which to her high-minded and honor-loving sons, should be more
formidable than all the rest. She is defying the Spirit of the Age.
She is not only defying the judgment of contemporaries, but invoking
upon herself the execrations of posterity. Mark the progress in the
public sentiment of Christendom, within the last few centuries, on
the subject of slavery and the rights of man. After the discovery of
this continent by Columbus, the ecclesiastics of Spain held councils
to discuss the question, whether the aborigines of this country had
or had not souls to be saved. They left this question undecided; but
they said, as it was possible that the nations of the new world might
have an immortal spirit, they would send them the gospel, so as to
be on the safe side; and the mission of Las Casas was the result. In
the time of Lord Coke, only a little more than two centuries ago, the
doctrine was openly avowed and held, in Westminster Hall, that the
heathen had no rights; and therefore that it was lawful for Christians
to drive them out of their inheritance, and to despoil them, as the
Jews despoiled the Egyptians and drove out the Canaanites. During
the seventeenth century, all the commercial nations of Europe engaged
in the African slave trade, without compunction or reproach. In the
last, or eighteenth century, the horrors of that trade were aggravated
and blackened by such demoniacal atrocities, as, were it not for
some redeeming attributes among men, would have made the human race
immortally hateful. Even when our own constitution was formed, in 1787,
this dreadful traffic was not only sanctioned, but a solemn compact was
entered into, by which all prohibition of it was prohibited for twenty
years. Yet, in the year 1820, after the lapse of only thirty-three
years, this very trade was declared to be piracy,--the highest offence
known to the law,--and the felon’s death was denounced against all
principals and abettors. We are often reminded by gentlemen of the
south, that, at the time of the adoption of that constitution, slavery
existed in almost every state in the Union; and that some northern
merchants, by a devilish alchemy, transmuted gold from its tears and
blood. But can they read no lesson as to the progress of the age from
the fact that all those states have since abjured slavery of their own
free will; and that, at the present day, it would be more tolerable
for any northern merchant, rather than to be reasonably suspected
of the guilt of this traffic, to be cast into the fiery furnace of
Nebuchadnezzar, seven times heated? In Europe, the tide of liberty,
though meeting with obstructions from firm-seated dynasties and
time-strengthened prerogative, still rises, and sweeps onward with
unebbing flow. In France, revolutions follow each other in quicker and
quicker succession. These revolutions are only gigantic struggles of
the popular will to escape from oppression; and, at each struggle, the
giant snaps a chain.
Great Britain, which in former times sent more vessels to the coast
of Africa to kidnap and to transport its natives, than all the other
nations of the earth together, now maintains a fleet upon the same
coast to suppress the trade she so lately encouraged. Three times,
during the present century, has that government escaped civil commotion
by making large concessions to popular rights. Since the year 1814,
written constitutions have been extorted by the people from more than
three fourths of all the sovereigns of Europe. What a tempest now beats
upon Austria, from all points of the compass, because, during the last
season, she attempted only to half enslave the Hungarians,--because
she attempted to do what, during the last century, she might have done
without a remonstrance! The rights of individuals, not less than the
rights of communities, have emerged from oblivion into recognition,
and have become law. Penal codes have been ameliorated, and barbarous
customs abolished. There are now but two places on the globe where a
woman can be publicly whipped,--in Hungary and in the Southern States!
And the universal scorn and hissing with which the rulers of the former
country have been visited for their women-whipping, and their execution
of those whose sole crime was their love of freedom, only foretoken
that fiercer scorn and louder hissing with which, from all sides of the
civilized world, the latter will soon be visited. Let the high-toned
and chivalrous sons of the south,--those “who feel a stain upon their
honor like a wound,”--think of all this, as one in the long catalogue
of “hazards” upon which they are rushing.
