The Washington union. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1857-1859, 1859-03-20

BosroS, March lG, 1859.
DEAR BROTHER i have read your speech Of the 2lst
ultimO, delivered in the House OF Representatives. IL
has points OF considerable smartness, and will be praised
by your -paTtisans as a very clever effort but i see no
other effect that il can produce but 10 initiate the South,
and ALLEVIATE one section Of the Union still more from the
other. Have we not at the North stimulated our own
self-righteousness, In contrast with the sins OF the South,
quite up TO, or beyond the healthy point 7 Would IL not
be well for us, for a time, 10 look more at our own fail
ings and at the virtues OF our brethren at the south
You speak Of the change Of tone and sentiment that
has taken place during the last twenty-five years on the
subject of slavery. / plead guilty TO the truth of
this charge. 1t was one of the dreams Of my early
life, that the condition of mankind might be great
ly improved by sudden political changes. The cry
of the slave came 70 my youthful ear, waited by
the eloquent breath Of eye-witnesses, from Virginia
and New Jersey. Almost every man at the South,
at that time, admitted that slavery was an evil, moral,
social, aud political the horrors of the middle passage,
the barbarian cruelties of Jamaica, came 10 us across the
ocean Wiiberforce and Clarkson had acquired a world
wide fame by their singular devotion TO the abolition OF
the slave trade the assault was soon made upon slavery
itself in the British West Indies, and the frst Of August,
1888, was entered in the calender as one OF the holy
days of the year.
Campbell painted the wild chieitain on his native
plains, SO noble, 80 free, 80 happy-caught, chained,
doomed, suffering, till the hurricanes in the West Indies
were commissioned TO avenge his wrongs. The plaintive
Cowper wept out his compassion in the touching lines, II
would not have q slave for all the gold that sinews bought
and sold have ever earned = and these tones of suffering,
of compassion, of pity, We're echoed by every harp, and re-
echoed by orator and preacher, till the whole atmosphere
of New England was vocal with the cries of the slave. /
have done my full share of it but greater men have
been mistaken, and have in ripper years been compelled
to revise and revoke the opinions of earlier days.
Burke once was enraptured with the voice of Liberty, as
she cried from across the channel but in the full strength
of his manhood, he was compelled to dcnounce the crimes
committed in her name. Sir James Mcintosh wrote his
% Yindicial Gallice - but was compelled, by a longer
experience and a wider observation, to cancel the opin-
ions of early life by those of niaturer years. / am com
PEELED TO cancel many things that | have said on the
subject of slavery, and substitute for them the opinions
of ripper age. / might have once said what, or nearly
what, you have said in your late speech in Congress
though / think should have left out those portions
which serve no other end than simply to irritate, with
out convincing. But my convictions at the present time
are, not only that the shareholders have u complete vim
dication of their present position, but they are entitled
to be looked upon as benefactors to the country and to
the human race.
The only ground on which / can claim their patience
and forbearance toward us meddling with their affairs,
and for abusing them as much as we have, and as some
still continue TO dc, is this They gave us the false
premises on which we reasoned correctly to false conclu-
sions. They gave away their case by concession for il
slavery be IA sin, a wrong, or an evil, no fair mind can
resist the conclusion that efforts ought TO be made as
soon as possible 10 do it away. This philosophy, that
slavery is wrong, sprang up in Virginia, and was adopted
and encouraged in nearly all the slave States and the
seed was thence, in connexion with the correct and grand
principles of human government, scattered wide over the
free States. They have had their growth, and now it is
not a little difficult TO pull them up but they shall take
the wheat with them also.
The South are impregnable. The constitution protects
them, the Bible protects them, and the experience of
mankind protects them. Our fathers made a covenant
with their fathers. They came into the Union with their
African slaves on terms of equality with MS, and with all
the rights and privileges that we can claim under the
same instrument. They would make no covenant ex-
cept upon terms of equality. We accepted those terms;
we could get no better to-day and yet we should be
glad to make IL, il it were not made, or to renew it, If
krnlan and ON fha panan lttt IVA nApyh apa HIa
South claim the right to go into new territory, and try
the new land with their slaves, till the territory becomes
a sovereign State, and then bow to its will, as before all
other sovereigns. This is a just and equitable claim,
founded on a fair Interpretation of the constitution,
Slavery should be permitted to flow by natural laws to
regions for which it is best adapted. 1t will go nowhere
else. You could not force it into New Hampshire, nor
keep it there if introduced. The experiment has been
tried and failed. Slavery was given up in the northern
States not by the force of moral, but natural laws.
1t is true tie discussions of the last twenty-five years
have produced a great deal of sentiment on the subject of
slavery in the northern States but you know how ut
terly barren Of any good results it has been to the Afri-
can. In cords and because their number is small, and
will continue to be small-we have in the extreme North
given them the rights of citizenship and equality but
in ucorhs we deny them. The most respectable colored
men in Boston would not be permitted to hire or to own
and quietly enjoy a pew in the broad aisle of any fashion,
able church. In the West, where your soil is more fer
tile, and where more free colored men would be likely
to go, you are more stringent ; and the black laws OF
Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon, and the still more ex-
pulsive Topeka constitution of Kansas-for which, / be-
licve, you and all your republican associates voted
proclaim, as with trumpet tongue, the innate and in
eradicabIe prejudice against the African, lurking, as it
still docs, in the bosom of those whose tongues are clo-
duent for his rights.
i am not a little surprised at the manner in which you
speak of Noah. The Bible calls him a .just man, and
perfect in his generation = and yet because he, by Divine
inspiration and by Divine command, foretold the slavery
of the children OF Ham, you give him some very hard
thrusts, and leave him on the pages of your speech with
q character by no means so fair as that given him by the
sacred historian. Was Noah in the way of your theory,
that you strike at him so vigorously, as though you
would hew him down You say he mistook Canaan for
Ham. Suppose he did, the prediction and the curse rest
somewhere-on some nation. The principle is the same
in the Divine administration. Who are the children of
Canaan? Tradition and history unite in the belief that
they inhabit the continent Of Africa. Their condition
fulfls, with remarkable fidelity, the prophecy of that
righteous man and preacher of righteousness, ;" Noah.
"a servant of servants was the double curse, which has
is covered with a network of double slavery-every chief
having his retinue of slaves, while he pays tribute to
some higher chief or petty king.
You seem TO lay great stress upon the fact that the Ca
NANTES were not black. How do you know 2 DR..
Thompson, who has written, perhaps, the most thorough
work on Syria and Palestine that has ever been publish
cd, says the ancient Inhabitants of that country came
from Africa. The great painting of Samson grinding in
the mill shows his Phiistine drivers very dark, if not
black. But you miss the point of the S~criptural prece-
dent and example for slavery. You prove, as you think,
that the Canaanites were not black, and then Jump at
once to the conclusion that, if they were not black, they
must have been cnslavcd because they were Laboripg men.
This does very well to stir up prejudice at the North
but is it the TRUTH The Israeltes were permitted to en-
slave the Canaanites not because they were laboring men,
but because they were heather, and thereby so degraded
that n transfer to the Hebrew Commonwealth. where the