If, fellow-citizens, with all the natural and political advantages we
have enumerated, your progress is still downward, and has been so,
compared with the other sections of the country, since the first
organization of the Government, what are the anticipations of the
distant future, which sober reflection authorizes you to form? The
causes which now retard the increase of your population must continue to
operate, so long as slavery lasts. Emigrants from the North, and from
foreign countries, will, as at present, avoid your borders, within which
no attractions will be found for virtue and industry. On the other hand,
many of the young and enterprising among you will flee from the
lassitude, the anarchy, the wretchedness engendered by slavery, and seek
their fortunes in lands where law affords protection, and where labor is
honored and rewarded.
In the meantime, especially in the cotton States, the slaves will
continue to increase in a ratio far beyond the whites, and will at
length acquire a fearful preponderance.
At the first census, in every slave State there was a very large
majority of whites--now, the slaves out-number the whites in South
Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, and the next census will
unquestionably add Florida and Alabama, and probably Georgia, to the
number of negro States.
And think you that this is the country, and this the age, in which the
republican maxim that the MAJORITY must govern, can be long and
barbarously reversed? Think you that the majority of the PEOPLE in the
cotton States, cheered and encouraged as they will be by the sympathy of
the world, and the example of the West Indies, will forever tamely
submit to be beasts of burden for a few lordly planters? And remember,
we pray you, that the number and physical strength of the negroes will
increase in a much greater ratio than that of their masters.
In 1790 the whites in N. Carolina were to the slaves as
2.80 to 1, now as 1.97 to 1
" S. Carolina, " 1.31 to 1, " .79 to 1
" Georgia, " 1.76 to 1, " 1.44 to 1
" Tennessee, " 13.35 to 1, " 3.49 to 1
" Kentucky, " 5.16 to 1, " 3.23 to 1
Maryland and Virginia, the great breeding States, have reduced their
stock within the last few years, having been tempted, by high prices, to
ship off thousands and tens of thousands to the markets of Louisiana,
Alabama, and Mississippi. But these markets are already glutted, and
human flesh has fallen in value from 50 to 75 per cent. Nor is it
probable that the great staple of Virginia and Maryland will hereafter
afford a bounty on its production. In these States slave labor is
unprofitable, and the bondman is of but little value, save as an article
of exportation. The cotton cultivation in the East Indies, by cheapening
the article, will close the markets in the South, and thus it guarantees
the abolition of slavery in the breeding States. When it shall be found
no longer profitable to raise slaves for the market, the stock on hand
will be driven South and sold for what it may fetch, and free labor
substituted in its place. This process will be attended with results
disastrous to the cotton States. To Virginia and Maryland, it will open
a new era of industry, prosperity and wealth; and the industrious poor,
the "mean whites" of the South, will remove within their borders, thus
leaving the slaveholders more defenceless than ever. But while the white
population of the South will be thus diminished, its number of slaves
will be increased by the addition of the stock from the breeding States.
And what, fellow-citizens, will be the condition of such of _you_ as
shall then remain in the slave States? The change to which we have
referred will necessarily aggravate every present evil. Ignorance, vice,
idleness, lawless violence, dread of insurrection, anarchy, and a
haughty and vindictive aristocracy will all combine with augmented
energy in crushing _you_ to the earth. And from what quarter do you look
for redemption? Think you your planting nobility will ever grant freedom
to their serfs, from sentiments of piety or patriotism? Remember that
your clergy of all sects and ranks, many of them "Christian brokers in
the trade of blood," unite in bestowing their benediction on the system
as a _Christian_ institution, and in teaching the slaveholders that they
wield the whip as European monarchs the sceptre, "by the grace of God."
Do you trust to their patriotism? Remember that the beautiful and
affecting contrast between the prosperity of the North and the
desolation of the South, already presented to you, was drawn by W. G.
Preston, of _hanging_ notoriety. No, fellow-citizens, your great
slaveholders have no idea of surrendering the personal importance and
the political influence they derive from their slaves. Your Calhouns,
Footes, and Prestons, all go for everlasting slavery.
Unquestionably there are many of the smaller slaveholders who would
embrace abolition sentiments, were they permitted to examine the
subject; but at present they are kept in ignorance. If then the fetters
of the slave are not to be broken by the master, by whom is he to be
liberated? In the course of time, a hostile army, invited by the
weakness or the arrogance of the South, may land on your shores. Then,
indeed, emancipation will be given, but the gift may be bathed in the
blood of yourselves and of your children. Or the People--for they will
be THE PEOPLE--may resolve to be free, and you and all you hold dear may
be sacrificed in the contest.
