Instead of profiting by the experience of other nations, the slave-owners, as a body, have resolutely shut their eyes against the light, because they preferred darkness. Every change in the laws has riveted the chain closer and closer upon their victims; every attempt to make the voice of reason and benevolence heard has been overpowered with threatening and abuse. A cautious vigilance against improvement, a keen-eyed jealousy of all freedom of opinion, has characterized their movements. There _can_ be no doubt that the _majority_ wish to perpetuate slavery. They support it with loud bravado, or insidious sophistry, or pretended regret; but they never abandon the point. Their great desire is to keep the public mind turned in another direction.
They are well aware that the ugly edifice is built of rotten timbers, and stands on slippery sands--if the loud voice of public opinion could be made to reverberate through its dreary chambers, the unsightly frame would fall, never to rise again.
Since so many of their own citizens admit that the policy of this system is unsound, and its effects injurious, it is wonderful that they do not begin to destroy the "costly iniquity" in good earnest. But long-continued habit is very powerful; and in the habit of slavery are concentrated the strongest evils of human nature--vanity, pride, love of power, licentiousness, and indolence.
There is a minority, particularly in Virginia and Kentucky, who sincerely wish a change for the better; but they are overpowered, and have not even ventured to speak, except in the great Virginia debate of 1832. In the course of that debate, the spirit of slavery showed itself without disguise. The members _talked_ of emanc.i.p.ation; but with one or two exceptions, they merely wanted to emanc.i.p.ate, or rather to send away, the _surplus_ population, which they could neither keep nor sell, and which might prove dangerous. They wished to get rid of the consequences of the evil, but were determined to keep the evil itself.
Some members from Western Virginia, who spoke in a better spirit, and founded their arguments on the broad principles of justice, not on the mere convenience of a certain cla.s.s, were repelled with angry excitement. The eastern districts threatened to separate from the western, if the latter persisted in expressing opinions opposed to the continuance of slavery. From what I have uniformly heard of the comparative prosperity of Eastern and Western Virginia, I should think this was very much like the town"s poor threatening to separate from the town.
The mere circ.u.mstance of daring to debate on the subject was loudly reprimanded; and there was a good deal of indignation expressed that "reckless editors, and imprudent correspondents, had presumed so far as to allude to it in the columns of a newspaper." Discussion in the Legislature was strongly deprecated until a plan had been formed; yet they must have known that no plan could be formed, in a republican government, without previous discussion. The proposal contained within itself that self-perpetuating power, for which the schemes of slave-owners are so remarkable.
Mr. Gholson sarcastically rebuked the restless spirit of improvement, by saying "he really had been under the _impression_ that he _owned_ his slaves. He had lately purchased four women and ten children, in whom he thought he had obtained a great bargain; for he supposed they were his own property, _as were his brood mares_." To which Mr. Roane replied, "I own a considerable number of slaves, and am perfectly sure they are mine; and I am sorry to add that I have occasionally, though not often, been compelled to make _them_ feel the _impression_ of that ownership.
I would not touch a hair on the head of the gentleman"s slave, any sooner than I would a hair in the _mane of his horse_."
Mr. Roane likewise remarked, "I think slavery as much a correlative of liberty as cold is of heat. History, experience, observation and reason, have taught me that the torch of liberty has ever burned brighter when surrounded by the dark and filthy, yet _nutritious_ atmosphere of slavery! I do not believe in the fanfaronade that all men are by nature equal. But these abstract speculations have nothing to do with the question, which I am willing to view as one of cold, sheer state policy, in which the safety, prosperity, and happiness of the _whites alone_ are concerned."
Would Mr. Roane carry out his logic into all its details? Would he cherish intemperance, that sobriety might shine the brighter? Would he encourage theft, in order to throw additional l.u.s.tre upon honesty? Yet there seems to be precisely the same relation between these things that there is between slavery and freedom. Such sentiments sound oddly enough in the mouth of a republican of the nineteenth century!
