An idea has to some extent prevailed abroad, that Missouri contained but a very small slave population, and that the permanence of this institution here was threatened by the existence of at least a respectable minority of her citizens, ready and anxious to abolish it, and that only a slight external pressure was necessary to accomplish this purpose. We regret that this opinion has to some extent received countenance from the publication and patronage of journals in our commercial metropolis, evidently aiming at such a result. Without, however, going into any explanation of political parties here, which would be entirely foreign to our purpose, we think it proper to state, that the idea above alluded to is unfounded; and that no respectable party can be found in this State, outside of St. Louis, prepared to embark in any such schemes. In that city, constituting the great outlet of our commerce, as well as that of several other States and Territories, it will not seem surprising that its heterogeneous population should furnish a foothold for the wildest and most visionary projects. St. Louis was, however, represented in our Convention, and it is not thought unwarrantable to assume that the resolutions adopted by this body have received the cordial approbation of a large and influential portion of her citizens. Other counties, besides St. Louis, outside of the district to which our observations have been principally directed, were also represented by delegates; and had not the season of the year, the short notice of its intended session, and the locality where the Convention was held—remote from the centre of the State—prevented, we doubt not that delegates from every county in the State would have been in attendance. Indeed, a portion of the upper Mississippi and lower Mississippi counties are as deeply, though less directly interested in this question, as any part of this State; and their citizens are known to accord most heartily in the sentiments and actions of Western Missouri. Even in the south-west part of our State, from the Osage to the borders of Arkansas, where there are but few slaves, the proceedings of public meetings indicate the entire and active sympathy of their people. From the general tone of the public press throughout the State, a similar inference is deducible, and, we feel warranted in asserting, a very general, if not unanimous concurrence in the principles adopted by the Lexington Convention. Those principles are embodied in a series of resolutions appended to this address, and which, we are happy to say, were adopted with entire unanimity, by a body representing every shade of political opinion to be found in the interior of our State. These facts are conclusive of the condition of public sentiment in Missouri. The probabilities of changes here in reference to the question of slavery, are not essentially different from what they are in Tennessee, or Virginia, or Kentucky. In relation to numbers, a reference to the census shows that Missouri contains double the number of Arkansas, nearly double the number of Texas, and about an equal number with Maryland.
These facts are stated with a view to a proper understanding of our position in reference to the settlement of Kansas, and the legitimate and necessary interest felt in the progress and character of that settlement. Previous to the repeal of the Congressional restriction of 1820, by which Missouri was thrown into an isolated position in reference to the question of slavery, and made a solitary exception to a general rule, her condition in regard to the territory west of her border, and yet north of the geographical line which Congress had fixed as the terminus of Southern institutions, was truly unenviable. With two States on her northern and eastern border, in many portions of which the Constitution of the United States, and the Fugitive Slave Law, passed in pursuance thereof, were known to be as inefficacious for the protection of our rights as they would have been in London or Canada, it was left to the will of Congress, by enforcing the restriction of 1820, to cut Missouri off almost entirely from all territorial connexion with States having institutions congenial to her own, and with populations ready and willing to protect and defend them. No alternative was left to that body but to repeal the restriction, and thus leave to the Constitution and the laws of nature, the settlement of our territories, or, by retaining the restriction, indirectly to abolish slavery in Missouri. If the latter alternative had to be selected, it would have been an act of charity and mercy to the slaveholders of Missouri, to warn them in time of the necessity of abandoning their homes, or manumitting or selling their slaves—to give them ample time to determine between the sacrifice of fifty millions of slave property, or seventy millions of landed estate. Direct legislation would have been preferable to indirect legislation, leading to the same result, and the enforcement of the restriction in the settlement of Kansas was virtually the abolition of slavery in Missouri. But Congress acted more wisely, as we think, and with greater fidelity to the Constitution and the Union.
