# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 06/Discourse 7

THE
PRESENT CRISIS IN AMERICAN AFFAIRS:
THE SLAVE-HOLDERS' ATTEMPT TO WRENCH THE TERRITORIES FROM THE WORKING PEOPLE, AND TO SPREAD BONDAGE OVER ALL THE LAND.
DELIVERED ON THE EVENING OF MAY 7.
"Oh! ill for him, who, bettering not with time.
Corrupts the strength of Heaven-descended will.
And ever weaker grows through acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,—
Recurring and suggesting still!
He seems as one whose footsteps halt,—
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o*er a weary, sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt."
America has now come to such a pass, that a small misstep may plunge us into lasting misery. Any other and older nation would be timidly conscious of the peril; but we, both so confident of destined triumph and so wonted to success, forecast only victory, and so heed none of all this danger. Who knows what is before us? By way of warning for the future, look at the events in the last six years.
1. In the spring of 1850, came the discussions on the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the programme of practical Atheism; for it was taught, as well in the Senate as the pulpits, that the American Government was amenable to no natural laws of God, but its own momentary caprice might take ​ the place of the eternal reason, "The Union is in danger" was the affected cry. Violent speeches filled the land, and officers of the Government uttered such threats against the people of the North as only Austrian and Russian ears were wont to hear. Even "discussion was to cease." That year, the principle was sown whence measures have since sprung forth, an evil blade from evil seed.
2. The next spring, 1851, kidnapping went on in all the North. Kane ruled in Philadelphia, Rynders in New York. Boston opened her arms to the stealers of men, who barked in her streets, and howled about the cradle of liberty,— the hiding-place of her ancient power. All the municipal authority of the town was delivered up to the kidnappers. Faneuil Hall was crammed with citizen-soldiers, volunteers in men-stealing, eager for their—
"Glorious first essay in war."
Visible chains of iron were proudlv stretched round the Court House. The Supreme Judges of Massachusetts crouched their loins beneath that yoke of bondage, and went under to their own place, wherein they broke down the several laws they were sworn and paid to keep. They gave up Thomas Sims to his tormentors. On the 19th of April, the seventy-sixth anniversary of the first battle of the Revolution, the city of Hancock and Adams thrust one of her innocent citizens into a slave-prison at Savannah; giving his back to the scourge, and his neck to the everlasting yoke.
3. In the spring of 1854, came the discussions on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill ; the attempt to extend bondage into the new territory just opening its arms to the industrious North; the legislative effort to rob the Northern labourer thereof, and give the spoils to Southern slave-holders. Then came the second kidnapping at Boston: a Judge of Probate stole a defenceless man, and made him a slave. The old volunteer soldiers put on their regimentals again to steal another victim. But they were not quite strong enough alone; so the United States troops of the line were called ​ out to aid the work of protecting the orphan. It was the first time I ever saw soldiers enforcing the decisions of a New England Judge of Probate; the first time I ever saw the United States soldiers in any service. This was characteristic work for a democratic army! Hireling soldiers, mostly Irishmen,—sober that day, at least till noon,—in the public square loaded their cannon, charged their muskets, fixed their bayonets, and made ready to butcher the citizens soon as a slave-holder should bid them strike a Northern neck. The spectacle was prophetic.
4. Now, in 1856, New England men migrate to Kansas, taking their wives, their babies, and their cradles. The Old Bible goes also on that pilgrimage,—it never fails the sons of the Puritans. But the fathers are not yet dead;—
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires."
Sharp's rifle goes as missionary in that same troop; an indispensable missionary—an apostle to the Gentiles—whose bodily presence is not weak, nor his speech contemptible, in Missouri. All the parties go armed. Like the father, the pilgrim son is also a Puritan, and both trusts in God and keeps his powder dry.
A company went from Boston a few days ago, a few of my own friends and parishioners among them. There were some five and forty persons, part women and children. Twenty Sharp's rifles answered to their names, not to speak of other weapons. The ablest minister in the United States stirs up the "Plymouth Church" to contribute fire-arms to this new mission; and a spirit, noble as Davenport's and Hooker's, pushes off from New England, again to found a New Haven in the wilderness. The bones of the regicide sleep in Connecticut; but the revolutionary soul of fire flames forth in new processions of the Holy Ghost.
In 1656, when Boston sent out her colonists, they took matchlocks and snaphances to fend off the red savage of the wilderness; in 1766, they needed weapons only against the French enemy; but, in 1856, the dreadful tools of war are to protect their children from the white border-ruffians, whom the President of the United States invites to burn the new settlements, to scalp and kill; ​ In 1850, we heard only the threat of arms; in 1851, we saw the volunteer muskets in the kidnapper's hand; in 1864, he put the United States cannon in battery; in 1856, he arms the savage Missourians. But now, also, there are tools of death in the people's hand. It is high time. When the people are sheep, the Government is always a wolf. What will the next step be? Mr. Gushing says, "I know what is requisite; but it is means that I cannot suggest!" Who knows what coup d'etat is getting ready? Surely affairs cannot remain long in this condition.
To understand this present emergency, you must go a long ways back, and look a little carefully at what lies deep down in the foundation of States.
The welfare of a nation consists in these three things; namely: first, possession of material comfort, things of use and beauty; second, enjoyment of all the natural rights of body and spirit; and, third, the development of the natural faculties of body and spirit in their harmonious order, securing the possession of freedom, intelligence, morality, philanthropy, and piety. It ought to be the aim of a nation to obtain these three things in the highest possible degree, and to extend them to all persons therein, that nation has the most welfare which is the furthest advanced in the possession of these three things.
Next, the progress of a nation consists in two things: first, in the increasing development of the natural faculties of body and spirit,—intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious—with the consequent increasing enjoyment thereof; and second, in the increasing acquisition of power over the material world, making it yield use and beauty, an increase of material comfort and elegance. Progress is increase of human welfare for each and for all. That is the most progressive nation which advances fastest in this development of human faculties, and the consequent acquisition of material power. There is no limit to this progress.
That is the superior nation, which, by nature, has the greatest amount of bodily and spiritual faculties, and, education has developed them to the highest degree of human culture, and, consequently, is capacious of the greatest amount of power over the material world, to turn ​ it into use and beauty, and so of the greatest amount of universal welfare for all and each. The superior nation is capable of most rapid progress; for the advance of man goes on with accelerated velocity; the further he has gone, the faster he goes.
The disposition in mankind to acquire this increase of human development and material power, I will call the instinct of progress. It exists in different degrees in various nations and races: some are easily content with a small amount thereof, and so advance but slowly; others desire the most of both, and press continually forward.
Of all races, the Caucasian has hitherto shown the most of this instinct of progress, and, though perhaps the youngest of all, has advanced furthest in the development of the human faculties, and in the acquisition of power over the material world; it has already won the most welfare, and now makes the swiftest progress.
Of the various families of the Caucasian race, the Teutonic, embracing all the Germanic people kindred to our own, is now the most remarkable for this instinct of progress. Accordingly, in the last four hundred years, all the great new steps of peaceful Caucasian development have been first taken by the Teutonic people, who now bear the same relation to the world's progress that the Greeks did a thousand years before Christ, the Romans eight hundred years later, and the Romanized Celts of France at a day yet more recent.
​ The great forces which in the last four hundred years have most powerfully and obviously helped this welfare and progress, may be reduced to two marked tendencies, which I will sum up in the form of ideas, and name the one Christianity and the other Democracy.
By Christianity, I mean that form of religion which consists of piety—the love of God, and morality—the keeping of His laws. That is not the Christianity of the Christian Church, nor of any sect ; it is the ideal religion which the human race has been groping after, if happily we might find it. It is yet only an ideal, actual in no society.
By Democracy, I mean government over all the people by all the people, and for the sake of all. Of course, it is government according to the natural law of God, by justice, the point common to each man and all men, to each nation and all mankind, to the human race and to God. In a democracy, the people reign with sovereign power; their elected servants govern with delegated trust. There is national unity of action, represented by law; this makes the nation one, a whole; it is the centripetal force of society. But there is also individual variety of action, represented by the personal freedom of the people who ultimately make the laws; this makes John John, and not James, the individual a free person, discreet from all other men; this is the centrifugal force of society, which counteracts the excessive solidification that would else go on. Thus, by justice, the one and the many are balanced together, as the centripetal and centrifugal forces in the solar system.
This is not the democracy of the parties, but it is that ideal government, the reign of righteousness, the kingdom of justice, which all noble hearts long for, and labour to produce, the ideal whereunto mankind slowly draws near. No nation has yet come so close to it as the people of some of the Northern States, whe are yet far beneath ideals of government now known, that are yet themselves vastly inferior to others which mankind shall one day voyage after, discover, and annex to human possession.
In this Democracy, and the tendency towards it, two things come to all; namely, labour and government. ​ Labour for material comfort, the means of use and beauty, is the duty of all, and not less the right, and practically the lot, of all; so there is no privilege for any, where each has his whole natural right. Accordingly, there is no permanent and vicariously idle class, born merely to enjoy and not create, who live by the unpurchased toil of others; and, accordingly, there is no permanent and vicariously working-class, born merely to create and not enjoy, who toil only for others. There is mutuality of earning and enjoying: none is compelled to work vicariously for another, none allowed to rob others of the natural fruit of their toil. Of course, each works at such calling as his nature demands: on the mare liberum, the open sea of human industry, every personal bark sails whither it may, and with such freight and swiftness as it will or can.
Government, in social and political affairs, is the right of all, not less their duty, and practically the lot of each. So there is no privilege in politics, no lordly class born to command and not obey, no slavish class born to serve and not command : there is mutuality of command and obedience. And as there is no compulsory vicarious work, but each takes part in the labour of all, and has his share in the enjoyment thereof; so there is no vicarious government, but each takes part in the making of laws and in obedience thereunto.
