Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1892-12-14

the provision to pass commercial laws
by simple majorities. "This, he said,
"would he TO deliver the South, bound
hand and foot, TO the eastern States. ana
enable them to say, in the words OF
Cromwell on certain occasion, 'Ihe
Lord hath delivered them into our
hands.
Public opinion had as yet experienced
no violent displacement as to the mer-
chantable quality of negroes for the
very States in which slavery itself had
ceased, or was ceasing to exist. were
those most actively engaged IN the
traffic in slaves
THE KING DENOUNCED BIZ JEFFERSON.
In the original draft of the Declara-
| ton Jefferson had denounced the hing
for warning against human nature.
Determined to keep an open market
where men should be bought and sold,
he has prostituted his negative for sup
pressing every legislative attempt TO
! prohibit or to restrain this execraole
traffic. And that this assemblage OF
horrors might want no fact OF dis
| tinguished die, be is now exciting those
very people TO rise in arms among us'
and 10 purchase that liberty Of which he
I has deprived them, by numbering the
/ people on whom he has obtruded them.
| This denunciation was stricken out
| partly in Difference 10 South Carolina
and Georgia. "But, adds Jefferson,
"our northern brethren also, believe,
| felt little tender under these censurcs,
for. though their people had few slaves
themselves, yet they bad been pretty con
siderable carriers OF them to others" The
| importation of slaves into the South
was continued by northern merchants
and northern ships until it was prohlb-
tied by the spontaneous action OF the
southern States themselves, which pre-
ceded, or was contemporaneOus with,
the legislation OF Congress in 1907.
Antecedent to the adoption of the Con-
stitution, South Carolina passed an act
prohibiting, under severe penalties, the
importation of negroes from Africa. In
1903 this act was repealed for the reason,
assigned in Congress by Mr.. Lowndes,
that it was impossible, without aid from
the General Government, "to prevent
our eastern brethren from introducing
them into the country =" Had we re-
ceived," he said, "the necessary aid from
Congress the repeal would never, in
my opinion, have taken place.
/ wish the time had arrived when Con-
gress could legislate conclusiyely on tho
subject"
FAVORED AS. LONG AS PROFITABLE.
fail to find the evidence that proper
ty in man was an obnoxious doctrine at
the North until property in man wholly
ceased there to be lucrative. Small as
the number of slaves necessarily was to
the north Of Maryland, in several OF
them slavery existed for more than fifty
years after the adoption OF the Constitu-
ton. Where the interest was SO limit
ed and the emancipation so gradual, no
great shock to society could well occur,
especially as in the bulk OF cases the
emancipator. with no qualms of con-
scious whatever, received the full value
Of his slaves from those who bought
them. The historian Bancroft is au-
thority for the statement that more slaves
we're emancipated by last will and testa-
ment in Virginia than we're ever set
free in Pennsylvania or Massachu-
! sets. Moreover, emancipation IN the
North, when it came, was accompanied
by 10 recognition OF equality. Prior to
1861 no negro in Massachusetts, had
ever been O member OF its Legislature,
or served upon the jury, or in the
militia, or been appointed to any Office
beyond one OF menial grade. This was
| freedom, with the recognition aud OPP
portunity of freedom severely omitted
1.-THE name OF freedom craven on
heavier chain Heavier because it was
| the expression OF a more invlnclble
barrier than that OF law, and breathed
O moro superlatiye scorn. In the second
volume of his commentaries, Chancellor
Kent thus describes the relation OF the
races "Tho African race are essentially
| a degraded caste OF inferior rank and
condition in society. Marriages are for
bidden between them and the whites IN
some OF the States, and when not abso-
lutely contrary to law they are revolt
ing and regarded as an offence against
| public decorum. By tho Revised Sta
tutes OF Illinois, published in 1929, mar
riaQes between whites and negroes or
| mulattoes are declared void, and the
persons SO married are liable to DO
whipped, fined, and imprisoned. by
on old statute OF Massachusetts,
of 1705 such marriages were de-
clared void, and are 30 STILL" This sum-
mary was cited and cOrroborated by the
Chief Justice of Connecticut as late as
1884, The Supreme Court Of Pennsyl-
yania decided In 1887 that negro or
mulatto was not entitled to exercise the
right Of suffrage. Ii was not until July
i. 1927. that New York was ranked
among the free States, and when the
Constitution of 1916 was adopted negro
suffrage was negatived by vote OF to
!. AS late certainly as the date OF
the bred Scott decision the Constltu-
ton Of New Jersey restricted the right
of suffrage to all white persons. This
course OF legislation in the North illus
trated the recognized discrepancy OF the
races Statute did not confer it and
statute could not take it away. Slavery
in the South rested upon the natural
supremacy OF the white race over the
black, and the total and inevitable dis
qualification of the latter for an equal
struggle with the former.
THosR SUBJECTED NOT OUR EQUALS.
Slavery in the South. unlike Oriental
bondage, Roman servitude, and feudal
yillainage, was not the subsection OF
equals, differing only in opportunity
but the subordinstion Of one extreme OF
humanity to tho other; Of the most ab-
ject to the most enlightened. The real
inequality OF tho races had made subor-
dination prescriptive. No higher en-
comium could possibly be pronounced
upon the practical benefcence of south
ern institutions, than the one tacitly
sanctioned by the last amendment
viz, that they had been sufficient to
educate the lowest of earth's savages to
take his plaza among the highest OF
earth's freemen.
As population increases it becomes
cheaper TO hire labor than TO buy or own
it or, borrowing the phrase OF Carlyle,
to hire for years rather than for life. The
labor of slavery ceases to be worth the
capital involved IN its support. The CO.
ercion OF authority is replaced by the
coercion Of want, and the obligation to
protect by the liberty to oppress. No
thing could be truer or wiser than that
,yh;ob xpas aaid Inv John Randolph IN