The history of the Kansas-Nebraska bill is known to the country. It abolished the geographical line of 36 deg. 30 min., by which the limits of slavery were restricted, and substituted a constitutional and just principle, which left to the settlers of the territories to adopt such domestic institutions as suited themselves. If ever there was a principle calculated to commend itself to all reasonable men, and reconcile all conflicting interests, this would seem to have been the one. It was the principle of popular sovereignty—the basis upon which our independence had been achieved—and it was therefore supposed to be justly dear to all Americans, of every latitude and every creed. But fanaticism was not satisfied. The abolitionists and their allies moved heaven and earth to accomplish its defeat, and although unsuccessful, they did not therefore despair. Out-voted in Congress, receiving no countenance from the Executive, they retired to another theatre of action, and, strange to say, they prostituted an ancient and respectable Commonwealth—one of the Old Thirteen—to commence, in her sovereign capacity as a State, with the means and imposing attitude incident to such a position, a crusade against slavery, novel in its character, more alarming in its features, and likely to be more fatal in its consequences, than all the fanatical movements hitherto attempted, since the appearance of abolitionism as a political party in 1835. They originated and matured a scheme, never before heard of or thought of in this country, the object and effect of which was to evade the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and in lieu of non-intervention by Congress, to substitute active intervention by the States. An act of incorporation was passed; a company with a capital of five millions was chartered; and this company was authorized to enlist an army of mercenary fanatics, and transport them to Kansas. Recruiting officers were stationed in places most likely to furnish the proper material; premiums were offered for recruits; the public mind was stimulated by glowing and false descriptions of the country proposed to be occupied, and a Hessian band of mercenaries was thus prepared and forwarded, to commence and carry on a war of extermination against slavery.
To call these people emigrants, is a sheer perversion of language. They are not sent to cultivate the soil, to better their social condition, to add to their individual comforts, or the aggregate wealth of the nation. They do not move from choice or taste, or from any motive affecting, or supposed to affect, themselves or their families. They have none of the marks of the old pioneers, who cut down the forests of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana, or levelled the cane brakes of Tennessee and Mississippi, or broke up the plains of Illinois and Missouri. They are mostly ignorant of agriculture; picked up in cities or villages, they of course have no experience as farmers, and if left to their unaided resources—if not clothed and fed by the same power which has effected their transportation—they would starve or freeze. They are hirelings—an army of hirelings—recruited and shipped indirectly by a sovereign state of this Union, to make war upon an institution now existing in the Territory to which they are transplanted, and thence to inflict a fatal blow upon the resources, the prosperity and the peace of a neighboring State. They are military colonies, planted by a State government, to subdue a territory opened to settlement by Congress, and take exclusive possession thereof. In addition to that esprit du corps, which of necessity pervades such an organization, they have in common a reckless and desperate fanaticism, which teaches them that slavery is a sin, and that they are doing God's service in hastening its destruction. They have been picked and culled from the ignorant masses, which Old England and New England negro philanthropy has stirred up and aroused to madness on this topic, and have been selected with reference to their views on this topic alone. They are men with a single idea; and to carry out this, they have been instructed and taught to disregard the laws of God and man; to consider bloodshed and arson, insurrection, destruction of property, or servile war, as the merest trifles, compared with the glory and honor of seducing a single slave from his master, or harboring and protecting the thief who has carried him off!
That such a population would be fatal to the peace and security of the neighboring State of Missouri, and immediate destruction of such owners of slaves as had already moved to the Territory of Kansas, is too clear to admit of argument. A horde of our western savages, with avowed purposes of destruction to the white race, would be less formidable neighbors.
The colonization of Kansas with a population of this character was a circumstance which aroused attention, and excited alarm among our citizens here, and those who had already emigrated to Kansas. Could any other result have been expected? Did sensible men at the North—did the abolitionists themselves, expect any other?
