Chapter III: Southern Testimony Against Slavery (1)

If it please the reader, let him forget all that we have written on the subject of slavery; if it accord with his inclination, let him ignore all that we may write hereafter. We seek not to give currency to our peculiar opinions; our greatest ambition, in these pages, is to popularize the sayings and admonitions of wiser and better men. Miracles, we believe, are no longer wrought in this bedeviled world; but if, by any conceivable or possible supernatural event, the great Founders of the Republic, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and others, could be reinvested with corporeal life, and returned to the South, there is scarcely a slaveholder between the Potomac and the mouth of the Mississippi, that would not burn to pounce upon them with bludgeons, bowie-knives and pistols! Yes, without adding another word, Washington would be _mobbed_ for what he has already said. Were Jefferson now employed as a professor in a Southern college, he would be dismissed and driven from the State, perhaps murdered before he reached the border. If Patrick Henry were a bookseller in Alabama, though it might be demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had never bought, sold, received, or presented, any kind of literature except Bibles and Testaments, he would first be subjected to the ignominy of a coat of tar and feathers, and then limited to the option of unceremonious expatriation or death. How seemingly impossible are these statements, and yet how true! Where do we stand? What is our faith? Are we a flock without a shepherd? a people without a prophet? a nation without a government?

Has the past, with all its glittering monuments of genius and patriotism, furnished no beacon by which we may direct our footsteps in the future? If we but prove true to ourselves, and worthy of our ancestry, we have nothing to fear; our Revolutionary sires have devised and bequeathed to us an almost perfect national policy. Let us cherish, and defend, and build upon, the fundamental principles of that polity, and we shall most assuredly reap the golden fruits of unparalleled power, virtue and prosperity. Heaven forbid that a desperate faction of slaveholding criminals should succeed in their infamous endeavors to quench the spirit of liberty, which our forefathers infused into those two sacred charts of our political faith, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. Oligarchal politicians are alone responsible for the continuance of African slavery in the South. For purposes of self-aggrandizement, they have kept learning and civilization from the people; they have wilfully misinterpreted the national compacts, and have outraged their own consciences by declaring to their illiterate constituents, that the Founders of the Republic were not abolitionists. When the dark clouds of slavery, error and ignorance shall have passed away,--and we believe the time is near at hand when they are to be dissipated,--the freemen of the South, like those of other sections, will learn the glorious truth, that inflexible opposition to Human Bondage has formed one of the distinguishing characteristics of every really good or great man that our country has produced.

The principles, aims and objects that actuated the framers of the Constitution, are most graphically and eloquently set forth, in the following extract from a speech recently delivered by the Hon. A. H. Cragin, of New Hampshire, in the House of Representatives:

"When our forefathers reared the magnificent structure of a free
Republic in this Western land, they laid its foundations broad and
deep in the eternal principles of right. Its materials were all
quarried from the mountain of truth; and, as it rose majestically
before an astonished world, it rejoiced the hearts and hopes of
mankind. Tyrants only cursed the workmen and their workmanship. Its
architecture was new. It had no model in Grecian or Roman history. It
seemed a paragon, let down from Heaven to inspire the hopes of men,
and to demonstrate the favor of God to the people of a new world. The
builders recognized the rights of human nature as universal. Liberty,
the great first right of man, they claimed for 'all men,' and claimed
it from 'God himself.' Upon this foundation they erected the temple,
and dedicated it to Liberty, Humanity, Justice, and Equality.
Washington was crowned its patron saint."

"The work completed was the noblest effort of human wisdom. But it
was not perfect. It had one blemish--a little spot--the black stain
of slavery. The workmen--the friends of freedom everywhere--deplored
this. They labored long and prayerfully to remove this deformity.
They applied all the skill of their art; but they labored in vain.
Self-interest was too strong for patriotism and love of liberty. The
work stood still, and for a time it was doubtful whether the
experiment would succeed. The blot must remain, or the whole must
fail. The workmen revarnished their work, to conceal and cover up the
stain. Slavery was recognized, but not sanctioned. The word slave or
slavery must not mar the Constitution. So great an inconsistency must
not be proclaimed to the world."