Such is the ideal Democracy, nowhere made actual.
Practically, labour and government are the two great forces in the education of mankind. These take the youth where schools and colleges leave him, and carry him further up to another seminary, where he studies for what honours he will, and graduates into such degrees as he can attain to.
This sharing of labour and government is the indispensable condition for human development; for, if any class of men permanently withdraws itself from labour, first it parts from its human sympathy; next it becomes debauched in its several powers; and presently it loses its masculine vigour and its feminine delicacy ; and dies, at last, a hideous ruin. Do you doubt what I say P Look then at the Roman aristocracy from two centuries before Christ to four centuries after—at the French aristocracy from Louis XIII. to Louis XVI. ​ If any class of men is withheld from government—from its share in organizing the people into social, political, and ecclesiastical forms, from making and executing the laws—then that class loses its manhood and womanhood, dwindles into meanness and insignificance, and also must perish. For example, look at the populace of Rome from the second century before Christ to the fourth after; look at the miserable people of Naples and Spain, too far gone ever to be raised out of the grave where they are buried now; look at the inhabitants of Ireland, whose only salvation consists in flight to a new soil, where they may have a share in political government, as well as in economic labour.
So much for the definition of terms frequently to be used, and the statement of the great principles which lie at the foundation of human progress and welfare.
Now, in the history of a nation, there are always two operating forces,—one positive, the other negative. One I will call the progressive force. It is that instinct of progress just named, with the sum total of all the excellences of the people, their hopefulness, human, sympathy, virtue, religion, piety. This is the power to advance. The other I will call the regressive force; that is, the vis inertiæ, the sluggishness of the people, the sum total of all the people's laziness and despair, all the selfishness of a class, all the vice and anti-religion. This is power to retard. I do not speak of the conservative force which would keep, or the destructive force which would wastefully consume, but only of those named. The destructive force in America is now small; the conservative, or preservative exceeding great.
Every nation has somewhat of the progressive force, each likewise something of the regressive. Let me illustrate this regressive force a little further. You sometimes in the country find a thriving, hardy family, industrious, temperate, saving, thrifty, up early and down late. By some unaccountable misfortune, there is born into the family, and grows up there, a lazy boy. He is weak in the knees, drooping in the neck, limber in the loins, and sluggish all over. He rises late in the morning, after he has been called many times, and, in the dog-days, comes down whilst his mother is getting breakfast, and hangs ​ over the fire. Most of you have doubtless seen such; I have, to my sorrow. That is one form of the regressive force. He is what the Bible calls a heaviness to his mother, and a grief to his father. There is a worse retarding force than this; to wit: sometimes a bad boy is born into the family with head enough, but with a devilish heart; he is a malformation in respect to all the higher faculties,—a destructive form of the regressive force. Now, a nation may have that regressive force in these two forms,—the lazy retardative, the wicked destructive.
Sometimes this progressive force seems limited to a small class of persons,—men of genius, like the Hebrew prophets, the Socratic philosophers, the German reformers of the sixteenth century, or the French savants of the eighteenth. But it is not likely, it is really thus limited; for these men of genius are merely trees of the common kind, rooted into the public soil, but grown to taller stature than the rest.
In the Northern States of America, and also in England and Scotland, it is plain this progressive force is widely spread among the great mass of the people, who are not only instinctively, but of set purpose, eager for progress; that is, for the increasing development of faculties, and for the consequent increasing power over the material world, transforming it to use and beauty. New England is a monument attesting this fact. But still this force arrives to its highest form in men of genius. Here, in the North, you may find men of money, men of education, literary culture, and scientific skill; men of talent, able to learn readily what can now be taught—who do not share this progressive instinct, whose will is regressive; but these are exceptional men—some maimed by accident, others impotent from their mother's womb; whom no Peter and John could make otherwise than halt and lame. But all the men of genius—aboriginal power of sight, ability to create, to know and teach what none learned before—are on the side of this progressive force. In all the Northern States, I know but one exception among the men of politics, science, art, letters, or religion. Even in his cradle, the Northern genius strangles the regressive snakes of Fogydom. Still, these men of genius are not the cause of the progressive force, only expressions of it; not its exclusive depositaries. ​ They are the thunder and lightning, perhaps the rain, out of the cloud, sparks from the electric charge : they are not the cloud; they did not make it. Of course, where the cloud is fullest of the fire of heaven, there is the reddest lightning, the heaviest thunder, and the most abounding rain. Still, the men of genius did not make the progressive spirit of the North; they but express and help to educate that force.
In the North, those two educational factors, Labour and Government, are widely diffused: more persons partake of each than anywhere else in the world. So there is no exclusive, permanent servile class—none that does all the work, and enjoys none of the results: there is no exclusive and permanent ruling class; all are masters, all servants; all command, and all obey.
So much for the progressive force.
The regressive force may consist in the general sluggishness of the whole mass of the people: then it will be either an ethnological misfortune, which belongs to the constitution of the race—and I am sorry to say that the Africans share that in the largest degree, and, accordingly, have advanced the least of any of the races—or else an historic accident entailed on them by oppression; and that is the case also with a large portion of the Africans in America, who have a double misfortune—that of ethnologic nature and historic position. But among the Caucasians, especially among the Teutons, this regressive force is chiefly lodged in certain classes of men, who are exceptional to the mass of the people, by an accidental position separated therefrom, and possessed of power thereover, which they use for their own selfish advantage, and against the interest of the people. They commonly aim at two things—to shun all the labour, and to possess all the government.
This exceptional position was either the accidental attainment of the individual, or else a trust thereto delegated from the people; but the occupiers of the trust considered it at length as their natural, personal right, and so held to it as a finality, and asked mankind to stop the human march in order that they might rejoice in their special occupation. Thus the fletchers of the fourteenth century, ​ who got their bread by making bows and arrows, opposed the use of gunpowder and cannon; thus the scribes of the fifteenth century opposed printing, and said Dr. Faustus was "possessed by the devil." In England, two hundred years ago, every top-sawyer resisted the use of saw-mills to cut logs into boards, and wanted to draw off the water from the ponds. Forty years ago, the hand-weaver of England opposed power-looms. In 1840, the worshipful company of ass-drivers in Italy begged the Pope of Rome not to allow a single railroad in his territory, because it would injure their property invested in packsaddles and jackasses. The Pope consented, and no steam-engine dared to scream and whistle in the Papal States. In Boston, twenty years ago, the Irishmen objected to steam pile-drivers, and broke them to pieces; just now, the stevedores of Boston insist that ships shall not be unladen by horses or steam-power, but that a man, who yet has a head, shall live only by the great muscles in his arms; that all merchandise shall be taken out of ships by an Irishman hanging at the end of a rope. All these men consider that their exceptional position and accidental business is a finality of human history, a natural right, which the top-sawyer, the scribe, and the others have to stop mankind. The stevedore and hand-loom weaver must have no competitors in the labour-market; the steam-engine must be shoved off the track, in order that the donkey may have the whole country wherein to bray and wheeze.
In Europe, at this day, the regressive force is lodged chiefly in the twofold aristocracy which exists there, ecclesiastical and political. In the sixteenth century, mankind, and especially the Teutonic family, longed to have more Christianity: the priestly class, with the Pope at their head, refused, hewed the people to pieces, burnt them to ashes at Madrid and Oxford. The priest stood between the people and the Bible, and said, "The word of God belongs to us: it is for the priests only, not for you, you infidels; down with you!" He counted his stand as the stopping-place of mankind: the human race must not go an inch further—he would kill all that tried. The result attained was a finality. So the thinker must be burned alive, that the ass-driver might have the whole world to snap his fingers in and cough to his donkey! Even now ​ the same class of men repeat the old experiment; and, in Italy, Spain, and Spanish America, the regressive power carries the day.
In this century, when the people of Europe wished to move on a little nearer to Democracy than before, the political class of aristocrats revised to suffer it; they put men of political genius in gaol, or hung them. Kossuth and Mazzini were lucky men to escape to a foreign land; thousands fled to America. In Europe, at present, and especially on the continent, this regressive power carries the day, and the progressive force is held down. For priests, kings, and nobles, inheriting a position which was once the highest that mankind had attained to, and then taking it as a trust, now count it a right of their own, a finality of the human race, the end of man's progress.
When a nation permanently consents to this triumph of the regressive over the progressive force, allows one class to do all the government and shun all the labour, it is presently all over with that nation. Look at Italy, with Home and Naples; at Spain, which is too far gone even to be galvanized into life. See what already takes place in France, where the son of the nephew has just been born, and the little baby is recognised as Emperor. Look at an election-day in Massachusetts; where the people choose one of themselves to be their temporary governor, responsible to them, swearing him on their statute-book: compare that with the preparation which Napoleon the Little made to anticipate the birth of Napoleon the Least! Why, the garments got ready for this equivocal baby have already cost more than the clothes of all our Presidents since "a young buckskin taught a British general the art of fighting. Eighty thousand dollars is decreed to pay for baptizing this imperial bantling. If twice that sum could christen the father, it might not be ill spent, if thereto decreed. Look at New England, and then at Spain, to see the odds between a people that has the progressive force uppermost, and a nation where the regressive force has trod the people down, and become, as it must, destructive. The Romanic nations of Italy and Spain, and the Romanized Celts of France, consent to a despotism which puts all the labour on the people, and takes all the government from them: they easily enough accept the rule of the political and ecclesias​ tical aristocracy. But the Teutons, especially the Saxon Teutons, and, above all others, those in the Northern States of America, with their immense love of individual liberty, hate despotism, either political or ecclesiastical. They perpetually demand more Christianity and democracy; that each shall do his own work, and rejoice in its result; that each shall have his share in the government of all. The women. Ions excluded from this latter right, now claim, and will at length, little by little, gain it. When all thus share the burthens and the joys of life, there is no class of men compelled by their position to hate society: so law and order prevail with ease; each keeps step with all, nor wishes to stay the march; property is secure, the government popular. But when one class does all the ruling, and forces all the toil on another class, nothing is certain but trouble and violence. Thus, in St. Domingo, red rebellion scoured black despotism out of the land, but with blood. If a government, like a pyramid, be wide at the bottom, it takes little to hold it up.
