The same spirit possessed the heart of Luther Martin, when, before the Legislature of Maryland, he delivered a report concerning the topic of which we speak. The report was adopted by a majority of the convention, though not without considerable opposition.
“It was said that we had just assumed a place among independent nations, in consequence of our opposition to the attempts of Great Britain to enslave us. That this opposition was grounded upon the preservation of those rights to which God and nature entitled us, not in particular, but in common with all the rest of mankind. That we had appealed to the Supreme Being for His assistance, as the God of freedom, who could not but approve our efforts to preserve the rights which he had thus imparted to all his creatures. That now, when we scarcely had risen from our knees and supplications for his aid and protection, in the form of government we had chosen, we proposed to have a provision therein, not only putting it out of its power to restrain and prevent the slave trade, but actually to encourage that most infamous traffic, by giving the States power and influence in the Union, in proportion as they cruelly and wantonly sported with the rights of their fellow creatures. Such a course ought to be considered a solemn mockery of, and insult to, that God whose protection we had implored, and it could not fail to hold us up to the detestation and contempt of every true friend of liberty in the world. National crimes can only be, and frequently are punished, at least, in the world, by national calamities. And if we thus give national sanction to the slave trade, we justly expose ourselves to the displeasure and vengeance of Him who is equally Lord of all, and who views with equal eye the poor African slave and his American master.”
The same fire which dictated the above, burned also in Captain Riley’s heart, when he exclaimed:
“Strange as it may seem to the philanthropist, my free and proud-spirited countrymen still hold a million and a half of human beings in the most cruel bonds of slavery, who are kept at hard labor, and, smarting under the lash of inhuman, mercenary drivers, in many instances enduring the miseries of hunger, thirst, imprisonment, cold, nakedness, and even tortures. This is no picture of the imagination. For the honor of human nature, I wish likenesses were nowhere to be found. I myself have witnessed such scenes in different parts of my own country, and the bare recollection of them now chills my blood with horror.”
In connection with this, we have the statement of De Witt Clinton, who, during the period of his legislative career—1797—bestowed a large portion of his attention to the protection of the public health, the promotion of agriculture, manufactures, and the arts, the gradual abolition of slavery, &c.
The record of the proceedings of the Senate of New York for the sessions of 1809-11 exhibits proofs of Mr. Clinton’s great usefulness. Under his auspices, the New York Historical Society was incorporated, the Orphan Asylum and free schools were fostered and encouraged. He introduced laws to prevent kidnapping, and the further introduction of slaves; also to punish those who should treat slaves inhumanly.—De Witt Clinton’s Life in Delaplaine’s Repository.
I have been forced, after honest and serious consideration, to the conclusion, that God, who rules all the affairs of men, is now speaking to the American nation in thunder tones. He is afflicting us for the terrible sin of slavery.
The great fear of those who have fostered this rebellion, is that a true knowledge of God and his word would be instilled into the minds of the people. This is proven by their own arguments. Let us cite one from General Duff Green’s favorite strain:
“We are of those who believe that the South has nothing to fear from a servile war. We do not believe that the abolitionists intend, nor could they if they would, to excite the slaves to insurrection. The danger of this is remote. We believe we have most to fear from the organized action upon the consciences and fears of the slaveholders themselves; from the insinuations of their dangerous heresies into our schools and pulpits and our domestic circles. It is only by alarming the consciences of the weak and feeble, and diffusing among our own people a morbid sensibility on the question of slavery, that the abolitionists can accomplish their object. Preparatory to this, they are now laboring to saturate the non-slaveholding States with the belief that slavery is a sin against God; that the national compact involves the non-slaveholders in that sin, and that it is their duty to toil and suffer that our country may be delivered from what they term its blackest stain, its foulest reproach, its deadliest curse.”—Southern Review.
Such arguments as these blacken the souls of thousands, shut up the avenues of knowledge in the South, and push on the car of slavery until it crushes all liberty beneath its iron wheels.