CHAPTER XXIV.CONCLUSION.

It has been shown in the foregoing pages of this work how that providential arrangement of human affairs, in which the negro is placed in natural juxtaposition with the white man, has resulted in the freedom of the latter and the general well-being of both. It has been seen how a subordinate and widely different social element in Virginia and other States, naturally gave origin to new ideas and new modes of thought, which, thrusting aside the mental habits and political notions brought from the Old World, naturally culminated in the grand idea of 1776, and the establishment of a new political existence, based on the natural, organic, and everlasting equality of the race. It has been seen, moreover, how the great civil revolution of 1800, which, under the lead of Mr. Jefferson, restored the purity and simplicity of republican principles, saved the Northern laboring and producing classes from the rule of an oligarchy, otherwise unavoidable, however it might have been disguised by republican formulas.

It is scarcely necessary to appeal to the political history of the country since 1800 to demonstrate the vital importance—indeed, the measureless benefit—of what, by an absurd perversion of terms, has been called negro slavery, to the freedom, progress, and prosperity of the laboring and producing classes of the North, and, indeed, to all mankind. It is seen that the existence of an inferior race—the presence of a natural substratum in the political society of the New World—has resultedin the creation of a new political and social order, and relieved the producing classes from that abject dependence on capital which in Europe, and especially in England, renders them mere beasts of burthen to a fraction of their brethren. The simple but transcendent fact, that capital and labor are united at the South—that the planter, or so-called slaveholder, is,per seand of necessity, the defender of the rights of the producing classes—this simple fact is the key to our political history, and the hinging-point of our party politics for half a century past.

The Southern planter and Northern farmer—the producing classes—a Southern majority and a Northern minority—have governed the country, fought all its battles, acquired all its territories, and conducted the nation step by step to its present position of strength, power, and grandeur. Just as steadily a Northern majority and a Southern minority have opposed this progress, and labored blindly, doubtless, to return to the system of the federalists, indeed to the European idea of class distinctions, and to render the government an instrument for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

They have sought to create national banks; demanded favors for those engaged in manufactures; for others engaged in Northern fisheries; for the benefit of bands of jobbers and speculators, under pretence of internal improvements; in short, the Northern majority have labored continually to render the government, as in England, an instrument for benefiting classes at the expense of the great body of the people.

All these efforts, however, have been defeated by the union of Northern and Southern producers, and mainly by the latter. A large majority of the votes in Congress against special legislation and schemes of corruption have been those of so-called slaveholders; and in those extraordinary instances when Northern representatives of agricultural constituencies have provedfaithless, and these schemes “worked” through Congress, “slaveholders” in the Presidential chair have interposed the veto, and saved the laboring and producing classes from this dangerous legislation, and the government from being perverted into an instrument of mischief.

Such has been our political and current party history, and from the nature and necessities of things, every “extension of slavery,” or every expansion of territory, must in the future, as it has in the past, strengthen the cause of the producing classes, and give greater scope and power to the American idea of government.

The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, of Texas, etc., of those great producing States on the Gulf Coast, has nearly overwhelmed the anti-republican tendencies of the North, and rendered almost powerless those combinations of capital and speculation which have always endangered the purity and simplicity of our republican system, and thus the rights and safety of the laboring and producing millions everywhere.

Indeed, it is a truth, a simple fact, that can not be too often repeated, that in precise proportion to the amount or extent of so-called “slaveholding”—of the number of negroes in their normal condition—is freedom rendered secure to the white millions of the North. And when in the progress of time Cuba and Central America, and the whole tropical center of the continent is added to the Union and placed in the same relation to New York and Ohio that Mississippi, Alabama, etc., are now, then it is evident that the democratic or American idea of government will be securely established forever, and the rights and interests of the producing millions who ask nothing from government but its protection, will be no longer endangered by those anti-republican tendencies which in the North have so long conflicted with the natural developmentof our system, and struggled so long and fiercely against its existence.

If this freedom and prosperity of the white man rested on wrong or oppression of the negro, then it would be valueless, for the Almighty has evidently designed that all His creatures should be permitted to live out the life to which He has adapted them. But when all the facts are considered, and the negro population of the South contrasted with any similar number of their race now or at any other time in human experience, then it is seen that, relatively considered, they are, perhaps, benefited to even a greater extent than the white population themselves.

The efforts, as has been shown, to reverse the natural order of things—to force the negro into the position of the white man—are not merely failures, but frightful cruelties—cruelties that among ourselves end in the extinction of these poor creatures, while in the tropics it destroys the white man and impels the negro into barbarism.

In conclusion, therefore, it is clear, or will be clear to every mind that grasps the facts of this great question, with the inductive facts, or the unavoidable inferences that belong to them, that any American citizen, party, sect, or class among us, so blinded, bewildered, and besotted by foreign theories and false mental habits as to labor for negro “freedom”—to drag down their own race, or to thrust the negro from his normal condition, is alike the enemy of both, a traitor to his blood and at war with the decrees of the Eternal.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESSilently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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