# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 05/Discourse 11

AN ADDRESS
ON THE
CONDITION OF AMERICA,
BEFORE
THE NEW YORK CITY ANTI-SLAYERY SOCIETY, AT ITS FIRST ANNIVERSARY,
HELD AT THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE, MAY 12, 1854.
Ladies and Gentlemen:—I shall ask your attention, this evening, to some few thoughts on the present condition of the United States in respect to slavery. After all that has been said by wise, powerful, and eloquent men in this city, this week, perhaps I shall have scarce anything to present that is new.
​ There are twenty-four millions of men; fifteen and a half millions with Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins— strong, real Anglo-Saxon blood; eight millions and a half more of other families and races, just enough to temper the Anglo-Saxon blood, to furnish a new composite tribe, far better, I trust, than the old. What a human basis for a state to be erected on this material groundwork!
On the Eastern slopes of the continent, where the high lands which reach from the Katahdin mountains in Maine to the end of the Appalachians in Georgia—on the Atlantic slopes, where the land pitches down to the sea from the 48th to the 28th parallel, there are fifteen States, a million square miles, communicating with the ocean. In the South, rivers bear to the sea rice, cotton, tobacco, and the products of half- tropic agriculture; in the North, smaller streams toil all day, and sometimes all night, working wood, iron, cotton, and wool into forms of use and beauty, while iron roads carry to the sea the productions of temperate agriculture, mining, and manufactures.
On the Western slope, where the rivers flow down to the Pacific Ocean from the 49th to the 32nd parallel, is a great country, almost eight hundred thousand square miles in extent. There, too, the Anglo-Saxon has gone ; in the South, the gold-hunter gathers the precious metals, while the farmer, the miner, and the woodman collect far more precious products in the North.
In the Great Basin between the Cordilleras of the West and the Alleghanies, where the Mississippi drains half the continent to the Mediterranean of the New World, there also the Anglo-Saxon has occupied the ground—twelve hundred thousand square miles; in the South to rear cotton, rice, and sugar; in the North to raise cattle and cereal grasses, for beast and for man.
What a spectacle it is! A nation not eighty years old, still in its cradle, and yet grown so great. Two hundred and fifty years ago, there was not an Anglo-Saxon on all this continent. Now there is an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth twenty-four millions strong, Rich as it is in numbers, there are not yet eight men to the square mile.
All this is a Republic; it is a Democracy. There is no born priest to stand betwixt the nation and its God; no Pope to entail his "nephews" on the Church; no bishop ​ claiming divine right to rule over the people and stand betwixt them and the Infinite. There is no king, no born king, to ride on the nation's neck. There are noble-men, but none noble-born to usurp the land, to monopolize the government and keep the community from the bosom of the earth. The people is priest and makes its own religion out of God's revelation in man's nature and history. The people is its own king to rule itself; its own noble to occupy the earth. The people make the laws and choose their own magistrates. Industry is free; travel is free; religion is free; speech is free; there are no shackles on the press. The nation rests on industry, not on war. It is formed of agriculturists, traders, sailors, miners—not a nation of soldiers. The army numbers ten thousand—one soldier for every twenty-four thousand men. The people are at peace; no nation invades us. The government is firmly fixed and popular. A nation loving liberty, loves likewise law; and when it sets a plant of liberty, it fences it all round with law as high up as the hands can reach. We annually welcome four hundred thousand immigrants who flee from the despotism of the Old World.
The country is rich—after England, the richest on earth in cultivated lands, roads, houses, mills. Four million, tons of shipping sail under the American flag. This year we shall build half a million tons more, which, at forty dollars a ton, is worth twenty millions of dollars. That is the ship crop. Then, the corn crop is seven hundred millions of bushels of Indian corn. What a harvest of coal, copper, iron, lead, of wheat, cotton, sugar, rice, is produced! Over all and above all these there rises the great American political idea, a "self-evident truth"—which cannot be proved—it needs no proof; it is anterior to demonstration; namely, that every man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, and in these rights all men are equal; and on these the government is to rest, deriving its sole sanction from the governed's consent.
Higher yet above this material groundwork, this human foundation, this accumulation of numbers, of riches, of industry—as the cross on the top of a tall, wide dome, whose lantern is the great American political idea—as the cross that surmounts it [rises the American religious idea—one ​ God; Christianity the true religion; and the worship of God by love; inwardly it is piety, love to God,—outwardly love to man—morality, benevolence, philanthropy.
What a spectacle to the eyes of the Scandinavian, the German, the Dutchman, the Irishman, as they view America from afar! What a contrast it seems to Europe. There liberty is ideal; it is a dream; here it is organic, an institution; one of the establishments of the land.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the aspect which America presents to the oppressed victims of European despotism in Church and in State. Far off on the other side of the Atlantic, among the Apennines, on the plains of Germany and in the Sclavonian lands, I have met men to whom America seemed as this fair-proportioned edifice that I have thus sketched out before your eyes. But when they come nearer, behold, half the land is black with slavery. In 1850, out of more than two hundred and forty hundred thousand Americans, thirty-two hundred thousand were slaves—more than an eighth of the population counted as cattle; not as citizens at all. They are only human material, not yet wrought into citizens:—nay, not counted human. They are cattle, property: not counted men, but animals and no more. Manhood must not be extended to them. Listen while I read to you from a Southern print. It was recommended by the Governor of Alabama that the Legislature should pass a law prohibiting the separation of families; whereupon the Richmond Enquirer discourses thus: "This recommendation strikes us as being most unwise and impolitic. If slaves are property, then should they be at the absolute disposal of the master, or be subject only to such legal provisions as are designed for the protection of life or limb. If the relation of master and slave be infringed for one purpose, it would be difficult to fix any limit to the encroachment." They are property, no more, and must be treated as such, and not as men.
Slavery is on the Atlantic slopes of the continent. There are one million six hundred thousand slaves between the Alleghany range and the Atlantic coast. Slavery is in the central basin. There are a million and a half of slaves on the land drained by the Mississippi. Spite of law and constitution, slavery has gone to the Pacific slopes, travelling with the gold-hunter into California. The State whose ​ capital county "in three years committed over twelve hundred murders" has very appropriately legalized slavery for a limited time. I suppose it is only preliminary to legalizing it for a time limited only by the Eternal God. In the very capital of the Christian Democracy there are four thousand purchased men. In the Senate-house, a few years ago, a Mississippi Senator belched out his imprecations against that one New Hampshire Senator who has never yet been found false to humanity. Mr Foote was a freeman, a citizen, and a "Democrat;" and while, in the halls of Congress, he was threatening to hang John P. Hale on the tallest pine tree in Mississippi, there toiled in a stable, whose loft he slept in by night, one of that Senator's own brothers. The son of Mr Footers father was a slave in the capital of the United States, while his half-brother—by the father's side—threatened to hang on the tallest pine in Mississippi the only Senator that New Hampshire sent to Washington who dared be true to truth and free for freedom.
