The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

Human laws, I contend, cannot make human beings property, if human force can do it. If it is competent for our legislatures to make a black man property, it is competent for them to make a white man the same; and the same objection exists to the power of the people in an organic law for their own government; they cannot make property of each other; and, in the language of the Constitution of Indiana, such an act "can only originate in usurpation and tyranny." Dreadful, indeed, would be the condition of this country, if these principles should not only be carried into the ballot box, but into the presidential chair. The idea that abolitionists ought to pay for the slaves if they are set free, and that they ought to think of this, is addressed to their fears, and not to their judgment. There is no principle of morality or justice that should require them or our citizens generally to do so. To free a slave is to take from usurpation that which it has made property and given to another, and bestow it upon the rightful owner. It is not taking property from its true owner for public use. Men can do with their own as they please, to vary their peace if they wish, but cannot be compelled to do so.

The gentleman repeats the assertion that has been repeated a thousand and one times: that abolitionists are retarding the emancipation of the slave, and have thrown it back fifty or a hundred years; that they have increased the rigors of slavery, and caused the master to treat his slave with more severity. Slavery, then, is to cease at some period; and because the abolitionists have said to the slaveholder, "Now is the accepted time," and because he thinks this an improper interference, and not having the abolitionists in his power, he inflicts his vengeance on his unoffending slave! The moral of this story is, the slaveholder will exercise more cruelty because he is desired to show mercy. I do not envy the senator the full benefit of his argument. It is no doubt a true picture of the feelings and principles which slavery engenders in the breast of the master. It is in perfect keeping with the threat we almost daily hear; that if petitioners do not cease their efforts in the exercise of their constitutional rights, others will dissolve the Union. These, however, ought to be esteemed idle assertions and idle threats.

The Senator tells us that the consequences arising from the freedom of slaves, would be to reduce the wages of the white laborer. He has furnished us with neither data nor fact upon which this opinion can rest. He, however, would draw a line, on one side of which he would place the slave labor, and on the other side free white labor; and looking over the whole, as a general system, both would appear on a perfect equality. I have observed, for some years past, that the southern slaveholder has insisted that his laborers are, in point of integrity, morality, usefulness, and comfort, equal to the laboring population of the North. Thus endeavoring to raise the slave in public estimation, to an equality with the free white laborer of the North; while, on the other hand, the northern aristocrat has, in the same manner, viz.: by comparison, endeavored to reduce his laborers to the moral and political condition of the slaves of the South. It is for the free white American citizens to determine whether they will permit such degrading comparisons longer to exist. Already has this spirit broken forth in denunciation of the right of universal suffrage. Will free white laboring citizens take warning before it is too late?

The last, the great, the crying sin of abolitionists, in the eyes of the Senator, is that they are opposed to colonization, and in favor of amalgamation. It is not necessary now to enter into any of the benefits and advantages of colonization; the Senator has pronounced it the noblest scheme ever devised by man; he says it is powerful but harmless. I have no knowledge of any resulting benefits from the scheme to either race. I have not a doubt as to the real object intended by its founders; it did not arise from principles of humanity and benevolence towards the colored race, but a desire to remove the free of that race beyond the United States, in order to perpetuate and make slavery more secure.

The Senator further makes the broad charge, that abolitionists wish to enforce the unnatural system of amalgamation. We deny the fact, and call on the Senator for proof. The citizens of the free States, the petitioners against slavery, the abolitionists of the free States in favor of amalgamation! No, sir! If you want evidence of the fact, and reasoning in support of amalgamation, you must look into the slave States; it is there it spreads and flourishes from slave mothers, and presents all possible colors and complexions, from the jet black African to the scarcely to be distinguished white person. Does any one need proof of this fact? let him take but a few turns through the streets of your capital, and observe those whom he shall meet, and he will be perfectly satisfied. Amalgamation, indeed! The charge is made with a very bad grace on the present occasion. No, sir; it is not the negro woman, it is the slave and the contaminating influence of slavery that is the mother of amalgamation. Does the gentleman want facts on this subject? let him look at the colored race in the free States; it is a rare occurrence there. A colony of blacks, some three or four hundred, were settled, some fifteen or twenty years since, in the county of Brown, a few miles distant from my former residence in Ohio, and I was told by a person living near them, a country merchant with whom they dealt, when conversing with him on this very subject, he informed me he knew of but one instance of a mulatto child being born amongst them for the last fifteen years; and I venture the assertion, had this same colony been settled in a slave State, the cases of a like kind would have been far more numerous. I repeat again, in the words of Dr. Channing, it is a slave country that reeks with licentiousness of this kind, and for proof I refer to the opinions of Judge Harper, of North Carolina, in his defence of southern slavery.

