"He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised.""
"For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."
Again:--
"The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed."
"Rob not the poor because he is poor, neither oppress the afflicted in the gate; for the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them."
"And I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts."
"Wo unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor"s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work."
Fairs, for the sale of articles fabricated by the hands of female abolitionists, and recommended by such pictures and sentences as those quoted above, are held in many of our cities and large towns. Crowds frequent them to purchase; hundreds of dollars are thus realized, to be appropriated to the anti-slavery cause; and, from the cheap rate at which the articles are sold, vast numbers of them are scattered far and wide over the country. Besides these, if we except various drawings or pictures on _paper_, (samples of which were put up in the packages you ordered a few days ago,) such as the Slave-market in the District of Columbia, with Members of congress attending it--views of slavery in the South--a Lynch court in the slave-states--the scourging of Mr. Dresser by a vigilance committee in the public square of Nashville--the plundering of the post-office in Charleston, S.C., and the conflagration of part of its contents, &c, &c, I am apprised of no other means of propagating our doctrines than by oral and written discussions.
"13. _Are your hopes and expectations of success increased or lessened by the events of the last year, and especially by the action of this Congress? And will your exertions be relaxed or increased?_"
ANSWER.--The events of the last year, including the action of the present Congress, are of the same character with the events of the eighteen months which immediately preceded it. In the question before us, they may be regarded as one series. I would say, answering your interrogatory generally, that none of them, however unpropitious to the cause of the abolitionists they may appear, to those who look at the subject from an opposite point to the one _they_ occupy, seem, thus far, in any degree to have lessened their hopes and expectations. The events alluded to have not come altogether unexpected. They are regarded as the legitimate manifestations of slavery--necessary, perhaps, in the present dull and unapprehensive state of the public mind as to human rights, to be brought out and spread before the people, before they will sufficiently revolt against slavery itself.
1. They are seen in the CHURCH, and in the practice of its individual members. The southern portion of the American church may now be regarded as having admitted the dogma, that _slavery is a Divine inst.i.tution_.
She has been forced by the anti-slavery discussion into this position--either to cease from slaveholding, or formally to adopt the only alternative, that slaveholding is right. She has chosen the alternative--reluctantly, to be sure, but substantially, and, within the last year, almost unequivocally. In defending what was dear to her, she has been forced to cast away her garments, and thus to reveal a deformity, of which she herself, before, was scarcely aware, and the existence of which others did not credit. So much for the action of the southern church as a body.--On the part of her MEMBERS, the revelation of a time-serving spirit, that not only yielded to the ferocity of the mult.i.tude, but fell in with it, may be reckoned among the events of the last three years. Instances of this may be found in the attendance of the "clergy of all denominations," at a tumultuous meeting of the citizens of Charleston, S.C., held in August, 1835, for the purpose of reducing to _system_ their unlawful surveillance and control of the post-office and mail; and in the alacrity with which they obeyed the popular call to dissolve the Sunday-schools for the instruction of the colored people. Also in the fact, that, throughout the whole South, church members are not only found on the Vigilance Committees, (tribunals organized in opposition to the laws of the states where they exist,) but uniting with the merciless and the profligate in pa.s.sing sentence consigning to infamous and excruciating, if not extreme punishment, persons, by their own acknowledgment, innocent of any unlawful act. Out of sixty persons that composed the vigilance committee which condemned Mr. Dresser to be scourged in the public square of Nashville, TWENTY-SEVEN were members of churches, and one of them a professed Teachers of Christianity. A member of the committee stated afterward, in a newspaper of which he was the editor, that Mr. D. _had not laid himself liable to any punishment known to the laws_. Another instance is to be found in the conduct of the Rev. Wm. S. Plumer, of Virginia. Having been absent from Richmond, when the ministers of the gospel a.s.sembled together formally to testify their abhorrence of the abolitionists, he addressed the chairman of the committee of correspondence a note, in which he uses this language:--"If abolitionists will set the country in a blaze, it is but fair that they should have the first warming at the fire."--"Let them understand, that they will be caught, if they come among us, and they will take good heed to keep out of our way." Mr. P. has no doubtful standing in the Presbyterian church with which he is connected. He has been regarded as one of its brightest ornaments.[A] To drive the slaveholding church and its members from the equivocal, the neutral position, from which they had so long successfully defended slavery--to compel them to elevate their practice to an even height with their avowed principles, or to degrade their principles to the level of their known practice, was a preliminary, necessary in the view of abolitionists, either for bringing that part of the church into the common action against slavery, or as a ground for treating it as confederate with oppressors. So far, then, as the action of the church, or of its individual members, is to be reckoned among the events of the last two or three years, the abolitionists find in it nothing to lessen their hopes or expectations.
