Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1857-05-13

character of our institutions of government,
the free white laboring man and his posterity.
Slavery is deadly enemy of free labor
The two cannot co-exist on the same field of
enterprise. Either labor will vindicate its
right to freedom, or it will sink into depen-
dence and dishonor. Free labor is clothed
with intelligence a1d power. It stands erect
in the dignity of true manhood. 1t sustains
by its energies all the noble institutions of
refined and perfectly developed social life
It is the source of our prosperity and national
greatness. Slavery is labor in ignoranbe and
cains-a brutalizcd humanity, stimulated to
industry by the lash of a master. 1t makes
the laborer an article of merchandise, without
aim and without hope. In the place of an in
telligent citizen, ready to defend with his life
the honor and interests of his country, slave
rv gives to the State an ignorant savage to be
held in subsection. 1t endangers the social
fabric by converting its great element of
strength into an implacable enmity.
Never, in the history of partisan warfare,
were men more unjustly and perseveringly
misrepresented than are the opponents of the
extension of slavery. This arises in part from
the ntolerant nature of slavery, and the wea-
pons it is necessitated to employ, and partly
from the fact-so omnipotent has the Slave
Power become in our govnrnment-that sup
port of its every demand is made the single
test of party fidelity, and the only road to Of
fetal preferment. The citizen who dissents in
terms of earnest and manly protest against
thereby-in so far as the National Government
can impose disahilities-a almost as much an a
lien and outlaw as is the slave himself. If the
freemen of the North consent to occupy such
a subordinae position in the government Of
their country, the spirit of manly indepen-
dence will be crushed out in their posterity.
Our sons will become a submissive and servile
race, slipped of manhood and self respect
The Shareholder, proprietor of the soil and
master of the government, will dominate over
them with scarcely less of arrogance and pow
er than he rules over his hereditary bondsmen.
To this condition are the on-slaveholding
whites of the South already reduced. They
have to-day little more Of practical power in
the formation of public opinion, and in the af-
fairs of government, than has the slave. The
same fate awaits our posterity, if slavery is al
lowed to monopolize the virgin soil of this
continent. 1t is the inevitable retribution Of
heaven on any people that have not the cour-
age and integrity to maintain their rights. 1t
is not true that the defenders of the rights of
free labor seek the elevation Of the black race
to an equality with the white. They do not
propose the emancipation of the slave, but
leave that question, both as to time and the
mode of its accomplishment, with the States
in which slavery exists. They wish to deal
with this great and embarrassin evil in a
spirit of friendly forbearance towards those
States but they cannot carry their forbear-
ance as far as to become slaves themselves--as
to surrender the soil and government of the
nation into the hands of an aristocracy found
ed upon property in slaves.
Free white labor has rights in the soil supe
rior to the pretensions of slavery. The slave
holding capitalist claims that his property, be-
ing largely invested in slaves, will depreciate,
unless the field whereon he can employ it be
enlarged. The white laborer, also, has pro-
perty in his labor, quite as sacred and wor
thy of the care of the Government and where
is the Uelu upon WHICH lie Is 10 HINT lLdI Ia
Dor profitable to himself and family, if slave
ry is to monopolize the fertile and virgin lands
of the West Labor is depressed almost to
the starving point in the densely populated
countries of the old world, because of the
narrow field upon which il is imprisoned. The
demand for labor is SMALL compared with the
thousands who have labor to sell. So it will
be at no distant day in this favored land un-
less we keep our vast public domain as a sa-
cred inheritance for the free white laboring
man and his posterity forever. In the soil of
our extended empire, the toiling masses have
the only sure guarantee for their future pros
perity and independence. This the cupidity
of capital would take from them; and here
lies the real issue that the Slave Power has
forced upon the country. 1t is struggle for
land.
On the one side stands the owner of slave
property, demanding a field upon which to en-
ploy his servile labor-upon the other side
stands free labor, claiming the soil as an in
heritance for free posterity. Central and
Western Europe, teeming with its millions of
population, is not as large as the domain of the
American stakeholder. He and his bondmen
already occupy by far the most fertile and ge-
nial portion of this continent. Let him rest
content with his territorial possessions and
power. We do not seek to disturb him. We
neither assail nor defend his asserted right to
hold his peculiar kind of property. We sim
ply affirm that we have nothing to do with it,
and propose to let him and his slaves alone
where they are. We make, therefore, no ques-