HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED.
Preliminary to our elucidation of what we conceive to be the most
discreet, fair and feasible plan for the abolition of slavery, we propose
to offer a few additional reasons why it should be abolished. Among the
thousand and one arguments that present themselves in support of our
position--which, before we part with the reader, we shall endeavor to
define so clearly, that it shall be regarded as ultra only by those who
imperfectly understand it--is the influence which slavery invariably
exercises in depressing the value of real estate; and as this is a matter
in which the non-slaveholders of the South, of the West, and of the
Southwest, are most deeply interested, we shall discuss it in a sort of
preamble of some length.
The oligarchs say we cannot abolish slavery without infringing on the
right of property. Again we tell them we do not recognize property in man;
but even if we did, and if we were to inventory the negroes at quadruple,
the value of their last assessment, still, impelled by a sense of duty to
others, and as a matter of simple justice to ourselves, we, the
non-slaveholders of the South, would be fully warranted in emancipating
all the slaves at once, and that, too, without any compensation whatever
to those who claim to be their absolute masters and owners. We will
explain. In 1850, the average value per acre, of land in the Northern
States was $28,07; in the Northwestern $11,39; in the Southern $5,34; and
in the Southwestern $6,26. Now, in consequence of numerous natural
advantages, among which may be enumerated the greater mildness of climate,
richness of soil, deposits of precious metals, abundance and spaciousness
of harbors, and super-excellence of water-power, we contend that, had it
not been for slavery, the average value of land in all the Southern and
Southwestern States, would have been _at least_ equal to the average value
of the same in the Northern States. We conclude, therefore, and we think
the conclusion is founded on principles of equity, that you, the
slaveholders, are indebted to us, the non-slaveholders, in the sum of
$22,73, which is the difference between $28,07 and $5,34, on every acre of
Southern soil in our possession. This claim we bring against you, because
slavery, which has inured exclusively to your own benefit, if, indeed, it
has been beneficial at all, has shed a blighting influence over our lands,
thereby keeping them out of market, and damaging every acre to the amount
specified. Sirs! are you ready to settle the account? Let us see how much
it is. There are in the fifteen slave States, 346,048 slaveholders, and
544,926,120 acres of land. Now the object is to ascertain how many acres
are owned by slaveholders, and how many by non-slaveholders. Suppose we
estimate five hundred acres as the average landed property of each
slaveholder; will that be fair? We think it will, taking into
consideration the fact that 174,503 of the whole number of slaveholders
hold less than five slaves each--68,820 holding only one each. According
to this hypothesis, the slaveholders own 173,024,000 acres, and the
non-slaveholders the balance, with the exception of about 40,000,000 of
acres, which belong to the General Government. The case may be stated
thus:
Area of the Slave States 544,926,720 acres.
Estimates {Acres owned by slaveholders 173,024,000
{Acres owned by the government 40,000,000--213,024,000
{Acres owned by non-slaveholders 331,902,720
Now, chevaliers of the lash, and worshippers of slavery, the total value
of three hundred and thirty-one million nine hundred and two thousand
seven hundred and twenty acres, at twenty-two dollars and seventy-three
cents per acre, is _seven billion five hundred and forty-four million one
hundred and forty-eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-five dollars_;
and this is our account against you on a single score. Considering how
your villainous institution has retarded the development of our commercial
and manufacturing interests, how it has stifled the aspirations of
inventive genius; and, above all, how it has barred from us the
heaven-born sweets of literature and religion--concernments too sacred to
be estimated in a pecuniary point of view--might we not, with perfect
justice and propriety, duplicate the amount, and still be accounted modest
in our demands? Fully advised, however, of your indigent circumstances, we
feel it would be utterly useless to call on you for the whole amount that
is due us; we shall, therefore, in your behalf, make another draft on the
fund of non-slaveholding generosity, and let the account, meagre as it is,
stand as above. Though we have given you all the offices, and you have
given us none of the benefits of legislation; though we have fought the
battles of the South, while you were either lolling in your piazzas, or
playing the tory, and endeavoring to filch from us our birthright of
freedom; though you have absorbed the wealth of our communities in sending
your own children to Northern seminaries and colleges, or in employing
Yankee teachers to officiate exclusively in your own families, and have
refused to us the limited privilege of common schools; though you have
scorned to patronize our mechanics and industrial enterprises, and have
passed to the North for every article of apparel, utility, and adornment;
and though you have maltreated, outraged and defrauded us in every
relation of life, civil, social, and political, yet we are willing to
forgive and _forget_ you, if you will but do us justice on a single count.
Of you, the introducers, aiders and abettors of slavery, we demand
indemnification for the damage our lands have sustained on account
thereof; the amount of that damage is $7,544,148,825; and now, Sirs, we
are ready to receive the money, and if it is perfectly convenient to you,
we would be glad to have you pay it in specie! It will not avail you,
Sirs, to parley or prevaricate. We must have a settlement. Our claim is
just and overdue. We have already indulged you too long. Your criminal
extravagance has almost ruined us. We are determined that you shall no
longer play the profligate, and fair sumptuously every day at our expense.
How do you propose to settle? Do you offer us your negroes in part
payment? We do not want your negroes. We would not have all of them, nor
any number of them, even as a gift. We hold ourselves above the
disreputable and iniquitous practices of buying, selling, and owning
slaves. What we demand is damages in money, or other absolute property, as
an equivalent for the pecuniary losses we have suffered at your hands. You
value your negroes at sixteen hundred millions of dollars, and propose to
sell them to us for that sum; we should consider ourselves badly cheated,
and disgraced for all time, here and hereafter, if we were to take them
off your hands at sixteen farthings! We tell you emphatically, we are
firmly resolved never to degrade ourselves by becoming the mercenary
purchasers or proprietors of human beings. Except for the purpose of
liberating them, we would not give a handkerchief or a tooth-pick for all
the slaves in the world. But, in order to show how brazenly absurd are the
howls and groans which you invariably set up for compensation, whenever we
speak of the abolition of slavery, we will suppose your negroes are worth
all you ask for them, and that we are bound to secure to you every cent of
the sum before they can become free--in which case, our accounts would
stand thus:
Non-slaveholder's account against Slaveholders 7,544,148,825
Slaveholder's account against Non-slaveholders 1,600,000,000
-------------
Balance due Non-slaveholders 5,944,148,825
Now, Sirs, we ask you in all seriousness, Is it not true that you have
filched from us nearly five times the amount of the assessed value of your
slaves? Why, then, do you still clamor for more? Is it your purpose to
make the game perpetual? Think you that we will ever continue to bow at
the wave of your wand, that we will bring humanity into everlasting
disgrace by licking the hand that smites us, and that with us there is no
point beyond which forbearance ceases to be a virtue? Sirs, if these be
your thoughts, you are laboring under a most fatal delusion. You can goad
us no further; you shall oppress us no longer; heretofore, earnestly but
submissively, we have asked you to redress the more atrocious outrages
which you have perpetrated against us; but what has been the invariable
fate of our petitions? With scarcely a perusal, with a degree of contempt
that added insult to injury, you have laid them on the table, and from
thence they have been swept into the furnace of oblivion. Henceforth,
Sirs, we are demandants, not suppliants. We demand our rights, nothing
more, nothing less. It is for you to decide whether we are to have justice
peaceably or by violence, for whatever consequences may follow, we are
determined to have it one way or the other. Do you aspire to become the
victims of white non-slaveholding vengeance by day, and of barbarous
massacre by the negroes at night? Would you be instrumental in bringing
upon yourselves, your wives, and your children, a fate too horrible to
contemplate? shall history cease to cite, as an instance of unexampled
cruelty, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, because the world--the
South--shall have furnished a more direful scene of atrocity and carnage?
Sirs, we would not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads; but we
have endured long, we have endured much; slaves only of the most
despicable class would endure more. An enumeration or classification of
all the abuses, insults, wrongs, injuries, usurpations, and oppressions,
to which you have subjected us, would fill a larger volume than this; it
is our purpose, therefore, to speak only of those that affect us most
deeply. Out of our effects your have long since overpaid yourselves for
your negroes; and now, Sirs, you _must_ emancipate them--speedily
emancipate them, or we will emancipate them for you! Every non-slaveholder
in the South is, or ought to be, and will be, against you. You yourselves
ought to join us at once in our laudable crusade against "the mother of
harlots." Slavery has polluted and impoverished your lands; freedom will
restore them to their virgin purity, and add from twenty to thirty dollars
to the value of every acre. Correctly speaking, emancipation will cost you
nothing; the moment you abolish slavery, that very moment will the
putative value of the slave become actual value in the soil. Though there
are ten millions of people in the South, and though you, the slaveholders,
are only three hundred and forty-seven thousand in number, you have within
a fraction of one-third of all the territory belonging to the fifteen
slave States. You have a landed estate of 173,024,000 acres, the present
average market value of which is only $5,34 per acre; emancipate your
slaves on Wednesday morning, and on the Thursday following the value of
your lands, and ours too, will have increased to an average of at least
$28,07 per acre. Let us see, therefore, even in this one particular,
whether the abolition of slavery will not be a real pecuniary advantage to
you. The present total market value of all your landed property, at $5,34
per acre, is only $923,248,160! With the beauty and sunlight of freedom
beaming on the same estate, it would be worth, at $28,07 per acre,
$4,856,873,680. The former sum, deducted from the latter, leaves a balance
of $3,933,535,520, and to the full extent of this amount will your lands
be increased in value whenever you abolish slavery; that is, provided you
abolish it before it completely "dries up all the organs of increase."
Here is a more manifest and distinct statement of the case:--
Estimated value of slaveholders' lands after slavery} $4,856,783,680
shall have been abolished }
Present value of slaveholders' lands 923,248,160
--------------
Probable aggregate enhancement of value $3,933,535,520
Now, Sirs, this last sum is considerably more than twice as great as the
estimated value of your negroes; and those of you, if any there be, who
are yet heirs to sane minds and honest hearts, must, it seems to us, admit
that the bright prospect which freedom presents for a wonderful increase
in the value of real estate, ours as well as yours, to say nothing of the
thousand other kindred considerations, ought to be quite sufficient to
induce all the Southern States, in their sovereign capacities, to abolish
slavery at the earliest practical period. You yourselves, instead of
losing anything by the emancipation of your negroes--even though we
suppose them to be worth every dime of $1,600,000,000--would, in this one
particular, the increased value of land, realize a _net profit_ of over
_twenty three hundred millions of dollars_! Here are the exact figures:--
Net increment of value which it is estimated will}
accrue to slaveholders' lands in consequence } $3,933,535,520
of the abolition of slavery }
Putative value of the slaves 1,600,000,000
-------------
Slaveholders' estimated net landed profits of eman. $2,333,535,520
What is the import of these figures? They are full of meaning. They
proclaim themselves the financial intercessors for freedom, and, with that
open-hearted liberality which is so characteristic of the sacred cause in
whose behalf they plead, they propose to pay you upward of three thousand
nine hundred millions of dollars for the very "property" which you, in all
the reckless extravagance of your inhuman avarice, could not find a heart
to price at more than one thousand six hundred millions. In other words,
your own lands, groaning and languishing under the monstrous burden of
slavery, announce their willingness to pay you all you ask for the
negroes, and offer you, besides, a bonus of more than twenty-three hundred
millions of dollars, if you will but convert those lands into free soil!
