CHAPTER III.

SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY.

If it please the reader, let him forget all that we have written on the

subject of slavery; if it accord with his inclination, let him ignore all

that we may write hereafter. We seek not to give currency to our peculiar

opinions; our greatest ambition, in these pages, is to popularize the

sayings and admonitions of wiser and better men. Miracles, we believe, are

no longer wrought in this bedeviled world; but if, by any conceivable or

possible supernatural event, the great Founders of the Republic,

Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and others, could be reinvested with

corporeal life, and returned to the South, there is scarcely a slaveholder

between the Potomac and the mouth of the Mississippi, that would not burn

to pounce upon them with bludgeons, bowie-knives and pistols! Yes, without

adding another word, Washington would be _mobbed_ for what he has already

said. Were Jefferson now employed as a professor in a Southern college, he

would be dismissed and driven from the State, perhaps murdered before he

reached the border. If Patrick Henry were a bookseller in Alabama, though

it might be demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had never

bought, sold, received, or presented, any kind of literature except

Bibles and Testaments, he would first be subjected to the ignominy of a

coat of tar and feathers, and then limited to the option of unceremonious

expatriation or death. How seemingly impossible are these statements, and

yet how true! Where do we stand? What is our faith? Are we a flock without

a shepherd? a people without a prophet? a nation without a government?

Has the past, with all its glittering monuments of genius and patriotism,

furnished no beacon by which we may direct our footsteps in the future? If

we but prove true to ourselves, and worthy of our ancestry, we have

nothing to fear; our Revolutionary sires have devised and bequeathed to us

an almost perfect national policy. Let us cherish, and defend, and build

upon, the fundamental principles of that polity, and we shall most

assuredly reap the golden fruits of unparalleled power, virtue and

prosperity. Heaven forbid that a desperate faction of slaveholding

criminals should succeed in their infamous endeavors to quench the spirit

of liberty, which our forefathers infused into those two sacred charts of

our political faith, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution

of the United States. Oligarchal politicians are alone responsible for the

continuance of African slavery in the South. For purposes of

self-aggrandizement, they have kept learning and civilization from the

people; they have wilfully misinterpreted the national compacts, and have

outraged their own consciences by declaring to their illiterate

constituents, that the Founders of the Republic were not abolitionists.

When the dark clouds of slavery, error and ignorance shall have passed

away,--and we believe the time is near at hand when they are to be

dissipated,--the freemen of the South, like those of other sections, will

learn the glorious truth, that inflexible opposition to Human Bondage has

formed one of the distinguishing characteristics of every really good or

great man that our country has produced.

The principles, aims and objects that actuated the framers of the

Constitution, are most graphically and eloquently set forth, in the

following extract from a speech recently delivered by the Hon. A. H.

Cragin, of New Hampshire, in the House of Representatives:

"When our forefathers reared the magnificent structure of a free

Republic in this Western land, they laid its foundations broad and

deep in the eternal principles of right. Its materials were all

quarried from the mountain of truth; and, as it rose majestically

before an astonished world, it rejoiced the hearts and hopes of

mankind. Tyrants only cursed the workmen and their workmanship. Its

architecture was new. It had no model in Grecian or Roman history. It

seemed a paragon, let down from Heaven to inspire the hopes of men,

and to demonstrate the favor of God to the people of a new world. The

builders recognized the rights of human nature as universal. Liberty,

the great first right of man, they claimed for 'all men,' and claimed

it from 'God himself.' Upon this foundation they erected the temple,

and dedicated it to Liberty, Humanity, Justice, and Equality.

Washington was crowned its patron saint."

"The work completed was the noblest effort of human wisdom. But it

was not perfect. It had one blemish--a little spot--the black stain

of slavery. The workmen--the friends of freedom everywhere--deplored

this. They labored long and prayerfully to remove this deformity.

They applied all the skill of their art; but they labored in vain.

Self-interest was too strong for patriotism and love of liberty. The

work stood still, and for a time it was doubtful whether the

experiment would succeed. The blot must remain, or the whole must

fail. The workmen revarnished their work, to conceal and cover up the

stain. Slavery was recognized, but not sanctioned. The word slave or

slavery must not mar the Constitution. So great an inconsistency must

not be proclaimed to the world."

"All agreed, at that time, that the anomaly should not increase, and

all concurred in the hope and belief that the blemish would gradually

disappear. Those noble men looked forward to the time when slavery

would be abolished in this land of ours. They believed that the

principles of liberty were so dear to the people, that they would not

long deny to others what they claimed for themselves. They never

dreamed that slavery would be extended, but firmly believed it would

be wholly blotted out. _I challenge any man to show me a single

patriot of the Revolution who was in favor of slavery, or who

advocated its extension._ So universal was the sentiment of liberty

then, that no man, North or South, could be found to justify it. Some

palliated the evil, and desired that it might be gradually

extinguished; but none contemplated it as a permanent institution."

"Liberty was then the national goddess, worshiped by all the people.

They sang of liberty, they harangued for liberty, they prayed for

liberty, and they sacrificed for liberty. Slavery was then hateful.

It was denounced by all. The British king was condemned for foisting

it upon the Colonies. Southern men were foremost in entering their

protest against it. It was then everywhere regarded as an evil, and a

crime against humanity."

The fact is too palpable to be disguised, that slavery and slaveholders

have always been a clog and a dead-weight upon the government--a disgrace

and a curse to humanity. The slaveholding Tories of the South,

particularly of South Carolina, in their atrocious hostility to freedom,

prolonged the arduous war of the Revolution from two to three years; and

since the termination of that momentous struggle, in which, thank Heaven,

they were most signally defeated, it has been their constant aim and

effort to subvert the dear-bought liberties which were achieved by the

non-slaveholding patriots.

Non-slaveholders of the South! up to the present period, neither as a

body, nor as individuals, have you ever had an independent existence; but,

if true to yourselves and to the memory of your fathers, you, in equal

copartnership with the non-slaveholders of the North, will soon become the

honored rulers and proprietors of the most powerful, prosperous, virtuous,

free, and peaceful nation, on which the sun has ever shone. Already has

the time arrived for you to decide upon what basis you will erect your

political superstructure. Upon whom will you depend for an equitable and

judicious form of constitutional government? Whom will you designate as

models for your future statesmen? Your choice lies between the dead and

the living--between the Washingtons, the Jeffersons and the Madisons of

the past, and the Quattlebums, the Quitmans and the Butlers of the

present. We have chosen; choose ye, remembering that freedom or slavery is

to be the issue of your option.

As the result of much reading and research, and at the expenditure of no

inconsiderable amount of time, labor and money, we now proceed to make

known the anti-slavery sentiments of those noble abolitionists, the

Fathers of the Republic, whose liberal measures of public policy have been

so criminally perverted by the treacherous advocates of slavery.

Let us listen, in the first place, to the voice of him who was "first in

war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," to

THE VOICE OF WASHINGTON.

In a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9th, 1786, General

Washington says:--

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me

to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my _first

wishes_ to see some plan adopted by which slavery, in this country,

may be abolished by law."

In a letter to Robert Morris, dated Mount Vernon, April 12, 1786, he

says:--

"I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more

sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.

