“Sir, if there be one who concurs with that gentleman in the harmless character of this institution, let me request him to compare the condition of the slaveholding portion of this commonwealth—barren, desolate, and seared as it were by the avenging hand of Heaven—with the descriptions which we have of this country from those who first broke its virgin soil. To what is this change ascribable?Alone to the withering and blasting effects of slavery.If this does not satisfy him, let me request him to extend his travels to theNorthern States of this Union, and beg him to contrast the happiness and contentment which prevail throughout that country, the busy and cheerful sound of industry, the rapid and swelling growth of their population, their means and institutions of education, their skill and proficiency in the useful arts, their enterprise and public spirit, the monuments of their commercial and manufacturing industry; and, above all, their devoted attachment to the government from which they derive their protection,with the derision, discontent, indolence, and poverty of the Southern country. To what, Sir, is all this ascribable?To that vice in the organization of society, by which one-half of its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half—to that unfortunate state of society in which freemen regard labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden tyrannically imposed upon them—to that condition of things in which half a million of your population can feel no sympathy with the society in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no attachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but injustice.
“If this should not be sufficient, and the curious and incredulous inquirer should suggest that the contrast which has been adverted to, and which is so manifest, might be traced to a difference of climate, or other causes distinct from slavery itself, permit me to refer him to the two States of Kentucky and Ohio. No difference of soil, no diversity of climate, no diversity in the original settlement of those two States, can account for the remarkable disproportion in their natural advancement. Separated by a river alone,they seem to have been purposely and providentially designed to exhibit in their future histories the difference which necessarily results from a country free from, and a country afflicted with, the curse of slavery.
“Vain and idle is every effort to strangle this inquiry. As well might you attempt to chain the ocean, or stay the avenging thunderbolts of Heaven, as to drive the people from any inquiry which may result in their better condition. This is too deep, too engrossing a subject of consideration. It addresses itself too strongly to our interests, to our passions, and to our feelings. I shall advocate no scheme that does not respect the right of property,so far as it is entitled to be respected, with a just regard to the safety and resources of the State. I would approach the subject as one of great magnitude and delicacy, as one whose varied and momentous consequences demand the calmest and most deliberate investigation. But still, Sir, I would approach it—aye, delicate as it may be, encompassed as it may be with difficulties and hazards, I would still approach it. The people demand it. Their security requires it. In the language of the wise and prophetic Jefferson, ‘Youmust approach it—you must bear it—you must adopt some plan of emancipation, or worse will follow.’”
Mr. Curtis, in a speech in the Virginia Legislature in 1832, said:
“There is a malaria in the atmosphere of these regions, which the new comer shuns, as being deleterious to his views and habits. See the wide-spreading ruin which the avarice of our ancestral government has produced in the South, as witnessed in a sparse population of freemen, deserted habitations, and fields without culture! Strange to tell, even the wolf, driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery.”
Mr. Moore, also a member of the Legislature of Virginia, in speaking of the evils of slavery, said:
“The first I shall mention is the irresistible tendency which it has to undermine and destroy everything like virtue and morality in the community. If we look back through the long course of time which has elapsed since the creation to the present moment, we shall scarcely be able to point out a people whose situation was not, in many respects, preferable to our own, and that of the other States, in which negro slavery exists.
“In that part of the State below tide-water, the whole face of the country wears an appearance of almost utter desolation, distressing to the beholder. The very spot on which our ancestors landed, a little more than two hundred years ago, appears to be on the eve of again becoming the haunt of wild beasts.”
Mr. Rives, of Campbell county, said:
“On the multiplied and desolating evils of slavery, he was not disposed to say much. The curse and deteriorating consequence were within the observation and experience of the members of the House and the people of Virginia, and it did not seem to him that there could be two opinions about it.”
Mr. Powell said:
“I can scarcely persuade myself that there is a solitary gentleman in this House who will not readily admit that slavery is an evil, and that its removal, if practicable, is a consummation most devoutly to be wished. I have not heard, nor do I expect to hear, a voice raised in this Hall to the contrary.”
In the language of another, “we might multiply extracts almost indefinitely from Virginia authorities—testifying to the blight and degradation that have overtaken the Old Dominion, in every department of her affairs. Her commerce gone, her agriculture decaying, her land falling in value, her mining and manufactures nothing, her schools dying out,—she presents, according to the testimony of her own sons, the saddest of all pictures—that of a sinking and dying State.” Every year leaves her in a worse condition than it found her; and as it is with Virginia, so it is with the entire South. In the terse language of Governor Wise, “all have grown poor together.” The black god of slavery, which the South has worshipped for two hundred and thirty-seven years, is but a devil in disguise; and if we would save ourselves from being engulphed in utter ruin we must repudiate this foul god, for a purer deity, and abandon his altars for a holiershrine. No time is to be lost; his fanatical adorers, the despotic adversaries of human liberty, are concocting schemes for the enslavement of all the laboring classes irrespective of race or color. The issue is before us; we cannot evade it; we must meet it with firmness, and with unflinching valor.
What it was that paralyzed the tongues of all those members of the Virgina Legislature, who, at the session of 1831-’32, distinguished themselves by advocating a system of emancipation, is a mystery that has never yet been solved. Whether any or all of them shared a division of spoils with a certain newspaper editor, we have no means of knowing; but if all accounts be true, there was consummated in Richmond, in the latter part of the year 1832, one of the blackest schemes of bribery and corruption that was ever perpetrated in this or any other country. We are assured, however, that one thing is certain, and it is this: that the negro population of Virginia was very considerably and suddenly decreased by forcible emigration—that a large gang was driven further South, sold, and the proceeds divided among certain renegades and traitors, who, Judas-like, had agreed to serve the devil for a price.
