy—Under the guidance of this philosophy, we have examined the institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, in the midst of which we live, where we have found the sanctity or security of slavery an essential part of them, &c.—Seeing as we did in the Constitution of the United States, the supreme law of the land—an imperative rule of action—which made Slavery a National Institution—which pledged the physical force of the whole nation for the protection of Slavery against
a righteous,
servile Revolution,
” (!!) “in the presence of such a Constitution, we plainly saw that there was no alternative for men who reverenced the obligation of promises, and the sanctity of oaths on the one hand, and who hated Slavery on the other—but in
obedience
or REVOLUTION. We have made our election. We have renounced our allegiance to a government which we could not support without sustaining slavery. And believing the existing Constitution and the present union of these States, incompatible with the Abolition of Slavery, we have devoted ourselves to the abrogation of the one, and to the dissolution of the other, in order that they may be replaced by a purer Constitution, &c.”
“
Our Method.
”—“Our Method is identical with our Philosophy. The one is the other reduced to practice—it consist in short, in the use of every means in our power to make this Constitution and this Union, of which it is the bond, infamous and abhorred in the eyes of the people, and of the nations of the world—that it may vanish—and give way to a Republic which shall, indeed, be the Model instead of the warning of the world—we see, already, the effect of our agitation in the altered tone of feeling and speech, as to the sacredness of the Constitution and the Union. We have disenchanted the mind of the people in a good measure, as to the Divinity of their parchment idol. We have taught men to calculate the valueo? the Union. The idea that loyalty and allegiance are its due, is fast becoming ridiculous and contemptible—multitudes who walk not with us, have been taught by their own experience to
curse
the Constitution and the Union, as a delusion and a snare,” &c., &c.
Thus ends a Report of eighty-six pages. The funds of this
magnificent
institution consist of $5,852,01. Of which $3,262,11 were received from proceeds of the Massachusetts Annual Fair; 447,24 from the Rural Fair at Dedham; $173,95 from office rent; $298,66 balance in hand from last year; and $1670,25, donations from all quarters—Ireland, I suppose, included. So that it seems this patriotic band are not likely to bankrupt themselves by their liberality to their noble enterprise. Of these funds $1391,78 are paid to agents; $200 to the Liberator; $2,800 to the American Anti-Slavery Society; and the rest for rent of meeting-places, printing, paper, &c. When we see how the funds are raised, we can account for the Lady Vice Presidents and Counsellors. Of the heroes of the Revolution, to whose memory they have erected a monument, they hold this language: “We cannot see the precise course of events—they must be all moulded and guided by Fate, which rules over this nation, through the
crimes of our Fathers
and our own.”—“We are constrained to believe there is no deliverance for the people of the Free States from the yoke
their Fathers imposed,
and they have worn so long, except by a radical and revolutionary change in our political relations.”—The dominion of Slave Power is so fastened upon us by the
weak
and
wicked
compact, which
our fathers
made with it, &c.”
So much for the Report: what did the Society?
They
Resolved,
“That Gov.
Briggs
was a narrow-minded or willing tool of aperjured
by his own showing, and traitor to his own principles”—“That in this so called Mexican war, they can see nothing but a foray of pirates and kidnappers; and that the nation which wages it—deserves the deep curse of every lover of right and human liberty”—“That they hail with thankfulness the—abiding influence of—
Garrison;
and rejoice to take by the hand their beloved pioneer
Thomas Clarkson,
” (an Englishman,) “and to hear from
his lips
the assurance of
his
deep interest in, and cordial approbation of
our pledged
purpose to seek for a
Dissolution of this Union,
as the most effectual method of striking off the fetters of the slave”—“That they cordially approve of the action of the Board of Managers of the society in instituting a movement for the purpose of asking the Legislature of the State to call a convention of the People to take measures for a peaceful secession from the Union,” (God speed ye in that; and brand any State that objects to it, with a mark of infamy as black as your own,) “and they pledge themselves to make demand loud, &c.—and to repeat it, until it shall be heard
and obeyed.
” (So printed in the Report.)—“That—the working classes of the North—who stand aloof from the Anti-Slavery enterprise, will be guilty of manufacturing yokes for the necks and fetters for the limbs of the Southern slave population”—“That they rejoice that the working-men of the Old World—are deeply interested in the Anti-Slavery movement in England.—Seeing the existence of slavery in this boasted Republic is the mightiest obstacle to their own deliverance from oppression and bondage”—“That they cannot view with approbation the proposal of some devoted friends of the Slave, to test the number—of the friends of Disunion, by urging them to repair to the ballot box and deposite their votes for such men as will never take the oath to support the Constitution of the United States,” as this method would be “liable to render less distinct, emphatic and intelligible, our protest against the Government of the United States”—“That each town in the Commonwealth be urged to assemble immediately, and raise funds for the enterprise”—“That all who participate in this war, or who give it any countenance, are enemies to the country and traitors to liberty and the rights of man”— “That they pledge
for New England
to Ohio, not only their hearty sympathy, but their most efficient aid and support, in covering with Anti-Slavery
machinery
the vast field she has in charge.”
These and many other resolutions in the same spirit, were offered and discussed—not one of which can I discover was rejected, though I cannot find where the vote was taken upon some of them. Most of them were adopted.
Thus ends a meeting which continued for three days in peaceable session in the Town Hall of Boston. I have given the subjects, and all the subjects, which engaged its attention, with some of its views on each. We learn from it that its aim is to overthrow the government of the country; and the instruments to be used for this purpose are anti-slavery associations in England, the West Indies, and the Free States. That these associations are actually formed and in secret communication with each other—interchanging missionaries and inviting counsels and pecuniary resources. That the Englishman recommends agitation in this country as the most efficient means for destroying the government, and the American thanks him for his advice, and promises to follow it strictly; and in token of its wisdom they tell him and the world that they have already wrought a magic change in popular opinion, (and this is certainly true, as to popular opinion North of the Potomac,) and disenchanted the mind of the people as to the divinity of their parchment idol. That they have taught men to calculate the value of the Union—That they intend to use every means in their power to render the United States Government infamous. When we examine their works we find that they are in strict accordance with these principles. Not a plan do they propose or have they ever proposed, to emancipate the slave: all their machinery is directed towards the slave-holder, the Union, and the sepulchres of their fathers. Falsehood, the most unblushing, is uttered, and the Magistrate bows assent to it, the Judge puts his seal to it, and the Priest anoints it. The whole vocabulary of Billingsgate is exhausted upon the Slaveholder,Christians.
The intruder upon our peace, is pronounced a martyr, and the perjured villain, a hero. A Servile Revolution is pronounced “
righteous,
” and the government is
cursed
because it prevents it. With one hand in the pocket of starving Ireland, and the other in their daughter's ridicules, and six buttons on their own pockets, they call on the world for large contributions to their noble enterprise. These things are not done in a corner. There is a logic in the place and the manner in which they are done, which is as convincing as demonstration, that their
spirit
overspreads the whole State. The conclusion is confirmed by observation. Abolitionism, as we have seen it, is seen in some or all of its features in almost all her movements, civil and ecclesiastical. And would to God that it stopped here. But, alas! it has extended its dominion to all the free States, and wherever it gets foothold, we find the same daring, the same desperation, the same contempt of oaths, the same inroads upon the Constitution, which it here evinces. In the Cathedral and the Capitol, it is one and the same thing. To comment upon these proceedings in decent language, would be unbecoming my subject. To comment upon them in any other, would be unbecoming
GEORGIA.
Note.
—“In
Georgia's
second Letter to the Southern States, she apologizes for ascribing the principles of this Society to the State of Massachusetts, upon the ground that they are plainly visible in all the movements of the State, though not as distinctly avowed by her, as by the Society. The following resolutions which have passed the Legislature of Massachusetts since these letters were written, show that
Georgia
was not mistaken in supposing the State and the Society were one in principle:
RESOLVES.
CONCERNING THE MEXICAN WAR AND THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY.
Resolved,
That the present war with Mexico has its primary origin in the unconstitutional annexation to the United States of the foreign State of Texas, while the same was still at war with Mexico; that it was unconstitutionally commenced by the order of the President to General Taylor, to take military possession of territory in dispute between the United States and Mexico,
and in the occupation of Mexico;
and that it is now waged ingloriously—by a powerful nation against a weak neighbor—unnecessarily and without just cause, at immense cost of treasure and life, for the dismemberment of Mexico, and for the conquest of a portion of her territory, from which slavery has already been excluded, with the triple object of extending slavery, of strengthening the “Slave Power,” and of obtaining the control of the Free States, under the Constitution of the United States.
Resolved,
That such a war of conquest, so hateful in its objects, so wanton, unjust and unconstitutional in its origin and character, must be regarded as a war against freedom, against humanity, against justice, against the Union, against the Constitution, and
against the Free States;
and that a regard for the interests and the highest honor of the country, not less than the impulses of Christian duty, should arouse all good citizens to join in efforts to arrest this gigantic crime, by witholding supplies, or other voluntary contributions, for its further prosecution, by calling for the withdrawal of our army within the established limits of the United States, and, in every just way, aiding the country to retreat from the disgraceful position of aggression which it now occupies towards a weak, distracted neighbor, and sister republic.
Resolved,
That our attention is directed anew to the wrong and “enormity” of slavery, and to the tyranny and usurpation of the “Slave Power,” as displayed in the history of our country, particularly in the annexation of Texas, and the present war with Mexico; and that we are impressed with the unalterable conviction, that a regard for the fair fame of our country, for the principles of morals, and for that righteousness which exalteth a nation, sanctions and requires all constitutional efforts for the abolition of slavery within the limits of the United States, while loyalty to the constitution, and a just self-defence, make it specially incumbent on the people of the fr?e States to co-operate in stronuous exertions to restrain and overthrow the “Slave power.”