So much for the regressive force.
In the United States we have two peoples in one nation, similar in origin, united in their history, but for the last two generations so diverse in their institutions, their mode of life, their social and political aims, that now they have become exceedingly unlike, even alien and hostile; for, though both the stems grow out from the same ethnologic root, one of them has caught such a mildew from the ground it hangs over, and the other trees it mixes its boughs among, that its fruit has become "peculiar," and not like the native produce of the sister trunk. One of these I will call the Northern States, the other the Southern States. At present, there is a governmental bond put round both, which holds them together; but no moral union makes the two one. There is no unity of idea between them. A word of each.
In the Northern States we have a population fifteen millions strong, mainly of Anglo-Saxon origin, but early crossed with other Teutonic blood—Dutch, German, Scandinavian—which bettered the stock. Of late, numerous Celts have been added to the mixture, but so recently that ​ no considerable influence yet appears in the collective character, ideas, or institutions of the North. A hundred years hence, the ethnologic fruits of this other seed will show themselves.
These Northern Saxons, moreover, are mainly descended from men who fled from Europe because they had ideas, at least sentiments, of Christianity and democracy which could not be carried out at home. They are born of Puritan pilgrims, who were the most progressive portion of the most progressive people, of the most progressive stock, in all Christendom. They came to America, not for ease, honour, money, or love of adventure, but for conscience sake, for the sake of their Christianity and their democracy. Such men founded the chief Northern colonies and institutions, and have controlled the doctrines and the development thereof to a great degree.
We see the result of such parentage: more than all other nations of the earth, the North has cut loose from the evil of the past, and set its face towards the future. At one extreme, it has no lordly class, ecclesiastical or political, exclusively and permanently to shun labour and monopolize government, vicariously to enjoy the result of work, vicariously to rule; and, at the other extreme, there is no class slavishly and unwillingly to do the work, and have none of its rewards; to suffer all the obedience, and enjoy none of the command. No class is permanent, highest or lowest. The Northern States are progressively Christian, also progressively democratic, in the sense just given of Christianity and democracy. No people on earth has such material comfort, such enjoyment of natural rights of body and spirit already possessed, such general development of the human faculties. But the attainment does not satisfy us; for we share this instinct of progress to such a degree, that no achievement will content us. Be the present harvest never so rich, our song is—
"To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new."
No nation has such love of liberty, such individual Variety of action, or such national unity of action; nowhere is such respect for law; nowhere is property so secure, life so safe, and the individual so little disturbed. And, with ​ all this, we are not at all destructive, but eager to create, and patient to preserve. The first thing which a Northern man lays hold of is a working-tool, an axe, or a plough; the last thing he takes in hand is a fighting-tool, a bowie-knife, a rifle: he never touches that till he is driven to the last extremity. He loves to organize productive industry, not war.
So much for the nation North.
Next, there are the Southern States ten millions in population. There also the original germ was Anglo-Saxon, to which additions were made from other stocks, Teutonic and Celtic, though in a smaller degree : France and Spain added more largely to the mixture. But what has most affected the ethnological character of the South is the African element. There are three and a-half millions of men in the Southern States of African origin, whereof half a million are (acknowledged) mulattoes, African Caucasians; but those monumental half-breeds are much more numerous than the census dares confess.
This is not the only human difference between the North and the South. While the Saxons, who originally came to the North, and have since controlled its institutions and ideas, were mainly pilgrims, who, driven by persecution, fled hither for the sake of establishing democracy and Christianity—the foremost people in an age of movement, when revolution shook the whole Teutonic world, bringing the most Christian and democratic institutions and ideas of their age, and developing them to forms still more human and progressive— the settlers of the South were adventurers, who came to America to mend their fortunes, for the sake of money, ease, honour, love of change. Whilst, subsequently, emigrants came from Europe to the North of their own accord, shared the Northern labour and government, partook of its Christianity and democracy, partook of its best influences, and soon mingled their blood in the great stream of Northern population: many persons from Africa were forced to immigrate to the South, and, by legal violence, compelled to more than their share of labour, driven from all share in the government, breaded as inferior, and mingled with the Caucasian population only an illicit lust—which bastardized its own sons and daughters—and were ​ made subordinate to the owners' lash. While the North, from 1620 to 1856, has aimed to spread education over all the land, and facilitate the acquisition of property by the individual, and prevent its entailment in families, or its excessive accumulation by transient corporations, the South has always endeavoured to limit education, making it the exclusive monopoly of the few—who yet learned not much—and now makes it a State prison offence to teach the labouring class to read and write: it aims to condense money into large sums, permanently held, if not in families, at least in a class.
Thus, at one extreme, the South had formed a permanently idle and lordly class, who shun labour and monopolize government.
The South culminates in Virginia and South Carolina, which bear the same relation to the slave States that New England does to the free States ; that is, they are the mother-city of population, ideas, institutions, and character. As I just said, Christendom cannot boast a population in any other country where there are fifteen millions of men so nobly developed as the fifteen millions of the North; so far advanced in Christianity and democracy; with so much material comfort, enjoyment of natural rights, and development of natural powers. Compare New England with Old England, Scotland, France, Saxony, Belgium, Prussia, any of the foremost nations of Europe, and you see that it is so. But take the ten millions of the South, and see what they are: nowhere in Europe, north of Turkey and west of Russia, can you find ten millions of contiguous men who have so low a development, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious, as the ten millions of the slave States; nowhere can you find Caucasians or any other people in Western Europe so slightly advanced above the savage. Three and a quarter millions are actual slaves. Take the States of Virginia and South Carolina, in which the South comes to its flower: there are one million one hundred and seventy thousand whites, nine hundred and twenty thousand coloured, whereof eight hundred and sixty thousand are slaves; that is to say, out of two millions, more than one-third are only human property, not counted as human persons. In South Carolina, out of a hundred native whites over twenty years of age, there are seven who cannot read ​ the name Pierce, the political lord they worship; in Virginia, out of a hundred native whites over twenty years, there are nine who cannot write the word slave, nor spell it after it is written all over their State; whereas, in Massachusetts, out of four hundred persons over twenty, there is only one man who cannot write, with his own hand. Liberty for all men now and for ever!
Take the two million popxdation of Virginia and South Carolina: there is no people in Western Europe so little advanced as they; and, in all Christendom, there are only two nations or collections of men who staud on the same level—the Russian empire and Spanish America. Behold the reason for the phenomenon which struck many with surprise,—that South Carolina and Virginia, in their politics, have recently sympathized with Russia and Brazil, birds of a feather flock together, like consorting with like.
Here, then, are these two nations, alike in their ethnological origin. Joint in their history, now utterly diverse and antagonistic in disposition and aim. The North has organized Freedom, and seeks to extend it; the South, Bondage, and aims to spread that. The North is progressively Christian and democratic; while the South is progressively anti-Christian and undemocratic. First, only the Southern measures were anti-Christian and undemocratic; now also its principles. It lays down anti-Christianity and anti-democracy as the only theory of religion and politics. In New England, man is put before property, the human substance above the material accident; in Virginia and South Carolina, property is put before man, the material accident before the human substance itself; and, of all property that which is most valued and most carefully preserved, though most "aristocratic" and sacred, is property in the bodies of men.
That is the odds between the North and the South.
​ The regressive power is lodged chiefly at the South, where it is considerably diffused among the people. That wide diffusion comes partly from the ethnologic sluggishness of the African element mixed in with the population, but still more from the degradation incident to a people who have long sat under tyrannical masters. It is this which has debased the Caucasian of Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina.
But as the progressive force of the North comes clearest to light in the men of genius, so the regressive force at the South is most shown in the men of eminent ability, ecclesiastical and political, of whom not a single man is publicly progressive in Christianity or Democracy. Compare the spirit of the great newspapers of the South, the Richmond Examiner, the Charleston Mercury, with those of the North, the New York Tribune, the Evening Post; compare the Southern politicians, the Masons and Toombses, with the Sewards and Chases of the North. See the odds between the mass of the people at the North and the South; between the eminent genius, all of which at the North is progressive, but all of which at the South turns its back on human progress, and would leave humanity behind. There is the difference.
This regressive force accepts Slavery as the Dagon of its idolatry, its "peculiar institution;" and Slavery is to the South what the book of Mormon or the car of Juggernaut is to its worshippers. This institution is so iniquitous and base, that in Christian Europe, all the Teutonic nations have swept it away; and all the Celtic, all the Romanic nations, even the inhabitants of Spain, have trodden bondage under their feet. Yes, the TJgrians have driven out such slavery from Hungary, from Livonia, from Lapland itself; and, of all parts of Europe, Russia and Turkey alone still keep the unclean thing ; but even there it is progressively diminishing. As a measure^ it is felt to be exceptional, and publicly denounced; as a principle, no man defends it: it is there as a fact without a theory. Only two tribes in Christendom yet hold to the theory of this unholy thing,—Spanish America and the slave part of Saxon America, the two Barbary States of the New World.
All the regressive power of Christendom gathers about ​ American Slavery, which is the stone of stumbling, the rock of offence in the world's progress.
Slavery is the great obstacle to the present welfare and future progress of the South itself. It prevents the mass of the Southern people from the possession of material comfort,—use and beauty; from the enjoyment of their natural rights; and also, for the future, it hinders them from the increasing development of their natural faculties, and the consequent increasing acquisition of power over the material world. It hinders Christianity and Democracy, which it would destroy, or else itself must thereby be brought to the ground. It shuts the mass of the people from their share of the government of society, forces many to unnatural and vicarious labour, and robs them of the fruit of their toil. Thus it is the great obstacle alike to present welfare and future development.
