What would the South have? They took the management at the very threshold of our government, and, excepting the rigidly just administration of Washington, they have kept it ever since. They claimed slave representation and obtained it. For their convenience the revenues were raised by imposts instead of direct taxes, and thus they give little or nothing in exchange for their excessive representation. They have increased the slave States, till they have twenty-five votes in Congress—They have laid the embargo, and declared war—They have controlled the expenditures of the nation—They have acquired Louisiana and Florida for an eternal slave market, and perchance for the manufactory of more slave States—They have given five presidents out of seven to the United States—And in their attack upon manufactures, they have gained Mr. Clay's concession bill. "But all this availeth not, so long as Mordecai the Jew sitteth in the king's gate." The free States must be kept down. But change their policy as they will, free States cannot be kept down. There is but one way to ruin them; and that is to make them slave
States. If the South with all her power and skill cannot manage herself into prosperity, it is because the difficulty lies at her own doors, and she will not remove it. At one time her deserted villages were attributed to the undue patronage bestowed upon settlers on the public lands: at another, the tariff is the cause of her desolation. Slavery, the real root of the evil, is carefully kept out of sight, as a "delicate subject," which must not be alluded to. It is a singular fact in the present age of the world, that delicate and indelicate subjects mean precisely the same thing.
If any proof were wanted, that slavery is the cause of all this discord, it is furnished by Eastern and Western Virginia. They belong to the same State, and are protected by the same laws; but in the former, the slaveholding interest is very strong—while in the latter, it is scarcely any thing. The result is, warfare, and continual complaints, and threats of separation. There are no such contentions between the different sections of free States; simply because slavery, the exciting cause of strife, does not exist among them.
The constant threat of the slaveholding States is the dissolution of the Union; and they have repeated it with all the earnestness of sincerity, though there are powerful reasons why it would not be well for them to venture upon that untried state of being. In one respect only, are these threats of any consequence—they have familiarized the public mind with the subject of separation, and diminished the reverence, with which the free States have hitherto regarded the Union.
The farewell advice of Washington operated like a spell upon the hearts and consciences of his countrymen. For many, many years after his death, it would almost have been deemed blasphemy to speak of separation as a possible event. I would that it still continued so! But it is now an every-day occurrence, to hear politicians, of all parties, conjecturing what system would be pursued by different sections of the country, in case of a dissolution of the Union. This evil is likewise chargeable upon slavery. The threats of separation have uniformly come from the slaveholding States; and on many important measures the free States have been awed into acquiescence by their respect for the Union.
Mr. Adams, in the able and manly report before alluded to, says: "It cannot be denied that in a community spreading over a large extent of territory, and politically founded upon the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but
differing so widely in the elements of their social condition, that the inhabitants of one-half the territory are wholly free, and those of the other half divided into masters and slaves, deep if not irreconcilable collisions of interest must abound. The question whether such a community can exist under one common government, is a subject of profound, philosophical speculation in theory. Whether it can continue long to exist, is a question to be solved only by the experiment now making by the people of this Union, under that national compact, the constitution of the United States."
The admission of Missouri into the Union is another clear illustration of the slaveholding power. That contest was marked by the same violence, and the same threats, as have characterized nullification. On both occasions the planters were pitted against the commercial and manufacturing sections of the country. On both occasions the democracy of the North was, by one means or another, induced to throw its strength upon the Southern lever, to increase its already prodigious power. On both, and on all occasions, some little support has been given to Northern principles in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina; because in portions of those States there is a considerable commercial interest, and some encouragement of free labor. So true it is, in the minutest details, that slavery and freedom are always arrayed in opposition to each other.
At the time of the Missouri question, the pestiferous effects of slavery had become too obvious to escape the observation of the most superficial statesman. The new free States admitted into the Union enjoyed tenfold prosperity compared with the new slave States. Give a free laborer a barren rock, and he will soon cover it with vegetation; while the slave and his task-master, would change the garden of Eden to a desert.
But Missouri must be admitted as a slave State, for two strong reasons. First, that the planters might perpetuate their predominant influence by adding to the slave representation,—the power of which is always concentrated against the interests of the free States. Second, that a new market might be opened for their surplus slaves. It is lamentable to think that two votes in favor of Missouri slavery, were given by Massachusetts men; and that those two votes would have turned the scale. The planters loudly threatened to dissolve the Union, if slavery were not extended beyond the Mississippi.