But a few years ago, Mr Hope H. Slatter had his negro market in the capital of the United States; one of the greatest slave-dealers in America. He was a member also, it is said, of a "Christian church." The slave-pen is a singular institution for a democratic metropolis, and the slave-trader a peculiar ornament for the Christian church in the capital of a democracy. He grew rich, went to Baltimore, had a fine house, and once entertained a "President of the United States" in his mansion. The slave-trader and the democratic President met together—Slatter and Polk! fit guest and fitting host!
In all the three million square miles of American land there is no inch of free soil, from the St John's to the Rio Gila, from Madawasca to San Diego. The star-spangled banner floats from Vancouver's Island by Nootka Sound to Key West on the South of Florida, and all the way the flag of our Union is the standard of slavery. In all the soil that our fathers fought to make free from English tyranny, there is not an inch where the black man is free, save the five thousand miles which Daniel Webster surrendered to Lord Ashburton by the treaty of 1842. The symbol of the Union is a fetter. The President should be sworn on the auction-block of a slave-trader. The New Hampshire ​ President, in his Inaugural, declared publicly his allegiance to the slave power—not to the power of Northern mechanics, free farmers, free manufacturers, freemen; but allegiance to the slave power; he swears special protection to no property but "property" in slaves; specific allegiance to no law but the Fugitive Slave Bill; devotion to no right but the slaveholder's "right" to his property in man.
The supreme court of the United States is a slave court; a majority of the Senate and of the House of Representatives the same. It has been so this forty years. The majority of the House of Representatives are obedient to the lords of the lash; a majority of Northern politicians, especially of that denomination which is called "dough-faces," are only overseers for the owner of the slave. Mr Douglas is a great overseer; Mr Everett is a little overseer.
The nation offers a homestead out of its public land; it is only to the white man. What would you say if the Emperor of Russia offered land only to nobles; the Pope only to priests; Queen Victoria only to lords? Each male settler in Utah, it seems, is to have four hundred and eighty acres of land, if he is not married, and a hundred and sixty more, I believe, according to one proposition, for every wife that he has got. But if he have the complexion of the only children that Madison left behind him, he can have no land at all.
Even a Boston school-house is shut against the black man's children. The arm of the city government slams the door in every coloured boy's face. His father helps pay for the public school; the son and daughter must not come in.
In the slave States, it is a crime to teach the slave to read and write. Out of four millions of children of America at school in 1850, there were twenty-six thousand that were coloured. There were more than four hundred thousand free coloured persons, and there were more than two hundred and fourteen thousand thereof under the age of twenty; of these, there were at school only twenty-six thousand—one child in nine! Out of three and a quarter millions of slaves, there was not one at school. It is a crime by the statute in every slave State to teach a slave to spell "God." He may be a Christian; he must not write "Christ." He ​ must worship the Bible; he must not read it! It is a crime even in a Sunday school to teach a child the great letters which spell out "Holy Bible." I knew a minister, he was a Connecticut man, too, who went off from New Orleans because he did not dare to stay; and he did not dare to stay because he tried to teach the slave to read in his Sunday school. He went back to Connecticut, whence he will, perhaps, go as a missionary to China or Turkey, and find none to hinder his Christian work.
At the North, the black man is shut out of the meetinghouse. In heaven, according to the theology of America, he may sit down with the just made perfect, his sins washed white "in the blood of the Lamb;" but when he comes to a certain Baptist church in Boston, he cannot own a pew. And there are few churches where he can sit in a pew. The rich and the poor are there; the one Lord is the Maker of them all; but the church thinks He did not make the black as well as the white. Nay; he is turned out of the omnibus, out of the burial-ground. There is a burial-ground in this State, and in the deed which conveys the land it is stipulated that "no coloured person or convict." can ever be buried there. He is turned out of the graveyard, where the great mother of our bodies gathers our dust when the sods of the valley are sweet to the soul. Nowhere but in the jail and on the gallows has the black man equal rights with the white in our American legislation!
The American Press—it is generally the foe of the slave, the advocate of bondage.
In Virginia, it is felony to deny the master's right to own his slaves. There is an old law re-enacted in the revision of the Virginia statutes, which inflicts a punishment of not more than one year's confinement on any one guilty of that offence. It was proposed in the Virginia Legislature, last winter, that if a man had conscientious objections to holding slaves, he should not be allowed to sit on any jury where the matter of a man's freedom was in question. Nor is that all. There is a law in Virginia, it is said, that when a man has three quarters white blood in his veins, he may recover his freedom in virtue of that fact. It is well known that at least half the slaves in Virginia are half white and one quarter of them three quarters white. Accordingly, ​ it was proposed in one of their newspapers that this old law should be repealed, and another substituted providing that no man should recover his freedom in consequence of his complexion, unless he had more than nine tenths white blood in his veins.
The slave has no rights; the ideas of the Declaration of Independence are repudiated; he is not "endowed by his Creator" with "certain unalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Listen to what a Southern editor says. I am quoting now from one of the most powerful Southern journals, printed at the capital of Virginia, the Richmond Examiner, and the words which I read were written by the American Charge d’Affairs at Turin. He says: "The foundation and right of negro slavery is in its utility and the fitness of things; it is the same right by which we hold property in domestic animals." The negro is "the connecting link between the human and brute creation." "The negro is not the white man. Not with more safety do we assert that a horse is not a hog. Hay is good for horses—but not for hogs; liberty is good for white men, but not for negroes." "A law rendering perpetual the relation between a negro and his master is no wrong, but a right."
Then in reply to some writer in the Tribune, who had asked, "Have they no souls," he says, "They may have souls, for aught we know to the contrary; so may horses and hogs." Then, when somebody quotes the Bible in behalf of the rights of men, he answers: "The Bible has been vouchsafed to mankind for the purpose of keeping us out of hell-fire and getting us into heaven by the mysteries of faith and the inner life; not to teach us government, political economy," &c.
The American Church repudiates the Christian religion when it comes to speak about the African. It does not apply the golden rule to the slave. The "servants" of the New Testament, in the Greek language, were "slaves," and the American Church commands them to be obedient to their masters. There must be no marriage—the affectional and passional union of one man and one woman for life—only transient concubinage. Marriage is inconsistent with slavery, and the slave wedlock in the American Church is not a sacrament. "Manifest destiny" is the ​ cry of politicians, and that demands slavery: "The will of God" is the cry of the priests, and it demands the same thing. I am not speaking of ministers of Christianity; they are a very different sort of men, and preach a very different creed from that—only of the ministers in the churches of commerce. According to the popular theology of all Christendom, Jesus Christ came on earth to seek and to save that which is lost. The Good Physician does not go among the whole, but among the sick. If he were to come here to seek to relieve the slave, the leading men in the American denominations would tell him he came before he was called; he ran before he was sent; that it was no mission from God to break a single American fetter, nor to let the oppressed go free. Is not the "Constitution" above "Conscience," and the Fugitive Slave Bill more holy than the Bible; the commissioner of more authority than Christ?