_Our_ lands, also, cry aloud to be spared from the further pollutions and
desolations of slavery; and now, Sirs, we want to know explicitly whether,
or not, it is your intention to heed these lamentations of the ground? We
want to know whether you are men or devils--whether you are entirely
selfish and cruelly dishonest, or whether you have any respect for the
rights of others. We, the non-slaveholders of the South, have many very
important interests at stake--interests which, heretofore, you have
steadily despised and trampled under foot, but which, henceforth, we shall
foster and defend in utter defiance of all the unhallowed influences which
it is possible for you, or any other class of slaveholders or
slavebreeders to bring against us. Not the least among these interests is
our landed property, which, to command a decent price, only needs to be
disencumbered of slavery.
In his present condition, we believe man exercises one of the noblest
virtues with which heaven has endowed him, when, without taking any undue
advantage of his fellow-men, and with a firm, unwavering purpose to
confine his expenditures to the legitimate pursuits and pleasures of life,
he covets money and strives to accumulate it. Entertaining this view, and
having no disposition to make an improper use of money, we are free to
confess that we have a greater penchant for twenty-eight dollars than for
five; for ninety than for fifteen; for a thousand than for one hundred.
South of Mason and Dixon's line we, the non-slaveholders, have 331,902,720
acres of land, the present average market value of which, as previously
stated, is only $5,34 per acre; by abolishing slavery we expect to enhance
the value to an average of at least $28,07 per acre, and thus realize an
average net increase of wealth of more than _seventy-five hundred millions
of dollars_. The hope of realizing smaller sums has frequently induced men
to perpetrate acts of injustice; we can see no reason why the certainty of
becoming immensely rich in real estate, or other property, should make us
falter in the performance of a _sacred duty_.
As illustrative of our theme, a bit of personal history may not be out of
place in this connection. Only a few months have elapsed since we sold to
an elder brother an interest we held in an old homestead which was willed
to us many years ago by our dear departed father. The tract of land,
containing two hundred acres, or thereabouts, is situated two and a half
miles west of Mocksville, the capital of Davie county, North Carolina, and
is very nearly equally divided by Bear Creek, a small tributary of the
South Yadkin. More than one-third of this tract--on which we have plowed,
and hoed, and harrowed, many a long summer without ever suffering from the
effects of _coup de soleil_--is under cultivation; the remaining portion
is a well-timbered forest, in which, without being very particular, we
counted, while hunting through it not long since, sixty-three different
kinds of indigenous trees--to say nothing of either coppice, shrubs or
plants--among which the hickory, oak, ash, beech, birch, and black walnut,
were most abundant. No turpentine or rosin is produced in our part of the
State; but there are, on the place of which we speak, several species of
the genus Pinus, by the light of whose flammable knots, as radiated on the
contents of some half-dozen old books, which, by hook or by crook, had
found their way into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the
long winter evenings to our advantage, and have thus _partially_ escaped
from the prison-grounds of those loathsome dungeons of illiteracy in which
it has been the constant policy of the oligarchy to keep the masses, the
non-slaveholding whites and the negroes, forever confined. The fertility
of the soil may be inferred from the quality and variety of its natural
productions; the meadow and the bottom, comprising, perhaps, an area of
forty acres, are hardly surpassed by the best lands in the valley of the
Yadkin. A thorough examination of the orchard will disclose the fact that
considerable attention has been paid to the selection of fruits; the
buildings are tolerable; the water is good. Altogether, to be frank, and
nothing more, it is, for its size, one of the most desirable farms in the
county, and will, at any time, command the maximum price of land in
Western Carolina. Our brother, anxious to become the sole proprietor,
readily agreed to give us the highest market price, which we shall publish
by-and-bye. While reading the Baltimore _Sun_, the morning after we had
made the sale, our attention was allured to a paragraph headed "Sales of
Real Estate," from which, among other significant items, we learned that a
tract of land containing exactly two hundred acres, and occupying a
portion of one of the rural districts in the southeastern part of
Pennsylvania, near the Maryland line, had been sold the week before, at
_one hundred and five dollars and fifty cents_ per acre. Judging from the
succinct account given in the _Sun_, we are of the opinion that, with
regard to fertility of soil, the Pennsylvania tract always has been, is
now, and perhaps always will be, rather inferior to the one under special
consideration. One is of the same size as the other; both are used for
agricultural purposes; in all probability the only _essential_ difference
between them is this: one is blessed with the pure air of freedom, the
other is cursed with the malaria of slavery. For our interest in the old
homestead we received a nominal sum, amounting to an average of precisely
_five dollars and sixty cents_ per acre. No one but our brother, who was
keen for the purchase, would have given us quite so much.
And, now, pray let us ask, what does this narrative teach? We shall use
few words in explanation: there is an extensive void, but it can be better
filled with reflection. The aggregate value of the one tract is $21,100;
that of the other is only $1,120; the difference is $19,980. We contend,
therefore, in view of all the circumstances detailed, that the advocates
and retainers of slavery, have, to all intents and purposes, defrauded our
family out of this last-mentioned sum. In like manner, and on the same
basis of deduction, we contend that almost every non-slaveholder, who
either is or has been the owner of real estate in the South, would, in a
court of strict justice, be entitled to damages--the amount in all cases
to be determined with reference to the quality of the land in question. We
say this because, in violation of every principle of expediency, justice,
and humanity, and in direct opposition to our solemn protests, slavery was
foisted upon us, and has been thus far perpetuated, by and through the
diabolical intrigues of the oligarchs, and by them alone; and furthermore,
because the very best agricultural lands in the Northern States being
worth from one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre,
there is no possible reason, except slavery, why the more fertile and
congenial soil of the South should not be worth at least as much. If, on
this principle, we could ascertain, in the matter of real estate, the
total indebtedness of the slaveholders to the non-slaveholders, we should
doubtless find the sum quite equivalent to the amount estimated on a
preceding page--$7,544,148,825.
We have recently conversed with two gentlemen who, to save themselves from
the poverty and disgrace of slavery, left North Carolina six or seven
years ago, and who are now residing in the territory of Minnesota, where
they have accumulated handsome fortunes. One of them had traveled
extensively in Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and other adjoining
States; and, according to his account, and we know him to be a man of
veracity, it is almost impossible for persons at a distance, to form a
proper conception of the magnitude of the difference between the current
value of lands in the Free and the Slave States of the West. On one
occasion, embarking at Wheeling, he sailed down the Ohio; Virgina and
Kentucky on the one side, Ohio and Indiana on the other. He stopped at
several places along the river, first on the right bank, then on the left,
and so on, until he arrived at Evansville; continuing his trip, he sailed
down to Cairo, thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Des Moines;
having tarried at different points along the route, sometimes in Missouri,
sometimes in Illinois. Wherever he landed on free soil, he found it from
one to two hundred per cent. more valuable than the slave soil on the
opposite bank. If, for instance, the maximum price of land was eight
dollars in Kentucky, the minimum price was sixteen in Ohio; if it was
seven dollars in Missouri, it was fourteen in Illinois. Furthermore, he
assured us, that, so far as he could learn, two years ago, when he
traveled through the States of which we speak, the range of prices of
agricultural lands, in Kentucky, was from three to eight dollars per acre;
in Ohio, from sixteen to forty; in Missouri, from two to seven; in
Illinois, from fourteen to thirty; in Arkansas, from one to four; in Iowa,
from six to fifteen.
In all the old slave States, as is well known, there are vast bodies of
land that can be bought for the merest trifle. We know an enterprising
capitalist in Philadelphia, who owns in his individual name, in the State
of Virginia, _one hundred and thirty thousand acres_, for which he paid
only _thirty-seven and a half cents_ per acre! Some years ago, in certain
parts of North Carolina, several large tracts were purchased at the rate
of _twenty-five cents_ per acre!
Hiram Berdan, the distinguished inventor, who has frequently seen freedom
and slavery side by side, and who is, therefore, well qualified to form an
opinion of their relative influence upon society, says:
"Many comparisons might be drawn between the free and the slave
States, either of which should be sufficient to satisfy any man that
slavery is not only ruinous to free labor and enterprise, but
injurious to morals, and blighting to the soil where it exists. The
comparison between the States of Michigan and Arkansas, which were
admitted into the Union at the same time, will fairly illustrate the
difference and value of free and slave labor, as well as the
difference of moral and intellectual progress in a free and in a
slave State.
"In 1836 these young Stars were admitted into the constellation of
the Union. Michigan, with one-half the extent of territory of
Arkansas, challenged her sister State for a twenty years' race, and
named as her rider, 'Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude,
unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this
State.' Arkansas accepted the challenge, and named as her rider, 'The
General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the
emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners.' Thus
mounted, these two States, the one free and the other slave, started
together twenty years ago, and now, having arrived at the end of the
proposed race, let us review and mark the progress of each. Michigan
comes out in 1856 with three times the population of slave Arkansas,
with five times the assessed value of farms, farming implements and
machinery and with eight times the number of public schools."
In the foregoing part of our work, we have drawn comparisons between the
old free States and the old slave States, and between the new free States
and the new slave States; had we sufficient time and space, we might with
the most significant results, change this method of comparison, by
contrasting the new free States with the old slave States. Can the
slavocrats compare Ohio with Virginia, Illinois with Georgia, or Indiana
with South Carolina, without experiencing the agony of inexpressible
shame? If they can, then indeed has slavery debased them to a lower deep
than we care to contemplate. Herewith we present a brief contrast, as
drawn by a Maryland abolitionist, between the most important old slave
State and the most important new free State:
"Virginia was a State, wealthy and prosperous, when Ohio was a
wilderness belonging to her. She gave that territory away, and what
is the result? Ohio supports a population of two million souls, and
the mother contains but one and a half millions; yet Virginia is
one-third larger than the Buckeye State. Virginia contains 61,000
square miles, Ohio but 40,000. The latter sustains 50 persons to the
square mile, while Virginia gives employment to but 25 to the square
mile. Notwithstanding Virginia's superiority in years and in
soil--for she grows tobacco, as well as corn and
wheat--notwithstanding her immense coal-fields, and her splendid
Atlantic ports, Ohio, the infant State, had 21 representatives in
Congress in 1850, while Virginia had but 13--the latter having
_commenced_ in the Union with 10 Congressmen. Compare the progress of
these States, and then say, what is it but Free Labor that has
advanced Ohio? and to what, except slavery, can we attribute the
non-progression of the Old Dominion?"
As a striking illustration of the selfish and debasing influences which
slavery exercises over the hearts and minds of slaveholders themselves, we
will here state the fact that, when we, the non-slaveholders, remonstrate
against the continuance of such a manifest wrong and inhumanity--a system
of usurpation and outrage so obviously detrimental to _our_
interests--they fly into a terrible passion, exclaiming, among all sorts
of horrible threats, which are not unfrequently executed, "It's none of
your business!"--meaning to say thereby that their slaves do not annoy us,
that slavery affects no one except the masters and their chattels
personal, and that _we_ should give ourselves no concern about it,
whatever! To every man of common sense and honesty of purpose the
preposterousness of this assumption is so evident, that any studied
attempt to refute it would be a positive insult. Would it be none of our
business, if they were to bring the small-pox into the neighborhood, and,
with premeditated design, let "foul contagion spread?" Or, if they were to
throw a pound of strychnine into a public spring, would that be none of
our business? Were they to turn a pack of mad dogs loose on the community,
would we be performing the part of good citizens by closing ourselves
within doors for the space of nine days, saying nothing to anybody?