"All agreed, at that time, that the anomaly should not increase, and
all concurred in the hope and belief that the blemish would gradually
disappear. Those noble men looked forward to the time when slavery
would be abolished in this land of ours. They believed that the
principles of liberty were so dear to the people, that they would not
long deny to others what they claimed for themselves. They never
dreamed that slavery would be extended, but firmly believed it would
be wholly blotted out. _I challenge any man to show me a single
patriot of the Revolution who was in favor of slavery, or who
advocated its extension._ So universal was the sentiment of liberty
then, that no man, North or South, could be found to justify it. Some
palliated the evil, and desired that it might be gradually
extinguished; but none contemplated it as a permanent institution."

"Liberty was then the national goddess, worshiped by all the people.
They sang of liberty, they harangued for liberty, they prayed for
liberty, and they sacrificed for liberty. Slavery was then hateful.
It was denounced by all. The British king was condemned for foisting
it upon the Colonies. Southern men were foremost in entering their
protest against it. It was then everywhere regarded as an evil, and a
crime against humanity."

The fact is too palpable to be disguised, that slavery and slaveholders have always been a clog and a dead-weight upon the government--a disgrace and a curse to humanity. The slaveholding Tories of the South, particularly of South Carolina, in their atrocious hostility to freedom, prolonged the arduous war of the Revolution from two to three years; and since the termination of that momentous struggle, in which, thank Heaven, they were most signally defeated, it has been their constant aim and effort to subvert the dear-bought liberties which were achieved by the non-slaveholding patriots.

Non-slaveholders of the South! up to the present period, neither as a body, nor as individuals, have you ever had an independent existence; but, if true to yourselves and to the memory of your fathers, you, in equal copartnership with the non-slaveholders of the North, will soon become the honored rulers and proprietors of the most powerful, prosperous, virtuous, free, and peaceful nation, on which the sun has ever shone. Already has the time arrived for you to decide upon what basis you will erect your political superstructure. Upon whom will you depend for an equitable and judicious form of constitutional government? Whom will you designate as models for your future statesmen? Your choice lies between the dead and the living--between the Washingtons, the Jeffersons and the Madisons of the past, and the Quattlebums, the Quitmans and the Butlers of the present. We have chosen; choose ye, remembering that freedom or slavery is to be the issue of your option.

As the result of much reading and research, and at the expenditure of no inconsiderable amount of time, labor and money, we now proceed to make known the anti-slavery sentiments of those noble abolitionists, the Fathers of the Republic, whose liberal measures of public policy have been so criminally perverted by the treacherous advocates of slavery.

Let us listen, in the first place, to the voice of him who was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," to

THE VOICE OF WASHINGTON.

In a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9th, 1786, General Washington says:--

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me
to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my _first
wishes_ to see some plan adopted by which slavery, in this country,
may be abolished by law."

In a letter to Robert Morris, dated Mount Vernon, April 12, 1786, he says:--

"I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more
sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.
But there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be
accomplished, and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far
as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting."

He says, in a letter:--

"To the MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE--April 5th, 1783:--

The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose as a precedent, to
encourage the emancipation of the black people in this country from
the state of bondage in which they are held, is a striking evidence
of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in so
laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business
till I have the pleasure of seeing you."

In another letter to Lafayette, he says:--

"The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicuous on
all occasions, that I never wonder at any fresh proofs of it; but
your late purchase of an estate in the Colony of Cayenne, with the
view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof
of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself
generally into the minds of the people of this country."

In a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he further said:--

"There are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of slavery,
which neither Virginia nor Maryland have at present, but which
nothing is more certain than they must have, and at a period _not
remote_."

From his last will and testament we make the following extract:

"Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the
slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To
emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by me,
be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their
intermixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the
most painful sensation, if not disagreeable consequences, from the
latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same
proprietor, it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the
dower negroes are held, to manumit them."

It is said that, "when Mrs. Washington learned, from the will of her deceased husband, that the only obstacle to the immediate perfection of this provision was her right of dower, she at once gave it up, and the slaves were made free." A man might possibly concentrate within himself more real virtue and influence than ever Washington possessed, and yet he would not be too good for such a wife.

From the Father of his Country, we now turn to the author of the Declaration of Independence. We will listen to

THE VOICE OF JEFFERSON.

