The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1856-11-27
SLAVERY ESSENTIAL TO REPUBLICANISM.
From the New Orleans Delta.

From the New Orleans Delta
Slavery is national, and not sectional. 1t
was coeval with the Union, and existed of law
as we'll as fact in the colonial days which pre-
ceded the Revolution. 1t was introduced orig
inally with the sanction and through the exer-
ton of the mother country was received into
all the Colonies and was an institution in every
State at the period of the formation of the pres
ent Constitution. Not only this-every one of
the original thirteen States solemnly recognised
it as an object of national importance, and hav-
ing national existence, by ratifying the Con-
stitution which covered it, by an express guar
antee in favor of the STAKEHOLDER.
Such, briefly, are the true origin and political
nature of an institution now territorially pecu-
liar to the South, which is denounced and as
sailed as sectional by one half of the Union,
and is declared to be hostile to the principles
on which the Constitution is founded, blot
upon the national escutcheon, and sin before
God and man. But it is not with the rampant
CIV of foaming fanaticism, or the shallow sophis-
tries ofhypocritical philanthropy, we have here
to do.
We have a proposition to lay down that may
appear startling to many because it is new, but
will have weight and consideration with the
thinking, inasmuch as it is based on both phi
losophy and experience. We therefore declare
that Slavery is not only national, of origin and
of right, but it is essential to republican nation.
atty. But for Slavery, Republicanism would
have long since become tale in these United
States.
History is Instructive; heed its teachings :;
they are invariable and unerring. 1t tells us
that great republic never existed without Sla.
very. 1t tells US that where partial and defined
Slavery did not exist of law, the mass of the
working people have been slaves, and worse
than slaves. 1t tells us that wherever universal
Freedom has nominally existed, poverty, want,
and possible famine, and humiliating depend.
ency of the poor upon the rich, have been the
price of painted delusion and the remedy, in
variably the same, revolution and carnage, until
nations have been almost drowned in their own
blood.
Modern free society, as at present organized,
is radically wrong and rotten. 1t is self-de-
stroying, and can never exist happily and nor
mally until it is qualified by the introduction of
some principle equivalent in effect to the insti
tuition of Southern Negro Slavery. We do not
mean that the whites, or the laboring portion
of them, should hold the relation of slaves
Far from it. We would have them liberated
from the real bondage, poverty, and want, to
which free society exposes them. They are
liable to be dependent, without the hope of re-
lief. The capital their labor creates affords
them in return no guaranty against want, when
their labor is no longer demanded They have
the right to labor aud pocket their wages, if
they can get any; if not then they have the
glorious right to starve at their own expense
and On their own responsibility privilege
which the poor African slave cannot enjoy!
In the Northern States, free society has
proved failure. 1t is rotten to the core. 1t
would have destroyed itself ere this, but that
its disease has had an outward manifestation,
and its feverish and desperate energies have
been directed in demoniac enmity and warfare
against the South. Let the demonism which
its putrescence has engendered succeed, and
society, with its most sacred sanctions and its
hottest institutions, will fall before it, both in
the North and South, and the country must be-
come the seat of bowling anarchy or iron des-
potism.
Negro Slavery, then, is the conservative ele.
ment of Republicanism, and the firmest basis
of society in these United States.
We have heretofore pointed to the measure
OF negro exemption as one highly favorable to
the objects just named, to wit the diffusion
and extension of Slavery, and the consequent
consolidation of the slave-owning interest. One
other measure we are in favor of, though we
fear its announcement may throw some of the
"ancient fogie men" into almost epileptic con-
sternation. Nevertheless, we shall announce
it, and here declare that we not only desire to
make Territories, now free, slave Territories,
and to acquire new territory into which to ex.
tend Slavery-such as Cuba, Northeastern
Mexico, &c.-but we would reopen the African
slave trade, that every white man might have
chance to make himself owner of one or more
negroes, and go with them and his household
gods wherever opportunity beckoned to enter
prise.
But the North would never consent to this
they would dissolve the Union rather than grant
it, say the croaking impracticables. Gentle.
men, you do not know the North, oracular as
you look when obviously shaking your heads.
1t would not oppose any more bitterly large
demand like this, boldly made, than the small
est one, family and politely urged. Try it.
There is nothing to lose by the experiment.
At all events, if the attempt to reopen this
trade should fail, it would give one more proof
of how injurious our connection with the North
has become to US, and would indicate one more
signal advantage which Southern Confedera.
cy would have over the present heterogeneous