We would fain avoid all personalities and uncomplimentary allusions to the dead, but when men, from love of lucre, from mere selfish motives, or from sheer turpitude of heart, inflict great injuries and outrages on the public, their villainy ought to be exposed, so that others may be deterred from following in their footsteps. As a general rule, man’s moral nature is, we believe, so strongthat it invariably prompts him to eschew vice and practice virtue—in other words, to do right; but this rule, like all others, has its exceptions, as might be most strikingly illustrated in the character of —— ——, and some half-dozen or more of his pro-slavery coadjutors. From whose hands did this man receive fifty thousand dollars—improperly, if not illegally, taken from the public funds in Washington? When did he receive it?—and for what purpose?—and who was the arch-demagogue through whose agency the transfer was made? He was an oligarchical member of the Cabinet under Mr. Polk’s administration in 1845,—and the money wasused,—and who can doubtintended?—for the express purpose of establishing another negro-driving journal to support the tottering fortunes of slavery. From the second volume of a valuable political work, “by a Senator of thirty years,” we make the following pertinent extract:—
“TheGlobewas sold, and was paid for, and how? becomes a question of public concern to answer; for it was paid for out of public money—those same $50,000 which were removed to the village bank in the interior of Pennsylvania by a Treasury order on the fourth of November, 1844. Three annual installments made the payment, and the Treasury did not reclaim the money for these three years; and, though traveling through tortuous channels, the sharpsighted Mr. Rives traced the money back to its starting point from that deposit. Besides, Mr. Cameron, who had control of the village bank, admitted before a committee of Congress, that he had furnished money forthe payments—an admission which the obliging Committee, on request, left out of their report. Mr. Robert J. Walker was Secretary of the Treasury during these three years, and the conviction was absolute, among the close observers of the course of things, that he was the prime contriver and zealous manager of the arrangements which displaced Mr. Blair and installed Mr. Ritchie.”
Thus, if we are to believe Mr. Benton, in his “Thirty Year’s View,” and we are disposed to regard him as good authority, the WashingtonUnionwas brought into existence under the peculiar auspices of the ostensible editor of the RichmondEnquirer; and the two papers, fathered by the same individual, have gone hand in hand for the last dozen or thirteen years, the shameless advocates and defenders of human bondage. To suppose that either has been sustained by fairer means than it was commenced with, would be wasting imagination on a great improbability. Both have uniformly and pertinaciously opposed every laudable enterprise that the white non-slaveholder has projected; indeed, so unmitigated has been their hostility to all manual pursuits in which their stupid and vulgar slaves can not be employed to advantage—and if there is any occupation under the sun in which they can be employed to good advantage, weknownot what it is—that it is an extremely difficult matter to find a respectable merchant, mechanic, manufacturer, or business man of any calling whatever, within the bounds of their circulation.
We have been credibly informed by a gentleman from Powhattan county, in Virginia, that in the year 1836 or’37, or about that time, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, of Boston, backed by his brother Amos and other millionaires of New England, went down to Richmond with the sole view of reconnoitering the manufacturing facilities of that place—fully determined, if pleased with the water-power, to erect a large number of cotton-mills and machine-shops. He had been in the capital of Virginia only a day or two before he discovered, much to his gratification, that nature had shaped everything to his liking; and as he was a business man who transacted business in a business-like manner, he lost no time in making preliminary arrangements for the consummation of his noble purpose. His mission was one of peace and promise; others were to share the benefits of his laudable and concerted scheme; thousands of poor boys and girls in Virginia, instead of growing up in extreme poverty and ignorance, or of having to emigrate to the free States of the West, were to have avenues of profitable employment opened to them at home; thus they would be enabled to earn an honest and reputable living, to establish and sustain free schools, free libraries, free lectures, and free presses, to become useful and exemplary members of society, and to die fit candidates for heaven. The magnanimous New Englander was in ecstasies with the prospect that opened before him. Individually, so far as mere money was concerned, he was perfectly independent; his industry and economy in early life had secured to him the ownership and control of an ample fortune. With the aid of eleven other men, each equal to himself, he could have bought the whole city of Richmond—negroes and all—though it is not to bepresumed that he would have disgraced his name by becoming a trader in human flesh. But he was not selfish; unlike the arrogant and illiberal slaveholder, he did not regard himself as the centre around whom everybody else should revolve. On the contrary, he was a genuine philanthropist. While, with a shrewdness that will command the admiration of every practical business man, he engaged in nothing that did not swell the dimensions of his own purse, he was yet always solicitous to invest his capital in a manner calculated to promote the interest of those around him. Nor was he satisfied with simply furnishing the means whereby his less fortunate neighbors were to become prosperous, intelligent and contented. With his generous heart and sagacious mind, he delighted to aid them in making a judicious application of his wealth to their own use. Moreover, as a member of society, he felt that the community had some reasonable claims upon him, and he made it obligatory on himself constantly to devise plans and exert his personal efforts for the public good. Such was the character of the distinguished manufacturer who honored Richmond with his presence nineteen or twenty years ago; such was the character of the men whom he represented, and such were the grand designs which they sought to accomplish.
To the enterprising and moneyed descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers it was a matter of no little astonishment, that the immense water-power of Richmond had been so long neglected. He expressed his surprise to a number of Virginians, and was at a loss to know why they had not, long prior to the period of his visit amongst them,availed themselves of the powerful element that is eternally gushing and foaming over the falls of James River. Innocent man! He was utterly unconscious of the fact that he was “interfering with the beloved institutions of the South,” and little was he prepared to withstand the terrible denunciations that were immediately showered on his head through the columns of the RichmondEnquirer. Few words will suffice to tell the sequel. That negro-worshipping sheet, whose hireling policy, for the last four and twenty years, has been to support the worthless black slave and his tyrannical master at the expense of the free white laborer, wrote down the enterprise! and the noble son of New England, abused, insulted and disgusted, quietly returned to Massachusetts, and there employed his capital in building up the cities of Lowell and Lawrence, either of which, in all those elements of material and social prosperity that make up the greatness of States, is already far in advance of the most important of all the seedy and squalid niggervilles in the Old Dominion. Such is an inkling of the infamous means that have been resorted to, from time to time, for the purpose of upholding and perpetuating in America the accursed institution of slavery.