Small-pox is a nuisance; strychnine is a nuisance; mad dogs are a
nuisance; slavery is a nuisance; slaveholders are a nuisance, and so are
slave-breeders; it is our business, nay, it is our imperative duty, to
abate nuisances; we propose, therefore, with the exception of strychnine,
which is the least of all these nuisances, to exterminate this catalogue
from beginning to end.
We mean precisely what our words express, when we say we believe thieves
are, as a general rule, less amenable to the moral law than slaveholders;
and here is the basis of our opinion: Ordinarily, thieves wait until we
acquire a considerable amount of property, and then they steal a
dispensable part of it; but they deprive no one of physical liberty, nor
do they fetter the mind; slaveholders, on the contrary, by clinging to the
most barbarous relic of the most barbarous age, bring disgrace on
themselves, their neighbors, and their country, depreciate the value of
their own and others' lands, degrade labor, discourage energy and
progress, prevent non-slaveholders from accumulating wealth, curtail their
natural rights and privileges, doom their children to ignorance, and all
its attendant evils, rob the negroes of their freedom, throw a damper on
every species of manual and intellectual enterprise, that is not projected
under their own roofs and for their own advantage, and, by other means
equally at variance with the principles of justice, though but an
insignificant fractional part of the population, they constitute
themselves the sole arbiters and legislators for the entire South. Not
merely so; the thief rarely steals from more than one man out of an
hundred; the slaveholder defrauds ninety and nine, and the hundredth does
not escape him. Again, thieves steal trifles from rich men; slaveholders
oppress poor men, and enact laws for the perpetuation of their poverty.
Thieves practice deceit on the wise; slaveholders take advantage of the
ignorant.
We contend, moreover, that slaveholders are more criminal than common
murderers. We know all slaveholders would not wilfully imbue their hands
in the blood of their fellow-men; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that all
slaveholders are under the shield of a perpetual license to murder. This
license they have issued to themselves. According to their own infamous
statutes, if the slave raises his hand to ward off an unmerited blow, they
are permitted to take his life with impunity. We are personally acquainted
with three ruffians who have become actual murderers under circumstances
of this nature. One of them killed two negroes on one occasion; the other
two have murdered but one each. Neither of them has ever been subjected to
even the preliminaries of a trial; not one of them has ever been arrested;
their own private explanations of the homicides exculpated them from all
manner of blame in the premises. They had done nothing wrong in the eyes
of the community. The negroes made an effort to shield themselves from the
tortures of a merciless flagellation, and were shot dead on the spot.
Their murderers still live, and are treated as honorable members of
society! No matter how many slaves or free negroes may witness the
perpetration of these atrocious homicides, not one of them is ever allowed
to lift up his voice in behalf of his murdered brother. In the South,
negroes, whether bond or free, are never, under any circumstances,
permitted to utter a syllable under oath, except for or against persons of
their own color; their testimony against white persons is of no more
consequence than the idle zephyr of the summer.
We shall now introduce four tables of valuable and interesting statistics,
to which philosophic and discriminating readers will doubtless have
frequent occasions to refer. Tables 22 and 23 will show the area of the
several States, in square miles and in acres, and the number of
inhabitants to the square mile in each State; also the grand total, or the
average, of every statistical column; tables 24 and 25 will exhibit the
total number of inhabitants residing in each State, according to the
census of 1850, the number of whites, the number of free colored, and the
number of slaves. The recapitulations of these tables will be followed by
a complete list of the number of slaveholders in the United States,
showing the exact number in each Southern State, and in the District of
Columbia. Most warmly do we commend all these statistics to the _studious_
attention of the reader. Their language is more eloquent than any possible
combination of Roman vowels and consonants. We have spared no pains in
arranging them so as to express at a single glance the great truths of
which they are composed; and we doubt not that the plan we have adopted
will meet with general approbation. Numerically considered, it will be
perceived that the slaveholders are, in reality, a very insignificant
class. Of them, however, we shall have more to say here after.
TABLE NO. XXII.
AREA OF THE FREE STATES.
------------------------------------------------------------
States. | Square Miles.| Acres. |Inhabit'nts to
| | | square mile.
----------------|--------------|-------------|--------------
California | 155,980 | 99,827,200 | .59
Connecticut | 4,674 | 2,991,360 | 79.33
Illinois | 55,405 | 35,359,200 | 15.37
Indiana | 33,809 | 21,637,760 | 29.24
Iowa | 50,914 | 32,584,960 | 3.78
Maine | 31,766 | 20,330,240 | 18.36
Massachusetts | 7,800 | 4,992,000 | 127.50
Michigan | 56,243 | 35,995,520 | 7.07
New Hampshire | 9,280 | 5,939,200 | 34.26
New Jersey | 8,320 | 5,324,800 | 58.84
New York | 47,000 | 30,080,000 | 65.90
Ohio | 39,964 | 26,576,960 | 49.55
Pennsylvania | 46,000 | 29,440,000 | 50.26
Rhode Island | 1,306 | 835,840 | 112.97
Vermont | 10,212 | 6,535,680 | 30.76
Wisconsin | 53,924 | 34,511,360 | 5.66
|--------------|-------------|--------------
| 612,597 | 392,062,082 | 21,91
============================================================
TABLE NO. XXIII.
AREA OF THE SLAVE STATES.
------------------------------------------------------------
States. | Square Miles.| Acres. |Inhabit'nts to
| | | square mile.
----------------|--------------|-------------|--------------
Alabama | 50,722 | 32,027,490 | 15.21
Arkansas | 52,198 | 33,406,720 | 4.02
Delaware | 2,120 | 1,356,800 | 43.18
Florida | 59,268 | 37,931,520 | 1.48
Georgia | 58,000 | 37,120,000 | 15.62
Kentucky | 37,680 | 24,115,200 | 26.07
Louisiana | 41,255 | 26,403,200 | 12.55
Maryland | 11,124 | 7,119,360 | 52.41
Mississippi | 47,156 | 30,179,840 | 12.86
Missouri | 67,380 | 43,123,200 | 10.12
North Carolina | 50,704 | 32,450,560 | 17.14
South Carolina | 29,385 | 18,805,400 | 22.75
Tennessee | 45,600 | 29,184,000 | 21.99
Texas | 237,504 | 152,002,560 | 89
Virginia | 61,352 | 39,165,280 | 23.17
|--------------|-------------|--------------
| 851,448 | 544,926,720 | 11.29
TABLE NO. XXIV.
POPULATION OF THE FREE STATES--1850.
---------------------------------------------------
States. | Whites. | Free | Total.
| | Colored.|
----------------|------------|---------|-----------
California | 91,635 | 962 | 92,597
Connecticut | 363,099 | 7,693 | 370,792
Illinois | 846,034 | 5,436 | 851,470
Indiana | 977,154 | 11,262 | 988,416
Iowa | 191,881 | 333 | 192,214
Maine | 581,813 | 1,356 | 583,169
Massachusetts | 985,450 | 9,064 | 994,514
Michigan | 395,071 | 2,583 | 397,654
New Hampshire | 317,456 | 520 | 317,976
New Jersey | 465,509 | 23,810 | 489,555
New York | 3,048,325 | 49,069 | 3,097,394
Ohio | 1,955,050 | 25,279 | 1,980,329
Pennsylvania | 2,258,160 | 53,626 | 2,311,786
Rhode Island | 143,875 | 3,670 | 147,545
Vermont | 313,402 | 718 | 314,120
Wisconsin | 304,756 | 635 | 305,391
|------------|---------|-----------
| 13,233,670 | 196,116 | 13,434,922
===================================================
TABLE NO. XXV.
POPULATION OF THE SLAVE STATES--1850.
------------------------------------------------------------
States. | Whites. | Free | Slaves. | Total.
| | Colored.| |
---------------|-----------|---------|-----------|----------
Alabama | 426,514 | 2,265 | 342,844 | 771,623
Arkansas | 162,189 | 608 | 47,100 | 209,897
Delaware | 71,169 | 18,073 | 2,290 | 91,532
Florida | 47,203 | 932 | 39,310 | 87,445
Georgia | 521,572 | 2,931 | 381,622 | 906,185
Kentucky | 761,413 | 10,011 | 210,981 | 982,405
Louisiana | 255,491 | 17,462 | 244,809 | 517,762
Maryland | 417,943 | 74,723 | 90,368 | 583,034
Mississippi | 295,718 | 930 | 309,878 | 606,326
Missouri | 592,004 | 2,618 | 87,422 | 682,044
North Carolina | 553,028 | 27,463 | 288,548 | 869,039
South Carolina | 274,563 | 8,960 | 384,984 | 668,507
Tennessee | 756,836 | 6,422 | 239,459 | 1,002,717
Texas | 154,034 | 397 | 58,161 | 212,592
Virginia | 894,800 | 54,333 | 472,528 | 1,421,661
|-----------|---------|-----------|----------
| 6,184,477 | 228,138 | 3,200,364 | 9,612,979
RECAPITULATION--AREA.
Square Miles. Acres.
Area of the Slave States 851,448 544,926,720
Area of the Free States 612,597 392,062,082
------------ -----------
Balances in favor of Slave States 238,851 152,864,638
RECAPITULATION--POPULATION--1850.
Whites. Total.
Population of the Free States 13,233,670 13,434,922
Population of the Slave States 6,184,477 9,612,976
---------- ----------
Balances in favor of the Free States 7,049,193 3,821,946
FREE COLORED AND SLAVE--1850.
Free Negroes in the Slave States 228,138
Free Negroes in the Free States 196,116
--------
Excess of Free Negroes in the Slave States 32,022
Slaves in the Slave States 3,200,364
Free Negroes in the Slave States 228,138
---------
Aggregate Negro Population of the Slave States in 1850 3,428,502
THE TERRITORIES AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
Area in Square Miles. Population.
Indian Territory 71,127
Kansas " 114,798
Minnesota " 166,025 6,077
Nebraska " 335,882
N. Mexico " 207,007 61,547
Oregon " 185,030 13,294
Utah " 269,170 11,380
Washington " 123,022
Columbia, Dist. of 60 [2]51,687
--------- --------
Aggregate of Area and Population, 1,472,121 143,985
NUMBER OF SLAVEHOLDERS IN THE UNITED STATES--1850.
Alabama 29,295
Arkansas 5,999
Colombia, District of, 1,477
Delaware 809
Florida 3,520
Georgia 38,456
Kentucky 38,385
Louisiana 20,670
Maryland 16,040
Mississippi 23,116
Missouri 19,185
North Carolina 28,303
South Carolina 25,596
Tennessee 33,864
Texas 7,747
Virginia 55,063
--------
Total Number of Slaveholders in the United States 347,525
CLASSIFICATION OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS--1850.
