Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1870-08-06

people.
II is important to understand the state
of political opinion in regard to slavery
at that time. For that purpose ask
your attention TO brief survey of the
previous history of slavery.
The founders Of the Republic believed
they had so adjusted its principles that
slavery would slowly but surely become
extinct under the joint operation of con-
stitational and popular forces.
They provided in the Constitution for
the abolition of the foreign slave trade
after the year 1908, ard in the ordinance
of 1887 they had prohibited the spread
of slavery under any territory Of the
United States where it did not exist.
Thus preventing its territorial increase
at home, and its numerical increase from
abroad, and leaving in the National Con.
s!itution no recognition of its right to
exist, except by the authority of State
laws, they had strong ground for belief
that the genial influence of religion and
civil liberty would gradually exterminate
a system which the cupidity of England
had entailed upon them, and which at
that time found few apologists and still
fewer defenders.
The reasoning was sound, and during
the first fifteen years of the constitution
there were many indications of the
gradual decline of slavery and the growth
of freedom.
But a great reaction set in IN favor OF
slavery, in consequence of two events,
neither Of which the fathers could have
foreseen. One was the invention of the
cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1893, and
the other was the purchase of Louisiana
from the French in 1903. The first made
cotton crowned king among the staple
products of the United States. The
whole cotton crop of 1890 was less than
the product of single plantation in 1860
The plant was almost yalueless, because
of the enormous labor required to sepa.
rate the seed from the fiber-one pound
of fiber being the average result of a
days work. So completely did Whit.
ney's invention revolutionize the indus
try of the south than an able writer de-
clared that "To say that this invention
was worth one thousand millions of dol
lars to the slave states is 10 place very
moderate estimate on its value"
The acquisition of the territory ofLou-
isiana gave the planters the best of all
their cotton lands, and opened to them
an industrial future, brilliant beyond COM
parison. To convert this new territory
into cotton fields, and to control the cot
ton market of the world, became the pas
sion of Southern planters. The purchase.
of slaves from the worn ont tobacco fields
of Virginia and the Caroinas, and the Or
ganization of the coastwise and inter-
state slave trade, became leading features
of the apostasy from freedom and the re-
newal of the spirit of slavery. 1t was
not merely perverse desire to oppress
and enslave--but the love of money, that
cupidity which seeks to grasp great for
tunes, with few toils-that inaugurated
this new crusade for slavery.
OF all the hostile forces which truth,
justice and humanity meet in the strug-
gle of lite, none are so insidious, none so
subtle, none so formidable as the inordi-
nate love of gain. This was the inspir-
ing genius of slavery. | will not follow
;he stealthy steps by which slavery made
its way, year after year, upchallenged
and unobserved. Appealing to the ava
rice OF human nature, it perverted the in
tellects and drugged the consciences of
men. 1t guided the ambition of politici-
ans, perverted the wisdom of statesmen,
and seized all the places ofpower and in
tluence in the national government. And
finally il entered the sanctuaries of re-
ligion, and converted the great mass of
American churches into bulwarks for the
defense of human bondage.
1t required nearly half century to eff
feet this horrible transformation, and it
was done so silently, so insidiously, that
it well nigh escaped the notice of man
kind.
1t is significant fact, which should
not be forgotten, that when the awaken
ing began, it did not begin in the high
places of political or ecclesiastical power.
1t sprang up among the common people
who lived remote from the centres of
power and iniuence-people who ate
their bred in the sweat of their own faces
and who, adopting the religious and
political faith of their fathers, discovered
and proclaimed the great apostasy ofthe
slave power. This truth is eXemplitied
in the career of Abraham Lincoln-that
most remarkable character in modern
history. Sprung from such depths of
poverty as can hardly be understood in
this community, living far removed from
the current of political action, when a
boy working by the month on Missis-
sippi river fiat boat, he saw at New Or
leans, in 1929, slave auction and all its
brutal accompaniments, and from that
hour his soul ceased not to loathe slave
ry, until, in the wonderful development
OF his lite, he was enabled to speak the
word that broke four millions of tetters.
In the winter of 1924 the American
Anti Slavery Society, organized at Phdla-
delphia, with fourteen members, had be-
gan TO make its protest against slavery.
During the ten or twelve years that fol
lowed this organization, the appeal had
been SO fully made to the public con-
science tha: both political partieshad taken
the alarm, and had determined to sup
press agitation by every means in their
power.
In order TO fix the place which MIR.
Giddings occupied in the great move
ment against slavery, it is necessary to
make brief analysis of the forces which
were opposing that institution at the time
he became prominent. They were
Eirsf-Tha followara Of William IlOyd