Sir, the leading minds in a community are mainly responsible for the
fortunes of that community. Under God, the men of education, of talent,
and of attainment, turn the tides of human affairs. Where great social
distinctions exist, the intelligence and the wealth of a few stimulate
or suppress the volition of the masses. They are the sensorium of the
body politic, and their social inferiors are the mighty limbs, which,
for good or for evil, they wield. Such is the relation in which the
three hundred thousand, or less than three hundred thousand slave
owners of the south, hold to their fellow-citizens. They can light
the torch of civil war, or they can quench it. But if civil war once
blazes forth, it is not given to mortal wisdom to extinguish or control
it. It comes under other and mightier laws, under other and mightier
agencies. Human passions feed the combustion; and the flame which the
breath of man has kindled, the passions of the multitude,--stronger
than the breath of the hurricane,--will spread. Among these passions,
one of the strongest and boldest is the love of liberty, which dwells
in every bosom. In the educated and civilized, this love of liberty is
a regulated but paramount desire; in the ignorant and debased, it is
a wild, vehement instinct. It is an indestructible part of the nature
of man. Weakened it may be, but it cannot be destroyed. It is a thread
of asbestos in the web of the soul, which all the fires of oppression
cannot consume.
With the creation of every human being, God creates this love of
liberty anew. The slave shares it with his master, and it has
descended into his bosom from the same high source. Whether dormant
or wakeful, it only awaits an opportunity to become the mastering
impulse of the soul. Civil war is that opportunity. Under oppression
it bides its time. Civil war is the fulness of time. It is literal
truth that the south fosters within its homes three millions of latent
rebellions. Imbedded in a material spontaneously combustible, it
laughs at fire. Has it any barriers to keep the spirit of liberty,
which has electrified the Old World, from crossing its own borders,
and quickening its bondmen into mutinous life?--not all of them, but
one in ten thousand, one in a hundred thousand of them. If there is no
Spartacus among them, with his lofty heroism and his masterly skill
for attack and defence, is the race of Nat Turners extinct, who, in
their religious musings, and their dumb melancholy, take the impulses
of their own passions for the inspiration of God, and, after prayer
and the eucharist, proceed to massacre and conflagration? In ignorant
and imbruted minds, a thousand motives work which we cannot divine.
A thousand excitements madden them, which we cannot control. It may
be a text of Scripture, it may be the contents of a wine vault; but
the result will be the same,--havoc wherever there is wealth, murder
wherever there is life, violation wherever there is chastity. Let this
wildfire of a servile insurrection break out in but one place in a
state; nay, in but ten places, or in five places in all the fifteen
states; and then, in all their length and breadth, there will be no
more quiet sleep. Not Macbeth, but the angel of retribution, will
“murder sleep.” The mother will clasp her infant to her breast, and,
while she clasps it, die a double death. But, where will the slaves
find arms? “_Furor arma ministrat._” Rage will supply their weapons.
Read the history of those slaves who have escaped from bondage; mark
their endurance and their contrivance, and let incredulity cease
forever. They have hid themselves under coverts; dug holes and burrowed
in the earth for concealment; sunk themselves in ponds, and sustained
life by breathing through a reed, until their pursuers had passed by;
wandered in “Dismal Swamps,” far away from the habitations of men;
almost fasting for forty days and forty nights, like Christ in the
wilderness; crushed themselves into boxes, but of half a coffin’s
dimensions, to be nailed up and transported hundreds of miles, as
merchandise; and, in this horrible condition, have endured hunger and
thirst, and, standing upon the head, without a groan or a sigh;--and,
will men, who devise such things, and endure such things, be balked in
their purposes of hope and of revenge, when the angel of destruction,
in the form of the angel of liberty, descends into their breasts?
The state of slavery is always a state of war. In its deepest
tranquillity, it is but a truce. Active hostilities are liable at any
hour to be resumed. Civil war between the north and the south,--any
thing that brings the quickening idea of freedom home to the mind of
the slave; that supplies him with facilities of escape, or immunities
for revenge,--will unleash the bloodhounds of insurrection. Can you
muster armies in secret, and march them in secret, so that the slave
shall not know that they are mustered and marched to perpetuate his
bondage, and to extend the bondage of his race? Was not Major Dade’s
whole command supposed to be massacred through the treachery of a
slave? A foray within your borders places you in such a relation to the
slave that you are helpless without him, and in danger of assassination
with him. He that defends slavery by war, wars against the eternal laws
of God, and rushes upon the thick bosses of Jehovah’s buckler. Such are
some of the “hazards” which the leaders of public opinion at the south,
the legislators and guides of men in this dark and perilous hour, are
invoking upon themselves and their fellows; not for the interests of
the whole, but for the fancied interests of the slaveholders alone,
and against the real interest of a vast majority of the people. May
God give that wisdom to the followers which he seems not yet to have
imparted to the leaders.
