The intimate commercial relations existing between this Republic and the principal maritime and warlike nations of the globe, mainly by means of the products of slave labor, constitute a necessity for our onward, uninterrupted progress, as the great agricultural and commercial almoner of civilization, and cannot be disturbed, except at the peril of that civilization which they have been so instrumental and conspicuous to promote. The proposed annihilation of the hand of labor whose products amount to $250,000,000 per annum, and those products constituting the articles of prime necessity to civilization, is a matter which involves other interests than our own; and however willing monarchists and their minions may be to disrupt our political system, and destroy this temple of freedom, they will find the genius of commerce and the genius of liberty will continue to go hand in hand to uphold the principles of right and justice, which demand that barbarism shall subserve civilization.
AMERICAN COTTON.
American cotton, the product of slave labor, clothes, to a large extent, one-fourth part of the human race; without it the glory of civilization would vanish. It embellishes the denizen of the city, and hides the nakedness of barbarism. It is the tablet on which is inscribed the history of the present, and rescues from oblivion the mouldering records of the past. It is the talisman of thought, and the vehicle of those electric currents that blaze athwart the sky of mind, with which intellect binds together, with silver thread, the mind's great empire, where kings do homage at the shrine of genius, and bow in awe, and humble reverence before the majesty of mind. It is the medium through which the internal and external domains of thought are blended, and truth made universal, and obvious to the apprehension of a world!
WASHINGTON NOT OPPOSED TO SLAVERY AS WRONG.
It has been urged, that because Washington regretted the impossibility of devising some feasible means of emancipation, that, therefore, he was opposed to slavery, as wrong. The precise opposite was the case. He was too wise to oppose that which he could not overcome. His whole career was success in overcoming opposition. He might, with us, regret the barbarism of the African and the impracticability of his release from servitude, on account of his unfitness for freedom; but he never could logically or reasonably oppose, as wrong, that which made the African better and happier, and which protects him from the dangers and miseries of barbarism, though it placed him in the position to learn only the rudiments of civilization. To assert that Washington deemed slavery a wrong to the slave, is to accuse him of knowingly doing wrong, for he held slaves to the day of his death; and if he emancipated them then, it was more with the hope than the reasonable expectation, that even HIS slaves, with all the force of his example during his whole life, had become fitted for freedom, or that they would be benefited by the experiment of their own attempted self-control. Washington could not, therefore, consistently oppose slavery as a wrong to the slave, nor conscientiously believe it to be wrong; because he would not oppose that which he could not overcome, and because his whole life was occupied in doing right. It is against the prophetic character of Washington's mission, ever crowned with success; against his wisdom, which was most profound; and against his judgment, which was unerring,—to presume his hostility to slavery as wrong, or his opposition to it in a moral point of view, when he knew, as we know, the emancipation of the slaves to be wrong in itself, and impossible, even if right or desirable. It is plain, then, that if Washington had any real aversion to Negro slavery, it was not because it was wrong so far as any natural right of the slave was involved, but because of his ability to do without slaves; and notwithstanding his fortune was ample, he held his slaves during the whole course of his life; whereas, if he had deemed slavery a wrong to the slaves, he would undoubtedly have granted them their liberty. What right would he have had, as a just man, to bestow his generosity upon the public, by refusing the emoluments of office, justly due him, and unjustly appropriating the proceeds or avails of the labor of his slaves, if he knew, or believed they were justly entitled to their freedom. If our moral view of slavery is clear, he was just, as well as generous, and wise as well as successful.
WASHINGTON REPROACHES THE EMANCIPATIONISTS.
It is well known how powerful the secret influence of the British and Tory abolitionists was in this country immediately after the American Revolution, as well as before and since that time; and that at about that time, or soon after, the question was seriously entertained of abolishing slavery in Virginia by legislation, as was done in other States of the Union; and it was on account of the annoying importunities of these disinterested philanthropists (?), and the apparent inclination of the people of the State of Virginia to experiment in their theories, that Washington expressed his willingness to see slavery abolished by legislative enactment. But in what characteristic terms of manly reproach did he address the Emancipation Society on the subject when he found their principles and practices to be that "the end justifies the means." He says:
"But when slaves, who are happy and contented with their present masters, are tampered with and seduced to leave them; when masters are taken unawares by these practices; when a conduct of this kind begets discontent on one side, and resentment on the other; and when it happens to fall on a man whose purse will not measure with that of the Society, and he loses his property for want of means to defend it,—it is oppression in such a case, AND NOT HUMANITY IN ANY, because it introduces more evils than it can cure."[6]
OUR FATHERS ON THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.
It is not to be concealed, however, that some of the sages who framed this Republic, in their zeal for freedom, overlooked the fact of African barbarism, or failed to be explicit in their unpremeditated enunciations of human freedom. Perhaps, however, they had more astuteness than has been supposed by some. Perchance they considered barbarity not humanity, but its opposite, and would have deemed it a work of supererogation to explain that which natural history, the history of the African ram for four thousand years, and common sense, and common observation, had established as a self-evident proposition; to wit, that equality was a political, and not a social, nor moral, nor even physical condition; and that, especially, neither equality nor freedom were to be construed to be the prerogatives nor the right of barbarism. And the Constitution of the United States, the work of their own hands, sanctions this supposition, by recognizing the existence, and providing for the right of Negro slavery, and rescues the Fathers of the Republic from the absurd and opprobrious imputation of advocating Negro equality. Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of our Revolutionary epoch, the Constitution of these United States was the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime wisdom; and that Constitution, the very sublimation and quintessence of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon the immutable principles of justice.