Having in view all the foregoing facts, we were not in the least surprised when, while walking through Hollywood Cemetery, in the western suburbs of Richmond, not long since, our companion, a Virginian of the true school, directed our attention to a monument of some pretentions, and exclaimed, “There lie the remains of a man upon whose monument should be inscribed in everlastingprominence the finger of scorn pointing downward.” The reader scarcely needs to be told that we were standing at the tomb of —— ——, who in the opinion of our friend, had, by concentrating within himself the views and purposes of all the evil spirits in Virginia, greatly retarded the abolition of slavery; so greatly, indeed, as, thereby, to throw the State at least fifty years behind her free competitors of the North, of the East, and of the West. It is to be hoped that Virginia may never give birth to another man whose evil influence will so justly entitle him to the reprobation of posterity.
How any rational man in this or any other country, with the astounding contrasts between Freedom and Slavery ever looming in his view, can offer an apology for the existing statism of the South, is to us a most inexplicable mystery. Indeed, we cannot conceive it possible that the conscience of any man, who is really sane, would permit him to become the victim of such an egregious and diabolical absurdity. Therefore, at this period of our history, with the light of the past, the reality of the present, and the prospect of the future, all so prominent and so palpable, we infer that every person who sets up an unequivocal defence of the institution of slavery, must, of necessity, be either a fool, a knave, or a madman.
It is much to be regretted that the slavocrats look at but one side of the question. Of all the fanatics in the country, they have, of late, become the most unreasonable and ridiculous. Let them deliberately view the subject of slavery in all its aspects and bearings, and if they are possessed of honest hearts and convincible minds, theywill readily perceive the grossness of their past errors, renounce their allegiance to a cause so unjust and disgraceful, and at once enroll themselves among the hosts of Freedom and the friends of universal Liberty. There are thirty-one States in the Union; let them drop California, or any other new free State, and then institute fifteen comparisons, first comparing New-York with Virginia, Pennsylvania with Carolina, Massachusetts with Georgia, and so on, until they have exhausted the catalogue. Then, for once, let them be bold enough to listen to the admonitions of their own souls, and if they do not soon start to their feetdemandingthe abolition of slavery, it will only be because they have reasons for suppressing their inmost sentiments. Whether we compare the old free States with the old slave States, or the new free States with the new slave States, the difference, unmistakable and astounding, is substantially the same. All the free States are alike, and all the slave States are alike. In the former, wealth, intelligence, power, progress, and prosperity, are the prominent characteristics; in the latter, poverty, ignorance, imbecility, inertia, and extravagance, are the distinguishing features. To be convinced, it is only necessary for us to open our eyes and look at facts—to examine thestatisticsof the country, to free ourselves from obstinacy and prejudice, and to unbar our minds to convictions of truth. Let figures be the umpire. Close attention to the preceding and subsequent tables is all we ask; so soon as they shall be duly considered and understood, the primary object of this work will have been accomplished.
Not content with eating out the vitals of the South, slavery, true to the character which it has acquired for insatiety and rapine, is beginning to make rapid encroachments on new territory; and as a basis for a few remarks on the blasting influence which it is shedding over the broad and fertile domains of the West, which in accordance with the views and resolutions offered by the immortal Jefferson, should have been irrevocably dedicated to freedom, we beg leave to call the attention of the reader to another presentation of the philosophy of free and slave labor. Says theNorth American and United States Gazette:
“We have but to compare the States, possessing equal natural advantages, in which the two kinds of labor are employed, in order to decide with entire confidence as to which kind is the more profitable. At the origin of the government, Virginia, with a much larger extent of territory than New-York, contained a population of seven hundred and fifty thousand, and sent ten representatives to Congress; while New-York contained a population of three hundred and forty thousand, and sent six representatives to Congress. Behold how the figures are reversed. The population of New-York is three and a half millions, represented by thirty-three members in Congress; while the population of Virginia is but little more than one and a half millions, represented by thirteen members in Congress. It is the vital sap of free labor that makes the one tree so thrifty and vigorous, so capable of bearing with all ease the fruit of such a population. And it is slave labor which strikes a decadence through the other, drying up many of its branches with a fearful sterility, and rendering therest but scantily fruitful; really incapable of sustaining more. Look at Ohio, teeming with inhabitants, its soil loaded with every kind of agricultural wealth, its people engaged in every kind of freedom’s diversified employments, abounding with numberless happy homes, and with all the trophies of civilization, and it exhibits the magic effect of free labor, waking a wilderness into life and beauty; while Kentucky, with equal or superior natural advantages, nature’s very garden in this Western world, which commenced its career at a much earlier date, and was in a measure populous when Ohio was but a slumbering forest, but which in all the elements of progress, is now left far, very far, behind its young rival, shows how slave labor hinders the development of wealth among a people, and brings a blight on their prosperity. The one is a grand and beautiful poem in honor of free labor. The other is an humble confession to the world of the inferiority of slave labor.”
Equally significant is the testimony of Daniel R. Goodloe, of North Carolina, who says:—
“The history of the United States shows, that while the slave States increase in population less rapidly than the free, there is a tendency in slave society to diffusion, greater than is exhibited by free society. In fact, diffusion, or extension of area, is one of the necessities of slavery; the prevention of which is regarded as directly and immediately menacing to the existence of the institution. This arises from the almost exclusive application of slave labor to the one occupation of agriculture, and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of diversifying employments. Free society,on the contrary, has indefinite resources of development within a restricted area. It will far excel slave society in the cultivation of the ground—first, on account of the superior intelligence of the laborers; and secondly, in consequence of the greater and more various demands upon the earth’s products, where commerce, manufactures, and the arts, abound. Then, these arts of life, by bringing men together in cities and towns, and employing them in the manufacture or transportation of the raw materials of the farmer, give rise to an indefinite increase of wealth and population. The confinement of a free people within narrow limits seems only to develop new resources of wealth, comfort and happiness; while slave society, pent up, withers and dies. It must continually be fed by new fields and forests, to be wasted and wilted under the poisonous tread of the slave.”