[Footnote A: In the division of the General a.s.sembly of the Presbyterian church, that has just taken place, Mr. Plumer has been elected Moderator of the "Old School" portion.]
2. The abolitionists believed, from the beginning, that the slaves of the South were (as slaves are everywhere) unhappy, _because of their condition_. Their adversaries denied it, averring that, as a cla.s.s, they were "contented and happy." The abolitionists thought that the argument against slavery could be made good, so far as this point was concerned, by either _admitting_ or _denying_ the a.s.sertion.
_Admitting_ it, they insisted, that, nothing could demonstrate the turpitude of any system more surely than the fact, that MAN--made in the image of G.o.d--but a little lower than the angels--crowned with glory and honor, and set over the works of G.o.d"s hands--his mind sweeping in an instant from planet to planet, from the sun of one system to the sun of another, even to the great centre sun of them all--contemplating the machinery of the universe "wheeling unshaken" in the awful and mysterious grandeur of its movements "through the void immense"--with a spirit delighting in upward aspiration--bounding from earth to heaven--that seats itself fast by the throne of G.o.d, to drink in the instructions of Infinite Wisdom, or flies to execute the commands of Infinite Goodness;--that such a being could be made "contented and happy" with "enough to eat, and drink, and wear," and shelter from the weather--with the base provision that satisfies the brutes, is (say the abolitionists) enough to render superfluous all other arguments for the _instant_ abandonment of a system whose appropriate work is such infinite wrong.
_Denying_ that "the slaves are contented and happy," the abolitionists have argued, that, from the structure of his moral nature--the laws of his mind--man cannot be happy in the fact, that he is _enslaved_. True, he may be happy in slavery, but it is not slavery that makes him so--it is virtue and faith, elevating him above the afflictions of his lot. The slave has a will, leading him to seek those things which the Author of his nature has made conducive to its happiness. In these things, the will of the master comes in collision with his will. The slave desires to receive the rewards of his own labor; the power of the master wrests them from him. The slave desires to possess his wife, to whom G.o.d has joined him, in affection, to have the superintendence, and enjoy the services, of the children whom G.o.d has confided to him as a parent to train them, by the habits of the filial relation, for the yet higher relation that they may sustain to him as their heavenly Father. But here he is met by the opposing will of the master, pressing _his_ claims with irresistible power. The ties that heaven has sanctioned and blessed--of husband and wife, of parent and child--are all sundered in a moment by the master, at the prompting of avarice or luxury or l.u.s.t; and there is none that can stay his ruthless hand, or say unto him, "What doest thou?" The slave thirsts for the pleasures of refined and elevated intellect--the master denies to him the humblest literary acquisition.
The slave pants to know something of that still higher nature that he feels burning within him--of his present state, his future destiny, of the Being who made him, to whose judgment-seat he is going. The master"s interests cry, "No!" "Such knowledge is too wonderful for you; it is high, you cannot attain unto it." To predicate _happiness_ of a cla.s.s of beings, placed in circ.u.mstances where their will is everlastingly defeated by an irresistible power--the abolitionists say, is to prove them dest.i.tute of the sympathies of _our_ nature--not _human_. It is to declare with the Atheist, that man is independent of the goodness of his Creator for his enjoyments--that human happiness calls not for any of the appliances of his bounty--that G.o.d"s throne is a nullity, himself a superfluity.
But, independently of any abstract reasoning drawn from the nature of moral and intelligent beings, FACTS have been elicited in the discussion of the point before us, proving slavery everywhere (especially Southern slavery, maintained by enlightened Protestants of the nineteenth century) replete with torments and horrors--the direst form of oppression that upheaves itself before the sun. These facts have been so successfully impressed on a large portion of the intelligent mind of the country, that the slaves of the South are beginning to be considered as those whom G.o.d emphatically regards as the "poor," the "needy," the "afflicted," the "oppressed," the "bowed down;" and for whose consolation he has said, "Now will I arise--I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."
This state of the public mind has been brought about within the last two or three years; and it is an event which, so far from lessening, greatly animates, the hopes and expectations of abolitionists.