Sir, in these remarks, I have studiously abstained from every thing
that seemed to me like retaliation or unkindness. I certainly have
suffered no purposed word of crimination to pass my lips. If I have
uttered severe truths, I have not sought for severe language in
which to clothe them. What I have said, I have said as to a brother
sleeping on the brink of a precipice, where one motion of his troubled
sleeping, or of his bewildered awaking, might plunge him into
remediless ruin.
In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and abiding
conviction of the character of slavery, that under a full sense of my
responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately say, better
disunion,--better a civil or a servile war,--better any thing that
God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds of
slavery.
Upon the close of Mr. Mann’s remarks,
MR. BURT, of South Carolina, rose and said that he had not interrupted
the gentleman from Massachusetts during his speech, but he presumed he
did not wish to have any error go forth under the sanction of his name;
and he therefore called upon him to retract what he had said in regard
to slaves ever being exempted from capital punishment for crimes for
which the whites were executed. He called upon him also to withdraw the
imputation that the pecuniary value of the slave was a motive for any
such difference in the laws respecting them. He remarked that, by the
laws of the Southern States, such a distinction is not made. I know,
said he, no instance in which it exists. On the contrary, slaves are
punished capitally for offences that are not so punished when committed
by white men. In South Carolina, slaves have never been admitted to
the benefit of clergy for offences at common law; and thus a slave
is punished capitally for maiming or grievously beating a white man.
Mr. Burt was also understood to say that there were “six or eight,”
or “eight or ten,” offences in South Carolina for which slaves were
punished capitally, but for which white men were not.
MR. MANN replied that he had stated what he believed to be true; but
if he had fallen into any mistake, he should be most happy to be
corrected. He was assured also by the gentleman from Georgia, on
his left, [Mr. TOOMBS,] that no such distinction existed as he had
supposed; and it was but reasonable to believe that those gentlemen
were more conversant with the southern laws than himself.
MR. MANN added that he, (Mr. Mann,) could not be expected to have the
statute books of the Southern States before him, at that time, to meet
so unexpected a denial. Neither could he be expected by any honorable
gentleman to make a retraction until he had time to see whether the
ground he had taken were tenable.
NOTE BY MR. MANN. On repairing to the Law library to ascertain
which party was right in regard to the above difference of opinion,
the second book I opened contained at least three cases, where
the courts were authorized to sentence a slave to be transported
for the commission of an offence, for which a white man must be
unconditionally hung. See North Carolina Rev. Stat. vol. i. chap.
3, §§ 36, 37, 39. Of course, the reason of this difference is the
pecuniary value of the slave. Hung, he would be worthless; transported
to Cuba, he might bring five hundred dollars.
The law was formerly so in Mr. Burt’s own state.
In the seventh volume of the Statutes at Large of South Carolina, No.
344, § 5, I find the following: “And _whereas_, it has been found by
experience that the execution of several negroes for felonies of a
smaller nature, by which they have been condemned to die, has been of
great charge and expense to the public, and will continue, (if some
remedy be not found,) to be very chargeable and burdensome to this
province; _Be it therefore enacted_, by the authority aforesaid, that
all negroes or other slaves who shall be convicted and found guilty of
any capital crime, (murder excepted,) for which they used to receive
the sentence of death, as the law directs, shall be transported from
this province, by the public receiver for the time being, to any other
of his majesty’s plantations, or other foreign part, where he shall
think fitting to send them, _for the use of the public_.”
The slave condemned to transportation was to be appraised, and his
master paid out of the public treasury, and this amount was, of
course, to be reimbursed by what should be received from the foreign
sale. From the statement of Mr. Burt, that no such law _now_ exists in
South Carolina, I suppose the above enactment must have been repealed.