Resolved,
That the annexation of territory with a Mexican population upon it, is highly inconsistant with the well-being of the Union.
“Mr.
Heyden,
of Boston, offered resolves of thanks to General Taylor and his officers, and even for their gallant conduct, which, after much wrangling, passed the House by a vote of 121 to 71.
But they were rejected by the Senate!
By the exertions of the patriotic and high-minded
Caleb Cushing,
a Regiment was raised in Massachusetts for the Mexican war; (the first, we believe, that that State ever sent forth from her own borders to meet the enemies of her country) and she refused to grant it the temporary supplies needful, before it could be mustered into the service. If she feels herself dishonored by her connexion with the Union; how should all the other States feel?”
LETTER IX.
Madam,
Our characters are before the world. Impartial history never can materially change my outline of them. Upon a comparison of them—(and they may be taken for pretty fair representatives of the North and South—of the Free and Slave States)—the Philosophy of History will have to be remodelled. Had
M. Comte
lived among us, he would doubtless have anticipated her in this department of her labors; and I sincerely regret that he has not lived among us, because his works will live to instruct future generations, while mine will die as they leave the Press. Never was the world more deceived, than it has been in regard to the influences of Slavery in this country. When the writer just mentioned stated that it was impossible for an hereditary nobility to exist for any length of time, because the race would run out, and that poverty, however abject, never would arrest the increasing population of the indigent, I was startled. The doctrine seemed to me alike hostile to the teachings of sound philosophy, and the lessons of experience. Yet it is as certainly true, as any doctrine can be, that is based upon history. Nothing would be more easy than to
reason
it down, as
Lardner
did the practicability of crossing the Atlantic by steam; but there stands the
fact,
impregnable in both cases. So is it with regard to Slavery. We all revolt at it—we can fill volumes with unanswerable arguments to prove its baneful influences upon Government, Religion, Wealth, social and individual happiness; but when we turn our eyes from the domain of reason to the stern reality of things as they exist around us, we find that nineteen-twentieths of these arguments are opposed to the evidence of our senses. “How,” inquires Philosophy, “can a people,
born
and
raised
to
command,
ever be brought to obey? They will ever be impatient of government, restless under authority, and ripe for revolt at the smallest provocation.” But how is the fact? You are the child of Puritanism, I of Commercial Adventure. The principle could not be tested by stronger cases. Does our history confirm it? Very far from it. I never raised a finger against the Government in my life. The only time that I ever assumed a menacing attitude to it, was when, under a solemn compact to extinguish the Indian title to lands within my borders, the Government made a treaty to this effect, and then, under the guidance of your John, was about to abrogate it. I then said I would act upon the treaty, and if he could prevent me from so doing he might do it. That compact was left unexecuted, until millions upon millions of other lands were bought from the Indians, settled, erected, into Territories, and actually admitted into the Union as new States. On the other hand, you, who have actually drawn five dollars from the Government where I have drawn one, while I have put five into the common Treasury where you have put one—you, who have been pampered by it, and favored by it, and indulged by it, more than any State in the Union—have ever been in hostility to it, and at times in open revolt against its authority. I bore for sixteen years a course of policy which I then believed was ruining me just to fatten you, without lifting an arm against it; while you could not have your commerce
“
Slavery is hostile to a pure religion.
” That
you
should think so, with your notions of religion, is not strange; but it is exceedingly strange that anybody else should think so. If it be true, as you teach us, that a Slaveholder cannot be a Christian—that Slavery is
per se
a damning sin, involving a breach of nine precepts of the Decalogue, why then there is little or no religion in the Slave States. But as we happen to know, upon quite as high authority as yours, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who were Slaveholders, are all safely housed in Heaven, we are inclined to believe that you are mistaken, and that we have quite as pure a religion, and quite as much of it at the South, as you have at the North. This is a subject upon which I fear to do myself justice, lest I be led into a spirit of boasting for that which none of us can have, except through the boundless mercy and goodness of God; but let any candid man come and dwell with us and try us by all the tests of Bible-piety, and do the same in the Free States, and if he will say that he finds more of the image of Christ among you than he finds among us, I will admit that Slavery is hostile to a pure religion. But believe me, until I find more candor, more justice, more meekness, more temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, charity, peace, and good order, than I have yet found among you, I must fling that doctrine among the rubbish of a used-up philosophy.
“
Slavery is fatal to mental culture.
” With not half your white population, and young enough to be your grand-child, I have more Colleges than you have, and as many students in them, though neither of them has near as many as your Harvard. I have fewer schools of course, because I have but little more than half your white population. I have made larger appropriations for educational purposes than you have ever made, (not counting taxation for these purposes on either side) and it is only because they were made before the time, that they have not been more profitable. Had we now the immense sums which we expended in splendid schemes of education, when we had no children to educate,
Georgia
would soon eclipse you in mental culture. As to the actual exhibitions of mental training, where the sons of the two sections have come in conflict, (as good a test as I can find) they seem to me to furnish you no cause for boasting. Mr.
Dix
recently gave the Senate of the United States a very luminous exposition of this text—but I confess that in looking into that body, I could not find anything to suggest, much less to justify such a disquisition. Nor can I fix upon the time since the foundation of the Government, when it would have been more appropriate to the place and the company. Of one thing, however, I am certain, and it is this; that there is a pride of character about the Southern Senators that will stimulate them, under such lectures, if just, to the severest exertion, in order to bring themselves up to a level with their more intellectual associates of the North—and that humbled under a sense fo their inferiority, they will come home and open their hearts and their hands to the rising generation, in order to redeem them from similar mortification. As it is in point to my subject, I will add, that if we happen to get a Senator of note, we do not deify him, nor pension him.
* It may be well to say, for the instruction of distant readers, that one of the Senators of Massachusetts is called “the god-like,” and the citizens of that State have raised a fund of $100,000, in order to euble him to remain in the Senate.
Turning from the Senate to the other House, to the Pulpit and the Bar, I can find no better ground for this opinion; the due allowances being made for numbers.
“
Slavery is adverse to Internal Improvements.
” I have greater length of Rail Road than any State in the Union, and as good as any in the Union. I have spent more money on my roads and rivers than any State in the Union—and though the expenditure has resulted in little or no profit, the fault was in my workmen not in me; nor in Slavery. In these matters I have received less help from the General Government than any in the Union of half my age. At least this is my best conviction, without taking the trouble to examine into the expenditures and helps of the other States—and not without having looked into these matters in time past. Turnpikes I have not had hitherto, because my population was too sparse to make it the interest of Companies to build them, and I have not now, because my rail roads would supplant them.
“
Slavery is prejudicial to productive industry.
” For many years, when your white population doubled mine, the annual produce of my labor was greater than yours, and even now, so far as our labor is left untouched by the Government, I beat you. Your manufactures have brought you up handsomely, and well they might under a system of legislation which forced down my productions and forced up yours. The census of 1840 makes a grand disclosure, to wit: that the value of your manufactures, that year, was sixteen-seventeenths of the whole amount of capital that you had been in investing in Factories for four and twenty years. In the same year the value of my productions were reduced to a price that would hardly pay two per cent upon the expenses of them. You have had another advantage of me. For many years past, from a half to three-fourths of the exports of the country were of Southern productions. In exchange for these exports come all the imports. Upon these imports the government has levied upwards of seven hundred millions of duties, and in disbursing these immense sums she has given to you
more
than six dollars to my one. Now, if you could not prosper far beyond me with these helps, you deserve to perish; if you cannot now be satisfied to let us all work as we please, and trade where we please, you ought to be drummed out of the Union. And yet you are not; one end, if not the great end, of your Abolition movement is to get our foreign commerce saddled again with a paralizing tariff. What the world will think of you I cannot tell—what those must think of themselves who make common cause with you, is more difficult to tell. You are “disenchanting the minds of the people as to the divinity of their parchment idol”—all the
charms
of Heaven and earth cannot disenchant you, as to the divinity of your mammon idol. Your creed consists of but two articles: “Get money—get it honestly, if convenient—but get money:”
“
Slavery has a demoralizing tendency.
” This is considered an axiomatic truth. How shall we test it? Shall we try it by the relative number of the truly pious in each section of the country? The proof will not be found here. Shall we try it by the deportment, the zeal, the truth, the fervor, the charity, the humility of the professor of religion? You gain nothing here. Shall we try it by the statistics of crime? I know of no better test. Here, unfortunately, I am wanting in authenticated facts; and therefore I must put my word against your record, and challenge you and the world to disprove it. In 1845 you had two thousand two hundred and seventy-nine prosecutions for crimes, and one thousand and thirty-eight convictions, Surely I never had as many in any one year of my life. Of these twenty were tried and eleven convicted for felonious offences against the person, viz:—murder, rape, assault with knife or gun, and felonious assault. What the last offence is, as contradistinguished from assault with deadly weapon, I do not know, unless it be assault with intent to commit a rape, or to rob. If this be the meaning, this offence, and the second in the list, is hardly known in this State. But as my people are quick of temper, sensitive to insult, and too quick to revenge it, I will concede that the crimes under this general head were as numerous in this State in the same year as in yours. But to be on the safe side I will grant, that they were double that number; and here I am sure I am beyond the mark. Offences against the person, not felonious, come next. Of these there were one hundred and seventy-five; seventy-eight convictions. They were for simple assault and battery. As the irreligiousMarryat,
speaking of the comparative amount of crime in England and the United States, finding himself a little annoyed by the statistics of the two countries, as far as ascertained, puts the discredit of the comparison upon the shoulders of poor Ireland and the civil authorities of this country, and then adds: “Still, the whole of Ireland, would offer nothing equal in atrocity to what
I can prove
relative to one small town in America—that of Augusta, in Georgia—containing only a population of three thousand, in which, in
one year,
there were
fifty-nine assassinations committed
in open day, without any notice being taken of them by the authorities.” Well, now, Madam, you have a fine opportunity of procuring the emancipation of three hundred thousand slaves in a day. If you, with Capt.
