THE UNION.
II.
Having stated the course of England on the slavery question and the rebellion, gladly would I rest here; but, as a Northern man, by parentage, birth, and education, always devoted to the Union, twice elected by Mississippi to the Senate of the United States, as the ardent opponent of nullification and secession, and, upon that very question, having announced in my first address, of January, 1833, the right and duty of the Government, by "coercion," if necessary, to suppress rebellion or secession by any State, truth and justice compel me to say, that we of the North, next to England, are responsible for the introduction of slavery into the South. Upon a much smaller scale than England, but, under her flag, which was then ours, and the force of colonial tradition, we followed the wretched example of England, and Northern vessels, sailing from Northern ports, and owned by Northern merchants, brought back to our shores from Africa their living cargoes.
Small numbers only of these slaves were brought from their tropical African homes to the colder North, where their labor was unprofitable, but, were taken to the South, and against their earnest protest, forced upon them. It was not the South that engaged in the African slave trade. It was not the South that brought slavery into America. No, it was forced upon the South, against their protest, mainly by England, but partly, also, by the North. Believing, as I do, that this war was produced by slavery, we should still remember by whom the slaves were imported here.
Nor should we forget how zealously, from first to last, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, in framing the Federal Constitution, sustained by Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton, and by New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, opposed the continuance, even for a day, of the African slave trade, and how they were overborne by the unfortunate coalition of the Eastern States with Georgia and the Carolinas, legalizing the execrable traffic for twenty years, and how fearfully the predictions of those great prophet statesmen, George Mason, of Virginia, and Luther Martin, of Maryland, have been fulfilled, that this fatal measure, by the force of its moral influence in favor of slavery, and by the rapid importation of negroes here, would menace the peace and safety of the Union.
Indeed, when the Constitution was framed, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, not only opposed the African slave trade, but interdicted the interstate slave trade. All these States then regarded slavery as a great evil, destined soon to disappear, and the failure to adopt gradual emancipation arose, mainly, from the fact, that the majority could not agree as to the practical details of the measure. In Virginia, Washington, Jefferson, George Mason, Madison and Monroe, Marshall and St. George Tucker, were all gradual emancipationists. Even as late as 1830, the measure failed, only by a single vote in the Virginia State Convention; and this year, Western Virginia has voted for manumission with great unanimity. Let us then, as a nation, do our full duty on this question to all loyal citizens; and the border States, acting by compact with the Federal Government, will surely adopt the system of gradual emancipation and colonization. The failure of any State to adopt the measure immediately, although greatly to be deplored, is no indication as to what their course will be when the rebellion shall have been suppressed, and Congress acted definitely on the subject.
As the North, next to England, was mainly responsible for forcing slavery upon the South, honor demands that the whole nation, as an act of justice, and as a measure that would greatly exalt the character of the country, should bear any loss that may arise to loyal citizens from a change of system in any State. Indeed, under all the circumstances, the nation cannot afford to leave all the sacrifice, and all the glory of such an achievement, to the South only. It will be a grand historical fact in the progress of humanity, and must adorn the annals of the nation.