The Senator, as if fearing that he had made his charge too broad, and might fail in proof to sustain it, seems to stop short, and make the inquiry, where is the process of amalgamation to begin? He had heard of no instance of the kind against abolitionists; they (the abolitionists) would begin it with the laboring class; and if I understand the Senator correctly, that abolitionism, by throwing together the white and the black laborers, would naturally produce this result. Sir, I regret, I deplore, that such a charge should be made against the laboring class—that class which tills the ground; and, in obedience to the decree of their Maker, eat their bread in the sweat of their face—that class, as Mr. Jefferson says, if God has a chosen people on earth, they are those who thus labor. This charge is calculated for effect, to induce the laboring class to believe, that if emancipation takes place, they will be, in the free States, reduced to the same condition as the colored laborer. The reverse of that is the truth of the case. It is the slaveholder NOW, he who looks upon labor as only fit for a servile race, it is him and his kindred spirits who live upon the labor of others, endeavoring to reduce the white laborer to the condition of the slave. They do not yet claim him as property, but they would exclude him from all participation in the public affairs of the country. It is further said, that if the negroes were free, the black would rival the white laborer in the free States. I cannot believe it, while so many facts exist to prove the contrary. Negroes, like the white race, but with stronger feelings, are attached to the place of their birth, and the home of their youth; and the climate of the South is congenial to their natures, more than that of the North. If emancipation should take place at the South—and the negro be freed from the fear of being made merchandize, they would remove from the free States of the North and West, immediately return to that country, because it is the home of their friends and fathers. Already in Ohio, as far as my knowledge extends, has free white labor, (emigrants,) from foreign countries, engrossed almost entirely all situations in which male or female labor is found. But, sir, this plea of necessity and convenience is the plea of tyrants. Has not the free black person the same right to the use of his hands as the white person: the same right to contract and labor for what price he pleases? Would the gentleman extend the power of the government to the regulation of the productive industry of the country? This was his former theory, but put down effectually by the public voice. Taking advantage of the prejudice against labor, the attempt is now being made to begin this same system, by first operating on the poor black laborer. For shame! let us cease from attempts of this kind.

The Senator informs us that the question was asked fifty years ago that is now asked, Can the negro be continued forever in bondage? Yes; and it will continue to be asked, in still louder and louder tones. But, says the Senator, we are yet a prosperous and happy nation. Pray, sir, in what part of your country do you find this prosperity and happiness? In the slave States? No! no! There all is weakness gloom, and despair; while, in the free States, all is light, business, and activity. What has created the astonishing difference between the gentleman's State and mine—between Kentucky and Ohio? Slavery, the withering curse of slavery, is upon Kentucky, while Ohio is free. Kentucky, the garden of the West, almost the land of promise, possessing all the natural advantages, and more than is possessed by Ohio, is vastly behind in population and wealth. Sir, I can see from the windows of my upper chamber, in the city of Cincinnati, lands in Kentucky, which, I am told, can be purchased from ten to fifty dollars per acre; while lands of the same quality, under the same improvements, and the same distance from me in Ohio, would probably sell from one to five hundred dollars per acre. I was told by a friend, a few days before I left home, who had formerly resided in the county of Bourbon, Kentucky—a most excellent county of lands adjoining, I believe, the county in which the Senator resides—that the white population of that county was more than four hundred less than it was five years since. Will the Senator contend, after a knowledge of these facts, that slavery in this country has been the cause of our prosperity and happiness? No, he cannot. It is because slavery has been excluded and driven from a large proportion of our country, that we are a prosperous and happy people. But its late attempts to force its influence and power into the free States, and deprive our citizens of their unquestionable rights, has been the moving cause of all the riots, burnings, and murders that have taken place on account of abolitionism; and it has, in some degree, even in the free States, caused mourning, lamentation, and woe. Remove slavery, and the country, the whole country, will recover its natural vigor, and our peace and future prosperity will be placed on a more extensive, safe, and sure foundation. It is a waste of time to answer the allegations that the emancipation of the negro race would induce them to make war on the white race. Every fact in the history of emancipation proves the reverse; and he that will not believe those facts, has darkened his own understanding, that the light of reason can make no impression: he appeals to interest, not to truth, for information on this subject. We do not fear his errors, while we are left free to combat them. The Senator implores us to cease all commotion on this subject. Are we to surrender all our rights and privileges, all the official stations of the country, into the hands of the slaveholding power, without a single struggle? Are we to cease all exertions for our own safety, and submit in quiet to the rule of this power? Is the calm of despotism to reign over this land, and the voice of freemen to be no more heard! This sacrifice is required of us, in order to sustain slavery. Freemen, will you make it? Will you shut your ears and your sympathies, and withhold from the poor, famished slave, a morsel of bread? Can you thus act, and expect the blessings of heaven upon your country? I beseech you to consider for yourselves.

