EARLY LEGISLATION AGAINST SLAVERY
The Cavalier and adventurer in working out their destiny in the New
World became purged of the foibles that continued to debauch their
compeers in England; among their descendants of a few generations were
those men of unimpeachable honor and integrity of purpose who will be
held forever as the highest types of American chivalry and manhood.
Those of Virginia, with whom colonial slavery was most ancient, were
the first to be aroused to the full ethical significance of the
evil--to the grave injustice to the unfortunate lower race, and to
the detriment to the moral nature of the higher. They were the first
to attempt to legislate against the evil. In 1770, Virginia protested
against the importation of slaves, but to no avail as royalty itself
was financially interested in the traffic. At the meeting of the
delegates from each county of Virginia held at Williamsburg in August,
1774, to consider British oppression and indignities, the second
article of the protest resolved and agreed upon bore upon the slave
traffic: “We will neither ourselves import nor purchase any slave, or
slaves, imported by any person, after the first day of November next,
either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place.” This meeting
was a full one, and among the one hundred and eight signers--all
prominent in Virginia life and annals--are Peyton Randolph, Richard
Henry Lee, George Washington, Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry, Thomas
Jefferson, Thomas Marshall, Thomas Randolph, and Francis Lightfoot
Lee. The instructions of Thomas Jefferson, with whom the abolition
of slavery was always a great aim, to the Virginia delegates to the
first Congress (August, 1774), voiced the sentiments of Virginia’s
most thoughtful men: “For the most trifling reason, and sometimes for
no reason at all, His Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary
tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of
desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily introduced in their
infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we
have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa.
Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by
imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition have been hitherto
defeated by His Majesty’s negative; thus preferring the immediate
advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the
American States, and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by
this inhuman practise.”
Not only was every effort of the Southern colonists opposed by
England’s monarch, but with the breaking out of open hostilities his
agents were commissioned to arm and instigate the slaves against their
masters.[8] Many lured by the promise of land and freedom flocked to
the British standard; they were sent into Nova Scotia. Suffering from
cold and becoming discontented by the non-fulfillment of the promises
of aggrandizement, they were finally sent to Sierra Leone, which in
the following seventy-five years received the thousands taken by the
British from the slavers.
During this fearful crisis, Virginia’s spirit towards these misguided
people was one of mercy and humanitarianism. At the next convention
it was resolved: “Whereas Lord Dunmore, by his proclamation, dated on
board the ship _William_ off Norfolk, the 7th day of November, 1775,
hath offered freedom to such able-bodied slaves as are willing to
join him, and take up arms against the good people of this colony,
giving encouragement to a general insurrection, which may induce a
necessity of inflicting the severest punishments upon these unhappy
people already deluded by his base and insiduous arts, and whereas,
by an act of the general assembly now in force in this colony, it
is enacted, that all negro, or other slaves, conspiring to rebel or
make insurrection, shall suffer death, and be excluded all benefit of
clergy--we think it proper to declare, that all slaves who have been,
or shall be seduced by his lordship’s proclamation, or others to desert
their masters’ service and take up arms against the inhabitants of
this colony, shall be liable to such punishment as shall hereafter be
directed by the convention. And to the end that all such, who have
taken this unlawful and wicked step, may return in safety, to their
duty, and escape the punishment due their crimes, we hereby promise
pardon to them, surrendering themselves to Colonel William Woodford or
any other commander of our troops, and not appearing in arms after the
publication hereof. And we do further earnestly recommend it to all
humane and benevolent persons in the colony, to explain and make known
this offer of mercy to those unfortunate people.”
About this time, some feeling against American slavery, but more
against the “aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the Southern
colonists,” stirred England, and a general enfranchisement of the
slaves was proposed. Edmund Burke, in his famous speech of March 22,
1775, on the “Conciliation with America,” touches on the incongruity
of such a proposition of freedom coming from England: “Slaves as these
unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery,
must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very
nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their
refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom
from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African
vessel, which is refused entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina,
with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to
see the Guinea captain attempt at the same instant to publish his
proclamation of liberty and to advertise the sale of slaves.”
