# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 05/Discourse 10

THE NEBRASKA QUESTION.
SOME THOUGHTS
ON THE
NEW ASSAULT UPON FREEDOM IN AMERICA, AND THE GENERAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY IN RELATION THEREUNTO,
SET FORTH IN A DISCOURSE PREACHED AT THE MUSIC HALL, IN BOSTON, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1854.
The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.—Psalm lxxiv. 20.
Before next Sunday it will be nine years since I first spoke to you in this city, coming at your request. In the first discourse I spoke of the Necessity of Religion for the Conduct of the Individual and the State. Since that time several crises have occurred in our national affairs which have led me to endeavour to apply the great principles of Religion to the political measures of this nation. It is something more than a year since any such event has called forth such treatment in this place. But now another assault has been made upon the liberty of man, in America, and so to-day I ask your attention to some thoughts on the new assault upon freedom in America, and the general state of the country in relation thereunto.
To comprehend the matter clearly, and the cause and the consequences of this special iniquity now contemplated, we must begin far off and study the general course of human conduct in America,—the last new continent left as a stage for the development of mankind.
The transfer of the Anglo-Saxon tribe to this Western ​ continent is one of the most important events which has taken place in the last thousand years. Since the Protestant Reformation, which helped forward the ideas that were the banner of the march, nothing has proved so significant as the westward movement of this swarm of men, not so much coming as driven out from the old close-pent European hive, and then settling down on the new continent.
A few Romano-Celtic Frenchmen had already moored their venturous shallops in the American water, and pitched their military tents in what was else only the great wilderness of North America, roamed over by wild beasts and wild men, also the children of the woods.
The Spanish tribe had come before either, and with military greediness were eating up the wealthy South. But Spain could set only a poor and perishing scion in the new world. That was always an evil tree to graft from, not producing good fruit. Besides, an old nation, in a state of decay, founds no healthy colonies. The children of a decomposing State, time-worn and debauched, though with a whole continent before them—what could they accomplish for mankind? They inherited the idleness, the ferocity, the military avarice, the superstition and heinous cruelty, of a people never remarkable for any high traits of character. Two thousand years ago, the Celto-Iberic tribe mingled with the Roman; then with the Visi-Goth, the Moor, the Jew—war proclaiming the savage nuptials,—and modern Spain is the issue of this six-fold juncture. This composite tribe of men had once some martial vigour; nay, some commercial enterprise, but it has done little to advance mankind by the invention of new ideas, the organization thereof, or the administration of what others devised and organized; the meanest and most cruel of the Christian nations, to-day she seems made but of the leavings of the world. To Columbus, adventurous Italy^s most venturous son, she gave, grudgingly, three miserable ships, wherewith that daring genius sailed through the classic and mediæval darkness which covered the great Atlantic deep, opening to mankind a new world, and new destination therein. No Queen wore ever a diadem so precious as those pearls which Isabella dropped into the Western sea^ a bridal gift where​ by the Old World, well endowed with. Art and Science, and the hoarded wealth of experience, wed America, rich only in her gifts from nature and her hopes in time. The three most valuable contributions Spain has made to mankind are the Consolato del mare, the Barcelonian bud whence modern mercantile law has slowly blossomed forth; the three scant ships a wealthy nation furnished to the Genoese navigator whom the world’s instinct pushed Westward in quest of continents; and Bon Quixote, a masterly satire on a form of folly then old-fashioned and fast getting extinct. These are the chief contributions Spain has dropped into the almsbox of the world. Coarse olives, huge onions, strong red wine—these are the offerings of the Spanish mind in the world^s fair of modern times. Since the days of Seneca and Lucan, perhaps Servetus is her foremost man, fantastic-minded yet rich in germs of fertile thought. Moorish and Hebrew greatness has indeed been cradled on her soil, but thereof Spain was not the mother.
Long before the Anglo-Saxons, the Spaniard came to America; greedy of money, hungering for reputation—the glory of the Gascon stock. He brought the proud but thin and sickly blood of a decaying tribe; the traditionary institutions of the past—Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Despotocracy, the dominion of the master over the exploitered slave. He brought the mass-book and legends of unnatural saints,—the symbols of superstition and ecclesiastic tyranny; the sword,—the last argument of Spanish kings, the symbol of military depotism; fetters and the bloodhound. He brought no great ideas, new trees started in the old nursery of the past; no noble sentiments, the seed-corn of ideal harvests yet to be. He shared only the material momentum of the human race which dashed his Eastern body on the Western world. He butchered the Indians who disbelieved "the immaculate conception of our blessed Lady" as taught by men of most Titanic, all-devouring lust. He set up the Inquisition, and soon had monks and nuns believing what heathen Guatemozin would have found bitterer than fire. The Spaniard attempted to found no institution which was an improvement on what he left behind—he reproduced only the Church, the State, the ​ Community, and Family, of the middle ages. He hated arts, letters, liberty; even the mass of the people seemed to care nothing for freedom of body or of mind. The Spaniard settled in the fairest parts of the new-found land, amongst tribes already far advanced toward civilization—the world’s foremost barbarians. He slew them with merciless rapacity; took their stone-built cities: occupied their land better tilled than the gardens of Castile; he seized their abundant gold; stole their wives and their maidens. At home the people were wonted to bull-fights, wherein the valiant Matador risks his own worthless body, and to Autos da Fe, where the cowardly priests burn their freethinking sister without hazarding their own nuisance of a life; in America the Spaniard rioted in the murder of men. The pictured horrors of De Bry report only a drop of the blood so torturously shed; yet two hundred and fifty years ago they terrified all Europe—Latin, German, French, English, Dutch.
To America, Spain transferred the superstition and tyranny of mediaeval Europe, its four-fold despotism, ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic. She reinvented negro slavery. Six thousand years ago, before the "flood," yea, before mythological Cain had been conceived by a Hebrew head, Egypt, it seems, was guilty of this crime. In the middle ages negro slavery was an art well nigh lost. Spain, first of the Christian nations, enforced religion with the knife, and beheaded men for heresy; she rolled the Inquisition as a sweet morsel under her tongue; her sovereigns, who extinguished the brand which smoked on the national hearth yet warm with Gothic liberty, who butchered the Moors and banished the plundered Jews, were for such services styled "the Catholic!" Spain re-annexed negro slavery to herself, and therewith stained the soil of America. Therein she broke not the continuity of her history, the succession of rapine, piracy, cruel outpouring of blood. Not Italian Columbus, but Iberian Cortes and Pizarro, were the types of Spain ; not Las Casas, but Torquemada.
Behold now the condition of Spanish America. Its most flourishing part is an empire, with the house of Braganza at its head—an imitation of the old world, a despotism throned on bayonets. There are two empires in Tropic ​ America—Hayti and Brazil; the foremost tradition of Africa, the hindmost of Europe set down on American soil. The negro empire appears the most successful, the most promising. There alone is no hereditary slavery. Over Cuba, France and England still hold up the feeble hands of Spain—whence at last freedom seems dropping into the slaveys expectant lap. The rest of Spanish America has the form of a republic—a republic whose only permanent constitution is a cartridge-box, which blows up once a year. Look at Mexico—I am glad she is going swiftly back to the form of despotism; she is capable of no other reality. How the Western vultures fly thitherward! Where the carcase of a nation rots there will the fillibusters be gathered together. Every raven in the hungry flock of American politicians looks that way, wipes his greedy beak, prunes his wings, and screams "Manifest Destiny!"
In South America there are ten "Republics." They cover three and a half millions of square miles, and contain twelve million men. But they do less for mankind than Holland; nay, Basil and Zurich do more for the human race than these "Republics," which only blot the continent. No idea is cradled in Spanish America; no books are written there; none read but books of "Devotion," which ignorance long since wrote. Old Spain imports from France the filthiest novels of the age; new Spain only the yet more deadly books of Catholic "Devotion." The "laws" of the Chilian "Republic" are printed in Spain, where no Chilian ship ever sailed. The Amazon has eighty thousand miles of navigable water,—near a hundred thousand, say some, the survey is conjectural,—and drains into the lap of America, a tropic basin, the largest, the richest on the globe, with more good land than all Europe owns; therein streams larger than the Danube discharge their freight. But only a single steamer disturbs the alligator on its mighty breast—that steamer built and owned at New York. Parà at its mouth is more than three hundred years old, yet has not twenty thousand souls. If the South American "Republics" were to perish this day, the world would hardly lose a valuable experiment in Spanish political or social life, hardly a visible promise of future prosperity; so badly flourish the Spanish scions set ​ in the green soil of America, and surrounded by the old institutions of the middle ages. Slavery is the one idea of the Spanish tribes—here African, there Indian or Caucasian.
One hundred and thirty years after Genoese Columbus had planted the Spanish Cross in the new world—"sword in hand and splendidly arrayed,"—from a little vessel, leaky, and with a "wrack in the main beam amidships," the Anglo-Saxons dropped their anchor in Massachusetts bay, circled then with savage woods; they drew up a "compact," chose their "Governor" for one year; rested and worshipped on Sunday; the next day landed at "New Plymouth," thanking God. They came, a slip from a young tree full of hardy life. Four stout roots—Angle, Saxon, Danish, Norman—united their old fantastic twists and joined in this one tough and rugged stem, then quadruply buttressed below, now how widely branched abroad in every climate of the world! Fresh blood was in those Anglo-Saxon veins; strong, red, heathen blood, not long before inoculated with Christianity which yet took most kindly in all Teutonic veins.
These pilgrims had in them the ethnologic idiosyncrasy of the Anglo-Saxon—his restless disposition to invade and conquer other lands; his haughty contempt of humbler tribes, which leads him to subvert, enslave, kill, and exterminate; his fondness for material things, preferring use to beauty; his love of personal liberty, yet coupled with most profound respect for peaceful and established law; his inborn skill to organize things to a mill, men to a company, a community, tribes to a federated State; and his slow, solemn, inflexible, industrious, and unconquerable will.
They brought with them much of the tradition of the human race, the guidings and warnings of experience; a great deal of superstition, of tyranny not a little, ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic. They brought the sword,—that symbol of military despotism must yet fight on freedom's side; but they loved better the axe, the wooden shovel—the best they had,—the plough, the swine, the ox, tools of productive industrial civilization, types of toil and co-operative freedom. For the Mass-book they had the Bible: it was a free Bible; let him read that listeth. ​ No doubt the Bible contained the imperfection of the men and ages concerned in writing it. The hay tastes of the meadow where it grew, of the weather when it was made, and smells of the barn wherein it has been kept; nay, the breath of the oxen housed underneath comes down to market in every load. But in its many-coloured leaves, the Bible likewise holds the words of great men, free and making free; it was full of the old blossoms of piety, and rich in buds for new and glorious life, ay, and beauty too. The cup of prophets mainly, not of priests, it ran over with water of life from the mythologic well in the wilderness and Bethesda^s pool which angels stirred to healing power;—it gave men vigorous strength and hardy life. Instead of the bloodhound, the pilgrims sent the schoolmaster to his work;—they put their fetters on the little streams that run among the hills, and those river gods must saw, and grind, and spin for mortal men; not the Inquisition, but the printing press, was the type and symbol of this Northern work.