On the 39th and 40th pages of his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson says:--

"There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our
people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole
commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most
boisterous passions--the most unremitting despotism on the one part,
and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is
the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is
learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no
motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining
the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a
sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not
sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions; and, thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be
stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy
who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances. And with what execration should the Statesman be
loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the
rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into
enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the _amor patriae_
of the other; for if a slave can have a country in this world, it
must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live
and labor for another; in which he must look up the faculties of his
nature, contribute, as far as depends on his individual endeavors, to
the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable
condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the
morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed; for, in a
warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another
labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a
very small proportion, indeed, are ever seen to labor. And can the
liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their
only firm basis--a conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are of the gift of God? that they are not to be violated
but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that
considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of
the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible
events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The
Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a
contest."

While Virginia was yet a Colony, in 1774, she held a Convention to appoint delegates to attend the first general Congress, which was to assemble, and did assemble, in Philadelphia, in September of the same year. Before that Convention, Mr. Jefferson made an exposition of the rights of British America, in which he said:--

"The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire
in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant
State. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves, it is
necessary to exclude further importations from Africa. Yet our
repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing
duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated
by his Majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of
a few African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American
States, and the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this
infamous practice."

In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, of which it is well known he was the author, we find this charge against the King of Great Britain:--

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great
Britain. Determined to keep a market where men should be bought and
sold, he has at length prostituted his negative for suppressing any
legislative attempt to prohibit and restrain this execrable
commerce."

Hear him further; he says:--

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed."

Under date of August 7th, 1785, in a letter to Dr. Price of London, he says:--

"Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there an opponent
of your doctrine, as you may find, here and there, a robber and
murderer; but in no great number. Emancipation is put into such a
train, that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of
Maryland. In Maryland I do not find such a disposition to begin the
redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to
which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice
in conflict with avarice and oppression; a conflict wherein the
sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of
young men grown up, and growing up. These have sucked in the
principles of liberty, as it were, with their mother's milk; and it
is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of the question."

In another letter, written to a friend in 1814, he made use of the following emphatic language:--

"Your favor of July 31st was duly received, and read with peculiar
pleasure. The sentiments do honor to the head and heart of the
writer. Mine on the subject of the slavery of negroes have long since
been in the possession of the public, and time has only served to
give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country
plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a reproach to us
that they should have pleaded it so long in vain."

Again, he says:--

"What an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil,
famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of
his own liberty; and the next moment be deaf to all those motives
whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his
fellow man a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery
than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."

Throughout the South, at the present day, especially among slaveholders, negroes are almost invariably spoken of as "goods and chattels," "property," "human cattle." In our first quotation from Jefferson's works, we have seen that he spoke of the blacks as _citizens_. We shall now hear him speak of them as _brethren_. He says:--

"We must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence,
and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our
brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their
groans shall have involved Heaven itself in darkness, doubtless a God
of justice will awaken to their distress. Nothing is more certainly
written in the Book of Fate, than that this people shall be free."

In a letter to James Heaton, on this same subject, dated May 20, 1826, only six weeks before his death, he says:--

"My sentiments have been forty years before the public. Had I
repeated them forty times, they would have only become the more stale
and threadbare. Although I shall not live to see them consummated,
they will not die with me."

From the Father of the Declaration of Independence, we now turn to the Father of the Constitution. We will listen to

THE VOICE OF MADISON.

Advocating the abolition of the slave-trade, Mr. Madison said:--

"The dictates of humanity, the principles of the people, the national
safety and happiness, and prudent policy, require it of us. It is to
be hoped, that by expressing a national disapprobation of the trade,
we may _destroy_ it, and save our country from reproaches, and our
posterity from the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with
slaves."

Again, he says:--

"It is wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea that there can
be property in man."

In the 39th No. of "The Federalist," he says:--

"The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form
and aspect of the government be strictly Republican. It is evident
that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the
people of America, and with the fundamental principles of the
Revolution, or with that honorable determination which animates every
votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the
capacity of mankind for self-government."

In the Federal Convention, he said:--

"And in the third place, where slavery exists, the Republican theory
becomes still more fallacious."

On another occasion, he says:--

"We have seen the mere distinction of color made, in the most
enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion
ever exercised by man over man."

THE VOICE OF MONROE.

In a speech in the Virginia Convention, Mr. Monroe said:--

"We have found that this evil has preyed upon the very vitals of the
Union, and has been prejudicial to all the States, in which it has
existed."

THE VOICE OF HENRY.