Holders of 1 slave 68,820
Holders of 1 and under 5 105,683
Holders of 5 and under 10 80,765
Holders of 10 and under 20 54,595
Holders of 20 and under 50 29,733
Holders of 50 and under 100 6,196
Holders of 100 and under 200 1,479
Holders of 200 and under 300 187
Holders of 300 and under 500 56
Holders of 500 and under 1,000 9
Holders of 1,000 and over 2
-------
Aggregate Number of Slaveholders in the United States 347,525
It thus appears that there are in the United States, three hundred and
forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five slaveholders. But this
appearance is deceptive. The actual number is certainly less than two
hundred thousand. Professor De Bow, the Superintendent of the Census,
informs us that "the number includes slave-hirers," and furthermore, that
"where the party owns slaves in different counties, or in different
States, he will be entered more than once." Now every Southerner, who has
any practical knowledge of affairs, must know, and does know, that every
New Year's day, like almost every other day, is desecrated in the South,
by publicly hiring out slaves to large numbers of non-slaveholders. The
slave-owners, who are the exclusive manufacturers of public sentiment,
have popularized the dictum that white servants, decency, virtue, and
justice, are unfashionable; and there are, we are sorry to say, nearly one
hundred and sixty thousand non-slaveholding sycophants, who have
subscribed to this false philosophy, and who are giving constant
encouragement to the infamous practices of slaveholding and
slave-breeding, by hiring at least one slave every year.
In the Southern States, as in all other slave countries, there are three
odious classes of mankind; the slaves themselves, who are cowards; the
slaveholders, who are tyrants; and the non-slaveholding slave-hirers, who
are lickspittles. Whether either class is really entitled to the regards
of a gentleman is a matter of grave doubt. The slaves are pitiable; the
slaveholders are detestable; the slave-hirers are contemptible.
With the statistics at our command, it is impossible for us to ascertain
the exact numbers of slaveholders and non-slaveholding slave-hirers in the
slave States; but we have data which will enable us to approach very near
to the facts. The town from which we hail, Salisbury, the capital of Rowan
county, North Carolina, contains about twenty-three hundred inhabitants,
including three hundred and seventy-two slaves, fifty-one slaveholders,
and forty-three non-slaveholding slave-hirers. Taking it for granted that
this town furnishes a fair relative proportion of all the slaveholders,
and non-slaveholding slave-hirers in the slave States, the whole number of
the former, including those who have been "entered more than once," is one
hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred and fifty-one; of the
latter, one hundred and fifty-eight thousand nine hundred and
seventy-four; and, now, estimating that there are in Maryland, Virginia,
and other grain-growing States, an aggregate of two thousand slave-owners,
who have cotton plantations _stocked_ with negroes in the far South, and
who have been "entered more than once," we find, as the result of our
calculations, that the total number of actual slaveholders in the Union,
is precisely one hundred and eighty-six thousand five hundred and
fifty-one--as follows:
Number of actual slaveholders in the United States 186,551
Number "entered more than once" 2,000
Number of non-slaveholding slave-hirers 158,974
--------
Aggregate number, according to De Bow 347,525
The greater number of non-slaveholding slave-hirers, are a kind of
third-rate aristocrats--persons who formerly owned slaves, but whom
slavery, as is its custom, has dragged down to poverty, leaving them, in
their false and shiftless pride, to eke out a miserable existence over the
hapless chattels personal of other men.
So it seems that the total number of actual slave-owners, including their
entire crew of cringing lickspittles, against whom we have to contend, is
but three hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five.
Against this army for the defense and propagation of slavery, we think it
will be an easy matter--independent of the negroes, who, in nine cases out
of ten, would be delighted with an opportunity to cut their masters'
throats, and without accepting of a single recruit from either of the free
States, England, France or Germany--to muster one at least three times as
large, and far more respectable for its utter extinction. We hope,
however, and believe, that the matter in dispute may be adjusted without
arraying these armies against each other in hostile attitude. We desire
peace, not war--justice, not blood. Give us fair-play, secure to us the
right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the
difficulty at the ballot-box, not on the battle-ground--by force of
reason, not by force of arms. But we are wedded to one purpose from which
no earthly power can ever divorce us. We are determined to abolish slavery
at all hazards--in defiance of all the opposition, of whatever nature,
which it is possible for the slavocrats to bring against us. Of this they
may take due notice, and govern themselves accordingly.
Before we proceed further, it may be necessary to call attention to the
fact that, though the ostensible proprietorship of the slaves is vested in
fewer individuals than we have usually counted in our calculations
concerning them, the force and drift of our statistics remain unimpaired.
In the main, all our figures are correct. The tables which we have
prepared, especially, and the recapitulations of those tables, may be
relied on with all the confidence that is due to American official
integrity; for, as we have substantially remarked on a previous occasion,
the particulars of which they are composed have been obtained from the
returns of competent census agents, who, with Prof. De Bow as principal,
were expressly employed to collect them. As for our minor labors in the
science of numbers, we cheerfully submit them to the candid scrutiny of
the impartial critic.
A majority of the slaveholders with whom we are acquainted--and we happen
to know a few dozen more than we care to know--own, or pretend to own, at
least fifteen negroes each; some of them are the masters of more than
fifty each; and we have had the _honor (!)_ of an introduction to one man
who is represented as the owner of sixteen hundred! It is said that if all
the lands of this latter worthy were in one tract, they might be formed
into two counties of more than ordinary size; he owns plantations and
woodlands in three cotton-growing States.
The quantity of land owned by the slaveholder is generally in proportion
to the number of negroes at his "quarter;" the master of only one or two
slaves, if engaged in agriculture, seldom owns less than three hundred
acres; the holder of eight or ten slaves usually owns from a thousand to
fifteen hundred acres; five thousand acres are not unfrequently found in
the possession of the master of fifty slaves; while in Columbia, South
Carolina, about twelve months ago, a certain noted slaveholder was pointed
out to us, and reported as the owner of nearly two hundred thousand acres
in the State of Mississippi. How the great mass of illiterate poor whites,
a majority of whom are the indescribably wretched tenants of these
slavocratic landsharks, are specially imposed upon and socially outlawed,
we shall, if we have time and space, take occasion to explain in a
subsequent chapter.
Thus far, in giving expression to our sincere and settled opinions, we
have endeavored to show, in the first place, that slavery is a great
moral, social, civil, and political evil--a dire enemy to true wealth and
national greatness, and an atrocious crime against both God and man; and,
in the second place, that it is a paramount duty which we owe to heaven,
to the earth, to America, to humanity, to our posterity, to our
consciences, and to our pockets, to adopt effectual and judicious measures
for its immediate abolition. The questions now arise, How can the evil be
averted? What are the most prudent and practical means that can be devised
for the abolition of slavery? In the solution of these problems it becomes
necessary to deal with a multiplicity of stubborn realities. And yet, we
can see no reason why North Carolina, in her sovereign capacity, may not,
with equal ease and success, do what forty-five other States of the world
have done within the last forty-five years. Nor do we believe any good
reason exists why Virginia should not perform as great a deed in 1859 as
did New-York in 1799. Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780; would it
not be a masterly stroke of policy in Tennessee, and every other slave
State, to abolish it in or before 1860?
Not long since, a slavocrat, writing on this subject, said,
apologetically, "we frankly admit that slavery is a monstrous evil; but
what are we to do with an institution which has baffled the wisdom of our
greatest statesmen?" Unfortunately for the South, since the days of
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and their illustrious compatriots, she has
never had more than half a dozen statesmen, all told; of mere politicians,
wire-pullers, and slave-driving demagogues, she has had enough, and to
spare; but of statesmen, in the true sense of the term, she has had, and
now has, but precious few--fewer just at this time, perhaps, than ever
before. It is far from a matter of surprise to us that slavery has, for
such a long period, baffled the "wisdom" of the oligarchy; but our
surprise is destined to culminate in amazement, if the wisdom of the
non-slaveholders does not soon baffle slavery.
From the eleventh year previous to the close of the eighteenth century
down to the present moment, slaveholders and slave-breeders, who, to speak
naked truth, are, as a general thing, unfit to occupy any honorable
station in life, have, by chicanery and usurpation, wielded all the
official power of the South; and, excepting the patriotic services of the
noble abolitionists above-mentioned, the sole aim and drift of their
legislation has been to aggrandize themselves, to strengthen slavery, and
to keep the poor whites, the constitutional majority, bowed down in the
deepest depths of degradation. We propose to subvert this entire system of
oligarchal despotism. We think there should be _some_ legislation for
decent white men, not alone for negroes and slaveholders. Slavery lies at
the root of all the shame, poverty, ignorance, tyranny and imbecility of
the South; slavery must be thoroughly eradicated; let this be done, and a
glorious future will await us.
The statesmen who are to abolish slavery in Kentucky, must be mainly and
independently constituted by the non-slaveholders of Kentucky; so in every
other slave State. Past experience has taught us the sheer folly of ever
expecting voluntary justice from the slaveholders. Their illicit
intercourse with "the mother of harlots" has been kept up so long, and
their whole natures have, in consequence, become so depraved, that there
is scarcely a spark of honor or magnanimity to be found amongst them. As
well might one expect to hear highwaymen clamoring for a universal
interdict against traveling, as to expect slaveholders to pass laws for
the abolition of slavery. Under all the circumstances, it is the duty of
the non-slaveholders to mark out an independent course for themselves, to
steer entirely clear of the oligarchy, and to utterly contemn and ignore
the many vile instruments of power, animate and inanimate, which have been
so freely and so effectually used for their enslavement. Now is the time
for them to assert their rights and liberties; never before was there such
an appropriate period to strike for Freedom in the South.
Had it not been for the better sense, the purer patriotism, and the more
practical justice of the non-slaveholders, the Middle States and New
England would still be groaning and groveling under the ponderous burden
of slavery; New-York would never have risen above the dishonorable level
of Virginia; Pennsylvania, trampled beneath the iron-heel of the black
code, would have remained the unprogressive parallel of Georgia;
Massachusetts would have continued till the present time, and Heaven only
knows how much longer, the contemptible coequal of South Carolina.
Succeeded by the happiest moral effects and the grandest physical results,
we have seen slavery crushed beneath the wisdom of the non-slaveholding
statesmen of the North; followed by corresponding influences and
achievements, many of us who have not yet passed the meridian of life, are
destined to see it equally crushed beneath the wisdom of the
non-slaveholding Statesmen of the South. With righteous indignation, we
enter our disclaimer against the base yet baseless admission that
Louisiana and Texas are incapable of producing as great statesmen as Rhode
Island and Connecticut. What has been done for New Jersey by the statesmen
of New Jersey, can be done for North Carolina by the statesmen of North
Carolina; the wisdom of the former State has abolished slavery; as sure as
the earth revolves on its axis, the wisdom of the latter will not do less.
