After this meeting I walked home with Calhoun, who said that the
principles which I had avowed were just and noble; but that in the
Southern country, whenever they were mentioned, they were always
understood as applying only to white men. Domestic labor was confined
to the blacks, and such was the prejudice that if he, who was the most
popular man in his district, were to keep a white servant in his
house, his character and reputation would be irretrievably ruined.
[Footnote 46: From the "Diary."]
I said that this confounding of the ideas of servitude and labor was
one of the bad effects of slavery; but he thought it attended with
many excellent consequences. It did not apply to all kinds of
labor--not, for example, to farming. He himself had often held the
plow; so had his father. Manufacturing and mechanical labor was not
degrading. It was only manual labor--the proper work of slaves. No
white person could descend to that. And it was the best guarantee to
equality among the whites. It produced an unvarying level among them.
It not only did not excite, but did not even admit of inequalities by
which one white man could domineer over another.
I told Calhoun I could not see things in the same light. It is, in
truth, all perverted sentiment--mistaking labor for slavery, and
dominion for freedom. The discussion of the Missouri question has
betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they admit that
slavery is an evil, they disclaim all participation in the
introduction of it, and cast it all upon the shoulders of our old
granddam Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at
the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of
masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than
the plain freemen who labor for subsistence. They look down upon the
simplicity of a Yankee's manners, because he has no habits of
overbearing like theirs and can not treat negroes like dogs.
It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of
moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice;
for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which
makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the
color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed
with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the
Christian religion, that slaves are happy and contented in their
condition, that between master and slave there are ties of mutual
attachment and affection, that the virtues of the master are refined
and exalted by the degradation of the slave; while at the same time
they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, curse Britain for having
given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for
the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very
mention of human rights as applicable to men of color. The impression
produced upon my mind by the progress of this discussion is that the
bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution of
the United States is morally and politically vicious, inconsistent
with the principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified;
cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery, by pledging
the faith of freedom to maintain and perpetuate the tyranny of the
master; and grossly unequal and impolitic, by admitting that slaves
are at once enemies to be kept in subjection, property to be secured
or restored to their owners, and persons not to be represented
themselves, but for whom their masters are privileged with nearly a
double share of representation.
The consequence has been that this slave representation has governed
the Union. Benjamin portioned above his brethren has ravened as a
wolf. In the morning he has devoured the prey, and at night he has
divided the spoil. It would be no difficult matter to prove, by
reviewing the history of the Union under this Constitution, that
almost everything which has contributed to the honor and welfare of
the nation has been accomplished in despite of them or forced upon
them, and that everything unpropitious and dishonorable, including the
blunders and follies of their adversaries, may be traced to them. I
have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it to be all that
could be effected under the present Constitution, and from extreme
unwillingness to put the Union at hazard. But perhaps it would have
been a wiser as well as a bolder course to have persisted in the
restriction upon Missouri, till it should have terminated in a
convention of the States to amend and revise the Constitution. This
would have produced a new Union of thirteen or fourteen States
unpolluted with slavery, with a great and glorious object to effect,
namely, that of rallying to their standard the other States by the
universal emancipation of their slaves. If the Union must be
dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to
break. For the present, however, this contest is laid asleep.