The eloquent Patrick Henry says, in a letter dated January 18, 1773:--

"Is it not a little surprising that the professors of Christianity,
whose chief excellence consists in softening the human heart, in
cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a
practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and
wrong? What adds to the wonder is, that this abominable practice has
been introduced in the most enlightened ages. Times that seem to have
pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences,
and refined morality, have brought into general use, and guarded by
many laws, a species of violence and tyranny which our more rude and
barbarous, but more honest ancestors detested. Is it not amazing that
at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with
precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty--that in
such an age and in such a country, we find men professing a religion
the most mild, humane, gentle, and generous, adopting such a
principle, as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the
Bible, and destructive to liberty? Every thinking, honest man rejects
it in speculation. How free in practice from conscientious motives!
Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase?
I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without
them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I
will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and
rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want of conformity to them.
I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to
abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can do is to improve it,
if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants,
together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and an
abhorrence for slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished-for
reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with
lenity. It is the furthest advance we can make towards justice. It is
a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at
variance with that law which warrants slavery."

Again, this great orator says:--

"It would rejoice my very soul, that every one of my fellow-beings
was emancipated. We ought to lament and deplore the necessity of
holding our fellow-men in bondage. Believe me; I shall honor the
Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery."

THE VOICE OF RANDOLPH.

That excentric genius, John Randolph, of Roanoke, in a letter to William Gibbons, in 1820, says:--

"With unfeigned respect and regard, and as sincere a deprecation on
the extension of slavery and its horrors, as any other man, be him
whom he may, I am your friend, in the literal sense of that much
abused word. I say much abused, because it is applied to the leagues
of vice and avarice and ambition, instead of good will toward man
from love of him who is the Prince of Peace."

While in Congress, he said:--

"Sir, I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man from the
North who rises here to defend slavery on principle."

It is well known that he emancipated all his negroes. The following lines from his will are well worth perusing and preserving:--

"I give to my slaves their freedom, to which my conscience tells me
they are justly entitled. It has a long time been a matter of the
deepest regret to me that the circumstances under which I inherited
them, and the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws of the land,
have prevented my emancipating them in my life-time, which it is my
full intention to do in case I can accomplish it."

THOMAS M. RANDOLPH.

In an address to the Virginia Legislature, in 1820, Gov. Randolph said:--

"We have been far outstripped by States to whom nature has been far
less bountiful. It is painful to consider what might have been, under
other circumstances, the amount of general wealth in Virginia."

THOMAS JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.

In 1832, Mr. Randolph, of Albemarle, in the Legislature of Virginia, used the following most graphic and emphatic language:--

"I agree with gentlemen in the necessity of arming the State for
internal defence. I will unite with them in any effort to restore
confidence to the public mind, and to conduce to the sense of the
safety of our wives and our children. Yet, Sir, I must ask upon whom
is to fall the burden of this defence? Not upon the lordly masters of
their hundred slaves, who will never turn out except to retire with
their families when danger threatens. No, Sir; it is to fall upon the
less wealthy class of our citizens, chiefly upon the
non-slaveholder. I have known patrols turned out when there was not a
slaveholder among them; and this is the practice of the country. I
have slept in times of alarm quiet in bed, without having a thought
of care, while these individuals, owning none of this property
themselves, were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a
pittance of seventy-five cents per twelve hours, the very curtilage
of my house, and guarding that property which was alike dangerous to
them and myself. After all, this is but an expedient. As this
population becomes more numerous, it becomes less productive. Your
guard must be increased, until finally its profits will not pay for
the expense of its subjection. Slavery has the effect of lessening
the free population of a country.

"The gentleman has spoken of the increase of the female slaves being
a part of the profit. It is admitted; but no great evil can be
averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be
questioned how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this
branch of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice, in
parts of Virginia, to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable
mind, a patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this Ancient
Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism
of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand
menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for
the shambles? Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave
trade--that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of
every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the
slave, a stranger in language, aspect, and manners, from the merchant
who has brought him from the interior. The ties of father, mother,
husband, and child, have all been rent in twain; before he receives
him, his soul has become callous. But here, Sir, individuals whom the
master has known from infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the
innocent gambols of childhood, who have been accustomed to look to
him for protection, he tears from the mother's arms and sells into a
strange country among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters.

"He has attempted to justify slavery here, because it exists in
Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the
same principle, he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of
wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery, and murder, or any other of
the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery exist
in any part of civilized Europe? No, Sir, in no part of it."

PEYTON RANDOLPH.

