“I am a Free-Soiler and I don’t deny it. No word or vote of mine shall ever inure to the benefit of such a monstrous doctrine as the extension of Slavery over the patrimony of the free white laborers of the country. I am for the greatest good of the greatest number, and against the system which monopolizes the free and fertile territory of our country for a few slaveholders, to the exclusion of thousands upon thousands of the sinewy sons of toil. The time will come, and perhaps very soon, when the people will rule for their own benefit and not for that of a class which, numerically speaking, is insignificant. I stand here in the midst of the assembled Legislature of Missouri to avow myself a Free-Soiler. Let those who are scared at names shrink from the position if they will. I shall take my stand in favor of the white man. Here in Missouri I shall support the rights, the dignity and the welfare of the 800,000 non-slaveholders in preference to upholding and perpetuating the dominancy of the 30,000 slaveholders who inhabit our State.”
The St. Louis Democrat, in an editorial article, under date of January 28, 1857, entitled itself to the favorable regard of every true lover of liberty, by talking thus boldly on the subject of the “Emancipation of Slavery in Missouri”:—
“Viewing the question as a subject of State policy, we will venture to say that it is the grandest ever propounded to the people. If it were affirmed in a constitutional convention, and thoroughly carried out without any violation of vested rights, Missouri, in a few years subsequent to its consummation, would be the foremost State on the American continent. Population would flow in from all sides were the barrier of negro slavery once removed, and in place of 80,000 slaves, we should have 800,000 white men, which, in addition to the population we would have at that time, would give us at once an aggregate of two millions.
Is Missouri ambitious of political power?—a power which is slipping away from the South. The mode of acquiring it is found. We are not rash enough to attempt a description of our condition if the element of free labor were introduced. The earth would give up its hidden treasures at its bidding as the sea will give up its dead; and the soil would bloom more luxuriantly than if it drank the dews of Hermon nightly; ten thousand keels would vex our rivers, towns along their banks would grow into cities, and St. Louis would soon unite in itself the attributes of the greatest commercial manufacturing and literary metropolis in the world. Let it be remembered that we have every inanimate element of wealth and power within our limits, and that we require only labor—free labor—for we need not say that servile labor is inadequate. * * *
There need be no pernicious agitation, and even if there should, it is the penalty which we cannot avoid paying at some time; and it is easier to pay it now, than in the future. Who that watches passing events and indications, is not sensible of the fact that great internal convulsions await the slave States? Better to grapple with the danger in time, if danger there be, and avert it, than wait until it becomes formidable. One thing is certain, or history is no guide: that is, that slavery cannot be perpetuated anywhere. An agitation now would be the effort of the social system to throw off a disease which had not touched its vitals; hereafter it would be the struggle for life with a mortal sickness. But we do not apprehend any agitation more violent than has been forced upon us for years by the pro-slavery politicians. Agitating the slavery question, has been their constant business, and nothing worse has resulted from it than their elevation to office—no very trifling evil, by the way—and the temporary subjugation of Kansas.
Besides, we know that all the free States emancipated their slaves, and England and France theirs suddenly; and we have yet to learn that a dangerous agitation arose in any instance.”
In addition to all this, it is well known, and we thank Heaven for the fact and for the indication, that, at the election held for Mayor of St. Louis, in April, 1857, the Abolition candidate, himself a native of Virginia, was triumphantly elevated to the chief magistracy of the city. Three cheers for St. Louis! nine for Missouri! thirteen for the South.
In reference to the late election in St. Louis, in which the Emancipation party triumphed, the Wheeling (Va.) Intelligencer says:—
“These elections do demonstrate this fact, beyond a cavil, that the sentiment of the great majority of the people of this Union is irrevocably opposed to the extension of slavery; that they are determined, if overwhelming public sentiment can avail anything, another slave State shall not be admitted into the confederacy. And why are they so determined? Because they believe, and not only believe, but see and know, that slavery is an unmitigated curse to the soil that sustains it. They know this, because they see every free State outstripping every slave State in all the elements that make a people powerful and prosperous; because they see the people in the one educated and thrifty, and in the other ignorant and thriftless; because they have before their eyes a State like our own, once the very Union itself almost in importance, to-day taking her rank as a fifth rate power.”
Non-slaveholders of the South! fail not to support the papers—the Southern papers—that support your interests. Chief amongst those papers are the St. Louis (Mo.) Democrat, the National Era, published in Washington City, D. C., the Baltimore Clipper, the Wheeling (Va.) Intelligencer, and the Wellsburg (Va.) Herald.