But there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be

accomplished, and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far

as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting."

He says, in a letter:--

"To the MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE--April 5th, 1783:--

The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose as a precedent, to

encourage the emancipation of the black people in this country from

the state of bondage in which they are held, is a striking evidence

of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in so

laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business

till I have the pleasure of seeing you."

In another letter to Lafayette, he says:--

"The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicuous on

all occasions, that I never wonder at any fresh proofs of it; but

your late purchase of an estate in the Colony of Cayenne, with the

view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof

of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself

generally into the minds of the people of this country."

In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he further said:--

"There are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of slavery,

which neither Virginia nor Maryland have at present, but which

nothing is more certain than they must have, and at a period _not

remote_."

From his last will and testament we make the following extract:

"Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the

slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To

emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by me,

be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their

intermixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the

most painful sensation, if not disagreeable consequences, from the

latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same

proprietor, it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the

dower negroes are held, to manumit them."

It is said that, "when Mrs. Washington learned, from the will of her

deceased husband, that the only obstacle to the immediate perfection of

this provision was her right of dower, she at once gave it up, and the

slaves were made free." A man might possibly concentrate within himself

more real virtue and influence than ever Washington possessed, and yet he

would not be too good for such a wife.

From the Father of his Country, we now turn to the author of the

Declaration of Independence. We will listen to

THE VOICE OF JEFFERSON.

On the 39th and 40th pages of his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson says:--

"There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our

people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole

commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most

boisterous passions--the most unremitting despotism on the one part,

and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and

learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is

the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is

learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no

motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining

the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a

sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not

sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the

lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller

slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions; and, thus

nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be

stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy

who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such

circumstances. And with what execration should the Statesman be

loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the

rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into

enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the _amor patriae_

of the other; for if a slave can have a country in this world, it

must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live

and labor for another; in which he must look up the faculties of his

nature, contribute, as far as depends on his individual endeavors, to

the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable

condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the

morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed; for, in a

warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another

labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a

very small proportion, indeed, are ever seen to labor. And can the

liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their

only firm basis--a conviction in the minds of the people that these

liberties are of the gift of God? that they are not to be violated

but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect

that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that

considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of

the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible

events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The

Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a

contest."

While Virginia was yet a Colony, in 1774, she held a Convention to appoint

delegates to attend the first general Congress, which was to assemble, and

did assemble, in Philadelphia, in September of the same year. Before that

Convention, Mr. Jefferson made an exposition of the rights of British

America, in which he said:--

"The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire

in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant

State. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves, it is

necessary to exclude further importations from Africa. Yet our

repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing

duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated

by his Majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of

a few African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American

States, and the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this

infamous practice."

In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, of which it is

well known he was the author, we find this charge against the King of

Great Britain:--

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its

most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant

people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into

slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their

transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of

infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great

Britain. Determined to keep a market where men should be bought and

sold, he has at length prostituted his negative for suppressing any

legislative attempt to prohibit and restrain this execrable

commerce."

Hear him further; he says:--

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

unalienable 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."

Under date of August 7th, 1785, in a letter to Dr. Price of London, he

says:--

"Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there an opponent

of your doctrine, as you may find, here and there, a robber and

murderer; but in no great number. Emancipation is put into such a

train, that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of

Maryland. In Maryland I do not find such a disposition to begin the

redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to

which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice

in conflict with avarice and oppression; a conflict wherein the

sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of

young men grown up, and growing up. These have sucked in the

principles of liberty, as it were, with their mother's milk; and it

is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of the question."

In another letter, written to a friend in 1814, he made use of the

following emphatic language:--

"Your favor of July 31st was duly received, and read with peculiar

pleasure. The sentiments do honor to the head and heart of the

writer. Mine on the subject of the slavery of negroes have long since

been in the possession of the public, and time has only served to

give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country

plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a reproach to us

that they should have pleaded it so long in vain."

Again, he says:--

"What an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil,

famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of

his own liberty; and the next moment be deaf to all those motives

whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his

fellow man a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery

than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."

Throughout the South, at the present day, especially among slaveholders,

negroes are almost invariably spoken of as "goods and chattels,"

"property," "human cattle." In our first quotation from Jefferson's works,

we have seen that he spoke of the blacks as _citizens_. We shall now hear

him speak of them as _brethren_. He says:--

"We must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence,

and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our

brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their

groans shall have involved Heaven itself in darkness, doubtless a God

of justice will awaken to their distress. Nothing is more certainly

written in the Book of Fate, than that this people shall be free."

In a letter to James Heaton, on this same subject, dated May 20, 1826,

only six weeks before his death, he says:--

"My sentiments have been forty years before the public. Had I

repeated them forty times, they would have only become the more stale

and threadbare. Although I shall not live to see them consummated,

they will not die with me."

From the Father of the Declaration of Independence, we now turn to the

Father of the Constitution. We will listen to

THE VOICE OF MADISON.

Advocating the abolition of the slave-trade, Mr. Madison said:--

"The dictates of humanity, the principles of the people, the national

safety and happiness, and prudent policy, require it of us. It is to

be hoped, that by expressing a national disapprobation of the trade,

we may _destroy_ it, and save our country from reproaches, and our

posterity from the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with

slaves."

Again, he says:--

"It is wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea that there can

be property in man."

In the 39th No. of "The Federalist," he says:--

"The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form

and aspect of the government be strictly Republican. It is evident

that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the

people of America, and with the fundamental principles of the

Revolution, or with that honorable determination which animates every

votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the

capacity of mankind for self-government."

In the Federal Convention, he said:--

"And in the third place, where slavery exists, the Republican theory

becomes still more fallacious."

On another occasion, he says:--

"We have seen the mere distinction of color made, in the most

enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion

ever exercised by man over man."

THE VOICE OF MONROE.

In a speech in the Virginia Convention, Mr. Monroe said:--

"We have found that this evil has preyed upon the very vitals of the

Union, and has been prejudicial to all the States, in which it has

existed."

THE VOICE OF HENRY.

The eloquent Patrick Henry says, in a letter dated January 18, 1773:--

"Is it not a little surprising that the professors of Christianity,

whose chief excellence consists in softening the human heart, in

cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a

practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and

wrong? What adds to the wonder is, that this abominable practice has

been introduced in the most enlightened ages. Times that seem to have

pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences,

and refined morality, have brought into general use, and guarded by

many laws, a species of violence and tyranny which our more rude and

barbarous, but more honest ancestors detested. Is it not amazing that

at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with

precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty--that in

such an age and in such a country, we find men professing a religion

the most mild, humane, gentle, and generous, adopting such a

principle, as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the

Bible, and destructive to liberty? Every thinking, honest man rejects

it in speculation. How free in practice from conscientious motives!

Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase?

I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without

them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I

will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and

rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them.

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to

abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can do is to improve it,

if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants,

together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and an

abhorrence for slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished-for

reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with

lenity. It is the furthest advance we can make towards justice. It is

a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at

variance with that law which warrants slavery."

Again, this great orator says:--

"It would rejoice my very soul, that every one of my fellow-beings

was emancipated. We ought to lament and deplore the necessity of

holding our fellow-men in bondage. Believe me; I shall honor the

Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery."

