An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans

by Lydia Maria Child

There would perhaps be no harm in this system of compromises, or any objection to its continuing in infinite series, if no injustice were done to a third party, which is never heard or noticed, except for purposes of oppression.

I reverence the wisdom of our early legislators; but they certainly did very wrong to admit slavery as an element into a free constitution; and to sacrifice the known and declared rights of a third and weaker party, in order to cement a union between two stronger ones. Such an arrangement ought not, and could not, come to good. It has given the slave States a controlling power which they will always keep, so long as we remain together.

President John Adams was of opinion, that this ascendency might be attributed to an early mistake, originating in what he called the "Frankford advice." When the first Congress was summoned in Philadelphia, Doctor Rush, and two or three other eminent men of Pennsylvania, met the Massachusetts delegates at Frankford, a few miles from Philadelphia, and conjured them, as they valued the success of the common cause, to let no measure of importance appear to originate with the North, to yield precedence in all things to Virginia, and lead her if possible to commit herself to the Revolution. Above all, they begged that not a word might be said about "independence;" for that a strong prejudice already existed against the delegates from New-England, on account of a supposed design to throw off their allegiance to the mother country. "The Frankford advice" was followed. The delegates from Virginia took the lead on all occasions.

His son, John Q. Adams, finds a more substantial reason. In his speech on the Tariff, February 4, 1833, he said: "Not three days since, Mr. Clayton, of Georgia, called that species of population (viz. slaves) the machinery of the South. Now that machinery had twenty odd representatives[AB] in that hall,—not elected by the machinery, but by those who owned it. And if he should go back to the history of this government from its foundation, it would be easy to prove that its decisions had been affected, in general, by less majorities than that. Nay, he might go farther, and insist that that very representation had ever been, in fact, the ruling power of this government."

[AB] There are now twenty-five odd representatives—that is, representatives of slaves.

"The history of the Union has afforded a continual proof that this representation of property, which they enjoy, as well in the election of President and Vice-President of the United

States, as upon the floor of the House of Representatives, has secured to the slaveholding States the entire control of the national policy, and, almost without exception, the possession of the highest executive office of the Union. Always united in the purpose of regulating the affairs of the whole Union by the standard of the slaveholding interest, their disproportionate numbers in the electoral colleges have enabled them, in ten out of twelve quadrennial elections, to confer the Chief Magistracy upon one of their own citizens. Their suffrages at every election, without exception, have been almost exclusively confined to a candidate of their own caste. Availing themselves of the divisions which, from the nature of man, always prevail in communities entirely free, they have sought and found auxiliaries in the other quarters of the Union, by associating the passions of parties, and the ambition of individuals, with their own purposes, to establish and maintain throughout the confederated nation the slaveholding policy. The office of Vice-President, a station of high dignity, but of little other than contingent power, had been usually, by their indulgence, conceded to a citizen of the other section; but even this political courtesy was superseded at the election before the last, and both the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States were, by the preponderancy of slaveholding votes, bestowed upon citizens of two adjoining and both slaveholding States. At this moment the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Chief Justice of the United States, are all citizens of that favored portion of the united republic. The last of these offices, being under the constitution held by the tenure of good behaviour, has been honored and dignified by the occupation of the present incumbent upwards of thirty years. An overruling sense of the high responsibilities under which it is held, has effectually guarded him from permitting the sectional slaveholding spirit to ascend the tribunal of justice; and it is not difficult to discern, in this inflexible impartiality, the source of the obloquy which that same spirit has not been inactive in attempting to excite against the Supreme Court of the United States itself: and of the insuperable aversion of the votaries of nullification to encounter or abide by the decision of that tribunal, the true and legitimate umpire of constitutional, controverted law."

It is worthy of observation that this slave representation is

always used to protect and extend slave power; and in this way, the slaves themselves are made to vote for slavery: they are compelled to furnish halters to hang their posterity.

Machiavel says that "the whole politics of rival states consist in checking the growth of one another." It is sufficiently obvious, that the slave and free States are, and must be, rivals, owing to the inevitable contradiction of their interests. It needed no Machiavel to predict the result. A continual strife has been going on, more or less earnest, according to the nature of the interests it involved, and the South has always had strength and skill to carry her point. Of all our Presidents, Washington alone had power to keep the jealousies of his countrymen in check; and he used his influence nobly. Some of his successors have cherished those jealousies, and made effective use of them.