That our plan for the abolition of slavery, is the best that can be
devised, we have not the vanity to contend; but that it is a good one, and
will do to act upon until a better shall have been suggested, we do firmly
and conscientiously believe. Though but little skilled in the delicate
art of surgery, we have pretty thoroughly probed slavery, the frightful
tumor on the body politic, and have, we think, ascertained the precise
remedies requisite for a speedy and perfect cure. Possibly the less ardent
friends of freedom may object to our prescription, on the ground that some
of its ingredients are too griping, and that it will cost the patient a
deal of most excruciating pain. But let them remember that the patient is
exceedingly refractory, that the case is a desperate one, and that drastic
remedies are indispensably necessary. When they shall have invented milder
yet equally efficacious ones, it will be time enough to discontinue the
use of ours--then no one will be readier than we to discard the infallible
strong recipe for the infallible mild. Not at the persecution of a few
thousand slaveholders, but at the restitution of natural rights and
prerogatives to several millions of non-slaveholders, do we aim.
Inscribed on the banner, which we herewith unfurl to the world, with the
full and fixed determination to stand by it or die by it, unless one of
more virtuous efficacy shall be presented, are the mottoes which, in
substance, embody the principles, as we conceive, that should govern us in
our patriotic warfare against the most subtle and insidious foe that ever
menaced the inalienable rights and liberties and dearest interests of
America:
1st. Thorough Organization and Independent Political Action on the
part of the Non-Slaveholding whites of the South.
2nd. Ineligibility of Slaveholders--Never another vote to the
Trafficker in Human Flesh.
3rd. No Co-operation with Slaveholders in Politics--No Fellowship
with them in Religion--No Affiliation with them in Society.
4th. No Patronage to Slaveholding Merchants--No Guestship in
Slave-waiting Hotels--No Fees to Slaveholding Lawyers--No Employment
of Slaveholding Physicians--No Audience to Slaveholding Parsons.
5th. No Recognition of Pro-slavery Men, except as Ruffians, Outlaws,
and Criminals.
6th. Abrupt Discontinuance of Subscription to Pro-slavery Newspapers.
7th. The Greatest Possible Encouragement to Free White Labor.
8. No more Hiring of Slaves by Non-slaveholders.
9th. Immediate Death to Slavery, or if not immediate, unqualified
Proscription of its Advocates during the Period of its Existence.
10th. A Tax of Sixty Dollars on every Slaveholder for each and every
Negro in his Possession at the present time, or at any intermediate
time between now and the 4th of July, 1863--said Money to be Applied
to the transportation of the Blacks to Liberia, to their Colonization
in Central or South America, or to their Comfortable Settlement
within the Boundaries of the United States.
11th. An additional Tax of Forty Dollars per annum to be levied
annually, on every Slaveholder for each and every Negro found in his
possession after the 4th of July, 1863--said Money to be paid into
the hands of the Negroes so held in Slavery, or, in cases of death,
to their next of kin, and to be used by them at their own option.
This, then, is the outline of our scheme for the abolition of slavery in
the Southern States. Let it be acted upon with due promptitude, and, as
certain as truth is mightier than error, fifteen years will not elapse
before every foot of territory, from the mouth of the Delaware to the
emboguing of the Rio Grande, will glitter with the jewels of freedom. Some
time during this year, next, or the year following, let there be a general
convention of non-slaveholders from every slave State in the Union, to
deliberate on the momentous issues now pending. First, let them adopt
measures for holding in restraint the diabolical excesses of the
oligarchy; secondly, in order to cast off the thraldom which the infamous
slave-power has fastened upon them, and, as the first step necessary to be
taken to regain the inalienable rights and liberties with which they were
invested by Nature, but of which they have been divested by the accursed
dealers in human flesh, let them devise ways and means for the complete
annihilation of slavery; thirdly, let them put forth an equitable and
comprehensive platform, fully defining their position, and inviting the
active sympathy and co-operation of the millions of down-trodden
non-slaveholders throughout the Southern and Southwestern States. Let all
these things be done, not too hastily, but with calmness, deliberation,
prudence, and circumspection; if need be, let the delegates to the
convention continue in session one or two weeks; only let their labors be
wisely and thoroughly performed; let them, on Wednesday morning, present
to the poor whites of the South, a well-digested scheme for the
reclamation of their ancient rights and prerogatives, and, on the
Thursday following, slavery in the United States will be worth absolutely
less than nothing; for then, besides being so vile and precarious that
nobody will want it, it will be a lasting reproach to those in whose hands
it is lodged.
Were it not that other phases of the subject admonish us to be economical
of space, we could suggest more than a dozen different plans, either of
which, if scrupulously carried out, would lead to a wholesome, speedy, and
perfect termination of slavery. Under all the circumstances, however, it
might be difficult for us--perhaps it would not be the easiest thing in
the world for any body else--to suggest a better plan than the one above.
Let it, or one embodying its principal features, be adopted forth with,
and the last wail of slavery will soon be heard, growing fainter and
fainter, till it dies utterly away, to be succeeded by the jubilant shouts
of emancipated millions.
Henceforth, let it be distinctly understood that ownership in slaves
constitutes ineligibility--that it is a crime, as we verily believe it is,
to vote for a slavocrat for any office whatever. Indeed, it is our honest
conviction that all the pro-slavery slaveholders, who are alone
responsible for the continuance of the baneful institution among us,
deserve to be at once reduced to a parallel with the basest criminals that
lie fettered within the cells of our public prisons. Beyond the power of
computation is the extent of the moral, social, civil, and political evils
which they have brought, and are still bringing, on the country. Were it
possible that the whole number could be gathered together and transformed
into four equal gangs of licensed robbers, ruffians, thieves, and
murderers, society, we feel assured, would suffer less from their
atrocities than it does now. Let the wholesome public sentiment of the
non-slaveholders be vigilant and persevering in bringing them down to
their proper level. Long since, and in the most unjust and cruel manner,
have they socially outlawed the non-slaveholders; now security against
further oppression, and indemnity for past grievances, make it incumbent
on the non-slaveholders to cast them into the identical pit that they dug
for their betters--thus teaching them how to catch a Tartar!
At the very moment we write, as has been the case ever since the United
States have had a distinct national existence, and as will always continue
to be the case, unless right triumphs over wrong, all the civil,
political, and other offices, within the gift of the South, are filled
with negro-nursed incumbents from the ranks of that execrable band of
misanthropes--three hundred and forty-seven thousand in number--who, for
the most part, obtain their living by breeding, buying and selling slaves.
The magistrates in the villages, the constables in the districts, the
commissioners of the towns, the mayors of the cities, the sheriffs of the
counties, the judges of the various courts, the members of the
legislatures, the governors of the States, the representatives and
senators in Congress--are all slaveholders. Nor does the catalogue of
their usurpations end here. Through the most heart-sickening arrogance and
bribery, they have obtained control of the General Government, and all the
consuls, ambassadors, envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary,
who are chosen from the South, and commissioned to foreign countries, are
selected with special reference to the purity of their pro-slavery
antecedents. If credentials have ever been issued to a single
non-slaveholder of the South, we are ignorant of both the fact and the
hearsay; indeed, it would be very strange if this much abused class of
persons were permitted to hold important offices abroad, when they are not
allowed to hold unimportant ones at home.
And, then, there is the Presidency of the United States, which office has
been held _forty-eight_ years by slaveholders from the South, and only
_twenty_ years by non-slaveholders from the North. Nor is this the full
record of oligarchal obtrusion. On an average, the offices of Secretary of
State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of
the Navy, Secretary of War, Postmaster-General and Attorney-General, have
been under the control of slave-drivers nearly two-thirds of the time. The
Chief Justices and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the
United States, the Presidents pro tem. of the Senate, and the Speakers of
the House of Representatives, have, in a large majority of instances, been
slave-breeders from the Southern side of the Potomac. Five slaveholding
Presidents have been reelected to the chief magistracy of the Republic,
while no non-slaveholder has ever held the office more than a single term.
Thus we see plainly that even the non-slaveholders of the North, to whose
freedom, energy, enterprise, intelligence, wealth, population, power,
progress, and prosperity, our country is almost exclusively indebted for
its high position among the nations of the earth, have been arrogantly
denied a due participation in the honors of federal office. When "the sum
of all villainies" shall have ceased to exist, then the rights of the
non-slaveholders of the North, of the South, of the East, and of the West,
will be duly recognized and respected; not before.
With all our heart, we hope and believe it is the full and fixed
determination of a majority of the more intelligent and patriotic citizens
of this Republic, that the Presidential chair shall never again be filled
by a slavocrat. Safely may we conclude that the doom of the oligarchy is
already sealed with respect to that important and dignified station; it
now behooves us to resolve, with equal firmness and effect, that, after a
certain period during the next decade of years, no slaveholder shall
occupy any position in the Cabinet, that no slave-breeder shall be sent as
a diplomatist to any foreign country, that no slave-driver shall be
permitted to bring further disgrace on either the Senate or the House of
Representatives, that the chief justices, associate justices, and judges
of the several courts, the governors of the States, the members of the
legislatures, and all the minor functionaries of the land, shall be free
from the heinous crime of ownership in man.
For the last sixty-eight years, slaveholders have been the sole and
constant representatives of the South, and what have they accomplished? It
requires but little time and few words, to tell the story of their
indiscreet and unhallowed performances. In fact, with what we have already
said, gestures alone would suffice to answer the inquiry. We can make
neither a more truthful nor emphatic reply than to point to our thinly
inhabited States, to our fields despoiled of their virgin soil, to the
despicable price of lands, to our unvisited cities and towns, to our
vacant harbors and idle water-power, to the dreary absence of shipping and
manufactories, to our unpensioned soldiers of the revolution, to the
millions of living monuments of ignorance, to the poverty of the whites,
and to the wretchedness of the blacks.
Either directly or indirectly, are slave-driving demagogues, who have
ostentatiously set up pretensions to statesmanship, responsible for every
dishonorable weakness and inequality that exists between the North and the
South. Let them shirk the responsibility if they can; but it is morally
impossible for them to do so. We know how ready they have always been to
cite the numerical strength of the North, as a valid excuse for their
inability to procure appropriations from the General Government, for
purposes of internal improvement, for the establishment of lines of ocean
steamers to South American and European ports, and for the accomplishment
of other objects. Before that apology ever escapes from their lips again,
let them remember that the numerical weakness of the South is wholly
attributable to their own villainous statism. Had the Southern States, in
accordance with the principles enunciated in the Declaration of
Independence, abolished slavery at the same time the Northern States
abolished it, there would have been, long since, and most assuredly at
this moment, a larger, wealthier, wiser, and more powerful population,
south of Mason and Dixon's line, than there now is north of it. This fact
being so well established that no reasonable man denies it, it is evident
that the oligarchy will have to devise another subterfuge for even
temporary relief.
Until slavery and slaveholders cease to be the only favored objects of
legislation in the South, the North will continue to maintain the
ascendency in every important particular. With those loathsome objects out
of the way, it would not take the non-slaveholders of the South more than
a quarter of a century to bring her up, in all respects, to a glorious
equality with the North; nor would it take them much longer to surpass the
latter, which is the most vigorous and honorable rival that they have in
the world. Three quarters of a century hence, if slavery is abolished
within the next ten years, as it ought to be, the South will, we believe,
be as much greater than the North, as the North is now greater than the
South. Three quarters of a century hence, if the South retains slavery,
which God forbid! she will be to the North much the same that Poland is to
Russia, that Cuba is to Spain, or that Ireland is to England.
