The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-01-05 00:00:00

AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
NEYOR, EC. 23, 1856.
Since my last date here have beD
en occurrences
- . which should not be passed by without comment,
and winch English readers may not understand
• without explanation. One of the most important
. of these is the recent insurrection alarm in the
south The central southern states have all been
in a state of profound agitation during the last
• fortnight, and the cause hits been an anticipated
insurrection rising among the slaves.
Your readers will have noticed that no proof has
been found to convict a solitary negro, but the
whole alarm is grounded upon suspicion. And
upon -suspicion more than sixty negroes have been
hung, or killed in other ways, by their masters,
without recourse to law.
A small band of negroes in two or three different
• states seem to .have got the idea that some foreign
Power, an enemy from the north, perhaps. was to
Rppear, and deliver them from bondage about the
first of January next. There is no proof that one
Of these negroes expected to fight himself but a
delusion 'seemed to be in their minds to such an
extent that they fully believed freedom was soon to
be given to them. For this a large number
have been killed, .and hundreds of others
,•welpned. For instance, last Saturday night a
hundred slaves gathered together in Alexandria, a
• few miles from Washington, to dance the evening
• aNYaN'• For doing this. every one of them was
subjected by the authorities to thirteen lashes upon
• the bare back—men and women !
But the strangest part of this whole affair is this :
it is capable of proof that southern orators and
politicians have caused the recent insurrection by
their election harangues.
Iu their desire to excite hatred of the north
and northern institutions, the have invariably,
Fr
the late
campaign, represented the
F ernont Party as consisting of men ready
to march south, and free the whole slave
population. They have declared publicly on the
rostrum, land in the bar rooms, that if Fremont
was elected he would free the slaves. I need not
say that this was utterly false. But the slaves by
degrees gathered the meaning of their masters'
assertions, House servants first overheard the
remarks, and they spread it to the plantation slaves,
and in this manner the delusion arose • The slave-
holders can lay it to themselves, and this truth will
be fully stated in Congress during the coming
slavery debate there.
And this reminds me to say that there never was
a time when Congress debated the subject more
continuously than now. The President's message
was a firebrand thrown into a house of (Nimbus-
' tibles. The election has softened the democratic
Party, and even the South. They see that the
Whole North is in a state of rebellion against
slavery
etrarried with too s'
propegarldimand that matters have been
high a hand. Mr. Pierce is taking
he back track as gracefully as possible. His chief
Justice, in Kansas, who has during the past year
een guilty of enormities equal to those of
.j
efferies has been removed. In vain did
the wretched Free State men demand his
removal last summer, but now that . Mr. Pierce
ituows that be can never be President again, and
.‘once the overwhelming majorities against him in
t_?•e Northern states, he has
.consented to remove
the judicial despot whom even his duly appointed
pro—slavery governor cannot endure. Matters are
therefore looking brighter in Kansas, and the
si?ttlers are growing hopeful; let us all hope that
'A
• Buchanan will behave justly towards them.
Very important case has been before the
Supreme Court of the Union during the past week,
9.11. e which involves the constitutionality of the
.w.umiri;n Compromise Tt is stated that the Court
attempt to decide the case without pronouncing
the Compromise question, though how they
I°l do it cannot now be seen. If the matter be
rivetlquarely, there can be little doubt as to the
The Court is almost entirely made up
It .
slaveholdera, and extreme Southern ones at that.
expecting too much of human nature to think
that. these men will decide against their own
interests.
•
My letter has been chiefly upon the much
• diseussed
The of Slavery, but, it is not my
fault._o The President, Coagrese, and the Supreme
.1%
duoritnagrethaellsaagmitea.ting it, and the whole country
the Presidential Tb 4
President is soon to leave
Thousands who are chair,the war
no one reuzrets him
and who gave him their v friends of Buchanan,
and will cheer his passage trom
..es, detest Mr. Pierce,
votes,
old home in New Washington to his
Hampshire more heartily
they have any public act of his Presidential lthan
ife.