After throwing off the British yoke, the abolition of the slave traffic
and of slavery was still a paramount issue with these men of Virginia,
and in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had drafted a
clause relative to the moral obliquity; this clause, “reprobating the
enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to
South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the
importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue
it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under
these censures; for though their people had few slaves themselves, yet
they had been very considerable carriers of them to others.”[9]
The disposition to emancipate was strongest in Virginia. In 1778, when
Jefferson introduced a bill into the Assembly to stop the further
importation of slaves either by land or sea--a fine of one thousand
pounds to be imposed upon any transgressor--it was passed without
opposition and temporarily decreased the evil, but the time was not
ripe for so philanthropic an innovation, and the bill was repealed
by a later Assembly. Many of the younger men, however, were imbued
with a realization of the evil, especially those who at William and
Mary’s College, had come under the influence of George Wythe, and it
was to these that many looked for the ultimate righting of the wrong.
Adumbrations of a future catastrophe broke upon Jefferson, but in
that period of patriotism, his almost prophetic vision saw not the
dim, distant conflict as one arising out of the inherent differences
of North and South, though this came to sadden his declining years,
but rather as one of race against race: “Indeed I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep
forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a
revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among
possible events.” The hope of eradicating negro slavery before it took
a too vital hold upon the needs and institutions of his land stirred
his patriotic and spiritual zeal; throughout a long life he took a
vigorous stand against its growth. In 1784, when Virginia gave to the
United States her portion of the Northwest Territory, it was Jefferson,
assisted by Chase and Howell, who drafted and ardently advocated the
ordinance that “after the year 1800 there should be neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in
punishment of crime.” This was defeated, but led to the Ordinance of
1787 which forever excluded slavery from the territory northwest of the
Ohio River.
At the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787,
Jefferson urged as a step towards the ultimate ending of slavery,
the immediate abolition of the importation, but Pinckney of South
Carolina moved that the traffic be extended until 1808, and he was
seconded by Gorman of Massachusetts. The motion carried in all the New
England States, in South Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland; Virginia,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware were against it. This exigency
of extending it for twenty years was a subject of grave apprehension
to many thoughtful and patriotic men who were slave owners, among them
Jefferson, Washington, and Madison; though the attitude of the last
was frequently ambiguous about many questions, he commits himself very
fully on this clause of the Constitution in _The Federalist_: “It were
doubtless to be wished that the power of prohibiting the importation
of slaves had not been postponed until 1808, or, rather, that it had
been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult
to account either for the restriction on the general government or
for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be
considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period
of twenty years may terminate forever within these States, a traffic
which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern
polity.”
It may be assumed that the majority of those engaged in framing the
Constitution regarded slavery as a domestic problem nearing its
end, and it was a policy which at that time received more vehement
denunciation from men of the South than those of the North, probably
because a part of the North was actively engaged in the traffic and
that the humanitarians of the South, born in the midst of slavery,
were not only awake to the ethical significance of the evil, but were
averse to raising within their midst thousands of an alien race. That
the disposition to discontinue all avenues which led to a continuation
of slavery was not more general was incomprehensible to Jefferson, and
absolutely out of harmony with the spirit of freedom which permeated
American life: “What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine
is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death
itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf
to all those motives whose power supported him through trial, and
inflict on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with
more misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
But we must await, with patience, the workings of an over-ruling
Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of those,
our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full,
when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness,
doubtless, a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by
diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length,
by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things
of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind
fatality.”[10]
This constitutional postponement did not even settle the question
temporarily. The Quakers presented a memorial for the abolition of the
slave trade to the very first Congress (1790). This was reported by a
committee to the whole House; and after various amendments was returned
with the following:
“1st, That migration or importation of such persons, as any of the
States now existing shall think proper to admit, can not be prohibited
by Congress prior to the year 1808.
“2d, That Congress have no authority to interfere in emancipation
of slaves or in the treatment of them within any of the States; it
remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations
therein, which humanity and true polity may require.”
This was a perilous and critical time--a time of trial for the new
Constitution--when the States, watchful and alert, were jealous
of their rights, and the Quakers’ action was regarded by many as
a flagrant violation of those rights. Washington considered their
petition inopportune, especially as the question had been recently
disposed of and was contained in an article of the Constitution, and
so expressed himself in a letter: “The memorial of the Quakers [and
a very malapropos one it was] has at length been put to sleep, and
will scarcely awake before the year 1808.” However, the Quakers’
attitude was not equivocal, as was that of the Puritan New Englander.
Their petition grew from earnest convictions--convictions which were
deep-rooted before they came to America, for they had expressed their
repugnance to the English slave trade in 1671, and after coming to
America had discouraged participation in slavery as early as 1696; in
1776 they placed their ultimatum upon it by excluding from membership
any Quaker slaveholder.
This constitutional extension of the slave traffic closed
all possibility of the question ever being settled amicably.
