SLAVERY IN AMERICA.
A LETTER FROM THE BAPTIST BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN AMERICA, IN ANSWER TO ONE FROM THE BOARD OF BAPTIST MINISTERS IN AND NEAR LONDON, DATED DECEMBER 31, 1833.
(See our last Number, p. 534.)
Baptist Missionary Rooms,
Boston, Sept. 1, 1834.
Dear Brethren,
Your communication, dated London, December 31, 1833, was received some time since, by one of the officers of the Baptist General Convention; but as the Convention, to which it was chiefly addressed, will not convene till April, 1835, the communication was, after some delay, presented to the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, as the executive organ of the Convention. The board referred it to a Committee, and we now communicate to you a copy of their Report, and of the Resolutions adopted by the board.[A] We commend them to your candour, with a confident belief that you will do justice to the views and feelings of the board, encompassed as they are by difficulties which cannot be fully understood by persons in other countries.
It may assist you to form a more correct opinion of the whole subject, if we allude to a few of the circumstances which make slavery, in this country, a matter of peculiar difficulty, and which, consequently, require those who would promote the real welfare of the coloured race, to act with great caution.
In the first place, the political organization of the United States is widely different from that of England; and this difference makes it impossible to adopt here a course similar to that which the British Parliament have adopted in reference to slavery in the West Indies. This country is not one State, with an unrestricted Legislature, but a confederacy of States, united by a Constitution, in which certain powers are granted to the National Government; and all other powers are reserved by the States. Among these reserved powers is the regulation of slavery. Congress have no power to interfere with the slaves in the respective States; and an Act of Congress to emancipate the slaves in those States would be as wholly null and void, as an Act of the British Parliament for the same purpose. The Legislatures of the respective States cannot interfere with the legislation of each other. In some of the States, where laws forbidding emancipation exist, the minority cannot, if disposed, give freedom to their slaves. You perceive, then, that the National Government, and the people of the Northern States, have no power, nor right, to adopt any direct measures, in reference to the emancipation of the slaves in the Southern States. The slave-holders themselves are the only men who can act definitively on this subject; and the only proper and useful influence which the friends of emancipation in other States can use, consists in argument and entreaty. The existence of our union, and its manifold blessings, depends on a faithful adherence to the principles and spirit of our constitution, on this and on all other points.