Dr. Ross then proceeded:--Mr. Moderator, I move this amendment in the best spirit. I desire to imitate the committee in their refinement and delicacy of distinction. I disavow all intention to be impertinently inquisitorial. I intend to be inquisitorial, as the committee say they are,--but not impertinently so. No, sir; not at all; not at all. (Laughter.) Well, sir, we of the South, who desire the removal of the evil of slavery, and believe it will pass away in the developments of Providence, are grieved when we read your graphic, shuddering pictures of the "middle passage,"--the slave-ship, piling up her canvas, as the shot pours after her from English or American guns,--see her again and again hurrying hogshead after hogshead, filled with living slaves, into the deep, and, thus lightened, escape. Sir, what horror to believe that clipper-ship was built by the hands of Northern, noisy Abolition church-members! ["Yes, I know some in New York and Boston," said one in the crowd.] Again, sir, when we walk along your Broadways, and see, as we do, the soft hands of your church-members sending off to the South, not only clothing for the slave, but manacles and whips, manufactured expressly for him,--what must we think of your consistency of character? [True, true.] And what must we think of your self-righteousness, when we know your church-members order the sale of slaves,--yes, slaves such as St. Clair's,--and under circumstances involving all the separations and all the loathsome things you so mournfully deplore? Your Mrs. Stowe says so, and it is so, without her testimony. I have read that splendid, bad book. Splendid in its genius, over which I have wept, and laughed, and got mad, (here some one said, "All at the same time?") yes--all at the same time. Bad in its theology, bad in its morality, bad in its temporary evil influence here in the North, in England, and on the continent of Europe; bad, because her isolated cruelties will be taken (whether so meant by her or not) as the general condition of Southern life,--while her Shelbys, and St. Clairs, and Evas, will be looked upon as angel-visitors, lingering for a moment in that earthly hell. The impression made by the book is a falsehood.
Sir, why do your Northern church-members and philanthropists buy Southern products at all? You know you are purchasing cotton, rice, sugar, sprinkled with blood, literally, you say, from the lash of the driver! Why do you buy? What's the difference between my filching this blood-stained cotton from the outraged negro, and your standing by, taking it from me? What's the difference? You, yourselves, say, in your abstractions, there is no difference; and yet you daily stain your hands in this horrid traffic. You hate the traitor, but you love the treason. Your ladies, too,--oh, how they shun the slave-owner at a distance, in the abstract! But alas, when they see him in the concrete,--when they see the slave-owner himself, standing before them,--not the brutal driver, but the splendid gentleman, with his unmistakable grace of carriage and ease of manners,--why, lo, behold the lady says, "Oh, fie on your slavery!--what a wretch you are! But, indeed, sir, I love your sugar,--and truly, truly, sir, wretch as you are, I love you too." Your gentlemen talk just the same way when they behold our matchless women. And well for us all it is, that your good taste, and hearts, can thus appreciate our genius, and accomplishments, and fascinations, and loveliness, and sugar, and cotton. Why, sir, I heard this morning, from one pastor only, of two or three of his members thus intermarried in the South. May I thus give the mildest rebuke to your inconsistency of conduct? (Much good-natured excitement.)
Sir, may we know who are the descendants of the New England kidnappers? What is their wealth? Why, here you are, all around me. You, gentlemen, made the best of that bargain. And you have kept every dollar of your money from the charity of emancipating the slave. You have left us, unaided, to give millions. Will you now come to our help? Will you give dollar for dollar to equalize our loss? [Here many voices cried out, "Yes, yes, we will.">[
Yes, yes? Then pour out your millions. Good. I may thank you personally. My own emancipated slaves would to-day be worth greatly more than $20,000. Will you give me back $10,000? Good. I need it now.
I recommend to you, sirs, to find out your advocates of murder,--your owners of stock in under-ground railroads,--your Sabbath-breakers for money. I particularly urge you to find Legree, who whipped Uncle Tom to death. He is a Northern gentleman, although having a somewhat Southern name. Now, sir, you know the Assembly was embarrassed all yesterday by the inquiry how the Northern churches may find their absent members, and what to do with them. Here then, sir, is a chance for you. Send a committee up Red River. You may find Legree to be a Garrison, Phillips, Smith, or runaway husband from some Abby Kelly. [Here Rev. Mr. Smith protested against Legree being proved to be a Smith. Great laughter. [Footnote: This gentleman was soon after made a D.D., and I think in part for that witticism.] I move that you bring him back to lecture on the cuteness there is in leaving a Northern church, going South, changing his name, buying slaves, and calculating, without guessing, what the profit is of killing a negro with inhuman labor above the gain of treating him with kindness.