On the 20th of October, 1774, while Congress was in session in Philadelphia, Peyton Randolph, President, the following resolution, among others, was unanimously adopted:--

"That we will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after
the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly
discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it
ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or
manufactures, to those who are concerned in it."

EDMUND RANDOLPH.

The Constitution of the United States contains the following provision:--

"No person held to service or labor in another State, under the laws
thereof, escaping to another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due."

To the studious attention of those vandals who contend that the above provision requires the rendition of fugitive _slaves_, we respectfully commend the following resolution, which, it will be observed, was _unanimously_ adopted:--

"On motion of Mr. Randolph, the word '_servitude_' was struck out,
and '_service_' unanimously inserted--the former being thought to
express the condition of slaves, and the latter the obligation of
_free_ persons."--_Madison Papers, vol. III., p. 1569._

Well done for the Randolphs!

THE VOICE OF CLAY.

Henry Clay, whom everybody loved, and at the mention of whose name the American heart always throbs with emotions of grateful remembrance, said, in an address before the Kentucky Colonization Society, in 1829:--

"It is believed that nowhere in the _farming_ portion of the United
States would slave-labor be generally employed, if the proprietor
were not tempted to raise slaves by the high price of the Southern
market, which keeps it up in his own."

In the United States Senate, in 1850, he used the following memorable words:--

"I am extremely sorry to hear the Senator from Mississippi say that
he requires, first the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to
the Pacific, and also that he is not satisfied with that, but
requires, if I understand him correctly, a positive provision for the
admission of slavery South of that line. And now, Sir, coming from a
slave State, as I do, I owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it
to the subject to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote
for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had
not before existed, either South or North of that line. Coming as I
do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate and well-matured
determination that no power, no earthly power, shall compel me to
vote for the positive introduction of slavery either South or North
of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly too, our British
ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent
of America I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present
inhabitants of California and of New Mexico, shall reproach us for
doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us. If the
citizens of those territories choose to establish slavery, and if
they come here with Constitutions establishing slavery, I am for
admitting them with such provisions in their Constitutions; but then
it will be their own work, and not ours, and their posterity will
have to reproach them, and not us, for forming Constitutions allowing
the institution of slavery to exist among them. These are my views,
Sir, and I choose to express them; and I care not how extensively or
universally they are known."

Hear him further; he says:--

"So long as God allows the vital current to flow through my veins, I
will never, never, never, by word, or thought, by mind or will, aid
in admitting one rood of free territory to the everlasting curse of
human bondage."

A bumper to the memory of noble Harry of the West!

CASSIUS M. CLAY.

Of the great number of good speeches made by members of the Republican party during the late Presidential campaign, it is, we believe, pretty generally admitted that the best one was made by Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, at the Tabernacle, in New-York City, on the 24th of October, 1856. From the speech of that noble champion of freedom, then and there delivered, we make the following graphic extract:--

"If there are no manufactures, there is no commerce. In vain do the
slaveholders go to Knoxville, to Nashville, to Memphis and to
Charleston, and resolve that they will have nothing to do with these
abolition eighteen millions of Northern people; that they will build
their own vessels, manufacture their own goods, ship their own
products to foreign countries, and break down New-York, Philadelphia
and Boston! Again they resolve and reresolve, and yet there is not a
single ton more shipped and not a single article added to the wealth
of the South. But, gentlemen, they never invite such men as I am to
attend their Conventions. They know that I would tell them that
slavery is the cause of their poverty, and that I will tell them that
what they are aiming at is the dissolution of the Union--that they
may be prepared to strike for that whenever the nation rises. They
well know that by slave labor the very propositions which they make
can never be realized; yet when we show these things, they cry out,
'Oh, Cotton is King!' But when we look at the statistics, we find
that so far from Cotton being King, Grass is King. There are nine
articles of staple productions which are larger than that of cotton
in this country."

"I suppose it does not follow because slavery is endeavoring to
modify the great dicta of our fathers, that cotton and free labor are
incompatible. In the extreme South, at New Orleans, the laboring
men--the stevedores and hackmen on the levee, where the heat is
intensified by the proximity of the red brick buildings, are all
white men, and they are in the full enjoyment of health. But how
about cotton? I am informed by a friend of mine--himself a
slaveholder, and therefore good authority--that in Northwestern
Texas, among the German settlements, who, true to their national
instincts, will not employ the labor of a slave--they produce more
cotton to the acre, and of a better quality, and selling at prices
from a cent to a cent and a half a pound higher than that produced by
slave labor. This is an experiment that illustrates what I have
always held, that whatever is right is expedient."

