TOOMBS IN BOSTON.
In 1856, Mr. Toombs visited Boston, and delivered a lecture upon
slavery. It was a bold move, and many of his friends advised against it.
They did not see what good would come from the appearance of an extreme
Southern man in the heart of abolitionism, carrying his doctrines to the
very citadel of antislavery. But Toombs, with dramatic determination,
decided to accept. Several Southern statesmen had been invited to appear
before Boston audiences, but prudence had kept them from complying.
On the evening of the 24th of January, Mr. Toombs ascended the stage at
Tremont Temple. A large audience greeted him. There was great curiosity
to see the Southern leader. They admired the splendid audacity of this
man in coming to the place where Garrison had inveighed against slavery
and had denounced the Constitution as a "league with Hell and a covenant
with the Devil"; where Wendell Phillips had exerted his matchless
oratory, and where Charles Sumner had built up his reputation as an
unflagging enemy of Southern propagandism. Mr. Toombs was in good trim
for this supreme effort. Inspired by the significance of his mission, he
seemed possessed of unusual strength. His fine eye lighted with his
theme, and his brow seemed stamped with confidence rather than defiance.
His long, black hair was brushed from his forehead, and his deep voice
filled the historic hall. He was indeed a fine specimen of a man--a Saul
among his fellows. Possibly he was moved by the thought that he stood
where Webster had pleaded for the Union, for concession, and for harmony
six years before, when the people for the first time had turned from him
and when Fanueil Hall had been closed against him.
Senator Toombs was attended upon the stage by William and Nathan
Appleton, whose guest he was. Their presence was a guarantee that the
speaker should receive a respectful hearing. It was noticed at the
outset that he had abandoned his fervid style of speaking. He delivered
his address from notes in a calm and deliberate manner. He never
prepared a speech with so much care. His discourse was so logical and
profound, his bearing so dignified and impressive, that his hearers were
reminded of Webster.
It was evident early in the evening that his lecture would produce a
powerful effect. To many of his hearers his views were novel and fresh,
as they had never heard the Southern side of this great question. "With
the exception of Sam Houston," said a New York paper, "Mr. Toombs is the
only Southern man who has had the pluck to go into the antislavery camp
and talk aloud of the Constitution. Other Southern men, not afraid to
face Boston, have been afraid to face opinion at home."
In referring to the clause of the Constitution providing for the return
of fugitive slaves, Mr. Toombs was greeted by a hiss. The speaker turned
in the direction of the noise and said, "I did not put that clause
there. I am only giving the history of the action of your own John
Adams; of your fathers and mine. You may hiss them if you choose." The
effect was electrical. The hiss was drowned in a storm of applause. The
readiness and good-nature of the retort swept Boston off her feet, and
for one moment prejudice was forgotten.
The New York _Express_ declared that the speaker was earnest and
deliberate, presenting his argument with great power, and his lecture of
an hour and a half was, for the most part, listened to with respect and
attention. There was some conduct in the audience at the close which the
Boston _Journal_ was forced to denounce as "ungentlemanly." Three
cheers, not unmixed with dissent, were given to the distinguished
speaker. Someone called out, "When will Charles Sumner be allowed to
speak in the South?"
The New York _Express_ declared that "if Toombs and other hotheads would
lecture in Syracuse, Oswego, Ashtabula, and other points of 'Africa,'
they would do a good deal of good in educating the innocents and
becoming themselves educated and freed from fire, froth, fury, and
folly."
This lecture of Mr. Toombs at Boston will live as the most lucid defense
of slavery in law and in practice ever delivered. Slavery has fallen and
mankind has made up its verdict; but this address will still be read
with interest.
He did not hesitate to say that Congress had no right to limit,
restrain, or impair slavery; but, on the contrary, was bound to protect
it. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, slavery was a fact.
The Declaration did not emancipate a single slave; neither did the
Articles of Confederation. The Constitution recognized slavery. Every
clause relative to slavery was intended to strengthen and protect it.
Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the Territories. The clause
giving Congress power to make regulations for the Territories did not
confer general jurisdiction. It was not proper nor just to prohibit
slavery in the Territories. Penning the negro up in the old States would
only make him wretched and miserable, and would not strike a single
fetter from his limbs. Mr. Toombs simply asked that the common territory
be left open to the common enjoyment of all the people of the United
States; that they should be protected in their persons and property by
the general government, until its authority be superseded by a State
constitution, when the character of their democratic institutions was to
be determined by the freemen thereof. "This," he said, "is justice. This
is constitutional equity." Mr. Toombs contended that the compromise
measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 were made to
conform to this policy. "I trust--I believe," he continued, "that when
the transient passions of the day shall have subsided, and reason shall
have resumed her dominion, it will be approved, even applauded, by the
collective body of the people."
Upon the second branch of his theme, Mr. Toombs contended that so long
as the African and Caucasian races co-exist in the same society, the
subordination of the African is the normal and proper condition, the one
which promotes the highest interests and greatest happiness of both
races. The superiority of the white man over the black, he argued, was
not transient or artificial. The Crown had introduced slavery among the
American colonists. The question was not whether it was just to tear the
African away from bondage in his own country and place him here.