When Mr. Wirt, before the Supreme Federal Court, said that slavery was contrary to the laws of nature and of nations, and that the law of South Carolina concerning seizing colored seamen, was unconst.i.tutional, the Governor directed several reproofs at him. In 1825, Mr. King laid on the table of the United States Senate a resolution to appropriate the proceeds of the public lands to the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, and the removal of free negroes, provided the same could be done under and agreeable to, the laws of the respective States. He said he did not wish it to be debated, but considered at some future time. Yet kindly and cautiously as this movement was made, the whole South resented it, and Governor Troup called to the Legislature and people of Georgia, to "stand to their arms." In 1827, the people of Baltimore presented a memorial to Congress, praying that slaves born in the District of Columbia after a given time, specified by law, might become free on arriving at a certain age. A famous member from South Carolina called this an "impertinent interference, and a violation of the principles of _liberty_," and the pet.i.tion was not even _committed_. Another southern gentleman in Congress objected to the Panama mission because Bolivar had proclaimed liberty to the slaves.
Mr. Hayne, in his reply to Mr. Webster, says: "There is a spirit, which, like the father of evil, is constantly walking to and fro about the earth, seeking whom it may devour; it is the spirit of _false philanthropy_. When this is infused into the bosom of a statesman (if one so possessed can be called a statesman) it converts him at once into a visionary enthusiast. Then he indulges in golden dreams of national greatness and prosperity. He discovers that "liberty is power," and not content with vast schemes of improvement at home, which it would bankrupt the treasury of the world to execute, he flies to foreign lands to fulfil "obligations to the human race, by inculcating the principles of civil and religious liberty," &c. This spirit had long been busy with the slaves of the South; and it is even now displaying itself in vain efforts to drive the government from its _wise_ policy in relation to the Indians."
Governor Miller, of South Carolina, speaking of the tariff and "the remedy," a.s.serted that slave labor was preferable to free, and challenged the free States to compet.i.tion on fair terms. Governor Hamilton, of the same State, in delivering an address on the same subject, uttered a eulogy upon slavery; concluding as usual that nothing but the tariff--nothing but the rapacity of Northerners, could have nullified such great blessings of Providence, as the cheap labor and fertile soil of Carolina. Mr. Calhoun, in his late speech in the Senate, alludes in a tone of strong disapprobation, and almost of reprimand, to the remarkable debate in the Virginia Legislature; the occurrence of which offence he charges to the opinions and policy of the north.
If these things evince any real desire to do away the evil, I cannot discover it. There are many who inherit the misfortune of slavery, and would gladly renounce the miserable birthright if they could; for their sakes, I wish the majority were guided by a better spirit and a wiser policy. But this state of things cannot last. The operations of Divine Providence are hastening the crisis, and move which way we will, it must come in some form or other; if we take warning in time, it may come as a blessing. The spirit of philanthropy, which Mr. Hayne calls "false,"
_is_ walking to and fro in the earth; and it will not pause, or turn back, till it has fastened the golden band of love and peace around a sinful world. The sun of knowledge and liberty is already high in the heavens--it is peeping into every dark nook and corner of the earth--and the African cannot be always excluded from its beams.
The advocates of slavery remind me of a comparison I once heard differently applied: Even thus does a dog, unwilling to follow his master"s carriage, bite the wheels, in a vain effort to stop its progress.
CHAPTER IV.
INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY ON THE POLITICS OF THE UNITED STATES.
_Casca._ I believe these are portentous things Unto the climate that they point upon.
_Cicero._ Indeed it is a strange disposed time: But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
JULIUS CaeSAR.
When slave representation was admitted into the Const.i.tution of the United States, a wedge was introduced, which has ever since effectually sundered the sympathies and interests of different portions of the country. By this step, the slave States acquired an undue advantage, which they have maintained with anxious jealousy, and in which the free States have never perfectly acquiesced. The latter would probably never have made the concession, so contrary to their principles, and the express provisions of their State const.i.tutions, if powerful motives had not been offered by the South. These consisted, first, in taking upon themselves a proportion of _direct taxes_, increased in the same ratio as their representation was increased by the concession to their slaves.
Second.--In conceding to the small States an entire equality in the Senate. This was not indeed proposed as an item of the adjustment, but it operated as such; for the small States, with the exception of Georgia, (which in fact expected to become one of the largest,) lay in the North, and were either free, or likely soon to become so.
During most of the contest, Ma.s.sachusetts, then one of the large States, voted with Virginia and Pennsylvania for unequal representation in the Senate; but on the final question she was divided, and gave no vote.