Were we simply a freesoiler, or anything else less than a thorough and uncompromising abolitionist, we should certainly tax our ability to the utmost to get up a cogent argument against the extension of slavery over any part of our domain where it does not now exist; but as our principles are hostile to the institution even where it does exist, and, therefore, by implication and in fact, more hostile still to its introduction into new territory, we forbear the preparation of any special remarks on this particular subject.
With regard to the unnational and demoralizing institution of slavery, we believe the majority of Northern people are too scrupulous. They seem to think that it is enough for them to be mere freesoilers, to keep in check the diffusiveelement of slavery, and to prevent it from crossing over the bounds within which it is now regulated by municipal law. Remiss in theirnationalduties, as we contend, they make no positive attack upon the institution in the Southern States. Only a short while since, one of their ablest journals—theNorth American and United States Gazette, published in Philadelphia—made use of the following language:—
“With slavery in the States, we make no pretence of having anything politically to do. For better or for worse, the system belongs solely to the people of those States; and is separated by an impassable gulf of State sovereignty from any legal intervention of ours. We cannot vote it down any more than we can vote down the institution of caste in Hindostan, or abolish polygamy in the Sultan’s dominions. Thus, precluded from all political action in reference to it, prevented from touching one stone of the edifice, not the slightest responsibility attaches to us as citizens for its continued existence. But on the question of extending slavery over the free Territories of the United States, it is our right, it is our imperative duty to think, to feel, to speak and to vote. We cannot interfere to cover the shadows of slavery with the sunshine of freedom, but we can interfere to prevent the sunshine of freedom from being eclipsed by the shadows of slavery. We can interpose to stay the progress of that institution, which aims to drive free labor from its own heritage. Kansas should be divided up into countless homes for the ownership of men who have a right to the fruit of their own labors. Free labor would make it bud and blossom like the rose;would cover it with beauty, and draw from it boundless wealth; would throng it with population; would make States, nations, empires out of it, prosperous, powerful, intelligent and free, illustrating on a wide theatre the beneficent ends of Providence in the formation of our government, to advance and elevate the millions of our race, and, like the heart in the body, from its central position, sending out on every side, far and near, the vital influences of freedom and civilization. May that region, therefore, be secured to free labor.”
Now we fully and heartily indorse every line of the latter part of this extract; but, with all due deference to our sage cotemporary, we do most emphatically dissent from the sentiments embodied in the first part. Pray, permit us to ask—have the people of the North no interest in the United States as anation, and do they not see that slavery is a great injury and disgrace to thewhole country? Did they not, in “the days that tried men’s souls,” strike as hard blows to secure the independence of Georgia as they did in defending the liberties of Massachusetts, and is it not notoriously true that the Toryism of South Carolina prolonged the war two years at least? Is it not, moreover, equally true that the oligarchs of South Carolina have been unmitigated pests and bores to the General Government ever since it was organized, and that the free and conscientious people of the North are virtually excluded from her soil, in consequence of slavery? It is a well-known and incontestible fact, that the Northern States furnished about two-thirds of all the American troops engaged in the Revolutionary War; and,though they were neither more nor less brave or patriotic than their fellow-soldiers of the South, yet, inasmuch as the independence of our country was mainly secured by virtue of their numerical strength, we think they ought to consider it not only their right but theirdutyto make a firm and decisive effort to save the States which they fought to free, from falling under the yoke of a worse tyranny than that which overshadowed them under the reign of King George the Third. Freemen of the North! we earnestly entreat you to think of these things. Hitherto, as mere freesoilers, you have approached but half-way to the line of your duty; now, for your own sakes and for ours, and for the purpose of perpetuating this glorious Republic, which your fathers and our fathers founded in septennial streams of blood, we ask you, in all seriousness, to organize yourselves asone manunder the banners of Liberty, and to aid us inexterminatingslavery, which is the only thing that militates against our complete aggrandizement as a nation.
In this extraordinary crisis of affairs, no man can be a true patriot without first becoming an abolitionist. (A freesoiler is only a tadpole in an advanced state of transformation; an abolitionist is the full and perfectly developed frog.) And here, perhaps, we may be pardoned for the digression necessary to show the exact definition of the termsabolish,abolitionandabolitionist. We have looked in vain for an explanation of the signification of these words in any Southern publication; for no dictionary has ever yet been published in the South, nor is there the least probability that one ever will be published within herborders, until slavery isabolished; but, thanks to Heaven, a portion of this continent is what our Revolutionary Fathers and the Fathers of the Constitution fought and labored and prayed to make it—a land of freedom, of power, of progress, of prosperity, of intelligence, of religion, of literature, of commerce, of science, of arts, of agriculture, of manufactures, of ingenuity, of enterprise, of wealth, of renown, of goodness, and of grandeur. From that glorious part of our confederacy—from the North, whence, on account of slavery in the South, we are under the humiliating necessity of procuring almost everything that is useful or ornamental, from primers to Bibles, from wafers to printing-presses, from ladles to locomotives, and from portfolios to portraits and pianos—comes to us a huge volume bearing the honored name of Webster—Noah Webster, who, after thirty-five years of unremitting toil, completed a work which is, we believe, throughout Great Britain and the United States, justly regarded as the standard vocabulary of the English language—and in it the termsabolish,abolition, andabolitionist, are defined as follows:—
“Abolish,v. t.To make void; to annul; to abrogate; applied chiefly and appropriately to establish laws, contracts, rites, customs and institutions; as toabolishlaws by a repeal, actual or virtual. To destroy or put an end to; as toabolishidols.”“Abolition,n.The act of abolishing; or the state of being abolished; an annulling; abrogation; utter destruction; as theabolitionof laws, decrees, or ordinances, rites, customs, &c. The putting an end to slavery; emancipation.”“Abolitionist,n.A person who favors abolition, or the immediate emancipation of slaves.”
“Abolish,v. t.To make void; to annul; to abrogate; applied chiefly and appropriately to establish laws, contracts, rites, customs and institutions; as toabolishlaws by a repeal, actual or virtual. To destroy or put an end to; as toabolishidols.”