Marryat,
and all the abolitionists of the world to assist you, will “prove,” by credible testimony, that there has ever been
one assassination
in open day in the city of Augusta, which the civil authorities have never noticed, or that there have been the one-half of fifty-nine
homicides
(not to say assassinations,) in that city, since Georgia became an independent State, I pledge myself that every slave in Georgia shall be emancipated on the day that the proof is adduced. There never has been a
homicide
in the place, night or day, that has passed off unnoticed “by the authorities.” The only case that I remember, in which there ever was anything like remissness in securing the offender, was a very remarkable case. It was this: An Englishman, full-blooded and fresh from his parent-land, went at night to a house in which a number of slaves were enjoying themselves, at a ball. This man, with some others, obtruded himself among them, and, without any justifiable provocation, discharged his pistol among them and killed one of the
women.
He made his escape, I forget how, but I well remember that I thought at the time that there was some remissness on the part of the authorities in securing him for trial. This grew out of the fact, that it was manifest he did not intend to kill
the woman;
but it was, to my mind, equally manifest that he meant to kill some one else, the killing of whom would have been murder. That the truth or falsehood of this story may be fairly tested. I give the name of the Englishman. It was
Charles Worcester,
a Phrenologist by profession. This, I think, was the seventh case of homicide which had happenedMarryat
wrote his Diary. In all the seven cases the offenders were tried—in one of the cases two were tried for the same offence; the one was convicted and executed, the other acquitted. In another, the defendant was found guilty of manslaughter, and branded. In another the offender was convicted and executed; and, in all the rest, the accused were acquitted. Since that time, I regret to say, there have been several homicides—more than had ever before occurred in the city in the same time; but trials were had in all the cases with various results. I have dwelt upon this report of Capt.
Marryat
for obvious reasons. I dismiss it, with the remark that there is not in all Great Britain, a more moral city of the size, than Augusta. When the Captain wrote, the population of Augusta was about six, instead of three thousand.
“
But pass through Massachusetts, and you will find the country in the highest state of agricultural improvement. Pass through Georgia, and the eye is constantly offended by worn out lands, deserted fields, and decaying habitations.
” This is true; and what inference shall we draw from it? Why, at the first blush we should infer, beyond doubt, that the agricultural productions of Massachusetts must be greater and more valuable than those of Georgia. I suppose nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand travellers through the two countries, would so conclude. But the
fact
is otherwise. Here I always beat you largely. I could give the reason of it clear enough, but the fact is sufficient for my purpose.
“
But the condition of the poor Slave is so wretched.
” This is wider from the truth than any position yet examined. It is a common remark that there is not to be found a happier race of beings
among the working classes
on the face of the globe, than the slaves of the South. Most assuredly is this true. What is to make them unhappy? Having never known liberty, they rarely think of it, and still more rarely sigh for it. You might as well suppose that the peasant makes himself always miserable because he is not a nobleman; or the subject, because he is not a king. This source of unhappiness removed, and there is no other—no other I mean, to a vast, vast majority of them. As to the talk of tearing husbands and wives asunder; it is not done once by the master, where it is done five hundred times by the parties themselves. But I do not mean to discuss the matter, especially to deaf ears. They are, upon the whole, a happy people. Let those who choose to give reasons for or against this assertion, do so if they will; I have to do with the fact, and the fact only. At this moment I turn my eye to this class of my population; and if peace and plenty by day, and laughter, and music, and dancing, and song by night, unchecked by care for the present, or thought of the future, are tokens of happiness, then there are not three millions of happier beings anywhere than my slaves. And believe me, Madam, that you and your complotters, who gather up the few instances of cruelty to them which sometimes occur, and hold them up to the world as fair samples of slavery in this country, will have to answer in the day of righteous retribution for this falsehood, and for the unmeasurable evils which flow from it. In that day you will find, that all sin does not consist in Slavery on the one hand, nor all piety in Abolitionism on the other. That the Word of truth no more justifies hypocrisy, falsehood, slander, treason and violence, in opposition to slavery, than to drunkenness and covetousness. That with this word before you, and the lights which have been burning upon if for decades of centuries, showing
that God himself has more than once denounced Slavery upon whole races, as a penalty for sin, he will not justify you in proclaiming, “trumpet tongued,” that Slavery under all circumstances is a damning crime against God and Nature. Nor will the false glosses that you have given to his holy Word, in order to reduce it to the measure of your ethics, be passed to your credit. Nor will he look with much indulgence upon those, who, unable to justify these glosses themselves, give them currency, under such endorsements as, “Dr.
Channing,
has said,” and “Mr.
Barnes
has declared,” and “the profound this one asserts,” and “the pious that one avows.” On that day, as I reverentially believe, many of your sons will come before Him, crying “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name done manywork
iniquity!” While to many a slave-holder he shall say, “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world—for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
“It will be remembered, that the objections to slavery, which I have been considering, are such as regard its influences upon the
whites.
Had they been confined to the
blacks,
they would have had truth enough in them,to make it desirable to every benevolent slaveholder, that they should be emancipated so soon as it can be done peaceably, and with safety to both parties.
I am done with you, and I am about to bid you farewell, until we meet at Philippi. Let me beseech you to avert the ruin which you are bringing upon the country, by a peaceable secession from the Union; and let all who think as you do follow your example. You admit it to have been cemented with your father's blood—that as long as men will regard their oaths, it is impregnable to any who remain in it. You declare that the Constitution is the adamantine chain of slavery—and you proclaim to the world, that the supreme law of the land presses upon your conscience, and holds you to a connection with it, that is intolerable to you and your religion. What then should you do? Disregard your oaths for conscience sake? Abuse your fathers for their well meant error? Set a mob upon the Constitution? Cut the master's throat to reform the Government which binds you to fellowship with him? Rob him of his acknowledged rights, because you do not like his company? Surely not. In God's name how have you made proselytes to this system of warfare! Cease your agitations, and calmly appeal to the
States,
(not to
Congress,
) to release you from the tie that binds you to them; and let us exhibit to the world two sublime political miracles, in less than that many years: the nuptials and the divorce of nations, by the omnipotent law of love on the one hand, and its kindred law of peace on the other. We have struck the true theory of Government,and God seems to be furnishing the proof of it. Let us discard the notion of accession by aggressive warfare. Let us repudiate the idea, that the members of the body politic are to be bound to it by withs and thongs, when the nerves are cut which made them subservient to its will; they can only incumber and annoy it afterwards, and must soon spread their gangrene through the whole system. Now, that we have a chart and compass whereby we can navigate the ship of State through all seas in safety—so long as we can keep her own vermin from her timbers, let us not forget the Cynosure of Independence; but bid her a kind farewell for her pilotage through the breakers of the Revolution—blot her out from the galaxy that encircles the Eagle's crest—put the Lone Star in its place, and in language as peculiarly our own as is the sentiment, add a new motto to the Star Spangled Banner: “
Let all who love us, come—let all who hate us, go!
” But will you, Madam, give us the chance to exhibit this sublime spectacle to the world? Not you. You have not the most distant idea of leaving the Union. You could not be emptied out of it. With the adhesiveness and offensiveness of melted sulphur will you stick to it; ever wasting its strength and tarnishing its lustre by your suffocating fumes. Why, then, your pretended horror of Slavery, which is removed a thousand miles from you? To work upon the feelings and sympathies of your children and your neighbors, in order to band them against the South. Why bring the Constitution of your country into contempt? To quiet the consciences of the confederates, in violating its sacred precepts. Why bluster about quitting the Union? To cover your shame in your bold encroachments, and to reconcile the South to them, through their love of the Union. Why rave at the peaceable accession of Southern territory? Because it adds to the political strength of the South. Why wish to enfeeble this strength? That you may turn the Government into a machine, that shall work as a screw upon the South, and as a mint to the North. This explains—what otherwise would be inexplicable—the mystery of your success.
I am done. I have stretched my defence far beyond the limits originally intended; but not too far, to do justice to
LETTERS FROM
GEORGIA TO THE SOUTHERN STATES.
LETTER I.
After
having witnessed with ever increasing apprehensions, the progress of Abolitionism for fifteen or twenty years—after seeing it spread from State to State, until it gained the ascendency in two of the strongest Churches of the Union—after seeing it, without acruple and without apology, cut the cords which bound the members of these Churches together, and while in the very act of seizing upon the privileges and the property of the Southern members, heaping upon them contumely and abuse, forbidden by all the laws of courtesy, not to say, of Christianity—after seeing it for many long years, harassing Congress with petitions to do what Congress had no right to do—and after seeing concession after concession made to it on the part of the South, with no other effect then to encourage and to inflame it—after having borne its taunts and its insults, until patience ceased to be a virtue, and forbearance took the complexion of guilt, if not of treason—while its votaries were in the very act of laying siege to the Constitution, with a boldness and a wantonness never before equalled by this daring sect—the State looking indifferently upon its ravages in the Church, and the Church looking indifferently upon its ravages in the State—while all these things were before me, and in progress,I took the pen, in order, to the best of my feeble ability, to vindicate my own character, and the character of the South from its calumnies, to expose its parentage and designs, and to implore the Southern States, by everything that they hold sacred, to cease their wrangling about things of minor importance, and to unite in some plan of determined opposition to this all-wasting monster. To these ends, I have written nine Long letters, and (so far as I have seen) I have got—my trouble for my pains. No matter: the work is a good one, however poorly executed, and I will go on and finish it.