"Oh, Faith of Christians, hast thou wandered there
To waft us home the message of despair, Then bind the palm thy sage’s brow to suit
Of blasted leaf and death-distilling fruit."
Such is the aspect of America when the immigrant comes near and looks the nation in the face. What a spectacle that is to put along-side of the other! Europe repudiates bondage—Scandinavia, Holland, France, England. Since Britain emancipated her slaves, the present Emperor of Russia has set free over seven millions of slaves that belonged to his own private domain, and established more than four thousand schools, free for those seven millions of emancipated slaves; and did he not fear an outbreak in a country where "revolution is endemic," he would set free the other five and thirty millions that occupy his soil to-day. And when he enlarges his territory, he never extends the area of bondage, only the area of what in Russia is freedom.
What a spectacle! A country reaching from sea to sea, from the Gulf of tropic heat to Lake Superior's artic cold, and not an inch of free soil all the way ! Three millions of square miles, and not a foot where a fugitive from slavery can be safe! A Democracy, and every eighth man bought and sold!
It is the richest nation in the world, after England; yet, we are so poor that every eighth man is unable to say that ​ he owns the smallest finger on his feeblest hand. So poor are we amid our riches, that every eighth woman is to such an extent a pauper that she does not own the baby she has borne; nor even the baby that she bears. Maternity is but up at public vendue, and the auctioneer says, "So much for the mother and so much for the hopes and expectations of another life that is to be born!"
America calls herself "the best-educated nation in the world" and yet, in fifteen Democratic States, it is a felony by statute to teach a child to know the three letters which spell "God." What a spectacle is that!
Nor is this all; but able men, well educated and well endowed, come forward to teach us that slavery is not only no evil, but is "right as a principle," and is "divine" —is a "part of the divine revelation" which the great God miraculously made to man. What a spectacle!
Four hundred thousand immigrants come here openly every year, and a thousand fugitives flee off by night, escaping from American despotism. They go by the Underground Railroad, shut up in boxes smaller than a coffin, or, as lately happened, riding through the storms of Ocean in the fore-chains of a packet-ship, wet by every dash of the sea, and frozen by the winter's wind. Far off in the South the spirit of freedom came in the Northern blast to the poor man, and said to him, " It is better to enter into freedom halt and maimed rather than, having two hands and two feet, to continue in bondage for ever;" and he puts himself in the fore-chains of a packet-ship, and, half frozen, with the loss of two of his limbs, he reaches the North, and thanks God that he has still one hand and one foot to enter into freedom with. Alas, he is carried back, halt and maimed, to die; then he goes from bondage to that other Commonwealth, where even the American slave is free from his master, and Democrats "cease from troubling."
America translates the Bible—I am glad of it, and would give my mite thereto—into a hundred and forty-seven different tongues, and sends missionaries all over the world ; and here at home are three and a quarter millions of American men who have no Bible, whose only missionary is the overseer.
In the Hall of Independence, Judge Kane and Judge ​ Grier hold their court. Two great official kidnappers of the middle States hold their slave-court in the very building where the Declaration of Independence was decreed, was signed, and thence published to the world. What a spectacle it is! We thought, a little while ago, that Judge Jeffries was a historical fiction; that Scroggs was impossible; we did not think such a thing could exist. Jeffries is repeated in Philadelphia; Scroggs is brought back to life in New York and Boston and various Northern towns. What a spectacle is that for the Swiss, the German, and the Scandinavian who come here!
Do these immigrants love American slavery? The German, the Swiss, the Scandinavian hate it. I am sorry to say there is one class of men that come here who love it; it is the class most of all sinned against at home. When the Irishman reaches America, he takes ground against the African. I know there are exceptions, and I would go far to honour them; but the Irish, as a body, oppose the emancipation of the blacks as a body. Every sect that comes from abroad numbers friends of freedom—except the Catholic. Those who call themselves infidels from Germany do not range on the slaveholder's side. I have known some men who take the ghastly and dreadful name of Atheist; but they said "there is a law higher than the slaveholder's statute." But do you know a Catholic priest who is opposed to slavery? I wish I did. There are good things in the Catholic faith—the Protestants have not wholly outgrown it yet. But I wish I could hear of a single Catholic priest of any eminence who ever cared anything for the freedom of the most oppressed men in America. I have heard of none.
Look a little closer. The great interests prized most in America are commerce and politics. The great cities are the head-quarters of these. Agriculture and the mechanic arts are spread abroad all over the country. Commerce and politics predominate in the cities. New York is the metropolis of commerce; Washington of politics.
What have been the views of American commerce in respect to freedom? It has been against it; I am sorry to say so. In Europe commerce is the ally of freedom, and has been so far back that the memory of man runs not to the contrary. In America, the great commercial centres, ​ ever since the Revolution, have been hostile to freedom. In Massachusetts we have a few rich men friendly to freedom—they are very few; the greater part of even Massachusetts capital goes towards bondage — not towards freedom. In general, the chief men of commerce are hostile to it. They want first money, next money, and money last of all; fairly if they can get it—if not, unfairly. Hence, the commercial cities are the headquarters of slavery; all the mercantile capitals execute the Fugitive Slave Bill—Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati; only small towns repudiate man-stealing. The Northern capitalists lend money and take slaves as collateral; they are good security ; you can realize on it any day. The Northern merchant takes slaves into his ships as merchandise. It pays very well. If you take them on a foreign voyage, it is "piracy;" but taken coastwise, the domestic slave-trade is a legal traffic. In 1852, a ship called the "Edward Everett" made two voyages from Baltimore to New Orleans, and each time it carried slaves, once twelve, and once twenty.
A sea captain in Massachusetts told a story to the com- missioners sent to look after the Indians, which I will repeat. He commanded a small brig, which plied between Carolina and the Gulf States. "One day, at Charleston," said he, "a man came and brought to me an old negro slave. He was very old, and had fought in the Revolution, and had been much distinguished for bravery and other soldierly qualities. If he had not been a negro, he would have become a captain at least, perhaps a colonel. But, in his old age, his master found no use for him, and said he could not afford to keep him. He asked me to take the revolutionary soldier and carry him South and sell him. I carried him," said the man, "to Mobile, and I tried to get as good and kind a master for him as I could, for I didn't like to sell a man who had fought for his country. I sold the old revolutionary soldier for a hundred dollars to a citizen of Mobile, who raised poultry, and he set him to tend a hen-coop." I suppose the South Carolina master, "a true gentleman," drew the pension till the soldier died. "How could you do such a thing?" said my friend, who was an anti-slavery man. "If I didn't do it," he replied, "I never ​ could get another bale of cotton, nor a box of sugar, nor anything to carry from or to any Southern port."
In politics, almost all the leading men have been servants of slavery. Three "major prophets" of the American Republic have gone home to render their account where "the servant is free from his master, and the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Clay, Calhoun, Webster; they were all prophets of slavery, all against freedom. No men of high political standing and influence have ever lived in this country who were fallen so low in the mire of slavery as they during the last twenty years. No political footprints have sunk so deep into the soil—all their tracks run towards bondage. Where they marched, slavery followed.