THE VOICE OF RANDOLPH.

That excentric genius, John Randolph, of Roanoke, in a letter to William

Gibbons, in 1820, says:--

"With unfeigned respect and regard, and as sincere a deprecation on

the extension of slavery and its horrors, as any other man, be him

whom he may, I am your friend, in the literal sense of that much

abused word. I say much abused, because it is applied to the leagues

of vice and avarice and ambition, instead of good will toward man

from love of him who is the Prince of Peace."

While in Congress, he said:--

"Sir, I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man from the

North who rises here to defend slavery on principle."

It is well known that he emancipated all his negroes. The following lines

from his will are well worth perusing and preserving:--

"I give to my slaves their freedom, to which my conscience tells me

they are justly entitled. It has a long time been a matter of the

deepest regret to me that the circumstances under which I inherited

them, and the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws of the land,

have prevented my emancipating them in my life-time, which it is my

full intention to do in case I can accomplish it."

THOMAS M. RANDOLPH.

In an address to the Virginia Legislature, in 1820, Gov. Randolph said:--

"We have been far outstripped by States to whom nature has been far

less bountiful. It is painful to consider what might have been, under

other circumstances, the amount of general wealth in Virginia."

THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

In 1832, Mr. Randolph, of Albemarle, in the Legislature of Virginia, used

the following most graphic and emphatic language:--

"I agree with gentlemen in the necessity of arming the State for

internal defence. I will unite with them in any effort to restore

confidence to the public mind, and to conduce to the sense of the

safety of our wives and our children. Yet, Sir, I must ask upon whom

is to fall the burden of this defence? Not upon the lordly masters of

their hundred slaves, who will never turn out except to retire with

their families when danger threatens. No, Sir; it is to fall upon the

less wealthy class of our citizens, chiefly upon the

non-slaveholder. I have known patrols turned out when there was not a

slaveholder among them; and this is the practice of the country. I

have slept in times of alarm quiet in bed, without having a thought

of care, while these individuals, owning none of this property

themselves, were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a

pittance of seventy-five cents per twelve hours, the very curtilage

of my house, and guarding that property which was alike dangerous to

them and myself. After all, this is but an expedient. As this

population becomes more numerous, it becomes less productive. Your

guard must be increased, until finally its profits will not pay for

the expense of its subjection. Slavery has the effect of lessening

the free population of a country.

"The gentleman has spoken of the increase of the female slaves being

a part of the profit. It is admitted; but no great evil can be

averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be

questioned how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this

branch of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice, in

parts of Virginia, to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable

mind, a patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this Ancient

Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism

of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand

menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for

the shambles? Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave

trade--that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of

every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the

slave, a stranger in language, aspect, and manners, from the merchant

who has brought him from the interior. The ties of father, mother,

husband, and child, have all been rent in twain; before he receives

him, his soul has become callous. But here, Sir, individuals whom the

master has known from infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the

innocent gambols of childhood, who have been accustomed to look to

him for protection, he tears from the mother's arms and sells into a

strange country among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters.

"He has attempted to justify slavery here, because it exists in

Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the

same principle, he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of

wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery, and murder, or any other of

the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery exist

in any part of civilized Europe? No, Sir, in no part of it."

PEYTON RANDOLPH.

On the 20th of October, 1774, while Congress was in session in

Philadelphia, Peyton Randolph, President, the following resolution, among

others, was unanimously adopted:--

"That we will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after

the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly

discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it

ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or

manufactures, to those who are concerned in it."

EDMUND RANDOLPH.

The Constitution of the United States contains the following provision:--

"No person held to service or labor in another State, under the laws

thereof, escaping to another, shall, in consequence of any law or

regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but

shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or

labor may be due."

To the studious attention of those vandals who contend that the above

provision requires the rendition of fugitive _slaves_, we respectfully

commend the following resolution, which, it will be observed, was

_unanimously_ adopted:--

"On motion of Mr. Randolph, the word '_servitude_' was struck out,

and '_service_' unanimously inserted--the former being thought to

express the condition of slaves, and the latter the obligation of

_free_ persons."--_Madison Papers, vol. III., p. 1569._

Well done for the Randolphs!

THE VOICE OF CLAY.

Henry Clay, whom everybody loved, and at the mention of whose name the

American heart always throbs with emotions of grateful remembrance, said,

in an address before the Kentucky Colonization Society, in 1829:--

"It is believed that nowhere in the _farming_ portion of the United

States would slave-labor be generally employed, if the proprietor

were not tempted to raise slaves by the high price of the Southern

market, which keeps it up in his own."

In the United States Senate, in 1850, he used the following memorable

words:--

"I am extremely sorry to hear the Senator from Mississippi say that

he requires, first the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to

the Pacific, and also that he is not satisfied with that, but

requires, if I understand him correctly, a positive provision for the

admission of slavery South of that line. And now, Sir, coming from a

slave State, as I do, I owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it

to the subject to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote

for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had

not before existed, either South or North of that line. Coming as I

do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate and well-matured

determination that no power, no earthly power, shall compel me to

vote for the positive introduction of slavery either South or North

of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly too, our British

ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent

of America I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present

inhabitants of California and of New Mexico, shall reproach us for

doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us. If the

citizens of those territories choose to establish slavery, and if

they come here with Constitutions establishing slavery, I am for

admitting them with such provisions in their Constitutions; but then

it will be their own work, and not ours, and their posterity will

have to reproach them, and not us, for forming Constitutions allowing

the institution of slavery to exist among them. These are my views,

Sir, and I choose to express them; and I care not how extensively or

universally they are known."

Hear him further; he says:--

"So long as God allows the vital current to flow through my veins, I

will never, never, never, by word, or thought, by mind or will, aid

in admitting one rood of free territory to the everlasting curse of

human bondage."

A bumper to the memory of noble Harry of the West!

CASSIUS M. CLAY.

Of the great number of good speeches made by members of the Republican

party during the late Presidential campaign, it is, we believe, pretty

generally admitted that the best one was made by Cassius M. Clay, of

Kentucky, at the Tabernacle, in New-York City, on the 24th of October,

1856. From the speech of that noble champion of freedom, then and there

delivered, we make the following graphic extract:--

"If there are no manufactures, there is no commerce. In vain do the

slaveholders go to Knoxville, to Nashville, to Memphis and to

Charleston, and resolve that they will have nothing to do with these

abolition eighteen millions of Northern people; that they will build

their own vessels, manufacture their own goods, ship their own

products to foreign countries, and break down New-York, Philadelphia

and Boston! Again they resolve and reresolve, and yet there is not a

single ton more shipped and not a single article added to the wealth

of the South. But, gentlemen, they never invite such men as I am to

attend their Conventions. They know that I would tell them that

slavery is the cause of their poverty, and that I will tell them that

what they are aiming at is the dissolution of the Union--that they

may be prepared to strike for that whenever the nation rises. They

well know that by slave labor the very propositions which they make

can never be realized; yet when we show these things, they cry out,

'Oh, Cotton is King!' But when we look at the statistics, we find

that so far from Cotton being King, Grass is King. There are nine

articles of staple productions which are larger than that of cotton

in this country."