“Abolition,n.The act of abolishing; or the state of being abolished; an annulling; abrogation; utter destruction; as theabolitionof laws, decrees, or ordinances, rites, customs, &c. The putting an end to slavery; emancipation.”
“Abolitionist,n.A person who favors abolition, or the immediate emancipation of slaves.”
There, gentlemen of the South, you have the definitions of the transitive verbabolishand its two derivative nouns,abolitionandabolitionist; can you, with the keenest possible penetration of vision, detect in either of these words even a tittle of the opprobrium which the oligarchs, in their wily and inhuman efforts to enslave all working classes irrespective of race or color, have endeavored to attach to them? We know you cannot; abolition is but another name for patriotism, and its other special synonyms are generosity, magnanimity, reason, prudence, wisdom, religion, progress, justice, and humanity.
And here, by the way, we may as well explain whom we refer to when we speak of gentlemen of the South. We say, therefore, that, deeply impressed with the conviction that slavery is a great social and political evil, asin and a crime, in the fullest sense, whenever we speak of gentlemen of the South, or of gentlemen anywhere, or at whatever time, or in whatever connection we may speak of gentlemen, we seldom allude to slaveholders, for the simple reason that, with few exceptions, we cannot conscientiously recognizethemas gentlemen. It is only in those rare instances where the crime is mitigated by circumstances over which the slaveholder has had no control, or where he himself, convinced of the impropriety, the folly and the wickedness of the institution, is anxious to abolish it, that we can sincerely apply to him the sacred appellation in question—an appellation which we would no sooner think of applying to apro-slaveryslaveholder, or any other pro-slavery man, than we would think of applying it to a border-ruffian, a thief or a murderer. Let it beunderstood, however, that the rare instances of which we speak are less rare than many persons may suppose. We are personally acquainted with several slaveholders in North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, who have unreservedly assured us that they were disgusted with the institution, and some of them went so far as to say they would be glad to acquiesce in the provision of a statute which would make it obligatory on them all to manumit their slaves, without the smallest shadow or substance of compensation. These, we believe, are the sentiments of all the respectable and patriotic slaveholders, who have eyes to see, and see—ears to hear, and hear; who, perceiving the impoverishing and degrading effects of slavery, are unwilling to entail it on their children, and who, on account of their undeviating adherence to truth and justice, are, like the more intelligent non-slaveholders, worthy of being regarded as gentlemen in every sense of the term. Such slaveholders were Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other illustrious Virginians, who, in the language of the great chief himself, declared it among their “first wishesto see some plan adopted by which slavery, in this country, may be abolished by law.” The words embraced within this quotation were used by Washington, in a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9th, 1786—a letter from which we shall quote more freely hereafter; and we think his emphatic use of the participleabolished, at that early day, is proof positive that the glorious “Father of his Country” is entitled to the first place in the calendar of primitive American abolitionists.
It is against slavery on the whole, and against slaveholders as a body, that we wage an exterminating war. Those persons who, under the infamous slave-laws of the South—laws which have been correctly spoken of as a “disgrace to civilization,” and which must be annulled simultaneously with the abolition of slavery—have had the vile institution entailed on them contrary to their wills, are virtually on our side; we may, therefore, very properly strike them off from the black list of three hundred and forty-seven thousand slaveholders, who, as a body, have shocked the civilized world with their barbarous conduct, and from whose conceited and presumptuous ranks are selected the officers who do all the legislation, town, county, state and national, for (against) five millions of poor outraged whites, and three millions of enslaved negroes.
Non-slaveholders of the South! farmers, mechanics and workingmen, we take this occasion to assure you that the slaveholders, the arrogant demagogues whom you have elected to offices of honor and profit, have hoodwinked you, trifled with you, and used you as mere tools for the consummation of their wicked designs. They have purposely kept you in ignorance, and have, by moulding your passions and prejudices to suit themselves, induced you to act in direct opposition to your dearest rights and interests. By a system of the grossest subterfuge and misrepresentation, and in order to avert, for a season, the vengeance that will most assuredly overtake them ere long, they have taught you to hate the abolitionists, who are your best and only true friends. Now, as one of yourown number, we appeal to you to join us in our patriotic endeavors to rescue the generous soil of the South from the usurped and desolating control of these political vampires. Once and forever, at least so far as this country is concerned, the infernal question of slavery must be disposed of; a speedy and perfect abolishment of the whole institution is the true policy of the South—and this is the policy which we propose to pursue. Will you aid us, will you assist us, will you be freemen, or will you be slaves? These are questions of vital importance; weigh them well in your minds; come to a prudent and firm decision, and hold yourselves in readiness to act in accordance therewith. You must either be for us or against us—anti-slavery or pro-slavery; it is impossible for you to occupy a neutral ground; it is as certain as fate itself, that if you do not voluntarily oppose the usurpations and outrages of the slavocrats, they will force you into involuntary compliance with their infamous measures. Consider well the aggressive, fraudulent and despotic power which they have exercised in the affairs of Kanzas; and remember that, if, by adhering to erroneous principles of neutrality or non-resistance, you allow them to force the curse of slavery on that vast and fertile field, the broad area of all the surrounding States and Territories—the whole nation, in fact—will soon fall a prey to their diabolical intrigues and machinations. Thus, if you are not vigilant, will they take advantage of your neutrality, and make you and others the victims of their inhuman despotism. Do not reserve the strength of your arms until you shall have been rendered powerless to strike; the present is theproper time for action; under all the circumstances, apathy or indifference is a crime. First ascertain, as nearly as you can, the precise nature and extent of your duty, and then, without a moment’s delay, perform it in good faith. To facilitate you in determining what considerations of right, justice and humanity require at your hands, is one of the primary objects of this work; and we shall certainly fail in our desire if we do not accomplish our task in a manner acceptable to God and advantageous to man.
But we are carrying this chapter beyond all ordinary bounds; and yet, there are many important particulars in which we have drawn no comparison between the free and the slave States. The more weighty remarks which we intended to offer in relation to the new States of the West and Southwest, free and slave, shall appear in the succeeding chapter. With regard to agriculture, and all the multifarious interests of husbandry, we deem it quite unnecessary to say more. Cotton has been shorn of its magic power, and is no longer King;dried grass, commonly called hay, is, it seems, the rightful heir to the throne. Commerce, Manufactures, Literature, and other important subjects, shall be considered as we progress.
