Senator James Barbour Defends Slavery
In the second selection we have chosen, Senator James Barbour of Virginia defends slavery:
The gentleman from Pennsylvania asks shall we suffer Missouri to come into the Union with this savage mark [of slavery] on her countenance? I appeal to that gentleman to know whether this be language to address to an American Senate, composed equally of members from States precisely in that condition that Missouri would be in, were she to tolerate slavery. Are these sentiments calculated to cherish that harmony and affection so essential to any beneficial results from our Union? But, sir, I will not imitate this course, and I will strive to repress the feeling which such remarks are calculated to awaken.
... They assure us that they do not mean to touch this property [slavery] in the old states.... What kind of ethics is this that is bounded by latitude and longitude, which is inoperative on the left, but is omnipotent on the right bank of a river? Such a doctrine is well calculated to excite our solicitude; for, although the gentlemen who now hold it are sincere in their declarations, and mean to content themselves with a triumph in this controversy, what security have we that others will not apply it to the South generally?
Let it not, however, be supposed that in the abstract I am advocating slavery. Like all other human things, it is mixed with good and evil—the latter, no doubt, preponderating.... Whether slavery was ordained by God Himself in a particular revelation to His chosen people, or whether it be merely permitted as a part of that moral evil which seems to be the inevitable portion of man, are questions I will not approach; I leave them to the casuists [debaters] and the divines [preachers]. It is sufficient for us, as statesmen, to know that it has existed from the earliest ages of the world, and that to us has been assigned such a portion as, in reference to their number and the various considerations resulting from a change of their condition, no remedy, even plausible, has been suggested, though wisdom and benevolence united have unceasingly brooded over the subject.
However dark and inscrutable may be the ways of heaven, who is he that arrogantly presumes to arraign [challenge] them? The same mighty power that planted the greater and the lesser luminary in the heavens permits on earth the bondsman and the free. To that Providence, as men and Christians, let us bow. If it be consistent with His will, in the fullness of time, to break the fetter of the slave, He will raise up some Moses to be their deliverer. To him commission will be given to lead them up out of the land of bondage.