Year: 1859

DECAY OF AB0LIT10NlSM IN NEW ENG


LAND


BosToN, March 16, 1852


DEAR BROTHER: ] hare read your speech
of the 21st ultimo, delivered in the House OF
Represen tatives. It has pointsof considerable
smartness, and will be praised by your partisans
as very clever effort; but i see no other effect
that it can produce but to irritate the South.
and ALLEVIATE one section of the Union still more
from the other. Have we not at the North
| stimulated our own selfrighteousnes, in contrast
with the sins of the South, quite up to, or be-
yond the healthy point? Would itnot be well
for US, for time, to look more atsour esuH fail
| ings and at the virtues of our brethren at the
| South


| You speak of the tone and sentiment that
has taken place during the last twenty five years
on the subject of slavery. plead guilty to
the truth of this Charge It is one of the
dreams of my early life, that the condition OF
mankind might be greatly improved by sudden
political changes. The cryof the slave came
to my youthful ear, waited by the eloquent
breath of eye-witnesses, from Virginia and New
Jersey. Almost every man at the South, at
that time, admitted that slavery was an evil.
moral, social, and political sthe horrors of the
middle passage, the barbarian cruelties of jam
aica, came to us across the ocean; Wilberioree
and Clarkson had acquired world wide lame
by their singular devotion to the abolition of the
slave trade; the assault was soon made upon
slavery itself in the British West Indies, and the
first of August, 1913, was entered in the calen-
dar as one Of the holy days of the year.


Campbell painted the wild chieftain, on his
native plains, so noble, so free, so happy
caught, chained, doomed suffering, till the hur-
rrcan mi Indies .nerc com Inissioned
m IL, loi,,
wept out his compassion in the touching lines,
Il would not have slave for all the gold that
sinews bought and sold have ever earned;" and
these tones of suffering, compassion, of pity
were echoed by every harp, and re-echoed by
orator and preacher, till the whole atmosphere
of New England was vocal with the cries of
the slave. l have done my full share of it :
but greater men have been mistaken and have
in ripper years beas compelled to revise and re-
woke the opinions Of earlier days. Burke once
was enraptured with the voice of Liberty, as
she cried from across the channel; but in the
full strength of his manhood, he was compelled
to denounce the crimes committed in her name.
Sir James Mcintosh wrote his "Vindicial Gal
ice )" but was compelled, by longer expe-
rience and wider observation, to cancel the
opinions of early life by those of maturer years.
L am compelled to cancel many things that
have said on the subject of slavery, and sub
stitute for them the opinions of ripper age. ]
might have once said what, ornearly what, you
have slid in your late speech in Congress:
though 1 think shsuld have left out those
portions which servo no other end than simply
to irritate, without convincing. But my con-
victions at the present time are, only that the
slave holders have complete vindicationz of
their present position, but they are entitled to
be looked upon as benefactors to the country
and to the human race.


The only ground on which I can claim their
patience and forbearance toward us meddling
with their affairs, and for abusing them as
much as we have, and as some still continue to
do, is this they gave us the false premises on
which We reasoned correctly to false conclu-
sions. They gave away their case by con-
cession; for if slavery be sin, a wrong
or an evil no fair mind can resist the conclusion
that efforts ought to be made as soon as possible
to do it away. The philosophy, that slavery is
wrong, sprang up in Virginia, and was adopted
and encouraged in nearly all the slave States
and the seed was thence, in connexion with the
correct and grand principles of human govern
ment, scattered wide over the free States
There they had their growth, apd now it is not
little difficult to pull them up: but they shall
take the wheat with them also.


The South are impregnable. The constitu-
ton protects them, the~Bihle protects them,
and the exper.er of mankind protects them.
Our fathers made covenant with their fathers.
They came into the Union with their African
slaves on terms of equality with US, and with
all the rights and privileges that we can claim
under the same instrument. They would make
no covenant except upon terms of equality
We accepted those terms; we could get no
better to-day; and yet We should be glad to
make it, if it were not made, or to renew it, if
broken, and On the same conditions we now
have. The South claim the right to go into
new territory, AID try the new land with their
slaves, till the territory becomes sovereign
State, and then bow to its will, as before all
other sovereigns. This is Just and equitable
claim, founded on fair Interpretation of the
constitution. Slavery should be permitted to
flow by natural laws to regions for which it is
best adapted. 1t will go no where else. You
could not force it into New Hampshire, nor
keep it there if introduced. The experiment
has been tried and failed. Slavery was given !
up in the Northern States, not by the force of
moral, but natural laws. r !


1t is true the discussions of the last twenty
Eve years have produced great deal Of senti-
ment on the subject of slavery in the Northern
States; but you know how utterly barren of any
good result it has been to the African. In
loords--and because thier number is small, and |
will continue to be small---we have in the ex-
treme North given them the rights of citizen
ship and equality, but in scorks we deny them.