Preliminary to our elucidation of what we conceive to be the most discreet, fair and feasible plan for the abolition of slavery, we propose to offer a few additional reasons why it should be abolished. Among the thousand and one arguments that present themselves in support of our position—which, before we part with the reader, we shall endeavor to define so clearly, that it shall be regarded as ultra only by those who imperfectly understand it—is the influence which slavery invariably exercises in depressing the value of real estate; and as this is a matter in which the non-slaveholders of the South, of the West, and of the Southwest, are most deeply interested, we shall discuss it in a sort of preamble of some length.
The oligarchs say we cannot abolish slavery without infringing on the right of property. Again we tell them we do not recognize property in man; but even if we did, and if we were to inventory the negroes at quadruple, the value of their last assessment, still, impelled by a sense of duty to others, and as a matter of simple justice to ourselves, we, the non-slaveholders of the South, would be fully warranted in emancipating all the slaves at once, and that, too, without any compensation whatever tothose who claim to be their absolute masters and owners. We will explain. In 1850, the average value per acre, of land in the Northern States was $28,07; in the Northwestern $11,39; in the Southern $5,34; and in the Southwestern $6,26. Now, in consequence of numerous natural advantages, among which may be enumerated the greater mildness of climate, richness of soil, deposits of precious metals, abundance and spaciousness of harbors, and super-excellence of water-power, we contend that, had it not been for slavery, the average value of land in all the Southern and Southwestern States, would have beenat leastequal to the average value of the same in the Northern States. We conclude, therefore, and we think the conclusion is founded on principles of equity, that you, the slaveholders, are indebted to us, the non-slaveholders, in the sum of $22,73, which is the difference between $28,07 and $5,34, on every acre of Southern soil in our possession. This claim we bring against you, because slavery, which has inured exclusively to your own benefit, if, indeed, it has been beneficial at all, has shed a blighting influence over our lands, thereby keeping them out of market, and damaging every acre to the amount specified. Sirs! are you ready to settle the account? Let us see how much it is. There are in the fifteen slave States, 346,048 slaveholders, and 544,926,120 acres of land. Now the object is to ascertain how many acres are owned by slaveholders, and how many by non-slaveholders. Suppose we estimate five hundred acres as the average landed property of each slaveholder; will that be fair? We think it will, taking into consideration the fact that 174,503of the whole number of slaveholders hold less than five slaves each—68,820 holding only one each. According to this hypothesis, the slaveholders own 173,024,000 acres, and the non-slaveholders the balance, with the exception of about 40,000,000 of acres, which belong to the General Government. The case may be stated thus:
Area of the Slave States 544,926,720 acres.
Now, chevaliers of the lash, and worshippers of slavery, the total value of three hundred and thirty-one million nine hundred and two thousand seven hundred and twenty acres, at twenty-two dollars and seventy-three cents per acre, isseven billion five hundred and forty-four million one hundred and forty-eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-five dollars; and this is our account against you on a single score. Considering how your villainous institution has retarded the development of our commercial and manufacturing interests, how it has stifled the aspirations of inventive genius; and, above all, how it has barred from us the heaven-born sweets of literature and religion—concernments too sacred to be estimated in a pecuniary point of view—might we not, with perfect justice and propriety, duplicate the amount, and still be accounted modest in our demands? Fully advised, however, of your indigent circumstances, we feel it would be utterly useless to call on you for the whole amount that is due us; we shall, therefore, in your behalf, make another draft on the fund of non-slaveholding generosity, and let the account, meagre as it is, stand as above. Though we have givenyou all the offices, and you have given us none of the benefits of legislation; though we have fought the battles of the South, while you were either lolling in your piazzas, or playing the tory, and endeavoring to filch from us our birthright of freedom; though you have absorbed the wealth of our communities in sending your own children to Northern seminaries and colleges, or in employing Yankee teachers to officiate exclusively in your own families, and have refused to us the limited privilege of common schools; though you have scorned to patronize our mechanics and industrial enterprises, and have passed to the North for every article of apparel, utility, and adornment; and though you have maltreated, outraged and defrauded us in every relation of life, civil, social, and political, yet we are willing to forgive andforgetyou, if you will but do us justice on a single count. Of you, the introducers, aiders and abettors of slavery, we demand indemnification for the damage our lands have sustained on account thereof; the amount of that damage is $7,544,148,825; and now, Sirs, we are ready to receive the money, and if it is perfectly convenient to you, we would be glad to have you pay it in specie! It will not avail you, Sirs, to parley or prevaricate. We must have a settlement. Our claim is just and overdue. We have already indulged you too long. Your criminal extravagance has almost ruined us. We are determined that you shall no longer play the profligate, and fair sumptuously every day at our expense. How do you propose to settle? Do you offer us your negroes in part payment? We do not want your negroes. We would not have all of them, nor any number of them,even as a gift. We hold ourselves above the disreputable and iniquitous practices of buying, selling, and owning slaves. What we demand is damages in money, or other absolute property, as an equivalent for the pecuniary losses we have suffered at your hands. You value your negroes at sixteen hundred millions of dollars, and propose to sell them to us for that sum; we should consider ourselves badly cheated, and disgraced for all time, here and hereafter, if we were to take them off your hands at sixteen farthings! We tell you emphatically, we are firmly resolved never to degrade ourselves by becoming the mercenary purchasers or proprietors of human beings. Except for the purpose of liberating them, we would not give a handkerchief or a tooth-pick for all the slaves in the world. But, in order to show how brazenly absurd are the howls and groans which you invariably set up for compensation, whenever we speak of the abolition of slavery, we will suppose your negroes are worth all you ask for them, and that we are bound to secure to you every cent of the sum before they can become free—in which case, our accounts would stand thus:
Now, Sirs, we ask you in all seriousness, Is it not true that you have filched from us nearly five times the amount of the assessed value of your slaves? Why, then, do you still clamor for more? Is it your purpose to make the game perpetual? Think you that we will ever continue to bow at the wave of your wand, that we will bringhumanity into everlasting disgrace by licking the hand that smites us, and that with us there is no point beyond which forbearance ceases to be a virtue? Sirs, if these be your thoughts, you are laboring under a most fatal delusion. You can goad us no further; you shall oppress us no longer; heretofore, earnestly but submissively, we have asked you to redress the more atrocious outrages which you have perpetrated against us; but what has been the invariable fate of our petitions? With scarcely a perusal, with a degree of contempt that added insult to injury, you have laid them on the table, and from thence they have been swept into thefurnaceof oblivion. Henceforth, Sirs, we are demandants, not suppliants. We demand our rights, nothing more, nothing less. It is for you to decide whether we are to have justice peaceably or by violence, for whatever consequences may follow, we are determined to have it one way or the other. Do you aspire to become the victims of white non-slaveholding vengeance by day, and of barbarous massacre by the negroes at night? Would you be instrumental in bringing upon yourselves, your wives, and your children, a fate too horrible to contemplate? shall history cease to cite, as an instance of unexampled cruelty, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, because the world—the South—shall have furnished a more direful scene of atrocity and carnage? Sirs, we would not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads; but we have endured long, we have endured much; slaves only of the most despicable class would endure more. An enumeration or classification of all the abuses, insults, wrongs, injuries, usurpations, and oppressions,to which you have subjected us, would fill a larger volume than this; it is our purpose, therefore, to speak only of those that affect us most deeply. Out of our effects your have long since overpaid yourselves for your negroes; and now, Sirs, youmustemancipate them—speedily emancipate them, or we will emancipate them for you! Every non-slaveholder in the South is, or ought to be, and will be, against you. You yourselves ought to join us at once in our laudable crusade against “the mother of harlots.” Slavery has polluted and impoverished your lands; freedom will restore them to their virgin purity, and add from twenty to thirty dollars to the value of every acre. Correctly speaking, emancipation will cost you nothing; the moment you abolish slavery, that very moment will the putative value of the slave become actual value in the soil. Though there are ten millions of people in the South, and though you, the slaveholders, are only three hundred and forty-seven thousand in number, you have within a fraction of one-third of all the territory belonging to the fifteen slave States. You have a landed estate of 173,024,000 acres, the present average market value of which is only $5,34 per acre; emancipate your slaves on Wednesday morning, and on the Thursday following the value of your lands, and ours too, will have increased to an average of at least $28,07 per acre. Let us see, therefore, even in this one particular, whether the abolition of slavery will not be a real pecuniary advantage to you. The present total market value of all your landed property, at $5,34 per acre, is only $923,248,160! With the beauty and sunlight of freedom beaming on the same estate, itwould be worth, at $28,07 per acre, $4,856,873,680. The former sum, deducted from the latter, leaves a balance of $3,933,535,520, and to the full extent of this amount will your lands be increased in value whenever you abolish slavery; that is, provided you abolish it before it completely “dries up all the organs of increase.” Here is a more manifest and distinct statement of the case:—
Now, Sirs, this last sum is considerably more than twice as great as the estimated value of your negroes; and those of you, if any there be, who are yet heirs to sane minds and honest hearts, must, it seems to us, admit that the bright prospect which freedom presents for a wonderful increase in the value of real estate, ours as well as yours, to say nothing of the thousand other kindred considerations, ought to be quite sufficient to induce all the Southern States, in their sovereign capacities, to abolish slavery at the earliest practical period. You yourselves, instead of losing anything by the emancipation of your negroes—even though we suppose them to be worth every dime of $1,600,000,000—would, in this one particular, the increased value of land, realize anet profitof overtwenty three hundred millions of dollars! Here are the exact figures:—
What is the import of these figures? They are full of meaning. They proclaim themselves the financial intercessors for freedom, and, with that open-hearted liberality which is so characteristic of the sacred cause in whose behalf they plead, they propose to pay you upward of three thousand nine hundred millions of dollars for the very “property” which you, in all the reckless extravagance of your inhuman avarice, could not find a heart to price at more than one thousand six hundred millions. In other words, your own lands, groaning and languishing under the monstrous burden of slavery, announce their willingness to pay you all you ask for the negroes, and offer you, besides, a bonus of more than twenty-three hundred millions of dollars, if you will but convert those lands into free soil!Ourlands, also, cry aloud to be spared from the further pollutions and desolations of slavery; and now, Sirs, we want to know explicitly whether, or not, it is your intention to heed these lamentations of the ground? We want to know whether you are men or devils—whether you are entirely selfish and cruelly dishonest, or whether you have any respect for the rights of others. We, the non-slaveholders of the South, have many very important interests at stake—interests which, heretofore, you have steadily despised and trampled under foot, but which, henceforth, we shall foster and defend in utter defiance of all the unhallowed influences which it is possible for you, or any other class of slaveholders or slavebreeders to bring against us. Not the least among these interests is our landed property, which, to command a decent price, only needs to be disencumbered of slavery.
In his present condition, we believe man exercises one of the noblest virtues with which heaven has endowed him, when, without taking any undue advantage of his fellow-men, and with a firm, unwavering purpose to confine his expenditures to the legitimate pursuits and pleasures of life, he covets money and strives to accumulate it. Entertaining this view, and having no disposition to make an improper use of money, we are free to confess that we have a greater penchant for twenty-eight dollars than for five; for ninety than for fifteen; for a thousand than for one hundred. South of Mason and Dixon’s line we, the non-slaveholders, have 331,902,720 acres of land, the present average market value of which, as previously stated, is only $5,34 per acre; by abolishing slavery we expect to enhance the value to an average of at least $28,07 per acre, and thus realize an average net increase of wealth of more thanseventy-five hundred millions of dollars. The hope of realizing smaller sums has frequently induced men to perpetrate acts of injustice; we can see no reason why the certainty of becoming immensely rich in real estate, or other property, should make us falter in the performance of asacred duty.