3. The abolitionists believed from the first, that the tendency of slavery is to produce, on the part of the whites, looseness of morals, disdain of the wholesome restraints of law, and a ferocity of temper, found, only in solitary instances, in those countries where slavery is unknown. They were not ignorant of the fact, that this was disputed; nor that the "CHIVALRY OF THE SOUTH" had become a cant phrase, including, all that is high-minded and honorable among men; nor, that it had been formally a.s.serted in our National legislature, that slavery, as it exists in the South, "produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth."
Nor were the abolitionists unaware, that these pretensions, proving anything else but their own solidity, had been echoed and re-echoed so long by the unthinking and the interested of the North, that the character of the South had been injuriously affected by them--till she began boldly to attribute her _peculiar_ superiority to her _peculiar_ inst.i.tution, and thus to strengthen it. All this the abolitionists saw and knew. But few others saw and understood it as they did. The revelations of the last three years are fast dissipating the old notion, and bringing mult.i.tudes in the North to see the subject as the abolitionists see it. When "Southern Chivalry" and the _purity_ of southern society are spoken of now, it is at once replied, that a large number of the slaves show, by their _color_, their indisputable claim to white paternity; and that, notwithstanding their near consanguineous relation to the whites, they are still held and treated, in all respects, _as slaves_. Nor is it forgotten now, when the claims of the South to "hospitality" are pressed, to object, because they are grounded on the unpaid wages of the laborer--on the robbery of the poor. When "Southern generosity" is mentioned, the old adage, "be just before you are generous," furnishes the reply. It is no proof of generosity (say the objectors) to take the bread of the laborer, to lavish it in banquetings on the rich. When "Southern Chivalry" is the theme of its admirers, the hard-handed, but intelligent, working man of the North asks, if the espionage of southern hotels, and of ships and steamboats on their arrival at southern ports; if the prowl, by day and by night, for the solitary stranger suspected of sympathizing with the enslaved, that he may be delivered over to the mercies of a vigilance committee, furnishes the proof of its existence; if the unlawful importation of slaves from Africa[A] furnishes the proof; if the abuse, the scourging, the hanging on suspicion, without law, of friendless strangers, furnish the proof; if the summary execution of slaves and of colored freemen, almost by the score, without legal trial, furnishes the proof; if the cruelties and tortures to which _citizens_ have been exposed, and the burning to death of slaves by slow fires,[B] furnish the proof. All these things, says he, furnish any thing but proof of _true_ hospitality, or generosity, or gallantry, or purity, or chivalry.
[Footnote A: Mr. Mercer, of Virginia, some years ago, a.s.serted in Congress, that "CARGOES" of African slaves were smuggled into the southern states to a deplorable extent. Mr. Middleton, of South Carolina, declared it to be his belief, that THIRTEEN THOUSAND Africans were annually smuggled into the southern states. Mr. Wright, of Maryland, estimated the number at FIFTEEN THOUSAND. Miss Martineau was told in 1835, by a wealthy slaveholder of Louisiana, (who probably spoke of that state alone,) that the annual importation of native Africans was from THIRTEEN THOUSAND to FIFTEEN THOUSAND. The President of the United States, in his last Annual Message, speaking of the Navy, says, "The large force under Commodore Dallas [on the West India station] has been most actively and efficiently employed in protecting our commerce, IN PREVENTING THE IMPORTATION OF SLAVES, &c."]
[Footnote B: Within the last few years, four slaves, and one citizen of color, have been put to death in this manner, in Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas.]
Certain it is, that the time when southern slavery derived countenance at the North, from its supposed connection with "chivalry," is rapidly pa.s.sing away. "Southern Chivalry" will soon be regarded as one of the by-gone fooleries of a less intelligent and less virtuous age. It will soon be cast out--giving place to the more reasonable idea, that the denial of wages to the laborer, the selling of men and women, the whipping of husbands and wives in each others presence, to compel them to unrequited toil, the deliberate attempt to extinguish mind, and, consequently, to destroy the soul--is among the highest offences against G.o.d and man--unspeakably mean and ungentlemanly.
The impression made on the minds of the people as to this matter, is one of the events of the last two or three years that does not contribute to lessen the hopes or expectations of abolitionists.
4. The ascendency that Slavery has acquired, and exercises, in the administration of the government, and the apprehension now prevailing among the sober and intelligent, irrespective of party, that it will soon overmaster the Const.i.tution itself, may be ranked among the events of the last two or three years that affect the course of abolitionists.