The head-quarters of this regressive force are at the South, where its avowed organization and its institutions may be found. At the North it has three classes of allies. Here they are:—
​ 2. The next class is of mean men, of large acquisitiveness, or else a great love of approbation, little conscience, little affection, and only just religion enough to swear by. These men you can buy with office, honour, money, or with a red coat and a fife and drum. There are a great many such persons ; you find them in many places ; and, for the disgrace of my own profession, I am sorry to say they are sometimes in the pulpit, taking a South-side view of all manner of tyranny, volunteering to send their mothers into bondage, and denying the higher law of God.
3. The third class is of ignorant men, who know no better, but may be instructed. At the South, this regressive force is thus distributed:—
(1.) There are three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders, who, with their families, make up a population of a million and three-quarters; (2) There are four and three-quarter millions of non-slave-holders; and (3.) Three and a-half millions of slaves. A word of each.
1. First, of the slave-holders. Slavery makes them rich: they own the greater part of the land, and all the slaves, and control the greater part of the coloured or white labouring popidation. Slavery is a peculiar curse to the South in general, but a peculiar comfort to the slave-holders. They monopolize the education, own the wealth, have all the political power of the South—are the "aristocracy." But, since the American Revolution, I think this class has not born and bred a single man who has made any valuable contribution to the art, science, literature, morals, or religion of the American people. Marshall's Life of Washington is the only great literary work of the South; its hero was born in 1732, its author in 1755; and both Washington the hero, and Marshall the writer, at their death, abjured the "peculiar institution" of the South.
The Southern "aristocracy" rears two things—Negro slaves, of which it is often the father, and regressive politicians, who make the institutions to keep the slaves in bondage for ever, shutting them out from Christianitv and Democracy. Behold the " aristocracy" of the South I By their fruits ye shall know them. Of the general morals of this class I need not speak: "the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." Since the 1st of ​ January, they have burned four negroes alive, as a joyous spectacle and "act of faith;" a sort of profession of Christianity, like the more ceremonious autos-da-fé of their Spanish prototypes. Yet among the slave-holders are noble men; some who, but for their surroundings, would have stood with those eminent in talent, station, and in service, too, the forerunners of himian progress. Blame them for their wrong, pity them for the misfortune which they suffer. Yet let me do the South no injustice. Her three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders have ruled the nation for sixty years ; her politicians have beat the North in all great battles.
Now, we commonly judge the South by the slave-holders. This is wrong: it is like measuring England by her gentry, France and Germany by their men of science and letters, Italy by her priests. You shall judge what the whole mass of the people are when the "aristocracy," the picked men, are of that stamp.
2. Next are the non-slave-holders, four and three-quarter millions of men. Some of these are noble men, with property in land and goods, with some intelligence; but, as a class, they are both necessitous and illiterate, with small political power. They are cursed by Slavery, which they yet defend; for it makes labour a disgrace, and, if poor, puts them on the same level with the slave himself. Slavery hinders their development in respect to property, intellectual culture, and manly character ; yet, as a whole, they are too ignorant to understand the cause which keeps them down. The morals of this class are exceedingly low: it abounds in murders, and is full of cruelty towards its victims. Nay, where else in Christendom, save Spanish America, is ^he Caucasian found to take delight in burning his brother with a slow fire, for his own sport, and to please a licentious mob?
3. The third class consists of the slaves themselves, of whom I need say only this—that public opinion and the law, which is only the thunder from that cloud, keep them at labour and from government, from Christianity and Democracy, from all the welfare and development of the age, and seek to crush out the instinct of progress from the very nature of the victims. The slave has no personal rights, ecclesiastical, political, social, economical, indivi​ dual; no right to property—a human accident; none to his body or soul—the substance of humanity itself. But I fear you do not yet quite understand the difference between the regressive force of slavery at the South, and the progressive force of freedom at the North. Therefore, to see in noonday light the effect of each on the present welfare and the future progress of a people, compare an old typical slave State with an old typical free State, and then compare a new slave State with a new free State.
1. South Carolina contains 29,385 square miles of land; Connecticut, 4674. In 1850, South Carolina had 668,507 inhabitants, whereof 283,523 were free, and 384,984 slaves; while Connecticut had 370,792 inhabitants, all free.
The government value of all the land in South Carolina was $5.08 an acre; in Connecticut it was $30.50 the acre. All the farms in South Carolina contained 16,217,700 acres, and were worth $82,431,684 ; while the farms of Connecticut were worth $72,726,422, though they contained only 2,383,879 acres. Thus Slavery and Freedom affect the value of land in the old States.
In 1850, South Carolina had 340 miles of railroad; and Connecticut 547, on a territory not equal to one-sixth of South Carolina. In 1855, South Carolina had $11,500,000 in railroads ; Connecticut had then $20,000,000.
The shipping of South Carolina amounts to 36,000 tons; in Connecticut, to 125,000, though she is not advantageously situated for navigation.
​ In 1850, South Carolina had 366,026 persons under twenty years of age; her whole number of pupils, at schools, academies, and colleges, was 40,373. Connecticut had only 157,146 persons of that age, but 83,697 at school and college. Will you say it is of no consequence whether the coloured child is educated or not? Then remember that South Carolina had 149,322 white children, and only sent 40,373 of them to school at all in that year; while, out of 153,862 white children, Connecticut gave 82,433 a permanent place in her noble schools.
In South Carolina, there are but 129,350 free persons over twenty years of age; and, of these, 16,564 are un- able to read the word heaven. So, in all that great and democratic State, there are only 112,786 persons over twenty who know their A B C's; while in Connecticut there are 213,662 persons over twenty; and, of all that number, only 5306 are illiterate, and of them 4013 are foreigners. But, of all the 16,564 ignoramuses of South Carolina, only 104 were born out of that State!
Out of 365,026 persons over twenty. South Carolina has only 112,786 who can read their primer; while, out of 213,662, Connecticut has 208,356 who can read and write. South Carolina can boast more than 250,000 native adults who cannot write or read the name of their God—a noble army of martyrs, a cloud of witnesses to its peculiar institution; while poor Connecticut has only 1293 native adults unable to read their Holy Bible.
Such is the effect of Slavery and Freedom on education in the old States. The Southern politician was right: "Free society is a failure!"
2. Now compare two new States of about the same age. Arkansas was admitted into the Union in 1836, Michigan in 1837.
Arkansas contains 52,198 square miles, and 209,807 inhabitants, of whom 151,746 are free, and 58,161 are slaves. Michigan contains 56,243 square miles, and was entered for settlement later than her sister, but contains 397,654 persons, all free.
In Arkansas, the land is valued at $5.88 the acre; and, in Michigan at $11.83. The slave State has 781,531 acres of improved land; and Michigan, 1,929,110. The farms of Arkansas are worth $15,265,245; and those of Michigan, ​ $51,872,446. Thus Slavery and Freedom affect the value of land in the new States.
Michigan had, in 1855, 699 miles of railroad, which had cost $19,000,000; Arkansas had paid nothing for railroads. The total valuation of Arkansas, in 1850, was $39,871,025: the value of the slaves, $23,264,400, was included. Deducting that, there remains but $16,576,625, as the entire worth of Arkansas; while Michigan has property to the amount of $59,787,255. Thus Slavery and Freedom affect the value of property in the new States.
In 1850, Arkansas had 115,023 children under twenty, whereof 11,050 were in schools, academies, or colleges; while Michigan had 211,969, of whom 112,382, were at school, academy, or college. Or, to omit the coloured population, Arkansas had 97,402 white persons under twenty, and only 11,050 attending school; while, of 210,831 whites of that age in Michigan, 112,175 were at school or college. Last year, Michigan had 132,234 scholars in her public common schools. In 1850, Arkansas contained 64,787 whites over twenty—but 16,935 of these were unable to read and write; while, out of 184,240 of that age in Michigan, only 8281 were thus ignorant— of these, 3009 were foreigners; while, of the 16,935 illiterate persons of Arkansas, only 37 were born out of that State. The slave State had only 47,852 persons over twenty who could read a word; while the free State had 175,959. Michigan had 107,943 volumes in "libraries other than private," and Arkansas 420 volumes. Thus Slavery and Freedom affect the education of the people in the new States.
Now, see the effect of Slavery and Freedom on property and education in their respective neighbourhoods. I take examples from the States of Missouri and Virginia, kindly furnished by an ingenious and noble-hearted man.
​ In those ten Northern counties bordering on Freedom, there were 2329 scholars in the public schools; while in the twelve Southern, bordering on Arkansas, there were only 339. Thus the neighbourhood of Slavery affects the development of education.
2. Compare the Northern with the Southern counties of Virginia, and you find the same results. Monongahela and Preston Counties, in Virginia, bordering on free Pennsylvania, contain 122,444 acres of improved land, valued at $21 an acre, or $2,784,137 in all; are occupied by 24,095 persons, whereof 263 only are slaves; and there are 1747 children in the public schools: while the corresponding counties of Patrick and Henry, touching on North Carolina, contain but 99,731 acres of improved land, worth only $15 an acre, or $1,554,841 in all; are occupied by 18,481 inhabitants, 5664 of them slaves; and have only 961 children at school. But cross the borders, and note the change: the adjacent counties of North Carolina, Rockingham, and Stokes, contain 103,784 acres of improved land, worth $14 an acre, or $1,517,520; 23,701 persons, of whom 7122 are slaves; and have only 2050 pupils at school or college: while Fayette and Green Counties, in Pennsylvania, adjacent to the part of Virginia above spoken of, contain 297,005 acres of improved land, valued at $49 an acre, or $7,618,919 ; 61,248 persons, all free; and 12,998 pupils at the common schools.