Short-sightedness can scarcely be charged to those responsible, for at
that time there was no thought of an acquisition of territory on the
south and southwest, and the cultivation of cotton was still in its
infancy. Before another decade Eli Whitney had invented the cotton-gin;
this gave an impetus to the growing of cotton; agriculture in the
South was revolutionized. To make way for the industry Georgia ceded
her western territory to the United States and a tide of Southern
immigration from the older centers of Virginia and the Carolinas
rapidly flowed into Alabama and Mississippi. The wanderlust of a
hardy, pioneer ancestry was in these men’s veins. Accompanied often
by gentle families, their household goods, and their negroes they
started overland. By long and tedious journeyings, across mountain,
stream, and swamp--through seemingly boundless stretches of majestic
pines--sometimes encountering hostile Indians and again exchanging
friendly courtesies with the friendly Choctaws and Chickasaws, they
reached the new frontier, and established themselves along the river
courses. Others came by sailing vessels, and passing through the French
and Spanish cities of Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, followed
the river courses into the interior. The log cabins which sprang up
in the wilderness, were soon supplanted by comfortable, substantial
homes frequently built of brick made upon the plantations or of
hand-hewn lumber; each became a nucleus of activities around which all
things necessary for the maintenance of life were produced. On the
well-ordered plantations the African was not only field laborer and
faithful domestic, but became cobbler, mason, carpenter, and a spinner
and weaver of cotton and wool. In this virgin region, far removed
from the life and influences of the older States, there grew up a
vital and mutual dependence between master and slave; as such, each
was necessary to the other; but it was not a combination out of which
sentiments for the ultimate freedom of the negro were apt to grow; and
it was these who were farthest removed from the later machinations
of the Abolitionists, who were most bitter and strenuous in their
opposition. In this close relation which in all but rare exceptions was
a kindly one, the Southerner came to know the negro as the negro then
could not know himself, realized his limitations, directed him along
useful lines, and knew how rapidly he would revert were the civilizing
and humanizing influence of slavery as it existed in the South removed.
In later years when Southerners stood before a questioning world, there
was no sophistry in the protests of those who declared that slavery was
beneficial, and it was an argument resting upon truth that the Southern
negro’s condition was happier than that of the laboring classes in
other parts of the world.
European events also conspired towards an extension of slavery. After
the French troops, already depleted by yellow fever, were defeated by
the negro insurgents at San Domingo, Napoleon realized the uncertainty
of France retaining the great Louisiana Territory which had been
but recently repossessed from Spain. To circumvent the English, who
had long coveted this domain, Napoleon, in 1803, offered it to the
United States for fifteen million dollars. American settlers along
the Mississippi had already experienced difficulties with the Spanish
who claimed complete control of the Mississippi River south of the
Yazoo, and though Congress had been given no constitutional prerogative
for acquiring new territory, Jefferson, who was then President, saw
the varied importance of this acquisition, and successfully and with
very little criticism directed the negotiations. This brought into
the United States, not only a vast terra incognita, but an extensive
Franco-Spanish civilization stretching along the Gulf of Mexico, with
French outposts scattered along the great river systems and reaching
into the very heart of America.
The divergence of this civilization from that of English colonization
was not only racial, but its tone had been qualified by the spirit in
which the settlements had been made and the polity adopted by each. It
possessed nothing of New England’s austerity, or of Virginia’s somewhat
stolid stateliness, but was characterized by a graceful picturesqueness
and a delightful bonhomie. The black-robed priest if not the pathfinder
who blazed the way for French settlements was usually the comrade and
companion of those who did. Religion and settlement went hand in hand.
None of the torturing and enslaving methods used by the Puritans to
force upon the natives a cold, stern religion, unattractive even to
other Christian sects, or by the Spanish in Mexico and Florida, were
resorted to by the French. Wherever there was a priest, Mass began the
day. The mystic ceremony, performed in the dewy freshness of early
morning within the forest’s depths, or on a strip of sandy beach beside
the mighty waters; the solemn gestures of the celebrant and the adoring
attitude of the worshippers appealed to the Indian imagination, and the
French were soon importuned to invoke their Great Spirit to aid the red
man, to bring rain or to heal the sick or wounded.
