The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-08-11

trade. LDaL money WAS buUSCElUcQ tOf the DUST
ness and that it would be extremely difficult in
that part of the country, to get grand jury to
find an Indictment, or to get conviction from
petit Jury; that he was amazed at the senti-
ment generally pervading that part of the coun-
try and that we had no conception of it here.
think that anybody who has read of the move
ment led by Mr.. Yancey of Alabama, and other
gentlemen in that part of the country, viii come
to this conclusion that there is party, mainly
in the Gulf States extending through q portion
of the Southern States, in favor of reopening
the slave trade; and these doctrines have been
avowed during the present session of Congress,
by gentlemen representing that section of the
Union, in the other branch of Congress.
Mr.. HAMMOND. 1 am not at all, nor is any
portion of the South liable for the impressions
which any person travelling through the South
may form. There is no sort of doubt that few
persons in the South, some of them highly re-
spectacle, wish to open the African slave trade;
but from what knowledge have myself, and
from what knowledge l have received, and /
have been active in inquiry, my opinion is, that
''nine-tenths of the people of the South are ut
terly opposed to it; and l think the more the
subject is discussed, the fewer will be the num-
Der who are in favor of reopening the slave
trade will inform the Senator from Massa-
chusetts of one fact of which / supposed he
was cognizant: that during the past week the
grand jury in Savannah has found true bills in
two different cases against persons whom it
was alleged had participated in the African
slave trade"
Mr.. Hammond is a great STAKEHOLDER, and, like
most of his class, is opposed to the opening of a
trade which would reduce the value of his prop
erty But it is most evident that the strength OF
his own opinion against that trade, misled him
in respect to the actual sentiment and to the tend
If onfsu OF fhn Snr.fh He n
possibly express himself to-day, with the conf
dence which he displayed on the 10th of Febru-
airy. At that time, he repudiated, and with APP
parent resentment, the suggestion that Southern
grand juries would refuse to find indictments for
violations of the laws against the slave trade.
Since that time, a trial jury in his own State has
acquitted the officers and crew of the Echo, who
were taken fagrante delieto; and at this day. it is
admitted that nowhere at the South is it possible
to obtain convictions for similar offences.
Mr.. Hammond was mistaken, as to the condi-
ton of Southern sentiment at the time when he
spoke, but still more mistaken as to the course
and tendency of Southern sentiment Mr.. Craw-
ford who declared that the slave-trade question
was gro,0ing stronger and stronger" and would
soon make and unmske parties and platforms at
the South, understood that matter it is evident,
good deal better than Mr.. Hammond did Mr.
Crawford is politician who belongs to the pres
ent day and generation. Mr.. Hammond, recalled
to public life from long retirement upon his
plantation, belongs to the past
Nevertheless, if the present and recent condi-
ton of public sentiment at the South is not what
MIR. Hammond, in February, supposed it to be, it
certainly was so at period notremote. The South
ern feeling in favor of the slave trade, to what
ever extent it actually exists, is certainly a
new thing under the sun, although it may have
resulted from train of causes which have been
in operation good while. If it has been long
at work out of sight, the disorder has, at any
rate, broken out suddenly; so suddenly, indeed,
that the existence of it is hardly yet realized.
Nor is it necessary to be true, in order that we
should suffer all that we possibly can suffer from
the evil, that the slave-trade sentiment should
get possession of the whole South, or even of
major part of the South II that sentiment be-
comes predominant in any one State so situated
as to carry on the trade, the mischief is done
But the actual case is that the whole tier of
States upon the Gulf of Mexico is infected and
this being so. the African slave trade may wax
and flourish, be the predicament of public opin-
ion, in Virginia, Maryland, or even South Caro-
lima, what it may. 1t is the region upon the
Gulf which wants more slaves than it raises, and
the evil becomes formidable indeed, when the
people of that region with its vast stretch of sea
coast, determine to receive cheap slaves from
slave States.
The movement at the South in favor of the
slave trade, although new and sudden, is, after
all, only logical and necessary result of the
ideas which have been propagated in that quar-
ter during the last twenty-five years. When
the old ground, unanimously maintained by the
revolutionary fathers, that Slavery was great
evil, to be endured only until it could be got rid
of by safe and practicable methods, was aban-
4 IL. - NJ. III 4.
the institution was positive good, establishing
the best relations between capital and labor, and
beneficial alike to both parties to it, movement
in favor of the African slave trade could not be
long postponed. In no respect more objection
able, and in many respects vastly less so, than
the slave trade between Virginia and the Gulf
States, it has the powerful recommendation of the
greater cheapness in the cost of the commodity
dealt in, and this relative cheapness has been
continually on the increase, the price of slaves
in Virginia having more than duplicated within
quarter of a century.
Of late years, also, schemes of ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
looking to the double objects of control in the
Union so long as the Union may endure, and of
laying the foundations for a powerful slave
holding empire upon the Gulf of Mexico in the
event of the disruption of the Union, have taken
possession of the Southern mind; and to these
schemes, in anything like the development and
proportions designed by those who cherish them
the revival of the African slave trade seems to
be essential Slavery cannot exist without slaves
and it, as Mr. Crawford of Georgia supposes, the
slaveholding section is to absorb the whole of
Mexico, quite to Guatemala, within fifteen years.
or within three times that period, it only be
done by fresh impOrtations of negroes In no
other way is it possible considering that free
white laborers multiply more rapidly than negro
slaves, to prevent such prior occupation by free
institutions of so much of the continent as re-
mains to be occupied, as will confine slavery
within territorial limits, not susceptible as yet
of precise demarkation, but discernible, never
theless, with sufficient defniteness and distinct
ness, to alarm politicians proverbial for their far
sighted anticipation of future events
AS a matter of fact the African slave trade
with the United States, is now actually reopened
after being closed for half century. The current
information of the day leaves no room to doubt
that cargoes of slaves are being landed from time
to time in the Gulf States, and that preparations
are being made to enter upon the traffic in good
earnest and upon large scale. The conditions
exist, which render the continuance and expan-
sion of the traffic inevitable. There is a market
for the subject-matter of the traffic, offering a
profit vastly exceeding the risk In fact the
risk is reduced TO the small one of capture upon
the high seas by the public vessels of the United
States, and it is now certain that such capture
involves only the loss of ship and cargo, unat-
tended with danger of personal punishment to
the parties concerned. If the cargo is once
landed, the risk is ended, and the venture reali-
zed. Southern newspapers contain advertise
ments from responsible planters, offering so much
per head for imported Africans. The interposi-
ton of legal authority has become abortive. Law
according to our frame of Government, is only
enforceable through the instrumentalty of juries,
and Southern iuries reflect not the law hu1 the
humors and pfejudices of the vicinage In the
case of the Echo, taken with a full cargo of ne
groes on board there was not merely not con-
viction, but an absolute acauittal A failure TO