The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

Whilst on this subject of "the rights of property," I am reminded of your "third impediment to abolition." This "impediment" consists in the fact of the great value of the southern slaves--which, according to your estimation, is not less than "twelve hundred millions of dollars." I will adopt your estimate, and thus spare myself from going into the abhorrent calculation of the worth in dollars and cents of immortal man--of the worth of "the image of God." I thank you for your virtual admission, that this wealth is grasped with a tenacity proportioned to its vast amount. Many of the wisest and best men of the North have been led into the belief that the slaveholders of the South are too humane and generous to hold their slaves fur the sake of gain. Even Dr. Channing was a subject of this delusion; and it is well remembered, that his too favorable opinions of his fellow men, made it difficult to disabuse him of it. Northern Christians have been ready to believe, that the South would give up her slaves, because of her conscious lack of title to them. But in what age of the world have impenitent men failed to cling as closely to that, which they had obtained by fraud, as to their honest acquisitions? Indeed, it is demonstrable on philosophical principles, that the more stupendous the fraud, the more tenacious is the hold upon that, which is gotten by it. I trust, that your admission to which I have just referred, will have no small effect to prevent the Northern apologist for slavery from repeating the remark that the South would gladly liberate her slaves, if she saw any prospect of bettering the condition of the objects of her tender and solicitous benevolence. I trust, too, that this admission will go far to prove the emptiness of your declaration, that the abolitionists "have thrown back for half a century the prospect of any species of emancipation of the African race, gradual or immediate, in any of the states," and the emptiness of your declaration, that, "prior to the agitation of this subject of abolition, there was a progressive melioration in the condition of slaves throughout all the slave states," and that "in some of them, schools of instruction were opened," &c.; and I further trust, that this admission will render harmless your intimation, that this "melioration" and these "schools" were intended to prepare the slaves for freedom. After what you have said of the great value of the slaves, and of the obstacle it presents to emancipation, you will meet with little success in your endeavors to convince the world, that the South was preparing to give up the "twelve hundred millions of dollars," and that the naughty abolitionists have postponed her gratification "for half a century." If your views of the immense value of the slaves, and of the consequent opposition to their freedom, be correct, then the hatred of the South towards the abolitionists must be, not because their movements tend to lengthen, but because they tend to shorten the period of her possession of the "twelve hundred millions of dollars." May I ask you, whether, whilst the South clings to these "twelve hundred millions of dollars," it is not somewhat hypocritical in her to be complaining, that the abolitionists are fastening the "twelve hundred millions of dollars" to her? And may I ask you, whether there is not a little inconsistency between your own lamentations over this work of the abolitionists, and your intimation that the South will never consent to give up her slaves, until the impossibility, of paying her "twelve hundred millions of dollars" for them, shall have been accomplished? Puerile and insulting as is your proposition to the abolitionists to raise "twelve hundred millions of dollars" for the purchase of the slaves, it is nevertheless instructive; inasmuch as it shows, that, in your judgment, the South is as little willing to give up her slaves, as the abolitionists are able to pay "twelve hundred millions of dollars" for them; and how unable the abolitionists are to pay a sum of money far greater than the whole amount of money in the world, I need not explain.

But if the South must have "twelve hundred millions of dollars" to induce her to liberate her present number of slaves, how can you expect success fur your scheme of ridding her of several times the present number, "in the progress of some one hundred and fifty, or two hundred years?" Do you reply, that, although she must have "four hundred dollars" a-piece for them, if she sell them to the abolitionists, she is, nevertheless, willing to let the Colonization Society have them without charge? There is abundant proof, that she is not. During the twenty-two years of the existence of that Society, not so many slaves have been emancipated and given to it for expatriation, as are born in a single week. As a proof that the sympathies of the South are all with the slaveholding and real character of this two-faced institution, and not at all with the abolition purposes and tendencies, which it professes at the North, none of its Presidents, (and slave-holders only are deemed worthy to preside over it,) has ever contributed from his stock of slaves to swell those bands of emigrants, who, leaving our shores in the character of "nuisances," are instantly transformed, to use your own language, into "missionaries, carrying with them credentials in the holy cause of Christianity, civilization, and free institutions." But you were not in earnest, when you held up the idea in your recent speech, that the rapidly multiplying millions of our colored countrymen would be expatriated. What you said on that point was but to indulge in declamation, and to round off a paragraph. It is in that part of your speech where you say that "no practical scheme for their removal or separation from us has yet been devised or proposed," that you exhibit your real sentiments on this subject, and impliedly admit the deceitfulness of the pretensions of the American Colonization Society.