Mr. President, I have been compelled to enter into this discussion from the course pursued by the Senate on the resolutions I submitted a few days since. The cry of abolitionist has been raised against me. If those resolutions are abolitionism, then I am an abolitionist from the sole of my feet to the crown of my head. If to maintain the rights of the States, the security of the citizen from violence and outrage; if to preserve the supremacy of the laws; if insisting on the right of petition, a medium through which every person subject to the laws has an undoubted right to approach the constitutional authorities of the country, be the doctrines of abolitionists, it finds a response in every beating pulse in my veins. Neither power, nor favor, nor want, nor misery, shall deter me from its support while the vital current continues to flow.

Condemned at home for my opposition to slavery, alone and singlehanded here, well may I feel tremor and emotion in bearding this lion of slavery in his very den and upon his own ground. I should shrink, sir, at once, from this fearful and unequal contest, was I not thoroughly convinced that I am sustained by the power of truth and the best interests of the country.

I listened to the Senator of Kentucky with undivided attention. I was disappointed, sadly disappointed. I had heard of the Senator's tact in making compromises and agreements on this floor, and though opposed in principle to all such proceedings, yet I hoped to hear something upon which we could hang a hope that peace would be restored to the borders of our own States, and all future aggression upon our citizens from the free States be prevented. Now, sir, he offers us nothing but unconditional submission to political death; and not political alone, but absolute death. We have counted the cost in this matter, and are determined to live or die free. Let the slaveholder hug his system to his bosom in his own State, we will not go there to disturb him; but, sir, within our own borders we claim to enjoy the same privileges. Even, sir, here in this District, this ten miles square of common property and common right, the slave power has the assurance to come into this very Hall, and request that we—yes, Mr. President, that my constituents—be denied the right of petition on the subject of slavery in this District. This most extraordinary petition against the right of others to petition on the same subject of theirs, is graciously received and ordered to be printed; paeans sung to it by the slave power, while the petitions I offer, from as honorable, free, high-minded and patriotic American citizens as any in this District, are spit upon, and turned out of doors as an unclean thing! Genius of liberty! how long will you sleep under this iron power of oppression? Not content with ruling over their own slaves, they claim the power to instruct Congress on the question of receiving petitions; and yet we are tauntingly and sneeringly told that we have nothing to do with the existence of slavery in the country, a suggestion as absurd as it is ridiculous. We are called upon to make laws in favor of slavery in the District, but it is denied that we can make laws against it; and at last the right of petition on the subject, by the people of the free States, is complained of as an improper interference. I leave it to the Senator to reconcile all these difficulties, absurdities, claims and requests of the people of this District, to the country at large; and I venture the opinion that he will find as much difficulty in producing the belief that he is correct now, that he has found in obtaining the same belief that he was before correct in his views and political course on the subject of banks, internal improvements, protective tariffs, &c., and the regulation, by acts of Congress, of the productive industry of the country, together with all the compromises and coalitions he has entered into for the attainment of those objects. I rejoice, however, that the Senator has made the display he has on this occasion. It is a powerful shake to awaken the sleeping energies of liberty, and his voice, like a trumpet, will call from their slumbers millions of freemen to defend their rights; and the overthrow of his theory now, is as sure and certain, by the force of public opinion, as was the overthrow of all his former schemes, by the same mighty power.