The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1856-10-02

ranks to oppose him. Bolivar, on his part, pro-
claimed universal emancipation, to recruit his
ranks. History records the result.
As member of the Republican Convention,
can say with confidence that, to the prevalent
sense of that body, nothing could be more
revolving than the general manumission of the
slaves in the South, and putting them on a
level with the white race.
The liberation of the blacks, under existing
circumstances, is known to be impossible-shat
it would be ruinous to their owners, a great
evil to all others of the white race, and fatal to
the negroes, who would perish under the intel
Egence and energy of a superior race, as the
Narragansetts, Pequods, and Mohicans, perish
ed under it in another quarter. Humanity for
the incapable race forbids the experiment, and
Justice to both classes of the superior one re-
quires that they should be saved from the haz-
ards of the struggles it would provoke.
How the question of Slavery is, in the tract
of time, to be disposed of, depends on the will
of the Government of the States having it in
charge. Natures code, written in the heart,
will, with the progress of Christianity and civil
zation, work out happy result 1t may grad
nally GO out southwark, and an improved race
of blacks appear as a colony of our country
within the tropics of South America. Amalga
nation or equality with our race in the same
Government is impossible.
Myneighborsknow that my declarations against
sweeping abolition are sincere. They know that
/ own slaves, some inherited, and some that have
begged their way into my house from the slave
pen; and while they know that my course in
submitting to this encumbrance is character
lied by humanity, they have proof in my con-
duct, that so far from using it to degrade my
own flesh and blood in the persons of those who
toll with their hands for living, and to bring
them to the condition to which the Democracy,
speaking through the Richmond press, woul ID
assign them, that my best efforts have been to
counterfeit this tendency of the system. My
strongest sympathies are for the laboring white
man. Under this feeling, and believing it the
best mode of gradually superseding Slavery in
the cultivation of the soil, l have employed free
labor for the most part in my farming, and with
the happiest consequences.
Of the neighbors whom / employ to assist me
in opening and in the cultivation and improve
ment of my farm, ten, who held no land, now
possess little farms and comfortable homesteads
of their own in fee simple. If, instead of free
labor, had purchased and employed negroes
in my cultivation, might have added from the
profits all these homesteads to my own domain,
and exhibited a widespread scene of wasting AT
rican agriculture. Now the whole neighborhood
is dotted with neat and thriving farms and cot
tages, and the land which sold for ten, fifteen,
and twenty dollars an acre when began to open
my farm thirteen years ago, now sells for from
sixty to one hundred, and sometimes more
do not mention this to assert my claims on my
neighbors. They have done more for me than
l for them. l state facts to recommend a sys-
tenn. The general benefit every one admits. One
of the orators who came from the city to de-
nounce me, under the crown of Old Bucks
horns set up to overlook my precincts, compli-
mented my neighbors on the great improve
ment of the scene around him, but said, fixing
his eye on my home, that his heart sunk within
him when he reflected that it belonged to " an
arch traitor" and then it was that he summoned
the lightning to blast me.
The system of small tenements and free labor
can alone confer beauty and strength on an i'm
poverished region. Even the rich soil of Ken
lucky, the beautiful luxuriance of which it is
almost impossible to destroy, cannot prevent the
comparative weakness that awaits State which
turns away free labor, and sends it to build up
rival free States in the West. Example will H.
lustrate. l have three relatives in Kentucky
honest, benevolent, most estimable men
who, when left the State, were farmers on a
limited scale. Within twenty years, one has
bought up ten of the farms around him,
another twelve, another fifteen, in the heart of
Woodford and Fayette. Handsome edifces, once
the homes of families numbering multitude,
scattered over the country, are now occupied
as granaries, small one here and there inhab-
tied by an overseer. The population is gone,
the school-houses are deserted, the churches
have no congregations, and yet the country is
beautiful, clothed with grass, covered with herds
OF the hnest cattle, mules, and horses, in the
world. The corn fields for the support of this
quadruped population in winter are worked by
slaves. The rain and sunshine that makes the
grass grow provides for them in summer, as it
does in the pampas of South America, that Gre
ate the living wealth of those solitudes. The
white population banished by this species of
engrossing cultivation have right to the ter
ritories reserved by the compact for free labor.
And are not the people further south, who have
no hold on the soil there, also to be secure of
a home somewhere? On multitude of the
great plantations in the South, free labor is en-
tirely dispensed with. They have not only their
blacksmith, but their black carpenter, wheel
wright, plasterer, and painter; and where are all
the white mechanics to go? and where the
white laborers, who are already driven to the
hills, to live by hunting, fishing, and robbing-
as Gov. Hammond, of South Carolina, tells us
where are they to 60, if Slavery in the new ter
ritories is to pursue them with the same fate
l hope my neighbors will pardon me when
proclaim it, that my feelings and judgment alike
actuate me to fight the battle for the rights of
the white cultivator of the soil and the white
mechanic, against all who would pursue him
into the new territories with the institution
which drives them out from those little COM
munities," at the head of which reigns master,
who, with his fellows, the organs of Democ-
racy in the South tell US constitute the State.
Your fellow. citizen, F.P. BLAIR.
SilUer Spring, September II.