They had the traditions of the human race, but also its momentum acquired in the movement of many a thousand years. They brought the best political institutions the world had then known. They had the English common law,—which had slowly got erected in the practice of this liberty-loving people, its Cyclopean walls built up by the Lesbian rule,—with its forms and precedents, its methodical schemes of procedure, itself a popular judicium rusticum; they had the habit of local self government; the right—though then not well understood—of popular legislation, also founded in immemorial usage; dim notions and the certain practice of representative government—the democracy of law-making; the trial by jury—the democracy of law-administration. They brought Congregational Protestantism—the democracy of Christianity, involving, what they neither granted nor knew, the universal right of search for truth and justice, the natural right to take or reject, as a man’s own spirit should require.
Besides the organized institutions—visible as tools of industry or politics, or invisible in literature, science, settled and admitted principles of private morality or of public law,—which represent the history and achievements of mankind, they brought also ideas not organized in either ​ form of institution, and sentiments not then translated into conscious thought. These represented man's natural instinct of progress and the momentum he had gained in history; they were to become institutions and facts in future time.
When the Puritan founded his colonies in New England, there were other Anglo-Saxon settlements on the Atlantic coast. Jamestown was founded in 1607. Other settlements followed. The same Anglo-Saxon blood flowed South as well as North; the same traditions and institutions were with both. But the Anglo-Saxons North brought institutions, ideas, and feelings quite unlike those of their Southern fellows. The motive for immigrating was altogether unlike. New England was a religious colony,—mainly composed of persecuted men who fled Westward because they had ideas which could not be set up in the Eastern world. Thrice the May-flower crossed the sea, coming to Plymouth, to Salem, to Boston; each time bringing veritable pilgrims who came from a religious motive, and sought religious ends. This was likewise the case with the primitive settlers of Pennsylvania. The South was not settled by religious colonies. The primitive difference in the seed has continually appeared in the growth thence accruing; in the policy and the character of the South and North. The same year which brought the Puritan Pilgrims to New England bore a quite different freight to Virginia. In 1620, a Dutch captain carried thither some twenty Africans who were sold as slaves into perpetual bondage—themselves and their children. Thus the old sin of Egypt, half omitted and half forgotten in classic and mediæval times, rediscovered by the Spaniards, and fixed by despots—a loathly plague-spot—on the tropic regions of America, was brought North, adopted by the Anglo-Saxons of the South, and set a going at Jamestown. It excited no astonishment. All the "Christian" world then sold prisoners of war for slaves. Thus early did Negro Slavery become an "institution" of the South.
But all things are double: in the Anglo-Saxon North there were two contending elements. One represented old institutions, and wished to stop therewith. It loved despotocracy in the family, aristocracy in the community, monarchy in the State, and theocracy in the Church: it ​ opposed the natural human rights of the servant in the family, of the labourer in the community, of the people in the State, of the layman in the Church; it favoured the rule of the master, the lord, the king, the priest. This element was old, ancestral, stationary, if not retrogressive; it was also powerful. In this the Anglo-Saxon and the Spaniard were alike.
The other element was the instinct for progressive development; the sentiments not idealized into conscious thoughts; the ideas not organized into institutions. There was a feeling of the equality of all men in the substance of their human nature, and consequently in all natural rights, howsoever diverse in natural powers, in transmitted distinction and riches, or in acquired culture, money, and station. Now and then this feeling had broken out in a "Jack Cadets insurrection," or a "Peasants’ war." But in the seventeenth century it found no distinct expression as a thought. Perhaps it was not an idea with any man a hundred and fifty years ago; it was the stuff ideas are made of. What other feelings are there, one day to become ideas, then acts, the world's victorious life! Lay down your ear to the great ocean of humanity, and as the Spirit of God moves on the face of this deep, listen to the low tone of the great ground swell, and interpret the ripple at the bottom of the sea, while, all above, the surface is calm as a maiden's dreamless sleep. In these days, what is it that we hear at the bottom of the world as the eternal tide of human history meets with the sand bars cast down in many an ancient storm! Thereof will I speak not now.
This feeling came slowly to an idea. With many stumblings and wanderings it went forth, blindfold as are all the instinctive feelings—whereunto only God not man is eye,—not knowing whither it went or intended to go. See what has been done, or at least commenced.
I. They protested against Theocracy in the church. "Let us have a church without an altar or a bishop; a service with no mass-book, no organ, no surplice, each congregation subject only to the Lord, not to man," said the Puritan—and he had it: "Yea," answered the Quaker, "and with no hireling minister, no outward sacrament, no ​ formal prayer of words; the church is they that love the Lord; it takes all the church to preach all the gospel, and without that cannot all mankind be saved!" "No vicarious sprinkling of babies, but the voluntary plunging of men," cried the Anabaptist. Thereat the theocratic Puritan lifted his hands and scourged the Baptist and smote the Quaker stone dead. But the palm-tree of toleration sprang out of Mary Dyer's grave. The theocracy got routed in many a well-contested fight; in this city of the Puritans, the Catholic, the Quaker, the Anabaptist, the Jew, and the Unitarian may worship or worship not, just as they will. But this fight is not over; yet it is plain how the battle is going. The theocracy is doomed to the cave of Pope and Pagan. Let us give it our blessing—as it goes. The Puritan fled from episcopal England to tolerant Holland, to the wilderness of America. But he brought more than Puritanism along with him,—humanity came in the same ship. The great warfare for the right of man’s nature to transcend all the accidents of his history, began in the name of religion—the instinct whereunto is the deepest in us, the innermost kernel and germinal dot in the human spirit; Luther's hammer shook the world. During mid-winter, in Switzerland, when the snow overhangs heavily from every cliff, if the traveller but clap his hands and shout aloud, the mountains answer with an avalanche. When Martin lifted up his voice amid the mediaeval snows of Europe, half Christendom came down in that great landslip of churches. Other snows have since fallen; other voices will be lifted up; other church-slides will follow—for every mountain shall be levelled, and the valleys filled. The Bible took the place of the Mass-book, the minister of the priest, the independent society of the Papal church. The glorious liberty of the children of God is to be the final result of all.
II. Next came the protest against Monarchy. The Anglo-Saxons never loved single-headed, absolute despotism. How the barons fought against it! But it was left for "His Majesty's faithful Commons" to do the work. The dreadful axe of Puritanic Oliver Cromwell shore off the divine right of kings, making a clean cut between the vicarious government of the middle ages, and the personal ​ self-rule of modern times. On the 30th of January, 1648, the executioner held up the head of Charles I. with a "Behold the head of a traitor," and "Royalty disappeared in front of Whitehall:" a ghastly, dreadful sight. Peasant Luther pushed the Latin Mass-book aside with his German Bible, saying, "Thus I break the succession of the priests." With his sword Cromwell, the brewer, pushed aside the Crown of England, "Thus I break the succession of Kings."
New England loved Cromwell; and while dwelling in the wilderness exercised the rights of sovereignty many times before it was known what she did, both destroying and building,—as likewise do all of us,—greater and wiser than she knew. Luther's hammer broke also the neck of kings, who disappear, and in their place came up governors and presidents not born to adverse rule, but voted in for official service.
III. Then came the protest against "Aristocracy. God made men not in classes but as individuals—each man a person with all the substantive rights of humanity: the same law must serve for all; all must be equal before it and the social institutions of the community. That was the dim utterance of many a man who grumbled in his beard:—
"When Adam delved and Eve span
Where was then the gentleman?"
How idly they dreamed—looking back for the Paradise that lay before them! But between it and them Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and a fourth stream, nameless as yet, rolled torrents of blood; and a fiery sword of selfishness turned every way to keep men from the tree of life, whose very leaves are for the healing of the nations—could they but get to it. Could they—ay! Can they not?
Little by little, man's nature prevailed over Aristocracy, one accident of his development. The Anglo-Saxon Briton had restricted the nobility he brought with him from the continent;—only the eldest son inherits his father's land, title, and rank, the later-born all commoners. The Anglo-Saxon American broke up primogeniture: the children are equal in blood and rank; the first son has no more of his father in him than the last; all must share equally in his goods. Bank is not heritable. If a coward, the captain's ​ son is no captain; by human substance, eminent manhood, bravery, skill, is the new man made captain; not by the historic accident of legitimate descent from an old captain. To be born well is to be well born; tall men are of a high family. The corpora?s child, yea, the sons of rank and file, are also men. In the woods of nature, new humanity takes precedence of all the artificial distinctions of old time. The crime of the father must work no attainder in the baby’s blood; by the sour grapes of his own eating only shall a man^s teeth be set on edge. Estates must not be entailed in perpetuity. Land must be held in fee-simple, with no quit-rents, or other servitudes of vassalage; on terms which all can understand. The vicarious land-tenures of the middle ages are for ever broken. All men may hold land; and cheaply convey it to whom they will. For the first time the majority have a stake in the public hedge; the medieval "noble," the conventional "gentleman," gradually withdraws and moves out from New England. "It is not a good place for gentlemen," so a governor wrote two hundred years ago. Everybody is "Mr;" then "Esquire;" The born magistrate vanishes, the "select men" are annually voted in. Still the social aristocracy, bottomed on accident, is far from being ended. But it rests no longer on the immovable accident of birth, but on the changeable block of money, and like that can be struggled for and acquired by all. It rests on golden sands or fickle votes.
IV. There yet remains the protest against Despotocracy—the adverse rule of the master over the servant, the hostile subordination of the weak to the strong in the family. In a military despotism, war confers dignity: "it is the part of a man to fight," says Homer, "of a slave to work;" and they "who exercise lordship are called benefactors." In a Theocracy, the priest is a sacred person: his work is "divine service," he enters the temple; but the people are profane, and must stand without; their work is menial! In a Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy—founded and maintained by violence or cunning—labour is thought degrading; the labourer is for the State, not it also for him. This exploitering of the weak by the strong belongs to the essence of those three institutions. Domestic slavery coheres therewith, and in dark ages this adverse rule of the ​ strong over the weak appears in all the collective action of men—ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic; the god, the king, the noble, the master, the husband, the father,—all are tyrants; all rule is despotism—the strong for his interest coercing the weak against theirs. In such a soil, slavery is at home, and grows rank and strong.