There was probably an increasing tendency to view this part of the compromise, not merely as a concession of the large to the small States, but also of the largely slaveholding, to the free, or slightly slaveholding States. The two questions of slave representation with a proportional increase of direct taxes, and of perfect equality in the Senate, were always connected together; and a large committee of compromise, consisting of one member from each State, expressly recommended that both provisions should be adopted, but neither of them without the other.
Such were the equivalents, directly or indirectly offered, by which the free States were induced to consent to slave representation. It was not without very considerable struggles that they overcame their repugnance to admitting such a principle in the construction of a republican government. Mr. Gerry, of Ma.s.sachusetts, _at first_ exclaimed against it with evident horror, but _at last_, he was chairman of the committee of compromise. Even the slave States themselves, seem to have been a little embarra.s.sed with the discordant element. A curious proof of this is given in the language of the Const.i.tution. The ugly feature is covered as cautiously as the deformed visage of the Veiled Prophet. The words are as follows: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the States according to their respective numbers; which shall be ascertained by adding to the whole number of free persons, _including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons_." In this most elaborate sentence, a foreigner would discern no slavery. None but those already acquainted with the serpent, would be able to discover its sting.
Governor Wright, of Maryland, a contemporary of all these transactions, and a slaveholder, after delivering a eulogy upon the kindness of masters[AA] expressed himself as follows: "The Const.i.tution guaranties to us the services of these persons. It does not say _slaves_; for the feelings of the framers of that glorious instrument would not suffer them to use _that_ word, on account of its anti-congeniality--its incongeniality to the idea of a const.i.tution for freemen. It says, "_persons held to service, or labor_.""--_Governor Wright"s Speech in Congress, March, 1822._
[Footnote AA: It was stated, at the time, that this person frequently steamed his negroes, in order to reduce their size to an equal weight for riding race-horses. This practice is understood to be common at the South.]
This high praise bestowed on the _form_ of our const.i.tution, reminds me of an anecdote. A clergyman in a neighboring State, being obliged to be absent from his parish, procured a young man to supply his place, who was very worldly in his inclinations, and very gay in his manners. When the minister returned, his people said, somewhat reproachfully, "How could you provide such a man to preach for us; _you might at least have left us a hypocrite_."
While all parties agreed to act in opposition to the _principles_ of justice, they all concurred to pay homage to them by hypocrisy of _language_! Men are willing to try all means to _appear_ honest, except the simple experiment of _being_ so. It is true, there were individuals who distrusted this compromise at the time, if they did not wholly disapprove of it. It is said that Washington, as he was walking thoughtfully near the Schuylkill, was met by a member of the Convention, to whom, in the course of conversation, he acknowledged that he was meditating whether it would not be better to separate, without proposing a const.i.tution to the people; for he was in great doubt whether the frame of government, which was now nearly completed, would be better for them, than to trust to the course of events, and await future emergencies.
This anecdote was derived from an authentic source, and I have no doubt of its truth: neither is there any doubt that Washington had in his mind this great compromise, the pivot on which the system of government was to turn.
If avarice was induced to shake hands with injustice, from the expectation of increased direct taxation upon the South, she gained little by the bargain. With the exception of two brief periods, during the French war, and the last war with England, the revenue of the United States has been raised by _duties on imports_. The heavy debts and expenditures of the several States, which they had been accustomed to provide for by direct taxes, and which they probably expected to see provided for by the same means in time to come, have been all paid by duties on imports. The greatest proportion of these duties are, of course, paid by the free States; for here, the poorest laborer daily consumes several articles of foreign production, of which from one-eighth to one-half the price is a tax paid to government. The clothing of the slave population increases the revenue very little, and their food almost none at all.
Wherever free labor and slave labor exist under the same government, there must be a perpetual clashing of interests. The legislation required for one, is, in its spirit and maxims, diametrically opposed to that required for the other. Hence Mr. Madison predicted, in the convention which formed our Federal Const.i.tution, that the contests would be between the great geographical sections; that such had been the division, even during the war and the confederacy.
In the same convention, Charles Pinckney, a man of great sagacity, spoke of the equal representation of large and small States as a matter of slight consequence; no difficulties, he said, would ever arise on that point; the question would always be between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding interests.
If the pressure of common danger, and the sense of individual weakness, during our contest for independence, could not bring the States to mutual confidence, nothing ever can do it, except a change of character.