Suffer us, fellow-citizens, to show you "a more excellent way." We seek
the welfare of all, the rich and the poor, the bond and the free. While
we repudiate all acknowledgment of property in human beings, we rejoice
in the honest, lawful prosperity of the planter. Let not, we beseech
you, the freedom of the slave proceed from the armed invader of your
soil, nor from his own torch and dagger--but from _your_ peaceful and
constitutional interference in his behalf.
In breaking the chains which bind the slave, be assured you will be
delivering yourselves from a grievous thraldom. Ponder well, we implore
you, the following suggestions.
Without your co-operation, the slaveholders, much as they despise you,
are powerless. To you they look for agents, and stewards, for overseers,
and drivers, and patrols. To you they look for votes to elevate them to
office, and to you they too often look for aid to enforce their Lynch
laws. Feel then your own power; claim your rights, and exert them for
the deliverance of the slave, and consequently for your own happiness
and prosperity.
Let then your first demand be for LIBERTY OF SPEECH. Your Constitution
and laws guarantee to you this right in the most solemn and explicit
terms; and yet you have permitted a few slaveholders to rob you of it.
Resume it at once. Be not afraid to speak openly of your wrongs, and of
the true cause of them. Dread not the Lynch clubs. Their power depends
wholly on opinion. The slaveholders are not strong enough to execute
their own sentences, if _you_ resist them. They shrank, in Charleston,
from prohibiting the sale of Dickens' Notes, because they believed the
people were determined to read them. Had the same curiosity been felt in
Petersburg, to read the article on Bible Slavery in Breckenridge's
Magazine, the slaveholders there would not have dared to purloin them
from the post-office and burn them in the street. In the one place they
strained at a gnat, in the other they swallowed a camel. Be assured,
your bullies are timid bullies; not that they are wanting in individual
courage, but because they are aware that their authority rests, not on
their physical strength, but on _your_ habits of deference and
obedience. Speak then boldly, and without disguise; and be assured that
no sooner will your tongues be loosed on the forbidden subject, than you
will be surprised to find what a coincidence of thought exists in
relation to it. Discussion once commenced, the enemies of slavery will
multiply faster with you than they do elsewhere for the obvious reason,
that with you there is no dispute about _facts_. You all know and daily
witness the blighting influence of the curse which overspreads your
land; and believe us, that just in proportion as your courage rises,
will the arrogance of your oppressors sink.
By conversing freely among yourselves, and proclaiming your hostility to
slavery in public meetings, you will create an influence that will soon
reach the PRESS. The bands with which the slaveholders have bound this
Leviathan will then be snapped asunder. Once establish a FREE PRESS, and
the fate of slavery is sealed. Such a press will advocate your rights,
will encourage education and industry, will point out the true cause of
the depravation of morals, the prevalence of violence, and the
depression of the public welfare.
Having gained the liberty of speech and of the press, you will go on,
conquering and to conquer. Political action on your part will lead to
new triumphs. The State legislatures and the public offices will no
longer be the exclusive patrimony of the holders of slaves. Having once
obtained a footing in your legislative halls, you will have secured in a
quiet, peaceable, constitutional mode, the downfall of slavery, the
recovery of your rights, and the prosperity and happiness of your
country.
Think us not extravagantly sanguine. The very horror manifested by the
slaveholders of the means we recommend, is evidence of their efficacy.
We advise you to exercise freedom of speech. Have they not endeavored to
bully you into silence by the threat, that "the question of slavery is
not and shall not be open to discussion;" and that the moment any
private individual talks about the means of terminating slavery, "_that
moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon a dunghill_?"
Promote a free press. Is not the wisdom of the recommendation verified
by the proclamation made of "_instant death_" to the abolition editors
in the slave States, if "_they avow their opinions_?"
Your Constitutions have indeed been rendered by the slaveholders
"blurred and obliterated parchments;" be it your care to restore them to
their pristine beauty, and to make them fair and legible charters of the
rights of man.
But we doubt not, fellow-citizens, that although you give your cordial
assent to all we have said respecting the practical influence of
slavery, you have, nevertheless, some misgivings about the effect of
_immediate_ emancipation. Shut up as you are in darkness on this
subject, threatened with death if you talk or write about it; while the
utmost pains are taken to prevent books or papers, which might enlighten
you, from falling into your hands, it would be wonderful indeed, were
you at once prepared to admit the safety and policy of instant and
unconditional emancipation. You are assured, and probably believe, that
massacre, and conflagration, and universal ruin would ensue on "letting
loose the negroes;" but you are kept in ignorance of the fact, that in
various parts of the world, negroes have been let loose, and in no one
instance have such consequences followed; and you are not permitted to
learn, in discussion, the _reasons_ why such consequences never have
followed, and never will follow the immediate abolition of slavery. What
think you would be the fate of the man who should attempt to deliver a
lecture in Charleston or Mobile on the safety of emancipation? Yet such
a lecture might be delivered with perfect safety, were the lecturer to
be accompanied by one or two hundred of _your_ number, declaring their
determination to maintain freedom of speech and to protect the lecturer.