"I suppose it does not follow because slavery is endeavoring to

modify the great dicta of our fathers, that cotton and free labor are

incompatible. In the extreme South, at New Orleans, the laboring

men--the stevedores and hackmen on the levee, where the heat is

intensified by the proximity of the red brick buildings, are all

white men, and they are in the full enjoyment of health. But how

about cotton? I am informed by a friend of mine--himself a

slaveholder, and therefore good authority--that in Northwestern

Texas, among the German settlements, who, true to their national

instincts, will not employ the labor of a slave--they produce more

cotton to the acre, and of a better quality, and selling at prices

from a cent to a cent and a half a pound higher than that produced by

slave labor. This is an experiment that illustrates what I have

always held, that whatever is right is expedient."

THE VOICE OF BENTON.

In his "Thirty Years' View," Thomas H. Benton says:--

"My opposition to the extension of slavery dates further back than

1844--forty years further back; and as this is a suitable time for a

general declaration, and a sort of general conscience delivery, I

will say that my opposition to it dates from 1804, when I was a

student at law in the State of Tennessee, and studied the subject of

African slavery in an American book--a Virginia book--Tucker's

edition of Blackstone's Commentaries."

Again, in a speech delivered in St. Louis, on the 3rd of November, 1856,

he says:--

"I look at white people, and not at black ones; I look to the peace

and reputation of the race to which I belong. I look to the peace of

this land--the world's last hope for a free government on the earth.

One of the occasions on which I saw Henry Clay rise higher than I

thought I ever saw him before, was when in the debate on the

admission of California, a dissolution was apprehended if slavery was

not carried into this Territory, where it never was. Then Mr. Clay,

rising, loomed colossally in the Senate of the United States, as he

rose declaring that for no earthly purpose, no earthly object, could

he carry slavery into places where it did not exist before. It was a

great and proud day for Mr. Clay, towards the latter days of his

life, and if an artist could have been there to catch his expression

as he uttered that sentiment, with its reflex on his face, and his

countenance beaming with firmness of purpose, it would have been a

glorious moment in which to transmit him to posterity--his

countenance all alive and luminous with the ideas that beat in his

bosom. That was a proud day. I could have wished that I had spoken

the same words. I speak them now, telling you they were his, and

adopting them as my own."

THE VOICE OF MASON.

Colonel Mason, a leading and distinguished member of the Convention that

formed the Constitution, from Virginia, when the provision for prohibiting

the importation of slaves was under consideration, said:--

"The present question concerns not the importing States alone, but

the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor

despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the emigration

of whites who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce

the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born

a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. As

nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must

be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence

punishes national sins by national calamities. He lamented that some

of our Eastern brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this

nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the right

to import, this was the case with many other rights, now to be

properly given up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that

the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of

slavery."

THE VOICE OF MCDOWELL.

In 1832, Gov. McDowell used this language in the Virginia Legislature:--

"Who that looks to this unhappy bondage of an unhappy people, in the

midst of our society, and thinks of its incidents or issues, but

weeps over it as a curse as great upon him who inflicts as upon him

who suffers it? Sir, you may place the slave where you please--you

may dry up, to your uttermost, the fountains of his feelings, the

springs of his thought--you may close upon his mind every avenue of

knowledge, and cloud it over with artificial night--you may yoke him

to your labors, as the ox, which liveth only to work and worketh only

to live--you may put him under any process which, without destroying

his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational

being--you may do this, and the idea that he was born to be free will

survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality--it is the

etherial part of his nature which oppression cannot rend. It is a

torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be

extinguished by the hand of man."

THE VOICE OF IREDELL.

In the debates of the North Carolina Convention, Mr. Iredell, afterwards a

Judge of the United States Supreme Court, said:--

"When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an

event which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every friend

of human nature."

THE VOICE OF PINKNEY.

William Pinkney, of Maryland, in the House of Delegates in that State, in

1789, made several powerful arguments in favor of the abolition of

slavery. Here follows a brief extract from one of his speeches:--

"Iniquitous and most dishonorable to Maryland, is that dreary system

of partial bondage which her laws have hitherto supported with a

solicitude worthy of a better object, and her citizens by their

practice, countenanced. Founded in a disgraceful traffic, to which

the parent country lent its fostering aid, from motives of interest,

but which even she would have disdained to encourage, had England

been the destined mart of such inhuman merchandize, its continuance

is as shameful as its origin.

I have no hope that the stream of general liberty will forever flow

unpolluted through the mire of partial bondage, or that they who have

been habituated to lord it over others, will not, in time, become

base enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist, it will

be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle."

THE VOICE OF LEIGH.

In the Legislature of Virginia, in 1832, Mr. Leigh said:--

"I thought, till very lately that it was known to every body that,

during the Revolution, and for many years after, the abolition of

slavery was a favorite topic with many of our ablest Statesmen, who

entertained with respect all the schemes which wisdom or ingenuity

could suggest for its accomplishment."

THE VOICE OF MARSHALL.

Thomas Marshall, of Fauquier, said, in the Virginia Legislature, in

1832:--

"Wherefore, then, object to slavery? Because it is ruinous to the

whites--retards improvements, roots out an industrious population,

banishes the yeomanry of the country--deprives the spinner, the

weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and

support."

THE VOICE OF BOLLING.

Philip A. Bolling, of Buckingham, a member of the Legislature of Virginia

in 1832, said:--

"The time will come--and it may be sooner than many are willing to

believe--when this oppressed and degraded race cannot be held as they

now are--when a change will be effected, abhorrent, Mr. Speaker, to

you, and to the feelings of every good man.

The wounded adder will recoil, and sting the foot that tramples upon

it. The day is fast approaching, when those who oppose all action

upon this subject, and, instead of aiding in devising some feasible

plan for freeing their country from an acknowledged curse, cry

'_impossible_,' to every plan suggested, will curse their

perverseness, and lament their folly."

THE VOICE OF CHANDLER.

Mr. Chandler, of Norfolk, member of the Virginia Legislature, in 1832,

took occasion to say:--

"It is admitted, by all who have addressed this House, that slavery

is a curse, and an increasing one. That it has been destructive to

the lives of our citizens, history, with unerring truth, will record.

That its future increase will create commotion, cannot be doubted."

THE VOICE OF SUMMERS.

Mr. Summers, of Kanawha, member of the Legislature of Virginia, in 1832,

said:--

"The evils of this system cannot be enumerated. It were unnecessary

to attempt it. They glare upon us at every step. When the owner looks

to his wasted estate, he knows and feels them."

THE VOICE OF PRESTON.

In the Legislature of Virginia, in 1832, Mr. Preston said:--

"Sir, Mr. Jefferson, whose hand drew the preamble to the Bill of

Rights, has eloquently remarked that we had invoked for ourselves the

benefit of a principle which we had denied to others. He saw and felt

that slaves, as men, were embraced within this principle."

THE VOICE OF FREMONT.

John Charles Fremont, one of the noblest sons of the South, says:--

"I heartily concur in all movements which have for their object to

repair the mischiefs arising from the violation of good faith in the

repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I am opposed to slavery in the

abstract, and upon principles sustained and made habitual by long

settled convictions. I am inflexibly opposed to its extension on this

continent beyond its present limits."

