The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1860-02-09

senffng tBefr poiiSy uyy tnoe tno SAoSsfSn W
,uch candidate will be cause for the dissolu-
tion of the Union. f Aeat
In the month of August, 1870, twsnty African
bondmen were borne into the waters OF Virginia.
At jamestown, in 1870, began that system OF
human slavery in America, which now, in 1860,
haughtily assumes to mould and fashion the pol
icy Of the nation to expand itself over the vast
possessions Of, the Republic TO repress the in
born right of the freedom of speech and of the
press to arrest and to imprison, to scourge and
to Danish American citizens for entertaining,
cherishing, and uttering, the sentiments of the
great statesmen of the North and of the South,
who carried as through the Ere and blood OF
the Observation-Disclosures whose names are for
ever associated with national Independence and
constitutional freedom.
This system of African slavery, planted on The
shores Of Virginia, grew and spread over Amer
lea under the colonial and commercial policy OF
England. Encouraged by British legislation, and
fostcred by royal favor, the merchants of Eng
land transported from the shores of Western At
RIGA, TO the thirteen British colonies, from the
middle of the seventeenth century to lT76, more
than three hundred thousand of the children OF
Africa. The Golfers of her merchants were filled
with gold, soiled with the blood of these hapless
bondmen. For nearly two centuries the party oil
the slave trade controlled the Government, and
directed the policy of England. Kings and
queens, lords and commons judges, attorneys
general, and bishops, all gave to the traffic In
the bodies Of men their persistent support. Par
lament pronounced "the trade highly adyan-
tageous to the kingdom and its colonies" Queen
Anne instructed the Governor of New York and
New Jersey q to give due encouragement to the
Royal African Company" The merchants and
manufacturers clamored for the extension and
protection of the African slave traffic; and when
the charter of the Royal African Company ex-
PRED, in l749, the ports of Africa, for thirty de-
grees, from Cape Blanco to Loango st. PauPs
'1ere thrown open to the free competition of Brit
SD commerce. Under this colonial and COM
mercial policy of England, the traffic in the
bodies of men, between the coasts of Africa and
the Spanish, French, and British colonies in the
western world, expanded into gigantic proper
tons, and slavery spread and increased with
such fearful rapidity, that the American colonies
were startled and appalled, and " laws designed
to restrict importations of slaves" says Bancroft,
" are scattered along the records of colonial leg
islation." To check their importation, Virginia
imposed a tax but " the African Company OBJ
tanned the repeal of the law" The British
Government" says Madison, " constantly check
ed the attempts of Virginia to put stop TO this
Internal traffic" Ogethrope, the founder of
Georgia, forbade slavery but the merchants
got the Government to sanction slavery thers"
Even South Carolina, for attempting to restrict
the slave traffic received the rebuke of the Brit
ish Government, which steadily and relentlessly
resisted all colonial sction tending to check the
inhuman traffic IN the souls and bodies of men.
Up to the hour of national independence, the Gov
eminent of England sternly rejected all colonial
restrictions upon slavery and the slave trade and
persisted in the policy of forcing that trade upon
all her colonies, which were q not allowed in
the words of the Earl Of Dartmouth in l775, {" to
check or discourage, in any degree, a traffic so
beneficial to the nation" British avarice plant
ed slavery in America British legislation nur-
tured aud sustained it; and British statesmen
sanctioned and guarded it.
In spite, however, of the avarice of the men
who guided the commercial and colonial policy
of England, in spite of the potent influences of
the statesmen who s@ayed the councils of the
Throne, the slave trade and slavery found sturdy
opponents in England and America. In the mid
die OF the eighteenth century, years before Gran
Vile Sharpe brought James Somerset before the
Kings Bench-twenty years before Lord Mans
field pronounced that immortal opinion, which
reversed the joint opinion of York and Talbot
that a slave coming into Great Britain doth not
become free" and made it forever impossible for
slaves to breathe the air of England-John Wool
man traversed America, proclaiming to Christian
men that the practice of continuing men in sla-
very was not right :" that "liberty was the nat
ural right of all men equally" This early apos-
tie of emancipation found MANY slave masters on
the banks of the Hudson, the Delaware, and the
Potomac, who encouraged the emancipation of
the bondmen, because they had no contract for
their labor, and liberty was their right During
the years of agitation and discussion, from the
treaty of Paris in 1852 to the opening dawn of the
Revolution at Lexington-years, during which the
rights of the colonies and the rights OF man were
discussed with mastery power by the most
gifted minds OF America, the popular leaders in
New England, the middle colonies and Virginia,
did not fail to see and to acknowledge the wrong
fulness of slavery and to denounce the slave tra-
fc and the slavery extending policy of the British
Government The records of those days of trial
and of glory will bear to all coming time the
amplest evidence that the men who inaugurated
the Revolution, carried America from colonial
dependence to national independence, were not
only hostile to the slave trade, but to the per-
petual existence of slavery ITSELF
When tbs fret Congress assembled in 1774,
tue humanity of the colonies, long depressed and
baffied by the power of England, found utterance
That assemblage of ilustrious men declared that
God never intended part of the human race
to hold property in, and unbounded power over
others !" that they would not import slaves, or
buy slaves imported by Others" These illustri-
Gus statesmen framed the articles of association
which united the colonies in federative Union.
By the second article of that bond of union the
slave trade was prohibited and that prohibition
of the inhuman trs ffic in man was sustained by
the men of the North and the men of the South,
and by the colonies of the North and of the South
Thus did the slave trade, which jefferson after
wards, in the original draft of the Declaration,
branded as an execrable commerce." "pirati-
cal warfare" receive the condemnation of the
men who accepted the bloody issues of civil war
in defence of their perilied liberties.
When the Declaration of independence was
proclaimed, nearly half million OF men were
held In bondage in America. Influenced by the
rising spirit of liberty, by the awakened sense OF
the natural rights of man, which had found ut
terance in the charter of independence, the
Northern States early adopted measures tending
| to emancipation. Nor were efforts for the eman-
| cipaton of the bondmen confined to the North
ern States Jefferson and Wythe, commissioned
to revise the laws Of Virginia after the peace oil
1888, prepared plan of gradual emancipation
but timid counsels prevailed, and the Old Do
minion failed to take her place in the list of free
Commonwealth. Timidity, the soriid spirit OF
gain, the lust and pride of the privileged class
not the Humane sentiments of Washington and
Henry, Jefferson and Wythe, Mason and Ran.
dolph-controlled the policy of that great State
But Mr.. Jefferson, in letter to Dr. Price of Eng.
land, in lfs5, thus spoke of the cause of eman.
cipation in Virginia
the next State 10 which we NAV turn our eyes fo
the interesting spectacle OF justice conflict , ara,ice an.
Preiona conflict wherein sacred side is daily gauin
recruits from the influx into Office young grown M
and growing These have sucked principles of lib
crty as il were, with their mothers and il is TO then
look with anxiety to turn the fate Of the question:
When the Convention assembled in May, 1887
to frame the Constitution of the United States
Massachusetts was a free Commonwealth TIL
foot of the slave no longer pressed the rock O
| Plymouth, nor the hallowed sods of Lexington
Concord, or Bunker Hill. Other Northern State
had taken measures for ultimate emancipation
but slavery, in its modified form, still fingered il
| the NORTH In the whole country, nearly six hun