The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-03-24


pect to see practical revival of the abhorred
African slave trade, accompanied by clamor-
GUS demand on the part of the Southern ultras
for its legalization but the idea of dissolving
the Union, which the friends of the slave
trade have ultimately in view, is as impos-
sible of execution as it is traitorous in design.
They cannot hope for the cooperation of the
Northern slave States, and profess not to desire
it. They demand confederacy of the Gulf
States, and hatter themselves that they will be
all the more safe and secure in the possession
of their slaves by having slave States north of
them. Their programme contemplates the con-
quest of Mexico, Cuba, and Central America,
out of which grand slaveholding confederacy
is to be carved, based on Slavery and the slave
trade; and the political Quixotes expect to
rule the world through its love for the tropical
Injuries.
The folly of these expectations is so conspic-
nous as scarcely to require pointing out; and
the undoubting faith with which they are re-
ceived throughout several States of the Union
can only be explained by a recurrence to the
fact that the press is as completely fettered In
those States as in Austria. The consequence
is, that the gasconade and arrogance for which
certain parts of the South are distinguished,
have been fostered and encouraged until the
people really believe what the demagogues tell
them, viz: that the slaveholding States are the
very strength and bufwark of the COnfederacy !;
and that they hold the commerce and prosperity
of nations in their hands. No man dare dis
pute these vainglorious boasts, and hence the
prevalence Of conceit and presumption to de-
gree which may one day bring the most terrible
calamities upon the Southern people.
A slaveholding confederacy would consti-
tute one of the weakest nations in the world.
1t would become at once dependent on Eng
land or France, and would be the last nation
on this continent which would attempt to in
wade the territorial rights of its neighbors. The
tone of the British Government towards such
confederacy would be very different from that
in which it addresses the powerful Confederacy
of which the free States constitute the bulwark.
Cotton, instead of being treated as a King,
would find itself in the condition of vassal
to those whom its producers now arrogantly
assume to be dependent on it for commercial
and manufacturing prosperity; and the idea
that such nation could reopen the slave trade,
in defiance of the civilized world, is chimerical
to the last degree. If the Southern Confede-
racy should be composed Of the Gulf States,
merely, it would leave the more northern slave
States in a meager minority in the Northern
Confederacy; the abolition of Slavery would
follow as necessary consequence; and the
effect of abolition in these would render the
longer continuance of Slavery in the Gulf
States impossible.
The revival of the African slave trade in
the Gulf States, by supplying the demand for
labor at one-thrd the rates which are now paid
for slaves, cannot fail to produce the most Sc
rious injury to all the older slave States which
breed large surplus Of negroes for sale, and
whose citizens now derive large share of their
revenue from that source. 1t is highly profit
able to breed negroes in Virginia for the
Southern market, when the prices range from
a thousand to two thousand dollars but the
rates at which they can be supplied from the
coast of Africa would be ruinous to the domes-
tic trade. The shareholders of the older States
are bound by their love of Slavery, and by their
interest in maintaining the present high prices
for negroes, to oppose the revival of the Afri-
can slave trade. No people in the Union are
so interested in maintaining the law as il is,
as the class of large shareholders.
But there is reason to believe that the de-
mon of sel6shness and tyranny, which they
have called mp for their own especial benefit,
may turn against them. Demagoguism is ap-
pealing to the cupidity of the middle and lower
classes, and arousing in them a spirit Of ambi-
ton to elevate themselves, according to South
ern ideas, by acquiring slaves to serve them.
Every citizen a Shareholder" is the motto of
the new party; and no party could desire more
popular appeal than this is, when addressed to
the Southern people.
The large shareholders are therefore in great
danger of losing their wealth in slaves and
their monopoly in slaveholding. 1t may be
that they are to be the first great sufferers from
the triumph of Slavery over the laws of God
and man and it is not improbable that they
will be the first to appeal to the North, and to
the great Republican party, to save them from
the consequences of an excess of Pro-Slavery
sentiment, which they, by their own persistent
teaching, first implanted in the breasts of the
people.
Here, then, we fatter ourselves that great
and radical issue is TO arise in the South, upon
the subject of Slavery. The large slavehold
ers, the commercial and manufacturing class
es, and the men Of integrity and humanity, will
take sides against the revival of the foreign
slave trade, which the demagogues, appealing
to the masses, will demand, in the name of that
species of equality which is implied in the mot
to, Every citizen a Shareholder" 1t is the
Southern version of the socialistic creed, which
promises to "give everybody everything :" it
is potent watchword in community where
the people have been thoroughly schooled in
The 6endish morality which teaches that "black
men have no rights which white men are bound
TO respects" and the great shareholders will find
it impossible to resist its influence upon the
people, if left to their own unaided efforts.
The question here arises, what will the North
say to the practical revival of the slave trade /?
Its legalization is impossible, without the con-
sent of the free States; and we may set it down
as morally impossible that that consent can be
given. But its revival, in spite of the laws
which condemn it as piracy, we have shown to
be practical and probable, so long as an AID
ministration dependent upon the slave power
has charge of the Federal Government.
VIII the North permit this new influx of Af
rican barbarism. The South is not alone in