But in an industrial community, with a printed Bible bought by the parish and belonging thereunto; with a minister chosen by the laymen^s votes, ordained by their hands, paid by their free-will offerings, nay, educated, perhaps, by their charity, criticized by their judgment, removable at their will; with a creed voted in by the congregation—and voted out when they change their mind; with no monarch ruling by divine right, but only a governor chosen by the people at their annual meeting; with no "nobles," no "gentlemen," but an elected assembly, a general court,—sworn on a constitution made by the people,—democratically making laws; with magistrates chosen by the people, or responsible thereto; with democratic trial by jury for all men; with the idea that a man's nature is before all the accidents of his ancestry or estate—the old domestic Despotocracy must gradually become impossible. Labour will be thought honourable—idleness a disgrace. Productive activity will be deemed a glory, and riches its result, the greatest of all mere outside and personal distinctions. The tools must be for whoso can handle them. So the threefold movement, destroying the triple tyranny already mentioned, must presently achieve the emancipation of man from all personal servitude and domestic subordination: the substance of man must be inaugurated above the accidents of his history. This must be done not only in the Church, the State, the community, but also in the family. It must set the bondman free. If the Church, State, and community rest on natural law, so likewise must the family as well.
To accomplish this, two things were needful. This was the first.
1. To affirm as a principle and establish in measures the idea that all men, rich and poor, strong and weak, are equal in all their natural rights; that as the accident of birth makes no man priest, king, or noble, with a right, thence derived, to rule over men against their will in the ​ Church State, or community; so the accident of superior power gives no man a right in the family to hold others in bondage and subordination, for his advantage and against theirs. It is only to admit that all are Men, for manhood carries all human rights with it, as land the crops, and the substance its primary qualities. It seems a small thing to do;—especially for men able to dispense and make way with the other mediaeval forms of vicarious rule—theocracy, monarchy, and aristocracy. How easy it seemed to inaugurate personality and individualism in the family! But as matters were, this was the most difficult thing of all. For the priests, the kings, the nobles did not come over—only the tradition thereof, and the habit of subordination thereto, with a few feeble scions of the sacerdotal, royal, and noble stocks—and preaching against these always was popular,—while the masters came over in large numbers, bringing their slaves. They brought the substance of Despotocracy along with them, not merely its tradition. To preach against that was always a "sin" to the American Church. But man wants unity of consciousness. Accordingly, in New England good men began early to feel that absolute and perpetual slavery was a wicked thing. Had not the letter of the Old Testament and of certain passages in the New blinded their eyes, I think the Puritan would have seen more clearly than he did see. Still, with so much of the spirit of the Old Testament in him, he could not but see it was wrong to steal men for the purpose of making them slaves and their children after them. So slavery was always a contradiction in the consciousness of New England. The white slaves became free on expiration of their term of service, or were set free before. There were many such. The red men would not work-and were let alone, or quietly shot down. The Indians killed the white man and scalped him; the Puritan omitted the scalping—it was not worth his while; the scalp was of no use.
The slavery of the blacks never prevailed extensively in New England. It was not found very profitable. True it prevailed: it had the laws and the tradition of the elders on its side. But it was yet felt, known, and confessed to be at variance with the ecclesiastical, political, and social ideas of the people. There was always a good deal of conscience in New England. The religious origin of the ​ first colonies is not yet a forgotten fact. The Puritan still looked up to a higher law. Did he keep his powder dry? He also trusted in God. Coveting the end, he looked for the means thereto. The gain from the compulsory labour of the African slave was not motive enough to keep up the contradiction in the New England consciousness. So before the Revolution this institution was much weakened, and with that disappeared from New England; and soon after vanished out of all the States which she bore or taught.
2. The other thing was to affirm as a principle and establish as a measure the natural equality of men and women in all that pertained to human rights. It was only to affirm that woman is human, and has the same quality of human substance with man. If difference in condition, as rich and poor, or ability, as strong or weak, does not affect the substance of manhood, and the rights thence accruing, no more does difference of sex, masculine or feminine, make one master and the other slave. Not only the proletary, the servant, the slave, but exploitered woman also must rise as Despotocracy goes down.
In the Southern part of the North American continent other Anglo-Saxon colonies got planted and grew up. None of them was a religious settlement; the immigrants came not for the sake of an idea too new or too great for toleration at home. They came as adventurers, seeking their fortune; not as pilgrims, to found the "Kingdom of Heaven on earth." The Southern settlers had not the New England hostility to mediaeval institutions. Theocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, were not so unwelcome further South. In 1671, the Governor of Virginia said that she "had no free schools nor printing-press. Learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best governments. God keep us from both! "Despotocracy had its home in the Southern States. African slavery came to Virginia in the same year which brought the pilgrims to Plymouth. It suited the idleness of the self-indulgent master, and became an institution fixed and beloved in the Southern colonies, so diverse in their ideas from the stern but bigoted North. Still the ideas of the age found their way to these colonies—and led to acts. There also was a ​ protest against Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy, and even against Despotocracy. Mutuality of origin, community of position—that is all the Northern and Southern colonies at first had in common. Sentiments, ideas, institutions, were quite diverse. By and by a little trade helped unite the two. The South wanted slaves. The North—especially Rhode Island—overcame its scruples, and, spite of the Old Testament, stole men in Africa to sell them at enormous profit in the colonies of the South.
This great human protest against that four-fold despotism continually went on—no man understanding the great battle between the substance of man^s progressive nature and the stationary institutions which were the accidents of his history. At length, things came to such a pass that connection between New America and Old England could not be borne. Between the old and new there had ceased to be that mutuality of sentiment and idea which makes unity of institutions and unity of action possible. The daughter was too strong to bear patiently the dictation and the yoke of her parent; the mother was too distant and two feeble to enforce her selfish commands.
America published to the world a part of the new ideas which lay in her mind. The Declaration of Independence contained the American programme of political principles. The motive thereto is to be found in the general human instinct for progress, but more especially in the old Teutonic spirit, the love of individual liberty, which has marked the ancient Germans, and still more eminently their Anglo-Saxon descendants, as well in Christian as in heathen times. The form of speech—self-evident maxims, universal truths resting on the consciousness of mankind—seems derived from European writers on natural law; the influence of continental free-thinkers is obvious therein. But the first express declaration, that there are natural, unalienable rights in man, seems to have been made a few years before, in New England, in Boston. Is it here thought an honour to the town?—Nay, perhaps a disgrace!
Here is the American programme of political principles: All men are endowed by their Creator with certain natural rights; these rights can be alienated only by the possessor thereof; in respect thereto all men are equal; amongst ​ them are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; it is the function of government to preserve all these natural, unalienable, and equal rights for each man; government is amenable to the people, deriving its sanction from the consent of the governed.
In time of peace the thirteen distinct colonies could not have united in that Declaration of principles. The political ideal was a severe criticism on the actual legislation of the Americans. Talk of natural law and equal rights when every colony held slaves in perpetual bondage! when the North stole men in Africa to sell them in Carolina! But America was then in her agony and bloody sweat. European despotism was the angel which strengthened her. External violence pressed the colonies together into a confederation of States; that alone gave unity of action when there was no unity of humane sentiment or political idea. The union was only military—for defence.
"Would have brooked
Th' eternal devil to keep his state ….
As easily as king,"
Aristocracy found more favour, but likewise perished; "no title of nobility stall be granted;" honours are not devisable. Despotocracy, the worst institution of the middle ages—the leprosy of society—came over the water: the slave survived the priest, the noble, the king. Must the axe of a more terrible Cromwell shear that also away? Shall it be a black Cromwell? History points to St Domingo. The future also has much to teach us. The declaration of principles and of purposes would annihilate slavery; the Constitution nowhere forbids it, but broods over that egg which savage selfishness once laid. How could the liberty-loving North join with Carolina, which rejoiced to fetter men? The unity of action was no longer military—it was commercial, union for trade. Thus the idea of America became an act!
The truths of the Declaration went abroad to do their work. The French Revolution followed with its wide-reaching consequences, so beneficial to mankind; it still goes on. The ground-swell has come near the surface, and all the European sea now foams with tumult. Foreign opposition withdrew; America was left to herself, the sole republic of the world, with the wilderness for her stage and scene, and her great ideas for plot. The two antagonistic elements, the old selfishness which loves those four traditions of the past, the new benevolent instinct of progress which seeks the development of all man's nobler powers, were to fight their battle, while with hope and fear the world looks on. The New World has now broken with the Old—once and for ever.
The peculiar characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon appear now more prominent in the American than in the Britons; yet he is not altered, only developed. The love of individual liberty triumphs continually; the white man becomes more democratic—in Church, State, community, and family. The invasive character appears in the individual and national thirst for land and our rapid geographic spread. Materialism shows itself in the swift growth of covetousness, in the concentration of the talent and genius of the nation upon the acquisition of riches. The ​ power to organize things and men comes out in the machines, ships, and mills, in little and great confederations, from a lyceum to the Federal Union of thirty-one States. The natural exclusiveness appears in the extermination of the red man, in the enslavement of the black man, in the contempt with which he is treated—turned out of the tavern, the church, and the grave-yard. The lack of high qualities of mind is shown in the poverty of American literature, the meanness of American religion, in the neglect and continual violation of the idea set forth in our national programme of principles and purpose. Since the Revolution, the immediate aim of America appears to have changed.
At first, during the period of Americans colonization and her controversy with England, and her afiirmation and establishment of her programme of political principles,—the great national work of the disunited provinces was a struggle for local self-government against despotic centralization beyond the sea. It was an effort against the vicarious rule of the middle ages, which allowed the people no power in the State, the laity none in the Church, the servant none in the family. It was a great effort—mainly unconscious—in favour of the direct government of each State by itself, of the whole people by the whole people; a national protest against Theocracy, the subordination of man in religious affairs to the accident of his history; Monarchy, the subordination of the mass of men to a single man; Aristocracy, the subordination of the many to the few, of the weak to the strong; yes, in part also against Despotocracy, the subordination of the slave who toils to the master that enjoys,—in their rights they were equal. This forced men to look inward at the natural rights of man; outward at the general development thereof in history. It led to the attempt to establish a Democracy, which, so far as measures are concerned, is the government of all, for all, by all; so far as moral principle is concerned, it is the enactment of God^s justice into human laws. There was a struggle of the many against the few; of man’s nature, with its instinct of progressive and perpetual development, against the accidents of man's history. It was an effort to establish the eternal law of God against the provisional caprice of tyrants. I do not mean to say ​ that these great purposes and ideas existed consciously in the minds of men. They were in men^s character, not in their convictions; they came out in their life more than in their speech. They were in men as botany is in this plant, as chemistry in this drop of water, as gravitation which rounds it to a globe and brings it to the ground. But the camelia knows not the botany it lives; the drop of water knows nothing of the chemistry which has formed it, arranging its particles ^^by number and measure and weight; it knows not the gravitation which brings it to the ground. So it was the great soul of humanity that stirred in our fathers’ heart; it was the providence of God working by the men who formed the State.
From 1620 to 1788 there was a rapid development of ideas. But since that time the outward pressure has been withdrawn. The nation is no longer called to protest against a foreign foe; no despot forces us to fall back on the great principles of human nature, and declare great universal truths. Even the Anglo-Saxon people are always metaphysical in revolution. We have ceased to be such, and have become material. We have let the programme of political principles and purposes slip out of the nation's consciousness, and have betaken ourselves, body and soul, to the creation of riches. Wealth is the great object of American desire. Covetousness is the American passion. This is so—nationally in the political affairs of the country; ecclesiastically, socially, domestically, individually. Our national character, political institutions, geographic situation,—all favour the accumulation of riches. I thank God that we are thus rich!