Missouri contained, as we have seen, one hundred thousand slaves, and their value amounted to fifty millions of dollars. Had these fanatics who pronounced slavery an individual sin, and a national curse, ever yet pointed out any decently plausible scheme by which it could be removed? The entire revenue of our State, for ordinary fiscal purposes, scarcely reaches five hundred thousand dollars, and the abolition of slavery here would involve the destruction of productive capital estimated at fifty millions of dollars, or a taxation upon the people of five millions of dollars annually, which is the legalized interest upon this amount of capital, besides the additional tax which would be necessary to raise a sinking fund to pay off the debt created. The Constitution of Missouri prohibits the Legislature from passing laws emancipating slaves, without a full compensation to their owners; and it is therefore apparent, that ten-fold the entire revenue of the State would be barely sufficient to pay the interest upon a sum equivalent to the actual moneyed value of the slaves, without providing any means to extinguish the principal which such a debt would create. We omit altogether, in this calculation, the impracticability and impolicy and cruelty to both races, of liberating the slaves here, with no provision for their removal, and the additional debt which such removal would create, equal, in all probability, to that occasioned by their mere emancipation. It would seem then, that the merest glance at the statistical tables of our State, showing its population and revenue, must have satisfied the most sanguine abolitionist of the futility of his schemes. If the investigation was pursued further, and our estimate was made to embrace the three millions and a half of slaves now in the southern and south-western States, and the billions to which our computation must ascend in order to ascertain their value in money, this anti-slavery crusade, which presents itself in a form of open aggression against the white race, without the semblance or pretext of good to that race for which the abolitionist professes so much regard, and which stands so much higher in his affections than his own, is seen to be one of mere folly and wickedness, or, what is perhaps worse, a selfish and sectional struggle for political power.
It is a singular fact, and one worthy of notice in this connexion, that in the history of African slavery up to this time, no government has ever yet been known to abolish it, which fairly represented the interests and opinions of the governed. Great Britain, it is true, abolished slavery in Jamaica, but the planters of Jamaica had no potential voice in the British Parliament. The abolition of slavery in New England, and in the middle States, can hardly be cited as an exception, since that abrogation was not so much the result of positive legislation, as it was of natural causes—the unfitness of climate and productions to slave labor. It is well known to those familiar with the jurisprudence of this country, and of England, that slavery has been in no instance created by positive statutory enactment, nor has it been thus abolished in any country, when the popular will was paramount in legislative action. Its existence and non-existence appears to depend entirely upon causes beyond the reach of governmental action, and this fact should teach some dependence upon the will of an overruling Providence, which works out its ends in a mode, and at a time, not always apparent to finite mortals.
The history of some of our slaveholding States, in relation to efforts of this character, it would seem, ought to be conclusive, at least, against those who have no actual interests involved, and whom a proper sense of self-respect, if not of constitutional obligation, should restrain from impertinent interference. Virginia in 1831, and Kentucky more recently, were agitated from centre to circumference by a bold and unrestricted discussion of the subject of emancipation. Upon the hustings and in legislative assemblies, the subject was thoroughly examined, and every project which genius or philanthropy could suggest, was investigated. Brought forward in the Old Dominion, under the sanction of names venerated and respected throughout the limits of the commonwealth—well known to have been a cherished project of her most distinguished statesmen—favored by the happening of a then recent servile disturbance, and patronized by some of the most patriotic and enlightened citizens, the scheme nevertheless failed, without a show of strength or a step in advance towards the object contemplated. The magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome was so great, and so obvious, as to strike alike the emancipationists and their adversaries. The result has been, both in Virginia and Kentucky, that slavery, to use the language of one of Kentucky's eloquent and distinguished sons, and one, too, of the foremost in the work of emancipation, "has been accepted as a permanent part of their social system." Can it be that there is a destitution of honesty—of intelligence—of patriotism and piety in slaveholding States, and that these qualities are alone to be found in Great Britain and the northern free States? If not, the conclusion must be, that the difficulties in the way of such an enterprise exceed all the calculations of statesmanship and philosophy; and their removal must await the will of that Being, whose prerogative it is to make crooked paths straight, and justify the ways of God to man.
We have no thought of discussing the subject of slavery. Viewed in its social, moral or economical aspects, it is regarded, as the resolutions of the Convention declare, as solely and exclusively a matter of State jurisdiction, and therefore, one which does not concern the Federal Government, or the States where it does not exist. We have merely adverted to the fact, in connexion with the recent abolition movements upon Kansas, that amidst all their fierce denunciations of slavery for twenty years past, these fanatics have never yet been able to suggest a plan for its removal, consistent with the safety of the white race—saying nothing of constitutional guarantees, Federal and State.