I speak now of the slaves of the loyal. What course should be pursued with the slaves of rebels, is a very different question. As regards the seceded States, it is clear, as our army advances, that the slaves of the disloyal, seized or coming voluntarily within our lines, with or without previous proclamation, necessarily will be, and ought to be emancipated, under that clause of the Constitution authorizing Congress to 'make rules concerning captures on land and water,' and the law carrying that provision into effect. There never has been a war, foreign or intestine, in which slaves coming within the lines of an army have not been emancipated. In the case of Rose vs. Himly, 2d Curtis, 87, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that, in case of rebellion, 'belligerent rights may be superadded to those of sovereignty,' and that we may punish the rebels as traitors, or, treating them, by land and sea, as we now do, as belligerents, under the war power, which is also a constitutional power, we may enforce the same military contributions, or make the same captures, as in case of a foreign war. Indeed, if this were otherwise, our Constitution, as claimed by secessionists and anti-coercionists, at home and abroad, would have been a miserable failure, and would have invited rebellion, by depriving us of the power to suppress it by all war measures recognized by the law of nations. Such is the law, ancient and modern, and the uniform practice of nations in suppressing rebellion. Such acts are not bills of attainder, operating as judgments without war or capture, but the exercise by Congress of the power expressly granted by the Constitution, applicable, as the Supreme Court has declared, in case of rebellion, to 'make rules concerning captures on land and water.' But this provision implies capture or conquest, and the act of Congress proposes no mere paper edicts, which, without capture or conquest, can only operate as offers of conditional amnesty to rebels, or freedom to slaves. This great constitutional war power, as our army advances, should be clearly proclaimed and exercised, and the slaves of the disloyal, used, as they are, to supply the means of support to the rebel armies, should be emancipated, as required by Congress, and employed, at reasonable wages, in some useful labor in aid of the Union cause. In this way, the rebel whites and masters must soon, to a vast extent, leave the army, to raise the provisions now supplied by their slaves, and the war thus much more speedily be brought to a successful conclusion. By paper edicts I mean those designed to operate as judgments or sentences, without capture or conquest, and not those announced under the acts of Congress, in advance, but only to become operative and consummated in the contingency of capture or conquest. The unconditional friends of the Union should not only adhere to the Constitution as the bulwark of our cause, but will find in that great instrument the most ample power to suppress the rebellion. It is the rebels who are striving to overthrow the Constitution, and we who are resolved to maintain and enforce it, in war and in peace, as 'the supreme law of the land,' in every State, from the lakes to the gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
It is vain to deny the prejudice in the North against the negro race, constantly increasing as the numbers multiply, accompanied by the stern refusal of social or political equality with the negro, and the serious apprehension among their working classes of the degradation of labor by negro association, and the reduction of wages to a few cents a day by negro competition—all demonstrating, as a question of interest, as well as of humanity, that it is best for them, as for us, that the separation, though necessarily gradual and voluntary, must be complete and eternal.
Wherever the vote of the people of any State of the North has been taken on this question, it has been uniformly for the exclusion of the free negro race. In the midst of the excitement of the slavery question in Kansas, when the republicans acted alone upon the question of the adoption of their celebrated Topeka constitution, they submitted the free negro question to a distinct vote of the people, which was almost unanimous for their exclusion. The recent similar overwhelming vote, to the same effect, of the people of Illinois, is another clear test of the present sentiment of the nation. That sentiment is this: that the negro, although to be regarded as a man, and treated with humanity, belongs, as they believe, to an inferior race, communion or association with whom is not desired by the whites. Those who regard the slavery question as the only, or the principal difficulty, are greatly mistaken. The negro question is far deeper. It is not slavery, as a mere political institution, that is sustained in the South, but the greater question of the intermingling and equality of races. In this aspect, it is far more a question of race than of slavery. If, as among the Greeks and Romans, the white race were enslaved here, the institution would instantly disappear. Among the many millions of the population of the South, less than a tenth are slaveholders. Why, then, is it, that the non-slaveholding masses there support the institution? It is the instinct, the sentiment, the prejudice, if you please, of race, almost universal and unalterable. It is the fear that if the slaves of the South were emancipated, the non-slaveholding whites would be sunk down to their level. But let the non-slaveholders of the South know that colonization abroad would certainly accompany gradual emancipation, and they would support the measure. They do not wish the Africans among them; but if that must be the case, then they desire them to remain as slaves, and not to be raised to their own condition as freemen, to degrade labor and reduce its wages, as they believe. Abolition alone, touches then merely the surface of this question. It lies far deeper, in the antagonism of race, and the laws of nature. In this respect there is a union of sentiment between the masses, North and South, both opposing the introduction of free blacks.