I now approach the most delicate part of it, which is to lay before the Southern States my views of the policy which should govern them, until the Abolition fever subsides of itself, or is cured by depletion; for in doing this, I must necessarily seem at times, to favor the views of one or the other of the two great political parties, which have ever divided the country. All, however, who will read me with candor, and judge me with righteousness, will be constrained to acknowledge, that the real design of these letters (which will not exceed two) is to favor no man, nor any class of men, but Southern men. I think, that for every opinion which I may advance, I shall give reasons cogent enough to convince any candid man that I am sincere in those opinions, and that I advance them with no object but to perpetuate the Union—to secure to the South her constitutional rights, and to avert civil war; or if this cannot be done, to bring the South victoriously through it.
No one on this side of
Mason
and
Dixon's
Line, knows what Abolitionism is better than I do—not one in a thousand knows it as well as I do. To understand it perfectly, one must have seen its workings amidst prayers and hymns, and thanksgivings to God, in the temple where the sons of the North and of the South have been wont to worship together for more than a half century. If here, it can insult without a blush, injure without remorse, dispoil without a twitch, and pray without a halt, within the eye-shot of three hundred thousand people, and with nothing to conceal its deformity but a cob-web tissue of sophistry; be assured there is no security against its despotism in our “
parchment idol,
” as one has well expressed it. It is not a thing to be temporized, or tampered with. To my eye, all the agitating topics of the day sink into perfect insignificance when compared with it; and for us to be disputing about whether this man or that man should be made President—whether there are more Abolitionists belonging to this party than that—whether this measure or that measure will be the most politic, with all the
et ceteras
of party polemics; is like wrangling, under the axe of the executioner, about the grave-clothes that we will be buried in. Nothing alarms me more, or amazes me more, than the apathy and indifference with which the Southern people view the encroachments and the pretensions of the Abolitionists. With all their boasted high-mindedness and chivalry, I doubt whether there is another people on the face of the globe, who would have seen the fires of destruction kindled around them, as they have been kindled around us, with so little resistance, with so little emotion. These Northern rioters come thronging the halls of Congress with bushels of papers at a Session, which they are pleased to call petitions for the redress of grievances; and they bristle fiercely at any man who would deny them this “glorious constitutional right of petition.” And what is the grievance of which they complain? Why they of Massachusetts are grieved, that certain persons in the District of Columbia, whom they never saw and never expect to see, own Slaves. Open these petitions and you will see the very names affixed to them, which you find affixed to resolutions declaring the Constitution under whose panoply they come, is worthy of the bitterest execration. And yet this thing creates no alarms or excitement amongst us.—But let me not again repeat what I have already said. Suffice it to say that encroachment after encroachment, aggression after aggression, comes upon us, and it does not move us. At length comes the
Wilmot
Proviso, an outrage upon all decency and all propriety, unlooked for and unprovoked—a mere feeler to drag to light all false professors of the Abolition faith, and to segregate for destruction every Northern man, who might have integrity and firmness enough to keep his oath and defend his country from this infamous attack; and behold! it passes the popular branch of the Government by a strong majority! Northern Whigs and Democrats now take hands, leaving their Southern allies to shirk for themselves. Peradventure, the South might not have sense enough to understand these startling indications of popular feeling is the North, the more desperate of the clan proclaim to all the world, “that upon that subject, the South will find them united to a man.” Actions and words put together, and this is their version: “We give you to understand, that whenever Slavery can be screwed into any Legislative proceeding on this floor, whether it be in place or out of place, you may expect it to be done; and you may further know, that neither oaths nor Constitution will be held a sufficient apology to our constituents for voting against any measure the
professed
object of which is to oppose Slavery—no matter what the real object, and no matter how foreign the measure from the professed object.” This should have sent one general universal thrill of horror and indignation through every bosom of the South. But it has stirred nobody; most of the presses between the Potomac and the Rio Grande, have not spoken of it at all; and the very few that have spoken of it, have done it in a way that argues very little concern about it. The citadel of Freedom is stormed, and the besiegers are encouraged to push on by huzzas and warnings from their homes. Even little Delaware, who has but just cracked the shell of Slavery, cheeps to her Representatives to throw her two mites into the scale of Abolitionism. In the meantime, what are the besieged doing? Just about this:
“Do you see our outpost stormed by a joint attack of Whigs and Democrats?”
“Yes; what shall we do? Hadn't we better capitulate?”
“The terms will not admit of capitulation.”
“Then, do you hasten to the assailants and tell them that we are a high-minded, chivalrous people—and do you demonstrate to them that if they keep on in this way, they will certainly ruin us in a few years—and do you show how we got into this predicament—and do you calculate the number of Whigs, and you the number of Democrats, in the enemy's ranks; and when this is done, let us rush
en masse
to the President, and beg him, for mercy's sake, to do something for us, or we are ruined.”
Thus, at the battle-field—how at our homes?
“Have you seen the
Wilmot
Proviso? It is too bad!”
“Is he a Whig or a Democrat?”
“Upon that subject there's not much difference between them.”
“Those fellows will never rest till they dissolve the Union; and you'll see it.”
“Oh, everybody sees that—what's the price of Cotton?”
“
Is he a Whig or a Democrat?
” Aye, there is the turning point of our ruin.
If a
Whig:
Southern Whigs are as patient as lambs under his chastisements. If a
Democrat:
Southern Democrats are as meek as sucking doves under his infliction. I ask you, Whigs and Democrats, is this the way to save the Union? Does the history of the world furnish one single instance of escape from evil, by such conduct? Has it not uniformly and universally avouched it, and aggravated it? In this strange and unnatural deadness which has come over us, I see one strong ground of encouragement at least, and but one! It secures us against hasty, intemperate and injudicious action. Let us avail ourselves of it, to prepare like patriots and like men for the coming storm. In the absence of better counsels, let me lay before you the plan of defence which I would pursue, and the reasons of it. The cardinal principles of it are:
1st. The Union must be preserved if possible.
2d. If this cannot be done, we must so act as to compel those to leave it who do not like it—not us. And
3d. We must be prepared to meet the consequences, if we are forced out of it.
Upon these heads I have to remark, that so admirably is our Government framed, that Abolitionism never can seriously injure us, until it shall have got the control of all the three great departments of the Government. While any one of these is beyond its influence, or while any one of these remains pure, we are just as safe from its
mischievous
assaults as we would be in the heart of a rock-mountain. Let not, then, our Representatives or our people be rash in quiting the Union. An unconstitutional law can do no great harm, even if it pass both Houses of Congress, while the President regards his duty or his oath. It can create no
irreparable
mischief, if it pass both Houses, over the head of the President, (as it may possibly do,) or with the sanction of the President, so long as the Supreme Court maintains its integrity. Fortunately, the Supreme Court is a permanent body, not dependent upon the whims of the populace for its place or its power. It must and will be, therefore, the last pillar of the Republic which will give way, and we should never despair of the Republic until we see a majority of that body the creatures of Abolitionism. But the Abolitionists have the power to make the President, if they will concentrate it on this object—the President has the nomination of the Supreme Court. If, therefore, they get their President, and a majority in the Senate, they will be certain, after a time, to get a majority of the Court on their side. Now we have seen everywhere, in Church and State, that compacts are not worth a straw, in the sight of an Abolitionist, when his arms are pointed against Slaveholders. If Abolitionism does not entirely reverse the moral code of its votary, it most assuredly perverts the judgment and distracts the reason. Let us not, then, with the broad lights of experience blazing on our pathway, vainly hope for anything from Abolition vows, pledges, promises, or piety. These are sad confessions for a believer in Christianity to make, but truth and honesty demand them. I do not forget the few exceptions,
The first question with us, then, in a Presidential Canvass, should always be: Is he sound upon the subject of Abolitionism? Has he been
tried,
and has he
proved
himself sound? Not has he
said
he was sound? Can he be trusted to veto an unconstitutional law, amidst the storms and threats and yells of disappointed Abolitionism? If these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, let no Southern man touch him sooner than he would touch a live coal. No matter how well he agrees with us in everything else—let him alone, by the salvation of the country. If he be sound upon the great point, and his competitor be like him thus far, why then choose between them according to your tariff and your anti-tariff notions—your war and your anti-war notions—or any others that you may spring up to serve the time being. Abolitionism is manifestly working out a result which its projectors did not dream of. Some of the more simple and honest-hearted really begin to believe that they cannot live in safety to their souls under a Government that recognizes Slavery. This spirit may in time, and probably will, if the agitation is kept up as hitherto, exert a controlling influence, and compel some of the New England States to quit the Union. We should throw all our power, therefore, about the Constitution, that we may drive these malcontents to despair of a change or overthrow of the Government. If they desire to leave us, let no Southern man raise a voice against it. They will not be out of the Union a twelve-month before they will be sueing for re-admission, as perfectly weaned of Abolitionism as I am now.
But how are we to do when Abolitionism makes its appearance (as it often will,) in the form of the
Wilmot
Proviso?—when an indispensible law cannot be passed, without, at the same time, establishing a proviso that is fatal to the rights of the South? I answer, examine the law and the proviso well, and see whether the last be constitutional or not. If it be not, then look to see whether it can be brought within the cognizance of the Supreme Court; and if it cannot be, vote against the whole law, giving your reasons, and let the Government suffer the consequences of the infamous tactics of these disorganisers. To illustrate: Suppose the
Wilmot
Proviso had become a law, and by treaty a strip of Mexican territory adjoining Texas had been ceded to the United States—and suppose that slaveholders of Texas had moved over and settled on it, does any man believe that they could have been repelled from heir possessions by virtue of that law? The officer who would undertake to disturb hem would be sued—he would justify under the law—the Supreme Court would prtoounce the law void, and there would be an end of the matter.
