Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1845-02-21
EXTRACTS FROM AN ADDRESS
OF CASSIUS M. CLAY, TO THE
PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY.

Indifference, seeing no departure from NOR
ais or economical progress in the tenure.
The emancipation movement about 1880
affected me as it did most persons at the
time and felt some new and pleasing
emotions springing up in my bosom when
| had resolved, in common with my Ia
mented brother, TO liberate my slaves. l
authorized him to put my name to the E.
Emancipation Society formed about that
time in Mercer County. In the same year
went to Yale College, in Free State.
was not blind, and therefore saw peo-
pie living there luxuriously, on a soil which
here would have been deemed the high
road to famine and the alms-house. A
city of ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants
rose up in the morning, passed through all
the busy strife of the day, and lay down
again at night in quiet and security, and
not single police officer was any where
to be seen. There were more than five
hundred young men congregated from all
climes, of various habits and tempera-
ments, in the quick blood of youth and all
conquering passion, and there was not
found in all the city, so far as the public
were aware, single woman so fallen as
to demand less price for her love than
honorable marriage. A gray-haired Judge
of seventy years and more, in lifetime of
service had pronounced sentence of death
upon but five criminals in whole State,
and three of these were brought down to
ruin by intemperance. had been taught
TO regard Connecticut as land of wood
EN- nutmegs and leather pumpkin-seeds ;
yet there was land of sterity without
paupers, and people where no man was
TO be found who could not write his name
and read his laws and his Bible. These
were strange things; but far more strange,
passing strange, will it be, Kentuckians !!
if you shall not come to the same concu.
sion to which was compelled-that lib
erty, religion and education were the cause
of all these things, and the true founda-
ton of individual happiness and national
glory. In 1885 introduced Common
School bill into the House of Representa-
tives of Kentucky; it was lost. In 1888
had the pleasure of voting for the pres.
ent Common School law, in common with
a great majority of my compeers. Before
1910, | was convinced that universal edu-
cation in Slave State was impossible =
Whilst now write, the eight hundred
thousand dollars set aside, from the pro-
ceeds Of the sales of the public lands, for
Common Schools, surreptitiously ap.
propriated to Internal Improvements,
confirm my conclusion. There is not
single cent in the great Commonwealth Of
Kentucky appropriated to the education
of her people c. A. Wicklifie, in a
Convention of Teachers, in 1910, at
Frankfort, said: " If Slavery and Com
mon Schools be incompatible, l say let
Slavery perish" The sentiment was met
with tremendous applause. Men of Ken
lucky! what say you? Time has proved
they are incompatible not a single Slave
State has succeeded, from the beginning,
in the general education of her citizens
Governor Hammond, of South Carolina,
says in his message to the Legislature
"The Free School system is failure. lis
failure is owing to the fact that it does not
suit our people or our government" Ex-
perience and reason have long since pro-
claimed the same unwelcome fact.
The whole South cries out with anguish
against this or that measure Of national
injury; implores and denounces in alter
nate puerity: makes and unmakes Pres
idents enacts and repeats laws with a
petulance and recklessness, more worthy
of manly indignation, than the pitiable
forbearance of the North. Yet no relief
comes to the sinking patient; her hypo.
chondriacal illusions are not dispelled
she cannot, she will not see that slavery
nothing but slavery, is the cause of he
ruin. Her fields relapse into primitive
sterilty; her population wastes away
manufactures recede from the infected
border trade languishes decay trenches
upon her meagre accumulations of taste
or utility gaunt famine stalks into the
shattered portals of the homestead the
hearth stone is invaded by more relent
less intruder than the officer of the law
and the castle that may stand before the
sword, falls by this slow, secret and resist
less enemy the blood of the body poiti,
is frozen at the core; atrophy paralyses al
its limbs sullen despair begins to display
itself upon the care-worn faces of men
the Heavens and the earth cry aloud-,h,
eternal laws of happiness and existence
have been trampled under foot; and yet
with most pitiable inlatuation, the Soutl
still clings to slavery.
The competition of unrequited service
slave labor, dooms the laboring white mil
lions of these States to poverty poverty
gives them over to ignorance and igno
rance and poverty are the fast high-road
to crime and suffering. Among the NOR
fortunate property holders, religion ant
morality are staggering and dying. Idle
ness, extravaganza, unthriftiness, and wan
of energy, precipitate shareholders int
frequent and unheard of bankruptcies
such as are unknown in free States an