"In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life—that is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand—a race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified, in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity, to stand the climate to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves, by the 'common consent of mankind,' which, according to Cicero, 'lex naturæ est'—the highest proof of what is Nature's law. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; it is a word discarded now by 'ears polite;' I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal."
Upon going home to his South Carolina plantation, a change seems to have come over the mind of the senator—or he was greatly misunderstood while at Washington. In a speech, delivered at Brownwell Court House, South Carolina, October 27, 1858, he astonished some of his neighbors as well as distant friends and enemies, by the enunciation of peculiarly moderate views for a South Carolina Democrat. Let us quote a few paragraphs. First upon Disunion. Says Senator Hammond:
"But I will not detain you longer with what belongs to the past. The present and the future are what concern us most. You desire to know my opinion of the course the South should pursue under existing circumstances. I will give you, frankly and fully, the results of my observations and reflections on this all-important point. The first question is, Do the people of the South consider the present Union of these States as an evil in itself, and a thing that it is desirable we should get rid of under all circumstances? There are some, I know, who do; but I am satisfied that an overwhelming majority of the South would, if assured that this government was hereafter to be conducted on the true principles and construction of the Constitution, decidedly prefer to remain in the Union rather than incur the unknown costs and hazards of setting up a separate government. I think I say what is true when I say that, after all the bitterness that has characterized our long warfare, the great body of the southern people do not seek disunion, and will not seek it as a primary object, however promptly they may accept it as an alternative, rather than submit to unconstitutional abridgments of their rights. I confess that for many years of my life I believed that our only safety was in the dissolution of the Union, and I openly avowed it. I should entertain and without hesitation express the same sentiments now, but that the victories we have achieved, and those I think we are about to achieve, have inspired me with hope, I may say the belief, that we can fully sustain ourselves in the Union, and control its action in all great affairs."
Upon the African Slave Trade thus speaks the senator:
"We have it proposed to reopen the African slave trade and bring in hordes of slaves from that prolific region to restore the balance. I once entertained that idea myself; but, on further investigation, I abandoned it. I will not now go into the discussion of it further than to say that the South is itself divided on that policy, and, from appearances, opposed to it by a vast majority, while the North is unanimously against it. It would be impossible to get Congress to reopen the trade. If it could be done, then it would be unnecessary, for that result could only be brought about by such an entire abandonment by the North and the world of all opposition to our slave system that we might safely cease to erect any defences for it. But if we could introduce slaves, where could we find suitable territory for new slave States? The Indian Reserve, west of Arkansas, might make one; but we have solemnly guaranteed that to the remnants of the red race. Everywhere else, I believe, the borders of our States have reached the great desert which separates the Atlantic from the Pacific States of this Confederacy. Nowhere is African slavery likely to flourish in the little oasis of that Sahara of America. It is much more likely, I think, to get the Pacific slope and to the north in the great valley than anywhere else outside of its present limits. Shall we, as some suggest, take Mexico and Central America to make slave States? African slavery appears to have failed there. Perhaps, and most probably, it will never succeed in those regions. If it might, what are we to do with the seven or eight millions of hardly semi-civilized Indians and the two or three millions of Creole Spaniards and Mongrels who now hold those countries? We would not enslave the Indians! Experience has proved that they are incapable of steady labor, and are therefore unfit for slavery. We would not exterminate them, even if that inhuman achievement would not cost ages of murder and incalculable sums of money. We could hardly think of attempting to plant the black race there, superior for labor, though inferior, perhaps, in intellect, and expect to maintain a permanent and peaceful industry, such as slave labor must be to be profitable, amid those idle, restless, demoralized children of Montezuma, scarcely more civilized, perhaps more sunk in superstition, than in his age, and now trained to civil war by half a century of incessant revolution. What, I say, could we do with these people or these countries to add to southern strength? Nothing. Could we degrade ourselves so far as to annex them on equal terms, they would be sure to come into this Union free States all. To touch them in any way is to be contaminated. England and France, I have no doubt, would gladly see us take this burden on our back if we would secure for them their debts and a neutral route across the Isthmus. Such a route we must have for ourselves, and that is all we have to do with them. If we can not get it by negotiation or by purchase, we must seize and hold it by force of arms. The law of nations would justify it, and it is absolutely necessary for our Pacific relations. The present condition of those unhappy States is certainly deplorable, but the good God holds them in the hollow of his hand and will work out their proper destinies."
Upon the Cuban question:
"We might expand the area of slavery by acquiring Cuba, where African slavery is already established. Mr. Calhoun, from whose matured opinions, whether on constitutional principles or southern policy, it will rarely be found safe to depart, said that Cuba was 'forbidden fruit' to us unless plucked in an exigency of war. There is no reasonable grounds to suppose that we can acquire it in any other way; and the war that will open to us such an occasion will be great and general, and bring about results that the keenest intellect cannot now anticipate. But if we had Cuba, we could not make more than two or three slave States there, which would not restore the equilibrium of the North and South; while, with the African slave trade closed, and her only resort for slaves to this continent, she would, besides crushing our whole sugar culture by her competition, afford in a few years a market for all the slaves in Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland. She is, notwithstanding the exorbitant taxes imposed on her, capable now of absorbing the annual increase of all the slaves on this continent, and consumes, it is said, twenty to thirty thousand a year by her system of labor. Slaves decrease there largely. In time, under the system practised, every slave in America might be exterminated in Cuba as were the Indians. However the idle African may procreate in the tropics, it yet remains to be proven, and the facts are against the conclusion, that he can in those regions work and thrive. It is said Cuba is to be 'Africanized' rather than that the United States should take her. That threat, which at one time was somewhat alarming, is no longer any cause of disquietude to the South, after our experience of the Africanizing of St. Domingo and Jamaica. What have we lost by that?"
And finally upon his own position as a National Democrat:
"And this leads me to say that having never been a mere party politician, intriguing and wire-pulling to advance myself or others, I am not learned in the rubric of the thousand slang, unmeaning and usually false party names to which our age gives birth. But I have been given to understand that there are two parties in the South, called 'National' and 'State Rights' Democrats. The word 'national' having been carefully excluded from the Constitution by those who framed it, I never supposed it applicable to any principle of our government; and having been surrendered to the almost exclusive use in this country of the federal consolidationists, I have myself repudiated it. But if a southern 'National Democrat' means one who is ready to welcome into our ranks with open arms, and cordially embrace and promote according to his merits every honest free State man who reads the Constitution as we do, and will coöperate with us in its maintenance, then I belong to that party, call it as you may, and I should grieve to find a southern man who does not.