But still the Constitution may be so daringly overleaped, and, in a matter of such vital importance to the South, that we cannot with safety wait the tardy process of a legal remedy. And, whether this be the case or not, it is likely that the Abolitionists (without a blow-up among themselves.) will in time get the control of all the departments of Government, and, as soon as this is the case, we should separate from them in a body; for be assured, that of all Despotisms that ever cursed a people, this will be the worst.
Now we should begin camly and prudently to prepar for this event. We should have a military school in every State, and we should patronize them liberally in every way. Tactics should be a part of the study and training of every College. Our militia laws should undergo a thorough remodeling. Our men should be drilledargumentum ad hominem,
they may disband; and then let us do the like.
LETTER II.
It
may be well, before I proceed farther in the development of my views upon the policy of the Southern States in regard to Abolitionism, to subjoin an extract or two from a Massachusetts paper, confirmatory of the remark with which I closed my last letter:
“The great political contest in this country, in reality is, and long has been, the contest between Freedom on the one side, and Slavery on the other. Other issues have been presented to the people, but the slave
power
has always stood back of them and controlled them.”—“Why, then, should we longer play
bo-peep
around this colossal power, as if Tariffs, or any such thing, were issues of the least consequence in themselves? Why not at once present the true issue—the issue which must ere long be tried and determined—that of Freedom or Slavery?”
There can be no doubt of the truth of these remarks. Abolitionism has two names at the North, but is substantially the same thing under both; and turn our eyes whithersoever we may, we see the signs infallible that the Government, or the slave
power,
is to be crushed. If, therefore, we would not add the guilt of suicide to the guilt of negligence, let us prepare for the great issue. How madly do we act in refusing to look the thing in the face because it is offensive to the sight. I have shown the best way to avert, and the best way to meet the threatened catastrophe, namely: by keeping up the breastwork of the Constitution, and by organizing a strong military force behind it. But there are other plain indications of policy which are inseparably connected with these measures, and without a proper use of which they will be unavailing. We have seen that the powers of the Government must ultimately fall into the hands of our enemies, and surely we will not act so unwisely as to strengthen the arm of that Government. To do this, will be to put a dagger into the hand which is up-raised for our destruction. No measure, therefore, which must plainly increase the political power of the North, or which must enrich it more than the South, or increase its powers of exaction, should ever be supported by the Southern States, while we occupy our present position—however wise and politic those measures might be in a different state of things. It is the duty of the whole Union to hold the Government to the strictest economy; but to the South, this is a measure of safety as well as of expediency. They who control the purse of the nation will be certain to help themselves to most of its contents. We should take care, therefore, that we do not fill it with redundant treasure. Useless funds
We should begin now to anticipate the state of our Commerce, in case we shall be driven out of the Union. In this event, we must either have no commerce at all, or it must be direct between our own and foreign ports. If we cannot, as we now are, get up a direct trade, we certainly can keep from driving if from our doors, when it comes from other nations. The annals of Congress, and of my Legislature, show what my motives have ever been in regard to free trade; but suppose that I have erred in this regard hitherto. I cannot err in saying that while we are threatened with the loss of the home-trade, we should be looking out for some other—per-adventure we be cut off from the one, just as we cut ourselves off from the other, and thus be left without any.
The Southern States should, by some means, be interchanging their views as to their future connection, in case they be repelled from the Union, lest, when the evil day comes, they be like a routed band of soldiers, fleeing in every direction, without object or rallying point. I heard that it was in the contemplation of the Southern Representatives in Congress to leave in a body, if the
Wilmot
Proviso passed both Houses. This was probably a mistake; but suppose that had been done, in what a state of confusion should we have been at the South! This should never be done. Our Representatives, however, with that example before their eyes, would do well to meet at a convenient season, and draw up some plan of procedure for the South, in case they should discover that we can no longer remain in the Union with safety, and their plan should be made known to the most prudent and influential of their constituents whose suggestions should be carried back to Congress and discussed, and if good, be incorporated into the plan. In this way we might, in a few years, have a complete system of organization, ready for any emergency—to be flung in the fire if the Abolitionists cease their attacks, or to be used if they push them beyond endurance.
All these heads I had intended to discuss at some length; but finding it impossible to do so without treading upon disputed ground too far, and without seeming to favor men or parties, I forbear. This much, however, I will venture to say: that of the distinguished individuals spoken of for the Presidency, I think there are none who may not be safely trusted, so far as Slavery is concerned: President
Polk,
Vice President
Dallas, Benton, Cass, Calhoun, Clay, Taylor,
and
Scott,
are all sound, I doubt not, upon this head. Could the lives of these men be prolonged to the requisite period, and their mental vigor be preserved, nothing would afford me more pleasure than to be assured that these men would monopolize the Presidency, (alternately one from either party,) for the next two and thirty years to come. I certainly have very decided preferences between them, but I would forego these preferences, rather than run the risk of getting a worse man than either fastened upon us for more than four years, or an Abolitionist fastened upon us for any time. All who have noticed my votes for many years past, will give me credit for candor in this declaration at least, for I have been taunted with my unsteadiness in President-making not unfrequently.
A few words of explanation, and I have done. Some of these should have been given before, but I forgot them, and give them now. We all, who look upon passing events, have a morbid sensibility upon some subject—one upon Slavery, another upon Papacy, another upon War, another upon this thing and another upon that; and mine may be upon the subject of Abolitionism. I sincerely hope it may be so. But if so, it is a sensibility awakened not in the cloister, but by the unsought evidence of my senses. I cannot be mistaken as to the manner in which Northern Governors and Judges treat applicants for fugitive Slaves. I cannot be mistaken about the
But in view of our long-endured injuries, the wantonness of the attacks upon us, the cruelty, insolence and daring of those attacks, the breaches of faith through which they were made, the hardship of being thus set upon, for no fault of ours, for a mere
relation
in which we found ourselves by birth, from which we could not release ourselves, brought on us, too, by our persecutors—assailed in our feelings, in our character, in our families, in our Churches, in our Capital, at home, abroad, at all times, in all places, by men, by women, by whites, by blacks, by Christians, by scoundrels, by ex-Presidents, by scullions, while all the time we were lifting up the natural, if not too humble cry, “let us alone—let us alone—for mercy's sake, for peace sake, for our father's sake, for our country's sake, for God's sake, let us alone, and attend to your own concerns—Slavery is enough to bear, all admit, without any aggravations”—in view of all these things, and their lamentable consequences just ahead, I have sometimes spoken unguardedly, perhaps too severely for my credit, if not for my cause. The candid and the charitable will excuse me; I have nothing to ask of any others.
One has said, “with the
politics
of the
author
we have nothing to do.” If he will re-peruse my letters, he will see that I speak on political matters with which I have to do, as
Georgia,
in my
sovereign character,
or in the name of a majority of my children. I speak of Massachusetts (except in noticing some little incident) in the same way. I charge her with such things only, as she, in her sovereign character, has done or sanctioned, or such as I have clear proof that a majority of her children approve or design. I said in the beginning, and I repeat it here, that many of her sons have had no part in her ruinous projects, and that such are among the very noblest of the noble. If I am asked why I hold her responsible for the monstrous doctrines of the Abolition meeting, I answer because I had seen the very
I have been actuated in all I said and done by an honest desire to save the country, and to vindicate my character, and the character of the South, from aspersions which have been so long cast upon them, that almost the whole enlightened world takes us to be a band of cut-throats, robbers, and tyrants. That man
Garrison
goes over to England, and he fills all Great Britain with false reports of the Southern character. I have thrown to the wings of chance a daguerreotype from the focus of Slavery, and from the focus of Abolitionism, in the hope that kind Fortune may bear them along the path of the slanderous
Garrison,
if no farther, and to as many eyes as he found ears for his detraction. Whatever may be the result of my labors, the design of them is as pure as anything that emanated from
GEORGIA.
THE END.
With
an anxious desire to prevent the dangers which menace this Union, to the preservation of which, in its purity and original design, we are as warmly devoted as any men living, we sometime since stated our design to embody and present to the people in one view the tangible official measures of the Abolition Party, under their new banner, the Wilmot Proviso. We then thought, and still think, that the Slaveholding States have been lulled into a false, and it may be a fatal, non-action, because partly they fear to look at their case exactly as it is, unwisely expecting to escape its perils by shutting their eyes to the startling demonstrations of ill boding all around them, and weekly trusting to delusive promises and arrangements of political managers, and the presses which are their organs and parts of their machinery; yielding themselves up to those who are harnessed to party, who make its triumph their paramount object, going for offices, power, and spoils, without regarding the fatal concessions which they make to procure the votes and co-operation of Abolition allies. Abolition is thus allowed to get into close communion with both parties; to walk up to the helm of their political ship, to take the compass and steer it by their principles. And while dangers thicken, and the toils are being drawn to a fatal consummation, even after the votes of dead majorities of the House of Representatives in two successive sessions of Congress have cut away every principle of safety, and the concurrent and almost unanimous Resolutions of
Ten States
have rung the death knell of their Constitutional guaranties, such has been the lack of wisdom, spirit, and self-reliance amongst us, that presses and politicians, instead of rousing the people to organize for the defence of their Constitution, privileges, and institutions, exhort them to confide all to party management, and leave the safety of all they hold dear to the secret arrangements of political bargainers, wholly irresponsible to them, and whose most trusted allies are men whose sympathies, principles, and constituencies are steeped in Abolition. There is a fatal error here. It is time for the people of the non-slaveholding States to disavow the acts of their politicians and leaders, and for the Slaveholding States to look to their own preservation. We cannot safely, without great risk, confide our defence to any but ourselves. The people of the non-Slaveholding States should let us alone. The Wilmot Abolition Proviso is splitting the Union into sectional parties; it is virtually the first step to a dissolution. We appeal from their political leaders to themselves to arrest this progress to the ruin of the Republic. And that the North may see the truth and know the consequences, and that the Slave States may also know the length and breadth of the measures progressing for their destruction, we shall adduce and publish herewith such incontestible proofs of official and State action as the most confiding political dupe cannot palliate or deny.