No country was ever so rich before, nor got rich so fast; in none had wealth ever such power, or was so esteemed. It is counted as the end of life, not as the material basis to higher forms thereof. It has no conventional check in the institutions of the land, and only two natural checks in the heart of the people. One is the talent and genius—intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious—that is born in rare men; and the other is the desire, the caprice, the opinion, of the great majority of men, who oppose their collective human will against the material glitter of mere accumulated money. But money can buy intellectual talent and intellectual genius; at least it can buy American ​ talent and American genius. Money, and the men of cultivated minds whom it buys, can deceive the people, so that the majority shall follow the dollar wherever it rolls. The clink of the dollar,—that is the reveille, the morning drum-beat, for the American people. In America money is inaugurated as a power to control all other powers. It has itself become an "Institution"—master of all the rest.
Three of those bad institutions that I named, whereof our fathers brought the traditions from the old world, have mainly perished. The mediaeval Theocracy has gone out from the Protestant Church; Monarchy has wholly faded from the consciousness of the people; Aristocracy, sitting unmovable on her cradle, has had her heart pierced through and through by the gigantic spear of American industry horsed on a steam-engine. Money has taken the place of all three. It has got inaugurated into the Church,—it is a Church of commerce; in the State—it is a State of commerce; in the Community not less,—it is a society of commerce; and money wields the triple power of those three old masters. Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy. It is the almighty dollar.
In the American Church, money is God. The peculiar sins of money, and of the rich, they are never preached against; it is a Church of commerce, wealth its heaven and the millionaire its saint; its ministers should be ordained, not "by the imposition of hands," but of bankbills—of small denomination. In the American State, money is the Constitution: officers ought to be sworn on the federal currency; they should make the sign of the dollar ($) as their official symbolic cross; it is a State of commerce. In the community, money is nobility; it is transmissible social power; it is Aristocracy, it makes a man who has got it a vulgar "gentleman;" it is a society of commerce. Nay, in the family, money is thought better than love, and the daughter who fascinates and coaxes and courts and weds a bag of gold, gets the approbation of her mother and her father's benediction, "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."
"None but the rich deserve the fair."
The fourth bad institution whose tradition our fathers brought, Despotocracy, the rule of the master over the ​ slave whom lie exploiters,—that has not yet shared the fate of Theocracy, Monarchy, and Aristocracy. It is still preserved; it leagues itself with money, and builds up anew in America the old corrupt family of the middle ages. In New York, it clothes the white flunkeys of the Hon. Dives Gotrich with an imitated livery; in New Orleans, and in more than half the land, it takes those whom nature has clothed in a sable livery, and makes them its slaves. Despotocracy alone could not accomplish this. The wickedness is foreign to the American idea of a State, a community, or a Church. But leaguing with money, which has taken the place of all those old institutions, it is this day the strongest power in the nation.
Money having taken the place of these three institutions, it must be politically represented in the nation by a party; for a party is the provisional organization of a tendency. So there is a party organized about the dollar as its central nucleus and idea. The dollar is the germinal dot of the Whig party; its motive is pecuniary; its motto should be, to state it in Latin, pecunia pecuniata, money moneyed, money made. It sneers at the poor; at the many; has a contempt for the people. It legislates against the poor, and for the rich; that is, for men pecuniarily strong; the few who are born with the desire, the talent, and the conventional position to become rich. "Take care of the rich, and they will take care of the poor," is its secret maxim. Everything must yield to money; that is to have universal right of way. Down with mankind! the dollar is coming! The great domestic object of government, said the greatest expounder of this party, "is the protection of property;"—that is to say, the protection of money moneyed, money got. With this party there is no absolute right, no absolute wrong. Instead thereof, there is expediency and inexpediency. There is no law higher than the power to wield money just as you will. Accordingly a millionaire is reckoned by this party as the highest production of society. He is the Whig ideal; he alone has attained "the measure of the stature of a perfect man."
Singular to say, most of the great public charities of America have been founded by men of this party; most of the institutions of learning, the hospitals and asylums of ​ all kinds. Drive out Nature with a dollar, still she comes back.
But man is man, can a dollar stop him? For ever? The instinct of development is as inextinguishable in man as the instinct of perpetuation in blackbirds and thrushes, who build their procreant nests under all administrations, theocratic or democratic. So there is another party which represents the majority of the people; that majority who have not money which is coveted, only the covetous desire thereof. This represents the acquisitive instinct of the people; not acquired wealth; not money moneyed, but money moneying,—peamia pecunians, to state it Latin-wise. This is the Democratic party. It loves money as well as the Whig party, but has got less of it. However, with all its love of money, it has something of the momentum of the nation, something also of the instinct of man-kind.
To the Whig party belong the rich, the educated, the decorous; the established,—those who look back, and count the money got. To the other party belong the young, the poor, the bold, the adventurous, everybody that is in want, everybody that is in debt, everybody who complains. The audacious are its rulers; often men destitute of lofty character, of great ideas, of justice, of love, of religion—bold, smart, saucy men. This party sneers at the rich, and hates them; of course it envies them, and lusts for their gold. It talks loudly against oppression in all corners of the world, except our own. The other party talks favourably of oppression, and shows its good side.
The Democratic party appeals to the brute will of the majority, right or wrong; it knows no higher law. Its statesmanship is the power to enact into permanent institutions the transient will of the majority: that is the ultimate standard. Popular and unpopular, take the place of right and wrong—vox populi, vox Dei; the vote settles what is true, what right. It regards money made and hoarded as the foe of human progress, and so is hostile to the millionaire. The Whig calls on his lord, "Money, help us!" To get money, the Democrat can do all things through the majority strengthening him.
The Catholic does homage to the wafer which a baker made, and a celibate priest addressed in Latin; it is to ​ him the body of the Catholic God. The Protestant worships the Bible, a book written with ink, in Hebrew and Greek, "translated out of the original tongues, appointed to be read in churches." To him it is the word of God, the Protestant God. In the same way the Whig party worships money: it is the body of the Whig god; there is no higher law. The Democratic party worships the opinion of the majority: it is the voice of the Democrat's god; there is no higher law. To the Whig party,—no matter how the money is got, by smuggling opium or selling slaves,—it is pecunia pecuniata,—money moneyed. To the Democratic party it is of no consequence what the majority wishes, or whom it chooses: Polk is as strong as Jackson—when voted in; and Pierce as great as Jefferson,—for office makes all men equally tall. Once the Democracy manfully protested against England's impressing American sailors—but refused to protect a coloured seaman;—and now it basely protests against America making any black man free. Once it went to war—righteously, perhaps, for aught I know—in order to take a marblehead fisherman out of a British ship, where he had been wickedly impressed. Now the same Democracy covets Cuba and Mexico, and seeks to make slaves out of millions of men, and spread slavery everywhere. If the majority wants to violate the Constitution of America and the Declaration of Independence, or the constitution of the universe and the declaration of God, why! the cry is—"there is no higher law!" "the greatest good of the greatest number!"—What shall become of the greatest good of the smaller number?
There is, therefore, no vital difference between the Whig party and the Democratic party; no difference in moral principle. The Whig inaugurates the money got; the Democrat inaugurates the desire to get the money. That is all the odds. So in the times that try the passions, which are the souls of these parties, the Democrat and the Whig meet on the same Baltimore platform. One is not higher and the other lower; they are just alike. There is only a hand rail between the two, which breaks down if you lean on it, and the parties mix. In common times, it becomes plain that a Democrat is but a Whig on time; a Whig is a Democrat arrived at maturity; his time has come. A Democrat is a young Whig who will legislate ​ for money as soon as lie has got it; the Whig is an old Democrat who once hurrahed for the majority—"Down with money! that is a despot! and up with the desire for it! Down with the rich, and up with the poor! "The young man, poor, obscure, and covetous, in 1812 was a Democrat, went a-privateering against England; rich, and accordingly "one of our eminent citizens," in 1851 he was a Whig, and went a-kidnapping against Ellen Craft and Thomas Sims.
Bedini's hand is "thicker than itself with brother's blood." Young Democrats very properly burnt him in effigy. Old Democrats, wanting to be president, took him to their hearts. The young ones will also grow up in time to honour such future Nuncios of the Pope. I once new a crafty family which had two sons; both men of ability, and of remarkable unity of "principle." The family invested one in each party, and as it had a head on either side of the political penny thrown into the air, the family was sure to win. A New England family, wise in its generation.
Now, I do not mean to say that all Democrats or all Whigs are of this way of thinking. Quite the contrary. There is not a Whig or a Democrat who would confess it. The majority, so far as they have convictions, are very different from this; but the Whig would say in his convention, that I told the truth of the Democratic party; the Democrat, in his convention, would say, I told the truth of the Whigs. These ideas,—they reside in the two parties, as botany in this camelia, as chemistry in the water, as in the drop the gravitation which brings it to the ground: not a conviction, but a fact. Each of these parties has great good to accomplish. Both seem indispensable. Money must be looked after. It is a valuable thing; the human race could not do without property. It is the ladder whereby we scale the heavens of manhood. But property alone is good for nothing. The will of the majority must be respected. I honour the ideas of the Democratic party, and of the Whig party, so far as they are just. But man is not made merely for money; the majority are the standard of power, not of right. There is a law of God which directs the chink of every dollar; it cannot roll except by the laws of the ​ Eternal Father of earth and heaven. What if the majority enact iniquity into a statute! Can millions make wrong right? Justice is the greatest good of all.
With little geographical check or interference from other nations, we are going on solving our problem of "manifest destiny." Since the establishment of Independence, America has made a rapid development. Her population has increased with unexampled rapidity; her territory has enlarged to receive her ever greatening family; riches have been multiplied faster even than their possessors. But some of the least lovely qualities of the Anglo-Saxon tribe have become dreadfully apparent. We have exterminated the Indians; we keep no treaties made with the red men, they keep all. The national materialism and indifference to great universal principles of right shows itself clearer and clearer. Submission to money or the majority is the one idea that pervades the nation. There are few great voices in the American churches which dare utter the Eternal Justice of the Infinite God and rebuke the wickedness of the nation, or talk as with a trumpet. Come up higher. We have taken a feeble tribe of men and made them slaves; we kidnap the baby newly born; tear him from his mother’s arms, to sell him like swine in the market; the children of Jefferson and Madison are slaves in the Christian republic. The American treats his African victims with the intensest scorn. Even in Boston, spite of Constitution and Statute law, they are ignominiously thrust out of the common school. The clergy are the anointed defenders of slavery. The Whig party loves slavery as a tool for making money; the Democratic party, however, has the strongest antipathy to the African, and uses him for the same purpose. How many great American politicians care for him?
To obtain any considerable office in America, a man must conciliate one of these two—the money power or the majority power. But the particular body which sways the destinies of the nation, or its politics, is an army of slaveholders, some three hundred thousand strong. They direct the money; they sway the majority; and are the controlling force in America. They have been so for more than sixty years. I cannot now stop and weary you with ​ showing how they acquired the power, and how they administer it.