THE VOICE OF BENTON.

In his "Thirty Years' View," Thomas H. Benton says:--

"My opposition to the extension of slavery dates further back than
1844--forty years further back; and as this is a suitable time for a
general declaration, and a sort of general conscience delivery, I
will say that my opposition to it dates from 1804, when I was a
student at law in the State of Tennessee, and studied the subject of
African slavery in an American book--a Virginia book--Tucker's
edition of Blackstone's Commentaries."

Again, in a speech delivered in St. Louis, on the 3rd of November, 1856, he says:--

"I look at white people, and not at black ones; I look to the peace
and reputation of the race to which I belong. I look to the peace of
this land--the world's last hope for a free government on the earth.
One of the occasions on which I saw Henry Clay rise higher than I
thought I ever saw him before, was when in the debate on the
admission of California, a dissolution was apprehended if slavery was
not carried into this Territory, where it never was. Then Mr. Clay,
rising, loomed colossally in the Senate of the United States, as he
rose declaring that for no earthly purpose, no earthly object, could
he carry slavery into places where it did not exist before. It was a
great and proud day for Mr. Clay, towards the latter days of his
life, and if an artist could have been there to catch his expression
as he uttered that sentiment, with its reflex on his face, and his
countenance beaming with firmness of purpose, it would have been a
glorious moment in which to transmit him to posterity--his
countenance all alive and luminous with the ideas that beat in his
bosom. That was a proud day. I could have wished that I had spoken
the same words. I speak them now, telling you they were his, and
adopting them as my own."

THE VOICE OF MASON.

Colonel Mason, a leading and distinguished member of the Convention that formed the Constitution, from Virginia, when the provision for prohibiting the importation of slaves was under consideration, said:--

"The present question concerns not the importing States alone, but
the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor
despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the emigration
of whites who really enrich and strengthen a country. They produce
the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born
a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. As
nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must
be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence
punishes national sins by national calamities. He lamented that some
of our Eastern brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this
nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the right
to import, this was the case with many other rights, now to be
properly given up. He held it essential, in every point of view, that
the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of
slavery."

THE VOICE OF MCDOWELL.

In 1832, Gov. McDowell used this language in the Virginia Legislature:--

"Who that looks to this unhappy bondage of an unhappy people, in the
midst of our society, and thinks of its incidents or issues, but
weeps over it as a curse as great upon him who inflicts as upon him
who suffers it? Sir, you may place the slave where you please--you
may dry up, to your uttermost, the fountains of his feelings, the
springs of his thought--you may close upon his mind every avenue of
knowledge, and cloud it over with artificial night--you may yoke him
to your labors, as the ox, which liveth only to work and worketh only
to live--you may put him under any process which, without destroying
his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational
being--you may do this, and the idea that he was born to be free will
survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality--it is the
etherial part of his nature which oppression cannot rend. It is a
torch lit up in his soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be
extinguished by the hand of man."

THE VOICE OF IREDELL.

In the debates of the North Carolina Convention, Mr. Iredell, afterwards a Judge of the United States Supreme Court, said:--

"When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an
event which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every friend
of human nature."

THE VOICE OF PINKNEY.

William Pinkney, of Maryland, in the House of Delegates in that State, in 1789, made several powerful arguments in favor of the abolition of slavery. Here follows a brief extract from one of his speeches:--

"Iniquitous and most dishonorable to Maryland, is that dreary system
of partial bondage which her laws have hitherto supported with a
solicitude worthy of a better object, and her citizens by their
practice, countenanced. Founded in a disgraceful traffic, to which
the parent country lent its fostering aid, from motives of interest,
but which even she would have disdained to encourage, had England
been the destined mart of such inhuman merchandize, its continuance
is as shameful as its origin.

I have no hope that the stream of general liberty will forever flow
unpolluted through the mire of partial bondage, or that they who have
been habituated to lord it over others, will not, in time, become
base enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist, it will
be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle."

THE VOICE OF LEIGH.

In the Legislature of Virginia, in 1832, Mr. Leigh said:--

"I thought, till very lately that it was known to every body that,
during the Revolution, and for many years after, the abolition of
slavery was a favorite topic with many of our ablest Statesmen, who
entertained with respect all the schemes which wisdom or ingenuity
could suggest for its accomplishment."