The evidence derived from the press, abundant and virulent as it is, we pass by; the petitions and memorials of societies and individuals, under which the tables ofalmost equally
the acts of Whigs and Democrats, show that both of these parties, with few and constantly diminishing exceptions, have been absorbed in the movements of Abolition, and are controlled by it; and that thereby Abolition has been advanced into a
new position,
which is the most dangerous it has ever occupied, because it is subversive of the Constitution, and Revolutionary, and will, if it is not
now met, resisted and defeated,
by the peaceful extension of the Missouri Compromise and the settlement of the issue on that basis, inevitably lead to the destruction of the rights of the Slaveholding States and their citizens, or to the necessity of maintaining them by the sword.
This evidence will further show to the country, that in all cases the Slaveholding States have been the party assailed; and assailed upon points of vital consequence, where to yield on their part, is to submit to ruin and degradation; and that they have never assaulted in turn, but have acted throughout purely in self-defence. It will show also, that while the attack is one of fearful danger, that it has been deliberately prepared, is widely adopted, has been pursued with a cool and inflexible resolution, and has combined in its aggression a most formidable array of the non-Slaveholding States, not only in and through the almost unanimous votes of their Representatives in Congress, Whig and Democratic, but by their State Governments: and that being thus a Governmental State movement combined, and with this fixed and determinate purpose, it will, if successful, revolutionise the Government, put the Constitution itself in the hands of Abolition, and take from the Slaveholding States every security for their rights and property which that compact now guaranties to them.
The progress of this movement has been one of cold, stern purpose, marching steadily forward with unfaltering step to its object. To understand in its import the dangerous nature and the resolute progressive influences combined to carry it, a retrospect of a few years, to trace the prior action of Abolition in this country, will be useful. This we shall make very briefly.
Although a disposition existed with a class of individuals in this country to attack the slave institutions of the States, it was not until after the example of British West India Emancipation, that it was taken up by any of the States, and became excited to dangerous activity and power. Massachusetts took the first direct overt step in State aggression. The history of it is briefly this: A most dangerous insurrection had been discovered and suppressed in 1822, which had been planned and instigated by foreign colored persons, (from St. Domingo,) who had seduced the colored natives, free and slaves, into a bloody plot to murder the whites, and plunder and burn the City of Charleston. To guard life and property from the horrors of servile insurrection, an act of the Legislature was passed, prohibiting the intrusion or residence of foreign persons of color amongst our slaves; a measure necessary to self-preservation, and of equal humanity to whites and blacks.
During fourteen years this act was enforced without complaint or remonstrance from any one of the American States. But then came British West India Emancipation, waking a kindred spirit at the North. Massachusetts aroused from her slumber of fourteen years to the sudden discovery, that this act of humanity, so necessary to protect thousands of their free white fellow citizens, their wives and children, from massacre, and even greater atrocities, was a supposed invasion of hypothetical rights of
her colored citizens,
and imposed on her “a paramount duty” to remonstrate against it, and resist it. The supposed rights of
her
colored citizens was their free access to our slaves, and would have opened wide our portals to the emissaries of rebellion, and put the peace, property and lives of our people at the tender mercies of that speculative philanthropy, which will see no guilt in stimulating the black slaves to treason, murder and arson on their white masters.
On this pretext Massachusetts began a war of legislative reports, protests and resolutions, which has been prosecuted by her and other anti-Slavery States ever since without cessation, going even to the bold extent of sending agents with her commissions
From this beginning sprung other acts of like character; and the records of Congress teem with documents emanating not from fanatical individuals alone, but from sovereign States, which contain the most unwarrantable aspersions, irritating to their feelings, unfriendly in their bearing, embittering rank wrong by biting insults, and disturbing their tranquillity by agitations dangerous to their peace and safety; and yet under all these aggressions, the Slaveholding States, confining themselves strictly within the bounds of their rights and duties, have never been aggressors, but have acted purely on the defensive. But what has been the reward of their forbearance? An increase of injury and aggression. The causes for painful anxiety, from the concurrence of so many of their sister States in conduct subversive of good feeling and confidence, has more recently grown into profound alarm, by circumstances so pregnant of evil omen as to shake all reliance on the efficacy and value of the guarantees of the Constitution itself for our safety and protection.
For the sake of convenience and brevity, we will divide and treat of these circumstances under two heads or classes.
The first of these is the withdrawal by such States as New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts of all State aids, stipulated for in the Constitution, and provided for in the Act of Congress of 1793, for the recovery of fugitive slaves, and for the arresting and delivery of those who are charged with the felony of stealing slaves from their masters in their own States. The most flagrant of these is the act of Pennsylvania recently passed, and which we publish with this article—an act which has been responded to in Carlisle, one of its towns, by the murder of a peaceful citizen of Maryland, whose only offence was that he arrested and attempted to carry home his runaway slave which he found there. We omit the laws of New York, Massachusetts and other States of cognate character, not having room for them, and leaving this one of Pennsylvania to speak for the others, and to show to the Slaveholding States how faithfully their Northern sisters fulfil the compacts of the Constitution, and obey the laws of Congress made to enforce them, in regard to slavery. And to enable them to do this more understandingly, we put the article of the Constitution, and the Act of Congress of 1793, side and side with the law of Pennsylvania.
The second class of these circumstances is the repeal of the 21st rule, its natural corralleries the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise, the passage in two successive Sessions of the Wilmot Proviso by the popular branch of Congress, and the combined affiliated resolutions of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Michigan—TEN of the SOVEREIGN STATES of this Confederated Republic—Of TEN STATES which wield votes enough to control the legislation of Congress, and to elect a President of the United States!
We have shown that in all that relates to this unhappy controversy, the Slaveholding States have in no instance been aggressors; that the subject of quarrel has been selected by the other side; the quarrel itself begun by them; and that it has been urged in all its desperate tendencies by them. And in regard to the second class, viz: the repeal of the 21st rule, the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise, the Wilmot Proviso, and the affiliated Legislative resolutions of these Ten States, we publish these resolutions with dates at which they were presented in the House of Representatives, as well as such defensive proceedings on the side of the Slaveholding States as have the sanction of Legislatures or Conventions. We have several objects in thus collecting and throwing before the public these authentic records.
One object is, to show, by comparing the dates of these measures on both sides, that what we have said above is strictly true—that Abolition and its friends are the aggressors on the Slave States; and that it was not until the combination of all parties with Abolition was manifested in the events of the last Session of Congress, and the co-operation of their allied States, that a single movement, even of self-defence, was made by the Slaveholding States, either in Congress, their Legislatures, or Conventions.
On the 6th of August, 1846, being the 1st Session of the 29th Congress, whilst a bill appropriating $2,000,000 to procure a peace with Mexico was on its passage,
David Wilmot,
a Democratic Representative of Pennsylvania, offered an amendment in the following words:
“
Provided further,
That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory on the continent of America, which shall hereafter be acquired by, or annexed to the United States by virtue of this appropriation, or in any other manner whatever, except for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
No debate was allowed—the South was gagged, and the amendment passed by a vote of 85 to 80.
The bill failed to become a Law in the Senate; and at the next session, on the 29th December, before the Committee to which the Mexican question was regularly referred had time to act upon the subject, Mr.
Preston King,
of New York, rose in his place, resumed the offensive, and gave notice of his
intention
to introduce a bill upon this subject, containing Mr.
Wilmot's
Proviso. On the 4th January, 1837, he asked leave of the House to introduce his bill, which was refused. On the next day he resumed his purpose, and in a long speech, in which he explained the object of the Proviso, said, in regard to a peace with Mexico, that it would be “vain to attempt to conceal that the acquisition of new territory,
at least of the Californias and New Mexico
* * * * * will be insisted upon by the United States;” and that it was the fixed and determined purpose of the non-slave States to exclude Slaveholders with their property from that territory.
It is upon the basis laid down in the speech of Mr.
King,
their organ, supported by Mr.
Brinkerhoff,
of Ohio, Mr.
Wilmot,
of Pennsylvania, and
Hannibal Hamlin,
of Maine, that this Abolition movement has since proceeded, conforming to its principles strictly, both in Congress and in those States which have supported it by their Legislatures. What has given to it even more ominous gravity and consequence, is the fact, that in its support we can see (with a few honorable exceptions) no difference in the zeal and unanimity of original Abolitionists and their modern recruits, Democrats and Whigs. On this issue, the politicians, with very few exceptions, cohere and make
one party
north of Mason and Dixon's line. From them we appeal to the people, in the hope that a returning sense of justice will yet save our country from the perils they have created.
On February 1, 1847, Mr.
Wilmot
renewed his motion to amend the bill to appropriate $3,000,000 for a peace with Mexico, by adding his Proviso. This was debated until the 15th, when it passed—115 to 105. During this debate, and to influence and act on the decision, Resolutions from several State Legislatures, endorsing and approving the measure, were presented in the House of Representatives—the great States, New York and Pennsylvania, taking the lead, and presenting theirs together on the 6th February. A few days after, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Michigan followed; Massachusetts and New Hampshire also did the same. Thus the extraordinary spectacle was presented of nine confederate States, parties to a solemn Constitutional compact which guarantied equal rights to all their confederate sisters, bringing their sovereign organic influence into the National Council, to force up their representatives to an act designed to exclude the citizens of Slaveholding States from emigrating with their property into territories of the United States which are their joint and common property, in disregard of their equal rights thereto, and in violation of that compact of the Constitution which stipulates that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.”