What we want and must have, as the only sure means of attaining to a
position worthy of Sovereign States in this eminently progressive and
utilitarian age, is an energetic, intelligent, enterprising, virtuous, and
unshackled population; an untrammeled press, and the Freedom of Speech.
For ourselves, as white people, and for the negroes and other persons of
whatever color or condition, we demand all the rights, interests and
prerogatives, that are guarantied to corresponding classes of mankind in
the North, in England, in France, in Germany, or in any other civilized
and enlightened country. Any proposition that may be offered conceding
less than this demand, will be promptly and disdainfully rejected.
Speaking of the non-slaveholders of the South, George M. Weston, a zealous
co-laborer in the cause of Freedom, says:--
"The non-slaveholding whites of the South, being not less than
seven-tenths of the whole number of whites, would seem to be entitled
to some enquiry into their actual condition; and especially, as they
have no real political weight or consideration in the country, and
little opportunity to speak for themselves. I have been for twenty
years a reader of Southern newspapers, and a reader and hearer of
Congressional debates; but, in all that time, I do not recollect ever
to have seen or heard these non-slaveholding whites referred to by
Southern 'gentlemen,' as constituting any part of what they call
'_the South_.' When the rights of the South, or its wrongs, or its
policy, or its interests, or its institutions, are spoken of,
reference is always intended to the rights, wrongs, policy,
interests, and institutions of the three hundred and forty-seven
thousand slaveholders. Nobody gets into Congress from the South but
by their direction; nobody speaks at Washington for any Southern
interest except theirs. Yet there is, at the South, quite another
interest than theirs; embracing from two to three times as many white
people; and, as we shall presently see, entitled to the deepest
sympathy and commiseration, in view of the material, intellectual,
and moral privations to which it has been subjected, the degradation
to which it has already been reduced, and the still more fearful
degradation with which it is threatened by the inevitable operation
of existing causes and influences."
The following extract, from a paper on "Domestic Manufactures in the South
and West," published by M. Tarver, of Missouri, may be appropriately
introduced in this connection:--
"The non-slaveholders possess, generally, but very small means, and
the land which they possess is almost universally poor, and so
sterile that a scanty subsistence is all that can be derived from
its cultivation; and the more fertile soil, being in the possession
of the slaveholders, must ever remain out of the power of those who
have none. This state of things is a great drawback, and bears
heavily upon and depresses the moral energies of the poorer classes.
The acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of wealth
appears so difficult, that they decline the hopeless pursuit, and
many of them settle down into habits of idleness, and become the
almost passive subjects of all its consequences. And I lament to say
that I have observed of late years, that an evident deterioration is
taking place in this part of the population, the younger portion of
it being less educated, less industrious, and in every point of view
less respectable than their ancestors."
Equally worthy of attention is the testimony of Gov. Hammond, of South
Carolina, who says:--
"According to the best calculation, which, in the absence of
statistic facts, can be made, it is believed, that of the three
hundred thousand white inhabitants of South Carolina, there are not
less than fifty thousand whose industry, such as it is, and
compensated as it is, is not, in the present condition of things, and
does not promise to be hereafter, adequate to procure them, honestly,
such a support as every white person is, and feels himself entitled
to. And this, next to emigration, is, perhaps, the heaviest of the
weights that press upon the springs of our prosperity. Most of these
now follow agricultural pursuits, in feeble, yet injurious
competition with slave labor. Some, perhaps, not more from
inclination, than from the want of due encouragement, can scarcely be
said to work at all. They obtain a precarious subsistence, by
occasional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, sometimes by plundering
fields or folds, and too often by what is, in its effects, far
worse--trading with slaves, and seducing them to plunder for their
benefit."
Conjoined with the sundry plain straightforward facts which have issued
from our own pen, these extracts show conclusively that immediate and
independent political action on the part of the non-slaveholding whites
of the South, is, with them, a matter, not only of positive duty, but also
of the utmost importance. As yet, it is in their power to rescue the South
from the gulf of shame and guilt, into which slavery has plunged her; but
if they do not soon arouse themselves from their apathy, this power will
be wrenched from them, and then, unable to resist the strong arm of the
oppressor, they will be completely degraded to a social and political
level with the negroes, whose condition of servitude will, in the
meantime, become far more abject and forlorn than it is now.
In addition to the reasons which we have already assigned why no slavocrat
should, in the future, be elected to any office whatever, there are others
that deserve to be carefully considered. Among these may be mentioned the
illbreeding and the ruffianism of slaveholding officials. Tedious indeed
would be the task to enumerate all the homicides, duels, assaults and
batteries, and other crimes, of which they are the authors in the course
of a single year. To the general reader their career at the seat of
government is well known; there, on frequent occasions, choking with rage
at seeing their wretched sophistries scattered to the winds by the sound,
logical reasoning of the champions of Freedom, they have overstepped the
bounds of common decency, vacated the chair of honorable controversy, and,
in the most brutal and cowardly manner, assailed their unarmed opponents
with bludgeons, bowie knives and pistols. Compared with some of their
barbarisms at home, however, their frenzied onslaughts at the national
Capital have been but the simplest breaches of civil deportment; and it
is only for the purpose of avoiding personalities that we now refrain from
divulging a few instances of the unparalleled atrocities which they have
perpetrated in legislative halls South of the Potomac. Nor is it alone in
the national and State legislatures that they substitute brute force for
genteel behavior and acuteness of intellect. Neither court-houses nor
public streets, hotels nor private dwellings, rum-holes nor law-offices,
are held sacred from their murderous conflicts. About certain silly
abstractions that no practical business man ever allows to occupy his time
or attention, they are eternally wrangling; and thus it is that
rencounters, duels, homicides, and other demonstrations of personal
violence, have become so popular in all slaveholding communities. A few
years of entire freedom from the cares and perplexities of public life,
would, we have no doubt, greatly improve both their manners and their
morals; and we suggest that it is a Christian duty, which devolves on the
non-slaveholders of the South, to disrobe them of the mantle of office,
which they have so long worn with disgrace to themselves, injustice to
their constituents, and ruin to their country.
But what shall we say of such men as Botts, Stuart, and Macfarland of
Virginia; of Raynor, Morehead, Miller, Stanly, Graves, and Graham of North
Carolina; of Davis and Hoffman of Maryland; of Blair and Benton of
Missouri; of the Marshalls of Kentucky; and of Etheridge of Tennessee? All
these gentlemen, and many others of the same school, entertain, we
believe, sentiments similar to those that were entertained by the immortal
Fathers of the Republic--that slavery is a great moral, social, civil,
and political evil, to be got rid of at the earliest practical period--and
if they do, in order to secure our votes, it is only necessary for them to
"have the courage of their opinions," to renounce slavery, and to come out
frankly, fairly and squarely, in favor of freedom. To neither of these
patriotic sons of the South, nor to any one of the class to which they
belong, would we give any offence whatever. In our strictures on the
criminality of pro-slavery demagogues we have had heretofore, and shall
have hereafter, no sort of reference to any respectable slaveholder--by
which we mean, any slaveholder who admits the injustice and inhumanity of
slavery, and who is not averse to the discussion of measures for its
speedy and total extinction. Such slaveholders are virtually on our side,
that is, on the side of the non-slaveholding whites, with whom they may
very properly be classified. On this point, once for all, we desire to be
distinctly understood; for it would be manifestly unjust not to
discriminate between the anti-slavery proprietor who owns slaves by the
law of entailment, and the pro-slavery proprietor who engages in the
traffic and becomes an aider and abettor of the institution from sheer
turpitude of heart; hence the propriety of this special disclaimer.
If we have a correct understanding of the positions which they assumed,
some of the gentlemen whose names are written above, gave, during the last
presidential campaign, ample evidence of their unswerving devotion to the
interests of the great majority of the people, the non-slaveholding
whites; and it is our unbiassed opinion that a more positive truth is no
where recorded in Holy Writ, than Kenneth Raynor uttered, when he said,
in substance, that the greatest good that could happen to this country
would be the complete overthrow of slave-driving democracy, _alias_ the
nigger party, which has for its head and front the Ritchies and Wises of
Virginia, and for its caudal termination the Butlers and Quatlebums of
South Carolina.
And this, by the way, is a fit occasion to call attention to the fact,
that slave-driving Democrats have been the perpetrators of almost every
brutal outrage that ever disgraced our halls of legislation. Of countless
instances of assault and battery, affrays, and fatal rencounters, that
have occurred in the court-houses, capitols, and other public buildings in
the Southern States, we feel safe in saying that the aggressor, in at
least nine cases out of ten, has been a negro-nursed adherent of modern,
miscalled democracy. So, too, the challenger to almost every duel has been
an abandoned wretch, who, on many occasions during infancy, sucked in the
corrupt milk of slavery from the breasts of his father's sable concubines,
and who has never been known to become weary of boasting of a fact that
invariably impressed itself on the minds of his auditors or observers, the
very first moment they laid their eyes upon him, namely, that _he_ was a
member of the Democratic party. Brute violence, however, can hardly be
said to be the worst characteristic of the slave-driving Democrat; his
ignorance and squalidity are proverbial; his senseless enthusiasm is
disgusting.
Peculiarly illustrative of the material of which sham democracy is
composed was the vote polled at the Five Points precinct, in the city of
New-York, on the 4th of November, 1856, when James Buchanan was chosen
President by a _minority_ of the people. We will produce the figures:
Five Points Precinct, New-York City, 1856.
Votes cast for James Buchanan 574
" " " John C. Fremont 16
" " " Millard Fillmore 9
It will be recollected that Col. Fremont's majority over Buchanan, in the
State of New-York, was between seventy-eight and seventy-nine thousand,
and that he ran ahead of the Fillmore ticket to the number of nearly one
hundred and fifty-one thousand. We have not the shadow of a doubt that he
is perfectly satisfied with Mr. Buchanan's triumph at the Five Points,
which, with the exception of the slave-pens in Southern cities, is,
perhaps, the most vile and heart-sickening locality in the United States.
One of the most noticeable and commendable features of the last general
election is this: almost every State, whose inhabitants have enjoyed the
advantages of free soil, free labor, free speech, free presses, and free
schools, and who have, in consequence, become great in numbers, in virtue,
in wealth, and in wisdom, voted for Fremont, the Republican candidate, who
was pledged to use his influence for the extension of like advantages to
other parts of the country. On the other hand, with a single honorable
exception, all the States which "have got to hating everything with the
prefix Free, from free negroes down and up through the whole
catalogue--free farms, free labor, free society, free will, free thinking,
free children, and free schools," and which have exposed their citizens to
all the perils of numerical weakness, absolute ignorance, and hopeless
poverty, voted for Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, who, in reply to
the overtures of his slave-driving partisans, had signified his
willingness to pursue a policy that would perpetuate and disseminate,
without limit, the multitudinous evils of human bondage.
Led on by a huckstering politician, whose chief vocation, at all times, is
the rallying of ragamuffins, shoulder strikers, and liquor-house
vagabonds, into the ranks of his party, and who, it is well known,
receives from the agents of the slave power, regular installments of money
for this infamous purpose, a Democratic procession, exceedingly motley and
unrefined, marched through the streets of one of the great cities of the
North, little less than a fortnight previous to the election of Mr.
