The weekly North-Carolina standard., 1867-05-01
REMARKS OF E. W. PoU, Esq,
OF JOHNSTON COUNTY,

| OF JOHNSTON COUNTY, .--.-.
Delirered in Smitltfeld, april 20th, 1867.
FELLOW CITIZENS The times are new.
and strange and wonderful to us all. But
few years ago, portion of you were what
the law called slaves, and some OF US were
owners Now we all stand with equal rights
under the law, so far as the color of our
| skins or previous condition of freedom or
seryitude is concerned. And these newly
acquired privileges of yours, my colored
| friends, are guaranteed to you by all the
power of the strongest government In the
world.
How did this happen? will try to tell
YOU. About three generations ago,-when
your grandfathers and mine were infants
| almost the whole civilized and Christian
world seemed to think that the African was
the proper subject of prey for the whiterace.
From time immemorial your savage ances-
tors, captured by each other in brutal con-
tests, had been sold as slaves for whatever
market demanded slaves. And it IS re-
markable that one of the best and purest
men that ever lived, Las Casas early in the
sixteenth century did more than any one else
| to plant African slavery in the West Indies.
His motives were good His object was to
relieve the Indian slave by the more robust
and heat-enduring African, and at the same
time, to bring the African in reach of the
| Christian missionary. He lived to see his
designs perverted and to regret his agency
in the enslavement of your race.
| The first cargo of slaves ever brought into
this country, were landed at jamestown in
| Virginia in 1920. From that period until
| about eighty years ago, the trade in slaves
was carried on by the shipping of the CIV
ilized and Christian world with scarcely a
| protest from any quarter. The earliest
protest that know of, is that made by
| Thomas Jefferson, in his original draft of the
| Declaration of Independence. About this
| time England was feeling the effects of a
great religious revival, due largely to the
preaching of John Wesley, Geo. Whitfield
and the Quaker fraternity. These all set
their faces against the slave trade, which was
then very profitable to English merchants
Their influence reached parliament Will
liam Wilberforce about the year 1885, made
his first effort in the British Legislature to
have the slave trade, under the English flag,
abolished. He did not succeed until the
year 1907. But although the trade with the
coast of Africa, by the English, then termin-
ated, slavery continued to exist in some of
the British colonies until 1st January, 1884,
when Parliament abolished it, and appropri-
| ated 800 000, 900 to remunerate the owners.
1 mention this to show how recent it is
| only that the Christian and civilized people
of Great Britain have left off pro-slavery
practices. France abolished slavery in her
colonies still later in 184S, and the Dutch
yet later in 1860.
| In the Northern United States, owing to
climate and productions, slavery was never
| profitable slaves never became numerous in
those latitudes. General emancipation acts
passed by the Legislatures of various North
ern States between 1850 and 1904, liberated
eventually, the comparatively small number
of slaves in that region. But as late as 1928,
it is said. a negro woman was sold, at Sher-
ifs sale, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania,
to satisfy claim for debt against her owner.
| There were avowed friends of emancipa-
tion in the South as well as in the North
until about the year 1885. The North Caro-
lima Manumission Society protested against
the Imprisonment of William Lloyd Garri-
| son, in Baltimore, about the year 1880. I
| would like to know who were members of
that Society, and so would you. You ought
to tell your children to lay bunch of North
Carolina flowers on the graves of any men,
bers of that society that may be near you. The
immortal CASTOR, am told, was an emanci-
pationist. So, too, was that glorious chief
tain whose portrait hangs in many North
Carolinian's house, and who, in life, was by
thousands considered the embodiment of
patriotismI mean Henry Clay Until
1885, there were many openly avowed eman-
cipationists in the South. The question
with our fathers then, was not how can we
forever protect and indefinitely extend q
good institution, but with many, it was how
can We most easily and safely get rid of
great evil? While at that same time, the
City of Boston was so far in the rear of her
present advanced position, on human rights,
that in the year 1885, an anti-slavery meet
ing, In that City, was overawed and broken
up by "gentlemen of property and stand
ing" T
The human family is grand army of pro-
gress marching steadily forward to higher
excellence. Sometimes there are small par
ties that lose sight of the pillars of cloud by
day and the pillars of fire by night, and
straggle to the rear. Those who thus fail
to keep with the main body, always pay the
penalty for the breach of discipline. From
what L have said, you see that the South was
not struggling from the grand army IN 1885,
The world was then fast learning that your
race, my colored friends was entitled to free
dom. Our people uere learning it tOo How
happened it, that while the rest of the world
went forward, our people went backward 2
Other people learned the lesson of freedom
By discussing slacery. Opposition was ruade,
sometimes violently, as in Boston. but the
| interests
lively in the North and in England and
France, that its friends could not stop the
discussion. In the South it was different
slaves and Lands were principal items of
property IN the South the cotton business
was very profitable. The agitation of the
slavery question outside the South stirred
up sectional passion and prejudice, until
slavery became the most cherished institu-
zion In the South. No man In the South ever
daring to attack it, the present generation
OF Southerners grew up accustomed only to
hear its praises as sacred institution, and
educated in the idea that they must defend
it as their dearest right The North going
forward and the South going backward af-
ter 1885, by the year 1850 had gotten a
long way apart.
In that year Mr.. Calhoun made his last
speech in the United States Senate He was
great man-bold, truthful, honest-dis-
daining duplicity and indirection. In nv
humble judgment there was not a single
weakness in his character, SAGE hi. 6eliefin the
right of slauery. That conviction of his, is
the key of his political life. Fis every act
would have been the act of wise patriot, if
it had only been true that slavery was inst
and good thing and one that ought 10 be
4 >oA,. ii r IL :