"The great body of non-slaveholding Freemen, including those of the

South, upon whose welfare slavery is an oppression, will discover

that the power of the General Government over the Public Lands may be

beneficially exerted to advance their interests, and secure their

independence, knowing this, their suffrages will not be wanting to

maintain that authority in the Union, which is absolutely essential

to the maintenance of their own liberties, and which has more than

once indicated the purpose of disposing of the Public Lands in such a

way as would make every settler upon them a freeholder."

THE VOICE OF BLAIR.

In an Address to the Republicans of Maryland, in 1856, Francis P. Blair

says:--

"In every aspect in which slavery among us can be considered, it is

pregnant with difficulty. Its continuance in the States in which it

has taken root has resulted in the monopoly of the soil, to a great

extent, in the hands of the slaveholders, and the entire control of

all departments of the State Government; and yet a majority of people

in the slave States are not slave-owners. This produces an anomaly in

the principle of our free institutions, which threatens in time to

bring into subjugation to slave-owners the great body of the free

white population."

THE VOICE OF MAURY.

Lieut. Maury, to whom has been awarded so much well-merited praise in the

world of science, says:--

"The fact must be obvious to the far-reaching minds of our Statesmen,

that unless some means of relief be devised, some channel afforded,

by which the South can, when the time comes, get rid of the excess of

her slave population, she will be ultimately found with regard to

this institution, in the predicament of the man with the wolf by the

ears; too dangerous to hold on any longer, and equally dangerous to

let go. To our mind, the event is as certain to happen as any event

which depends on the contingencies of the future, viz.: that unless

means be devised for gradually relieving the slave States from the

undue pressure of this class upon them--unless some way be opened by

which they may be rid of their surplus black population--the time

will come--it may not be in the next nor in the succeeding

generation--but, sooner or later, come it will, and come it

must--when the two races will join in the death struggle for the

mastery."

THE VOICE OF BIRNEY.

James G. Birney, of Kentucky, under whom the Abolitionists first became a

National Party, and for whom they voted for President in 1844, giving him

66,304 votes, says:

"We have so long practiced injustice, adding to it hypocrisy, in the

treatment of the colored race, both negroes and Indians, that we

begin to regard injustice as an element--a chief element--the chief

element of our government. But no government which admits injustice

as an element can be a harmonious one or a permanent one. Harmony is

the antagonist of injustice, ever has been, and ever will be; that

is, so long as injustice lasts, which cannot always be, for it is a

lie, a semblance, therefore, perishable. True, from the imperfection

of man, his ambition and selfishness, injustice often finds its way

incidentally into the administration of public affairs, and maintains

its footing a long time before it is cast out by the legitimate

elements of government."

"Our slave States, especially the more southern of them, in which the

number of slaves is greater, and in which, of course the sentiment of

injustice is stronger than in the more northern ones, are to be

placed on the list of decaying communities. To a philosophic

observer, they seem to be falling back on the scale of civilization.

Even at the present point of retrogression, the cause of civilization

and human improvement would lose nothing by their annihilation."

THE VOICE OF DELAWARE.

Strong anti-slavery sentiment had become popular in Delaware as early as

1785. With Maryland and Missouri, it may now be ranked as a semi-slave

State. Mr. McLane, a member of Congress from this State in 1825, said:--

"I shall not imitate the example of other gentlemen by making

professions of my love of liberty and abhorrence of slavery, not,

however, because I do not entertain them. I am an enemy to slavery."

THE VOICE OF MARYLAND.

Slavery has little vitality in Maryland. Baltimore, the greatest city of

the South--greatest because freest--has a population of more than two

hundred thousand souls, and yet less than three thousand of these are

slaves. In spite of all the unjust and oppressive statutes enacted by the

oligarchy, the non-slaveholders, who with the exception of a small number

of slaveholding emancipationists, may in truth be said to be the only

class of respectable and patriotic citizens in the South, have wisely

determined that their noble State shall be freed from the sin and the

shame, the crime and the curse of slavery; and in accordance with this

determination, long since formed, they are giving every possible

encouragement to free white labor, thereby, very properly, rendering the

labor of slaves both unprofitable and disgraceful. The formation of an

Abolition Society in this State, in 1789, was the result of the influence

of the masterly speeches delivered in the House of Delegates, by the Hon.

William Pinkney whose undying testimony we have already placed on record.

Nearly seventy years ago, this eminent lawyer and Statesman declared to

the people of America, that if they did not mark out the bounds of

slavery, and adopt measures for its total extinction, it would finally

"work a decay of the spirit of liberty in the free States." Further, he

said that, "by the eternal principles of natural justice, no master in the

State has a right to hold his slave in bondage a single hour." In 1787,

Luther Martin, of this State, said:--

"Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has a

tendency to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it

lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us

to tyranny and oppression."

THE VOICE OF VIRGINIA.

After introducing the unreserved and immortal testimony of Washington,

Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and the other great men of the Old Dominion,

against the institution of slavery, it may to some, seem quite superfluous

to back the cause of Freedom by arguments from other Virginia

abolitionists; but this State, notwithstanding all her more modern manners

and inhumanity, has been so prolific of just views and noble sentiments,

that we deem it eminently fit and proper to blazon many of them to the

world as the redeeming features of her history. An Abolition Society was

formed in this State in 1791. In a memorial which the members of this

Society presented to Congress, they pronounced slavery "not only an odious

degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the most essential

rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the

Gospel." A Bill of Rights, unanimously agreed upon by the Virginia

Convention of June 12, 1776, holds--

"That all men are, by nature, equally free and independent;

That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common

benefit, protection, and security, of the People, Nation, or

Community;

That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people

in assembly ought to be free;

That all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest

with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage,

and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property, for public uses,

without their own consent or that of their representatives so

elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not in like manner

assented, for the public good;

That the freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of

Liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments;

That no free Government or the blessing of Liberty can be preserved

to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation,

temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to

fundamental principles."

The "Virginia Society for the Abolition of Slavery," organized in 1791,

addressed Congress in these words:--

"Your memorialists, fully aware that righteousness exalteth a nation,

and that slavery is not only an odious degradation, but an outrageous

violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature, and

utterly repugnant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes

'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that a practice so

inconsistent with true policy and the inalienable rights of men,

should subsist in so enlightened an age, and among a people

professing that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to

freedom."

THE VOICE OF NORTH CAROLINA.

If the question, _slavery_ or _no slavery_, could be fairly presented for

the decision of the legal voters of North Carolina at the next popular

election, we believe at least two-thirds of them would deposite the _no

slavery_ ticket. Perhaps one-fourth of the slaveholders themselves would

vote it, for the slaveholders in this State are more moderate, decent,

sensible, and honorable, than the slaveholders in either of the adjoining

States, or the States further South; and we know that many of them are

heartily ashamed of the vile occupations of slaveholding and

slave-breeding in which they are engaged, for we have the assurance from

their own lips. As a matter of course, all the non-slaveholders, who are

so greatly in the majority, would vote to suppress the degrading

institution which has kept them so long in poverty and ignorance, with the

exception of those who are complete automatons to the beck and call of

their imperious lords and masters, the major-generals of the oligarchy.

