Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-01-10
Nnrnnsidnrntc Snnth.

all their own wav. Noconsideratc South
ern man ought to ask or expect more than
this. How could we possibly be active in
pursuing and selling poor trembling fugI-
tiYes and returning them to their horrible
doom. The opinion is prevalent in the
free States, that the reclaimed fugitive is
severely whipped or sold South, or that he
suffers both these punishments. The
BUSINESS of slave-hunting and slavc-catch-
ing is more and more at war with the
ideas of the nineteenth century. | have
in one instance seen the picture of despair
in the visage of poor wretch carried, IN
chains, along the highways of free Ohio,
and may God in mercy preserve my eyes
from ever being blasted by such another
sight. Our reluctance to engage i'll such
work is invincible, and amounts to total
incapacity. to utter inability. But tins
reluctance argues no i'll will to the South.
1t exists in full force in the hearts and
minds of men who love the whole Union,
Including the South, rs Englishmen love
England, or as Frcnchmen love France, or
,VirCinians Virginia. This feeling of re-
pugnance is not peculiar to the free States,
it exists in Virginia itself. In fact, in gem
erous minds it exists everywhere. And
everywhere the wretches who can, for
money, be hired to engage in the business
of slave-calching, are the scum of earth,
the bascst of the human race. For suit
able consideration, such men could be
hired to handle the dagger and the torch.
Had Africa made earlier advances in
civilization, the rich soil of the South
would have been polluted by the footsteps
of no sooty slave. Then the whole state
of feeling between the two sections, might
have been reversed. Had the Northern
men captured and enslayed some tribe of
in n
have proceeded South in search of their
fugitive slaves. Charleston in particular
would have been utterly memorable on the
subject. And the Arctic slave hunter
would soon find it prudent to retire.
When listen to the inflated rhetoric, the
exaggerated CenSurcS, the bitter reproach-
es, the stern mcnaccs of Southern mem
bers of Congress directed against US on
their subject of fugitive slaves, they seem
to me to be upbraidimg us simply for being
men, with the feelings, sympathics and
instincts of men. While VIC continue to
be men we cannot be other than we arc
To us, their rhetoric resembles that of
those who scold the ocean for heavifig or
the winds for blowing. If we were other
than we are, if our morality were of Il
lower and bnser tone, we could not exhibit
the rapid advances in strength, i'll prosper
ity, in oPULgNCE, which are making the
free States of this Union, the wonder and
admiration of the world. would like to
say to those rabid Southern orators that
the malignity, the hatred, the ity
which they so wildly describe, have no
existence except in their own heated imag-
nations, or at the very worst, only in tho
minds of IL few ignorant, uncultivated
fanatics, not amounting to one per cent. of
our population l would like to say to
our Southern fellow-citiZens, that we are
always "to their faults little blind, aud
to their virtues very kind" If the limits
of this paper would permit, it would be a
pleasant task to show how religion, laws,
language, history, common origin, con-
sanguinity bind the men of the North to
the men of the South, in ten thousand en-
dearing ties, that are not easily worn out
or broken asunder. But this essay is al
ready long enough. Perhaps the subject
will be resumed in future numbers. My
only object is to show my Southern kins-
men how they may preserve and retain the
friendship and goodwill of those millions
of men, who, in the Northern and Western
States, are rapidly building up power in
comparison with which all other powers
at present existing or disclosed in history
look insignificant and dwarlish. To show
them that this vast aggregation of men
can only be turned into enemies by the
most dcplornble and inexcusable plumbers.
~ Son OF THE OLD DOMINION.