The Placer herald., 1861-02-09
The National Crisis-No Q,

| state ~ tuoueanu years scarCeiy ieaVeo d
foot print in its material progress, and yet
science teaches that its present organization
is the result of regular chemical, vegetable,
and mineral progression, ,-step by STEP
from the granite rock, to vegetable fruitful
ness, and ihe elements which give birth to,
and austain animal life. The moral improve
ment of mankind, is almost as tardy in its
movements 1t takes an age to work an
idea into an accepted fact. individuals do
occasionally, make stride carrying them
beyond their contemporaries, but for this piece
of temerty, they are condemned to drink
from the poisoned cup to the tagot and stake,
the agonies of the cross or in more modern
times, denounced as dangerously insane. The
majority is against them, and therefore they
must be wrong. | have made these re
marks TO pave the way, for what some may
call heresies. The cupidtp of the founders
of European government in America, estab-
lished African slavery on this continent and
adjacent Islands of the Gulf of Mexico, AS
a part Of the common law thereof. This
truth is as deduceable from history, as the
existence of any of the laws of nations, that
have been established within the past three
hundred years. The African slave trade is
this day legitimate, save where it is inter
dicted, by and between, and as to, certain
nations by treaty compact. BY the laws of
nations it is Legitimate commercially trea
ty-to some, piracy. Who shall say, that
this is not one of the mysteries of moral
progression! We know tha; the African in
his own jungles is savage beast, slo;hfu!
and ignorant, besottel in his worship of
| ,le
pressing the weak, and accednG to such bar
baran rules in the government of their war
fare, as gives the lives and bodies of the con
quered to the unrestrained vii! of the con
queror. He is sold INTO American slavery
by his conqueror, as a matter CT tavor-tor
it is by the laws of those savages, equally
Just to cut his throat. Removed to the
plantations of America. his condition is
ameliorated and he improved. His gross
heather idolatrv, gives place to the light of
a more humanizing worship, his slothtnl vag
abond savage life, Is exchanged for habits of
industry and knowledge of the rudiments
of the science of agriculture His naked
ness is clad, and his hunger appeased with
plenty, and The horrible slavery of his own
country exchanged for a system, in which
his person is protected from injury, by laws,
and master given him, from race snperi-
or to his own, in morals, whose best interest
it is to attach him to his person and family,
by kind treatment, and preserve bin in
heath that the slave may labor, and he have
profit. Looking alone to the foregoing facts
and there cannot be any philanthrophy in
the movement the Northern man is making
against the system Of slavery in the United
States. His sympathy, he says, is for the
white race-he does not wish slave labor to
come in competition, with the free labor of
the white man. The field of labor within
this empire is in comparison to the supply,
ilIimtable-the great necessity of this con
tinent, is now, and has been for centuries,
labor. We invite it to our shores, from the
balance Of the world, we encourage it to
remain, by every reasonable nducement.
VIII the negro labor more when he is set
free than now? if he WILL then the compel
ton with white labor will be greater, and
the object sought by the Republican,, is in
that respect prostrated. Set the slaves OF
the south free and vast hordes Of them would
move into the northern States and their la
Dor would come in immediate contact with
white labor, and if receiving 20 his hands,
the result of his industry, quiclened bis en-
ergies beyond his present exertions, it would
be all the worse for the white laborer, adopt
ING their own theory, But experience shows,
that when set at liberty the negro will not
labor, even enough to supply bis actual pres
ent necessities. This is true in the West
Indies and wherever they are found in the
British possessions Of this continent, or in
the non -savehoding States of this Union,
of course there are individual exceptions
but this proves the rule What then would
be the result of making them free? it would
be to quarter upon the white race, vast hords
of slothful pifering vagabonds, whose main
tainance would become a bnr;hen upon the
white laborer. This would not long be
borne, and society to rid itself of such a
hurthen, would necessarily adopt rules, by
which the negro could be forced to labor
some system of peonage such as prevails
now in Mexico, and which is slavery in a
modified form. Thus then it is apparent,
that could the leading idea of the Republi
can be carried into practice at once, in ten
years from this time, instead of having but
half slave States in the Union, nearly every
State would have system Of slavery and
slaves.
But suppose you prevent this, by enacting
laws to prohibit the manumitted negro
from moving to the free States; you have
then hemmed them in, and all parties agree
that it is only a question of time, when by
reason of the more rapid ncreose of the
blacks over the whites, the latter by force of
numbers and brute strength must burst the
bands that fetter them in political inferority,
and overcome the whites. This present doc.
trine Of confining slavery to the States in
which it now exists is only slower mode of