How long shall it be before the citizens of North Carolina shall have the

privilege of expressing, at the ballot-box, their true sentiments with

regard to this vexed question? Why not decide it at the next general

election? Sooner or later, it must and will be decided--decided correctly,

too--and the sooner the better. The first Southern State that abolishes

slavery will do herself an immortal honor. God grant that North Carolina

may be that State, and soon! There is at least one plausible reason why

this good old State should be the first to move in this important matter,

and we will state it. On the 20th of May, 1775, just one year one month

and fourteen days prior to the adoption of the Jeffersonian Declaration of

Independence, by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776,

the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the authorship of which is

generally attributed to Ephraim Brevard, was proclaimed in Charlotte,

Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, and fully ratified in a second

Convention of the people of said county, held on the 31st of the same

month. And here, by the way, we may remark, that it is supposed Mr.

Jefferson made use of this last-mentioned document as the basis of his

draft of the indestructible title-deed of our liberties. There is

certainly an identicalness of language between the two papers that is well

calculated to strengthen this hypothesis. This, however, is a controversy

about which we are but little concerned. For present purposes, it is,

perhaps, enough for us to know, that on the 20th of May, 1775, when

transatlantic tyranny and oppression could no longer be endured, North

Carolina set her sister colonies a most valorous and praiseworthy example,

and that they followed it. To her infamous slaveholding sisters of the

South, it is now meet that she should set another noble example of

decency, virtue, and independence. Let her at once inaugurate a policy of

common justice and humanity--enact a system of equitable laws, having due

regard to the rights and interests of all classes of persons, poor whites,

negroes, and nabobs, and the surrounding States will ere long applaud her

measures, and adopt similar ones for the governance of themselves.

Another reason, and a cogent one, why North Carolina should aspire to

become the first free State of the South is this: The first slave State

that makes herself respectable by casting out "the mother of harlots," and

by rendering enterprise and industry honorable, will immediately receive

a large accession of most worthy citizens from other States in the Union,

and thus lay a broad foundation of permanent political power and

prosperity. Intelligent white farmers from the Middle and New England

States will flock to our more congenial clime, eager to give thirty

dollars per acre for the same lands that are now a drug in the market

because nobody wants them at the rate of five dollars per acre; an

immediate and powerful impetus will be given to commerce, manufactures,

and all the industrial arts; science and literature will be revived, and

every part of the State will reverberate with the triumphs of manual and

intellectual labor.

At this present time, we of North Carolina are worth less than either of

the four adjoining States; let us abolish slavery at the beginning of the

next regular decade of years, and if our example is not speedily followed,

we shall, on or before the first day of January, 1870, be enabled to

purchase the whole of Virginia and South Carolina, including, perhaps, the

greater part of Georgia. An exclusive lease of liberty for ten years would

unquestionably make us the Empire State of the South. But we have no

disposition to debar others from the enjoyment of liberty or any other

inalienable right; we ask no special favors; what we demand for ourselves

we are willing to concede to our neighbors. Hereby we make application for

a lease of freedom for ten years; shall we have it? May God enable us to

secure it, as we believe He will. We give fair notice, however, that if we

get it for ten years, we shall, with the approbation of Heaven, keep it

twenty--forty--a thousand--forever!

We transcribe the Mecklenburg Resolutions, which, it will be observed,

acknowledge the "inherent and inalienable rights of man," and "declare

ourselves a free and independent people, are, and of right ought to be, a

sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power

other than that of our God, and the general government of the Congress."

MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE,

As proclaimed in the town of Charlotte, North Carolina, May 20th, 1775,

and ratified by the County of Mecklenburg, in Convention, May 31st, 1775.

"I. _Resolved_--That whosoever, directly or indirectly, abetted, or

in any way, form or manner, countenanced the unchartered and

dangerous invasion of our rights as claimed by Great Britain, is an

enemy to this country, to America, and to the inherent and

inalienable rights of man.

"II. _Resolved_--That we the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do

hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the

mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to

the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract or

association with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our

rights and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of American

patriots at Lexington.

"III. _Resolved_--That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and

independent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and

self-governing association, under the control of no power other than

that of our God, and the general government of the Congress; to the

maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other

our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred

honor.

"IV. _Resolved_--That as we now acknowledge the existence and control

of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this county, we

do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each, and every

of our former laws--wherein, nevertheless, the crown of Great Britain

never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities or

authority therein."

Had it not been for slavery, which, with all its other blighting and

degrading influences, stifles and subdues every noble impulse of the

heart, this consecrated spot would long since have been marked by an

enduring monument, whose grand proportions should bear witness that the

virtues of a noble ancestry are gratefully remembered by an emulous and

appreciative posterity. Yet, even as things are, we are not without

genuine consolation. The star of hope and promise is beginning to beam

brightly over the long-obscured horizon of the South; and we are firm in

the belief, that freedom, wealth, and magnanimity, will soon do justice to

the memory of those fearless patriots, whose fair fame has been suffered

to moulder amidst the multifarious abominations of slavery, poverty,

ignorance and grovelling selfishness.

Judge Iredell's testimony, which will be found on a preceding page, and to

which we request the reader to recur, might have been appropriately

introduced under our present heading.

In the Provincial Convention held in North Carolina, in August, 1774, in

which there were sixty-nine delegates, representing nearly every county in

the province, it was--

"_Resolved_--That we will not import any slave or slaves, or purchase

any slave or slaves imported or brought into the Province by others,

from any part of the world, after the first day of November next."

In Iredell's Statutes, revised by Martin, it is stated that,

"In North Carolina, no general law at all was passed, prior to the

revolution, declaring who might be slaves."

That there is no _legal_ slavery in the Southern States, and that slavery

no where can be legalized, any more than theft, arson or murder can be

legalized, has been virtually admitted by some of the most profound

Southern jurists themselves; and we will here digress so far as to furnish

the testimony of one or two eminent lawyers, not of North Carolina, upon

this point.

In the debate in the United States Senate, in 1850, on the Fugitive Slave

Bill, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, objected to Mr. Dayton's amendment,

providing for a trial by jury, because, said he:--

"A trial by jury necessarily carries with it a trial of the whole

right, and a trial of the right to service will be gone into,

according to all the forms of the Court, in determining upon any

other fact. Then, again, it is proposed, as a part of the proof to be

adduced at the hearing, after the fugitive has been re-captured, that

evidence shall be brought by the claimant to show that slavery is

established in the State from which the fugitive has absconded. Now

this very thing, in a recent case in the city of New-York, was

required by one of the judges of that State, which case attracted the

attention of the authorities of Maryland, and against which they

protested. In that case the State judge went so far as to say that

the only mode of proving it was by reference to the Statute book.

Such proof is required in the Senator's amendment; and if he means by

this that proof shall be brought that slavery is established by

existing laws, it is impossible to comply with the requisition, for

no such law can be produced, I apprehend, in any of the slave States.

I am not aware that there is a single State in which the institution

is established by positive law."

Judge Clarke, of Mississippi, says:--

"In this State the legislature have considered slaves as reasonable

and accountable beings; and it would be a stigma upon the character

of the State, and a reproach to the administration of justice, if the

life of a slave could be taken with impunity, or if he could be

murdered in cold blood, without subjecting the offender to the

highest penalty known to the criminal jurisprudence of the country.