Our Presidents must all be pro-slavery men. John Quincy Adams even, the only American politician, thus far, who inherited a great name and left it greater, as President did nothing against slavery that has yet come to light; said nothing against it which has yet come to light. The brave old man, in his latter days, stirred up the nobler nature in him, and amply repaid for the sins of omission. But the other Presidents, a long line of them—Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison,—they are growing smaller and smaller,—Tyler, Polk, Taylor, who was a brave, earnest man, and had a great deal of good in him,—and now they began rapidly to grow very small,—Fillmore, Pierce—can you find a single breath of freedom in these men? Not one. The last slave President, though his cradle was rocked in New Hampshire, is Texan in his latitude. He swears allegiance to slavery in his inaugural address.
Is there a breath of freedom in the great federal officers—secretaries, judges? Ask the Cabinet; ask the supreme court; the federal officers. They are, almost without exception, servants of slavery. Out of forty thousand government officers to-day, I think thirty-seven thousand are strongly pro-slavery ; and of the three thousand who are at heart anti-slavery, we have yet to listen long before we shall hear the first anti-slavery lisp. I have been listening ever since the fourth of March, 1853, and have not heard a word yet. In the English Cabinet there are various opinions on important matters; here the administration is ​a unit, a unit of bondage. In Russia, a revolutionary man sometimes holds a high post and does great service; in America, none but the servant of slavery is fit for the political functions of Democracy. I believe in the United States there is not a single editor holding a government office who says anything against the Nebraska Bill. They do not dare. Did a Whig office-holder oppose the Fugitive Slave Bill or its enforcement? I never heard of one. The day of office, like the day of bondage, "takes off half a man/s manhood," and the other half it hides! A little while ago, an anti-slavery man in Massachusetts carried a remonstrance against the Nebraska Bill, signed by almost every voter in his town, to the postmaster, and asked him, "Will you sign it?" "No, I shan't," said he. "Why not?" Before he answered, one of his neighbours said, "Well, I would not sign it if I were he." "Why not?" said the man. "Because if he did, he would be turned out of office in twenty-four hours; the next telegraph would do the business for him." "Well," said my friend, "if I held an office on that condition, I would get the biggest brass dog-collar I could find and put it round my neck, and have my owner's name on it, in great, large letters, so that everybody might see whose dog I was."
In the individual States, I think there is not a single anti-slavery governor. I believe Vermont is the only State with an anti-slavery supreme court; and that is the only State which has not much concern in commerce or manufactures. It is a State of farmers.
For a long time the American Government has been controlled by slavery. There is an old story told by the Hebrew rabbis, that before the flood there was an enormous giant, called Gog. After the flood had got into the full tide of successful experiment, and every man was drowned except those taken into the ark, Gog came striding along after Noah, feeling his way with a cane as long as a mast of the "Great Republic." The water had only come up to his girdle. It was then over the hill-tops and was still rising—raining night and day. The giant hailed the Patriarch. Noah put his head out of the window, and said, "Who is there?" "It is I," said Gog. "Take us in; it is wet outside!" "No," said Noah, "you're too big; no room. Besides, you're a bad character. You ​would be a very dangerous passenger, and would make trouble in the ark; I shall not take you in. You may get on top if you like;" and he clapped to the window. "Go to thunder," said Gog; "I will ride, after all." And he strode after him, wading through the waters; and mounting on the top of the ark, with one leg over the larboard and the other over the starboard side, steered it just as he pleased, and made it rough weather inside. Now, in making the Constitution, we did not care to take in slavery in express terms. It looked ugly. We allowed it to get on the top astride, and now it steers us just where it pleases.
The slave power controls the President, and fills all the offices. Out of the twelve elected Presidents, four have been from the North, and the last of them might just as well have been taken by lot at the South anywhere. Mr Pierce, I just now said, was Texan in his latitude. His conscience is Texan; only his cradle was of New Hampshire. Of the nine judges of the supreme court, five are from the slave States; the chief-justice is from the slave States; all slave judges. A part of the Cabinet are from the North—I forget how many; it makes no difference; they are all of the same Southern complexion; and the man who was taken from the furthest North, I think is most Southern in his slavery proclivities.
The nation fluctuates in its policy. Now it is for internal improvements; then it is against them. Now it is for a bank; then a bank is "unconstitutional." Now it is for free trade; then for protection; then for free trade again—"protection is altogether unconstitutional." Mr Calhoun turned clear round.—When the North went for free trade and grew rich by that, Calhoun did not like it, and wanted protection: he thought the South would grow rich by it. But when the North grew rich under protection, he turned round to free trade again. Now the nation is for giving away the public lands. Sixteen millions of acres of "swamp lands" are given, within seven years, to States. Twenty-five millions of the public lands are given away gratuitously to soldiers—six millions in a single year. Forty-seven millions of the public lands to seventeen States for schools, colleges, &c. Forty-seven thousand acres for deaf and dumb asylums. And look; just now it changes its policy, and Mr Pierce is opposed to granting ​any land—"it is not constitutional"—to Miss Dix, to make the insane sober and bring them to their right minds. He may have a private reason for keeping the people in a state of craziness, for aught I know.
The public policy changes in these matters. It never changes in respect to slavery. Be the Whigs in power, slavery is Whig; be the Democrats, it is Democratic. At first, slavery was an exceptional measure, and men tried to apologize for it and excuse it. Now it is a normal principle, and the institution must be defended and enlarged.
Commercial men must be moved, I suppose, by commercial arguments. Look, then, at this statement of facts.
Slavery is unprofitable for the people. America is poorer for slavery. I am speaking in the great focus of American commerce—the third city for population and riches in the Christian world. Let me, therefore, talk about dollars. America, I say, is poorer for slavery. If the three and a quarter millions of slaves were freemen, how much richer would she be! There is no State in the Union but it is poorer for slavery. It is a bad tool to work with. The educated freeman is the best working power in the world.
Compare the North with the South, and see what a difference in riches, comfort, education. See the superiority of the North. But the South started with every advantage of nature—soil, climate, everything. To make the case plainer, let me take two great States, Virginia and New York. Compare them together.
