If unquestionable facts and experience warrant the conclusion, that while slavery is lawful, yet its continuance or expansion among us is inexpedient, then let us act accordingly.
Being prompted by your request, I propose to examine facts, which are admitted the world over, as evidence of prosperity and happiness in a community, and to compare the evidence thus furnished in different sections of our country, where the experiment of freedom, and the experiment of slavery have been fully and fairly upon trial since the commencement of our colonial existence, that we may see, if possible, what is true on this subject. This seems to be the unerring method of coming at the truth. And if it shall appear, by such a comparison—fairly made—between States of equal age, where slavery and freedom have had a fair opportunity to produce their legitimate results, that in all the elements of prosperity, slaveholding States suffer nothing in the comparison—but that, in almost every particular, are decidedly in advance of the non-slaveholding States, why then we are bound to let the testimony of these facts control our judgment.
Every man and woman in the United States should not only be willing, but desirous to know, what is the matter-of-fact evidence on this all-absorbing question. It is but lately that any method existed, of coming at undisputed facts, which would throw light upon this subject. The Congress of the United States seeing this, thought proper to order that such facts as tend to demonstrate the relative prosperity of the different States of the Union, in religion—in morals—in the acquisition of wealth—in the increase of native population—in the prolongation of life—in the diminution of crime, etc., etc., should be ascertained, under oath, by competent and responsible agents, and that these facts should be published at the national expense for the benefit of the people: so that the people could, understandingly, apply the corrective for evils that might be found to exist in one locality, and profit by a knowledge of the greater prosperity that might be found to exist in another locality.
Up to that time, the non-slaveholding States affirmed, and the slaveholding States tacitly admitted, that by this test, the slaveholding States must suffer in the comparison, in some important items. The facts which belong to the subject, are now before the world, in the census of 1850.
It is my purpose to compare some of the most important of these facts, which have a bearing on this subject. I shall take for the most part, the six New England States, on one side, and the five old slave States, (extending from, and including Maryland and Georgia,) on the other side, for the comparison.
I select these States, not because they are the richest, (for they are not,) but because they all lie on the Atlantic side of the Union—because they were settled at or near the same time—because they have (within a fraction) an equal free population—and because it has been constantly affirmed, and almost universally admitted, that the advantages of freedom, and the disadvantages of slavery, have been more perfectly developed in these two sections, than they have been anywhere else in the United States. There have been no controlling circumstances at any time, since their first settlement, to neutralize the advantages of freedom on the one side, or to modify the evils of slavery on the other. Their mutual tendencies, without let or hindrance, have been in full and free operation for more than two centuries. This is surely a length of time quite sufficient to test the question now in controversy between the North and the South, as to the evils of slavery.
The first facts I shall examine are those which throw light on the progress made in each of these two localities in religion. Of all the evils ascribed to slavery by the free men of the North, none equals, in their estimation, its deleterious tendency upon religion and morals. Indeed, such is the moral character, ascribed by many at the North, who call themselves Christians, to a Southern slaveholder, that no degree of personal piety, of which he can be the subject, will bring them to admit that he is any thing but a God-abhorred miscreant, utterly unfit for the association of honorable men, much less Christian men.
In the outset of this examination, let me remark, that it is just and proper, in a comparative estimate of the tendency of freedom and slavery upon religion and morals, in these two sections of our country, that due allowance be made for the moral and religious character of the materials by which these two sections were originally settled. New England was settled by Puritans, who were remarkable for orthodox sentiments in religion—for high-toned religious conscientiousness, and a rigid personal piety; while these five slave States were either settled, or received character from Cavaliers, who rather scoffed at pure religion, and were highly tinged with infidelity.
The stream does not, in its flow onward, carry with more certainty the characteristics of the fountain, than does progressive society, generally, the moral, social, and religious characteristics of its origin. The five slave States, in this comparison originated in a people of loose morals—strongly tinged with infidelity—and subjected, also, in their onward progress, to all the evil tendencies (if any there be) that are ascribed to slavery.
At the end of more than two centuries, we are comparing the progress which these five slave States have made in religion, with the progress made by six non-slaveholding States, whose subjects, when originally organized into communities, were in advance, in personal piety and religious conscientiousness, of any communities that had then been founded since the days of the apostles—and that have been, in their onward progress, from that time until this, free from all the supposed evils of slavery. If infidelity and slavery be antagonistic elements, almost, if not altogether, too strong for moral control in a community, it certainly ought not to seem strange, that with this original odds against them, these five old slave States should be found very far behind their more highly favoured Northern neighbors in religious attainments.