Has the slave no rights, because he is deprived of his freedom? He is

still a human being, and possesses all those rights of which he is

not deprived by the positive provisions of the law. The right of the

master exists not by force of the law of nature or nations, but by

virtue only of the positive law of the State."

The Hon. Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, says:--

"Arguments drawn from the well-established principles, which confer

and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the tutor

over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been pressed on

us. The Court does not recognize their application; there is no

likeness between the cases; they are in opposition to each other, and

there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is that

which exists between freedom and slavery, and a greater cannot be

imagined. In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the youth,

born to equal rights with that governor on whom the duty devolves of

training the young to usefulness, in a station which he is afterwards

to assume among freemen. To such an end, and with such a subject,

moral and intellectual instruction seem the natural means, and, for

the most part, they are found to suffice. Moderate force is

superadded only to make the others effectual. If that fail, it is

better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, and the

ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be immoderately

inflicted by a private person. With slavery it is far otherwise. The

end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety;

the subject, one doomed, in his own person and his posterity, to live

without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own,

and to toil that another may reap the fruits. What moral

considerations shall be addressed to such a being to convince him,

what it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know can

never be true, that he is thus to labor upon a principle of natural

duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness? Such services

can only be expected from one who has no will of his own; who

surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another. Such

obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the

body. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect.

The power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of

the slave perfect. I most freely confess my sense of the harshness of

this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any man can; and as a

principle of moral right, every person in his retirement must

repudiate it."

An esteemed friend, a physician, who was born and bred in Rowan county,

North Carolina, and who now resides there, informs us that Judge Gaston,

who was one of the half dozen Statesmen whom the South has produced since

the days of the venerable fathers of the Republic, was an avowed

abolitionist, and that he published an address to the people of North

Carolina, delineating, in a masterly manner, the material, moral, and

social disadvantages of slavery. Where is that address? Has it been

suppressed by the oligarchy? The fact that slaveholders have, from time to

time, made strenuous efforts to expunge the sentiments of freedom which

now adorn the works of nobler men than the noble Gaston, may, perhaps,

fully account for the oblivious state into which his patriotic address

seems to have fallen.

THE VOICE OF SOUTH CAROLINA.

Poor South Carolina! Folly is her nightcap; fanaticism is her day-dream;

fire-eating is her pastime. She has lost her better judgment; the

dictates of reason and philosophy have no influence upon her actions. Like

the wife who is pitiably infatuated with a drunken, worthless husband, she

still clings, with unabated love, to the cause of her shame, her misery,

and her degradation.

A Kentuckian has recently expressed his opinion of this State in the

following language:--

"South Carolina is bringing herself irrecoverably in the public

contempt. It is impossible for any impartial lover of his country,

for any just thinking man, to witness her senseless and quenchless

malignancy against the Union without the most immeasurable disgust

and scorn. She is one vast hot-bed of disunion. Her people think and

talk of nothing else. She is a festering mass of treason."

In 1854, there were assessed for taxation in

SOUTH CAROLINA,

Acres of Land 17,289,359

Valued at $22,836,374

Average value per acre $1,32

At the same time there were in

NEW JERSEY,

Acres of Land, 324,800

Valued at $153,161,619

Average value per acre $28,76

We hope the Slavocrats will look, first on that picture, and then on this;

from one or the other, or both, they may glean a ray or two of wisdom,

which, if duly applied, will be of incalculable advantage to them and

their posterity. We trust, also, that the non-slaveholding whites will

view, with discriminating minds, the different lights and shades of these

two pictures; they are the parties most deeply interested; and it is to

them we look for the glorious revolution that is to substitute Freedom for

Slavery. They have the power to retrieve the fallen fortunes of South

Carolina, to raise her up from the loathsome sink of iniquity into which

slavery has plunged her, and to make her one of the most brilliant stars

in the great constellation of States. While their minds are occupied with

other considerations, let them not forget the difference between

_twenty-eight dollars and seventy-six cents_, the value of land per acre

in New Jersey, which is a second-rate free State, and _one dollar and

thirty-two cents_, the value of land per acre in South Carolina, which is,

_par excellence_, the model slave State. The difference between the two

sums is twenty-seven dollars and forty-four cents, which would amount to

precisely two thousand seven hundred and forty-four dollars on every

hundred acres. To present the subject in another form, the South Carolina

tract of land, containing two hundred acres, is worth now only two hundred

and sixty-four dollars, and is depreciating every day. Let slavery be

abolished, and in the course of a few years, the same tract will be worth

five thousand seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, with an upward

tendency. At this rate, the increment of value on the total area of the

State will amount to more than three times as much as the present

estimated value of the slaves!

South Carolina has not always been, nor will she always continue to be, on

the wrong side. From Ramsay's History of the State, we learn that, in

1774, she--

"_Resolved_--That His Majesty's subjects in North America (without

respect to color or other accidents) are entitled to all the inherent

rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the Kingdom

of Great Britain; that it is their fundamental right, that no man

should suffer in his person or property without a fair trial, and

judgment given by his peers, or by the law of the land."

One of her early writers, under the _non de plume_ of Philodemus, in a

political pamphlet published in Charleston in 1784, declares that--

"Such is the fatal influence of slavery on the human mind, that it

almost wholly effaces from it even the boasted characteristic of

rationality."

This same writer, speaking of the particular interests of South Carolina,

says:--

"It has been too common with us to search the records of other

nations, to find precedents that may give sanction to our own errors,

and lead us unwarily into confusion and ruin. It is our business to

consult their histories, not with a view to tread right or wrong in

their steps, but in order to investigate the real sources of the

mischiefs that have befallen them, and to endeavor to escape the

rocks which they have all unfortunately split upon. It is paying

ourselves but a poor compliment, to say that we are incapable of

profiting by others, and that, with all the information which is to

be derived from their fatal experience, it is in vain for us to

attempt to excel them. If, with all the peculiar advantages of our

present situation, we are incapable of surpassing our predecessors,

we must be a degenerate race indeed, and quite unworthy of those

singular bounties of Heaven, which we are so unskilled or undesirous

to turn to our benefit."

A recent number of Frazer's Magazine contains a well-timed and

well-written article from the pen of Wm. Henry Hurlbut, of this State;

and from it we make the following extract:--

"As all sagacious observers of the operation of the system of slavery

have demonstrated, the profitable employment of slave-labor is

inconsistent with the development of agricultural science, and

demands a continual supply of new and unexhausted soil. The

slaveholder, investing his capital in the purchase of the laborers

themselves, and not merely in soil and machines, paying his free

laborers out of the profit, must depend for his continued and

progressive prosperity upon the cheapness and facility with which he

can transfer his slaves to fresh and fertile lands. An enormous

additional item, namely, the price of slaves, being added to the cost

of production, all other elements of that cost require to be

proportionably smaller, or profits fail."