From such a lecture you would learn, with astonishment, that the
atrocities in St. Domingo, so constantly used by the slaveholders to
intimidate the refractory, arose from a civil war, which the planters,
by their own folly and wickedness, kindled between themselves and the
_free_ blacks, and were wholly independent of the subsequent act of the
French Government manumitting the slaves. You would also hear, perhaps
for the first time, of the peaceful abolition of slavery in Mexico and
South America. You would listen, with a surprise almost bordering on
incredulity, to accounts of the glorious, wonderful success, attending
the emancipation of 800,000 slaves in the British Colonies, without the
loss of a single life. You would learn that in these colonies, among the
liberated slaves, ten, twenty, thirty times as numerous as the whites, a
degree of tranquility and good order and security is enjoyed, utterly
unknown in any Southern or Western slave State. The complaints (grossly
exaggerated, if they reach you through the medium of a pro-slavery
press) of the want of labor and the diminution of production, arise not
from the idleness, but the _industry_ of the enfranchised slaves. Their
wives and children, no longer toiling under the lash, are now engaged in
the occupations of the family and of the school; while many of the
fathers and husbands have become landholders, and raise their own food,
and also articles for the market. Substantial and honest prosperity is
gradually taking the place of that wealth, which, as in all other slave
countries, was concentrated in the hands of a few, and was extorted from
the labor of a wretched, degraded and dangerous population.
If you admit the greatest happiness of the greatest number to be the
true test of national prosperity, then, beyond all controversy, the
British West Indies are now infinitely more prosperous than at any
previous period of their history.
Despots and aristocrats have, in all ages, been afraid of "turning
loose" the PEOPLE, no matter of what hue was their complexion. You have
seen that your own McDuffie does not scruple to intimate, that, were not
the Southern laborers already shackled, an order of nobility would be
required to keep them in subjection; and a shudder seizes Chancellor
Harper, when he reflects that the Northern allies of the slaveholders
are democrats and agrarians.
A glorious career opens before you. In the place of your present
contempt, and degradation, and misery, honor, and wealth, and happiness
court your acceptance. By abolishing slavery you will become the
architects of your own fortune, and of your country's greatness. The
times are propitious for the great achievement. You will be cheered by
the approbation of your own consciences, and by the plaudits of mankind.
The institution which oppresses you is suffering from the decrepitude of
age, and is the scorn and loathing of the world. Out of the slave
region, patriots and philanthropists, and Christians of every name and
sect abhor and execrate it. Do you pant for liberty and equality, more
substantial than such as is now found only in your obliterated and
tattered bills of right? Do you ask that your children may be rescued
from the ignorance and irreligion to which they are now doomed, and that
avenues may be opened for you and for them to honest and profitable
employment? Unite then, we beseech you, with one heart and one mind, for
the legal, constitutional abolition of slavery. The enemy is waxing
faint and losing his courage. He is terrified by the echo of his own
threats, and the very proposal to dissolve the Union and leave him to
his fate, throws him into paroxysms. The North, so long submissive to
his mandates, and awed by his insolence, laughs at his impotent rage;
and all his hopes now rest upon a few profligate politicians whom he
purchases with his votes, while their baseness excites his contempt, and
their principles his fears. Now is the time, fellow-citizens, to assail
the foe. Up--quit yourselves like men: and may Almighty God direct and
bless your efforts!
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
A single superscripted letter was represented by that single letter
preceded by a caret (^).
Errors in punctuation, inconsistencies in abbreviations of names, and
inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. The
punctuation of the mid-nineteenth century was very different to that of
today; with commas, periods, and colons sometimes appearing to be used
interchangeably. Such variations in punctuation were kept as-is.
The tables sometimes have ditto marks, whose meaning are somewhat
ambiguous. Those ditto marks are kept as-is.
On page 5, a period was placed after "p. 206".
On page 14, "supeperior" was replaced with "superior".
On page 23, a period was added after "_not_ a slaveholder".
On page 29, "and and" was replaced with "and".
On page 35, "provison" was replaced with "provision".
On page 37, a period was replaced with a comma.
On page 43, "tribuual" was replaced with "tribunal".
On page 44, "patriarchial" was replaced with "patriarchal".
On page 55, "recomend" was replaced with "recommend".