and a free ocean frontier of about twenty-five hundred miles; and
more than one half of all your slaves are within two days’ run of
it. More than one quarter of them are within one night’s run of it.
Thousands and tens of thousands can escape, even while you are dining.
Canada, now so distant, is brought five hundred miles nearer. The
under-ground railroad will be abandoned, and its stock so invested as
to yield quicker returns. What facilities for escape, too, will the
ocean present. Fleets of vessels are constantly passing and repassing
within a few hours’ sail of the coast. The day for the power and the
triumph of those whom you hate as abolitionists will have arrived.
Steamboats could lie out of sight of land in the day time, run in at
night, and be out of sight again before the rising of the sun. To guard
twenty-five hundred miles of coast is impossible. If you declare war in
order to avenge your losses, then that war makes your coast lawfully
accessible both by day and by night, and multiplies a hundred fold the
opportunities and facilities for this self-recovery of stolen goods.
I know it is said that some of the Northern States are averse to
the reception of blacks. Let us analyze this idea. There are now
by estimation three millions of slaves. Say one half of these are
either too old or too young to have the strength or the intelligence
to escape. A million and a half are left; five hundred thousand of
these will have attachments to their own parents or children, or to
their masters, too strong to be broken; or they may be so degraded
as to be contented with bondage; for their contentment is always one
of the measures of their degradation. This would leave a million for
fugitives, consisting wholly of the most able bodied and intelligent.
The Northern States comprise a territory of five hundred thousand
square miles. A million of escaped slaves would give but two to
a square mile, and this surely would not be a formidable number,
even where colorphobia is strongest. Suppose the case of a family
of fourteen slaves,--two grandparents, too decrepit for labor, six
athletic sons or daughters, and six grand children. What but affection
should prevent the able-bodied and the profitable from escaping, and
leaving the aged and the young on their masters’ hands. Affection,
indeed, would bind the parents to their children, but they know too
well how often this bond is remorselessly broken by the master; and,
besides, an enlightened affection would look to future children and
their posterity forever, as well as to those they already have.
Will you make your laws horribly penal, in order to deter slaves from
escaping by fear? Will you mutilate them, or scourge them till within
a minute of death? Do so. All such punishments not only nourish the
love of freedom, but breed the purpose of revenge; and it is a kind
of lesson which a brutalized nature is always prone to retaliate with
improvements. Will you make the act of escape a capital offence in
a slave, and destroy the victim you cannot restrain? Do so. Though
you may inflict death in a paroxysm of wrath, yet of all your penal
dispensations it is the most merciful. It not only releases the slave
himself, but is a prospective and perpetual amnesty,--a true act of
oblivion,--for all his descendants. But this extremity of punishment
is not likely to be resorted to. In looking over the criminal codes
of the slave states, I think I have noted cases where the slave is
not punished with death for an offence for which a white man is.
The _value_ moderates the vengeance. There are not many who, like
Cleopatra, can afford to dissolve a pearl in the cup of revenge, and
swallow it at a draught, when that pearl will command five hundred or a
thousand dollars in the market-place.
Southern gentlemen, when they threaten disunion, cannot surely be
so much at fault as to forget that slavery exists here as it never
existed before in the world. In Greece there were slaves;--in some
cases, highly intelligent and accomplished slaves. They could have
escaped if they would; but where should they escape to? All coterminous
nations,--the whole circle round,--were barbarians. These slaves,
therefore, had no place to flee to, where better institutions and
juster laws prevailed. So it was with Rome. Whither could her slaves
fly but to barbarous Spain, or more barbarous Gaul, or to some nation
whose language they did not understand. Ignorance of language is a more
insuperable barrier than mountains or oceans. It is just the reverse
here. The English language is spoken on all sides; and our slave land
is encircled by free land or free ocean,--Jamaica, the Bermudas, and
two thousand miles of northern frontier. And I have lately seen an
estimate from a credible source, that if an inter-oceanic canal should
be opened across the Isthmus of Darien, twelve hundred ships would
annually pass through it; and, as they sail to and fro, they will skirt
the whole of your gulf coast, and the whole of your Atlantic coast, a
great part of the voyage being within sight, or within a day’s sail, of
your shores. Now, the ignorant slave knows but little of geography, but
he would know of these avenues to freedom, and nothing but death could
extinguish such knowledge and the hopes it would inspire. I say, sir,
under such circumstances, slavery would melt away upon your borders
like an iceberg in the tropics. The particles, that is, the individuals
of the exposed surface, would disappear; and you might as well attempt
to stop solar evaporation by statutory laws, as to prevent their
escape. Perhaps a dissolution of the Union is the means foreordained
by God for the extinction of slavery; and did I not foresee its doom
before any very long period shall have elapsed, without the unspeakable
horrors of a civil and a servile war, I cannot say to what conclusion
the above considerations would lead my own mind.