In geographical position, Virginia has every advantage over New York. Almost everything that will grow in the Union will grow somewhere in Virginia, save sugar. The largest ships can sail up the Potomac a hundred miles, as far as Alexandria. The Eappahannock, York, James, are all navigable rivers. The Ohio flanks Virginia more than three hundred miles. There are sixty miles of navigation on the Kanawha. New York has a single navigable stream with not a hundred and fifty miles of navigation, from Troy to the ocean. Virginia has the best harbour on the Atlantic coast, and several smaller ones. Your State has but a single maritime port. Virginia abounds in water power for mills. I stood once on the steps of the Capitol at Washington, and within six miles of me, under my eyes, there was a water power greater than that which turns the ​mills of Lawrence, Lowell, and Manchester, all put together. In 1836, it did not turn a wheel; now, I am told, it drives a grist-mill. No State is so rich in water power. The Alleghanies are a great water-shed, and at the eaves the streams rush forward as if impatient to turn mills. Virginia is full of minerals—coal, iron, lead, copper, salt. Her agricultural resources are immense. What timber clothes her mountains! what a soil for Indian corn, wheat, tobacco, rice! even cotton grows in the southern part. Washington said the central counties of Virginia were the best land in the United States. Daniel Webster, reporting to Virginians of his European tour, said, he saw "no lands in Europe so good as the valley of the Shenandoah." Virginia is rich in mountain pastures favourable to sheep and horned cattle. Nature gives Virginia all that can be asked of nature. What a position for agriculture, manufactures, mining, commerce! Norfolk is a hundred miles nearer Chicago than New York is, but she has no intercourse with Chicago. It is three hundred miles nearer the mouth of the Ohio; but if a Norfolk man wants to go to St Louis, I believe his quickest way lies through New York. It is not a day’s sail further from Liverpool; it is nearer to the Mediterranean and South American ports. But what is Norfolk, with her 23,000 tons of shipping and her fourteen thousand population? What is Richmond, with her twenty-seven thousand men—ten thousand of them slaves? Nay, what is Virginia herself, the very oldest State? Let me cypher out some numerical details. In 1790, she had 748,000 inhabitants; now she has 1,421,000. She has not doubled in sixty years.
In 1790, New York had 340,000; now she has 3,048,000. She has multiplied her population almost ten times. In Virginia, in 1850, there were only 452,000 more freemen than sixty years before; in New York, there were 2,724,000 more freemen than there were in 1790. There are only 165,000 dwellings in Virginia; 463,000 in New York. Then the Virginia farms were worth $216,000,000; yours, $554,000,000; Virginia is wholly agricultural, while you are also manufacturing and commercial. Her farm tools were worth $7,000,000; yours, $22,000,000. Her cattle, $33,000,000; yours, $73,000,000. The orchard products of Virginia were worth $177,000; of New York, $1,762,000. Virginia had ​478 miles of railroad; you had 1826 miles. She had 74,000 tons of shipping; you had 942,000. The value of her cotton factories was not two millions; the value of yours was four and a quarter millions. She produced $841,000 worth of woollen goods; you produced $7,030,000. Her furnaces produced two millions and a half; yours pro- duced eight millions: her tanneries $894,000; yours, $ 9,804,000. All of her manufactures together were not worth $9,000,000; those of the city of New York alone have an annual value of $105,000,000. Her attendance at school was 109,000; yours, 693,000.
But there is one thing in which Virginia is far in advance of you. Of native Virginians, over twenty years old, who could not read the name of "Christ," nor the word "God"—free white people who cannot spell "Democrat"—there were 87,383. That is, out of every five hundred free white persons, there were one hundred and five that could not spell Pierce. In New York there are 30,670— no more; so that out of five hundred persons, there are six that cannot read and write. Virginia is advancing rapidly upon you in this respect. In 1840, she had only 68,787 adults who could not read and write; now 28,596 more. So you see she is advancing!
Virginia has 87 newspapers; New York 428. The Virginia newspaper circulation is 89,000; the New York newspaper circulation is 1,622,000. The Tribune—and I think it is the best paper there is in the world—has an aggregate circulation of 110,000; 20,000 more than all the newspapers of Virginia. Virginia prints every year 9,000,000 copies of newspapers, all told. New York prints 115,000,000. The New York Tribune prints 15,000,000— more than the whole State of Virginia put together. Such is the state of things counted in the gross, but I think the New York quality is as much better as the quantity is more.
Virginia has 88,000 books in libraries not private; New York 1,760,000,—more than twenty times as much. Virginia exports $3,500,000 worth each year; New York $53,000,000. Virginia imports $426,000; New York $111,000,000. But in one article of export she is in advance of you—she sends to the man-markets of the South about $10,000,000 or $12,000,000 worth of her children every year; exports slaves! The estimated value of all the ​property real and personal in the State of Virginia, including slaves, is $430,701,882; of New York $1,080,000,000, without estimating the value of the men who own it, Virginia has got 472,528 slaves. I will estimate them at less than the market value—at 1400 each; they come to $189,000,000. I subtract the value of the working people of Virginia, and she is worth not quite $242,000,000, Now, the State of New York might buy up all the property of Virginia, including the slaves, and still have $649,000,000 left; might buy up all the real and personal property of Virginia, except the working men, and have $838,000,000 left. The North appropriates the rivers, the mines, the harbours, the forests, fire and water—the South kidnaps men. Behold the commercial result.
Virginia is a great State—very great! You do not know how great she is. I will read it to you presently. Things are great and small by comparison. I am quoting again from the Richmond Examiner (March 24, 1854). "Virginia in this confederacy is the impersonation of the well-born, well-educated, well-bred aristocrat" [well born while the children of Jefferson and the only children of Madison are a "connecting link between the human and brute creation;" well educated, with twenty-one per cent, of her white adults unable to read the vote they cast against the unalienable rights of man; well bred, when her great product for exportation is—the children of her own loins! Slavery is a "patriarchal institution;" the democratic Abrahams of Virginia do not offer up their Isaacs to the Lord; that would be a "sacrifice," they only sell them. So]; "she looks down from her elevated pedestal upon her parvenu, ignorant, mendacious Yankee vilifiers, as coldly and calmly as a marble statue; occasionally she condescends to recognize the existence of her adversaries at the very moment when she crushes them. But she does it without anger, and with no more hatred of them than the gardener feels towards the insects which he finds it necessary occasionally to destroy." "She feels that she is the sword and buckler of the South—that it is her influence which has so frequently defeated and driven back in dismay the Abolition party when flushed by temporary victory. Brave, calm, and determined, wise in times of excitement, always true to the slave power, never rash or indiscreet, the waves ​of Northern fanaticism burst harmless at her feet; the contempt for her Northern revilers is the result of her consciousness of her influence in the political world. She makes and unmakes Presidents; she dictates her terms to the Northern Democracy and they obey her. She selects from among the faithful of the North a man upon whom she can rely, and she makes him President." This latter is true! The opinion of Richmond is of more weight than the opinion of New York. Slavery, the political Gog on the outside, steers the ark of commercial Noah, and makes it rough or smooth weather inside, just as he likes.
"In the early days of the Republic, the superior sagacity of her statesmen enabled them to rivet so firmly the shackles of the slave, that the Abolitionists will never be able to unloose them."
"A wide and impassable gulf separates the noble, proud, glorious Old Dominion from her Northern traducers; the mastiff dares not willingly assail the skunk!" "When Virginia takes the field, she crushes the whole Abolition party; her slaughter is wholesale, and a hundred thousand Abolitionists are cut down when she issues her commands!"
Again (April 4th, 1854), "A hundred Southern gentlemen, armed with riding-whips, could chase an army of invading Abolitionists into the Atlantic."