From Mobile, the oldest and for many years the chief French
settlement, the genius of Iberville and Bienville Lemoyne, aided by
ardent and indefatigable missioners, reached out to remote Indian
tribes, conciliating and binding them as allies. They dealt fairly
with the Indian, but in cases of treachery used the Indian’s own
method of punishment. From the Indians they also adopted the custom of
making slaves of hostile captives. Negro slavery also existed in these
settlements from very early years, for in the quaint baptismal register
of 1704-1778, forming a part of the archives of the Catholic Cathedral
of Mobile, is recorded the baptism of two negro children belonging to
Bienville in 1707, and in the same year a negro woman belonging to him
bore the first negro child born on the Gulf coast.[11]
Gold was not found, nor did the French settlements on the Gulf lay in
the wake of the treasure-ladened Spanish galleons, but the climate was
benign, the lands rich, and the forests afforded an abundance of food,
and in times of scarcity Bienville sometimes quartered his soldiers
among the friendly natives. There was leisure for the amenities,
and the priest and nun who had given up life and ambition in the Old
World were not only the spiritual advisers and educators of the young
of New France, but as missioners guided and instructed the Indian and
the slave. Their institutions became asylums for the sick and desolate
of any race, and to their influence may be traced the easy, happy
condition of the negro slave among the French of Louisiana. There was
that in the temperament of these French which while appropriating the
Indian’s and negro’s usefulness at the same time beguiled and won them.
An incident of a slave’s heroic loyalty to the French is related by
Gayarré in his _Louisiana_. After the French settlements passed under
Spanish control, New Orleans revolted, and the leaders were sentenced
to be shot; Jeannot the negro hangman cut off his right arm rather than
raise it against a Frenchman.
In March, 1724, Bienville issued a code, one clause of which forbade
marriages between whites and blacks. Such marriages had taken place,
and had given rise to what afterwards became an extensive Afro-Latin
population. In many places along the Gulf coast it is among these
so-called Creoles who have clung to their original habitations along
the river banks, the creeks, and bays, that the old French names are
found and a patois spoken. The result of this amalgamation did not seem
mongrel, but distinctive, and in their local history, covering two
hundred years, during which time they have lived under five different
flags, there has been a pride of race which has kept the original
strain pure. Deeply religious, they have been characterized by honesty,
frugality, and industry. They were never slaves, but were in many
instances slave owners.
A Société des Amis des Noirs had been formed in Paris, in 1788. Its
object was to end the slave trade and slavery, especially in San
Domingo from which came many reports of cruelty and oppression. A
little later, France in establishing the rights and equality of man
passed through her awful revolution. Though Louisiana was in constant
touch and sympathy with France, among her peaceful, pleasure-loving
people no sentiment about negro freedom or equality seems to have been
evolved. When this great territory passed into the United States, it
carried with it its institution of slavery, which, established as it
was in the habits and thoughts of these people, strengthened slavery’s
hold upon the South, pushed further away, and complicated with added
difficulties the fulfillment of the hope of those great Southerners who
had looked for its gradual and peaceful termination. In the government
of this new territory we again meet with the large vision of Jefferson
and his desire to curtail slavery. Outside importations were forbidden,
and only slaves who had been brought to this country before 1798
could be carried by their masters for the purpose of settlement into
Louisiana. All others carried in would be freed and the penalty for
each offense would be three hundred dollars.
To prepare the seafaring interests for the statute of 1808, and to lead
American sentiment to its acceptance, Congress in the early part of
the same year (1803) prohibited after April 1, 1803, the importation
of any persons of color, or the entry of any vessels containing such
persons into those States whose laws already debarred such importation.
Indians were not included in this prohibition. The penalty for the
first violation was a fine of one thousand dollars for every such
person, one half to be appropriated to the United States and the other
to be given to the informer. For the latter offense, the vessel and
all appurtenances were to be confiscated by the United States, one
half the net proceeds to be given to such “person or persons on whose
information the seizure of such forfeiture shall be made.”[12]
When New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804, this statute obtained in
all the Northern States. In their economy slavery was an incubus. This
statute imposed no financial sacrifice on individuals, for in most
cases the relatively few slaves had been transferred and sold in the
South. Though there were threatening party differences, as yet there
seems no general feeling against slavery in those States to which
it was peculiar, and such sentiments as were entertained were more
abstract than those common in the South itself.[13] Many Northern
fortunes had been built upon the slave trade; though prohibiting the
importation into their own States, numbers were still actively engaged
in the traffic--and the Southern States were the only ports legally
open to them, for an act forbidding the direct or indirect importation
of slaves into foreign countries had become a United States statute
in 1794. The South itself seldom engaged in this traffic--it was a
degradation to which her aristocratic tendencies could not stoop; a
“nigger-trade” was taboo; and though slave vessels plied to and from
her ports, they were usually a part of Yankee enterprise.