​ In civilized society, there must be an organization of things and of persons, of labour and of government; and so slavery is to be looked at, not only in its economical relations, as affecting labour and wealth, power over matter, but also in its political relations, as affecting government, which is power over men.
There are 350,000 slave-holders in the United States, with their families, making a population of 1,750,000 persons. Now, Slavery is a political institution which puts the government of all the people of the slave States into the hands of those few men: the majority are the servants of this minority.
1. The 350,000 slave-holders control the 3,250,000 slaves; owning their bodies, and, by direct legislation, purposely preventing their development.
2. They control the 4,750,000 non- slave-holders, cutting them off from their share of government, and hindering them alike in their labour and their education, and purposely preventing their development.
3. They control the Federal politics, and thereby affect the organization of things and persons, of labour and government, throughout the whole nation, and purposely prevent the development of the whole people.
In all these three forms of political action, they have selfishly sought their own immediate interest, and wrought to the lasting damage of the slaves, the non-slave-holders, and the whole people. But neither the slaves nor the non-slave-holders have made any powerful opposition to this injury : the chief hostility has been shown by the North, or rather by the few persons therein who either had mind enough to see this manifold mischief clearly, or else such moral and religious instinct as made them at once revolt from this wickedness. But, ever since the Declaration of Independence, there has been a strife, open or hidden, between the South and this portion of the Northern people; and though the battle has been often joined, yet, since 1788, the North has been beaten in every conflict, pitched battle or skirmish, until last January; then, after much fighting, the House of Representatives chose for Speaker a man hostile to Slavery. Always before, the South conquered the North; that is, the minority conquered the majority. The party with the smallest numbers, the least ​ money, the meanest intelligence, the wickedest cause, yet beat the larger, richer, more intelligent party, which had also justice on its side. There is now no time to explain this political paradox.
Between 1787 and 1851, the regressive power, Slavery, took nine great steps towards absolute rule over the United States. These I have spoken of before. It now lifts its foot to take a tenth step,—to stamp bondage on all the territories of this Union, and then organize them into Slave States. Look at the facts.
We have now one million four hundred thousand square miles of territory not organized into States (1,400,934). Of this, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Utah make nine hundred and twenty-six thousand (926,857). Now, the South aims to make it all slave territory, to deliver it over to this regressive force, and establish therein such institutions that a few men shall at first own all the land; next, own the bulk of the working people; and, thirdly, shall control the rest of the whites; then themselves monopolize education, and yet get very little of it; repress freedom of speech, and enact laws for the advantage of the vulgarest of all oligarchies,—a band of men-stealers.
Let me suppose that there is no immediate danger that Slavery will go to Oregon or Washington territory,—rather a gratuitous admission: there are still nine hundred and twenty-six thousand square miles land to plant it on; that is, about one-third of all the country which the United States own! the South is endeavouring to establish it there. Within three years the great battle is to be fought; for, before the 4th of March, 1859, all that territory of fourteen hundred thousand square miles will be either free territory or else slave territory.
The battle is first for Kansas. Shall it be free, as the majority of its own inhabitants have voted; or slave, as the Federal Government and the slave power—the general regressive force of America—have determined by violence to make it? This is the question. Shall the nine hundred and twenty-six thoiisand miles of territory belong to three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders, or to the whole ​ people of the United States? This is a question which directly concerns the material interest of every working man in the nation, and especially every Northern working man. Before the Ist of January, 1858, perhaps before next January, Kansas, with its one hundred and fourteen thousand seven hundred and ninety square miles, will be a Free State or a Slave State. See what follows, immediately or ultimately, if we let the slave-holders have their way, and make Kansas a Slave State.
Look, first, at the effect on the welfare and progress of individuals.
1. A privileged class, an oligarchy of slave-holders, will be founded there, such as exists in the present slave States. They will own all the land, almost all the labourers; will make laws for the advantage of the slave-holder against the interest of the slave and the non-slave-holder. That is the effect on the Southern man.
2. Next see the effect on the working men of the North who emigrate to that quarter. They must go as slave-holders or as non-slave-holders.
Some will go as slave-holders, such as take a South-side view of human wickedness in general. You know what the effect will be on them. Compare the condition, the intellectual and moral character, of New England men who have settled in Georgia, and become slave-holders, with others of the same families — their brothers and cousins—who have remained at home, and engaged in agriculture, commerce, and manufactures.
But not many Northern men will go there and become slave-holders. Some will go as non-slave-holders; and you will see under what disadvantage they must labour.
​ 2. Next, there will be no miscellaneous mechanical industry, as in New England and all the free States. Agriculture will be the chief business, almost the only business; and that will be confined to the great staples—corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, cotton ; the aim will be only to produce the raw material. Agriculture will be poor, land will be low in price, and continually getting run out by unskilful culture. The slave's foot burns the soil and spoils the land; that is the master's fault. Twenty years hence, land will not be worth $16 an acre, as in sterile New Hampshire, but $4, as in fertile Georgia. There will be no rapid development of wealth ; and, as the Northern man values riches, I think he should look to this, and see that the land is not taken from under his foot, and the power of creating wealth from his head and hand.
3. Then there will be no good and abundant roads, as in New England, but only a few, as in Carolina and Virginia, and those miserably poor. In Kansas, twenty years hence, there will not be 1964 miles of railroad, as in Illinois, but 231 miles, as in Missouri.
4. There will be no abundance of beneficent free schools, as in New England, but a few, and of the worst sort: Education will be the monopoly of the rich, who will not get much thereof. Laws will forbid the education of the slave, and discourage the culture of the mass of the people.
5. There will be no Lyceums, no courses of lectures; but, in their place, there will be horse-races, occasionally the lynching of an Abolitionist, or the burning of a black man at a slow fire! Yet, now and then, a Northern man will be invited thither by the slave-holders; some unapostolical fisherman will take the majestic memory of Washington, disembowel it of all its most generous humanity, skilfully arrange it as bait; and then, with bob and sinker, hook and fine, this "political Micawber," " looking for something to turn up," will go angling along the shore, praying for at least a presidential bite, and possibly obtain a conventional nibble.
6. There will be no "libraries other than private," with their one hundred and eight thousand volumes, as in Michigan ; only four hundred and twenty volumes, as in ​ Arkansas. But a noble army of ignoramuses, twenty-five men out of each hundred adult white men, will attest the value of the "peculiar institution."
7. There will be no multiplicity of valuable newspapers, with an annual circulation of three million three hundred and twenty-four thousand copies, as in Michigan; but a few political journals, scattering three hundred and seventy-seven thousand dingy sheets, as in Arkansas.
8. There will be no abundant and convenient meeting-houses, as in the North; not one hundred and twenty thousand comfortable pew-seats in neat and decorous churches, as in Michigan; but only sixty thousand benches in barns and log-huts, as in Arkansas. No army of well-educated ministers will help, instruct, and moralize the community, but ignorant ranters or calculating hypocrites will stalk through the Christian year, perverting the Bible to a Fugitive Slave Bill, and denying the higher law which God writes in man.
9. There will be no laws favouring all men; but statutes putting the neck of labour into the claws of capital, by which the strong will crush the weak, and enslave the feeblest of all ; constitutions like those of South Carolina, which provide that nobody shall sit in the popular House of the Legislature, unless, in his own right, he own " ten negro slaves."
10. There will be no universal suffrage, as in Massachusetts; but a man's political rights will be determined by the colour of his skin, and the amount of his estate. One permanent class will monopolize government, money, education, honour, and ease; the other permanent class will be forced to bondage, ignorance, poverty, and shame. This is the prospect which the Northern man will find before him if Slavery prevails in the new territory.
11. That is not all: his property and person will not be safe, as in Michigan; border-ruffians will permanently have gone over the border, and a new Arkansas be established in Kansas.
Under such circumstances. Northern men will not go there; and so Kansas, and then all the other territory, is stolen from the North, as effectually as if ceded to Russia or annexed to the Spanish domain. Yes, more completely lost; for, if it did belong to Spain, ​ we might reclaim it by filibustering; and the American Government would not disturb, but help us.
Then, if a Northern man wishes to migrate, he has only the poorer land of Washington and Oregon before him, and is shut out from the most valuable territory of the United States.
If the city government of Boston were, next month, to establish a piggery on Boston Common, with fifty thousand swine, and set up an immense slaughter-house of the savagest and filthiest character in the Granary Burying-ground, on Copp's Hill, and in each of the public squares; were to give all vacant land to the gamblers, thieves, pimps, kidnappers, and murderers—they would not commit a worse injustice, and they would not do a greater proportional damage to the real estate, and more mischief to the health of the inhabitants of the city, than the American Government would do the working people of the South and North by creating this nuisance of Slavery on the free soil of Kansas.
So much for the effect of this on the individual interests of the working people of America. I have only taken the lowest possible view of the subject.
See its effects on Americanpolitics—on the welfare and progress of the nation. If Kansas is made a slave State, we shall either keep united, or else dissolve the Union and separate.
1. Suppose we keep united: what follows?
First, New Mexico will be a slave State, then Utah.
California is only half for freedom now, and will soon split into two; Lower California will be slave.
Then Texas will peel off into new States; Western Texas will soon be made a new slave State.
The Mesilla Valley, bigger than Virginia, will be a slave territory.
Then we shall dismember Mexico—make slave territory there.
We shall re-annex the Mosquito territory: the Government wants it, and lets all manner of filibusters go there now.
​ St. Domingo must next fall a prey to American lust for land.