In reference to the project at the North of sending Northern Abolitionists along with the Northern slave-breeders to Nebraska, to put freedom into the soil before slavery gets there, the Examiner says: "Why, a hundred wild, lank, half-horse, half-alligator Missouri and Arkansas emigrants would, if so disposed, chase out of Nebraska and Kansas all the Abolitionists who have figured for the last twenty years at Anti-slavery meetings."
I say slavery is not profitable for the nation nor for a State, but it is profitable for slave- owners. You will see why. If the Northern capitalist owned the weavers and spinners at Lowell and Lawrence, New England would be poorer; and the working-men would not be so well off", or so well educated; but Undershot and Overshot, Turbine Brothers, Spindle & Co., would be richer and would get larger dividends. Land monopoly in England enfeebles the island, but enriches the aristocracy. How poor, ill-fed, and ill-clad were the French peasants before the Revolution; ​how costly was the chateau of the noble. Monopoly was bad for the people; profitable for the rich men. How poor are the peasants in Italy; how wealthy the Cardinals and the Pope. Oppression enriches the oppressor; it makes poorer the down-trodden. Piracy is very costly to the merchant and to mankind; but it feeds the pirate. Slavery impoverishes Virginia, but it enriches the master. It gives him money—commercial power,—office—political power. The slave-holder is drawn in his triumphal chariot by two chattels; one, the poor black man, whom he "owns legally," the other is the poor white man, whom he "owns morally" and harnesses to his chariot. Hence these American lords of the lash cleave to this institution — they love it. To the slave-holders, slavery is money and power!
Now the South, weak in numbers, feeble in respect to money, has continually directed the politics of America just as she would. Her ignorance and poverty were more efficacious than the Northern riches and education. She is in earnest for slavery; the North not in earnest for freedom; only earnest for money. So long as the Federal Government grinds the axes of the Northern merchant, he cares little whether the stone is turned by the freeman's labour or the slave's. Hence, the great centres of Northern commerce and manufactures are also the great centres of pro-slavery politics. Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, they all liked the Fugitive Slave Bill ; all took pains to seize the fugitive who fled to a Northern altar for freedom; nay, the most conspicuous clergymen in those cities became apostles of kidnapping ; their churches were of commerce, not Christianity. The North yielded to that last most insolent demand. Under the influence of that excitement she chose the present Administration, the present Congress. Now see the result! Whig and Democrat meet on the same platform at Baltimore. It was the platform of slavery. Both candidates—Scott and Pierce—gave in their allegiance to the same measure; it was the measure which nullifies the first principles of American Independence—they were sworn on the Fugitive Slave Bill. Whig and Democrat knew no "higher law," only the statute of slave-holders. Conscience bent down before the Constitution. What sort of a government can you expect from such conduct? What Representatives? Just ​what you have got. Sow the wind, will you? then reap the whirlwind. Mr Pierce said in his Inaugural, "I believe that involuntary servitude is recognized by the Constitution;" "that it stands like any other admitted right. I hold that the Compromise measures [that is, the Fugitive Slave Bill] are strictly constitutional and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect." The laws to secure the master's right to capture a man in the free States "should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully and according to the decision of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs." These words were historical,—reminiscences of the time when "no higher law" was the watchword of the American State and the American Church; they were prophetic—ominous of what we see to-day.
I. Here is the Gadsden Treaty which has just been negotiated. How bad it is I cannot say; only this: If I am rightly informed, a tract of 39,000,000 acres, larger than all Virginia, is "reannexed" to the slave soil which the "flag of our Union" already waves over. The whole thing, when it is fairly understood by the public, I think will be seen to be a more iniquitous matter than this Nebraska wickedness.
II. Then comes the Nebraska Bill, yet to be consummated. While we are sitting here in cold debate, it may be the measure has passed. From the beginning I have never had any doubts that it would pass. If it could not be put through this session—as I thought it would—I felt sure that before this Congress goes out of office, Nebraska would be slave soil. You see what a majority there was m the Senate; you see what a majority there is in the House. I know there is an opposition—and most brilliantly conducted, too, by the few faithful men; but see this: The Administration has yet three years to run. There is an annual income of sixty millions of dollars. There are forty thousand offices to be disposed of—four thousand very valuable. And do you think that a Democratic Administration, with that amount of offices, of money and time, cannot buy up Northern doughfaces enough to carry any measure it pleases? I know better. Once I thought ​that Texas could not be annexed. It was done. I learned wisdom from that. I have taken counsel of my fears. I have not seen any barrier on which the North would rally that we have come to yet. There are some things behind us. John Randolph said, years ago, "We will drive you from pillar to post, back, back, back." He has been as good as his word. We have been driven "back, back, back." But we cannot be driven much further. There is a spot where we shall stop. I am afraid we have not come to it yet. I will say no more about it just now—because not many weeks ago I stood here and said a great deal. You have listened to me when I was feeble and hollow- voiced; I will not tax your patience now, for in this, as in a celebrated feast of old, they have "kept the good wine until now!" (alluding to Mr Garrison and Mr Phillips who were to follow).
If the Nebraska Bill is defeated, I shall rejoice that iniquity is foiled once more. But if it become a law—there are some things which seem probable.
1. On the Fourth of March, 1857, the "Democrats" will have "leave to withdraw" from office.
2. Every Northern man who has taken a prominent stand in behalf of slavery will be politically ruined. You know what befell the Northern politicians who voted for the Missouri Compromise; a similar fate hangs over such as enslave Nebraska. Already, Mr Everett is, theologically speaking, among the "lost;" and of all the three thousand New England ministers whose petition he dared not present, not one will ever pray for his political salvation. Pause with me and drop a tear over the ruin of Edward Everett, a man of large talents and commensurate industry, very learned, the most scholarly man, perhaps, in the country, with a persuasive beauty of speech only equalled by this American [Mr Phillips] , who therein surpasses him; he has had a long career of public service, public honour—Clergyman, Professor, Editor, Representative, Governor, Ambassador, President of Harvard College, Senator, alike the ornament and the auxiliary of many a learned society—he yet comes to such an end.
"This is the state of man; to-day, he puts forth The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow, blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, Nebraska's frost;
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely,
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls————.
"Oh how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on public favours!
There is betwixt that smile he would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of voters, and their ruin.
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again!"
Mr Douglas also is finished; the success of his measure is his own defeat. Mr Pierce has three short years to serve; then there will be one more Ex-President—ranking with Tyler and Fillmore. Mr Seward need not agitate,
——Let it work
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoise with his own petar."