The _fact_ stated in the speech is therefore proved, although
the instances may be fewer than I had supposed. As to the motive
attributed, there can be no doubt. The cases are most numerous in the
Southern States, where white men are merely _imprisoned_ for offences
for which slaves are whipped, branded, and cropped, or otherwise
corporally punished. The slave’s time is too valuable to be lost in a
prison, but the white man’s is not; the white man’s skin is too sacred
to be flayed or branded, but the slave’s is not.
But laws which punish “_six or eight_,” or “_eight or ten_,” or any
other number of offences with death, when committed by slaves, while
the same offences receive a milder penalty when committed by whites;
or laws denying the benefit of clergy, (where that relic of barbarism
still prevails,) to a slave, while it is granted to a white man, are
surely among the greatest atrocities recorded in the history of the
race. Ponder for a moment upon the accursed fact. A freeman acting
under all the motives to self-respect; moved by all the incentives
to good conduct; enjoying all the means of education; inspired by
all the influences of the gospel; and capable of comprehending all
the powerful restraints and the sublime rewards connected with a
hereafter, _exonerated_ from the punishment of death; while death, in
all the horrors with which ignorance and superstition can invest it,
is inflicted upon men who are subjected to bondage; deprived of all
motive for honorable conduct; debarred from every avenue to knowledge
by cruel penalties; blinded to the light of the gospel; and, in a
land of boasted Christianity, left in the darkness of heathenism!
These are not the customs of a lawless banditti, of outcasts or
renegades, but solemn enactments of state legislatures, devised by
talent and eminence, enforced and preserved by the oligarchical few,
by the virtual nobility and flower of populous communities. Such
laws demand a return of five talents, under penalty of death, where
only one talent had been confided; they absolve him who had received
five talents, though he brings none of them back. Such laws make the
Scriptures read, that the servant who knoweth his lord’s will, but
doeth it not, shall be beaten with but few stripes; but the servant
who did not know it, whom his very master debarred from knowing it,
shall be beaten with many stripes; for unto whomsoever much is given,
but little shall be required; but to whom men have committed much, of
him little shall be asked. What shall be thought of a system, AND OF
EXTENDING A SYSTEM, which so perverts the hearts of men, otherwise
clear-headed, high-minded, and generous!
What more fitting theme could be conceived, were the arch-enemy of
mankind to compose a _burlesque_, in ridicule of _Republics_, to be
represented in that Theatre which is all “_Pit_”?
It is not, however, the _existence_ of slavery, but its _extension_,
we now intend to avert.
* * * * *
The last paragraph in the foregoing speech gave rise to the following
correspondence, which was published in the National Intelligencer:--
LETTER FROM MR. MANN.
MESSRS. EDITORS; Your paper of this morning contains a portion of a
speech of the Hon. MR. BADGER, of North Carolina, delivered in the
Senate on the 19th instant, in which he comments upon some remarks
lately made by me in the House of Representatives. The respect which,
(without any personal acquaintance,) I have long entertained for
this distinguished senator, would deter me from noticing any such
miscontructions of my remarks as a candid mind might inadvertently
commit; but the misrepresentations which the senator has made are so
gratuitous and gross, that I am constrained to notice them. I therefore
ask the favor of a place in your paper, where he can answer me, if he
pleases, though he chose a place for his animadversions where he knew I
could not answer him.
The following is a passage in his speech:--
“Nor, Mr. President, must I forget that, in considering the effect
which this proviso is likely to have upon the condition of the
southern mind, we must look to what has been said by northern
gentlemen in connection with this subject. Permit me to call the
attention of the Senate to a very brief extract from a speech
delivered in the other end of the capitol:--
“‘In conclusion, I have only to add, that such is my solemn and
abiding conviction of the character of slavery, that, under a full
sense of my responsibility to my country and my God, I deliberately
say, better disunion, better a civil or a servile war, better any
thing that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the
bounds of slavery.’
“SEVERAL SENATORS. Whose speech is that?
“A SENATOR. Mr. Mann’s.
