I am an Unionist as we all are, or nearly all, and I strongly share the
hope of mankind in the power, and therefore, in the duties of the Union;
and I conceive it demonstrated,—the necessity of common sense and justice
entering into the laws. What shall we do? First, abrogate this law; then,
proceed to confine slavery to slave states, and help them effectually
to make an end of it. Or shall we, as we are advised on all hands, lie
by, and wait the progress of the census? But will Slavery lie by? I fear
not. She is very industrious, gives herself no holidays. No proclamations
will put her down. She got Texas and now will have Cuba, and means to
keep her majority. The experience of the past gives us no encouragement
to lie by. Shall we call a new Convention, or will any expert statesman
furnish us a plan for the summary or gradual winding up of slavery, so
far as the Republic is its patron? Where is the South itself? Since it is
agreed by all sane men of all parties (or was yesterday) that slavery is
mischievous, why does the South itself never offer the smallest counsel
of her own? I have never heard in twenty years any project except Mr.
Clay’s. Let us hear any project with candor and respect. Is it impossible
to speak of it with reason and good nature? It is really the project
fit for this country to entertain and accomplish. Everything invites
emancipation. The grandeur of the design, the vast stake we hold; the
national domain, the new importance of Liberia; the manifest interest of
the slave states; the religious effort of the free states; the public
opinion of the world;—all join to demand it.
We shall one day bring the States shoulder to shoulder and the citizens
man to man to exterminate slavery. Why in the name of common sense and
the peace of mankind is not this made the subject of instant negotiation
and settlement? Why not end this dangerous dispute on some ground of fair
compensation on one side, and satisfaction on the other to the conscience
of the free states? It is really the great task fit for this country to
accomplish, to buy that property of the planters, as the British nation
bought the West Indian slaves. I say buy,—never conceding the right of
the planter to own, but that we may acknowledge the calamity of his
position, and bear a countryman’s share in relieving him; and because it
is the only practicable course, and is innocent. Here is a right social
or public function, which one man cannot do, which all men must do. ’Tis
said it will cost two thousand millions of dollars. Was there ever any
contribution that was so enthusiastically paid as this will be? We will
have a chimney-tax. We will give up our coaches, and wine, and watches.
The churches will melt their plate. The father of his country shall
wait, well pleased, a little longer for his monument; Franklin for his,
the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs, and the patient Columbus for his. The
mechanics will give, the needle-women will give; the children will have
cent-societies. Every man in the land will give a week’s work to dig away
this accursed mountain of sorrow once and forever out of the world.[134]
Nothing is impracticable to this nation, which it shall set itself to
do. Were ever men so endowed, so placed, so weaponed? Their power of
territory seconded by a genius equal to every work. By new arts the earth
is subdued, roaded, tunnelled, telegraphed, gas-lighted; vast amounts of
old labor disused; the sinews of man being relieved by sinews of steam.
We are on the brink of more wonders. The sun paints; presently we shall
organize the echo, as now we do the shadow. Chemistry is extorting new
aids. The genius of this people, it is found, can do anything which can
be done by men. These thirty nations are equal to any work, and are
every moment stronger. In twenty-five years they will be fifty millions.
Is it not time to do something besides ditching and draining, and
making the earth mellow and friable? Let them confront this mountain of
poison,—bore, blast, excavate, pulverize, and shovel it once for all,
down into the bottomless Pit. A thousand millions were cheap.
But grant that the heart of financiers, accustomed to practical figures,
shrinks within them at these colossal amounts, and the embarrassments
which complicate the problem; granting that these contingencies are
too many to be spanned by any human geometry, and that these evils are
to be relieved only by the wisdom of God working in ages,—and by what
instrument, whether Liberia, whether flax-cotton, whether the working out
this race by Irish and Germans, none can tell, or by what sources God has
guarded his law; still the question recurs, What must we do? One thing
is plain, we cannot answer for the Union, but we must keep Massachusetts
true. It is of unspeakable importance that she play her honest part.
She must follow no vicious examples. Massachusetts is a little state:
countries have been great by ideas. Europe is little compared with Asia
and Africa; yet Asia and Africa are its ox and its ass. Europe, the least
of all the continents, has almost monopolized for twenty centuries the
genius and power of them all. Greece was the least part of Europe. Attica
a little part of that,—one tenth of the size of Massachusetts. Yet that
district still rules the intellect of men. Judæa was a petty country. Yet
these two, Greece and Judæa, furnish the mind and the heart by which the
rest of the world is sustained; and Massachusetts is little, but, if true
to itself, can be the brain which turns about the behemoth.
I say Massachusetts, but I mean Massachusetts in all the quarters of
her dispersion; Massachusetts, as she is the mother of all the New
England states, and as she sees her progeny scattered over the face of
the land, in the farthest South, and the uttermost West. The immense
power of rectitude is apt to be forgotten in politics. But they who have
brought the great wrong on the country have not forgotten it. They avail
themselves of the known probity and honor of Massachusetts, to endorse
the statute. The ancient maxim still holds that never was any injustice
effected except by the help of justice. The great game of the government
has been to win the sanction of Massachusetts to the crime. Hitherto they
have succeeded only so far as to win Boston to a certain extent. The
behavior of Boston was the reverse of what it should have been: it was
supple and officious, and it put itself into the base attitude of pander
to the crime. It should have placed obstruction at every step. Let the
attitude of the states be firm. Let us respect the Union to all honest
ends. But also respect an older and wider union, the law of Nature and
rectitude. Massachusetts is as strong as the Universe, when it does that.
We will never intermeddle with your slavery,—but you can in no wise be
suffered to bring it to Cape Cod and Berkshire. This law must be made
inoperative. It must be abrogated and wiped out of the statute-book; but
whilst it stands there, it must be disobeyed. We must make a small state
great, by making every man in it true. It was the praise of Athens, “She
could not lead countless armies into the field, but she knew how with
a little band to defeat those who could.” Every Roman reckoned himself
at least a match for a Province. Every Dorian did. Every Englishman in
Australia, in South Africa, in India, or in whatever barbarous country
their forts and factories have been set up,—represents London, represents
the art, power and law of Europe. Every man educated at the Northern
school carries the like advantages into the South. For it is confounding
distinctions to speak of the geographic sections of this country as
of equal civilization. Every nation and every man bows, in spite of
himself, to a higher mental and moral existence; and the sting of the
late disgraces is that this royal position of Massachusetts was foully
lost, that the well-known sentiment of her people was not expressed. Let
us correct this error. In this one fastness let truth be spoken and right
done. Here let there be no confusion in our ideas. Let us not lie, not
steal, nor help to steal, and let us not call stealing by any fine name,
such as “Union” or “Patriotism.” Let us know that not by the public, but
by ourselves, our safety must be bought. That is the secret of Southern
power, that they rest not on meetings, but on private heats and courages.
It is very certain from the perfect guaranties in the constitution, and
the high arguments of the defenders of liberty, which the occasion called
out, that there is sufficient margin in the statute and the law for the
spirit of the Magistrate to show itself, and one, two, three occasions
have just now occurred, and past, in either of which, if one man had felt
the spirit of Coke or Mansfield or Parsons, and read the law with the eye
of freedom, the dishonor of Massachusetts had been prevented, and a limit
set to these encroachments forever.