The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1860-09-20


tence in the same couse has been en-
tirely unnecessary and unjustifable.
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Can
ada, what remains of Mexico, all the
West Indies and Central America, are
doubtless very desirable, but We have
patiently waited for them, and are now
likely to wait until they can be acquired
without receiving slavery with them,
or extending it over them. Nay, all
the resistance we have ever met in ad-
ding Spanish American territories to
our Republic, has resulted from our
willful and preverse purpose of SUBJ
verting freedom there, to blight the
fairest portion of our earth, when we
found it free, by extending over it our
only national agency of desolation.
We may doubtless persist still further.
We may add conquest to conquest, for
resistance to our ambition daily grows
more and more impossible, until we
surpass in extent and apparent strength
the greatest empires of ancient or mod
ern times, all the while enlarging the
area of African bondage but after our
already ample experience, / think no
one will be bold enough to deny that
we equally increase the evils OF dis
content and the dangers of domestic
faction.
citizens, while / lament the
nations divergence l have thus de-
scribed, l do not confess it to be alto
gether inexcusable. Much less do
blame any one or more of our politi-
clans or parties, while exempting others
All are, in different degrees, perhaps,
responsible alike, and all have abun-
dant, if not altogether adequate excus-
es. Deviation once begun, without
realizing the immediate presence of
danger, it was easier to continue on
than to return. The country has all
the time been-growing richer and more
prosperous and populous. 1t was not
unnatural that we should disregard
warnings of what we were assured by
high though interesting authorities, al
ways were distant, improbable, and
even visionary dangers. 1t cannot be
denied that the African races among
us are abject, although their condition,
and even their presence here are due
not to their will or fault, but to our
own, and that they have direct inter-
est in the question of slavery. How
natural has it been to assume that the
motive of those who have protested
against the extension of slavery, was
an unnatural sympathy with the negro
instead of what it always has really
been, concern for the welfare of the
white man. There are few, indeed,
who ever realize that the whole human
race suffers somewhat in the Affections
and calamities which befall the hum
blest and most dispised of its men,
bers.
The argument, though demanding
the most dispassionate calmness and
kindness, has too often been conducted
with anger and broken out in violence.
Moreover, alarms of disunion were
sounded, and strange political inven-
tions like the floating fire ships sent
down the ST. Lawrence, by the besieged
in Quebec, to terrify the army of Wolfe
on the Island of st. Louis, appeared
suddenly before as whenever we pro-
posed to consider in good earnest, the
subject of Federal slavery.
We love and ought to love the fel-
lowship of our slaveholding brethren.
How natural, therefore, has it been to
make the concessions so necessary to
silence their complaints, rather than by
seeming impracticability in what was
thought a matter of Indifference, to
lose such genial companionship. Again
at least, present peace and safety, to-
gether with some partial guarantees and
concessions of freedom, were from
time to time obtained by compromises.
Who had the right, or who the pre-
sumption to say with the certainty of
being held responsible for casting impu-
tations of bad faith upon our Southern
brethren, that these compromises would
when their interests should demand it,
be disavowed and broken?
Other nations, we have assumed, are
jealous of our growing greatness.
They have cehsured us, perhaps with
unjust asperity, for our apostacy in ia
vor Of slavery. How natural and even
patriotic has it been on our part to man
ifest by persistence, our contempt and
defiance of such interested and hostile
animadversions. Besides, though slave
ry is indeed now practically loca
and peculiar institution of. the SoOh
it was not long ago the habit and prac
tice of the whole American people. Il
is only twenty-five years since ouI
T British brethren abolished slavery in
their colonies, and only half century
since we or any European nation inter
dicted the African slave trade. Scarce
ly three generations have passed away
since the subject Of the wrongfulness
of slavery first engaged the considera
ton of mankind.
!, You and / indeed understand now
very well, how it is, that slavery in tht
: Territories of the United States, is lef
!, open by the Constitution 10 our utmos
peaceful opposition, while within thu
, slave States, it is entrenched behin(
: local Constitutions beyond the reach o
} external legislation. But the subjec
is complex one, and the great masses
of the people to whom it has only beer
recently presented, and doubtlessl.
, often presented, under unfavorable cir
: cumstances, might we'll desire time fo