England had settled that for us. When the colonies became free they
found seven hundred thousand slaves among them. Our fathers had to
accept the conditions and frame governments to cover it. They
incorporated no Utopian theories in their system. They did not so much
concern themselves about what rights man might possibly have in a state
of nature, as what rights he ought to have in a state of society. The
lecturer maintained that under this system, the African in the
slaveholding States is found in a better position than he has ever
attained in any other age or country, whether in bondage or freedom. The
great body of this race had been slaves in foreign lands and slaves in
their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been
in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried
of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had
resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but
could not conceal the utter prostration of the race." The best specimens
of the race were to be found in the Southern States, in closest contact
with slavery. The North does not want the negro, does not encourage his
immigration. The great fact of the inferiority of the race is admitted
everywhere in our country.
"Our political system gives the slave great and valuable rights. His
life is protected; his person secured from assault against all others
except his master, and his master's power in this respect is placed
under salutary legal restriction." He gets a home, ample clothing and
food, and is exempted from excessive labor. When no longer capable of
labor, from age or disease, he is a legal charge upon his master. The
Southern slave, he said, is a larger consumer of animal food than any
population in Europe, and larger than any laboring population in the
United States, and their natural increase is equal to that of any other
people. Interest and humanity cooperate in harmony for the well-being of
slave labor. Labor is not deprived of its wages. Free labor is paid in
money, the representative of products; slave labor in the products
themselves. The agricultural and unskilled laborers of England fail to
earn the comforts of the Southern slave. The compensation of labor in
the Old World has been reduced to a point scarcely adequate to the
continuation of the race.
"One-half the lands of the cotton States is annually planted in food
crops. This half is consumed by the laborers and animals. The tenant in
the North does not realize so much."
Mr. Toombs believed that the Southern men were awakening to the
conviction that the slave should be taught to read and write, as being
of more use to himself, his master, and society. He realized that the
laws should protect marriage and other domestic ties, forbidding the
separation of families, and stated that some of the slaveholding States
had already adopted partial legislation for the removal of these evils.
But the necessities of life and the roving spirit of the white people
produced an infinitely greater amount of separation in families than
ever happened to the colored race. "The injustice and despotism of
England toward Ireland has produced more separation of Irish families
and sundered more domestic ties within the last ten years than African
slavery has effected since its introduction into the United States."
England keeps 100,000 soldiers, a large navy, and innumerable police to
secure obedience to her social institutions, and physical force is the
only guarantee of her social order, the only cement of her gigantic
empire. The laws restrain the abuses and punish the crimes of the slave
system. Slavery is impossible in England and Europe, because wages have
gone down to a point where they are barely sufficient to support the
laborer and his family. Capital could not afford to own labor. Slavery
ceased in England in obedience to this law, and not from any regard to
liberty and humanity.
Senator Toombs declared that the condition of the African might not be
permanent among us. He might find his exodus in the unvarying law of
population. Increase of population may supply to slavery its euthanasia
in the general prostration of all labor. The emancipation of the negro
in the West Indies had not made him a more useful or productive member
of society. The slave States, with one-half the white population, and
between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 slaves, furnish three-fifths of the
annual product of the republic. In this relation, the labor of the
country is united with and protected by its capital, directed by the
educated and intelligent.
Senator Toombs combated the idea that slavery debased and enervated the
white man. To the Hebrew race were committed the orders of the Most
High. Slaveholding priests ministered at their altars. Greece and Rome
afforded the highest forms of civilization. Domestic slavery neither
enfeebles nor deteriorates a race. Burke had declared that the people of
the Southern colonies of America were much more strongly, and with a
higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty that those to the
Northward. Such were our Gothic ancestors; such were the Poles; such
will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. In such a
people the haughtiness of domination combines itself with the spirit of
freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.
Senator Toombs declared that, in the great agitation which for thirty
years had shaken the national government to its foundation and burst
the bonds of Christian unity among the churches, the slaveholding States
have scarcely felt the shock. Stability, progress, order, peace,
content, prosperity reign through our borders. Not a single soldier is
to be found in our domain to overawe or protect society. Mr. Toombs
pictured the progress of the Southern churches, schools and colleges
multiplying. None of these improvements had been aided by the Federal
Government. "We have neither sought from it protection for our private
interests nor appropriations for our public improvements. They have been
effected by the unaided individual efforts of an enlightened, moral, and
energetic people. Such is our social system and such our condition under
it. We submit it to the judgment of mankind, with the firm conviction
that the adoption of no other, under such circumstances, would have
exhibited the individual man, bond or free, in a higher development or
society in a happier civilization."
Mr. Toombs carried his principles into practice. He owned and operated
several large plantations in Georgia, and managed others as agent or
executor. He had the care of, possibly, a thousand slaves. His old
family servants idolized him. Freedom did not alter the tender bond of
affection. They clung to him, and many of them remained with him and
ministered to his family to the day of his death. The old plantation
negroes never failed to receive his bounty or good will. During the
sale of a plantation of an insolvent estate Mr. Toombs, who was
executor, wrote to his wife, "The slaves sold well. There were few
instances of the separation of families." He looked after the welfare of
all his dependents. While he was in the army, his faithful servants took
care of his wife and little grandchildren, and during his long exile
from his native land they looked after his interests and watched for his
return.