Before closing my remarks on the topic of "the rights of property," I will admit the truth of your charge, that Abolitionists deny, that the slaveholder is entitled to "compensation" for his slaves.

Abolitionists do not know, why he, who steals men is, any more than he, who steals horses, entitled to "compensation" for releasing his plunder. They do not know, why he, who has exacted thirty years' unrequited toil from the sinews of his poor oppressed brother, should be paid for letting that poor oppressed brother labor for himself the remaining ten or twenty years of his life. But, it is said, that the South bought her slaves of the North, and that we of the North ought therefore to compensate the South for liberating them. If there are individuals at the North, who have sold slaves, I am free to admit, that they should promptly surrender their ill-gotten gains; and no less promptly should the inheritors of such gains surrender them. But, however this may be, and whatever debt may be due on this score, from the North to the South, certain it is, that on no principle of sound ethics, can the South hold to the persons of the innocent slaves, as security for the payment of the debt. Your state and mine, and I would it were so with all others, no longer allow the imprisonment of the debtor as a means of coercing payment from him. How much less, then, should they allow the creditor to promote the security of his debt by imprisoning a third person--and one who is wholly innocent of contracting the debt? But who is imprisoned, if it be not he, who is shut up in "the house of bondage?" And who is more entirely innocent than he, of the guilty transactions between his seller and buyer?

Another of your charges against abolitionists is, that, although "utterly destitute of Constitutional or other rightful power--living in totally distinct communities--as alien to the communities in which the subject on which they would operate resides, so far as concerns political power over that subject, as if they lived in Africa or Asia; they nevertheless promulgate to the world their purpose to be, to manumit forthwith, and without compensation, and without moral preparation, three millions of negro slaves, under jurisdictions altogether separated from those under which they live."

I will group with this charge several others of the same class.

1. Abolitionists neglect the fact, that "the slavery which exists amongst us (southern people) is our affair--not theirs--and that they have no more just concern with it, than they have with slavery as it exists throughout the world."

2. They are regardless of the "deficiency of the powers of the General Government, and of the acknowledged and incontestable powers of the States."

3. "Superficial men (meaning no doubt abolitionists) confound the totally different cases together of the powers of the British Parliament and those of the Congress of the United States in the matter of slavery."_

Are these charges any thing more than the imagery of your own fancy, or selections from the numberless slanders of a time-serving and corrupt press? If they are founded on facts, it is in your power to state the facts. For my own part, I am utterly ignorant of any, even the least, justification for them. I am utterly ignorant that the abolitionists hold any peculiar views in relation to the powers of the General or State Governments. I do not believe, that one in a hundred of them supposes, that slavery in the states is a legitimate subject of federal legislation. I believe, that a majority of the intelligent men amongst them accord much more to the claims of "state sovereignty," and approach far more nearly to the character of "strict constructionists," than does the distinguished statesman, who charges them with such latitudinarian notions. There may be persons in our country, who believe that Congress has the absolute power over all American slavery, which the British Parliament had over all British slavery; and that Congress can abolish slavery in the slave states, because Great Britain abolished it in her West India Islands; but, I do not know them; and were I to look for them, I certainly should not confine my search to abolitionists--for abolitionists, as it is very natural they should be, are far better instructed in the subject of slavery and its connections with civil government, than are the community in general.