The abolitionists regard the Const.i.tution with unabated affection. They hold in no common veneration the memory of those who made it. They would be the last to brand Franklin and King and Morris and Wilson and Sherman and Hamilton with the ineffaceable infamy of attempting to ingraft on the Const.i.tution, and therefore to _perpetuate_, a system of oppression in absolute antagonism to its high and professed objects, one which their own practice condemned,--and this, too, when they had scarcely wiped away the dust and sweat of the Revolution from their brows! Whilst abolitionists feel and speak thus of our Const.i.tutional fathers, they do not justify the dereliction of principle into which they were betrayed, when they imparted to the work of their hands _any_ power to contribute to the continuance of such a system. They can only palliate it, by supposing, that they thought, slavery was already a waning inst.i.tution, destined soon to pa.s.s away. In their time, (1787) slaves were comparatively of little value--there being then no great slave-labor staple (as cotton is now) to make them profitable to their holders.[A]
Had the circ.u.mstances of the country remained as they then were, slave-labor, always and every where the most expensive--would have disappeared before the compet.i.tion of free labour. They had seen, too, the principle of universal liberty, on which the Revolution was justified, recognised and embodied in most of the State Const.i.tutions; they had seen slavery utterly forbidden in that of Vermont --instantaneously abolished in that of Ma.s.sachusetts--and laws enacted in the New-England States and in Pennsylvania, for its gradual abolition. Well might they have antic.i.p.ated, that Justice and Humanity, now starting forth with fresh vigor, would, in their march, sweep away the whole system; more especially, as freedom of speech and of the press--the legitimate abolisher not only of the acknowledged vice of slavery, but of every other that time should reveal in our inst.i.tutions or practices--had been fully secured to the people. Again; power was conferred on Congress to put a stop to the African slave-trade, without which it was thought, at that time, to be impossible to maintain slavery, as a system, on this continent,--so great was the havoc it committed on human life. Authority was also granted to Congress to prevent the transfer of slaves, as articles of commerce, from one State to another; and the introduction of slavery into the territories. All this was crowned by the power of refusing admission into the Union, to any new state, whose form of government was repugnant to the principles of liberty set forth in that of the United States. The faithful execution, by Congress, of these powers, it was reasonably enough supposed, would, at least, prevent the growth of slavery, if it did not entirely remove it. Congress did, at the set time, execute _one_ of them--deemed, then, the most effectual of the whole; but, as it has turned out, the least so.
[Footnote A: The cultivation of cotton was almost unknown in the United States before 1787. It was not till two years afterward that it began to be raised or exported. (See Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Feb. 29, 1836.)--See Appendix, D.]
The effect of the interdiction of the African slave-trade was, not to diminish the trade itself, or greatly to mitigate its horrors; it only changed its name from African to American--transferred the seat of commerce from Africa to America--its profits from African princes to American farmers. Indeed, it is almost certain, if the African slave-trade had been left unrestrained, that slavery would not have covered so large a portion of our country as it does now. The cheap rate at which slaves might have been imported by the planters of the south, would have prevented the rearing of them for sale, by the farmers of Maryland, Virginia, and the other slave-selling states. If these states could be restrained from the _commerce_ in slaves, slavery could not be supported by them for any length of time, or to any considerable extent.
They could not maintain it, as an economical system, under the compet.i.tion of free labor. It is owing to the _non-user_ by Congress, or rather to their unfaithful application of their power to the other points, on which it was expected to act for the limitation or extermination of slavery, that the hopes of our fathers have not been realized; and that slavery has, at length, become so audacious, as openly to challenge the principles of 1776--to trample on the most precious rights secured to the citizen--to menace the integrity of the Union and the very existence of the government itself.
Slavery has advanced to its present position by steps that were, at first, gradual, and, for a long time, almost unnoticed; afterward, it made its way by intimidating or corrupting those who ought to have been forward to resist its pretensions. Up to the time of the "Missouri Compromise," by which the nation was wheedled out of its honor, slavery was looked on as an evil that was finally to yield to the expanding and ripening influences of our Const.i.tutional principles and regulations.
Why it has not yielded, we may easily see, by even a slight glance at some of the incidents in our history.
It has already been said, that we have been brought into our present condition by the unfaithfulness of Congress, in not _exerting_ the power vested in it, to stop the domestic slave-trade, and in the _abuse_ of the power of admitting "_new_ states" into the Union. Kentucky made application in 1792, with a slave-holding Const.i.tution in her hand.--With what a mere _technicality_ Congress suffered itself to be drugged into torpor:--_She was part of one of the "Original States"--and therefore ent.i.tled to all their privileges._
One precedent established, it was easy to make another. Tennessee was admitted in 1796, without scruple, on the same ground.