Having shown how the “_redress_” of disunion will operate upon one
of the grievances alleged as its motive and excuse, let us look at
another of those “hazards,” whose list, of indefinite length, the south
is so willing to brave. In case of rebellion or secession, to whom
will the territories belong? It is the rule of political as well as
of municipal law, that whoever retires from a community, leaves its
common property behind him. I have a direct interest and proprietorship
in the church in my parish, in the schoolhouse in my town, and in
the state-house and other public property belonging to my state. But
if I expatriate myself, I leave all that interest and proprietorship
behind me. If the county of Brooke, in Virginia, should secede from the
State of Virginia, and should annex itself to Ohio or Pennsylvania,
no one doubts that it would forfeit all its rights to whatever public
property the State of Virginia possesses. In like manner, if the
“_United States South_”--as the new confederacy has already been named
by the “Richmond Enquirer,”--should secede, they would, by the very
act of secession, surrender and abandon all right, title, and interest
in the new territories. By such secession, all their citizens become
foreigners. They have no rights under the treaty with Mexico. The new
Spanish citizen, whose allegiance was transferred by the treaty with
Mexico, and whose citizenship is not yet two years old, would have a
right to expel them. The “United States South,” it is true, may declare
war, and attempt the conquest of the territories by force; but in such
a contest, the army and navy and military stores of the government,
which, also, they have lost by secession, will be turned against them.
But, I venture to prophesy, that if the slave states shall pass through
one war, single-handed, they will afterwards be the most peaceable
nation the world ever saw. To every frontier country and to every
naval power, they have given three millions of hostages for their good
behavior.
Let us look at a third grievance they mean to redress, and a third
“hazard” they are ready to encounter. They complain of northern
agitation on the subject of slavery, and northern instigation of the
slaves themselves. On the subject of “agitation,” I deny that the north
has ever overstepped the limits of their constitutional rights. They
have never agitated the question of slavery in the states. It has been
only in regard to slavery in this District, or the annexation of Texas,
or the acquisition of territory for the extension of slavery, or the
imprisonment of her own citizens in southern ports, or a denial of the
inviolable right of petition;--it has been only on such subjects that
the north has lifted up the voice of expostulation and remonstrance.
Even these constitutional rights she has used forbearingly. She has
never exerted force, nor threatened force, either to maintain the right
of petition or to liberate her own citizens imprisoned in southern
jails.
In regard to instigating slaves to escape, I acknowledge there have
been some instances of it; but they have been few. The perpetrators
have been tried and severely punished, and the north has acquiesced;
for they acknowledge that, if a man will go into a slave state and
violate its laws, he must be judged by them. But I have never known
of a single case,--I believe there is no well-authenticated case on
record,--where a northern man has instigated the slaves to rise in
rebellion, and to retaliate upon their masters for the wrongs which
they and their race have suffered. As I dread indiscriminate massacre
and conflagration, I should abhor the perpetrator of such a crime. But
will separation bring relief or security? No, sir; it will enhance
the danger a myriad fold. Thousands will start up, who will think
it as much a duty and an honor to assist the slaves in any contest
with their masters, as to assist Greeks, or Poles, or Hungarians, in
resisting their tyrants. Two things exist at the north which the south
does not duly appreciate,--the depth and intensity of our abhorrence
of slavery, and that reverence for the law which keeps it in check.
The latter counterpoises the former. We are a law-abiding people.
But release us from our obligations, tear off from the bond with
your own hands the signatures which bind our consciences and repress
our feelings, destroy those compensations which the world and which
posterity would derive from a continuance of this Union, and well may
you tremble for the result. I have seen fugitive slaves at the north,
and heard from their own lips the dreadful recital of their wrongs:
and if I am any judge of the natural language of men; if I can divine
from the outward expression what passions are burning within, each one
of them had a hundred conflagrations and a hundred massacres in his
bosom. They felt as you and I should feel if we had been subjected to
Algerine bondage. And do you doubt, sir, does any southern gentleman on
this floor doubt, for one moment, that if he were seized by a Barbary
corsair and sold into Algerine bondage, and carried a hundred miles
into the interior, that he would improve the first opportunity to
escape, though at every step in his flight he should crush out a human
life, and should leave an ever-widening expanse of conflagration behind
him? If agitation and instigation are evils now, woe to those who would
seek to mitigate or to repress them by the remedies of disunion and
civil war. Let men who live in a powder-mill beware how they madden
pyrotechnists.