As illustrative of our theme, a bit of personal history may not be out of place in this connection. Only a few months have elapsed since we sold to an elder brother an interest we held in an old homestead which was willed to us many years ago by our dear departed father. The tract of land, containing two hundred acres, or thereabouts, is situated two and a half miles west of Mocksville, the capital of Davie county, North Carolina, and is very nearlyequally divided by Bear Creek, a small tributary of the South Yadkin. More than one-third of this tract—on which we have plowed, and hoed, and harrowed, many a long summer without ever suffering from the effects ofcoup de soleil—is under cultivation; the remaining portion is a well-timbered forest, in which, without being very particular, we counted, while hunting through it not long since, sixty-three different kinds of indigenous trees—to say nothing of either coppice, shrubs or plants—among which the hickory, oak, ash, beech, birch, and black walnut, were most abundant. No turpentine or rosin is produced in our part of the State; but there are, on the place of which we speak, several species of the genus Pinus, by the light of whose flammable knots, as radiated on the contents of some half-dozen old books, which, by hook or by crook, had found their way into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the long winter evenings to our advantage, and have thuspartiallyescaped from the prison-grounds of those loathsome dungeons of illiteracy in which it has been the constant policy of the oligarchy to keep the masses, the non-slaveholding whites and the negroes, forever confined. The fertility of the soil may be inferred from the quality and variety of its natural productions; the meadow and the bottom, comprising, perhaps, an area of forty acres, are hardly surpassed by the best lands in the valley of the Yadkin. A thorough examination of the orchard will disclose the fact that considerable attention has been paid to the selection of fruits; the buildings are tolerable; the water is good. Altogether, to be frank, and nothing more, it is, for its size, one of the most desirable farms inthe county, and will, at any time, command the maximum price of land in Western Carolina. Our brother, anxious to become the sole proprietor, readily agreed to give us the highest market price, which we shall publish by-and-bye. While reading the BaltimoreSun, the morning after we had made the sale, our attention was allured to a paragraph headed “Sales of Real Estate,” from which, among other significant items, we learned that a tract of land containing exactly two hundred acres, and occupying a portion of one of the rural districts in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania, near the Maryland line, had been sold the week before, atone hundred and five dollars and fifty centsper acre. Judging from the succinct account given in theSun, we are of the opinion that, with regard to fertility of soil, the Pennsylvania tract always has been, is now, and perhaps always will be, rather inferior to the one under special consideration. One is of the same size as the other; both are used for agricultural purposes; in all probability the onlyessentialdifference between them is this: one is blessed with the pure air of freedom, the other is cursed with the malaria of slavery. For our interest in the old homestead we received a nominal sum, amounting to an average of preciselyfive dollars and sixty centsper acre. No one but our brother, who was keen for the purchase, would have given us quite so much.
And, now, pray let us ask, what does this narrative teach? We shall use few words in explanation: there is an extensive void, but it can be better filled with reflection. The aggregate value of the one tract is $21,100; that of the other is only $1,120; the difference is $19,980. Wecontend, therefore, in view of all the circumstances detailed, that the advocates and retainers of slavery, have, to all intents and purposes, defrauded our family out of this last-mentioned sum. In like manner, and on the same basis of deduction, we contend that almost every non-slaveholder, who either is or has been the owner of real estate in the South, would, in a court of strict justice, be entitled to damages—the amount in all cases to be determined with reference to the quality of the land in question. We say this because, in violation of every principle of expediency, justice, and humanity, and in direct opposition to our solemn protests, slavery was foisted upon us, and has been thus far perpetuated, by and through the diabolical intrigues of the oligarchs, and by them alone; and furthermore, because the very best agricultural lands in the Northern States being worth from one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre, there is no possible reason, except slavery, why the more fertile and congenial soil of the South should not be worth at least as much. If, on this principle, we could ascertain, in the matter of real estate, the total indebtedness of the slaveholders to the non-slaveholders, we should doubtless find the sum quite equivalent to the amount estimated on a preceding page—$7,544,148,825.
We have recently conversed with two gentlemen who, to save themselves from the poverty and disgrace of slavery, left North Carolina six or seven years ago, and who are now residing in the territory of Minnesota, where they have accumulated handsome fortunes. One of them had traveled extensively in Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio,Indiana, and other adjoining States; and, according to his account, and we know him to be a man of veracity, it is almost impossible for persons at a distance, to form a proper conception of the magnitude of the difference between the current value of lands in the Free and the Slave States of the West. On one occasion, embarking at Wheeling, he sailed down the Ohio; Virgina and Kentucky on the one side, Ohio and Indiana on the other. He stopped at several places along the river, first on the right bank, then on the left, and so on, until he arrived at Evansville; continuing his trip, he sailed down to Cairo, thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Des Moines; having tarried at different points along the route, sometimes in Missouri, sometimes in Illinois. Wherever he landed on free soil, he found it from one to two hundred per cent. more valuable than the slave soil on the opposite bank. If, for instance, the maximum price of land was eight dollars in Kentucky, the minimum price was sixteen in Ohio; if it was seven dollars in Missouri, it was fourteen in Illinois. Furthermore, he assured us, that, so far as he could learn, two years ago, when he traveled through the States of which we speak, the range of prices of agricultural lands, in Kentucky, was from three to eight dollars per acre; in Ohio, from sixteen to forty; in Missouri, from two to seven; in Illinois, from fourteen to thirty; in Arkansas, from one to four; in Iowa, from six to fifteen.
In all the old slave States, as is well known, there are vast bodies of land that can be bought for the merest trifle. We know an enterprising capitalist in Philadelphia, who owns in his individual name, in the State ofVirginia,one hundred and thirty thousand acres, for which he paid onlythirty-seven and a half centsper acre! Some years ago, in certain parts of North Carolina, several large tracts were purchased at the rate oftwenty-five centsper acre!
Hiram Berdan, the distinguished inventor, who has frequently seen freedom and slavery side by side, and who is, therefore, well qualified to form an opinion of their relative influence upon society, says: