Preliminary remarks--American party--The present and
prospective condition of our country--The large number of
voters in the free-soil States who will be under a foreign
influence, political and religious, inducing them to discard
the Bible and the right of private judgment--The freedom of the
Southern States from this anti-Christian and anti-republican
influence--The presence of the African race in the Southern
States secures them this advantage--The unpatriotic policy of
free-soilism
We have seen that nowhere throughout the South have the masses of our
African population given evidence of the first intelligent conception
of political freedom. As to insurrections, we are freer from their
disturbing influences than are the communities of many of the Northern
States from the progress of a no less dangerous influence--the
agrarian spirit which pervades a somewhat similar portion of society.
We of the South fear them less; and we have less cause to fear them.
On this score they make a useless expenditure of sympathy on our
behalf. It may be demonstrated that, without a singular interposition
of Divine Providence, the South (using the term, as I generally do,
for all those States which maintain the system of domestic slavery)
will, ere long, be called upon to protect the liberties of the North
from the progress of agrarianism, whilst there is not the remotest
probability that these will ever be called on to protect the South
from the insurrectionary movements of their blacks. I repeat--no! no
people in the whole country who fill the menial offices of society are
more contented than our blacks, or as much so. There are none who less
feel their condition to be oppressive, or who have as little cause to
feel it so.
In discussing the proposition enunciated, it is proper to premise,
that if I should be found to agree to any extent with the “American
party,” whose “councils” are now attracting so much attention, as to
the accumulation of a dangerous influence in the country, I find the
chief remedy (whatever may or may not be true of those proposed by
this party) in a providential arrangement which seems not so much to
have engaged public attention.
I propose to submit a brief sketch of the present and prospective
condition of our country.
We live in a country of vast geographical extent. A large portion of
it is uninhabited. It is, however, rapidly filling up. Immigrants from
every section of the civilized world are rapidly arriving in our
eastern cities, and spreading to remote sections of our republic: men
of every conceivable variety of taste, disposition, and opinion, both
in politics and in religion. The fertility and abundance of our soil,
and the variety of our staple articles of produce, have attracted
universal activity and enterprise. To compare the civilized world to
one vast city, our republic seems destined to become the great market
or business-street of it. Here, all is bustle and activity. Nowhere on
the face of the globe is so much energy of character displayed. No
attentive observer can fail to perceive the tendency of all this to
call off the mind from those moral and intellectual pursuits that so
eminently fit men for the sober duties of life and the felicities of
heaven. The public mind is already kept in a state of most unnatural
excitement, stimulated in the highest degree to the pursuits of wealth
and political distinction, to the almost entire neglect of every other
interest. This is daily becoming the supreme attraction, to which the
popular impulse yields as readily as the unfortunate ship obeys the
resistless circles of the maelstrom.
Thus far, it is true, we have succeeded to “lay that broad foundation
of modern society which promises the noble superstructure of rational
liberty. But regarding the tendencies of this restless people, looking
at the growth of our own improvidence, and at the copious additions
which overstocked and perishing Europe is daily sending us, in
multiplied forms of ignorance and superstition, insomuch that in many
respects in our Northern States our republican fabric is fast changing
and passing away before our very eyes, who can exult in the certainty
of success! Who will not despair, except so far as he may be sanguine
that a tone and energy of moral effort is put forth, equal to that
which achieved our national liberties! For if this be not done, in a
day we may go down into hopeless bondage! The physical battle of our
liberties has been fought and won, and we are fast rushing up to
unparalleled eminence; but from this dizzy height, if we be not
sustained by some conservative power, we shall go down in a moment to
the degradation of slavery. For let it be remembered that whilst
liberty may be achieved by the sword, it cannot be maintained by the
sword. Enlightened principles and moral excellence alone can maintain
the liberty that force achieves.”
I say nothing of that large class of foreign population whose
education and pecuniary resources enable them to come among us from a
choice of our institutions, and the other means of happiness which
this great country affords. I bid them all welcome. They add alike to
the permanency and strength of our institutions. Nor do I say any
thing against that unfortunate multitude which accompanies these,
whose ignorance and vice compel them, reluctantly or not, to seek
their bread in our fruitful country. So far as we may be able to
receive them, I rejoice that we have a home for them. But it is
obvious that our safety can be found only in our ability to absorb
them into our political body, and impart our character to them; and in
those providential arrangements which shall sustain us through the
protracted process. Without these, there is no ground to hope for
success. For what power is that which (in the language of another)
“has been fitly styled the ‘terror of Europe’--the power that has sent
earthquake after earthquake, rolling under the deep foundations of
governments, till they have rocked to their basis, and tottered to
their fall? It is the order, or rather the mass of vicious ignorance
and poverty which has there accumulated for ages.” This maniac power
must continue to work its extended desolations in Europe, except so
far as it may be enervated by expanding on the wilderness of North
America. It is fortunate for Europe that this enfeebling process is
rapidly going forward; but it is most unfortunate for us that we are
destined soon to concentrate a power which Europe is so happily
expanding. We are destined, ere long, to become a great manufacturing,
as well as commercial and agricultural people. Our condition is soon
to condense millions into cities and manufacturing districts, where,
as in Europe, from the class of population flowing in upon us, a
distinct class of menial poverty will be formed, “imbecile of mind,
and inapt but for one employment.”[6]
[6] Some years ago, a pamphlet fell into my hands, written by
some one whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten. I
think it likely that this language, or much of it, is to be
credited to that pamphlet.