Then we shall cany out the Fugitive Slave Bill in the North as never before. In 1836, Mr. Curtis asked the Supreme Court of Massachusetts to decree that a slaveholder from Louisiana might take his bondman to Boston as a slave, hold him as a slave, sell him as a slave, or, as a slave, carry him back. In 1855, Mr. Kane decreed that a slave-holder might bring his slave into a free State, and keep him there as long as he would in transitu. Then we must have laws to enforce these demands: Congress will legislate, and the Supreme Court will rule to put Slavery into every Northern State. In the beginning of June, 1854, this same Mr. Curtis, then become a judge, gave a "charge," in which he made it appear that, to make a speech in Faneuil Hall against kidnapping was "a misdemeanour." Yes, if a Massachusetts minister sees his parishioners kidnapped, and makes a speech in Faneuil Hall against that iniquity, and tells the people that they are slaves of Southern masters, Mr. Justice Curtis says that that man has committed a crime, to be punished by imprisonment for twelve months, and a fine of three hundred dollars! By-and-by, that charge will be "good common law:" all lawyers will be slave-hunters; all judges of the Scroggs family; all court-houses girt with chains; all the newspapers administration and Satanic; all the Trinitarian doctors of divinity will take a South-side view of wickedness in high places; all the Nothingarian doctors of divinity will send back their mothers—for a consideration! And then what becomes of freedom of speech, freedom to worship God? What of unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? They all perish; and the mocking of tyrants rings round the land: "We meant to subdue you, scoffs one; "I said, ’We will crush out humanity,'" laughs forth another. Where, then, is America? It goes where Korah, and Dathan, and Abiram are said to have gone long ago. The earth will open her mouth and swallow us up; the justice of God will visit us—our crime greater than that of Sodom and Gomorrah—for we shall have committed high treason against the dearest rights of man! He will rain on us worse than fire and brimstone; our name shall rot in the Dead Sea of ​ infamy, and the curses of mankind hang over our memory for ever and ever, world without end!
II. Suppose we separate. The North may at length feel some little manhood; become angry at this continual insult, and be roused by fear of actual ruin ; calculate the value of the Union, and find it not worth while any longer to be tied to this offensive partner. See what may follow in the attempt at dissolution. Look at the comparative military power—the men and money—of the North and South.
Omitting California and the territories, the North has fifteen million freemen, or three million men able to do military duty; and also thirty-two hundred million dollars ($3,200,000,000); while the South has fifteen hundred million dollars ($1,500,000,000), six million five hundred thousand freemen, and three million five hundred thousand slaves. But the latter are a negative quantity to be subtracted from the whole. So the effective population is three millions, or six hundred thousand men able to bear arms. Such is the comparative personal and material force of the two. I will not speak of the odds in the quality of Northern and Southern men, looking now only at the obvious quantitative difference.
The contest could not be doubtful or long. The North could dictate the terms of separation, and would probably take two-thirds of the naval and military property of the nation, and all of the territories. Then would come the question, where shall be the line of demarcation between Freedom and Slavery? I think the North might fix the Potomac and Ohio as the Northern, and the Mississippi as the Western limit of Slavery. Depend upon it, we shall not leave more land than these boundaries indicate to the cause of bondage. Then the ten Barbary States of America might found a new empire, with despotism for their central idea; take the name of Braggadocia, Servilia, Violentia, Thrasonia, or, in plainer Saxon title, Bullydom; and become as famous in future history as the " Five Cities of the Plain" were in the past. But would Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, consent to be border States, with no Fugitive Slave Bill to fetter their bondmen?
I do not propose disunion — at present, I would never leave the black men in bondage, or the whites subject to ​ the slaveholding oligarchy which rules them. The Constitution itself guarantees "a republican form of government" to each State in the Union: no slave State has had it yet. Perhaps the North will one day respect the other half of "the Compromises of the constitution." Certainly there must be national unity of idea, either of Freedom or of Slavery, or else we separate before long.
This regressive force, which retards the progress and diminishes the welfare of the South, and yet controls the politics of America, is determined to conquer the progressive force, to put liberty down, to spread bondage over all the North, to organize it in all the wild land of the continent. The ablest champions of this iniquity are Northern men. The same North which bore Seward and Giddings, Sumner and Hale, not to mention others equally able, is mother also to Cushing and Douglas; and one of these would "crush out" all opposition to Slaveiy, all love of welfare and progress ; the other is reported to have said to the North, in the Senate, "We mean to subdue you." Mark the words—"We mean to subdue you!" That is the aim of the administration, to make progress, regress; welfare, illfare ; to make Democracy and Christianity, Despotism and anti-Christianity; that is the purpose of the oligarchy of slaveholders, to be executed with those triple Northern tools already named—base men, mean men, ignorant men.
The first great measure is to put Slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, into four hundred and fifty thousand six hundred and eighty miles of wild land.
To accomplish that, five steps were necessary. Here they are:—
I. The first was to pass a pro-Slavery Act to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territory. That accomplished two things:—
1. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, and laid the territory open to the slave-holder.
2. It established squatter sovereignty, and allowed the settlers to make laws for Slavery or Freedom, as they saw fit. The South intended that it should be a slave State.
You know how this first step was taken in 1854; what was done by Congress, by the President; you have not ​ forgotten the conduct of Mr. Douglas, of Illinois. Massachusetts yet remembers the behaviour of Mr. Everett. It is rather difficult to find all the facts concerning this Kansas business; lies have been woven over the whole matter, and I know of no transaction in human history which has been covered up with such abundant lying, from the death of Ananias and Sapphira down to the first nomination of Governor Gardiner. Still the main facts appear through this garment of lies.
II. The second step was to give the new territory a slave government, which would take pains to organize Slavery into the land, and Freedom out of it. So the executive appointed persons supposed to be competent for that work, and, amongst others, Mr. Reeder, of Easton, in Pennsylvania, who was thought to be fit for that business. But it turned out otherwise: he became conscientious, and refused to execute the infamous and unlawful commands of the executive. Finding it was so, the President—I have it on good authority—tried to bribe him to resign, offering him the highest office then vacant—the ministry to China. Governor Reeder refiised the bribe, and then was discharged from his office on the pretence of some pecuniary unfaithfulness. Mr; Shannon was thrust into his place, for which he seems to the manner born; for—I have this also on good authority—his habitual drunkenness seems to be one of the smallest of his public vices.
III. The third step was to establish Slavery by squatter sovereignty. For this, two things were indispensable: (1.) To elect a legislatiire friendly to Slavery ; and (2.) To get laws made by that legislature to secure the desired end.
1. This must be done by actual settlers; and then, for the first time in this career of wickedness, a difficulty was found. The people were to be consulted; and no coup d'etat of the government could do the work. There was an unexpected difficulty ; for, soon' as Kansas was open, great bodies went there from the North to settle and secure it to freedom. It soon became plain that they were numerous enough to bring squatter sovereignty itself over to the side of humanity, and, by their votes, exclude bondage for even That must be prevented by the regressive force. Mr. Atchinson, Mr. Stringfellow, and others were appointed to take the matter in hand. Citizens of Missouri organized ​ themselves into companies, and in military order, with pistols and bowie-knives, and in one instance with cannon, went over the border into Kansas to determine the elections by excluding the legal voters, and themselves casting the ballot. In ten months, they made four general invasions of Kansas, if I am rightly informed; namely, (1.) On the 29th of July, 1854; (2.) 29th of November, 1854; (3.) 30th March, 1855, and (4.) 22nd May, 1855. The third was the great invasion, made to elect the legislators who were to enact the territorial laws. It appears that four thousand men marched bodily from Missouri to Kansas, some of them penetrating two himdred miles into the interior, and delivered their votes, electing men who would put Slavery into the land. The fourth was a smaUer and local invasion, to fill vacancies in the legislature.
I cannot dwell on these things, nor stop to speak of the violence and murder repeatedly committed by these border ruffians, under the eyes, and with the consent, and by the encouragement, of the American Executive. You can read those .things in the newspapers, at least in the New York Tribune and Evening Post. But, suffice it to say, the Legislature thus chosen was wholly illegal. If Jersey City were to order a municipal election, and New York were to go there, and choose aldermen and common councilmen, and the new officers were to act in that capacity, we should have a parallel of what took place in Kansas.
Thus the slave power which controls the Federal Government secured the first requisite,—a Slave Legislature.
2. They must next proceed to make the appropriate laws. The Legislature came together on the 2nd July, 1855, at the place legally fixed by Governor Reeder: they passed an illegal Act, fixing the seat of Government at Shawneetown, on the borders of Missouri, and adjourned thither. The Governor vetoed the Act, and repudiated the Legislature, illegally chosen at first, illegally acting afterwards. But they continued in session there from July 15th to August 31st, and made a huge statute-book of more than a thousand great pages. It contains substantially the laws of Missouri; but, in some instances, they were made worse. Take this, for example:—
No person who shall have been convicted of any violation of any of the provisions of an Act of Congress" (the Fugitive Slave Bills of 1798 ​ and 1850), "whether such conviction was by criminal proceeding or by civil action, in any courts of the United States, or of any State or territory, shall be entitled to vote at any election, or to hold any office in this territory." "If any person offering to vote shall be challenged and required to take an oath or affirmation that he will sustain the provisions of the above-recited Acts of Congress" (the Fugitive Slave Bills), "and shall refuse to take such oath or affirmation, the vote of such person shall be rejected."— Ch. Irvi § 11, p. 332.
There is no similar provision depriving a man of his vote if he violate any other statute : but a deed of common humanity disfranchises a man for ever; nay, performing an act of kindness to a brother perpetually deprives a man of his share in the government!
Look at this statute:—
"Every free person who shall aid …. in any rebellion or insurrection of slaves, …. or do any other overt act in furtherance of such rebellion, …. shall suffer death."
"If any person shall….induce any slaves to rebel,….or shall ….circulate ….any book…. or circular for the purpose of exciting insurrection…. on the part of the slaves, such person shall….suffer death."