III. The next thing is the enslavement of Cuba. That is a very serious matter. It has been desired a long time. Lopez, a Spanish fillibuster, undertook it and was legally put to death. I am not an advocate for the garrote, but I think, all things taken into consideration, that he did not meet with a very inadequate mode of death, and I believe such is the general opinion, not only in Cuba, but in the United States. But Young America is not content with that. Mr Dean, a little while ago, in the House, proposed to repeal the neutrality laws—to set fillibusterism on its legs again. You remember the President's message about the "Black Warrior"—how black-warrior-like it was; and then comes the "unanimous resolution" of the Louisiana legislature asking the United States to interfere and declare war, in case Cuba should undertake to emancipate her slaves. Senator Slidell’s speech is still tingling in our ears, asking the Government to repeal the neutrality laws and allow every pirate who pleases to land in Cuba and burn and destroy. You know Mr Soule's conduct in Madrid. It is rumoured that he has been authorized to offer $250,000,000 for Cuba. The sum is enormous; but when you consider the character of this Administration and the Inaugural of President Pierce, the unscrupulous abuse made of public money, I do not think it is a very extraordinary supposition. ​But this matter of getting possession of Cuba is something dangerous as well as difficult. There are three conceivable ways of acquiring it.
One is by buying, and that I take it is wholly out of the question. If I am rightly informed, there is a certain Spanish debt owing to Englishmen, and that Cuba is somehow pledged as a sort of collateral security for the Spanish Bonds. I take it for granted that Cuba is not to be bought for many years without the interference of England, and depend upon it England will not allow it to be sold for the establishment of slavery; for I think it is pretty well understood by politicians that there is a regular agreement entered into between Spain on the one side and England on the other, that at a certain period within twenty-five years every slave in Cuba shall be set free. I believe this is known to men somewhat versed in the secret history of the two Cabinets of England and of Spain. England has the same wish for land which fires our Anglo-Saxon blood. She has islands in the West Indies; the Moro in Cuba is only a hundred miles from Jamaica. If we get Cuba for slavery, we shall next want the British West Indies for the same institution. Cuba filled with fillibusters would be a dangerous neighbour to Jamaica.
The second way is by fillibustering; and that Mr Slidell and Mr Dean want to try. The third is by open war. Now fillibusterism will lead to open war, so I will consider only this issue.
I know that Americans will fight more desperately, perhaps, on land or sea, than any other people. But fighting is an ugly business, especially with such antagonists as we shall have in this case. It is a matter well understood that the Captain-General of Cuba has a paper in his possession authorizing him discretionally to free the slaves and put arms in their hands whenever it is thought necessary. It is rather difficult to get at the exact statistics of Cuba. There has been no census since 1842, when the population was estimated at a million. I will reckon it now at 1,300,000—700,000 blacks, and 600,000 whites. Of the 700,000 blacks, half a million are slaves and two hundred thousand freemen. Now, a black freeman in Cuba is a very different person from the black freeman in the United States. He has rights. He is not turned out of the omnibus, nor ​the meeting-house, nor the graveyard. He is respected by the law; he respects himself, and is a formidable person; let the blacks be furnished with arms, they are dangerous foes. And remember there are mountain fastnesses in the centre of the island; that it is as defensible as St Domingo; and has a very unhealthy climate for Northern men. The Spaniard would have great allies: the vomito is there; typhoid, dysentery, yellow fever, the worst of all, is there. A Northern army even of fillibusters would fight against the most dreadful odds. "The Lord from on high," as the old Hebrews say, would fight against the Northern men; the pestilence that swept off Sennacherib^s host would not respect the fillibuster.
That is not all. What sort of a navy has Spain? One hundred and seventy-nine ships of war! They are small mostly, but they carry over 1400 cannon, and 24,000 men—15,000 marines and 9000 sailors. The United States has seventy-five ships of war; 2200 cannon, 14,000 men—large ships, heavy cannon. That is not all. Spaniards fight desperately. A Spanish armada I should not be very much afraid of; but Spain will issue letters of marque, and a Portuguese or Spanish pirate is rather an uncomfortable being to meet. Our commerce is spread over all the seas; there is no mercantile marine so unprotected. Our ships do not carry muskets, still less cannon, since pirates have been swept off the sea. Let Spain issue letters of marque, England winking at it, and Algerine pirates from out the Barbary States of Africa, and other pirates from the Brazilian, Mexican, and the West Indian ports, would prowl about the coast of the Mediterranean and over all the bosom of the Atlantic; and then where would be our commerce? The South has nothing to fear from that. She has no shipping. Yes, Norfolk has 23,000 tons. The South is not afraid. The North has four million tons of shipping. Touch the commerce of a Northern man, and you touch his heart.
England has conceded to us as a measure just what we asked. We have always declared, "free ships make free goods." England said "Enemies' goods make enemies' ships." Now she has not affirmed our principle; she has assented to our measure. That is all you can expect her to do. But if we repeal our neutrality laws and seek to ​get Cuba in order to establish slavery there, endangering the interests of England and the freedom of her coloured citizens, depend upon it, England will not suffer this to be done without herself interfering. If she is so deeply immersed in European wars that she cannot interfere directly, she will indirectly. But I have not thought that England and France are to be much engaged in a European war. I suppose the intention of the American Cabinet is to seize Cuba as soon as the British and Russians are fairly fighting, thinking that England will not interfere. But in "this war of elder sons" which now goes on for the dismemberment of Turkey, it is not clear that England will be so deeply engaged that she cannot attend to her domestic affairs, or the interest of her West Indies. I think these powers are going to divide Turkey between them, but I do not believe they are going to do much fighting there. If we are bent on seizing Cuba, a long and a ruinous fight is a thing that ought to enter into men’s calculations. Now let such a naval warfare take place, and how will your insurance stock look in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston? How will your merchants look when reports come one after another that your ships are carried in as prizes by Spain, or sunk on the ocean after they have been plundered? I speak in the great commercial "metropolis of America. I wish these things to be seriously considered by mercantile men. Let the Northern men look out for their own ships.
But here is a matter which the South may think of. In case of foreign war, the North will not be the battle-field. An invading army would attack the South. Who would
"——for lack Of other stuff to hew and hack."
But would lie like to stand with such a fire in his rear? Set a house on fire by hot shot, and you do not know how much of it will burn down.
IV. Well, if Nebraska is made a slave territory, as I suppose it will be, the next thing is the possession of Cuba. Then the war against Spain will come, as I think, inevitably. But even if we do not get Cuba, slavery must be extended to other parts of the Union. This may be done judicially, by the Supreme Court—one of the most powerful agents to destroy local self-government and legalize centralization; or legislatively, by Congress. Already slavery is established in California. An attempt, you know, was made to establish it in Illinois. Senator Toombs, the other day, boasted to Mr John P. Hale, that it would "not be long before the slave-holder would sit down at the foot of Bunker Hill monument with his slaves." You and I may live to see it—at least to see the attempt made. A writer in a prominent Southern journal, the Charleston Courier (of March 16, 1854), declares "that domestic slavery is a constitutional institution, and cannot be prohibited in a territory by either territorial or congressional legislation. It is recognized by the Constitution as an existing and lawful institution…. and by the recognition and establishment of slavery eo nomine in the District of Columbia, under the constitutional provision for the acquisition of and exclusive legislation over such a capitoline district; and by that clause also which declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." "The citizens of any State … cannot be constitutionally denied the equal right … of sojourning or settling … with their man- servants and maid-servants … in any portion of the wide- spread Canaan which the Lord their God hath given them, there to dwell unmolested in person or property." Admirable exposition of the Constitution ! The free black man must be shut up in jail if he goes from Boston in a ship to Charleston, but the slave-holder may bring his slaves to Massachusetts and dwell there, unmolested with his property in men. South Carolina has a white population of ​274,567 persons, considerably less than half the population of this city. But if South Carolina says to the State of New York, with three million men in it, Let us bring our slaves to New York, what will the "Hards" and the "Softs" and the "Silver Greys" answer? Gentlemen, we shall hear what we shall hear. I fear that not an office-holder of any note would oppose the measure. It might be carried with the present Supreme Court, or Congress, I make no doubt.