Nor is _this_ all. It lays no claim to prophetic honor to venture the
prediction, that the youth of our country who shall survive the next
half century, will witness that which many will not believe, “though a
man declare it unto them.” But reasoning from the past, or from
well-established principles of political economy, it is morally
certain that our present population of twenty-three millions will then
have swelled to near one hundred millions. “Agriculture, commerce, and
manufactures will have expanded their resources and powers of
production to an inconceivable extent. The various portions of our
country will be linked together by railroads, canals,” telegraphic
wires, and by some other--God knows what!--as yet undiscovered means
of connection. Already, the cities of our Atlantic coast converse
freely, by means of “lightning post-boys,” with their next-door
neighbors--the cities of the great Mississippi valley! “Flourishing
cities are now lifting their spires in the hitherto pathless wilds of
Iowa, Oregon,” and California, and will soon be in telegraphic
connection with those of the East. Who can doubt that in less than ten
years the prediction of an eminent son of Virginia, J. E. Heath, Esq.,
will be verified: “American steamships from the cities of our Western
coast shall strike off in the path of the setting sun, and following
that burning luminary where he dips his glowing axle in the waters of
the Pacific, return in the short space of thirty or forty days, laden
with the commerce and population of China, and the isles of the
remotest West!”[7]
[7] Literary Messenger.
Can any man doubt the political and commercial changes that will then
follow throughout the civilized world? But who can estimate the extent
of these changes? Who can tell the result upon the political and
moral destiny of this great country? Who can tell the end of that
commercial revolution by which a large portion of the tea trade of
China, now in the hands of that greatest of all monopolies--the
British East India Company, contributing largely to the support of the
British government--shall be transferred to American bottoms, and flow
into this country through our cities on the Pacific coast! Already the
walls of pagan China have bowed to the thunder of British cannon, and
the deep foundations of her ancient government are destined at no
distant day to yield alike to American enterprise and American
liberty. Thousands of her perishing population--indeed, already they
come!--shall, ere long, flow in from the West, and meet the vast tide
of papal superstition and vice that has been long setting in from
Europe on the east. I am free to own that I contemplate this period
with profound amazement! I know not the extent of the vision that
confounds me. And when I turn my eyes to the canvas of Divine
inspiration, and decipher its unerring pencillings, I cannot doubt
that the strange elements that even now are so rapidly combining, and
that are soon to concentrate the maddened powers of pagan ignorance,
and papal superstition and vice, in the heart of this republic, are,
ere long, to make my native land the great theatre of those eventful
battles--the conflicts of truth and error in both politics and
religion--so graphically described in the apocalyptic vision of John.
And as I believe in the truth of the prophecy, and confide in the
promise of Heaven, I cannot doubt the result. But mark you, “the peril
of our condition--the peril of that state of things on which our
children may be but just entering!” This conflict is to be the more or
less fierce, the more or less disastrous to those who shall
immediately sustain its calamities, as they shall be the more or less
prepared for it. And what are the great agencies that shall prepare us
for a successful conflict? What is it that shall give comparative
mildness to this great moral and perhaps physical conflict that awaits
our children, or the want of which shall arm it with all the terrors
of a barbarous warfare? But one answer can be given to these
questions. The general education of the sovereigns of the land, and
the conservative influence of our institutions, or perdition, is the
alternative.