Buchanan to the Presidency; and the occasion gave rise, on the following
day, to a communication in one of the morning papers, from which we make
the following pertinent extract:
"While the Democratic procession was passing through the streets of
this city, a few days since, I could not but think how significant
the exultation of that ignorant multitude was of the ferocious
triumphs which would be displayed if ever false Democracy should
succeed in throwing the whole power of the country into the hands of
the Slave Oligarchy. It is melancholy to think that every individual
in that multitude, ignorant and depraved though he may be, foreign
perhaps in his birth, and utterly unacquainted with the principles
upon which the welfare of the country depends, and hostile it may be
to those principles, if he does understand them, is equal in the
power which he may exercise by his vote to the most intelligent and
upright man in the community.
"Of this, indeed, it is useless to complain. We enjoy our freedom
with the contingency of its loss by the acts of a numerical majority.
It behooves all men, therefore, who have a regard to the common
good, to look carefully at the influences which may pervert the
popular mind; and this, I think, can only be done by guarding against
the corruption of individual character. A man who has nothing but
political business to attend to--I mean the management of
elections--ought to be shunned by all honest men. If it were
possible, he should have the mark of Cain put upon him, that he might
be known as a plotter against the welfare of his country."
That less than _three_ per cent. of those who voted for Col. Fremont, that
only about _five_ per cent. of those who gave their suffrages to Mr.
Fillmore, and that more than _eighteen_ per cent. of those who supported
Mr. Buchanan, were persons over one and twenty years of age who could not
read and write, are estimates which we have no doubt are not far from the
truth, and which, in the absence of reliable statistics, we venture to
give, hoping, by their publicity, to draw closer attention to the fact,
that the illiterate foreigners of the North, and the unlettered natives of
the South, were cordially united in their suicidal adherence to the Nigger
party. With few exceptions, all the intelligent non-slaveholders of the
South, in concert with the more respectable slaveholders, voted for Mr.
Fillmore; certain rigidly patriotic persons of the former class, whose
hearts were so entirely with the gallant Fremont that they refused to vote
at all--simply because they did not dare to express their preference for
him--form the exceptions to which we allude.
Though the Whig, Democratic, and Know-Nothing newspapers, in all the
States, free and slave, denounced Col. Fremont as an intolerant Catholic,
it is now generally conceded that he was nowhere supported by the
peculiar friends of Pope Pius IX. The votes polled at the Five Points
precinct, which is almost exclusively inhabited by low Irish Catholics,
show how powerfully the Jesuitical influence was brought to bear against
him. At that delectable locality, as we have already shown, the timid Sage
of Wheatland received five hundred and seventy-four votes; whereas the
dauntless Finder of Empire received only sixteen.
True to their instincts for Freedom, the Germans, generally, voted the
right ticket, and they will do it again, and continue to do it. With the
intelligent Protestant element of the Fatherland on our side, we can well
afford to dispense with the ignorant Catholic element of the Emerald Isle.
In the influences which they exert on society, there is so little
difference between Slavery, Popery, and Negro-driving Democracy, that we
are not at all surprised to see them going hand in hand in their
diabolical works of inhumanity and desolation.
There is, indeed, no lack of evidence to show that the Democratic party of
to-day is simply and unreservedly a sectional Nigger party. On the 15th of
December, 1856, but a few weeks subsequent to the appearance of a
scandalous message from an infamous governor of South Carolina,
recommending the reopening of the African slave trade, Emerson Etheridge
of Tennessee--honor to his name!--submitted, in the House of
Representatives, the following timely resolution:--
"Resolved, That this House regard all suggestions or propositions of
every kind, by whomsoever made, for a revival of the slave trade, as
shocking to the moral sentiments of the enlightened portion of
mankind, and that any act on the part of Congress, legislating for,
conniving at, or legalizing that horrid and inhuman traffic, would
justly subject the United States to the reproach and execration of
all civilized and Christian people throughout the world."
Who voted _for_ this resolution? and who voted _against_ it? Let the yeas
and nays answer; they are on record, and he who takes the trouble to
examine them will find that the resolution encountered no opposition worth
mentioning, except from members of the Democratic party. Scrutinize the
yeas and nays on any other motion or resolution affecting the question of
slavery, and the fact that a majority of the members of this party have
uniformly voted for the retention and extension of the "sum of all
villanies," will at once be apparent.
For many years the slave-driving Democrats of the South have labored most
strenuously, both by day and by night--we regret to say how
unsuccessfully--to point out abolition proclivities in the Whig and
Know-Nothing parties, the latter of which is now buried, and deservedly,
so deep in the depths of the dead, that it is quite preposterous to
suppose it will ever see the light of resurrection.
For its truckling concessions to the slave power, the Whig party merited
defeat, and defeated it was, and that, too, in the most decisive and
overwhelming manner. But there is yet in this party much vitality, and if
its friends will reorganize, detach themselves from the burden of slavery,
espouse the cause of the white man, and hoist the fair flag of freedom,
the time may come, at a day by no means remote, when their hearts will
exult in triumph over the ruins of miscalled Democracy.
It is not too late, however, for the Democratic party to secure to itself
a pure renown and an almost certain perpetuation of its power. Let it at
once discard the worship of slavery, and do earnest battle for the
principles of freedom, and it will live victoriously to a period far in
the future. On the other hand, if it does not soon repudiate the fatal
heresies which it has incorporated into its creed, its doom will be
inevitable. Until the black flag entirely disappears from its array, we
warn the non-slaveholders of the South to repulse and keep it at a
distance, as they would the emblazoned skull and cross-bones that flout
them from the flag of the pirate.
With regard to the sophistical reasoning which teaches that abolitionists,
before abolishing slavery, should compensate the slaveholders for all or
any number of the negroes in their possession, we have, perhaps, said
quite enough; but wishing to brace our arguments, in every important
particular, with unequivocal testimony from men whom we are accustomed to
regard as models of political sagacity and integrity--from Southern men as
far as possible--we herewith present an extract from a speech delivered in
the Virginia House of Delegates, January 20, 1832, by Charles James
Faulkner, whose sentiments, as then and there expressed, can hardly fail
to find a response in the heart of every intelligent, upright man:--
"But, Sir, it is said that society having conferred this property on
the slaveholder, it cannot _now_ take it from him without an adequate
compensation, by which is meant full value. I may be singular in the
opinion, but I defy the legal research of the House to point me to a
principle recognized by the law, even in the ordinary course of its
adjudications, where the community pays for property which is
removed or destroyed because it is a nuisance, and found injurious to
that society. There is, I humbly apprehend, no such principle. There
is no obligation upon society to continue your right one moment after
it becomes injurious to the best interests of society; nor to
compensate you for the loss of that, the deprivation of which is
demanded by the safety of the State, and in which general benefit you
participate as members of the community. Sir, there is to my mind a
manifest distinction between condemning private property to be
applied to some beneficial public purpose, and condemning or removing
private property which is ascertained to be a positive wrong to
society. It is a distinction which pervades the whole genius of the
law; and is founded upon the idea, that any man who holds property
injurious to the peace of that society of which he is a member,
thereby violates the condition upon the observance of which his right
to the property is alone guarantied. For property of the first class
condemned, there ought to be compensation; but for property of the
latter class, none can be demanded upon principle, none accorded as
matter of right.
"It is conceded that, at this precise moment of our legislation,
slaves are injurious to the interests and threaten the subversion and
ruin of this Commonwealth. Their present number, their increasing
number, all admonish us of this. In different terms, and in more
measured language, the same fact has been conceded by all who have
yet addressed this House. '_Something must be done_,' emphatically
exclaimed the gentleman from Dinwiddie; and I thought I could
perceive a response to that declaration, in the countenance of a
large majority of this body. And why must something be done? Because
if not, says the gentleman from Campbell, the throats of all the
_white_ people of Virginia will be cut. No, says the gentleman from
Dinwiddie--'The whites cannot be conquered--the throats of the
_blacks_ will be cut.' It is a trifling difference, to be sure, Sir,
and matters not to the argument. For the fact is conceded, that one
race or the other must be exterminated.
"Sir, such being the actual condition of this Commonwealth, I ask if
we would not be justified _now_, supposing all considerations of
policy and humanity concurred without even a moment's delay, in
staving off this appalling and overwhelming calamity? Sir, if this
immense negro population were now in arms, gathering into black and
formidable masses of attack, would that man be listened to, who spoke
about property, who prayed you not to direct your artillery to such
or such a point, for you would destroy some of _his_ property? Sir,
to the eye of the Statesman, as to the eye of Omniscience, dangers
pressing, and dangers that must _necessarily_ press, are alike
present. With a single glance he embraces Virginia now, with the
elements of destruction reposing quietly upon her bosom, and Virginia
is lighted from one extremity to the other with the torch of servile
insurrection and massacre. It is not sufficient for him that the
match is not yet applied. It is enough that the magazine is open, and
the match will shortly be applied.
"Sir, it is true in national as it is in private contracts, that loss
and injury to one party may constitute as fair a consideration as
gain to the other. Does the slaveholder, while he is enjoying his
slaves, reflect upon the deep injury and incalculable loss which the
possession of that property inflicts upon the true interests of the
country? Slavery, it is admitted, is an evil--it is an institution
which presses heavily against the best interests of the State. It
banishes free white labor, it exterminates the mechanic, the artisan,
the manufacturer. It deprives them of occupation. It deprives them of
bread. It converts the energy of a community into indolence, its
power into imbecility, its efficiency into weakness. Sir, being thus
injurious, have we not a right to demand its extermination? shall
society suffer, that the slaveholder may continue to gather his
_crop_ of human flesh? What is his mere pecuniary claim, compared
with the great interests of the common weal? Must the country
languish, droop, die, that the slaveholder may flourish? Shall all
interests be subservient to one--all rights subordinate to those of
the slaveholder? Has not the mechanic, have not the middle classes
their rights--rights incompatible with the existence of slavery?
"Sir, so great and overshadowing are the evils of slavery--so
sensibly are they felt by those who have traced the causes of our
national decline--so perceptible is the poisonous operation of its
principles in the varied and diversified interests of this
Commonwealth, that all, whose minds are not warped by prejudice or
interest, must admit that the disease has now assumed that mortal
tendency, as to justify the application of any remedy which, under
the great law of State necessity, we might consider advisable."
From the abstract of our plan for the abolition of slavery, it will be
perceived that, so far from allowing slaveholders any compensation for
their slaves, we are, and we think justly, in favor of imposing on them a
tax of sixty dollars for each and every negro now in their possession, as
also for each and every one that shall be born to them between now and the
4th of July, 1863; after which time, we propose that they shall be taxed
forty dollars per annum, annually, for every person by them held in
slavery, without regard to age, sex, color, or condition--the money, in
both instances, to be used for the sole advantage of the slaves. As an
addendum to this proposition, we would say that, in our opinion, if
slavery is not totally abolished by the year 1869, the annual tax ought to
be increased from forty to one hundred dollars; and furthermore, that if
the institution does not then almost immediately disappear under the onus
of this increased taxation, the tax ought in the course of one or two
years thereafter, to be augmented to such a degree as will, in harmony
with other measures, prove an infallible death-blow to slavery on or
before the 4th of July, 1876.