But this is not the end. After the Gadsden Treaty, the enslavement of Nebraska, the extension of slavery to the free States, the seizure of Cuba, with other islands—San Domingo, &c.,—there is one step more—the Re-establishment of the African slave trade.
A recent number of the Southern Standard thus develops the thought: " With firmness and judgment we can open up the African slave emigration again to people the whole region of the tropics. We can boldly defend this upon the most enlarged system of philanthropy. It is far better for the wild races of Africa themselves." "The good old Las Casas, in 1519, was the first to advise Spain to import Africans to her colonies…. Experience has shown his scheme was founded in wise and Christian philanthropy….The time is coming when we will boldly defend this emigration [kidnapping men in Africa and selling them in the 'Christian Republic'] before the world. The hypocritical cant and whining morality of the latter-day saints will die away before the majesty of commerce…. We have too long been governed by psalm-singing schoolmasters from the North…. The folly commenced in our own Government uniting with Great Britain to declare slave-importing piracy." ... "A general rupture in Europe would force upon us the undisputed sway of the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies. . . . With Cuba and St Domingo, we could control the … power of the world. Our true policy is to look to Brazil as the next great slave power. …A treaty of commerce and alliance with Brazil will give us the control over the Gulf of Mexico and its border countries, together with the islands; and the consequence of this will place African slavery beyond the reach of fanaticism at home or abroad. These two great slave powers….ought to guard and strengthen their mutual interests. ​…We can not only preserve domestic servitude, but we can defy the power of the world." … "The time will come that all the islands and regions suited to African slavery, between us and Brazil, will fall under the control of these two powers…. In a few years there will be no investment for the $200,000,000 … so profitable … as the development … of the tropical regions " [that is, as the African slave-trade] … "If the slave-holding race in these States are but true to themselves, they have a great destiny before them."
Now, gentlemen and ladies, who is to blame that things have come to such a pass as this? The South and the North; but the North much more than the South, very much more. Gentlemen, we let Gog get upon the ark; we took pay for his passage. Our most prominent men in Church and State have sworn allegiance to Gog. But this is not always to last; there is a day after to-day—a forever behind each to-day.
The North should have fought slavery at the adoption of the Constitution, and at every step since; after the battle was lost then, we should have resisted each successive step of the slave power. But we have yielded—yielded continually. We made no fight over the annexation of slave territory, the admission of slave States. We ought to have rent the Union into the primitive townships sooner than consent to the Fugitive Slave Bill. But as we failed to fight manfully then, I never thought the North would rally on the Missouri Compromise line. I rejoice at the display of indignation I witness here and elsewhere. For once New York appears more moral than Boston. I thank you for it. A meeting is called in the Park to-morrow. It is high time; though I doubt that the North will yet rally and defend even the line drawn in 1820. But there are two lines of defence where the nation will pause, I think—the seizure and occupation of Cuba, with its war so destructive to Northern ships; and the restoration of the African slave-trade. The slave-breeding States, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, will oppose the last; for if the Gulf States and the future tropical territories can import Africans at one hundred dollars a head, depend upon it, that will spoil the market for the slave-breeders of America. And, gentlemen, if Virginia cannot ​sell her own children, how will this "well-born, well-educated, well-bred aristocrat" look down on the poor and ignorant Yankee, when the "gentlemen" of the Old Dominion do not bring a high price in the flesh market. No, this iniquity is not to last for ever! A certain amount of force will compress a cubic foot of water into nine-tenths of its natural size; but beyond that, the weight of the whole earth cannot make it any smaller. Even the North is not infinitely compressible. When atom touches atom, you may take off the screws.
Things cannot continue long in this condition. Every triumph of slavery is a day’s march towards its ruin. There is no higher law, is there? "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness." "The counsel of the wicked is carried,"—ay, but it is carried headlong.
Only see what a change has come over our spirit just now. Three years ago, Isaiah Rynders and Hiram Ketchum domineered over New York. Those gentlemen who are to follow me, and whom you are impatient to hear, were mobbed down in this city two years ago; they could not find a hall which would be leased to them for money or love, and had to adjourn to Syracuse to hold their convention. Look as this assembly now.
A little while ago all the leading clergymen were in favour of the Fugitive Slave Bill; now three thousand of New England's ministers remonstrate against Nebraska. They know there is a fire in their rear, and, in theological language, it is a fire that "is not quenched;" it goeth not out by day; and there is no night there. The clergymen stand between eternal torment on one side, and the "little giant of slavery" on the other. They do not turn back! Two thousand English clergymen once became non-conformists in a single day. Three thousand New England ministers remonstrated against the enslavement of Nebraska. When the "gentlemen of the Old Dominion" find their sons and daughters do not bring a high price in the flesh-markets of the South, they will doubt the "divinity of slavery."
Now is the time to push and be active, call meetings, bring out men of all parties, all forms of religion; agitate, agitate, agitate. Make a fire in the rear of the Government and the Representatives. The South is weak—only ​united. The North is strong in money, in men, in education, in the justice of our great cause—only not united for freedom. Be faithful to ourselves and slavery will come down, not slowly, as I thought once, but when the people of the North say so, it shall come down with a great crash!
Then when we are free from this plague-spot of slavery—the curse to our industry, our education, our politics, and our religion—we shall increase more rapidly in numbers and still more abundantly be rich. The South will be as the North—active, intelligent; Virginia rich as New York, the Carolinas as active as Massachusetts. Then by peaceful purchase, the Anglo-Saxon may acquire the rest of this North American continent,—for the Spaniards will make nothing of it. Nay, we may honourably go further South, and possess the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of the Southern continent, extending the area of freedom at every step. We may carry thither the Anglo-Saxon vigour and enterprise, the old love of liberty, the love also of law; the best institutions of the present age—ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic.
Then what a nation we shall one day become! America, the mother of a thousand Anglo-Saxon States, tropic and temperate, on both sides the Equator, they behold the Mississippi and the Amazon uniting their waters, the drainage of two vast continents in the Mediterranean of the Western World; may count her children at last by hundreds of millions—and among them all behold no tyrant and no slave! What a spectacle—the Anglo-Saxon family occupying a whole hemisphere, with industry, freedom, religion! It is our function to fulfil this vision; we are the voluntary instruments of God. Shall America scorn the mission He sends her on? Then let us all perish, and may Russia teach justice to mankind!
THE END.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.