In the history of mankind, this is the first attempt to found a State on the natural rights of man. It is not to be supposed that there should be national unity of action on so high a platform as that which the genius of Adams and Jefferson presented for the people then militant against oppression. There is a contradiction in the consciousness of the nation. In our industrial civilization, under the stimulus of love of wealth, and its consequent social and political power, we have made such a rapid advance in population and riches as no nation ever made. The lower powers of the understanding have also had a great development. We can plan, organize, and administer material means for material ends, as no nation has ever done. But it is not to be supposed that any people could pass all at once from the military civilization, with its fourfold despotism, to an industrial civilization with Democracy in its Church, State, community, and family. How slowly we learn; with what mistakes do we come to the true idea, and how painfully enact it into a deed! But see what results have come to pass.
In 1776, there were about 784,093 miles of territory; now there are 3,347,451. Then there were about two and a half millions of people; now there are four and twenty. In 1790, the annual revenue of America was less than four millions of dollars. Last year it was more than sixty-one. Then we had less than 698,000 slaves; now we have more than 3,204,000. In 1776, slavery was exceptional; the nation was ashamed of it. In 1774, Mr Jefferson had more democratic and Christian ideas than all Virginia has now. He said, "The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest desire of the American people." In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, he condemned England for fastening slavery upon us, forbidding us to abolish the slave-trade. He trembled when he remembered that "God is just." The leading men of the nation disliked slavery on principle. Some excused themselves for it,—"England forced it on us;" some thought it "expedient as a measure;" all thought it wrong as a principle.
During the Revolution, the white slaves who had been ​ soldiers, became free; there has not been any white slavery—of the old kind—since '76. I know some families in this city whose parents came to America as slaves— white slaves, I mean. They were bought in England; they were sold in America—sold under cruel laws. I should not like to mention their names; but in 1850, they were the most desperate Hunkers that could be found. Born of slaves, the iron had entered their contaminated souls, and they sought to enslave your brethren and my parishioners. These were the children of white slaves. The Indians were set free by laws. In most of the States, attempts were made to free the blacks. All the New England States set them free;—partly by the programme of principles in their Constitutions; partly by the decisions of courts; partly by statute law, enacted by the legislature. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, soon followed. In twelve years after the Declaration of Independence, seven of the thirteen States had begun efforts to abolish slavery for ever. The truths of the Declaration carried forward New England and other Northern States; nay, the momentum of the Revolution carried the whole of Congress forward, and ere long, America performed two great acts, restricting Despotocracy—establishing freedom and not bondage. Here they are.
I. In 1787, the general government had jurisdiction over the North-Western territory, and decreed that therein slavery should never exist, to all time, save as a punishment for crime "duly convicted." On that spot, there have since grown up five great States; Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Five great States, with four and a half millions of men, and not a slave. Near a million children went to the schools of those States last year, and there is not a slave. Out of 239,345 square miles, there is not an inch of slave soil, except what stands in the shoes of Senator Douglas and his coadjutors. That is the first thing.
II. In 1808, America abolished the slave-trade. Before that it was carried on from the harbours of New England; Boston, Bristol, Newport, New York, added to their wealth by enslaving men. These were the great ports ​ whence men cleared for Africa, to take in a cargo of slaves. It is still carried on from New York and Boston—but secretly; then it was openly done. Some of you, whose hoary heads dignify and give a benediction to this audience, may perhaps remember the great Rhode Island slave-trader, who occasionally visited this city, and if your eyes ever saw him, I know that your hearts—then hot with youth—recoiled with indignation at such a sight—a stealer of men! He seemed to be born for a slave-trader; he had a kidnapper’s name on him at his birth. He was called Wolf!
These are the two acts of the Federal government against slavery since the Declaration of Independence. That is all that America has done against slavery, in eight and seventy years. She has multiplied her population tenfold, her revenue fifteenfold, and has abolished the slave-trade, and prohibited slavery in the North- Western territory. Now see what has been done in favour of slavery.
I. This is the first step: in 1787, America inaugurated slavery into the Constitution.
1. She left it in the slave States, as part of the "Republican" Institutions.
2. Next, she provided that the owners of slaves should have their property represented in Congress, five slaves counting the same as three freemen ; and, at this day, in consequence of this iniquitous Act, for the 3,204,000 slaves which she has stolen and unjustly holds, the South has delegates in Congress equal to the representation of almost two millions of freemen in New England.
3. It was agreed, also, that slaves escaping from the service of their masters into a free State, should not thereby recover their freedom, but should be "delivered up."
Here were three concessions made to slavery at first. They were at variance with the programme of principles in the Declaration; the programme of purpose in the Constitution's preamble. They were known to be at variance with the religion of Jesus in the New Testament; at variance with the laws of Nature and of God. The Convention was ashamed of the whole thing, and added hypocrisy to its crime: it did not dare mention the word slave. That ​ was the first great step against freedom. It has cost us millions of people. We should have had a population counting millions more. It has cost us hundreds of millions of money. The Whig is poorer, the Democrat has a smaller majority. Ay, it has cost us what is worth more than both money and human life—it has cost manhood; it has caused us crime, falseness to our nature and our God. Just now the "Christian Republic" commits a greater offence against the fundamental principles of all morality, all religion, than the Russian or the Turk, or any Pagan despotism in the wide world!
How came it? The North wanted a special privilege of navigation; and it let slavery into the Constitution for that pitiful price. Mr Gorham, a representative from Massachusetts, a Boston man, in the Convention, declared that Massachusetts wanted Union, not to defend herself, she could do so, and had done so, and had defended others along with her; but she wanted a special privilege to trade. I am ashamed to confess it,—that was the Massachusetts which had just come out of the Revolutionary war. Here was a "compromise" between the covetousness of the North, wanting a special privilege of navigation, and the idleness of the South, wishing to eat but not to earn. Between these two mill-stones the African man was crushed into a slave—a mere chattel "to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever." That was the first step.
II. In 1792, America admitted Kentucky as a new State, made out of old soil, and established slavery therein. That was the first act of Congress establishing new slavery so far as she had power. Since then America has thrice repeated the experiment;—in 1796, establishing slavery in Tennessee; in 1817, in Mississippi; and in 1819, in Alabama—three new States made afresh out of old slave soil. That was the second step.
III. In 1793, America adopted slavery as a Federal institution; undertook herself, the Federal government, to seize and deliver up the fugitive slave. She took no such charge of other fugitive "property." She was not field-driver for horses and mules, only the hog-reeve for fugitive ​ men, "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," "to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That was the third step; and the great "Expounder of the Constitution" declared it was "wholly unconstitutional;" every freeman, who thinks with a free mind, I am confident will say the same.
IV. In 1803, Louisiana was purchased from France and organized into a territory, with slavery in it. This was the first attempt of America to carry the hateful institution upon new soil, acquired since the Declaration of Independence. In 1812, Louisiana was admitted as a State with slavery in it; the first slave State made out of new soil, acquired after the Declaration. Hitherto slavery had been confined to the Atlantic slope of the continent; in 1792, the Federal government established it in the valley of the Mississippi; in 1803, for the first time, she carried it west of the great river. That was the fourth step.
​ VI. In 1845, Florida was admitted as a slave State, with a constitution providing that the "general assembly shall have no power to pass laws emancipating slaves," or to forbid emigrants to bring their slaves with them. Here, slavery was extended over territory acquired for that purpose from Spain in 1819-21; made perpetual therein. It went down to the Gulf of Mexico, reaching far in. That was the sixth step.
VII. In 1845, Texas was "reannexed" and admitted as a State. This was territory whence the Mexicans had banished slavery. Slavery was in the Constitution of Texas; was carried west of the territory purchased of France, and spread over 325,520 square miles. It was established in a territory forty-three times greater than Massachusetts, by and by to be carved into more slave States. This was the first time that America had ever established slavery in any land whence any government had positively driven it out. That was the seventh step.
VIII. In 1848, at the conclusion of the war for plundering Mexico, by conquest and treaty we acquired California, Utah, and New Mexico—a territory of more than 596,000 square miles. This was coveted as new ground for the extension of slavery. The Mexican war was begun and continued for slavery; the land was to be slave soil. This was the first time we had conquered new land in battle for the sake of putting slavery on it. That was the eighth step.
IX. In 1850, you remember the cry, "The Union is in danger!"—How lustily men roared, "The Union is in danger!"—How the politicians talked, and the ministers! The "pedlars of oratory" took the stump. You remember the "Boston eloquence" that screamed, and tottered and stood a tiptoe, and spread its fingers, and tore its hair, and invaded the very heavens with its scary speech;—"The Union is in danger—this hour!" The celebrated Compromise measures were passed. So far as it concerns this question, they consisted of the Fugitive Slave Bill—of which I do not think you wish me, at least, to speak again; of the establishment of a territorial government in ​ New Mexico and Utah, extending slavery over 407,667 square miles,—a territory larger than fifty-three States of the size of Massachusetts; it paid Texas ten millions of money as a gift to slavery.
That was the greatest step of all since slavery was inaugurated in the Constitution. It was the most insulting to the North; it was most revolting to our political ideas and the principles of our professed religion. You remember the stir, and tumult, and storm. You have not forgotten the promise that "agitation was to cease." In 1852, the Whigs decided to "discountenance" agitation; and the Democrats, being stronger and more audacious, declared that they would resist all attempts to renew the agitation on the question of slavery, in Congress or out, in whatsoever shape. That was the ninth great step.
In 1776, African slavery existed in all the thirteen States. In a few years it shrunk southward. In 1790, the end of Delaware in 40° was its northern Atlantic limit ; on the Mississippi, it fell away to less than 37°. Below the snaky line which separates Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky on the south, from New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, on the north, east of the "Father of Waters," on the Atlantic slopes of the continent — the monster had scope and verge enough. North and west of these limits he dared not show his head. But in that year, America bought of Maryland and Virginia a field "ten miles square," as capital of the United States; in 1800, the seat of government was transferred from Philadelphia to the district of Columbia; in 1802, Congress re-enacted the slave codes of Virginia and Maryland, extending them over the capital of the nation. Behold, the Federal government of the sole Christian Republic of the world has its head-quarters on slave soil! Congress had gone South—ominous change! Since that day, no State has abolished slavery. It still exists in the six old States, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. It has spread into Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, four new States in twenty years made out of the territory of the old States. It has been put anew into Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Texas,—five new States made out of territory acquired for extending the area of slavery. It has been carried to Utah and New Mexico,—land plun​ dered from Mexico for this purpose. The white polygamy of Joe Smith, and the black polygamy of men yet more shameless, there flourish side by side. It has spread over 1,051,523 square miles, where there was no legal slavery at all in 1788. It has blotted the Mississippi Valley with more than 1,580,000 slaves. It has put slavery in a population of 3,250,303 white persons, which else would never have had an entailment of this curse upon their property, their education, and their morality, and their religion!
