Volume II Part 4 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Livermore, pp. 159, 160.

[6] Mackenzie's Life of Perry, vol. i. pp. 165, 166.

[7] Mackenzie's Life of Perry, vol. i. pp. 186, 187.

[8] a.n.a.lectic Magazine, vol. iii. p. 255.

[9] Niles's Weekly Register, Sat.u.r.day, Feb. 26, 1814.

PART 5.

_ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION._

CHAPTER IV.

RETROSPECTION AND REFLECTION.

1825-1850.

THE SECURITY OF THE INSt.i.tUTION OF SLAVERY AT THE SOUTH.--THE RIGHT TO HOLD SLAVES QUESTIONED.--RAPID INCREASE OF THE SLAVE POPULATION.--ANTI-SLAVERY SPEECHES IN THE LEGISLATURE OF VIRGINIA.--THE QUAKERS OF MARYLAND AND DELAWARE EMANc.i.p.aTE THEIR SLAVES.--THE EVIL EFFECT OF SLAVERY UPON SOCIETY.--THE CONSCIENCE AND HEART OF THE SOUTH DID NOT RESPOND TO THE VOICE OF REASON OR DICTATES OF HUMANITY.

An awful silence succeeded the stormy struggle that ended in the violation of the ordinance of 1787. It was now time for reflection.

The Southern statesmen had proven themselves the masters of the situation. The inst.i.tution of slavery was secured to them, with many collateral political advantages. And, in addition to this, they had secured the inoculation of the free territory beyond the Mississippi and Ohio rivers with the virus of Negro-slavery.

If the mother-country had forced slavery upon her colonial dependencies in North America, and if it were difficult and inconvenient to part with slave-labor, who were now responsible for the extension of the slave area? Southern men, of course. What principle or human law was strong enough to support an inst.i.tution of such cruel proportions? The old law of European pagans born of b.l.o.o.d.y and destroying wars? No; for it was now the nineteenth century.

Abstract law? Certainly not; for law is the perfection of reason--it always tends to conform thereto--and that which is not reason is not law. Well did Justinian write: ”Live honestly, hurt n.o.body, and render to every one his just dues.” The law of nations? Verily not; for it is a system of rules deducible from reason and natural justice, and established by universal consent, to regulate the conduct and mutual intercourse between independent States. The Declaration of Independence? Far from it; because the prologue of that incomparable instrument recites: ”_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 inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed._” And the peerless George Bancroft has added: ”The heart of Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the a.s.sertion of right was made for all mankind and all coming generations, without any exception whatever; for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be self-evident.” There was but one authority for slavery left, and that was the Bible.

Many slave-holders thought deeply on the question of their right to hold slaves. A disturbed conscience cried aloud for a ”Thus saith the Lord,” and the pulpit was charged with the task of quieting the general disquietude. The divine origin of slavery was heard from a thousand pulpits. G.o.d, who never writes a poor hand, had written upon the brow of every Negro, the word ”_Slave_”; slavery was their normal condition, and the white man was G.o.d's agent in the United States to carry out the prophecy of Noah respecting the descendants of Ham; while St. Paul had sent Onesimus back to his owner, and had written, ”Servants, obey your masters.”

But apologetic preaching did not seem to silence the gnawing of a guilty conscience. Upon the battle-fields of two great wars; in the army and in the navy, the Negroes had demonstrated their worth and manhood. They had stood with the undrilled minute-men along the dusty roads leading from Lexington and Concord to Boston, against the skilled redcoats of boastful Britain. They were among the faithful little band that held Bunker Hill against overwhelming odds; at Long Island, Newport, and Monmouth, they had held their ground against the stubborn columns of the Ministerial army. They had journeyed with the Pilgrim Fathers through eight years of despair and hope, of defeat and victory; had shared their sufferings and divided their glory. These recollections made difficult an unqualified acceptance of the doctrine of the divine nature of perpetual slavery. Reason downed sophistry, and human sympathy shamed prejudice. And against prejudice, custom, and political power, the thinking men of the South launched their best thoughts. Jefferson said: ”The hour of emanc.i.p.ation is advancing in the march of time. It will come, and whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds, or by the b.l.o.o.d.y process of St.

Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present enemy [Great Britain], if once stationed permanently within our country and offering asylum and arms to the oppressed [Negro], is a leaf in our history _not yet turned over_.” These words, written to Edward Coles, in August, 1814, were still ample food for the profound meditation of the slave-holders. In his ”Notes on Virginia” Mr. Jefferson had written the following words: ”_Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that G.o.d 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._”[10]

The eloquence of Patrick Henry and the logic and philosophy of Madison and Jefferson rang in the ears of the people of the slave-holding States, and they paused to think. In forty years the Negro population of Virginia had increased 186 per cent.--from 1790 to 1830,--while the white had increased only 51 per cent. The rapid increase of the slave population winged the fancy and produced horrid dreams of insurrection; while the p.r.o.nounced opposition of the Northern people to slavery seemed to proclaim the weakness of the government and the approach of its dissolution. In 1832, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, lifted up his voice in the Legislature of Virginia against the inst.i.tution of slavery.

Said Mr. Jefferson:--”There is one circ.u.mstance to which we are to look as inevitable in the fulness of time--_a dissolution of this Union_. G.o.d grant it may not happen in our time or that of our children; but, sir, it must come sooner or later, and when it does come, border war follows it, as certain as the night follows the day. An enemy upon your frontier offering arms and asylum to this population, tampering with it in your bosom, when your citizens shall march to repel the invader, their families butchered and their homes desolated in the rear, the spear will fall from the warrior's grasp; his heart may be of steel, but it must quail. Suppose an invasion in part with _black troops_, speaking the same language, of the same nation, burning with enthusiasm for the liberation of their race; if they are not crushed the moment they put foot upon your soil, they roll forward, an hourly swelling ma.s.s; your energies are paralyzed, your power is gone; the mora.s.ses of the lowlands, the fastnesses of the mountains, cannot save your wives and children from destruction. Sir, we cannot war with these disadvantages; _peace, ign.o.ble, abject peace,--peace upon any conditions that an enemy may offer, must be accepted_. Are we, then, prepared to barter the liberty of our children for slaves for them?... Sir, 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 ill.u.s.trious by the n.o.ble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand managerie, where men are to be reared for market like oxen for the shambles.

Is this better, is it not worse, than the _Slave-Trade_, that trade which enlisted the labor of the _good and the wise of every creed and every clime to abolish it_?”

Mr. P. A. Bolling said:--

”Mr. Speaker, it is vain for gentlemen to deny the fact, the feelings of society are fast becoming adversed to slavery. The moral causes which produce that feeling are on the march, and will on _until the groans of slavery are heard no more in this else happy country_. Look over this world's wide page--see the rapid progress of liberal feelings--see the shackles falling from nations who have long writhed under the galling yoke of slavery.

Liberty is going over the whole earth--hand-in-hand with Christianity. The ancient temples of slavery, rendered venerable alone by their antiquity, are crumbling into dust. Ancient prejudices are flying before the light of truth--are dissipated by its rays, as the idle vapor by the bright sun. The n.o.ble sentiment of Burns:

'Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that'--