The weekly Mississippian. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1859-1864, 1860-04-11
The Slave Trade.

SuppreSSlng the slave trade nrSt, Dy mOOl-
flying the Treaty of 1912, which requires
eighty guns to be maintained on the coast so
as to substitute small steamers end &st-sail-
ing brigs and schooners second, the adoption
of some system with other maritime powers,
by which the nationality of suspected vessels
might be established, and requiring officers to
be sustained for discharging their duty in aba
ting this traffic third, recommending nego-
tiations for making the African slave-trade
crime against international law.-Nea0 York
Tribune.
A similar movement to the one here recor
died. has been made in the Senate by Wilson
and others, of Massachusetts,, proving that the
Unsuitable and implacabe enemies of the South
are not satisfied with the unconstitutional
and oppressive measures which have already
been taken to abolish the slave trade, and thus
indirectly to place the institutions of the South
under the ban of the Federal Government,
but that they demand additional legislation
still more grevious to the Southern people.
Since the subject has been introduced, we
hope that there are members from the South
who will have the holiness to give it a thorough
constitutonality and oppressiveness of the
system of federal legislation concerning it. 1t
is clearly demonstrate that the laws inter-
dieting the slave trade and condemning it as
piracy, have no foundation either in the in
tention of the trainers of the constitution or in
the language or spirit of that instrument and
that the grant of authority to prohibit the
trade so far from emanatng from the Constitu-
ton, is entirely suppositious, and is in truth
! defieco 3 eeuf'sUssasaanAana..--
until 1903, for the benefit of such States as
might desire to prosecute it
We repeat that the acts of Congress which
associate in the eye of the law the institutions
of the South with piracy are unccn-
stitutional ab initio, being founded on no
grant Of power but only on a limitation Of poW-
err. Resting on that shado,O Of a shade they
have been made the basis of new code
which condemns as pirates all those who buy
and sell negroes.
The federal laws punish with death those
who trade in African born negroes or any ne
groes introduced into the United States since
1903, but they do not demand the pirates
punishment for those who trade in American
born negroes. The new code ofmorals, how
ever founded on these laws, makes both classes
of shareholders equally guilty-the holder of
African born negro slaves, and American born.
In moral point of view there is no differ
ence between the buying the selling or the
holding of negro slaves wherever born, at
home or abroad. If one be criminal they are
all so. If one be piracy, the institution of
negro slavery itself is piracy, as they are all
| incident to the institution. But that institu-
ton cannot be criminal except when abused. |
To attach criminaity to it, as the federal laws
do, is bare-faced impeachment of the Deity !
race, and servitude to the white mar his nor
NAL condition.
The immense number of valuable lives, and
millions upon millions of dollars expended on
the pestilential coasts of Africa under the |
stipulations of the treaty of 1912, are eloquent |
arguments in favor Of the abrogation of that
treaty but it will be seen that the expendi-
ture of men and money under its pro-
visions are not yet large enough to satisfy the
demands of our Northern enemies The treaty
was the result of British cupidity and cunning.
None knew better than British Statesmen
that the guilt Of piracy under the code of the
Great Jehovah does not attach in any manner
to the act of giving the negro better mas
ter in America than he had in Africa But
they know that unless they can break up ne
gro slavery in America, they never can mon
opolze the rich products Of tropical agriculture
with their hundred and fifty millions of East
India slaves. Hence they have put their
dupes, the fanatics, to work to impose on the
f'OUps0 UUae OF
morals which make the slave trade, or what
is the same thing, negro slavery, piracy, and
to impose upon them the treaty of 1912, into
the sanction of which our government was
shamefully wheedled. That infamous treaty,
and all laws on our statute books of CORES
ponding spirit and tenor, ought to be repealed.
The people of the northern States not entirely
given over to fanaticism, would cheerfully
lend helping hand in expunging them, if the
negro question in all its bearings were under
stood by them. But they have yet to learn
the first lesson in ethnology, that the negro is
not white man with black skin, that he has
no innate love for liberty, and never can be
free either in Africa or America
This negro issue in all its phases, must be
met at once, and met resolutely. The peo-
pie of the South, through their representa-
tives in the. federal Legislature, must assert
theirrights without hesitation or equivocaton.
1t will be difficult for the northern people to
regard shareholders and slavetraders (half the
southern people trade in slaves directly or in ,
Directly as their moral and religious equals
or to treat them as such, so long as the south
ern people tamely permit their own govern
ment to brand them as pirates, or no better
than pirates, or something worse.