No persons are more sensible of their hazardous situation than the slaveholders themselves, and hence, as is common with people who are secretly conscious of their own weakness, they attempt to supply the want of strength by a bullying insolence, hoping to effect by intimidation what they well know can be effected in no other way. This game has long been played, and with great success, in Congress. It has been attempted in our negotiations with Great Britain, and has signally failed.
Your aristocracy, whatever may be their vaunts, are conscious of their military weakness, and shrink from any contest which may cause a foreign army to plant the standard of emancipation upon their soil. The very idea of an armed negro startles their fearful imaginations. This is disclosed on innumerable occasions, but was conspicuously manifested in a debate in the Senate. In July, 1842, a Bill to regulate enlistments in the naval service being under consideration, Mr. Calhoun proposed an amendment, that negroes should be enlisted only as cooks and stewards. He thought it a matter of great consequence not to admit blacks into our vessels of national defence. Mr. Benton thought all arms, whether on land or sea, ought to be borne by the white race.
Mr. Bagby. "In the Southern portion of the Union, the great object was to keep arms and a knowledge of arms out of the hands of the blacks. The subject addressed itself to every Southern heart. Self-preservation was the first law of nature, and the South must look to that."
On the motion of Mr. Preston, the bill was so amended as to include the army.
And think you that men, thus in awe of their own dependents, shuddering at a musket in the hands of a black, and with a population of two millions and a half of these dreaded slaves, will expose themselves to the tremendous consequences of a union between their domestic and foreign enemies? Of the four who voted against the British treaty, probably not one would have given the vote he did, had he not known to a certainty that the treaty would be ratified.
Think not we are disposed to ridicule the fears of the slaveholders, or to question their personal courage. God knows their perils are real, and not imaginary: and who can question, that with a hostile British army in the heart of Virginia or Alabama, the whole slave region would presently become one vast scene of horror and desolation? Heretofore the invaders of our soil were themselves interested in slave property: now they would be zealous emancipationists, and they would be accompanied by the most terrific vision which could meet the eye of a slaveholder, regiments of black troops, fully equipped and disciplined. Surely such a state of things might well appal the bravest heart, and palsy the stoutest arm. But, fellow-citizens, what, in such a catastrophe, would be your condition? Your fate and that of your wives and children would then be linked to that of your lordly neighbors. One indiscriminate ruin would await you all. But you may avert these accumulated horrors. You may change two and a half millions of domestic and implacable enemies into faithful friends and generous protectors. No sooner shall the negroes cease to be oppressed, than they will cease to hate. The planters of Jamaica were formerly as much afraid of their slaves, as your planters now are of theirs. But the Jamaica slaves, now freemen, are no long dreaded; on the contrary, they form the chief military force of the island; and should a foreign foe attack it, would be found its willing and devoted defenders. It rests with you to relieve your country of its most dangerous enemy, to render it invulnerable to foreign assaults, and to dissipate that fearful anticipation of wrath and tribulation, which now broods over and oppresses the mind of every white who resides in a slave country.
We have called your attention to the practical influence of slavery on various points deeply affecting your prosperity and happiness. These are:
1. Increase of population.
2. State of education.
3. Industry and enterprise.
4. Feeling toward the laboring classes.
5. State of religion.
6. State of morals.
7. Disregard for human life.
8. Disregard for constitutional obligations.
9. Liberty of speech.
10. Liberty of the press.
11. Military weakness.
You will surely agree with us, that in many of these particulars, the States to which you belong are sunk far below the ordinary condition of civilized nations. The slaveholders, in their listlessness and idleness, in their contempt for the laws, in their submission to illegal and ferocious violence, in their voluntary surrender of their constitutional rights, and above all in their disregard for human life, and their cruelty in taking it, are, as a civilized and professedly a Christian community, without a parallel, unless possibly among some of the anarchical States of South America.
When compelled to acknowledge the superior prosperity of the free States, the slaveholders are fond of imputing the difference to tariffs, or to government patronage, or to any other than the true cause.