CONCLUSION.
It has been shown in the foregoing pages of this work how that
providential arrangement of human affairs, in which the negro is placed
in natural juxtaposition with the white man, has resulted in the freedom
of the latter and the general well-being of both. It has been seen how a
subordinate and widely different social element in Virginia and other
States, naturally gave origin to new ideas and new modes of thought,
which, thrusting aside the mental habits and political notions brought
from the Old World, naturally culminated in the grand idea of 1776, and
the establishment of a new political existence, based on the natural,
organic, and everlasting equality of the race. It has been seen,
moreover, how the great civil revolution of 1800, which, under the lead
of Mr. Jefferson, restored the purity and simplicity of republican
principles, saved the Northern laboring and producing classes from the
rule of an oligarchy, otherwise unavoidable, however it might have been
disguised by republican formulas.
It is scarcely necessary to appeal to the political history of the
country since 1800 to demonstrate the vital importance—indeed, the
measureless benefit—of what, by an absurd perversion of terms, has been
called negro slavery, to the freedom, progress, and prosperity of the
laboring and producing classes of the North, and, indeed, to all
mankind. It is seen that the existence of an inferior race—the presence
of a natural substratum in the political society of the New World—has
resulted in the creation of a new political and social order, and
relieved the producing classes from that abject dependence on capital
which in Europe, and especially in England, renders them mere beasts of
burthen to a fraction of their brethren. The simple but transcendent
fact, that capital and labor are united at the South—that the planter,
or so-called slaveholder, is, _per se_ and of necessity, the defender of
the rights of the producing classes—this simple fact is the key to our
political history, and the hinging-point of our party politics for half
a century past.
The Southern planter and Northern farmer—the producing classes—a
Southern majority and a Northern minority—have governed the country,
fought all its battles, acquired all its territories, and conducted the
nation step by step to its present position of strength, power, and
grandeur. Just as steadily a Northern majority and a Southern minority
have opposed this progress, and labored blindly, doubtless, to return to
the system of the federalists, indeed to the European idea of class
distinctions, and to render the government an instrument for the benefit
of the few at the expense of the many.
They have sought to create national banks; demanded favors for those
engaged in manufactures; for others engaged in Northern fisheries; for
the benefit of bands of jobbers and speculators, under pretence of
internal improvements; in short, the Northern majority have labored
continually to render the government, as in England, an instrument for
benefiting classes at the expense of the great body of the people.
All these efforts, however, have been defeated by the union of Northern
and Southern producers, and mainly by the latter. A large majority of
the votes in Congress against special legislation and schemes of
corruption have been those of so-called slaveholders; and in those
extraordinary instances when Northern representatives of agricultural
constituencies have proved faithless, and these schemes “worked” through
Congress, “slaveholders” in the Presidential chair have interposed the
veto, and saved the laboring and producing classes from this dangerous
legislation, and the government from being perverted into an instrument
of mischief.
Such has been our political and current party history, and from the
nature and necessities of things, every “extension of slavery,” or every
expansion of territory, must in the future, as it has in the past,
strengthen the cause of the producing classes, and give greater scope
and power to the American idea of government.
The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, of Texas, etc., of those great
producing States on the Gulf Coast, has nearly overwhelmed the
anti-republican tendencies of the North, and rendered almost powerless
those combinations of capital and speculation which have always
endangered the purity and simplicity of our republican system, and thus
the rights and safety of the laboring and producing millions everywhere.
Indeed, it is a truth, a simple fact, that can not be too often
repeated, that in precise proportion to the amount or extent of
so-called “slaveholding”—of the number of negroes in their normal
condition—is freedom rendered secure to the white millions of the North.
And when in the progress of time Cuba and Central America, and the whole
tropical center of the continent is added to the Union and placed in the
same relation to New York and Ohio that Mississippi, Alabama, etc., are
now, then it is evident that the democratic or American idea of
government will be securely established forever, and the rights and
interests of the producing millions who ask nothing from government but
its protection, will be no longer endangered by those anti-republican
tendencies which in the North have so long conflicted with the natural
development of our system, and struggled so long and fiercely against
its existence.
If this freedom and prosperity of the white man rested on wrong or
oppression of the negro, then it would be valueless, for the Almighty
has evidently designed that all His creatures should be permitted to
live out the life to which He has adapted them. But when all the facts
are considered, and the negro population of the South contrasted with
any similar number of their race now or at any other time in human
experience, then it is seen that, relatively considered, they are,
perhaps, benefited to even a greater extent than the white population
themselves.
The efforts, as has been shown, to reverse the natural order of
things—to force the negro into the position of the white man—are not
merely failures, but frightful cruelties—cruelties that among ourselves
end in the extinction of these poor creatures, while in the tropics it
destroys the white man and impels the negro into barbarism.
In conclusion, therefore, it is clear, or will be clear to every mind
that grasps the facts of this great question, with the inductive facts,
or the unavoidable inferences that belong to them, that any American
citizen, party, sect, or class among us, so blinded, bewildered, and
besotted by foreign theories and false mental habits as to labor for
negro “freedom”—to drag down their own race, or to thrust the negro from
his normal condition, is alike the enemy of both, a traitor to his blood
and at war with the decrees of the Eternal.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.