Why was all this? Has the South the most money, and so can buy up the North? the most votes, and so can scare us by overwhelming numbers? Not at all; the South is poor in money; in numbers she is weak. The North is strong in both. The South wanted slavery, the North did not want freedom for the African. Before 1808, Northern clergymen occasionally ventured their little savings in the slave-trade: since 1808, they obey with alacrity all attempts of the slave power to blaspheme the higher law of God! At each step, the South becomes more imperious, more insulting. She has served us right ! Nine times she has demanded a sacrifice—nine times the North has granted the demand. In some twenty-four millions of men, every seventh man is a slave ; the children of Jefferson and Madison are sold at public vendue. Senator Foote roared in the Capitol; his father's sons were slaves in the same street! It is "a great country" a "Union" worth saving!
But who is to blame for all this? The North has had the majority in the Federal councils from the beginning. It is the North who is to blame for these nine steps — for establishing, spreading, fostering, and perpetuating the worst institution wherewith the Spaniard has dared to blot the Western continent. Who put slavery in the Constitution, made it Federal? who put it in the new States? who got new soil to plant it in? who carried it across the Mississippi—into Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in the capital of the United States? who adopted slavery and volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the act in 1850,—in defiance of all law, all precedent, all right ? Why, it was the North. "Spain armed herself with bloodhounds," said Mr Pitt, "to extirpate the wretched natives of America." ​ In 1850, the Christian Democracy set worse bloodhounds afoot to pursue Ellen Craft; offered them five dollars for the run, if they did not take her; ten if they did! The price of blood was Northern money; the bloodhounds—they were kidnappers born at the North, bred there, kennelled in her church, fed on her sacraments, blessed by her priests! In 1778, Mr Pitt had a yet harsher name for the beasts wherewith despotic Spain hunted the red man in the woods—he called them "Hell Hounds." But they only hunted "savages, heathens, men born in barbarous lands." What would he say of the pack which in 1851 hunted American Christians, in the "Athens of America," and stole a man on the grave of Hancock and Adams—all Boston looking on, and its priests blessing the dead!
The slave power is now ready to take the tenth step. It wants these things; the acquisition of Cuba, the Mesilla Valley, the enslavement of Nebraska. Of the first and second I shall not now say anything. The third is a most important matter. It is an attempt to establish slavery in a new country. First, in a country where it never existed to any extent. There is only one American in the territory-known to have ever held a slave. That is a missionary who went thither from Boston, and, for a thousand dollars, bought a man in Missouri, to serve as help for his sick wife,—the only slave ever held by an American in Nebraska, so far as Senator Douglas is informed; and of all men the most, he ought to know.
Next, it is an attempt by the Federal government to establish it in a territory where it has been prohibited by the Federal government itself, by the solemn enactment of Congress, made thirty-three years ago, at a time when all the North swore solemnly that it would not suffer slavery to come north another inch.
Do you know what is the population of Nebraska? There are not one thousand Americans in it. There is a delegate from Nebraska at Washington. He had seventy votes, out of this vast territory! There were two competitors, and I suppose there could not have been more than two hundred votes cast; I doubt if there were one hundred.
It is an immense territory, 485,000 square miles; larger than sixty-two States of the size of Massachusetts. It ​ contains as much land as all the thirteen States that fought the Revolution, and more than 121,000 square miles besides. Draw a line from Trieste to Amsterdam,—Nebraska is larger than the part of Western Europe thus cut off. It contains more than all the fourteen Free States east of the Mississippi,—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin—and 83,393 square miles over and above. It reaches from the western boundary of Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. It extends from 37° north latitude to 49°—twelve degrees of latitude; and from 94° longitude to 114°—twenty degrees of longitude. Its waters run to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Pacific Ocean, and to Hudson's Bay. The blood of the slave will reach "Greenland's icy mountains," and stain the waters at the mouth of Baffin's Bay; the Saskatchawan, its great northern river, will drain the slave soil into Lake Winnepeg, and the keel of Captain Kane's ship, returning from his adventurous quest in the Arctic sea, will pass through waters that are darkened by the last great crime of America!
The slave power has long been seeking to extend its jurisdiction. It has eminently succeeded. It fills all the chief offices of the nation; the presidents are slave presidents; the supreme court is of slave judges, every one; the district judges,—you all know Judge Sprague, Judge Grier, Judge Kane. In all that depends on the political action of America, the slave power carries the day. In what depends on industry, population, education, it is the North. The slave power seeks to extend its institutions at the expense of humanity. The North works with it. In this century, the South has been^foiled in only two efforts,—to extend slavery to California and Oregon: nine times it has succeeded.
Now see why the South wishes to establish slavery in Nebraska.
1. She wishes to gain a direct power in Congress. So she wants new slave States, that she may have new slave Senators to give her the uttermost power in the Senate of the United States.
2. Next, she wishes indirectly to gain power by directly checking the rapid growth of the free States of the North. ​ If Nebraska is free, the tide of immigration will set thither, as once to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois ; as now to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minesota. There will be a rapid increase of freemen, with their consequent wealth, education, ideas, democratic institutions, free States, with consequent political power.
All this the South wishes to avoid; for the South—I must say it—is the enemy of the North. She is the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, and our commerce. Thrice, in my day, has she sought to ruin all three. She is the foe to our institutions—to our democratic politics in the State, our democratic culture in the school, our democratic work in the community, our democratic equality in the family, and our democratic religion in the Church. Hear what a great slave organ says of religion:—"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 ethnology, government," &c. It is the Editor of the Richmond Examiner who says that, the American Chargé at Turin.
I say the South is the enemy of the North. England is the rival of the North, a powerful rival, often dangerous; sometimes a mean and dishonourable rival. But the South is our foe,—far more dangerous, meaner, and more dishonourable. England keeps treaties ; the South breaks faith. She broke faith individually, and Webster lies there a wreck on the shore of his own estate; breaks it nationally, "and renews the agitation!" I always knew she would; I never trusted her lying breath; I warned my brothers and sisters against it: now she fulfils the expectation. She is the enemy of our material welfare and our spiritual development. Her success is our ruin. Our welfare shames her institutions, her ideas, and is the destruction to her "peculiar institution." She has been beaten in her effort to blot the territory of Oregon with slavery; but she never surrenders. This I honour in the South,—she is always true to her own institution, and her own idea. I honour the man who, on Plymouth Rock, when the sons of the Puritans crouched and shrunk down, and scarce one brave word could get spoken for humanity and the great rights of man which our fathers brought across the sea,—I honour ​ the Southern man who stood up and claimed that slavery should be protected, on Plymouth Rock, and told one Northern candidate for the Presidency that he also had once offered and volunteered to shoulder his musket, "the old Middlesex musket," and march South to put down an insurrection of slaves. I say, I honour a man’s fidelity to his own principle, even if it is a base one.
Such are the two general reasons why the South wishes slavery in this new territory. But here is a third reason, quite special.
3. There must be communication with the West. Three railroads are possible; one lies through Mexican territory, but we have not got it, for the Gadsden treaty is not yet a fact accomplished:—two others lie through Nebraska territory. One or the other of them must be built. If Nebraska is free soil, the slave master cannot take his slave across, for the law of the free soil makes the black man free. But if Nebraska is a slave State, then the master can go there and carry his "chattels personal,"—Goffles of men, droves of women, herds of children, attended by the "missionary from Boston," and the bloodhounds of the kidnapper. She wants right of way for her institution; a slave railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Such are the reasons why she wants to establish slavery there.
See what encourages the South to make new encroachments. She has been eminently successful in her former demands, especially with the last. The authors of the Fugitive Slave Bill did not think that enormity could be got through Congress: it was too atrocious in itself, too insulting to the North. But Northern men sprang forward to defend it—powerful politicians supported it to the fullest extent. The worse it was, the better they liked it. Northern merchants were in favour of it—it "would conciliate the South." Northern ministers in all the churches of commerce baptized it, defended it out of the Old Testament, or the New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it his mighty aid,—he went through the land a huckster of slavery, peddling Atheism: the Representative of Boston gave it his vote. Their constituents sustained both! All the great cities of the North executed the bill. The leading journals of Boston advised the merchants to withhold ​ all commercial intercourse from towns which opposed kidnapping. There was a "Union Meeting" at Faneuil Hall. You remember the men on the platform: the speeches are not forgotten. The doctrine that there is a law of God above the passions of the multitude and the ambition of their leaders, was treated with scorn and hooting: a loud guffaw of vulgar ribaldry went up against the justice of the Infinite God! All the great cities did the same. Atheism was inaugurated as the first principle of Republican government; in politics, religion makes men mad ! Mr Clay declared that "no Northern gentlemen will ever help return a fugitive slave!" What took place at Philadelphia? New York? Cincinnati?—nay, at Boston? The Northern churches of commerce thought slavery was a blessing, kidnapping a "grace." The Democrats and Whigs vie with each other in devotion to the Fugitive Slave Bill. The "Compromises" are the golden rule. The North conquered her prejudices. The South sees this, and makes another demand. Why not? I am glad of it. She serves us right.
There is one thing more which helps her. The South, weak in numbers, weak in money, has yet a certain unity of idea,—that of slavery. She has the political skill to control the money and the numbers of the North. She always makes the Presidents. As the Catholic priest takes a bit of baker's bread, and says, "Bread thou art, become a God!" and the dough is God,—so the South takes any man and transubstantiates him,—"Thou art a man! become a President!" And by political transubstantiation Polk and Pierce are Presidents, to be "lifted up," to be exhibited," set on high, and worshipped accordingly. Now the Northern lump covets exceedingly this Presi- dential transubstantiation; but to attain thereunto, it must be of the right leaven for the South. A new Presi- dent is presently to be kneaded together, to be baked to tTie requisite hardness, transubstantiated, and then set up in 1856. Several old Ephraims, alas! cakes "not turned," begin to swell, and bubble, and crack, and break, hoping presently to be in condition to be transubstantiated. Some Northern dough is leavening itself to suit the Southern taste. Alas! "It is not in man that walketh to direct his ​ steps." Many are leavened, but few rise. A Northern man, a bold adventurer, a bar-room politician of Illinois, born in Vermont, they say, has long coveted presidential transubtantiation. He has tempered his measures of meal with Southern leaven: he is a slave-holder—not born so; he courted slavery and "married on;" he has stirred into his character a great amount of appropriate leaven,—the "emptyings" of Southern firkins, the leavings of Southern feasts, the yeasty scum and froth of the Southern consciousness where slavery heats and swelters and keeps up a perpetual fermentation. In 1852, all his leaven was of no avail; even the heat of the Baltimore Convention could not make him rise to the requisite degree. Now he adds more potent leaven, and drugs his Northern dough, hoping the lump will rise a presidential loaf!
Mr Douglas has made his bid for the Presidency. He claims that the Missouri Compromise was abolished in 1850. Nobody knew it then; not he himself: it is his last discovery. Then he claims that Congress has no right to say that slavery shall not be in the territory.