But it is said that if dissolution occurs, the “United States South”
can form an alliance with Great Britain. And are there no instigators
and abolitionists in England? Yes, sir, ten in England where there is
one at the north. Frederick Douglass has just returned from England,
where he has enjoyed the honors of an ovation. William Wells Brown,
another fugitive slave, is now travelling in England. His journeys
from place to place are like the “progresses” of one of the magnates of
that land,--passing wherever he will with free tickets, and enjoying
the hospitalities of the most refined and educated men. The very last
steamer brought out an account of his public reception at Newcastle. An
entertainment was given him which was attended by four hundred ladies
and gentlemen. Men of high distinction and character adorned it by
their presence. The ladies made up a purse of twenty sovereigns, which
they gave him. It was presented in a beautiful purse that one of their
number,--the successful competitor for the honor,--had wrought with
her own hands. All their generosity and kindness they considered as
repaid by hearing from his own lips the pathetic story of his captivity
and the heroism of his escape. Sir, every man who has travelled in
England knows that there are large, wealthy, and refined circles there,
no member of which would allow a slaveholder to sit at his table or
enter his doors. Not only churches, but moral and religious men, the
world over, have begun to read slaveholders out of their communion and
companionship. If the south expects to rid itself of agitation and
abolitionism by rupturing its bonds with the north and substituting
an alliance with Great Britain for our present constitution, they may
envy the wisdom of the geese who invited the fox to stand sentinel over
them while they slept. Northern interference will increase a hundred
fold; and the whole power and wealth of British abolitionism, not
only founded on moral principle but nursed by national pride, will be
brought to bear directly upon them.
I said that the slave does not know much of geography; but he
understands enough of it to know where lies the free frontier. The
slave does not know much of astronomy; but there is one star in the
firmament which is dearer to him than all the heavenly host were
to the Chaldeans. He worships the north star with more than Persian
idolatry. But let the south form commercial alliances with Great
Britain; let the carrying trade be carried on in British vessels; and
the slave will find a star in the east as beautiful to his eye, and as
inspiring to his hopes, as the star in the north.
Is the case of the _Amistad_ forgotten, where a few ignorant, degraded
wretches, fresh from the jungles of benighted Africa herself, seized
upon the vessel in which they were transported, and compelled the
master, under peril of his life, to steer for the north star,--that
light which God kindled in the heavens, and which he will as soon
extinguish as he will extinguish the love of liberty which he has
kindled in every human breast?
And will a slave, escaping to Great Britain, or to any of her colonial
possessions, be reclaimable? Examine Somerset’s case for an answer.
No, sir. Neither the third clause of the second section of the fourth
article of the constitution, nor the law of 1793, will ever be extended
over the Three Kingdoms or their dependencies.
It surely is not beneath the dignity of the place or the occasion to
look at another of those “hazards” which the south are invoking. They
are proud of their past history, and I doubt not their reflecting
and patriotic men are at least reasonably solicitous of their future
fame. When they meet in august council to inaugurate the great event
of establishing an independent confederacy of slave states, and of
dissolving the political bands which now unite them with us, “a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind” will “require them to declare the
causes which had impelled them to the separation.” And will they find
a model for their manifesto in that glorious Declaration of American
Independence which their own immortal Jefferson prepared, and to which
many of the greatest of all their historic names are subscribed? Alas,
they will have to read that Declaration, as the devil reads Scripture,
backwards! I know not what may be the rhetorical terms and phrases
of the new Declaration, but I do know that its _historic_ form and
substance cannot be widely different from this:--
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are not created
equal; that they are not endowed by their Creator with inalienable
rights; that white men, of the Anglo-Saxon race, were born to rob, and
tyrannize, and enjoy, and black men, of the African race, to labor,
and suffer, and obey; that a man, with a drop of African blood in his
veins, has no political rights, and therefore shall never vote; that
he has no pecuniary rights, and therefore whatever he may earn or
receive, belongs to his master; that he has no judicial rights, and
therefore he shall never be heard as a witness to redress wrong, or
violence, or robbery, committed by white men upon him; that he has
no parental rights, and therefore his children may be torn from his
bosom, at the pleasure or caprice of his owner; that he has no marital
rights, and therefore his wife may be lawfully sold away into distant
bondage, or violated before his eyes; that he has no rights of mind or
of conscience, and therefore he shall never be allowed to read or to
think, and all his aspirations for improvement shall be extinguished;
that he has no religious rights, and therefore he shall never read the
Bible; that he has no heaven-descended, God-given rights of freedom,
and therefore he and his posterity shall be slaves forever. We hold
that governments were instituted among men to secure and fortify this
ascendency of one race over another; that this ascendency has its
foundation in force ratified by law, and in ignorance and debasement
inflicted by intelligence and superiority; and when any people, with
whom we are politically associated, would debar us from propagating our
doctrines or extending our domination into new realms and over free
territories, it becomes our duty to separate from them, and to hold
them, as we hold the rest of mankind,--friends when they make slaves,
enemies when they make freemen.”