THE VOICE OF MARSHALL.

Thomas Marshall, of Fauquier, said, in the Virginia Legislature, in 1832:--

"Wherefore, then, object to slavery? Because it is ruinous to the
whites--retards improvements, roots out an industrious population,
banishes the yeomanry of the country--deprives the spinner, the
weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and
support."

THE VOICE OF BOLLING.

Philip A. Bolling, of Buckingham, a member of the Legislature of Virginia in 1832, said:--

"The time will come--and it may be sooner than many are willing to
believe--when this oppressed and degraded race cannot be held as they
now are--when a change will be effected, abhorrent, Mr. Speaker, to
you, and to the feelings of every good man.

The wounded adder will recoil, and sting the foot that tramples upon
it. The day is fast approaching, when those who oppose all action
upon this subject, and, instead of aiding in devising some feasible
plan for freeing their country from an acknowledged curse, cry
'_impossible_,' to every plan suggested, will curse their
perverseness, and lament their folly."

THE VOICE OF CHANDLER.

Mr. Chandler, of Norfolk, member of the Virginia Legislature, in 1832, took occasion to say:--

"It is admitted, by all who have addressed this House, that slavery
is a curse, and an increasing one. That it has been destructive to
the lives of our citizens, history, with unerring truth, will record.
That its future increase will create commotion, cannot be doubted."

THE VOICE OF SUMMERS.

Mr. Summers, of Kanawha, member of the Legislature of Virginia, in 1832, said:--

"The evils of this system cannot be enumerated. It were unnecessary
to attempt it. They glare upon us at every step. When the owner looks
to his wasted estate, he knows and feels them."

THE VOICE OF PRESTON.

In the Legislature of Virginia, in 1832, Mr. Preston said:--

"Sir, Mr. Jefferson, whose hand drew the preamble to the Bill of
Rights, has eloquently remarked that we had invoked for ourselves the
benefit of a principle which we had denied to others. He saw and felt
that slaves, as men, were embraced within this principle."

THE VOICE OF FREMONT.

John Charles Fremont, one of the noblest sons of the South, says:--

"I heartily concur in all movements which have for their object to
repair the mischiefs arising from the violation of good faith in the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I am opposed to slavery in the
abstract, and upon principles sustained and made habitual by long
settled convictions. I am inflexibly opposed to its extension on this
continent beyond its present limits."

"The great body of non-slaveholding Freemen, including those of the
South, upon whose welfare slavery is an oppression, will discover
that the power of the General Government over the Public Lands may be
beneficially exerted to advance their interests, and secure their
independence, knowing this, their suffrages will not be wanting to
maintain that authority in the Union, which is absolutely essential
to the maintenance of their own liberties, and which has more than
once indicated the purpose of disposing of the Public Lands in such a
way as would make every settler upon them a freeholder."

THE VOICE OF BLAIR.

In an Address to the Republicans of Maryland, in 1856, Francis P. Blair says:--

"In every aspect in which slavery among us can be considered, it is
pregnant with difficulty. Its continuance in the States in which it
has taken root has resulted in the monopoly of the soil, to a great
extent, in the hands of the slaveholders, and the entire control of
all departments of the State Government; and yet a majority of people
in the slave States are not slave-owners. This produces an anomaly in
the principle of our free institutions, which threatens in time to
bring into subjugation to slave-owners the great body of the free
white population."

THE VOICE OF MAURY.

Lieut. Maury, to whom has been awarded so much well-merited praise in the world of science, says:--

"The fact must be obvious to the far-reaching minds of our Statesmen,
that unless some means of relief be devised, some channel afforded,
by which the South can, when the time comes, get rid of the excess of
her slave population, she will be ultimately found with regard to
this institution, in the predicament of the man with the wolf by the
ears; too dangerous to hold on any longer, and equally dangerous to
let go. To our mind, the event is as certain to happen as any event
which depends on the contingencies of the future, viz.: that unless
means be devised for gradually relieving the slave States from the
undue pressure of this class upon them--unless some way be opened by
which they may be rid of their surplus black population--the time
will come--it may not be in the next nor in the succeeding
generation--but, sooner or later, come it will, and come it
must--when the two races will join in the death struggle for the
mastery."

THE VOICE OF BIRNEY.