So the question is, shall we let slavery into the two great territories of Kanzas and Nebraska? That is a question of political economy. Here it is. Shall men work with poor industrial tools, or with good ones? Shall they have the varied industry of New England and the North, or the slave labour of Virginia and Carolina? Shall their land be worth five dollars and eight cents an acre as in South Carolina, or thirty dollars and a half as in Connecticut? Shall the people all be comfortable, engaged in honest work, which enriches while it elevates; or shall a part be the poorest of the world that a few may be idle and rich?
It is a question of political morality. Shall the government be a commonwealth where all are citizens, or an aristocracy where man owns his brother man? Shall there be the schools of Ohio, or the ignorance of Tennessee? Shall it be a virtue and a dignity to teach, as it is in the public schools of Boston; a great charity, as some of you are administering in private schools for the ignorant and poor; or shall it be a crime, as in Virginia, where Mrs Douglas, by sentence of court, is now serving out her time in the House of Correction, for teaching a black child its letters? Shall there be the public libraries^ newspapers. ​ lectures, lyceums, of Massachusetts; or the ignorance, the ignoble sloth, of Mississippi and Alabama? Ay! it is a question of domestic morality. Shall a man have a right to his own limbs, his liberty, his life? Shall the mother own the babe that is born from her bosom? Shall she be a maid, and keep her innocence and her honour? Shall she be a wife, faithful to him that she loves, or shall she be the instrument of a master’s lust, who has the law to enforce rape and violence? That is the question.
It is a great religious question. Shall the passions and ambition of base men have rule in Nebraska, or the natural law of the most high God? The Unitarian Autumnal Convention at Worcester debated the great question, whether men should have a Litany in the churches. The American Tract Society, the American Missionary Society, have questions of similar magnitude, which come before them. This is not thought a religious question. It is only one which concerns the welfare of millions of men, in hundreds of years yet to come; ay, thousands! The prayer of the Puritan, his self-denial, his trust in God, and love of the right,—they are the best inheritance New England ever got-shall we extend the best institutions of New England to Nebraska; or shall we send there the slave-driver with his whip, with his bloodhound, with his politician and his——! shall I say the next word? I pass it by. That question must be answered in a month; in one short month; ay! perhaps, in a week.
In sixty years, Virginia has not doubled her population, while New York has ten times the population of 1790. The most valuable export of Virginia, is her slaves, enriched by the "best blood of the old dominion;" the "Mother of Presidents" is also the great slave-breeder of America. Since she ceased to import bondmen from Africa, her slaves become continually paler in the face; it is the "effect of the climate"—and Democratic institutions. One quarter of her slaves have but one-fourth African blood in their veins; half of her slaves are half white. The Ethiopian is changing his skin. Beneficent "effect of the climate"—and Democratic institutions! By the laws of Virginia, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment, to deny the master’s right to hold his slave; it was lately proposed in her Legislature, to exclude from the jury​ box all persons guilty of this opinion. Her present law provides that men of three-fourths white descent shall be free—it is now proposed to enslave all who have less than nine-tenths Caucasian blood; so the blood of "Jefferson and Sally," uncontaminated by any new African admixture, must pass through yet four other slave-breeding Presidents before it is entitled to freedom! New York has 862,507 children at her public schools. Virginia makes it a crime to teach writing and reading to slaves. Her highest literature is partisan newspapers and speeches; her noblest men are nothing but party politicians; her chief manufacture is slaves—children of her own Caucasian loins, begotten for exportation. She stocks the plantations of Alabama and the bagnios of New Orleans. Shall we establish in Nebraska the institutions of Virginia? Let the North answer.
I know Northern politicians say, "slavery will never go there!" Do they believe their own word? They believe it! In 1820, they said it could not go to Missouri; then, there were but 10,222 therein; now 87,422! more than a quarter of all the slaves in the United States are north of 36° 30'. Desperate men from the slave States of the Atlantic and the Mississippi, too miserable to reach California, will find their El Dorado in Nebraska, take slaves there and work their lives out! It will be a better breeding State than Virginia herself.
Congress, it is said, has no right to legislate for the people of the territory against slavery. It must be left to the inhabitants thereof. There are 485,000 square miles,—not 1000 men, not two hundred voters. Shall two hundred squatters entail slavery on a country as large as all Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Holland? Is it "democratic" for Congress to allow two hundred stragglers in the wilderness, cheating the Indians, swearing, violent, half of them unable to write or read,—is it democratic in Congress to allow these vagabonds of the wilderness to establish the worst institution which Spain brought out of the middle ages; which Western Europe casts off with scorn; which Russia treads under her feet; which Turkey rejects with indignation,—and spread this over a country larger than the whole Roman empire when Julius Caesar was cradled in his mother's arms? If it is so, let ​ me go back and, most Imperial Nicholas! let me learn political justice from thee, thou last great tyrant of the Western world!
Suppose we grant this,—will that be the end? Suppose slavery flows into Nebraska,—is that all? This is the tenth time that slavery has demanded a great wrong, and the North has said, "Yes, I will do it." Each time it has been a greater and worser wrong. Our great enemy demands sacrifices, not of interests but of principle; the sacred principle of natural right, allegiance to the Eternal God. "Grant it," say they, "or we will dissolve the Union." Presently the cry will be raised again, "Save the Union! Oh! save the Union." "The Union is in danger—this hour!" will be rung again in our deceived ears. Suppose it is granted. Only once in seventy years has the Southern demand been rejected,—when she asked to put slavery into Oregon. But the conscience of the North,—there is not much of it,—not enough to act, only to grumble, or perchance to swear. The conscience of the North complains. "Stop that agitation, or I will dissolve the Union at once," says the South. Then the North says again, "Hush! Save the Union!" and there will not be a whisper from Whig or Democrat. The Church has got its mean mouth sewed up with an iron thread.
Then the South will demand again, "Grant us this demand, or we will dissolve the Union!"—and the same thing goes over and over again. Do you think the North fears a dissolution of the Union? As much as I fear that this handful of flowers shall rise and strike the life out of my soul. No! No! Think not of that. Is it love of country which prompts the Northern sacrifice of conscience? No! never! Never, no! It is love of the dollar. It is love of the power of the majority, of the slave-holder's power; not love of man, but love of money. While the North can make money by the Union, there is no danger of dissolution!
Grant this, and see what follows. I omit the probable acts of individual States, over which Congress has no direct control.
I. The South will claim that the master has a right to take his slaves into a free State — spite of its laws to the ​ contrary—and hold them there—first, for a definite time, say seven years; next, for an indefinite period in perpetuity. That will restore slavery to the North and enable the sons of New England to return to their native land with their "chattels personal." Perhaps it will require no Act of Congress to do this—and "supersede" the Ordinance of 1787, or declare it "inoperative and void." The whole may be done any day by the Supreme Court of the United States; any day when the President shall say, "Down with you, judges. Do as you are bid." Whigs and Democrats can do all things through money, which strengtheneth them! will the North consent? Why not, nothing is so supple as the Northern neck.
II. Then the South will seek more slave territory. Here is what is wanted:—a part of Mexico,—the Gadsden treaty stipulates for about 39,000,000 acres, eight States as large as Massachusetts; Cuba, which the slave power has long coveted; Porto Rico; Hayti, which the Democratic Christians hate with such bitterness; Jamaica and the other West Indies; the Sandwich Islands; other parts of the Northern and Southern continent. Slavery must be put in all these places. Will the North consent? Why not? habit makes all things easy. What an excellent "field for religious enterprise" Hayti would be, if this Republic should restore slavery to St Domingo! Conquer your prejudices!
III. Then she will seek to restore the African slave- trade. Here are the steps. 1. to authorize any State to import slaves; 2. to authorize any individual to do so in spite of the adverse laws of any State, which will be declared "inoperative and void," or "superseded." I can foresee the arguments for the measure—Whig and Democratic—Yes, the theological arguments, drawn from the Bible, from "conscience and the Constitution." Some future Unitarian Doctor of Divinity, I suppose, for a "consideration" will be afraid of a "dissolution of the Union," and solve the problem of human destination by offering to sacrifice his own brother, sister, wife, daughter, mother! Will the North consent? Why stop at the thirteenth demand and not at the first, at the ninth? Is it worse ​ to steal Heathen men in Africa than Christian babies in Virginia? Worse to steal the son of Pumbo Jumbo than the daughters of Jefferson! Why should not the North consent—all the slaves are to be voluntary "Missionaries for civilization and Christianity!" What is there which the North will not consent to?
Some of you may live long enough to see all this. The Union has been in danger five times, and five times saved by sacrifice of those principles which lie at the basis of the nation, and are its glory. Is that too sad a prophecy, even to be spoken? It is not worse for the fifty years to come, than for the fifty years past; it is only the history of the last fifty years.
In 1775, what if it had been told the men all red with battle at Lexington and Bunker Hill,—"your sons will gird the Court House with chains to kidnap a man; Boston will vote for a Bill which puts the liberty of any man in the hands of a commissioner, to be paid twice as much for making a slave as for declaring a freeman; and Boston will call out its soldiers to hunt a man through its streets!" What if on the 19th of April, 1775, when Samuel Adams said, "Oh ! what a glorious morning is this!" as he heard the tidings of war in the little village where he passed the night,—what if it had been told him,—"that on the 19th of April, seventy-six years from this day, will your city of Boston land a poor youth at Savannah, having violated her own laws, and stained her magistrates' hands, in order to put an innocent man in a slave-master's jail?" What if it had been told him that Ellen Craft must fly out of democratic Boston, to monarchic, theocratic, aristocratic England, to find shelter for her limbs, her connubial innocence, and the virtue of her woman's heart? I think Samuel would have cursed the day in which it was said a man-child was born, and America was free! What if it had been told Mayhew and Belknap, that in the pulpits of Boston, to defend kidnapping should be counted to man as righteousness? They could not have believed it .They did not know what baseness could suck the Northern breast, and still be base.
Who is to blame? The South? Well, look and see! In the House of Representatives there are eighty-eight Southern men; there are one hundred and forty-four from. ​ the North. In the Senate, the South has thirty, the North thirty-two. But out of the two and thirty Northern Senators, not twelve men can be found to protest against this wicked Bill. The President is a Northern man; the Cabinet has the majority from the North; the committee of Senators who reported this Bill has a majority of Northern men; its chairman is a Northern man.