Upon the importance of the great educational movement of the country,
I need not remark just now; nor need we notice in this connection the
conservative influence of our free institutions, or rather the
tendency of the great principle of liberty, (as embodied in our civil
and religious institutions,) which, with all true Americans, is a
kind of instinctive belief, to diffuse itself through the mass of
society. The two together may justly be regarded as forming a bulwark
of American liberty, upon which the intelligent mind of the country
may repose with great confidence. But still, history scarcely leaves
us room to doubt that a _politico_-religious priesthood, firmly
established in the superstitious devotions of a strong minority even
of _menials_, who at the same time are political sovereigns, presents
fearful odds in the strife of principles with the “man of sin.” Nor
need we be surprised at this. A large mass of our population--however
they may constitute but a minority of the whole population--have been
educated from their cradles in the firm belief that it is a sin,
involving the damnation of the soul, to read God’s word, or to
exercise private judgment upon any matters which such a priesthood may
choose to affirm are taught therein, and who are equally established
in a superstitious opinion and feeling of devotion and submission, not
only to its right to decide all such matters, but also its authority
to punish with the highest spiritual torments all who shall
heretically disregard its decisions. This power has proved itself an
overmatch for the genius of liberty in the states of Europe. Thrones
and kingdoms have fallen before it. To this day the despots of Europe
hold their sceptres in virtue of a league with it. Louis Napoleon
exercises despotic sway over a large portion of as free a people in
their opinions and sentiments on all subjects without the range of
priestly dictation and dogmatism as can be found on the globe. But how
does he do it? He crushed the measures of liberty in Italy, and
restored the Pope to his throne. And why? Not only because a republic
in Italy would be a dangerous neighbor, but also because he needed the
authority of the priesthood to enforce the politico-religious dogmas
upon which alone his despotic throne could repose with safety! Thus a
large community who are among the most enlightened and devoted friends
of liberty, are ruled by a grinding despotism; and this is only an
instance in which the genius of liberty is crushed and trodden under
foot by the “man of sin.” Education and the genius of liberty have
done much in Europe, and are daily struggling against fearful odds;
and may do much more in this country to modify and restrain this
power, but they are impotent to its destruction. It is, in itself, so
entirely contradictory of all liberty, and at the same time so full of
vitality, that God in mercy has only relieved the despair of the world
by the assurance that he would destroy it. Thus Paul says: “_The man
of sin, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called
God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple
of God, showing himself that he is God_--WHOM THE LORD SHALL CONSUME
WITH THE SPIRIT OF HIS MOUTH, AND SHALL DESTROY WITH THE BRIGHTNESS OF
HIS COMING.” 2 Thess. ii. 1-12. The world has no hope of relief from
the oppression of this nightmare of superstition, but that which is
found in _this_ promise of God, that the word of his truth shall
overthrow and utterly destroy this monster power, which for so many
ages has been the terror and the scourge of the civilized world. The
Bible--the word of God--freely circulated, read, and expounded, and
freely judged of by all who read or hear, according to the dictates of
their own judgments and consciences--this is the religion of
Protestants! in exact antagonism to the teachings of the “_man of
sin_.” The triumph of the Bible is the overthrow of his power.
Now, the Bible is not only being circulated, and its truths enforced
from the pulpit, but a great many arrangements of Divine Providence
are in constant operation, not only to secure the prevalence of Bible
truths in our land, but also to place these truths in such
circumstances as shall secure the permanent establishment of civil and
religious liberty. Of these arrangements of Divine Providence, we may
select as germane to the general subject of discussion, the
_conservative influence of the system of domestic slavery_.
That providence of God, by which so large a number of the States of
this Union have been supplied with a population who cannot be absorbed
by the body politic, but must exist among us, and for so long a time,
in a distinct and menial position, provided the means of safety to the
whole Union in the coming conflict which is already awakening the
fears of the country. If we do not greatly mistake the signs of the
times, it is to these States that all eyes and all hopes will be
turned as the great bulwarks of American liberty. The African race in
these States will give them this advantage of position.
Review the facts of the case. As to that class of population coming
into the country with that liberty of choice which intelligence and
pecuniary means afford them, the whole land is before them, and few
are more welcome than they, whatever may be their errors in religion.
But relatively, they make but a small portion of the whole number. The
great mass of this coming population necessarily seek the _menial_
offices of society as the only means of living. This evil is already
sorely felt in some portions of our country; and as our unoccupied
lands shall be filled up by Western as well as Eastern immigration,
this will be still more generally and deeply felt. For all these are
absorbed by the body politic, and form a part of the sovereignty of
the country.
But what portion of our country is it which now suffers, and is
chiefly threatened in future with this heavy calamity? Not the South!