From the adoption of the const.i.tution to the present time, the breach has been gradually widening. The South has pursued a uniform and sagacious system of policy, which, in all its bearings, direct and indirect, has been framed for the preservation and extension of slave power. This system has, in the very nature of the two things, constantly interfered with the interests of the free States; and hitherto the South have always gained the victory. This has princ.i.p.ally been accomplished by yoking all important questions together _in pairs_, and strenuously resisting the pa.s.sage of one, unless accompanied by the other. The South was desirous of removing the seat of government from Philadelphia to Washington, because the latter is in a slave territory, where republican representatives and magistrates can bring their slaves without danger of losing them, or having them contaminated by the principles of universal liberty. The a.s.sumption of the State debts, likely to bring considerable money back to the North, was _linked_ with this question, and both were carried. The admission of Maine into the Union as a free State, and of Missouri as a slave State, were two more of these Siamese twins, not allowed to be separated from each other. A numerous smaller progeny may be found in the laying of imposts, and the successive adjustment of protection to navigation, the fisheries, agriculture, and manufactures.
There would perhaps be no harm in this system of compromises, or any objection to its continuing in infinite series, if no injustice were done to a third party, which is never heard or noticed, except for purposes of oppression.
I reverence the wisdom of our early legislators; but they certainly did very wrong to admit slavery as an element into a free const.i.tution; and to sacrifice the known and _declared_ rights of a third and weaker party, in order to cement a union between two stronger ones. Such an arrangement ought not, and could not, come to good. It has given the slave States a controlling power which they will always keep, so long as we remain together.
President John Adams was of opinion, that this ascendency might be attributed to an early mistake, originating in what he called the "Frankford advice." When the first Congress was summoned in Philadelphia, Doctor Rush, and two or three other eminent men of Pennsylvania, met the Ma.s.sachusetts delegates at Frankford, a few miles from Philadelphia, and conjured them, as they valued the success of the common cause, to let no measure of importance _appear_ to originate with the North, to yield precedence in all things to Virginia, and lead her if possible to commit herself to the Revolution. Above all, they begged that not a word might be said about "independence;" for that a strong prejudice already existed against the delegates from New-England, on account of a supposed design to throw off their allegiance to the mother country. "The Frankford advice" was followed. The delegates from Virginia took the lead on all occasions.
His son, John Q. Adams, finds a more substantial reason. In his speech on the Tariff, February 4, 1833, he said: "Not three days since, Mr.
Clayton, of Georgia, called that species of population (viz. slaves) the machinery of the South. Now that machinery had twenty odd representatives[AB] in that hall,--not elected by the machinery, but by those who owned it. And if he should go back to the history of this government from its foundation, it would be easy to prove that its decisions had been affected, in general, by less majorities than that.
Nay, he might go farther, and insist that that very representation had ever been, in fact, _the ruling power of this government_."
[Footnote AB: There are now twenty-five _odd_ representatives--that is, representatives of slaves.]
"The history of the Union has afforded a continual proof that this representation of property, which they enjoy, as well in the election of President and Vice-President of the United States, as upon the floor of the House of Representatives, has secured to the slaveholding States the entire control of the national policy, and, almost without exception, the possession of the highest executive office of the Union. Always united in the purpose of regulating the affairs of the whole Union by the standard of the slaveholding interest, their disproportionate numbers in the electoral colleges have enabled them, in ten out of twelve quadrennial elections, to confer the Chief Magistracy upon one of their own citizens. Their suffrages at every election, without exception, have been almost exclusively confined to a candidate of their own caste. Availing themselves of the divisions which, from the nature of man, always prevail in communities entirely free, they have sought and found auxiliaries in the other quarters of the Union, by a.s.sociating the pa.s.sions of parties, and the ambition of individuals, with their own purposes, to establish and maintain throughout the confederated nation the slaveholding policy. The office of Vice-President, a station of high dignity, but of little other than contingent power, had been usually, by their indulgence, conceded to a citizen of the other section; but even this political courtesy was superseded at the election before the last, and both the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States were, by the preponderancy of slaveholding votes, bestowed upon citizens of two adjoining and both slaveholding States. At this moment the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Chief Justice of the United States, are all citizens of that favored portion of the united republic. The last of these offices, being under the const.i.tution held by the tenure of good behaviour, has been honored and dignified by the occupation of the present inc.u.mbent upwards of thirty years. An overruling sense of the high responsibilities under which it is held, has effectually guarded him from permitting the sectional slaveholding spirit to ascend the tribunal of justice; and it is not difficult to discern, in this inflexible impartiality, the source of the obloquy which that same spirit has not been inactive in attempting to excite against the Supreme Court of the United States itself: and of the insuperable aversion of the votaries of nullification to encounter or abide by the decision of that tribunal, the true and legitimate umpire of const.i.tutional, controverted law."