"If any person shall aid …. in enticing…. any slave…. to effect the freedom of such slave,…. he shall…. suffer death, or be imprisoned at hard labour for not less than ten years." — Ch. cli. § 2, 4, 5.
Look at this:—
Sect. 11.—"If any person print, write, introduce into, publish, or circulate, or cause to be brought into, printed, written, published, or circulated, or shall knowingly aid or assist in bringing into, printing, publishing, or circulating, within this territory, any book, paper, pamphlet, magazine, handbill, or circular, containing any statements, arguments, opinions, sentiments, doctrines, advice, or innuendo, calculated to promote a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellious disaffection among the slaves in this territory, or to induce such slaves to escape from the service of their masters, or to resist their authority, he shall be guilty of a felony, and be punished by imprisonment and hard labour for a term not less than five years."
Sect. 12.—"If any free person, by speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that persons have not the right to hold slaves in this territory, or shall introduce into this territory, print, publish, write, circulate, or cause to be introduced into this territory, written, printed, published, or circulated in this territory, any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet, or circular, containing any denial of the right of persons to hold slaves in this territory, such person shall be deemed guilty of felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard labour for a term of not less than two years."
But stealing a free child under twelve is punished with imprisonment for not more than five years, or confinement ​ in the county gaol not less than six months, or a fine of $500 (Ch. xlviii. Sect. 43).
Chap. xv. Sect. 13.—"No person who is oonsoientionBly opposed to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecntions for any violation of any of the sections of this Act."
That law excludes the New Testament and the Old Testament, as well as the Declaration of Independence, and the works of Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison : it shuts humanity from the jury-box.
IV. The next step was to get a pro-Slavery delegate from Kansas into the House of Representatives at Washington. So, on the 1st of October, 1855, the day appointed by the Border-Ruffian Legislature to elect a delegate, a fifth invasion was made by outsiders from Missouri, who, as before, took possession of the polls, and chose Hon. J. W. Whitfield to that oflSce. Mr. Shannon, the new and appropriate Governor of the territory, gave him a certificate of lawful election. He is now at Washington in that capacity. But the House of Representatives has the matter under advisement; a committee has gone to Kansas to investigate the matter; and the country waits, anxious, for the results.
V. The only remaining step is to enforce their slave-law, and then Kansas becomes a slave State. But this is a difficult matter: for the people of the territory, indignant at this invasion of their rights, long since repudiated the legislature of ruffians ; held a convention at Topeka; formed a constitution, which was submitted to the people, and accepted by them. They have chosen their own legislature. State officers, senators, and representatives, and applied for admission into the Union as a free State. But men, who have already five times invaded the territory, threaten to go there again, and enforce the laws which they have already made.
I need only refer to the conduct of the President, and his masters in the cabinet, and say that he has been uniformly on the side of this illegal violence. You remember his Message last winter, his Proclamation at a later day, his conduct all the time. He encourages the violence of these tools of the slave power, who have sought to tread ​ the people down. Hence it becomes indispensable for the Northern emigrants to take arms. It is instructive to see the old Puritan spirit coming out in the sons of the North, even those who went on theological errands. Excepting the Quakers, the Unitarians are the most unmilitary of sects; in Boston, their most conspicuous ministers have been—some of them still are—notorious supporters of the worst iniquities of American Slavery. Surely you will not forget the ecclesiastical defences of the Fugitive Slave Bill, the apologies for kidnapping. But a noble-hearted Unitarian minister. Rev. Mr. Nute, "felt drawn to Kansas." Of course he carried his Bible: he knew it also by heart. His friends gave him a "repeating rifle" and a "revolver." These also "felt drawn to Kansas." This "minister at large"—very much at large, too, his nearest denominational brother, on one side five hundred miles off, on the other fifteen hundred—trusts in God, and keeps his powder dry. Listen to this, written December 3rd, 1855:—
"I have just been summoned to be in the village with my repeating rifle. I shall go, and use my utmost efforts to prevent bloodshed. But, if it comes to a fight, in which we shall be forced to defend our homes and lives against the assault of these border savages (and by the way, the Indians are being enlisted on both sides), I shall do my best to keep them off."
On the 10th, he writes :—
"Our citizens have been shot at, and, in two instances, murdered; our houses invaded; hay-ricks burnt; corn and other provisions plundered; cattle driven off; all communication cut off between us and the States; wagons on the way to us with provisions stopped and plundered, and the drivers taken prisoners ; and we in hourly expectation of an attack. Nearly every man has been in arms in the village. Fortifications have been thrown up by incessant labour night and day. The sound of the drum, and the tramp of armed men, resounded through our streets; families fleeing with their household goods for safety. Day before yesterday, the report of cannon was heard at our house from the direction of Lecompton. Last Thursday, one of our neighbours,—one of the most peaceable and excellent of men, from Ohio, — on his way home, was set upon by a gang of twelve men on horseback, and shot down. Several of the ruffians pursued him some distance after he was shot-; and one was seen to push him from his horse, and heard to shout to his companions that he was dead. A neighbour reached him just before he breathed his last. I was present when his family came in to see the corpse, for the first time, at the Free-State Hotel,—a wife, a sister, a brother, and an aged mother. It was the most exciting and the most distressing scene that I ever witnessed. Hundreds of our men were in tears, as the shrieks and groans of the bereaved women were heard all ​ over the building, now used for military barracks. Over eight hundred men are gathered under arms at Lawrence. As yet, no act of violence has been perpetrated by those on our side; no blood of retaliation stains oar hands. We stand, and are ready to act, purely in the defence of our homes and lives. I am enrolled in the cavalry, though I have not yet appeared in the ranks ; but, should there be an attack, I shall he there. I have had some hesitation about the propriety of this course; but some one has said, "In questions of duty, the first thought is generally the right one." On that principle, I find strong justification. I could feel no self-respect until I had my services.
"Day before yesterday, we received the timely reinforcement of a twelve pounder howitzer, with ammunition therefor, including grape and canister, with forty bomb-shells. It was sent from New York (made at Chicopee). By a deed of successful daring and cunning, it was brought through the country invested by the enemy, a distance of fifty miles, from Kansas City, by an unfrequented route, boxed up as merchandise.
"Sunday Morning, Dec. 9.—The governor has pledged himself to do all he can to make peace; and we are told that the invaders are beginning to retreat; but we know not what to believe. Our men are to be kept under arms for twenty-four hours longer, at least. No religious meetings for the last three weeks. No work done, of course. Some of the logs to be sawed for our church were pressed into service to build a fort, of which we have no less than five, and of no mean dimensions or strength. For a time, it seemed probable that the foundation-stones for the church would be wet by the blood of the martyrs for liberty. They were piled up on the ground, and, with the earth thrown out of the excavation, made quite a fort on the hillside just outside of the line of intrenchments."
That is the report of a Unitarian missionary. You know what the Trinitarians have done: the conduct of that valiant man, Henry Ward Beecher,—the most powerful and popular minister in the United States,—and his "Plymouth Church," and other "religious bodies" at New Haven and elsewhere, need not be spoken of.
One effect of this warlike spirit is curious; "pious" newspapers are very much troubled at the talk of rifles, pistols, and cannon. In 1847, they rated me roundly for preaching against the Mexican war,—a war for plundering a feeble nation, that we might blacken her soil with Slavery: it was "desecrating the Sabbath." They liked the Sims brigade, the Burns division; they did homage to the cannon which men-stealers loaded in Boston, therewith to shoot the friends of humanity on the graves of Hancock and Adams! Now, the mean men and the base men are brought over to "peace principles:" a rifle is "not of the Lord;" a cannon is "a carnal weapon;" a sword is "of the devil." All the South thinks gunpowder is "unchris​ tian." Such a "change of heart" has not been heard of since the conversion of St. Ananias and Sapphirs.
I have no fondness for fighting ; not the average "instinct of destruction," I should suffer a great while before I struck a blow. But there are times when I would take down the dreadful weapon of war: this is one of them for the men in Kansas.
It is not easy for the border ruffians alone to put down Kansas; not possible for them to break up the popular organization, destroy the new Constitution, and hang the officers. Will the President send the United States soldiers to do this? No doubt his heart is good enough for that work. We remember what he did with United States soldiers at Boston, in 1854: the only service they ever rendered in that town for more than forty years was to kidnap Anthony Burns. But the President falters: there is a North; all last winter there was a North, — Northern ice in the Mississippi ; Banks, of the North, at Washington, in the speaker's chair.
Kansas and Nebraska are "the Children in the Wood." They had a fair inheritance; but the parents, dying, left them to a guardian uncle,—the President. I heard the Northern mother say to him,—
"You must be father and mother both,
And uncle, all in one."
"You are the man must bring our babes
To wealth or misery.
And, if yon keep them carefully,
Then God will you reward;
But, if you otherwise should deal,
God will your deeds regard."
It is still the old story: the Executive uncle promises well enough: yet—
"He had not kept these pretty babes
But twelve months and a day.
Before he did devise
To make them both away.
He bargained with two ruffians strong
[That is, Straightwhig and Democrat,]
Which were of furious mood.
That they should take these children young.
And slay them in a wood."
It is still the old story. One of the ruffians kills the other ; but, in this case, Democrat, the strong ruffian, killed Straightwhig,—a weak ruffian, who had no " backbone,"—and now seeks to kill the babes. He is not content to let them starve,—
"Their pretty lips with blackberries
So all besmeared and dyed;"
he "would make them both away." But that is not quite so easy. Kansas, the elder, turns out a very male child, a thrifty boy: he will not die; he refuses to be killed, but, with such weapons as he has, shows what blood he came of. His relations hear of the matter, and make a noise about it. The uncle becomes the town-talk. Even the ghost of Straightwhig is disquieted, and "walks" in obscure places, by graveyards, "haunting" some houses. Nay, the Northern mother rises from the grave: perhaps the Northern father is not dead, but only sleeping, like Barbarossa in that other fable, with his Sharp's rifle for a pillow. Who knows but he, too, will "rise," and execute his own will? The history may yet end after the old sort:—
"And now the heavy wrath of God
Upon the Uncle fell;
Yea, fearftil fiends did haunt his house;
His conscience felt a hell.