This is evident. Our menial offices are already occupied by a race
which cannot be absorbed, and who therefore can never form a part of
the sovereignty of the country. Hence, there is no room for the
menials of either Europe or China. The door of Providence is closed
against their admission. The foreign population which finds its way
into the South are, for the most part, a valued and welcome class of
society. No: it is in the midst of the Northern States, and those new
States which repudiate the African race, that these shoals of vice,
superstition, and ignorance--these hordes of modern Canaanites--are
gathering, “thick as the frogs and flies of Egypt.” Upon these States,
and not upon the South, this great and increasing calamity is to
display its strength. Are they destined to control the _primary_
schools to a great extent, from which they exclude the Bible, and
educate a large mass of the population to abandon the inherent right
of private judgment on all matters which the priesthood may please to
define--whether correctly or not--as matters of religion: that is, to
abandon those rights of conscience which are guaranteed to every
citizen by the constitution of our country? Already, many of these
schools are thus controlled, and a large portion of the citizens are
thus being educated in the city and State of New York, and other
places! But nothing of this sort can exist to any extent in the
Southern States. So far as popular education is promoted in these
States, it must be strictly Protestant education--Protestant, at
least, in its main feature: that is, every citizen brought up among us
grows up in the educated belief that, whatever aid he may seek or
derive from a gospel ministry, he is still individually and personally
responsible to God and his country, for his opinions and his
practices, both as to politics and religion. He should, therefore,
read, reflect, and judge for himself. No “man of sin,” in the shape of
pope, bishop, priest, minister, or preacher of the gospel, or with any
other title, has authority to “_oppose and exalt himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped_,” by dispensing either
political or religious beliefs; “_so that he, as God, sitteth in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is God_:” enforcing his right
to control the consciences of men, by severe spiritual and temporal
penalties--reaching even to “_anathema maranatha_!” No material
portion of Southern sovereigns can ever grow up in such an utter
abandonment of all liberty, whilst the African race shall fill the
menial offices of society. All this, however, and perhaps much more,
is reserved for those States which repudiate this race. And still
further, Is all this calculated to corrupt the purity of elections, as
it has done in many sections of New England and the State of New York,
and eminently so in the cities of New York and Cincinnati?--and is
this evil also destined to reach the national Legislature, either
directly, as the result of numerical strength, or indirectly, as the
action of a powerful minority, holding the balance of power between
contending political parties, and, in either case, sooner or later,
seriously threatening if not precipitating evils upon the whole
country, of which the oppressions of many of the States of Europe now
furnish us the mournful examples! But no such influence can ever
reach, to any material extent, the ballot-boxes of the South. With an
educated sovereignty, we have only to consummate our triumph over
intemperance, and our elections are at once fair exponents of the will
of an enlightened people. Our people may err in opinion, but, always
right in sentiment, and with no motive to stay wrong, they may, in due
time, be put right in _opinion_ also. The Southern States may be
labored by the tempests that shall break upon them from other
sources, but not from this, which its history in Europe shows to be
the most terrible calamity that ever scourged humanity. With their
ships well trimmed and their sails well set, and both worked and
governed by an educated sovereignty, it is morally impossible that
they should founder in the open sea of free discussion. These States,
therefore, will remain, and shall ever remain, through all this fierce
conflict, _free_ to settle the great quarrel of the country between
light and darkness, between religion and a vile superstition! Upon
these States will devolve the duty of holding the balance of power
between these great contending forces, and of preserving the ark of
American liberty in the politico-religious storms that are to sweep
over the land, and shake the foundations of our confederacy.
In view of all the facts, we are at no loss to account for the
agrarian doctrines and organizations which are already so common in
the Northern States, and which are essentially so entirely subversive
of all true liberty. Nor are we at a loss to account for the fact that
the Southern States have always, to the present time, stood forth as
the authors and uniform expounders of the soundest democratic
principles of republican freedom. They owe it, and will for ages to
come continue to owe it, not so much to any superior devotion to
sound principles above that of their intelligent and unbiased brethren
of other States, but to the fact that only a small portion of their
menial population are, or ever can be, sovereigns. The great mass of
their menials belong to a distinct and inferior race, who never can be
absorbed, and who, therefore, are not and never can become sovereigns
of the land. The conservative influence, therefore, of the African
race in the Southern States, I set down as a _fixed fact_, for which,
in the prospective condition of the country, we have abundant cause to
be devoutly thankful to Almighty God.
In view, therefore, of the condition of the Africans themselves, as
well as the calamities which overhang the country, how idly do they
talk who would expel the Africans from these States! How madly do they
reason who, by a cordon of free-soil States, on the West and South,
would shut up the Southern States--as if, with bolts and bars, they
would cage a savage beast! False philosophers! Enemies alike to
justice and humanity! Worse than Nadab and Abihu, in the republic of
Moses! Kindred to Ahithophel and Judas, and, in later days, to
Benedict Arnold! The day will come--passing events cast their long
“shadows before”--when history will record the civilization of all
Africa, and the final solution of the problem, and the permanent
establishment of American liberty. A sound philosophy will be at no
loss to trace both one and the other to the agency, and that in no
small degree, of that wonderful scheme of Divine Providence, by which
so large a number of Africans were introduced into so many of the
States of North America. Ay! and long before that day, the North will
learn to do justice to their brethren of the South. When the fight
shall wax warm, and the “battle-cry” shall be heard throughout all
their coasts, then will it be seen and acknowledged that the Southern
States--always great in the counsels of the nation--are always, and
everywhere, the true friends and invincible supporters of Protestant
freedom, or the rights of conscience; and then shall they do justice
to these States as the chief bulwarks of American liberty, and equal
honor to that wonderful providence which has so signally marked their
history, for good to the whole country, as well as to the continent of
Africa.