It is worthy of observation that this slave representation is always used to protect and extend slave power; and in this way, the slaves themselves are made to vote for slavery: they are compelled to furnish halters to hang their posterity.
Machiavel says that "the whole politics of rival states consist in checking the growth of one another." It is sufficiently obvious, that the slave and free States are, and must be, rivals, owing to the inevitable contradiction of their interests. It needed no Machiavel to predict the result. A continual strife has been going on, more or less earnest, according to the nature of the interests it involved, and the South has always had strength and skill to carry her point. Of all our Presidents, Washington alone had power to keep the jealousies of his countrymen in check; and he used his influence n.o.bly. Some of his successors have cherished those jealousies, and made effective use of them.
The people of the North have to manage a rocky and reluctant soil; hence commerce and the fisheries early attracted their attention. The products of these employments were, as they should be, proportioned to the dexterity and hard labor required in their pursuit. The North grew opulent; and her politicians, who came in contact with those of the South with any thing like rival pretensions, represented the commercial cla.s.s, which was the nucleus of the old Federal party.
The Southerners have a genial climate and a fertile soil; but in consequence of the c.u.mbrous machinery of slave labor, which is slow for every thing, (except exhausting the soil,) they have always been less prosperous than the free States. It is said, I know not with how much truth, but it is certainly very credible, that a great proportion of their plantations are deeply mortgaged in New-York and Philadelphia. It is likewise said that the expenses of the planters are generally one or two years in advance of their income. Whether these statements be true or not, the most casual observer will decide, that the free States are uniformly the most prosperous, notwithstanding the South possesses a political power, by which she manages to check-mate us at every important move. When we add this to the original jealousy spoken of by Mr. Madison, it is not wonderful that Southern politicians take so little pains to conceal their strong dislike of the North.
A striking difference of manners, also caused by slavery, serves to aggravate other differences. Slaveholders have the habit of command; and from the superior ease with which it sits upon them, they seem to imagine that they were "born to command," and we to obey. In time of war, they tauntingly told us that we might furnish the _men_, and they would furnish the _officers_; but in time of peace they find our list of pensioners so large, they complain that we did furnish so many men.
At the North, every body is busy in some employment, and politics, with very few exceptions, form but a brief episode in the lives of the citizens. But the Southern politicians are men of leisure. They have nothing to do but to ride round their plantations, hunt, attend the races, study politics for the next legislative or congressional campaign, and decide how to use the prodigious mechanical power, of slave representation, which a political Archimedes may effectually wield for the destruction of commerce, or any thing else, involving the prosperity of the free States.[AC]
[Footnote AC: The Hon. W. B. Seabrook, a southern gentleman, has lately written a pamphlet on the management of slaves, in which he says: "An addition of one million dollars to the private fortune of Daniel Webster, would not give to Ma.s.sachusetts more than she now possesses in the federal councils. On the other hand, every increase of slave property in South Carolina, is a fraction thrown into the scale, by which her representation in _Congress_ is determined."]
It has been already said, that most of the wealth in New-England was made by commerce; consequently the South became unfriendly to commerce.
There was a cla.s.s in New-England, jealous, and not without reason, of their own commercial aristocracy. It was the policy of the South to foment their pa.s.sions, and increase their prejudices. Thus was the old Democratic party formed; and while that party honestly supposed they were merely resisting the encroachments of a n.o.bility at home, they were actually playing a game for one of the most aristocratic cla.s.ses in the world--viz. the Southern planters. A famous slave-owner and politician openly boasted, that the South could always put down the aristocracy of the North, by means of her own democracy. In this point of view, democracy becomes a machine used by one aristocratic cla.s.s against another, that has less power, and is therefore less dangerous.