His barns were fired, his goods consumed,
His lands were barren made;
Conventions failed to nominate;
No office with him staid."
Kansas applies for admission as a free State, with a constitution made in due form and by the people. The regressive force is determined that she shall be a slave State; and so all the 926,000 miles of territory become the spoil of the slave-holder. See the state of things.
The majority of the Senate is pro-Slavery, of the Satanic Democracy. For once, the House inclines the other way,—leans towards Freedom. A bill for making Kansas a slave State will pass the Senate; will be resisted in the House: then comes the tug of war. The North has a majority in the House, but it is divided. If all will unite, they make Kansas a free State before the 4th of next July. ​ They can force the Administration to this act of justice, simply by refusing to vote a dollar of money until Kansas is free. If the House will determine on that course, the two Executives—the Presidential and the Senatorial—will soon come to terms. This is no new expedient: it was often enough resorted to by our fathers in old England, under the Tudors and Stuarts; nay, even the Dutch used it against Philip II.
But perhaps there is not virtue enough in the House to do this; then let the State legislatures which are now in session send instructions, the people—who are always in session—petitions, to that effect.
But perhaps the people themselves are not quite ready for this measure; and the House and Senate cannot agree. Then the question goes over to the next presidential election, where it will be the most important element. There will be three candidates, perhaps four; for the straight Whigs may put up some invertebrate politician, hoping to catch whatever shall turn "up." It is possible there shall be no choice by the people; then the election goes to the present House of Representatives, where the choice is by States. In either case, if the matter be managed well, the progressive force of America may get into the presidential chair. I mean to say, we can choose an anti-Slavery president next autumn—some one who loves man and God, not merely money, loaves and fishes,—who will counsel and work for the present welfare and future progress of America, and so promote that Christianity and Democracy spoken of before. I shall not pretend to say who the man is: it must be some one who reverences Justice,—the higher law of God. He must be a strong man, a just man, a man sure for the fight. Let there be no humbug this time, no doubtful man.
If we once put an anti-Slavery man, never so moderate, into the presidency, then see what follows immediately or at length:—
1. The Executive holds 40,000 offices in his right hand, and 70,000,000 annual dollars in his left hand : both will be dispensed so as to promote the welfare and the prosperity of the people. All the great offices, executive, judicial, diplomatic, commercial, will be controlled by the ​ progressive force; the Administration will be celestial-democratic, not Satanic merely, and seek by natural justice to organize things and persons so that all may have a share in labour and government. Then, when freedom has money and office to bestow, she will become respectable in the South, where noble men, slave-holders and non-slaveholders, will come out of their hiding-places to bless their land which others have cursed so heavily and so long. There are anti-Slavery elements at the South: "One swallow makes no summer;" but one presidential summer of freedom will bring many swallows out from their wintry sleep, fabulous or real. Nay, the ignorant men of the North will be instructed; her mean men will be attracted by the -smell of dinner; and her base men, left alone in their rot, will engage in other crime, but not in kidnapping men.
2. Kansas becomes a free State before the 1st of January, 1858. Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, Utah, New Mexico, all will be free States. When Texas sends down a pendulous branch, which takes independent root, a tree of freedom will grow up therefrom. Western Texas will ere long be a free State ; she is half ready now. Freedom will be organized in the Mesilla Valley. If we acquire new territory from Mexico, it will be honestly got, and Democracy and Christianity spread thither. If Central America, Nicaragua, or other new soil, become ours, it will be all consecrated to freedom, and the unalienable rights of man. Slavery will be abolished in the district of Columbia.
3. There will be no more national attempts to destroy Freedom in the North, but continual efforts to restrict Slavery. The democratic parts of the Constitution, long left a dead letter therein, will be developed, and the despotic clauses, exceptionable there, and clearly hostile to its purpose and its spirit, will be overruled, and forced out of sight, like odious features of the British common law. There will be a pacific railroad, perhaps more than one; and national attempts will be made to develop the national resources of the Continent by free labour. The South will share with the North in this better organization of things and persons, this development of industry and education.
4. And what will be the future of Kansas? Her 114,000 square miles will soon fill up with educated and industrious men, each sharing the labour and the government of ​ society, helping forward the welfare and the progress of all, aiding the organization of Christianity and Democracy. What a development there will be of agriculture, mining, manufactures, commerce! What farms and shops! What canals and railroads! What schools, newspapers, libraries, meeting-houses! Yes, what families of rich, educated, happy, and religious men and women! In the rear 1900, there will be 2,000,000 men in Kansas, with cities like Providence, Worcester, perhaps like Chicago and Cincinnati. She will have more miles of railroad than Maryland, Virginia, and both the Carolinas can now boast. Her land will be worth £20 an acre, and her total wealth will be $500,000,000 of money; 600,000 children will learn in her schools.
5. There will be a ring of Freedom all round the slave States, and in them Slavery itself will decline. The theory of bondage will be given up, like the theory of theocracy and monarchy; and attempts will be made to get rid of the fact. Then the North will help the Southern States in that noble work. There will never be another Slave State nor another Slave President; no more kidnapping in the North; no more chains round the Court House in Boston; no more preaching against the first principles of all humanity.
Three hundred years ago, our fathers in Europe were contending for liberty. Then it was freedom of conscience which the progressive force of the people demanded. Julius the Third had just been Pope, who gave the cardinalship, vacated at his election, to the keeper of his monkeys; and Paul IV. sat in his stead in St. Peter's chair, and represented in general for all Europe the regressive power; while bloody Mary and bloodier Philip sat on England's throne, and, incited thereto by the Pontiff, smote at the rights of man.
Two hundred years ago, our fathers in the two Englands—old and new—did grim battle against monarchic despotism: one Charles slept in his bloody grave, another wandered through the elegant debaucheries of the Continent; while Cromwell and Milton made liberal England abidingly famous and happy.
One hundred years ago, other great battling for the ​ rights of man was getting begun. Ah me! the long-continued strife is not ended. The question laid over by our fathers is adjourned to us for settlement. It is the old question between the substance of man and his accidents, labour and capital, the people and a caste.
Shall the 360,000 slave-holders own all the 1,400,000 square miles of territory not yet made States, and drive all Northern men away from it, or shall it belong to the people; shall this vast area be like Arkansas and South Carolina, or like Michigan and Connecticut? That is the immediate question.
Shall Slavery spread over all the United States, and root out Freedom from the land? or shall Freedom spread wide her blessed boughs till the whole continent is fed by her fruit, and lodged beneath her arms—her very leaves for the healing of the nations? That is the ultimate question.
Now is the time for America to choose between these two alternatives, and choose quick. For America? No, for the North. You and I are to decide this mighty question. I take it, the Anglo-Saxon will not forego his ethnological instinct for freedom; will not now break the historic habit of two thousand years ; he will progressively tend to Christianity and Democracy ; will put Slavery down, peaceably if he can, forcibly if he must.
We may now end this crime against humanity by ballots; wait a little, and only with swords and with blood can this deep and widening blot of shame be scoured out from the continent. No election, since that first and unopposed of Washington, has been so important to America as this now before us. Once the nation chose between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson. When the choice is between Slavery and Freedom, will the North choose wrong P Any railroad company may, by accident, elect a knave for President; but, when he has been convicted of squandering their substance on himself, and blowing up their engines, nay, destroying their sons and daughters, will the stockholders choose a swindler for ever?
I think we shall put Slavery down; I have small doubt of that. But shall we do it now and without tumult, or by and by with a dreadful revolution, St. Domingo massacres, and the ghastly work of war?
Shall America decide for wickedness, — extend the dark ​ places of the earth, filled up yet fuller with the habitations of cruelty? Then our ruin is certain,—is also just. The power of self-rule, which we were not fit for, will pass from our hands, and the halter of yengeance wiU gripe our neck, and America shall lie there on the shore of the sea, one other victim who died as the fool dieth. What a ruin it would be! Come away! I cannot look, even in fancy, on so foul a sight.
If we decide for the unalienable rights of man; for present welfare, future progress; for Christianity and Democracy; and so organize things and men that all may share the labour and government of society — ^then what a prospect is before us I How populous, how rich, will the land become! Ere long, her borders wide will embrace the hemisphere—how full of men! If we are faithful to our duty, one day, America, youngest of nations, shall sit on the Cordilleras, the youthful mother of the continent of States. Behind her are the Northern lakes, the Northern forest bounded by Arctic ice and snow; on her left hand swells the Atlantic, the Pacific on her right—both beautiful with the white lilies of commerce, giving fragrance all round the world; while before her spreads out the Southern land, from terra firma to the isles of fire, blessed with the Saxon mind and conscience, heart and soul; and, underneath her eye, into the lap of the hemisphere, the Amazon, and the Mississippi—classic rivers of freedom—pour the riches of either continent ; and behind her, before her, on either hand, all round, and underneath her eye, extends the new world of humanity, the commonwealth of the people, justice, the law thereof, and infinite perfection, God; a Church without a bishop, a State without a king, a community without a lord, a family with no holder of slaves, with welfare for the present, and progress for the future, she will show the nations how dicine a thing a people can be made.
"Oh, well for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:
For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,
Nor all calamity's hugest waves confound.
Who seems a promontory of rock.
That, compassed round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd."
* ↑ See Mr. Parker's Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Vol. II., Nos. VI.—X.
* ↑ Parker, ubi sup. No. XI, Additional Speeches, &c., Vol. I., Nos. I., II.
* ↑ Parker, Additional Speeches, Vol. I., Nos. V., VI.; Vol. II., Nob. I.—IV;