James G. Birney, of Kentucky, under whom the Abolitionists first became a National Party, and for whom they voted for President in 1844, giving him 66,304 votes, says:

"We have so long practiced injustice, adding to it hypocrisy, in the
treatment of the colored race, both negroes and Indians, that we
begin to regard injustice as an element--a chief element--the chief
element of our government. But no government which admits injustice
as an element can be a harmonious one or a permanent one. Harmony is
the antagonist of injustice, ever has been, and ever will be; that
is, so long as injustice lasts, which cannot always be, for it is a
lie, a semblance, therefore, perishable. True, from the imperfection
of man, his ambition and selfishness, injustice often finds its way
incidentally into the administration of public affairs, and maintains
its footing a long time before it is cast out by the legitimate
elements of government."

"Our slave States, especially the more southern of them, in which the
number of slaves is greater, and in which, of course the sentiment of
injustice is stronger than in the more northern ones, are to be
placed on the list of decaying communities. To a philosophic
observer, they seem to be falling back on the scale of civilization.
Even at the present point of retrogression, the cause of civilization
and human improvement would lose nothing by their annihilation."

THE VOICE OF DELAWARE.

Strong anti-slavery sentiment had become popular in Delaware as early as 1785. With Maryland and Missouri, it may now be ranked as a semi-slave State. Mr. McLane, a member of Congress from this State in 1825, said:--

"I shall not imitate the example of other gentlemen by making
professions of my love of liberty and abhorrence of slavery, not,
however, because I do not entertain them. I am an enemy to slavery."

THE VOICE OF MARYLAND.

Slavery has little vitality in Maryland. Baltimore, the greatest city of the South--greatest because freest--has a population of more than two hundred thousand souls, and yet less than three thousand of these are slaves. In spite of all the unjust and oppressive statutes enacted by the oligarchy, the non-slaveholders, who with the exception of a small number of slaveholding emancipationists, may in truth be said to be the only class of respectable and patriotic citizens in the South, have wisely determined that their noble State shall be freed from the sin and the shame, the crime and the curse of slavery; and in accordance with this determination, long since formed, they are giving every possible encouragement to free white labor, thereby, very properly, rendering the labor of slaves both unprofitable and disgraceful. The formation of an Abolition Society in this State, in 1789, was the result of the influence of the masterly speeches delivered in the House of Delegates, by the Hon. William Pinkney whose undying testimony we have already placed on record. Nearly seventy years ago, this eminent lawyer and Statesman declared to the people of America, that if they did not mark out the bounds of slavery, and adopt measures for its total extinction, it would finally "work a decay of the spirit of liberty in the free States." Further, he said that, "by the eternal principles of natural justice, no master in the State has a right to hold his slave in bondage a single hour." In 1787, Luther Martin, of this State, said:--

"Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has a
tendency to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it
lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us
to tyranny and oppression."

THE VOICE OF VIRGINIA.

After introducing the unreserved and immortal testimony of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and the other great men of the Old Dominion, against the institution of slavery, it may to some, seem quite superfluous to back the cause of Freedom by arguments from other Virginia abolitionists; but this State, notwithstanding all her more modern manners and inhumanity, has been so prolific of just views and noble sentiments, that we deem it eminently fit and proper to blazon many of them to the world as the redeeming features of her history. An Abolition Society was formed in this State in 1791. In a memorial which the members of this Society presented to Congress, they pronounced slavery "not only an odious degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the Gospel." A Bill of Rights, unanimously agreed upon by the Virginia Convention of June 12, 1776, holds--

"That all men are, by nature, equally free and independent;

That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common
benefit, protection, and security, of the People, Nation, or
Community;

That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people
in assembly ought to be free;

That all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest
with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage,
and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property, for public uses,
without their own consent or that of their representatives so
elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not in like manner
assented, for the public good;

That the freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of
Liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments;

That no free Government or the blessing of Liberty can be preserved
to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation,
temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to
fundamental principles."

The "Virginia Society for the Abolition of Slavery," organized in 1791, addressed Congress in these words:--

"Your memorialists, fully aware that righteousness exalteth a nation,
and that slavery is not only an odious degradation, but an outrageous
violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature, and
utterly repugnant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes
'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that a practice so
inconsistent with true policy and the inalienable rights of men,
should subsist in so enlightened an age, and among a people
professing that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to
freedom."

THE VOICE OF NORTH CAROLINA.