Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-01-26
rror ths Intellleencer.l

All fear mono aid you and fcw understRDd.'
The subscriber has very fainthopes that
great national calamities either can be or
will be averted. Yet,without being at all
sanguine of etfecting any good, am, dis
posed TO lay before your readers, the ma
ture reflections of mind as nearly Impair
tiaI as poor humanity eau ever hope to he.
War, whether intestine or foreign, is the
heaviest scourge that has ever afflicted
mankind since history lisped her first ac-
cents If NC, the Anglo Saxons of the
Union, were wise and virtuous people,
we might learn war no more. Where
could we find foreign enemy? If cor
tdially united, where is the Empire, King
dom or State bold enough to attack us
But we are not thus united, and to all hu-
man appearance. we arc about to realize
the fate of the house mentioned in Scrip
ture, divided against ITSELF Many sedate
and rejecting men begin to pronounce us
too wicked. too foolish people ever to
realize the high destiny which few years
ago, seemed to await US. Others profess
! to doubt the reality of the danger. Wnen
| so many lungs are putting, and so many
throats are believing for internecine strife,
to deny the reality and nearncss OF the
! danger would be to resemble the clown
mentioned by Adam Smith, who would not
! believe that q newly enclosed common
could ever produce wheat, because he had
never seen it produce that kind of grain.
! What is it that thus darkens our nation
! al prospects, that fills our political horizon
i with portentous clouds? Alas alas it
is the old story vamped up in new shape.
It is social and legal inequality, the utter
denial of all the rights of humanity to
part of the inhabitants of our common
country; in one word, the ehhorred do
minion of race over race.
In the fifteen Southern States of our
| confederacy are nearly four millions of
ipersons, who are SO far from possessing
! any rights Of property, that they are them
selves the absolute property of their mas
tiers. And it is the industrious imputation
of some feeling on the part of the North
cru people, uniriendly, or rather, not suf-
! ficiently fricdly, to this species of proper
tv, which now ConYulses the nation from
Maine to Florida, and from the shores of
the Chesapeake to the mouth of the Rio
! Graudc.
The question as to these cnslavcd mill
lions is great one. The subscriber has
not undertaken to deliver his own SEN
timents but to describe, as accurately
as possible, the opinions of the great
mass of enlightened northern men, on
the subject. They reason i'll this way
| The number of the slaves is so great, their
ignorance so gross, their habits of scrril-
ity and dependence are so fixed, that it is
extremely doubtful whether the rerilous
gift ofliberty, by immediate emancipation,
would prove to them q curse or II blessing.
Add to this their restitution of property,
their absence of all training i'll the school
of liberty, and their prospects after imme-
diate emancipation would not seem to be
very aattcring. After emancipation, how
are the new freemen to be treated? Is the
elective franchise to be granted to them or
denied them? AS the actions of freemen
cannot he controlled like those of slaves,
if denied the elective franchise they would
probably meet aud clamor for that privi-
lege If invested with it they would
probably form parties and factions des-
tructive of the peace of the common
wealth. Mr.. Jefferson, the first great adj
vocute of emancipation, uses the following
| language. "Deep-roOted prejudiceS enter
tanned by the whites; ten thousand recOl-
lections by the blacks, of the injuries they
have sustained; new provOcations; the real
distinctions which nature has made, and
many other circumstances, will divide us
into parties and produce commissions,
which will probably never end but in the
determination of the one or the other
race" Notes on Virginia, page Goa. So
impressed was that great statesman with
these considerations, that he proposed to
use the public navy in the deportation and
colonization of the blacks at the public
expense. See same page of the same
work. Whether this reasoning is we'll or
i'll founded, it at least prevents any inter
ference by the rejecting and wcll-intormed
citizens of the Northern and Western
States with the subject of slavery as it
exists in the Southern States. If The sub
,lNk r3,1
if we were not excited by never ccasing
threats of altering our own situation for
the worse, by the destruction of our ma
tional government, we should be very
! backward and delicate even about giving
advice in the matter. When man has
the misfortune to have 81 deep seated ulcer
on his person, the less his neighbors say to
him about it, the better. In one respect
the Northern men are continually and it
seems to me, Systematically misrepresent-
; ed by the orators and editors of the South.
Our aversion to slavery is attributed to
sectional feeling, to hostility and malig
nifty towards our Southern fellow-citiZens.
This is just as true as any story in Sinbad
the Sailor, orsGulliver's travels. Our OPP
position to the extension of slavery has
truer and better foundation. Amongst
intelligent and rejecting men ut the
North, the opinion is universal, thnt.sla-
very u injurious, is baneful to national
greatness, wealth, strength and prosper
ity. That while it is perfectly consis-
tent with the collection of great rich
es in the hands of n few individuals,
its sure and uuvarying attendants are
national and social weakness, indulgence
and adversely. Can any man treading the
soil of Virginia, or any man treNding the
soil of Ohio doubt the truth of these pro
positions. The latter State, seventy two
years after her first settlement, with forty
this day, two millions and half Of free
white inhabitants; the former, with sixty
three thousand square miles, two hundred
md tirt- .thran rnars aEtar her Erst scttla-