But our main purpose is to show that these measures, if successful, will subvert and override the Constitution, revolutionise and change this Government, and put the Constitution and Slavery in the power or at the disposal of Abolitionism. In short, that the Wilmot Proviso is Abolition—Abolition in the most dangerous form it has ever assumed; and that, if it is not
now met, resisted and defeated, by peaceful compromise and settlement on the Missouri basis, it will end in the utter ruin of the slaveholders, or compel them to resistance hereafter by the sword.
We have said that the Wilmot Proviso, if successful, subverts and overrides the Constitution. The foundation of that instrument is equality amongst the States, and equality of rights amongst the citizens; equality in the joint and common property, and its benefits and enjoyment. The territories that belong now, or may be acquired, are joint and common property; and whether acquired by purchase or conquest, have been and will continue to be, at the joint and common expense of treasure, blood and service. No slaveholder has ever proposed to exclude any citizen of any State, or even any foreigner from them; but the Wilmot Proviso excludes every slaveholder who will not renounce his property. There is thus imposed, by an act of Congress, as a fixed and fundamental condition to emigration from the Slave States, that no owner of slaves shall be permitted to go with his property into them. If we look into the Constitution for any such condition, it is nowhere to be found. In art. 6. it says: “This Constitution, &c. shall be the supreme law of the land;” but the Wilmot Proviso interpolates, flatly usurps a power above this, to impose as a fundamental condition to the enjoyment of the joint and common property of the United States what the Constitution nowhere authorizes, and against which all its principles and all sense of justice revolts. This is a condition which overrides the Constitution—is paramount to it—changes it fundamentally, and annihilates the highest privileges of nearly one-half of this Confederacy.
The Resolutions of several of the States go further still in open words, but not further in effect and operation, when they declare that no new State shall be admitted which tolerates slavery. That this is the meaning and intent of the Wilmot Proviso no man doubts. The speeches of the mover of it, and of its supporters,
Preston King, Hannibal Hamlin, Brinkerhoff,
&c. avow it. Here again they impose a condition not in the Constitution, but over and above it: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union,” says that compact; “on condition however,” with insulting arrogance adds the Wilmot Proviso Abolition party, “that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall be tolerated in them.” This is the plain statement of the case—and now let us see what will be its operation.
The United States now own in Oregon and the intervening lands a vast domain, sufficient for some twenty States. The Mexican treaty may, and most probably will, add territory enough to make ten or fifteen more. All of these, this new interpolation, or rather despot Proviso, will force to exclude slavery, and of course adds them to the non-slave States, which are already a majority, now numbering fifteen; while the slaveholding States are but fourteen, including Delaware,
which is never true to them.
The Constitution, as it now stands, guaranties slavery to us, and Congress has no power over it, or right to touch it, in the States. But the Constitution provides for its own amendment: two-thirds of Congress, or two-thirds of the States, may propose any amendment, which shall be valid if ratified by three-fourths of the States; and here is our danger, our greatest peril. The Proviso will limit the Slave States to their present number; while new Free States, without limit, may be admitted into the Union. They not only grow in numbers and power, while the Slave States are limited and dwarfed, but they are to be
formed on all sides of the Slave States, enveloping them with enemies to their institutions, and extending all around them the same border intrigues with their slaves that have driven Delaware into their arms, and is destroying the value of that property on their borders, in Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky.
They will soon have the two-thirds which are required to
propose
the amendment; and at no very remote day will have the three-fourths necessary to carry it, which will give to
their Congress
the power to abolish Slavery. The end aimed at is to get the power granted by the Constitution, not perhaps to exercise it at once, but to hold it
in terrorem
over us, and by it to rule and subject us to whatever measures of taxation, revenue, or expenditure their interests may dictate; and eventually perhaps, at some moment of fancied interest, or under the excitement of feeling or fanaticism, to end our suspense by consummating the act.
A revolution is in progress by the Wilmot Proviso. The equality of the States and of American citizens is being destroyed. The balance of power between the Slave and Free States is being subverted. The guaranties of the Constitution, often disregarded, are about to be utterly overthrown and rendered useless; and the Constitution and Slavery are being transferred by the Wilmot movement to Abolition and its allies.
Already the ten States that have spoken in their their resolutions, can vote 118 votes out of 224 in the House of Representatives—a majority of six, without calling on Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa or Wisconsin; and in the election of President they can cast within six votes of enough to elect. Counting the free States all together, they can command both Houses of Congress, and elect a President now. What is the situation of the Slave States under this condition of affairs? One of imminent peril—one demanding grave counsel—one calling for new guaranties; and we say, in the noble warning words of Virginia's resolution, “that the passage of the above mentioned Proviso makes it the duty of every slave-holding State, and the citizens thereof, as they value their dearest privileges, their sovereignty, their independence, their rights of property, to take firm, united and concerted action in this emergency.”
Constitution of the United States, article 4th, section
2.
A person charged in any State with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.
Sec.
3. That when a person held to labor in any of the United States or in either of the territories on the Northwest or South of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the said States or Territory, the person to whom such labor or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take him or her before any Judge of the Circuit or District Courts of the United States, residing or being within the State, or before any Magistrate of a county, city or town corporate wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof, to the satisfaction of such Judge or Magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken before and certified by a Magistrate of any such State or Territory, that the persons so seized or arrested doth under the laws of the State or Territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such Judge or Magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor, to the State or Territory from which he or she fled.
Sec.
4. That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given or declared; or shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor, as aforesaid, shall, for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars, which penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt, in any Court proper to try the same; saving moreover, to the person claiming such labor or service, his right of action for, or on account of the said injuries, or either of them.
[Approved February 12, 1793.]
Law of Pennsylvania.
Sec.
3. That no judge of any of the courts of this Commonwealth, nor any alderman or justice of the peace of said Commonwealth, shall have jurisdiction or take cognizance of the case of any fugitive from labor from any of the United States or territories,
Sec.
4. That if any person or persons claiming any negro or mulatto as a fugitive from servitude or labor, shall under any pretence of authority whatsoever, violently and tumultously seize upon and carry away in a riotous, violent, tumultous and unreasonable manner, and so as to disturb or endanger public peace, any negro or mulatto within this Commonwealth, either with or without the intention of taking such negro or mulatto before any district or circuit judge, the person or persons so offending shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be sentenced to pay a fine of not less than $100, nor more than $1000, with costs of prosecution, and be confined in the county jail for any period at the discretion of the court, not exceeding three months.
Sec.
5. That nothing in this act shall be construed to take away what is hereby declared to be invested in the judges of this Commonwealth, the right, power and authority at all times, on application made, to issue the writ of habeas corpus, and to inquire into the causes and legality of the arrest or imprisonment of any human being within this Commonwealth.
Sec.
6. It shall not be lawful to use any jail or prison of this Commonwealth for the detention of any person claimed as a fugitive from servitude or labor, except in cases where jurisdiction may lawfully be taken by any judge, under the provisions of this act; and any jailer, or keeper of any prison, or other person, who shall offend against the provision of this section, shall on conviction pay a fine of $500, one-half for the use of the Commonwealth, and the other half to the person who prosecutes; and shall moreover henceforth be removed from office, and be incapable of holding such office of jailor or keeper of a prison at any time during his natural life.
Sec.
7. That so much of the act of the General Assembly, entitled “An act for the gradual abolition of slavery,” passed March 1, 1780, as authorizes the masters or owners of slaves to bring and retain such slaves within this Commonwealth for the period of six months, in involuntary servitude, or for any period of time whatsoever, and so much of said act as prevents a slave from giving testimony against any person whatsoever, be and the same is hereby repealed.
The Wilmot Proviso.
That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory on the continent of America, which shall hereafter be acquired by or annexed to the United States, by virtue of this appropriation, or in any other manner whatsoever, except for crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Provided always, That any person escaping into such territory, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and carried out of such territory to the person claiming his or her labor or service.
Resolutions of Vermont—Jan.
28, 1847.
The Legislature of Vermont adopted a Resolution to the effect, that it will not give its countenance, aid or assent to the admission into the Federal Union of any new State whose Constitution tolerates slavery, and appeals to each of the other States to concur in that declaration, accompanied by another, instructing its Senators and Representatives in Congress to use their best efforts to carry the Resolution into effect.
Resolutions of New York—Feb.
6, 1847.
Resolved,
That if any territory is hereafter acquired by the United States, or annexed thereto, the act by which such territory is acquired or annexed, whatever such act may
Resolutions of Pennsylvania—Feb.
8, 1847.
The Legislature of the State of Pennsylvania, the next largest in the Union, adopted a Resolution requesting their Senators and Representatives in Congress to vote against any measure whatever by which territory will accrue to the Union, unless, as a part of the fundamental law upon which any compact or treaty for this purpose is based, slavery or involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall be forever prohibited.
Resolutions of Rhode Island—Feb.
10, 1847.
That while we yield to no State in the Union in our condemnation of the system of slavery, which the errors of past ages have transmitted to us, and will cheerfully co-operate in any just and constitutional measures to terminate it, we are not insensible to the difficulties of the position of our Southern brethren, nor disinclined to fulfil in its true spirit every obligation and duty imposed upon us by the terms of our compact as embodied in the Constitution of the United States; but submitting ourselves implicitly to the requirements of that instrument, we insist upon a like compliance by other parties to said compact with all its material stipulations, express or implied. We protest, therefore, against the acquisition of territory by conquest or otherwise beyond the present limits of the United States, for the purpose of establishing therein Slaveholding States, as deranging the balance of political power once so happily established between our confederated communities, and as manifestly in violation of the spirit and intent of the Constitution. We protest against the introduction of slaves, upon any terms, into any territory of the United States, whether of old or recent acquisition, where slavery does not exist, or has not immemorially existed; and we hold that so far from aiming to extend an institution like slavery over a wide territory than is now pervaded by it, it is clearly the interest, no less than the duty of the Slaveholding States, to circumscribe its operation within their own limits, and to provide, if possible, for its gradual extinguishment whenever public sentiment will permit it.
