Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1861-01-24

iuCStiou. IVY hioo 0'tPN"i ~ w 49, ~
law of the State.
I show there enactments which nullify the
law of God and make divorce marketable
and cheap commodity. l collect the adver-
tisements of your sally papers, in which
lawyers offer to procure the legal separation
of man and wife for stipulated price, to
say nothing in this sacred place of other ad-
vertisements which ylecency forbids me to
quote. Then I turn to the records of our
criminal courts, and find that every day
some cruel husband beats his wife, or some
unnatural father murders his child ,%or some
discontented wife or husband seeks the dis
solution of the marriage bond. In the next
place, 7 turn to the orphan asylums and
hospitals, and show there the miserable
wrecks of domestic tyranny in wives deserted
and children manned by drunken parents.
In the last place, I go through our streets
and into our tenement houses. and count
the thousands of ragged children, who,
amid ignorance and filth, are training for
the prison and gallows. Summing all these
facts together, I put them forth as the fruits
Of marriage in the city Of New York, and
proof that the relation itself is sinful. Ii l
were a novelist, and had written book to
illustrate this same doctrine, would call
this array of facts ''Key." In this key |
saw nothing about the sweet charities and
affections that flourish in ten thousand homes,
not word about the multitude of loving
kindnesses that characterize the daily life OF
honest people, about the instruction and dis
cipline that are training children at ten
thousand fresides. for usefulness here and
glory her eafter; all this [ ignore, and quote
only the statute book, the newspapers, the
records of criminal courts, and the miseries
of the abodes of poverty.
Now, what have [ done? | have not
misstated or exaggerateda single fact. And
yet am [ not falsi6er and slanderer OF the
deepest dye? Is there virtuous woman
or ar. honest man in this city whose cheeks
would not burn with Indignation at my one
st,del and injurious statements? Now, this
lis just what abolitionism has done in regard
to slaveholding. It has undertaken to IL
lustrate it's cardinal doctrine in works OF
fiction, and then, to sustain the creation of
it's fancy, has undertaken to underpin it with
an accumulation of facts. These facts are
collected in precisely the way [ have de-
scribed. The statute books Of slayeholdlngg
oIei; 8 ea--St
ment collated, newspaper reports OF cruelty
and crime on the part of wicked masters are
treasured up and classified, all the outrages
that have been perpetrated ''by lewd fellows
of the baser Sort" of whom there are plen-
ty, both North and South, are eagerly seized
and recorded, and this mass Of vileness and
filth collected from the kennels and sewers
of society is put forth as faithful exhibi-
ton of slayeholding. Senators in the for
um, and ministers in the pulpit, distil the
raw material into the more refined SANDER
| that Southern society is essentially barba-
rous, and that slaveholding had its origin
in hell" Legislative bodies enact and re-
enact statutes which declare that slavchold-
inc is such an enormous crime that il a
Southern man, under the broad shield Of
the Constitution, and with the decisions of
the Supreme Court of the country in his
hand, shall come within their jurisdiction,
shall be punished with a fine of So 900 and
15 years Imprisonment. This method of
argument has continued until multitudcs of
honest Christian people in this and other
lands believe that slaveholling is the sin of
sins, the sum of all vllaines Let me IL
lustrate this by an incident in my own ex-
perience:
A few years since took from the centre
table of Christian family in Scotland, by
whom had been most kindly entertained,
Il book entitled Life and Manners in A
merica." On the blank leaf was an inscrip-
, ton, stating that the book had been bestow-
ed upon one of the children Of the family as
a reward of diligence in an institution Of
learning. The frontispece was picture Of
a man Of fierce countenance beating naked
woman. The contents of the book were
professedly compiled from the testimony Of
Americans upon the subject of slavery. !
dare not quote in this place the extracts
which made in my memorandum. It will
be sufficient to say that the book asserts, as
undoubted facts, that the banks of the Mis-
sissippi are studded with iron gallows for the
punishment of slaves-that in the city of
Charleston the bloody block on which mas
ters cut off the hands Of dsobedient servants
may be seen in the public square, and that
sins against chastity are common and unre-
buked in professedly Christian families
Now in my heart [ did not feel angry at
the author Of that book, nor at the school
teacher who bestowed it upon his scholar,
for in Christian charity [ gave them credit
for honesty in the case but standing there
a stranger among the martyr memories OF
that glorious land to which my heart had SO
often made its pilgrimage, did feel that
you and [, and every man in America was
wronged by the revilers Of their native land,
who teach foreigners that hanging and cut
ting off hands, and beating women, are the
characteristics Of our life and manners.
But we need not 60 to foreign lands for
proof that abolitonism has carried on its
warfare by the language of abuse The
annual meeting of the American anti-Slavery
Society brings the evidence to our doors. -
We have been accustomed to laugh at these
vcnal exhibitions of fanaticism, not thinking
nnrhopS that ~ !,ut yraS tItD fnr nc ,y,c ,.o,}-