The very men who enacted the Fugitive Slave Law turn pale; but what do they do? They do nothing! Where is the North ? Where has it been these fifty years back?—at the feet of the South. Where are the Northern ideas—where is the Northern conscience, the Northern right! Oh, tell me, where? Is it in your Legislature? Listen! See if you can hear any faint breathings of the great Northern heart, that fought the war of Independence. At least, it is in the cities. Listen! In Boston, the "great men" who control Church and State—they have called conventions, have they? prepared resolutions—got them ready—had preliminary meetings—have they? Nothing of it. There is not a mouse stirring amongst them. It is all right, I suppose, in the little towns? There is the Northern heart—a great conscience, that says, '^ Give me liberty or give me death!"—"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!" Listen to Massachusetts! Can you hear anything? Well, I am a minister. It is in the pulpits of the North, perhaps. Hark! The Bible rustles, as that Southern wind, heavy with slavery, turns over its leaves rich in benedictions; and I hear the old breath come up again—"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"—"Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have not done it unto me." Is that the voice of the pulpit? Oh, no! That is the voice of a Hebrew peasant; a poor woman's son. In his own time, they said "He hath a devil." They hung him as a "blasphemer," an "infidel." That is not the pulpit’s voice. Listen again. Here it is: "I would send back my own mother." That is the answer of the American pulpit. Eight and twenty thousand Protestant ministers! The foremost sect of them all debated, a little while ago, whether it should have a Litany, and on what terms it should admit young men to the communion table—allow them to drink "grocers' wine, "and eat "bakers' bread," on the "Lord's day," in the "Lord's house;" and never ​ dared to lift that palsied hand, in which was once the fire and blood of Channing, against the world's mightiest sin. Eight and twenty thousand Protestant ministers, and not a sect that is opposed to slavery! Oh, the Church! the Church of America! False to the great prophets of the Old Testament, the great world's Prophet of the New; false to the fathers whose bloody knees once kissed the Rock of Plymouth!
The Northern conscience, the Northern religion, the Northern faith in God—where is it? Is it in the midst of the people—the young men and the young women; in your hearts and in my heart? Let us see. Let our actions speak. Now is the time; a month hence may be too late; ay, a week, and the deed may be done. Let us, at least, be manly, and do our part.
Well, let us contend bravely against this wicked device of men who are the enemies alike of America and mankind. I call on all men who love man and love God, to oppose this extension of slavery. Talk against it, preach against it, print against it — by all means, act against it. Call meetings of the towns to oppose it, of the Congressional districts, of the State, yea, of all the free States. Make a fire i'n the rear of your timid servants in Congress. Let us fight manfully, contesting the ground inch by inch, till at last we are driven back to the Rock of Plymouth. There let us gather up the wreck of the old ship which brought over the three churches of Plymouth, Salem, Boston,—whose children have so often proved false,—therewith let us build anew our Mayflower, make Plymouth our Delft-haven, launch again upon the sea, sailing to Greenland or to Africa, by prayer to lay other deep foundations, and in the wilderness to build up the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
But we shall not toil in vain. Slavery is nothing. It exists only by a whim. Theocracy is nothing. Monarchy is nothing. Aristocracy nothing. America has no "Pope," no "King," no "Noble;" a breath unmakes them as a breath once made. Slavery is no more if we say it ; the monster dies. In one day the North could annihilate all the slavery which depends on the Federal Government—abolish it on the Federal soil, the capital, and the territories; abolish the American slave-trade, declare it piracy, or other felony. That would be only common legislation. The ​ next day we could abolish it in the slave States. That would be revolution.
America has one great enemy—slavery, our deadliest foe. Do you believe it is always to last? I tell you no! young America! are you sure there is no law higher than love of money and power? sure there is no justice? no God? Quite sure of that? Men have sometimes been mistaken who reckoned without that Host.
Political economy is against slavery; it is a poor tool to work with. Compare Kentucky and Ohio, Virginia with Pennsylvania and New York! Do you believe that shifty Americans will always use the poor, rude instrument of the savage? They love riches too well. How weak slavery makes a nation! In time of war how easy it would be for the enemy fco raise up the 385,000 slaves of South Carolina against the 283,000 whites! Where would then be the "chivalry" of that mediaeval State?
Slavery hinders the education and the industry of the people; it is fatal to their piety. Think of a religious kidnapper! a Christian slave-breeder! a slave-trader loving his neighbour as himself, receiving the "sacraments" in some Protestant church from the hand of a Christian apostle, then the next day selling babies by the dozen, and tearing young women from the arms of their husbands, to feed the lust of lecherous New Orleans! Imagine a religious man selling his own children into eternal bondage! Think of a Christian defending slavery out of the Bible, and declaring there is no higher law, but Atheism is the first principle of Republican government!
"Slavery is the sum of all villanies; "what can save it? Things refuse to be mismanaged for ever. All the world is against us. It is only in America that slave-trading, slave-breeding is thought Christian and Democratic. Mr Slatter, who had become rich by trading in the souls of men, and famous for preserving the Union, in his slave-pen at the capital of the Christian Republic, once entertained the President of the United States at his costly house in Baltimore;—I forget whether it was Southern Mr Polk, or Northern Mr Fillmore; slavery has thrown down the partition-wall between Whig and Democrat. What European despot would have eaten salt with a man whose business was to sell misery by the wholesale, and to ​ retail the agony of women? Even the mediaeval Pope, the slave of stronger despots, who appropriately sends us his red-handed Bedini, to be lauded by aspirants for the Presidency—would shrink from this. No Russian despot has his sons as slaves to wait on him at table. You must come to America to find a Cossack President who could boast that honour! Do you believe this wickedness is always to continue? Can the Anglo-Saxon become Spanish? New England like Bolivia, Peru, Laguira, Mexico? The wheels of time turn not back. We cannot break the continuity of human history. See how mankind marches towards freedom, each step a revolution. See what has been done in four hundred years, for the freedom of man in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, or even in Spain! Lay down your ear to the great deep of humanity, and hearken to the ground-swell which goes on therein. That roar of mighty waters, does it whisper security to the tyrant? The next four hundred years what shall it do against Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Despotocracy?
See what the Anglo-Saxon in Europe has done for freedom since the first James! Compare the England of 1854 with the England of 1604. What a growth of liberal institutions; of freedom in the people! England loving liberty, loving law, goes on still building up the Cyclopaean walls of humanity, the bulwark of freedom for mankind. See what the same Anglo-Saxon has done in America. Compare the colonies of 1754 with the States of 1854. What a progress! Are we to stop here?
See what Massachusetts has done. Slavery was always a contradiction in the consciousness of New England. So in 1641, Massachusetts enacted that "there shall never be any bond-slavery, villanage, or captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars," &c. In 1646, the colony bore " witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing," and restored to Guinea some captives wickedly taken thence. But yet slavery existed, and cruel laws afflicted its victims. Listen to the following. In 1636, "it is ordered that no servant shall be set free—until he have served out the time covenanted:" that "when any servants shall run away from their masters… it shall be lawful for the next magistrate^ or the con​ stable and two of the chief inhabitants where no magistrate is, to press men and boats or pinnaces at the public charge, to pursue such persons by sea or land, and bring them back by force of arms." In 1703, a law forbade negro, mulatto, or Indian servants or slaves " to be found abroad in the night time after nine o'clock." They were "to be openly whipped by the constable." If a negro or mulatto should strike any person of the English,—he was to be "severely whipped at the discretion of the justices." In 1705, a duty of four pounds was levied on each slave imported, and a drawback allowed in case he was "exported within the space of twelve months." Marriage between white and black was illegal; a fine of fifty pounds punished the officer who joined the parties. It is not a hundred years since slaves were sold in Massachusetts; children were torn from their parents; the charms of young women were advertised in the public print. In less than a hundred years, two slaves were burned alive on Boston Neck for poisoning their master. Now Massachusetts has torn these wicked laws from her Statute-book. It is only Boston which turns a black boy out of her public school. Do you think the Northern men love slavery, the people love it? In all the parties there are noble men who hate American slavery. They know it is a wicked thing; they despise their politicians who seek to perpetuate it, and loathe the purchased priests who justify the iniquity in the name of God! Each of the nine sacrifices to slavery has been unpopular at the North. Only the politicians approved them. The Constitution was adopted with difficulty. New England hated its inauguration of slavery as a power in the Republic. The Fugitive Slave Bill of 1793—why, even Washington did not venture to pursue his slave by its authority and seize her. She was safe even in the native State of "Webster and of Pierce! The Mexican war was unpopular. It was not "with alacrity" that the North obeyed the wicked act of 1850. Boston saw her saddest day when she kidnapped Thomas Sims. It could not be done but with chains round the Court House, judges crawling under, and a regiment of flunkeys billeted in Faneuil Hall. If the question of the enslavement of Nebraska were this day put to the vote of the people, in nineteen twentieths of all the towns of the North, nineteen twentieths ​ of the voters would say No. The people are right, though, alas, not very earnest. There are a few politicians, also, who hate slavery. There are noble ministers of all sects save the Catholic, true to their high calling, honouring the great Philanthropist they worship, who hate American slavery, and preach against it in spite of the Pharisee, the Sadducee, and the hypocrite, who thereupon tighten against the minister the strings of the parish purse. I have no words to tell how much I honour such men! True ministers of Christ, they put the churches of commerce to continual shame. I never knew of a Catholic priest who favoured freedom in America; a slave himself, the mediaeval theocracy eats the heart out from the celibate monk!
Slavery is one great enemy of America, but there is one other foe—corrupt politicians fillibustering for the Presidency, defending slavery out of the New Testament, volunteering to shoulder their musket and shoot down men claiming their unalienable rights; politicians who deny God^s higher law, who call upon us to conquer our preju- dices against wickedness, inaugurating Atheism as the first principle of government. In 1788, they put slavery into the Constitution; in 1850, they enacted iniquity into law; and in 1854, they are about their old work "saving the Union." Shall such men always prevail? the mediaeval Catholic against the free minister of piety! the corrupt politician fillibustering for office against the people—the American idea in their heads, and humanity in their hearts! Even the Catholic shall learn.
Slavery must die. See how monarchy withdrew in front of White Hall in 1648 ! How slavery disappeared from St Domingo in 1790! Shall American slavery end after that sort, or as it ended in New England; as Old England put it down in Jamaica? Down it must. God does not forget. His justice is wrought into the world's great heart. See what changes perplex the monarchs of the world—with what strides mankind goes forward! The fourth tyrant must follow to the same tomb with the rest. It is for you and me to slay him!
Half a million immigrants annually find a shelter on our shores. "Westward the course of empire takes its way." Ay, it will come eastward—and Asia already be​ gins to send us her children. What a noble destination is before us if we are but faithful. Shall politicians come between the people and the eternal right—between America and her history! When you remember what our fathers have done; what we have done—substituted a new industrial for a military state, the self-rule of this day for the vicarious government of the middle ages; when you remember what a momentum the human race has got during its long run—it is plain that slavery is on the way to end.
As soon as the North awakes to its ideas, and uses its vast strength of money, its vast strength of numbers, and still more gigantic strength of educated intellect, we shall tread this monster underneath our feet. See how Spain has fallen—how poor and miserable is Spanish America. She stands there a perpetual warning to us. One day the North will rise in her majesty, and put slavery under our feet, and then we shall extend the area of freedom. The blessing of Almighty God will come down upon the noblest people the world ever saw—who have triumphed over Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Despotocracy, and have got a Democracy—a government of all, for all, and by all—a Church without a bishop, a State without a king, a community without a lord, and a family without a slave.