Resolutions of Ohio—Feb.
15, 1847.
That the Senators and Representatives from this State, in the Congress of the United States be and are hereby respectfully requested to procure the passage of measures in that body, providing for the exclusion of slavery from the territory of Oregon, and also from any other territory that now is, or hereafter may be, annexed to the United States.
Resolutions of New-Jersey—Feb.
19, 1847.
The Resolution adopted by the Legislature of New Jersey instructs their Senators and Representatives in Congress to use their best efforts to secure, as a fundamental condition to any act of annexation of any territory hereafter to be acquired by the United States as an indemnity for claims, that slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall be forever excluded from the territory to be annexed.
Resolutions of New Hampshire—Feb.
19, 1847.
That the Senators and Representatives in Congress from this State be respectfully requested to urge the passage of measures for the extinction of slavery in the District of Columbia, for its exclusion from Oregon, and other territories, that now or at any time hereafter may belong to the United States, for all constitutional measures for the suppression of the domestic slave trade, and to resist the admission of any new State into the Union while tolerating slavery.
Resolutions of Michigan—March
1, 1847.
That in the acquisition of new territory, whether by purchase, conquest, or otherwise, we deem it the duty of the General Government to extend over the same of the Ordinance of 1787 (being the one prohibiting slavery Northwest of the Ohio) with all its rights and privileges, conditions and immunities.
Resolutions of Massachusetts—March
1, 1847.
Resolved unanimously,
That the Legislature of Massachusetts views the existence of human slavery within the limits of the United States as a great calamity, and immense moral and political evil, which ought to be abolished as soon as that end can be properly and constitutionally attained; and that its extension should be uniformly and earnestly opposed by all good and patriotic men throughout the Union.
Resolved unanimously,
That the people of Massachusetts will strenuously resist the annexation of any new territory to this Union in which the institution of slavery is to be tolerated or established; and the Legislature, in behalf of the people of this commonwealth, do hereby solemnly protest against the acquisition of any additional territory without an express provision by Congress that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in such territory, otherwise than for the punishment of crime.
Resolutions of Maine, passed August
3, 1847,
with the votes thereon in the lower House.
Resolved,
That Maine, by the action of her State Government, and by her representation in Congress, should abide cheerfully by the letter and spirit of the concessions of the Constitution of the United States; at the same time resisting firmly all demands for their enlargement or extension. Yeas, 122—Nays, 1.
Resolved,
That the sentiment of this State is profound, sincere, and almost universal, that the influence of slavery upon productive energy is like the blight of mildew; that it is a moral and social evil; that it does violence to the rights of man, as a thinking, reasonable and responsible being. Influenced by such considerations, this State will oppose the introduction of slavery into any territory which may be acquired as an indemnity for claims upon Mexico. Yeas, 124—Nays, 8.
Resolved,
That in the acquisition of any free territory, whether by purchase or otherwise, we deem it the duty of the General Government to extend over the same the Ordinance of seventeen hundred and eighty-seven, with all its rights and privileges, conditions and immunities. Yeas, 126—Nays, 6.
Mr. Calhoun's Resolutions, submitted in the Senate of the United States, February
1, 1847.
Resolved,
That the territories of the United States belong to the several States composing this Union, and are held by them as their joint and common property.
Resolved,
That Congress, as the joint agent and representative of the States of this Union, has no right to make any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, or by its effects, make any discrimination between the States of this Union, by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any territory of the United States, acquired or to be acquired.
Resolved,
That the enactment of any law which should directly, or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Union from emigrating with their property into any of the territories of the United States, will make such discrimination, and would, therefore, be a violation of the Constitution, and the rights of the States from which such citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that perfect equality which belongs to them as members of this Union, and would tend directly to subvert the Union itself.
Resolved,
That, as a fundamental principle in our political creed, a people in forming a Constitution have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity and happiness, and that in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the Federal Constitution on a State in order to be admitted into the Union, except that its Constitution shall be strictly republican; and that the imposition of any other by Congress would not only be in violation of the Constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on which our political system rests.
Resolutions of the Legislature of Virginia.
Resolved,
That the Government of the United States has no control directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately, over the Institution of Slavery, and that in taking any such control it transcends the limits of its legitimate functions by destroying the internal organization of the sovereignties which formed it.
Resolved,
That under no circumstances will this body recognise as binding any enactment of the Federal Government, which has for its object the prohibition of Slavery in any Territory to be acquired either by conquest or treaty, south of the line of the Missouri compromise, holding it to be the natural and independent right of each citizen
Resolved,
That this Assembly holds it to be the duty of every man in every section of this confederacy, if the Union is dear to him, to oppose the passage of any law, for whatever purpose, by which Territory to be acquired may be subject to such a restriction.
Resolved,
That the passage of the Wilmot Proviso by the House of Representative of the United States makes it the duty of every slaveholding State and the citizens thereof, as they value their dearest privileges, their independence and their rights of property, to take firm, united and concerted action in this emergency.
Resolutions of the Democratic Convention of Alabama.
[After adopting the four resolutions of Virginia, as above,]
12.
Resolved,
That as one of the most
effective modes “of firm, united and concerted action
” recommended by the above resolutions—of resisting the interference by the General Government with a view to establish a discrimination, as degrading as it is injurious to the Slaveholding States,
the members of this Convention solemnly pledge themselves to each other,
and recommend to their fellow-citizens in those States,
to withhold their votes for the office of President of the United States from any citizen who shall not previously to the election distinctly, unequivocally, and publicly avow his opposition to all such interference.
Resolutions of the Democratic Convention of Georgia.
Resolved,
That the Democratic party, while it asserts the rights of citizens of any State to settle in any of the territories of the United States with their property, yet in the spirit of mutual “
concession
” in which our Union originated, and by which alone it can be preserved, we are still willing to abide by the provisions and the geographical line of the Missouri Compromise.
Resolved,
That we adopt the four following resolutions as passed by the General Assembly of Virginia as amended.
[And after adopting here the four resolutions of Virginia as above,]
Resolved further by this Convention,
That the Democratic party of Georgia will give their support to no candidate for the Presidency of the United States who does not unconditionally, clearly and unequivocally, declare his opposition to the principles and provisions of the Wilmot Proviso.
END OF THE APPENDIX
The
undersigned take the liberty of calling your attention to the
Western Continent,
a Weekly Newspaper published in Baltimore. The proprietor and editor, Mr.
William T. Thompson,
is known to the public as a writer of great sprightliness, originality, and power; and he is as honorably distinguished among those who are personally acquainted with him, as a man of high tone and solid worth. Under his management, the
Western Continent
has gained a reputation and sustained a position that commend it to the entire approval, and cordial support of the Southern people, and it is in the full conviction that it deserves, and will continue to deserve such approval and support, and that its extensive circulation is desirable, for reasons intimately connected with the well-being of the Southern States, that we take the liberty of calling your attention to it, and inviting you to aid it with your subscription, your good will, and your influence.
The
Western Continent
is the only Weekly Newspaper, wholly unconnected with party, either in Religion or Politics, now published in the Southern States. Its place of publication gives it advantages for the collection of news, and it offers a well digested summary of current events of general interest, while its columns are wholly free from the cumbrous trash that forms the body of the local news of the Northern City papers. Designed as a family newspaper, it admits only of such matter, as may afford useful information, pure instruction, and innocent entertainment for general readers.
Many newspapers of this kind are published at the North, and some of them have gained a wide circulation among our people. There is no one of them superior in the ability of its editorials, in variety of useful and entertaining selections, or in the completeness of its compend of news, to the
Western Continent;
and not one of them, therefore, that deserves a preference to it, considering them as simple competitors on equal terms. But unfortunately, the Southern people are no longer safe in trusting to the Northern Press. As a body, and with some honorable exceptions, its spirit is one of hostility and depreciation. Scarcely a Northern literary newspaper can be named, which for the sake of its domestic popularity, has not been compelled to avow abolition sentiments, and throw the weight of its moral influence against us. The anti-slavery feeling runs through them—tinges their thoughts, and is
insinuated
when it cannot be openly avowed. The influence of such papers is pernicious, and for our best interests we ought to use effectual means to check it. There seems no more appropriate remedy, than the substitution of well conducted, and liberally supported Southern newspapers.
But the
Western Continent,
under the conduct of Mr.
Thompson,
has been an able and judicious defender of the South, and for this, especially deserves the sympathy and support of the Southern people. Taking the great questions that divide the two sections, in their social, instead of their political aspect, without going out of its appropriate sphere, it offers a point of union for all Southern men, and will contribute powerfully to awaken, to harmonize, and to direct the sentiment of our people.
We might say much more in confirmation of the views, here hastily sketched, but forbear, and content ourselves with repeating, that the
Western Continent,
is the only weekly sheet appropriately denominated a family newspaper, now published in the Southern States; that it is really a Southern paper, conducted by an able, scholarly and worthy man, and that its extended circulation in the South, in substitution for the Northern weekly papers now so widely disseminated among us, will be the substitution of a warm and true friend, for either open or masked enemies.
W. T. COLQUITT,
H. G. LAMAR,
H. V. JOHNSON,
ROBT. M. CHARLTON,
GEORGE W. TOWNS,
M. H. McALLISTER,
J. W. A. SANFORD,
JAMES M. SMYTHE,
S. A. BAILEY,
SOLOMON COHEN,
F. H. ELMORE,
ISAAC W. HAYNE,
KER BOYCE,
WM. B. PRINGLE,
G. A. TRENHOLM,
JAMES ROSE,
ALEX. MAZYCK,
J. L. NOWELL,
C. M. FURMAN,
JAMES GADSDEN,
H. W. PERONNEAU.
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