The next triumph of slavery was in 1803, in the purchase of Louisiana, acknowledged afterward, even by Mr. Jefferson who made it, to be unauthorized by the Const.i.tution--and in the establishment of slavery throughout its vast limits, actually and substantially under the auspices of that instrument which declares its only objects to be--"to form a more perfect union, establish JUSTICE, insure DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of LIBERTY to ourselves and our posterity."[A]
[Footnote A: It may be replied, The colored people were held as _property_ by the laws of Louisiana previously to the cession, and that Congress had no right to divest the newly acquired citizens of their property. This statement is evasive. It does not include, nor touch the question, which is this:--Had Congress, or the treaty-making power, a right to recognise, and, by recognising, to establish, in a territory that had no claim of privilege, on the ground of being part of one of the "Original States," a condition of things that it could not establish _directly_, because there was no grant in the const.i.tution of power, direct or incidental, to do so--and because, _to do so_, was in downright oppugnancy to the principles of the Const.i.tution itself? The question may be easily answered by stating the following case:--Suppose a law had existed in Louisiana, previous to the cession, by which the children--male and female--of all such parents as were not owners of real estate of the yearly value of $500, had been--no matter how long--held in slavery by their more wealthy land-holding neighbors:--would Congress, under the Const.i.tution, have a right (by recognising) to establish, for ever, such a relation as one white person, under such a law, might hold to another? Surely not. And yet no substantial difference between the two cases can be pointed out.]
In this case, the violation of the Const.i.tution was suffered to pa.s.s with but little opposition, except from Ma.s.sachusetts, because we were content to receive in exchange, multiplied commercial benefits and enlarged territorial limits.
The next stride that slavery made over the Const.i.tution was in the admission of the State of Louisiana into the Union. _She_ could claim no favor as part of an "Original State." At this point, it might have been supposed, the friends of Freedom and of the Const.i.tution according to its original intent, would have made a stand. But no: with the exception of Ma.s.sachusetts, they hesitated and were persuaded to acquiesce, because the country was just about entering into a war with England, and the crisis was unpropitious for discussing questions that would create divisions between different sections of the Union. We must wait till the country was at peace. Thus it was that Louisiana was admitted without a controversy.
Next followed, in 1817 and 1820, Mississippi and Alabama--admitted after the example of Kentucky and Tennessee, without any contest.
Meantime, Florida had given some uneasiness to the slaveholders of the neighboring states; and for their accommodation chiefly, a negociation was set on foot by the government to purchase it.
Missouri was next in order in 1821. She could plead no privilege, on the score of being part of one of the original states; the country too, was relieved from the pressure of her late conflict with England; it was prosperous and quiet; every thing seemed propitious to a calm and dispa.s.sionate consideration of the claims of slaveholders to add props to their system, by admitting indefinitely, new slave states to the Union. Up to this time, the "EVIL" of slavery had been almost universally acknowledged and deplored by the South, and its termination (apparently) sincerely hoped for.[A] By this management its friends succeeded in blinding the confiding people of the North. They thought for the most part, that the slaveholders were acting in good faith. It is not intended by this remark, to make the impression, that the South had all along pressed the admission of new slave states, simply with a view to the increase of its own relative power. By no means: slavery had insinuated itself into favor because of its being mixed up with (other) supposed benefits--and because its ultimate influence on the government was neither suspected nor dreaded. But, on the Missouri question, there was a fair trial of strength between the friends of Slavery and the friends of the Const.i.tution. The former triumphed, and by the prime agency of one whose raiment, the remainder of his days, ought to be sackcloth and ashes,--because of the disgrace he has continued on the name of his country, and the consequent injury that he has inflicted on the cause of Freedom throughout the world. Although all the different Administrations, from the first organization of the government, had, in the indirect manner already mentioned, favored slavery,--there had not been on any previous occasion, a direct struggle between its pretensions and the principles of liberty ingrafted on the Const.i.tution. The friends of the latter were induced to believe, whenever they should be arrayed against each other, that _theirs_ would be the triumph. Tremendous error! Mistake almost fatal! The battle was fought. Slavery emerged from it unhurt--her hands made gory--her b.l.o.o.d.y plume still floating in the air--exultingly brandishing her dripping sword over her prostrate and vanquished enemy. She had won all for which she fought. Her victory was complete--THE SANCTION OF THE NATION WAS GIVEN TO SLAVERY![B]
[Footnote A: Mr. Clay, in conducting the Missouri compromise, found it necessary to argue, that the admission of Missouri, as a slaveholding state, would aid in bringing about the termination of slavery. His argument is thus stated by Mr. Sergeant, who replied to him:--"In this long view of remote and distant consequences, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) thinks he sees how slavery, when thus spread, is at last to find its end. It is to be brought about by the combined operation of the laws which regulate the price of labor, and the laws which govern population. When the country shall be filled with inhabitants, and the price of labor shall have reached a minimum, (a comparative minimum I suppose is meant,) free labor will be found cheaper than slave labor. Slaves will then be without employment, and, of course, without the means of comfortable subsistence, which will reduce their numbers, and finally extirpate them. This is the argument as I understand it," says Mr. Sergeant; and, certainly, one more chimerical or more inhuman could not have been urged.]
