Western Reserve chronicle and weekly transcript of the times. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1854-1855, 1855-02-07
But in the South she law refuses to

But in the South the Law refuses to
ook at any degree OF cruelty in chas-
1sements upon the universal laborer,
short of manning or de~th. and public
sentiment is but little better than the
law.
The laborer in the North nswe to q
tribunal in the South to g master, in
censed, passionate, yindictiYe in Justice
executed upon all symptoms of resisting
manhood
In the North. nothing is more sacred
than . mans family and his children.
1t would not be possible foI q nan to do
public violence to q family circle without
vindictive penalty. Let him separate q
mother from her daughters, let him hire
arufisn to carry off the boys into the
country and parcel them out there-let
him scatter the flock, and leave the chill
drsn motherless, and the parents child
less. and what do you think wonld be-
come of h,mf
In the South it is a part Of the civil
rights of men to do these things when
ever they please. And though public
sentiment is better than law, yet as no
public sentiment on earth is a match for
legalized lust, or ~aVsrice, or the grip of
misfortune, these things are continually
done. and remorselessly. Cruelty. chasti-
ty.yirtue, do not mean the same things in
the South as ia the North. A man is
not blemished by deeds and ~indulgences
upOna plantation, among slaves. which
In the North, would strike him through
with infamy and house him in the peni-
tentiaryi
In the South. there are many roads
leading from the top of society to the
bottom, but not one, not ONE from the
bottom to the top.
In the North, if the citizen chooses to
walk in it, there is q road from every
mans door up to the Governors chair
or the Presidential seat
1t needs no words, now, to convince
you, that out of such different theories of
men, there will exist, in the North and in
= the South extremely different ideas of
Society, Government and Public Policy.
In the North, first in order of consid-
GRAFTON is man. the individual man ;
mex the family, made of those of common
blood, and by far the strongest, as it is
the most sacred of all institutions. Then
comes the township, which presents the
only spectacle of n absolute politicalde-
mocracy. For here only do citizens as
semble in mass and vote, directly and
not by representation. Next comes So
eiety st large, or the mass of citizens
grouped into States. And in society, in
the North, there are no classes except
such as arise out of spontaneous forces.
Wealth, experience, ability set men
above their fellows. There they stand
as long as there is . real superiority.
But they stand there, not by legal force,
nor to exercise any legal power, or to
have one single privilege CT Ferogative,
which does not belong just as D UGH to
every citizen clear down TO the bottom.
All that q class means in the Nerth is,
shat when men have shown themselves
strong and wise, men give them honor
for it. Death levels it all down again.
Their children inherit nothing. They
must earn for themselves. There is no
division of society into orders, by which
some have privilege and scme have not,
some have opportunity and e3santages
which others have moi.
In the South Society is divided into
two great and prominent classes. the ru-
ling and the ~obeying-the thinking and
the working. The labor at the South is
performed by three million creatures
who represent the heather idea of man.
All the benefits hat have accrued to
man from Christianity, are appropriated
and monopolized by the white popula-
ton.
Here is a seam that no sophistry can
sew up. Here is a society organized,
not on al idea of equal rights, and of in
equalities cnly as they spring from diff
ference of worth, but on an idea of per-
manent, political organized inequality
among men. They carry it SO far that
the theory of Slave law regards the slave
not as an inferior man, governed, for his
, own good as well as for the benefit of So
eiety at large, but it p~ronounces him, in
reiterated forms, not a man at all, but a
chattel.
When a community of States, by the
mos potential voice of Law, says to the
whole body'Of its lsboring population,
Ye are not men and shall not be We are
ehsttels-it is absurd to speak about kind
treatment-about happiness. 1t is about
cattle that they are talking Our vast
body of laboring men do not yet feel the
force of such a theory of human society.
But, if that political system, which has
openly been making such prodigious
strides for the last fifty years. and effect
ing, secretly, . yet greater change in
mems ideas Of society and government
shall gain complete ~sscendency, they, in
their turn, and in due time will know and
see the difference between a Republican
Democracy and a Republican Aristoc-
racy!
Out of such original and radical differ
ences. there must flow a perpetual con-
trast and opposition of policies and pro-
ceedures, in the operation of society and
of business. We will select but a few,
Of many, subjects of contrast, Work, Ed
~ucation, Freedom of Speech, and of the
Press, and Religion.
1t is very plain that while nominally
republican institutions exist both in the
North and South, they are animated by
a very different spirit, and used for q dii-
erent purpose. In the North, they aim at
the welfare of the whole people in the
b nth they are the instruments by which
a few control the many. In the North,
they tend toward Democracy; in the
Sot1th toward 0lioarchv