Jefferson, to whom the question had so long been a momentous one,
welcomed the time when the traffic would end, and in his sixth annual
message to Congress, December 2, 1806, rejoiced “on the approach of
the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally,
to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further
participation in those violations of human rights which have so long
continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the
morality, the reputation, and the best interests of the country have
long been eager to proscribe.” With the first of January, 1808, it
became unlawful for any person of color to be imported into the United
States or her territory; any person aiding or abetting such traffic to
be fined five thousand dollars; also “any citizen of the United States,
building, fitting out, equipping, loading or otherwise preparing
or sending away any ship or vessel, knowing that the same shall be
employed in such trade or business” shall pay twenty thousand dollars,
a part to go to the United States and another to any person or persons
who shall prosecute the offender. Every vessel found engaged in the
traffic was to be “seized, prosecuted, and condemned in any of the
circuit courts or district courts where the said ship or vessel may
be found or seized.” The President was authorized to use the naval
and revenue forces to enforce the statute. They were to cruise on the
coast of the United States and her territories; to seize and bring to
port vessels contravening the provisions of the act, the captain or
commander to be prosecuted before any court of the United States having
jurisdiction thereof; and if convicted to be fined not more than ten
thousand dollars, and to be subject to imprisonment to not more than
four years.[14]
These and further enactments of a like nature ended constitutionally
the slave traffic in the United States. Many New Englanders had nothing
further to gain; there was no legitimate financial emolument now
standing between them and a realization of the ethical side of the
slave question. Instead of lending a conservative help to those of the
South who hoped by gradual and conciliatory methods to loose slavery’s
growing hold upon their institutions, through a curious psychological
metamorphosis they began to look askance upon the South and its
institution of slavery, and to affiliate in thought with the abolition
movement which under Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others was stirring
England; forgetting in their zeal that the wrongs which Clarkson and
Wilberforce were championing were the wrongs of which England and
New England as slave traders had been the chief perpetrators. This
growing sentiment was seized upon by politicians and played upon for
party purposes. It was with increased apprehension that they saw the
extension of the slave interests which the purchase of Louisiana had
necessitated, and the further representation these interests would
be given as new States were formed from the slave territory. For a
decade this jealousy was kept within safe bounds by any preponderance
of representation being checkmated and balanced by the formation of a
Free State. Yet this feeling was becoming rapidly contagious, spreading
to many who had not previously thought of slavery, or who regarded it
as a domestic policy to be settled by the Slave States individually
and exclusively. With the development of the Missouri controversy,
the temperamental divergence born of several centuries of turmoil and
turbulence in England, and too deep-rooted to be really dead, roused
from the anesthesia of united effort against a common enemy and a
subsequent enthusiasm for Union, and stood forth definitely defined
as North and South. Forgetful of the give and take necessary for
the harmonious existence of polities as of individuals, the country
was still not large enough or the political interests sufficiently
varied, for such differences to be conducive to well-being. In his
Presidential farewell Washington warned his countrymen against a
geographical division of interests: “In contemplating the causes which
may disturb our Union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern, that
any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by
_geographical discrimination_, ... northern and southern ... Atlantic
and western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that
there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the
expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is
to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot
shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings
which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien
to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal
affection.” To Jefferson, aged and waiting, this Missouri controversy
and its adjustment, was the alarum in which he heard the death-knell
of the Union, and in a letter to John Holmes, dated Monticello, April
22, 1820, he so expresses himself: “I thank you, dear sir, for the copy
you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents
on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had
for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to
public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a
passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not far distant. But
this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and
filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the death-knell of
the Union. It is hushed indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve
only, not the final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a
marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to
the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new
irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious
truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than
I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practical
way. The cession of that kind of property (for so it is misnamed) is
a bagatelle, which would not cost me a second thought, if in that
way a general emancipation and _expatriation_ could be effected; and
gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But, as it is,
we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely
let him go. Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other.
Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one Free
State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who
would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface
would make them individually happier, and proportionately facilitate
the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden on
a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence, too, from this act
of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of
Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of
men comprising a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of every
State, which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them, and
given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example, say that
the non-freemen of Connecticut could be freemen, or that they shall not
emigrate to another State?
“I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice
of themselves of the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and
happiness to their country, is to be thrown away, by the unwise and
unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be
that I shall not live to weep over it. If they would dispassionately
weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle,
more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause
before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of
treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful
advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and
respect.”