[Footnote B: See Appendix, E.]
Immediately after this achievement, the slaveholding interest was still more strongly fortified by the acquisition of Florida, and the establishment of slavery there, as it had already been in the territory of Louisiana. The Missouri triumph, however, seems to have extinguished every thing like a systematic or spirited opposition, on the part of the free states, to the pretensions of the slaveholding South.
Arkansas was admitted but the other day, with nothing that deserves to be called an effort to prevent it--although her Const.i.tution attempts to _perpetuate_ slavery, by forbidding the master to emanc.i.p.ate his bondmen without the consent of the Legislature, and the Legislature without the consent of the master. Emboldened, but not satisfied, with their success in every political contest with the people of the free states, the slaveholders are beginning now to throw off their disguise--to brand their former notions about the "_evil_, political and moral" of slavery, as "folly and delusion,"[A]--and as if to "make a.s.surance double sure,"
and defend themselves forever, by territorial power, against the progress of Free principles and the renovation of the Const.i.tution, they now demand openly--scorning to conceal that their object is, to _advance and establish their political power in the country_,--that Texas, a foreign state, five or six times as large as all New England, with a Const.i.tution dyed as deep in slavery, as that of Arkansas, shall be added to the Union.
[Footnote A: Mr. Calhoun is reported, in the National Intelligencer, as having used these words in a speech delivered in the Senate, the 10th day of January:--
"Many in the South once believed that it [slavery] was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free inst.i.tutions in the world."
Mr. Hammond, formerly a Representative in Congress from South Carolina, delivered a speech (Feb. 1, 1836) on the question of receiving pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In answering those who objected to a slaveholding country, that it was "a.s.similated to an aristocracy," he says--"In this they are right. I accept the terms. _It is a government of the best._ Combining all the advantages, and possessing but few of the disadvantages, of the aristocracy of the old world--without fostering, to an unwarrantable extent, the pride, the exclusiveness, the selfishness, the thirst for sway, the contempt for the rights of others, which distinguish the n.o.bility of Europe--it gives us their education, their polish, their munificence, their high honor, their undaunted spirit. Slavery does indeed create an aristocracy--an aristocracy of talents, of virtue, of generosity, of courage. In a slave country, every freeman is an aristocrat. Be he rich or poor, if he does not possess a single slave, he has been born to all the natural advantages of the society in which he is placed; and all its honors lie open before him, inviting his genius and industry. Sir, I do firmly believe, that domestic slavery, regulated as ours is, produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society, that has ever existed on the face of the earth."
That this _retraxit_ of former _follies and delusions_ is not confined to the mere politician, we have the following proofs:--
The CHARLESTON (S.C.) UNION PRESBYTERY--"Resolved. That in the opinion of this Presbytery, the holding of slaves, so far from being a sin in the sight of G.o.d, is nowhere condemned in his holy word; that it is in accordance with the example, or consistent with the precepts, of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; and that it is compatible with the most fraternal regard to the good of the servants whom G.o.d has committed to our charge."--Within the last few months, as we learn from a late No.
of the Charleston Courier, the late Synod of the Presbyterian Church, in Augusta, (Ga.) pa.s.sed resolutions declaring "That slavery is a CIVIL INSt.i.tUTION, with which the General a.s.sembly [the highest ecclesiastical tribunal] has NOTHING TO DO."
Again:--The CHARLESTON BAPTIST a.s.sOCIATION, in a memorial to the Legislature of South Carolina, say--"The undersigned would further represent, that the said a.s.sociation does not consider that the Holy Scriptures have made the FACT of slavery a question of morals at all."
And further,--"The right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves, has been distinctly recognised by the Creator of all things."