In an address delivered before the South Carolina Institute, in

Charleston, Nov. 20th, 1856, Mr. B. F. Perry, of Greenville, truthfully

says:--

"It has been South Carolina's misfortune, in this utilitarian age, to

have her greatest talents and most powerful energies directed to

pursuits, which avail her nothing, in the way of wealth and

prosperity. In the first settlement of a new country, agricultural

industry necessarily absorbs all the time and occupation of its

inhabitants. They must clear the forests and cultivate the earth, in

order to make their bread. This is their first consideration. Then

the mechanical arts, and manufactures, and commerce, must follow in

the footsteps of agriculture, to insure either individual or national

prosperity. No people can be highly prosperous without them. No

people ever have been. Agriculture, alone, will not make or sustain a

great people. The true policy of every people is to cultivate the

earth, manufacture its products, and send them abroad, in exchange

for those comforts and luxuries, and necessaries, which their own

country and their own industry cannot give or make. The dependence of

South Carolina on Europe and the Northern States for all the

necessaries, comforts and luxuries, which the mechanic arts afford,

has, in fact, drained her of her wealth, and made her positively

poor, when compared with her sister States of the Confederacy. It is

at once mortifying and alarming, to see and reflect on our own

dependence in the mechanic arts and manufactures, on strangers and

foreigners. In the Northern States their highest talents and energy

have been diversified, and more profitably employed in developing the

resources of the country, in making new inventions in the mechanic

arts, and enriching the community with science and literature,

commerce and manufactures."

THE VOICE OF GEORGIA.

Of the States strictly Southern, Georgia is, perhaps, the most thrifty.

This prosperous condition of the State is mainly ascribable to her hundred

thousand free white laborers--more than eighty-three thousand of whom are

engaged in agricultural pursuits. In few other slave States are the

non-slaveholders so little under the domination of the oligarchy. At best,

however, even in the most liberal slave States, the social position of the

non-slaveholding whites is but one short step in advance of that of the

negroes; and as there is, on the part of the oligarchy, a constantly

increasing desire and effort to usurp greater power, the more we

investigate the subject the more fully are we convinced that nothing but

the speedy and utter annihilation of slavery from the entire nation, can

save the masses of white people in the Southern States from ultimately

falling to a political level with the blacks--both occupying the most

abject and galling condition of servitude of which it is possible for the

human mind to conceive.

Gen. Oglethorpe, under whose management the Colony of Georgia was

settled, in 1733, was bitterly opposed to the institution of slavery. In a

letter to Granville Sharp, dated Oct. 13th, 1776, he says:--

"My friends and I settled the Colony of Georgia, and by charter were

established trustees, to make laws, &c. We determined not to suffer

slavery there. But the slave merchants and their adherents occasioned

us not only much trouble, but at last got the then government to

favor them. We would not suffer slavery, (which is against the

Gospel, as well as the fundamental law of England,) to be authorized

under our authority; we refused, as trustees, to make a law

permitting such a horrid crime. The government, finding the trustees

resolved firmly not to concur with what they believed unjust, took

away the charter by which no law could be passed without our

consent."

On the 12th of January, 1775, in indorsing the proceedings of the first

American Congress, among other resolutions, "the Representatives of the

extensive District of Darien, in the Colony of Georgia" adopted the

following:--

"5. To show the world that we are not influenced by any contracted or

interested motives, but a general philanthropy for all mankind, of

whatever climate, language, or complexion, we hereby declare our

disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in

America, (however the uncultivated state of our country or other

specious arguments may plead for it,) a practice founded in injustice

and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties, (as well as

lives,) debasing part of our fellow creatures below men, and

corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest; and is laying the basis

of that liberty we contend for, (and which we pray the Almighty to

continue to the latest posterity,) upon a very wrong foundation. We

therefore resolve, at all times, to use our utmost endeavors for the

manumission of our slaves in this Colony, upon the most safe and

equitable footing for the masters and themselves."

The Hon. Mr. Reid, of this State, in a speech delivered in Congress, Feb.

1, 1820, says:--

"I am not the panegyrist of slavery. It is an unnatural state, a dark

cloud, which obscures half the lustre of our free institutions. For

my own part, though surrounded by slavery from my cradle to the

present moment, yet--

'I hate the touch of servile hands,

I loathe the slaves who cringe around.'"

As an accompaniment to those lines, he might have uttered these:--

"I would not have a slave to till my ground;

To carry me, to fan me while I sleep

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth

That sinews bought and sold have ever earned."

Thus have we presented a comprehensive summary of the most unequivocal and

irrefragable testimony of the South against the iniquitous institution of

human slavery. What more can we say? What more can we do? We might fill a

folio volume with similar extracts; but we must forego the task; the

remainder of our space must be occupied with other arguments. In the

foregoing excerpts is revealed to us, in language too plain to be

misunderstood, the important fact that every truly great and good man the

South has ever produced, has, with hopeful confidence, looked forward to

the time when this entire continent shall be redeemed from the crime and

the curse of slavery. Our noble self-sacrificing forefathers have

performed their part, and performed it well. They have laid us a

foundation as enduring as the earth itself; in their dying moments they

admonished us to carry out their designs in the upbuilding and completion

of the superstructure. Let us obey their patriotic injunctions.

From each of the six original Southern States we have introduced the most

ardent aspirations for liberty--the most positive condemnations of

slavery. From each of the nine slave States which have been admitted into

the Union since the organization of the General Government, we could

introduce, from several of their wisest and best citizens, anti-slavery

sentiments equally as strong and convincing as those that emanated from

the great founders of our movement--Washington, Jefferson, Madison,

Patrick Henry and the Randolphs. As we have already remarked, however, the

limits of this chapter will not admit of the introduction of additional

testimony from either of the old or of the new slave States.

The reader will not fail to observe that, in presenting these solid

abolition doctrines of the South, we have been careful to make such

quotations as triumphantly refute, in every particular, the more specious

sophistries of the oligarchy.

The mention of the illustrious names above, reminds us of the fact, that

the party newspapers, whose venal columns are eternally teeming with

vituperation and slander, have long assured us that the Whig ship was to

be steered by the Washington rudder, that the Democratic barque was to

sail with the Jefferson compass, and that the Know-Nothing brig was to

carry the Madison chart. Imposed upon by these monstrous falsehoods, we

have, from time to time, been induced to engage passage on each of these

corrupt and rickety old hulks; but, in every instance, we have been basely

swamped in the sea of slavery, and are alone indebted for our lives to the

kindness of Heaven and the art of swimming. Washington the founder of the

Whig party! Jefferson the founder of the Democratic party! Voltaire the

founder of Christianity! God forbid that man's heart should always

continue to be the citadel of deception--that he should ever be to others

the antipode of what he is to himself.

There is now in this country but one party that promises, in good faith,

to put in practice the principles of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and

the other venerable Fathers of the Republic--the Republican party. To this

party we pledge unswerving allegiance, so long as it shall continue to

pursue the statism advocated by the great political prototypes

above-mentioned, but no longer. We believe it is, as it ought to be, the

desire, the determination, and the destiny of this party, to give the

death-blow to slavery; should future developments prove the party at

variance with this belief--a belief, by the bye, which it has recently

inspired in the breasts of little less than one and a half millions of the

most intelligent and patriotic voters in America--we shall shake off the

dust of our feet against it, and join one that will, in a summary manner,

extirpate the intolerable grievance.