Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1855-03-01
SAM, HOUSTON ON SLAVERY.

Gen. Houston delivered his long promised
lecture on Slavery, at the fremont Temple, in
Boston, last Thursday evening The Gcncral
has been so uniformly Liberal and manly in his
course towards the North, and his votes have SO
often been recorded with them against the sg'
gressive measures of the Slave Power, in Con-
gress, that considerable expectation had been
raised in many, and perhaps most minds, among
us, that his lecture on this occasion, would par
take largely Of an anti-slavery character. But
all such will be grievously disappointed in his
present effort for, 50 far from condemnng
Slavery, or going even with Clay and Benton,
in admitting it to be an evil, and deprecating
its extension, he undertook labered defence of
that indefensiblo institution, as now existing in
the Southern States. In asingulaiy incongru-
GUS and inconsistent argument, Ire goes on to
show, that all tho old States, Nerth as we'll as
South, once owned slaves-that the North sman-
cipated them because they could not make slave
labor proftable-that the climate of the South
is such that the whites cannot do the labor
that free negroes won't work, and as the work
must be done, there must be slaves to doit. And
besides all this, Slavery benefits the North as
much as the South~the latter producing the
cotton and the former manufacturing it. And
yet he thinks Providence may, at some future
day, bring about the emancipation of the blacks
in this country, through the Colonization Soci-
ETY., Or in some such way, perhaps, as that by
which the enslayed Israelites were delivered from
bondage in Egypt, which he termed " an act of
emancipation" though he was careful not to
carry out the parallel by telling what befel the
Egyptian slaveholders,as punishment for their
sins of Slavery.
The General condemned the Nebraska bill, not
because it was wrong but because it violated the
Missouri compromise, which was fair contract
between the North and South, that the latter
should have all south of that line for Slavery,
and the North all north of that line to do what
she pleased with and because it re-opened the
agitation of the Slavery question that was SO
securely settled by the compromise of 1850, and
thus endangered the Union, in defence of which
he amplifed with evident sincerity, and consid-
cradle eloauencs.
Such is Gen. Houston defence of Slavery-a
defence which embraces not an argument that
has not 1. hundred times been effectually refu-
ted, or a position that has not been overthrown,
and which, therefore, for all the courtesy and
Kind feeling toward the North it so obviously
exhibits, will, we imagine, make few proselytes
among the people Of New England.
Well may Senator Houston, and every other
Southern han, who is not absolutely blind to
the future, preach and pray for the continuance
of the Union; for.if there is one political event
more certain than another, in this country, il
will be that of the overthrow of slavery on the
dissolution of the Union. The South cannot
live without the Union. But the North car
live as we'll without as with it ; and it will no
take another such period Of Southern insult
and aggression as that of tho last FIVE years, w
apprehenG, to bring her to the united determi
nation Of giving the problem practical demon
stration. And it is this, unquestionably, aha
has lately brought so many of our most intefli
gent anti-slavory men to look forward to the dis
solution of the Union as the only way, unde
the present aspect Of affairs, of relieving tn,
free States Of the sinful responsibilities Of slav
cry, and the only certain means Of efeetually
Kidding the country Of the institution.