The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1856-02-07

seem nearly death-still. | doubt not it would
be so with the administration of any merely
political party in the country. Let the people
know, then, that this is the grand success of the
political treatment Of the Slavery question
every wheel of the Government stilled
In this state of things, it will not be the pop
ular heart but they who live by smothering that
heart, who will withstand those who now, when
all other methods fail, present THE ONE PATH,
opened up before the country in the Christian
Law, FIRST pure, then peacedble. Every man
knows how alone he gets peace. Priests may
humble over the souls of the departed, or be-
meath them, Reqniescat IN pace, but no soul
ever rested in peace until it had entered it by
the path of purity. And the greater is contain
ed in the less each atom obeys the laws of the
sphere. Nations began with individuals, and
are now but collections of them. and must obey
the laws OF individuals. With both, peace bios
SONS only on the stem of purity.
This, then, will save us from any national
peril, that the Conscience shall be enthroned e.
ery'chere absolute Monarch. 1t must be allow.
ed untrammelled action, wherever in any man
1t prohibits slaveholding, and wherever in any
man it does not. Only let men feel that they
are living and voting at unity with their best
/ light of duty, and they demand no more, but
are at ease. When agitation is abroad, it is
}
/ looseued somewhere.
| In order to secure this, we are called to mu.
tual concession-to the concession of each
moral sense to the other of all it claims-it
being understood that nothing can be claimed
by either for political advantage, but only from
such sense of the moral necessity of such a
claim as shall never shrink from any results
whatever, which are needed TO secure it. If the
two portions Of the country cannot unite, and
feel at the same moment ready to face the
Eternal Judge, with the full conviction that
they are each completely true to God and tC
every man, white and black, bond and Free OIL
Earth, let them sink together beneath the wa
tiers under the Earth, but never, never unite
or remain unitedl
We are called the more to this concession
because the error has been with both sides, anC
is now. The men whose consciences were frs
stirred on this subject have dwelt on the inhu
mainly of shareholders, without remembering
to ask whether THEY lcere not shareholders
For whatever the Federal Government sane
tons or adopts is of course by completely of al
who are parties to that Federal compact. AS
the people of Virginia did not derive Their
power to hold slaves from the Union, and do not
now, of course none of the rest of the States
or Of the individuals of the States, are involved
in it, They are, indeed, in high sense, con
cerned In all that concerns their fellowm men
but not otherwise are they morally involved
than as they are in widow burning in Hindos
tan, or cannibalism in the Fejee Islands. Dc
we, rs Americans, take upon our consciences
the sins, as we may think them, of Great Britain
or Japan, because we have treaties with those
nations? Do England and France become
responsible for one another's policy, or assume
each others National Church, because, for a
different object, they have formed an alliance
The United States are but such an alliance
And, as England and France have only com
mon responsibility for what is done in the wal
with Russia, so have the people of the free
States only responsibility for what is done by
the Federal Union as such. So We can only
look upon the position of the class of Anti
Slavery men whose motto is "No union aoiL
Shareholders" as blunder, occasioned by their
they worked by the Christian principle, First
cast the beam out of thine own eye, and so see
clearly to cast the mote out of thy brothers. -
had they not wasted their energies on Slavery
in the South, but concentrated them on Slavery
in the North, they would have put in demand
which, so surely as God made man alike in
Maine and California, would have received the
approval of every sincere soul from Maine to
California.
! This blunder has had it's antithetical one in
the South. And here, 1 may say, we must
guard against our prejudices. AS Virginian
with no tie of relationship northward, Of the re-
hottest kind, past or present, feel how easily
| might slide into a justifcatioR Of my dear
mother the South. But the soul knows nc
prejudices or sections, and must see all under
the pure light of reason and conscience.
The first error of the South has been an
Impotence in the discussion of this question
reminding calm men of those unfortunate per
sons met with in lunatic asylums, who speak
nationally on all topics until you touch that on
which they are deranged when their insanity
bursts wildly forth. This has cansed them to
put themselves in an attitude before the world
which has brought down its severest censure
and, feeling that this was not Just what they
deserved-since they were at least sincere--it
has led them on to still greater rage against
Judgment which, however unfair, was the
result of their own mistaken heat. 1t has
precluded freedom Of discussion even among
themselves; policy which no human brain or
heart ever respected yet. The native sons OF
the South have again and again sought to dis
cuss it in their own vicinities, and have as
often been threatened and visited with angry
processes, though the privilege is secured them
in the Bill of Rights Of nearly every Southern
State. The South has thus lost the confidence
of many Of her own children, who End that a
! freedom exercised by their lordly ancestors,
! Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and by them
| transmitted as an eternal inheritance, is now
denied them by men who beside those are
! lilliputian. Those who deny that the full sun
| light should play above and beneath and
around any subject, can never convince any
disinterested person that they are in the right.
This was true before Jesus said, "Whoso doeth
right coneth to the Light and it has been true
ever since, and will be true to all eternity.
What would men, including the South, say to
Christ's getting into passion with an sntago-
mist, or Plato's refusing to hear the other side
IN AN argument
Blunder is of a pricklypear growth, one leaf
developed from another. This impossibility of
free speech in the South has preserved Code
of Slavery which is far beneath her moral
sense, but which cannot become dead letter
so long as there are wicked and selfish men
in the world. AS an evidence of this, it is
familiar fact that the wretched men termed
"Negro-drivers " are held, with their families
in scorn By all classes of society in the South !;
yet no business is more entirely legal.
How is the Code to be reformed, if it is
crime to breach the subject? Take any South
ern man, and ask him if he believes that these
blacks should be so completely in the posses
sion of the whites that there should be no Sc
curity to the marital relation that one man
should have the power, if he wills, to separate
the families he owns to any extent? Ask him
if he believes that immortal beings should be
reared in brutal ignorance? And those who
90 otherwise break the laws. How sadly sug-
gestive is the fact that the only other people
who forbid education to any, are the Yezeddis
of Mesopotamia, who are the only race of Devil.
worshippers!) A Southern men viii reply, no.
And vet theaa laws remain there, trained by
Southerners who are not men, to bear the cruel