The Yazoo Democrat. [volume] (Yazoo City, Miss.) 1858-18??, 1860-01-28

GENTLEMEN | thank you TOR the honor
of your invitation. The citizens of llaverr
hill, who mean to be loyal to the Constitu-
ton, do well in holding meeting for the
"Union," to give expression to national
sentiments, and avow their unalterable pur'
pose to exert their strongest efforts to secure
the peace and prosperity of the States"
If the voting majority in the recent cleo
tions express the real sentiment of Massa-
chusetts, she has been recediug from the
Union for eight years. She cannot stand
still. She must either go farther or come
back to her ancient pledge to abide by the
Union and the Constitution. The history
Of morals and politics has never exhibited a
more glazing paradox than now exists be-
tween the professions and the practice of the
apparent majority in Massachusetts,. They
are irritating and dividing the South to the
verge of disunion, by making war upon her
slave labor, while they are growing upon
the manufacture of slave labor cotton and
the sale of brogans and New England
notions" to slave owners. The county OF
Middlesex spins more slave cotton, and the
county of Essex sells more shoes to slave
owners than any other like number of peo-
pie in the working world; and, at the same
time, their protested morals and religion,
and their actual politics, preaching, htera>
ture and lectures hold forth as the FREEDOMS
nant article of every creed; hatred to the
South" ono anon acih Shareholders"
The sources of all this difficulty is, that
there has been fostered among us false
sentiment, almost amounting to a disease
that Massachusetts, has right to enjoy all
the benefits of the Union without the cor
responding duty of enforcing any obliga-
ton of the Constitution which she may not
like. Hence the notification laws in our
statute book. And further, that having no
slave property herself, she has right, as
member of this Union, by all manner Of
interference with the slave States, to render
their tenure of that property SO uncertain
and dangerous as to compel them to abandon
| it iu the Union, or 90 out Of the Union in
order to protect it and themselves from
Northern aggressions. In other words, the
doctrine of all our tea5hers Of anti slavery
is this, and we have just seen its practical
results, viz: That the people of the free
States have the personal and combined right,
| by all acts, means and words that they can
use for that purpose, to incite sedition and
serviIe war in a slaYeholding State-tbat
they have right to use all means to de-
prive the owners of slaves Of their labor,
and that it is honest and religious and Chris
tan and patriotic to attempt to free the
slave against law and Constitution, while at
the same time under the Constitution We are
to continue to enjoy the free use of the pro,
ducts of slave labor and the profits Of slave
markets as the main sources of our material
prosperity and of the comfort and elevation
Of our own free labor
The plain common sense of New England
men, if they would but reflect must revolt
at this monstrous Inconsistency. MasSachu
sets, if she means to be honest, must either
relnquish the profits she lives upon, derived
from slave labor aud slave markets, aud the
Union with it, or she must practically rec.
ognizc the obligations of the Constitution
which guarantees to Virginia the right to
keep and reclaim slaves as clearly as Massa.
chusotts the right to spin cotton aud peg
shoes, or to keep and bear arms. 1t is i'm
possible for Massachusetts to maintain her
self respect or the respect of the world,
while, with her loud professions of extreme
moral constituencies at the existence of slave
ry in the South, she continues to erich
herself and support her working men and
working women by the use Of slave labor
and slave markets With her mouth sh,
speaketh great things against slavery, bu
with her hands she fills our pockets Will
the profits of that which she sentimental,
calls "the unrequited labor of the slave" y
She groans over the milisns of human
beings in bondage at the South, and at tn
same time, with her capital, herself employ
in the South some three hundred Thousand
slaves to raise the cotton she requires t
run her spiudles and freight her ships
The contemplative shoemaker on his benc
verify believes he is doing God service whel
he denounces slavery and sympathizes wit
the murderer John Brown; but he does no
contemplate that the comforts of his famil
and his own support depend more or les
upon the sale of the shoes he is making
the shareholders of the South. Must W
not, then, as people, if we would be decent
consistent in morals and religion, either lie
alone the slavery of the South, as we hav
sworn to do under the Constitution, or l.
alone the use of all products and profits {
slave labor as the means Of our own materii
, prosperity.
Bring this home, and we see what praC
teal test it would be Of the consistency
the North demanding of the South the sac
rifce of her slave labor. 1t simply require
of Massachusetts, that she shall stop all he
, spindles, shut up her shoeshops, haul u
her ships and 60 into insolvency pretty ez
tensively, and then wait just generation {
two until free labor can be forced to rails
cotton enough to set them going again.
| If we are to have no honest union wit
shareholders, under pretence of not partial
. ing of their sins, the North must do all thi
: which is even less than she demands of ii
e South, when she requires her to abando
d her thousand millions of property investe
+. in slave labor, and utterly impoverish, if ne
S exterminate one generation Of whites in ii
, process Of the doubtful experiment Of sui
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