At once let the good and true men of this country, the patriot sons of the
patriot fathers, determine that the sun which rises to celebrate the
centennial anniversary of our national independence, shall not set on the
head of any slave within the limits of our Republic. Will not the
non-slaveholders of the North, of the South, of the East, and of the West,
heartily, unanimously sanction this proposition? Will it not be cheerfully
indorsed by many of the slaveholders themselves? Will any _respectable_
man enter a protest against it? On the 4th of July, 1876--sooner, if we
can--let us make good, at least so far as we are concerned, the
Declaration of Independence, which was proclaimed in Philadelphia on the
4th of July, 1776--that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a
new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness." In purging our land of the iniquity of negro
slavery, we will only be carrying on the great work that was so
successfully commenced by our noble sires of the Revolution; some future
generation may possibly complete the work by annulling the last and least
form of oppression.
To turn the slaves away from their present homes--away from all the
property and means of support which their labor has mainly produced, would
be unpardonably cruel--exceedingly unjust. Still more cruel and unjust
would it be, however, to the non-slaveholding whites no less than to the
negroes, to grant further toleration to the existence of slavery. In any
event, come what will, transpire what may, the institution must be
abolished. The evils, if any, which are to result from its abolition,
cannot, by any manner of means, be half as great as the evils which are
certain to overtake us in case of its continuance. The perpetuation of
slavery is the climax of iniquity.
Two hundred and thirty-seven years have the negroes in America been held
in inhuman bondage. During the whole of this long period they have toiled
unceasingly from the gray of dawn till the dusk of eve, for their cruel
task-masters, who have rewarded them with scanty allowances of the most
inferior qualities of victuals and clothes, with heartless separations of
the tenderest ties of kindred, with epithets, with scoldings, with
execrations, and with the lash--and, not unfrequently, with the fatal
bludgeon or the more deadly weapon. From the labor of their hands, and
from the fruit of their loins, the humanmongers of the South have become
wealthy, insolent, corrupt, and tyrannical. In reason and in conscience
the slaves might claim from their masters a much larger sum than we have
proposed to allow them. If they were to demand an equal share of all the
property, real and personal, which has been accumulated or produced
through their efforts, Heaven, we believe, would recognize them as honest
claimants.
Elsewhere we have shown, by just and liberal estimates, that, on the
single score of damages to lands, the slaveholders are, at this moment,
indebted to the non-slaveholding whites in the extraordinary sum of
$7,544,148,825. Considered in connection with the righteous claim of
wages for services which the negroes might bring against their masters,
these figures are the heralds of the significant fact that, if strict
justice could be meted out to all parties in the South, the slaveholders
would not only be stripped of every dollar, but they would become in law
as they are in reality, the hopeless debtors of the myriads of unfortunate
slaves, white and black, who are now cringing, and fawning, and festering
around them. In this matter, however, so far has wrong triumphed over
right, that the slaveholders--a mere handful of tyrants, whose manual
exercises are wholly comprised in the use they make of instruments of
torture, such as whips, clubs, bowie-knives and pistols--have, as the
result of a series of acts of their own villainous legislation, become the
sole and niggardly proprietors of almost every important item of Southern
wealth; not only do they own all the slaves--none of whom any really
respectable person cares to own--but they are also in possession of the
more valuable tracts of land and the appurtenances thereto belonging;
while the non-slaveholding whites and the negroes, who compose at least
nine-tenths of the entire population, and who are the actual producers of
every article of merchandize, animal, vegetable, and mineral, that is sold
from the South, are most wickedly despoiled of the fruits of their labors,
and cast into the dismal abodes of extreme ignorance, destitution and
misery.
For the services of the blacks from the 20th of August, 1620, up to the
4th of July, 1863--an interval of precisely two hundred and forty-two
years ten months and fourteen days--their masters, if unwilling, ought,
in our judgment, to be compelled to grant them their freedom, and to pay
each and every one of them at least sixty dollars cash in hand. The
aggregate sum thus raised would amount to about two hundred and forty-five
millions of dollars, which is less than the total market value of two
entire crops of cotton--one-half of which sum would be amply sufficient to
land every negro in this country on the coast of Liberia, whither, if we
had the power, we would ship them all within the next six months. As a
means of protection against the exigencies which might arise from a sudden
transition from their present homes in America to their future homes in
Africa, and for the purpose of enabling them there to take the initiatory
step in the walks of civilized life, the remainder of the sum--say about
one hundred and twenty-two millions of dollars--might, very properly, be
equally distributed amongst them after their arrival in the land of their
fathers.
Dr. James Hall, the Secretary of the Maryland Colonization Society,
informs us that the average cost of sending negroes to Liberia does not
exceed thirty dollars each; and it is his opinion that arrangements might
be made on an extensive plan for conveying them thither at an average
expense of not more than twenty-five dollars each.
The American colonization movement, as now systematized and conducted, is
simply an American humane farce. At present the slaves are increasing in
this country at the rate of nearly one hundred thousand per annum; within
the last ten years, as will appear below, the American Colonization
Society has sent to Liberia less than five thousand negroes.
Emigrants sent to Liberia by the American Colonization Society, during the
ten years ending January 1st, 1857.
In 1847 39 }
In 1848 213 }
In 1849 474 }
In 1850 590 }
In 1851 279 }
In 1852 568 } Emigrants.
In 1853 583 }
In 1854 783 }
In 1855 207 }
In 1856 544 }
---- }
Total 4280 }
The average of this total is precisely four hundred and twenty-eight,
which may be said to be the number of negroes annually colonized by the
society; while the yearly increase of slaves, as previously stated, is
little less than one hundred thousand! Fiddlesticks for such colonization!
Once for all, within a reasonably short period, let us make the
slaveholders do something like justice to their negroes by giving each and
every one of them his freedom, and sixty dollars in current money; then
let us charter all the ocean steamers, packets and clipper ships that can
be had on liberal terms, and keep them constantly plying between the ports
of America and Africa, until all slaves shall enjoy freedom in the land of
their fathers. Under a well-devised and properly conducted system of
operations, but a few years would be required to redeem the United States
from the monstrous curse of negro slavery.
Some few years ago, when certain ethnographical oligarchs proved to their
own satisfaction that the negro was an inferior "type of mankind," they
chuckled wonderfully, and avowed, in substance, that it was right for the
stronger race to kidnap and enslave the weaker--that because Nature had
been pleased to do a trifle more for the Caucasian race than for the
African, the former, by virtue of its superiority, was perfectly
justifiable in holding the latter in absolute and perpetual bondage! No
system of logic could be more antagonistic to the spirit of true
democracy. It is probable that the world does not contain two persons who
are exactly alike in all respects; yet "_all_ men are endowed by their
Creator with certain _inalienable_ rights, among which are life,
_liberty_, and the pursuit of happiness." All mankind may or may not be
the descendants of Adam and Eve. In our own humble way of thinking, we are
frank to confess, we do not believe in the unity of the races. This is a
matter, however, which has little or nothing to do with the great question
at issue. Aside from any theory concerning the original parentage of the
different races of men, facts, material and immaterial, palpable and
impalpable--facts of the eyes and facts of the conscience--crowd around us
on every hand, heaping proof upon proof, that slavery is a shame, a crime,
and a curse--a great moral, social, civil, and political evil--an
oppressive burden to the blacks, and an incalculable injury to the
whites--a stumbling-block to the nation, an impediment to progress, a
damper on all the nobler instincts, principles, aspirations and
enterprises of man, and a dire enemy to every true interest.
Waiving all other counts, we have, we think, shown to the satisfaction of
every impartial reader, that, as elsewhere stated, on the single score of
damages to lands, the slaveholders are, at this moment, indebted to us,
the non-slaveholding whites, in the enormous sum of nearly seventy-six
hundred millions of dollars. What shall be done with this amount? It is
just; shall payment be demanded? No; all the slaveholders in the country
could not pay it; nor shall we ever ask them for even a moiety of the
amount--no, not even for a dime, nor yet for a cent; we are willing to
forfeit every farthing for the sake of freedom; for ourselves we ask no
indemnification for the past: we only demand justice for the future.
But, Sirs, knights of bludgeons, chevaliers of bowie-knives and pistols,
and lords of the lash, we are unwilling to allow you to swindle the slaves
out of all the rights and claims to which, as human beings, they are most
sacredly entitled. Not alone for ourself as an individual, but for others
also--particularly for five or six millions of Southern non-slaveholding
whites, whom your iniquitous statism has debarred from almost all the
mental and material comforts of life--do we speak, when we say, you _must_
emancipate your slaves, and pay each and every one of them at least sixty
dollars cash in hand. By doing this, you will be restoring to them their
natural rights, and remunerating them at the rate of less than twenty-six
cents per annum for the long and cheerless period of their servitude, from
the 20th of August, 1620, when, on James River, in Virginia, they became
the unhappy slaves of heartless masters. Moreover, by doing this you will
be performing but a simple act of justice to the non-slaveholding whites,
upon whom the institution of slavery has weighed scarcely less heavily
than upon the negroes themselves. You will also be applying a saving balm
to your own outraged hearts and consciences, and your children--yourselves
in fact--freed from the accursed stain of slavery, will become
respectable, useful, and honorable members of society.
And now, Sirs, we have thus laid down our ultimatum. What are you going to
do about it? Something dreadful, as a matter of course! Perhaps you will
dissolve the Union _again_. Do it, if you dare! Our motto, and we would
have you to understand it, is _the abolition of slavery, and the
perpetuation of the American Union_. If, by any means, you do succeed in
your treasonable attempts to take the South out of the Union to-day, we
will bring her back to-morrow--if she goes away with you, she will return
without you.
Do not mistake the meaning of the last clause of the last sentence; we
could elucidate it so thoroughly that no intelligent person could fail to
comprehend it; but, for reasons which may hereafter appear, we forego the
task.
Henceforth there are other interests to be consulted in the South, aside
from the interests of negroes and slaveholders. A profound sense of duty
incites us to make the greatest possible efforts for the abolition of
slavery; an equally profound sense of duty calls for a continuation of
those efforts until the very last foe to freedom shall have been utterly
vanquished. To the summons of the righteous monitor within, we shall
endeavor to prove faithful; no opportunity for inflicting a mortal wound
in the side of slavery shall be permitted to pass us unimproved. Thus,
terror-engenderers of the South, have we fully and frankly defined our
position; we have no modifications to propose, no compromises to offer,
nothing to retract. Frown, Sirs, fret, foam, prepare your weapons, threat,
strike, shoot, stab, bring on civil war, dissolve the Union, nay
annihilate the solar system if you will--do all this, more, less, better,
worse, anything--do what you will, Sirs, you can neither foil nor
intimidate us; our purpose is as firmly fixed as the eternal pillars of
Heaven; we have determined to abolish slavery, and, so help us God,
abolish it we will! Take this to bed with you to-night, Sirs, and think
about it, dream over it, and let us know how you feel to-morrow morning.