If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in this, it was really acting on the defensive,—on the defensive, however, not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that, to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large areas. To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end by the laws of population. To limit it is to force the planters, in the end, to free their slaves, from an inability to support them, and to force the slaves into more energy and intelligence in labor, in order that they may subsist as freemen. People prattle about the necessity of compulsory labor; but the true compulsory labor, the labor which has produced the miracles of modern industry, is the labor to which a man is compelled by the necessity of saving himself, and those who are dearer to him than self, from ignominy and want. It was by this policy of territorial limitation, that Henry Clay, before the annexation of Texas, declared that Slavery must eventually expire. The way was gradual, it was prudent, it was safe, it was distant, it was sure, it was according to the nature of things. It would have been accepted, had there been any general truth in the assertion that the slaveholders were honestly desirous of reconverting, at any time, and on any practicable plan, their chattels into men. But true to the malignant principles of their system, they accepted the law of its existence, but determined to evade the law of its extinction. As Slavery required large areas and scanty population, large areas and scanty population it should at all times have. New markets should be opened for the surplus slave-population; to open new markets was to acquire new territory; and to acquire new territory was to gain additional political strength. The expansive tendencies of freedom would thus be checked by the tendencies no less expansive of bondage. To acquire Texas was not merely to acquire an additional Slave State, but it was to keep up a demand for slaves which would prevent Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky from becoming Free States. As soon as old soils were worn out, new soils were to be ready to receive the curse; and where slave-labor ceased to be profitable, slave-breeding was to take its place.
This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, when they are plainly but steps in the development of principles already known. Slave-breeding and Slavery-extension are necessities of the system. Like Romulus and Remus, "they are both suckled from one wolf."
But it was just here that the question became to the Free States a practical question. There could be no "fanaticism" in meeting it at this stage. What usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit of uncompromising assault on a thing because its principles are absurd or wicked; what usually goes under the name of common sense is the disposition to assail it at that point where, in the development of its principles, it has become immediately and pressingly dangerous. Now by no sophistry could we of the Free States evade the responsibility of being the extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be extended. If we did not oppose it from a sense of right, we were bound to oppose it from a sense of decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do with Slavery at the South; but we had something to do with rescuing the national character from infamy, and unhappily we could not have anything to do with rescuing the national character from infamy without having something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was, whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and nonsensical enormity?—especially, whether we would be guilty of that last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to any despot of Europe,—we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,—his answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should connive at the commission of this execrable crime!
There can be no doubt, that, if the question had been fairly put to the inhabitants of the Free States, their answer would have been at once decisive for freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would have been "Free-Soilers,"—not only those who are conservatives in virtue of their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have made on the day of creation, could he have witnessed it. His first cry to the Divinity would have been to respect that ancient chaos." But even to conservatives of this class, the attempt to extend Slavery, though really in the order of its natural development, must still have appeared a monstrous innovation, and they were bound to oppose the Marats and Robespierres of despotism who were busy in the bad work. Indeed, in our country, conservatism, through the presence of Slavery, has inverted its usual order. In other countries, the radical of one century is the conservative of the next; in ours, the conservative of one generation is the radical of the next. The American conservative of 1790 is the so-called fanatic of 1820; the conservative of 1820 is the fanatic of 1856. The American conservative, indeed, descended the stairs of compromise until his descent into utter abnegation of all that civilized humanity holds dear was arrested by the Rebellion. And the reason of this strange inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries in which labor is not positively chattellized is towards freedom and civilization. True conservatism, it must never be forgotten, is the refusal to give up a positive, though imperfect good, for a possible, but uncertain improvement: in the United States it has been misused to denote the cowardly surrender of a positive good from a fear to resist the innovations of an advancing evil and wrong.
There was, therefore, little danger that Slavery would be extended through the conscious thought and will of the people, but there was danger that its extension might, somehow or other, occur. Misconception of the question, devotion to party or the memory of party, prejudice against the men who more immediately represented the Anti-Slavery principle, might make the people unconsciously slide into this crime. And it must be said that for the divisions in the Free States as to the mode in which the free sentiment of the people should operate the strictly Anti-Slavery men were to some extent responsible. It is difficult to convince an ardent reformer that the principle for which he contends, being impersonal, should be purified from the passions and whims of his own personality. The more fervid he is, the more he is identified in the public mind with his cause; and, in a large view, he is bound not merely to defend his cause, but to see that the cause, through him, does not become offensive. Men are ever ready to dodge disagreeable duties by converting questions of principles into criticisms on the men who represent principles; and the men who represent principles should therefore look to it that they make no needless enemies and give no needless shock to public opinion for the purpose of pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of the North has heretofore played altogether too much on Northerners.
But to return. The South expected to fool the North into a compliance with its designs, by availing itself of the divisions among its professed opponents, and by dazzling away the attention of the people from the real nature of the wickedness to be perpetrated. Slavery was to be extended, and the North was to be an accomplice in the business; but the Slave Power did not expect that we should be active and enthusiastic in this work of self-degradation. It did not ask us to extend Slavery, but simply to allow its extension to occur; and in this appeal to our moral timidity and moral laziness, it contemptuously tossed us a few fig-leaves of fallacy and false statement to save appearances.
We were informed, for instance, that by the equality of men is meant the equality of those whom Providence has made equal. But this is exactly the sense in which no sane man ever understood the doctrine of equality; for Providence has palpably made men unequal, white men as well as black.
Then we were told that the white and black races could dwell together only in the relation of masters and slaves,—and, in the same breath, that in this relation the slaves were steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity. But, if steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity, the time must inevitably come when they would not submit to be slaves; and then what becomes of the statement that the white and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? Why boast of their improvement, when you are improving them only that you may exterminate them, or they you?
Then, with a composure of face which touches the exquisite in effrontery, we were assured that this antithesis of master and slave, of tyrant and abject natures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery—so said these logicians of liberticide—has solved the great social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage, a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no man be owned.
Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,—