“MR. BADGER. We have heard much, Mr. President, of the violence of
southern declamation. I have most carefully avoided reading the
speeches of southern gentlemen who were supposed to be liable to that
charge. I happened, however, in the early part of this session, and
before the other House was organized, to be in that body when there
were some bursts of feeling and denunciation from southern gentlemen,
which I heard with pain, mortification, almost with anguish of mind.
But, sir, these were bursts of feeling; these were passionate and
excited declarations; these had every thing to plead for them as being
spontaneous and fiery ebullitions of men burning at the moment under
a sense of wrong. And where, among these, will you find any thing
equal to the cool, calm, deliberate announcement of the philosophic
mind that delivered in the other House the passage which I have read:
‘Better disunion, better a civil or a servile war, better any thing
that God in his providence shall send, than an extension of the bounds
of slavery.’
“In other words, it is the deliberate, settled, fixed opinion of
the honorable gentleman who made that speech, that rather than the
extension of slavery _one foot_,--yes sir, there is no qualification,
_one foot_,--he would prefer a disunion of these states; he would
prefer all the horrors of civil war, all the monstrous, untold,
and almost inconceivable atrocities of a servile war; he would
pile the earth with dead; he would light up heaven with midnight
conflagrations; all this, yea, and more,--all the vials of wrath which
God in his providence might see fit to pour down upon us, he would
suffer, rather than permit, not one man who is now free to be made a
slave,--that would be extravagant enough,--but rather than permit one
man who now stands upon the soil of North Carolina a slave, to stand a
slave upon the soil of New Mexico:
“Yes, sir, here is a sacrifice of life and happiness, and of all that
is dear to the black and white races together, to a mere idealism,--a
sacrifice proposed by a gentleman who claims to be a philosopher,
and to speak the language of calm deliberation,--a sacrifice of our
glorious Union proposed by a patriot,--not rather than freemen should
be made slaves,--not rather than the condition of even one human being
should be made worse than it now is,--but rather than one man shall
remove from one spot of the earth to another without an improvement
of his condition, without passing from slavery to freedom. Sir,
after that announcement, thus made, which I beg to say, sir, I did
not seek,--for the speech I have never read; the extract I found in
one of the newspapers of the day,--after that announcement, talk not
of southern violence, talk not of southern egotism, talk not of our
disposition to sacrifice to our peculiar notions and our peculiar
relations, the peace and happiness, the growing prosperity, and the
mutual concord of this great Union. Now, sir, if that announcement
goes abroad into the southern country, attended by the wanton
application of this Wilmot proviso, an irritating commentary upon that
patriotic announcement, what can be expected? What but the deepest
emotions of indignation in the bosoms of those born and brought up
where slavery exists, and taking totally different views of the
institution from those which are taken by the honorable gentleman
who has placed himself upon this cool and deliberate, humane and
philosophical position.”
By his own confession, Mr. Badger had not read my speech. He takes
up a single sentence, therefore, for comment, without the justice of
looking at the context. He is like the man who should declare that the
Scriptures say “there is no God,” when it is the fool, and not the
Bible, that makes the declaration. My speech discussed the question
of extending slavery over our territories and the proposed southern
remedy for prohibiting that extension, namely, the disunion of the
states. The conclusion to which I came was, that the north had better
submit to the application of the southern remedy, than to surrender
the new territories to all the horrors of bondage. Beyond our present
limits “no more slave territories and no more slave states,” was the
exact ground I took. But Mr. Badger represents me as saying that I
would “prefer a disunion of these states,” and all the other evils in
his long and labored catalogue, “rather than the extension of slavery
_one foot_;” “yes,” he repeats with emphasis, “_one foot_.” Now, I
never made such a declaration as this. I never said any thing to give
countenance or color to such a declaration. Many persons, seeing the
statement of the honorable senator, and relying upon his character for
fairness and veracity, have believed that I did. But he has led them
into the error. My argument and conclusion had reference to new slave
territories, or to a new slave territory. Mr. Badger construes, or
rather misconstrues this to mean “one foot.” If my speech is fairly
susceptible of this construction, I wish so far to retract it. He
shall have my consent to a “_one foot_” territory, and to as many
slaves as he can hold on it under the _local law_.