I have little to say of spirit-rappers, women's-rights conventionists, Bloomers, cruel husbands, or hen-pecked. But, if we may believe your own serious as well as caricature writers, you have things up here of which we down South know very little indeed. Sir, we have no young Bloomers, with hat to one side, cigar in mouth, and cane tapping the boot, striding up to a mincing young gentleman with long curls, attenuated waist, and soft velvet face,--the boy-lady to say, "May I see you home, sir?" and the lady-boy to reply, "I thank ye--no; pa will send the carriage." Sir, we of the South don't understand your women's-rights conventions. Women have their wrongs. "The Song of the Shirt,"--Charlotte Elizabeth,--many, many laws,--tell her wrongs. But your convention ladies despise the Bible. Yes, sir; and we of the South are afraid of them, and for you. When women despise the Bible, what next? Paris,--then the City of the Great Salt Lake,--then Sodom, before and after the Dead Sea. Oh, sir, if slavery tends in any way to give the honour of chivalry to Southern young gentlemen towards ladies, and the exquisite delicacy and heavenly integrity and love to Southern maid and matron, it has then a glorious blessing with its curse.
Sir, your inquisitorial committee, and the North so far as represented by them, (a small fraction, I know,) have, I take it, caught a Tartar this time. Boys say with us, and everywhere, I reckon, "You worry my dog, and I'll worry your cat." Sir, it is just simply a fixed fact: the South will not submit to these questions. No, not for an instant. We will not permit you to approach us at all. If we are morbidly sensitive, you have made us so. But you are directly and grossly violating the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church. The book forbids you to put such questions; the book forbids you to begin discipline; the book forbids your sending this committee to help common fame bear testimony against us; the book guards the honour of our humblest member, minister, church, presbytery, against all this impertinently-inquisitorial action. Have you a prosecutor, with his definite charge and witnesses? Have you Common Fame, with her specified charges and witnesses? Have you a request from the South that you send a committee to inquire into slanders? No. Then hands off. As gentlemen you may ask us these questions,--we will answer you. But, ecclesiastically, you cannot speak in this matter. You have no power to move as you propose.
I beg leave to say, just here, that Tennessee [Footnote: At that time I resided in Tennessee.] will be more calm under this movement than any other slave-region. Tennessee has been ever high above the storm, North and South,--especially we of the mountains. Tennessee!--"there she is,--look at her,"--binding this Union together like a great, long, broad, deep stone,--more splendid than all in the temple of Baalbec or Solomon. Tennessee!--there she is, in her calm valour. I will not lower her by calling her unconquerable, for she has never been assailed; but I call her ever-victorious. King's Mountain,--her pioneer battles:--Talladega, Emucfau, Horse-shoe, New Orleans, San Jacinto, Monterey, the Valley of Mexico. Jackson represented her well in his chivalry from South Carolina,--his fiery courage from Virginia and Kentucky,--all tempered by Scotch-Irish Presbyterian prudence from Tennessee. We, in his spirit, have looked on this storm for years untroubled. Yes, Jackson's old bones rattled in their grave when that infamous disunion convention met in Nashville, and its members turned pale and fled aghast. Yes, Tennessee, in her mighty million, feels secure; and, in her perfect preparation to discuss this question, politically, ecclesiastically, morally, metaphysically, or physically, with the extreme North or South, she is willing and able to persuade others to be calm. In this connection, I wish to say, for the South to the North, and to the world, that we have no fears from our slave-population. There might be a momentary insurrection and bloodshed; but destruction to the black man would be inevitable. The Greeks and Romans controlled immense masses of white slaves,--many of them as intelligent as their lords. Schoolmasters, fabulists, and poets were slaves. Athens, with her thirty thousand freemen, governed half a million of bondmen. Single Roman patricians owned thirty thousand. If, then, the phalanx and the legion mastered such slaves for ages, when battle was physical force of man to man, how certain it is that infantry, cavalry, and artillery could hold in bondage millions of Africans for a thousand years!
But, dear brethren, our Southern philanthropists do not seek to have this unending bondage; Oh, no, no. And I earnestly entreat you to "stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." Assume a masterly inactivity, and you will behold all you desire and pray for,--you will see America liberated from the curse of slavery.
The great question of the world is, WHAT IS TO BE THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN SLAVE?--WHAT IS TO BE THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN MASTER? The following extract from the "Charleston Mercury" gives my view of the subject with great and condensed particularity:--