I say, sir, of whatever words and phrases the southern “Magna Charta”
may consist, this, or something like this, must be its substance and
reality.
So the preamble to their constitution must run in this wise: “We, the
people of the ‘United States South,’ in order to form a more perfect
conspiracy against the rights of the African race, establish injustice,
insure domestic slavery, provide for holding three millions of our
fellow-beings, with all the countless millions of their posterity, in
bondage, and to secure to ourselves and our posterity the enjoyment of
power, and luxury, and sloth, do ordain and establish this constitution
for the ‘United States South.’”
Sir, should a civil war ensue between the north and the south,
(which may God in his mercy avert,) in consequence of an attempt to
dissolve this Union, and the certain resistance which would be made
to such an attempt, it would be difficult to exaggerate the immediate
evils which would befall the interests of New England and some other
parts of the north. Our manufactures and our commerce would suffer
at least a temporary derangement. But we have boundless resources
in our enterprise and our intelligence. Knowledge and industry are
recuperative energies that can never long be balked in their quest
of prosperity. The people that bore the embargo of 1807, and the
war of 1812, when all their capital was embarked in commerce, can
survive any change that does not stop the revolution of the seasons
or suspend the great laws of nature. And, when the day of peace again
returns, business will again return to its old channels. The south,
notwithstanding any personal hostility, will be as ready to take
northern gold as though it had come from the English mint; and they
will employ those first, who will do their manufacturing or their
commercial labor cheapest and best. Gold is a great pacificator between
nations; and, in this money-loving age, mutual interests will, in the
end, subdue mutual hostilities. Our share, therefore, of the calamities
of a civil war, will be mainly of a pecuniary nature. They will not be
intolerable. They will invade none of the securities of home; they will
not associate poison with our daily food, nor murder and conflagration
with our nightly repose; nor black violation with the sanctities of our
daughters and our wives.
Even in a pecuniary point of view, a dissolution of our political ties
would cause less immediate and intense suffering at the north than at
the south. Our laws and institutions are all framed so as to encourage
the poor man, and, by education, to elevate his children above the
condition of their parents; but their laws and institutions all tend to
aggrandize the rich, and to perpetuate power in their hands. Were it
not for the visions of horror and of bloodshed which southern threats
have so intimately associated with this controversy, one remarkable
feature, which has hitherto been eclipsed, would have been most
conspicuous.
With every philanthropic northern man, a collateral motive for keeping
the new territories free is, that they may be a land of hope and of
promise to the poor man, to whichever of all our states he may belong;
where he may go and find a home and a homestead and abundance. But the
south, in attempting to open these territories to the slaveholders,
would give them to the rich alone,--would give them to less than
three hundred thousand persons out of a population of six millions.
The interests of the poorer classes at the south all demand free
territory, where they can go and rise at once to an equality with
their fellow-citizens, which they never can do at home. They are
natural abolitionists, and unless blinded by ignorance, or overawed
by their social superiors, they will so declare themselves. Every
intelligent and virtue-loving wife or mother, at the south, when she
thinks of her husband and her sons, is forced to be an abolitionist.
The attempt, therefore, to subject the new territories to the law of
slavery is not made in the name of one half of the people of the United
States; it is not made for the six millions, more or less, who inhabit
the slave states; but it is made for less than three hundred thousand
slaveholders among more than twenty millions of people.