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 SHEFFIELD, MASS. 
 
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 CHARLESTON, S. C, 
 
 FOR DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 1856. 
 
REPLY 
 
 TO 
 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 ELM TREE, 
 
 SHEFFIELD, MASS. 
 
 I®it| ^^'tratts from t\t simt 
 
 CHARLESTON, S. C. 
 
 FOR DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 1856. 
 

 WALKER, EVANS k CO., 
 
 STATIONERS AND PRINTERS, 
 
 No. 3 Broad-Street, 
 
 CHARLESTON. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I\ compliance with the wish of a number of gentlemen, the publishers offer to 
 the public, in pamphlet form, the reply which lately appeared in the Charleston 
 Courier to Dr. Dewey's remarks on Slavery. The pamphlet embraces a few addi- 
 tional passages by the author of the reply, on one or two topics in the remarks not 
 before noticed. The publishers have also included the remarks themselves, as given 
 in the Charleston Mercury of the 18th October, from Northern papers. They are 
 extracts from the address delivered by Dr. Dewey at the Elm Tree, in Sheffield, 
 Massachusetts, in September last. It is presumed that they are correct, and that 
 a reference to them may be convenient to the readers of the reply. 
 
 November 7th, 1850. 
 
TO THE REY. ORVILLE DEWEY. 
 
 " In the right of your own poor thought," which, you say, 
 " cries to heaven in its very weakness," yon have denounced 
 Southern society, in your Elm Tree oration. Your friends, in 
 this region, thought themselves ahle to say that you would not 
 espouse the vulgar topics of the multitude ; that your literary 
 taste and gentle philosophy would keep you aloof from the 
 coarse stimulant which so much delights the passions of the 
 people around you ; that you would not, at least, seek an 
 opportunity for indulging their gross appetite for abuse on 
 Southern manners and morals. But we are not surprised that 
 the confidence has been misplaced. The occasion was too 
 alluring — the exciting subject, the sympathetic audience, the 
 obvious expectation produced by your sojourn for two winters 
 in the very heart of Southern society, in the midst of Southern 
 families, with every opportunity afforded by their unsuspi- 
 cious hospitality for marking the omissions and commissions 
 of Southern life, and registering the misdeeds of the Legrees, 
 which you have detected, — all this involved a temptation which 
 it would be unreasonable to expect you to resist. Your virtues 
 are not ascetic. Why should you refrain from gratifying the 
 eager appetite for detraction on the South which pervades your 
 people? Why impose on yourselt an unprofitable self-denial 
 in reference to those whom you never expect to see again? 
 You have already reaped all the fruits that the Southern field 
 directly produces, and it was sound philosophy to secure from 
 it the indirect advantage which its ofi'ences aiford. Your con- 
 demnation of the South gives pleasure to your friends, and 
 profit to yourself. It would be foolish to expect that an idle 
 
6 
 
 motive of delicacy should be allowed t<> debar yon from so 
 much enjoyment. 
 
 But although not surprised, we are nevertheless grieved at 
 your Elm Tree declamation. It strikes us as, somehow, not in 
 strict accordance with true moral taste and sound judgment. 
 There is in it something not easily i-econciled with the position, 
 so lately held among us, which has enabled you to say, " the 
 planters confess this." "the Southern gentlemen admit that"; 
 it has done general harm. The advantage which your visit 
 gave you for preparing materials in the South for a speech in 
 New England could hardly be used as yon have used them, 
 without injury to the great cause of hospitality and social life. 
 It must produce distrust in the So nth on all fature occasions. 
 They received you with unsuspecting cordiality ; your seizing 
 the first opportunity to assail theai may serve to close their 
 hearts and houses against future lecturers from the same 
 quarter. People do not ordinarily invite detraction to their 
 homes, however willing to be hospitable. You have added 
 another obstacle to those before existing in the way of social 
 intercourse between the two sections of the country. The 
 reflection must be painful to every man. The worst would 
 avoid it. It reminds us of the Eastern story of the Emir and 
 his horse. The Emir Hamid was wealthy and charitable. 
 Among his riches was a horse, which he valued above them 
 all. The steed was the fleetest and most enduring in Arabia. 
 A neighboring chief envied the Emir, and wished to lay hands 
 on his property. In vain the chief used every art of persua- 
 sion and ofler of value. Hami/l was deaf to every thing. 
 One day as he was riding his favorite horse in the desert, he 
 saw a man lying on the ground, writhing and groaning and 
 uttering cries and supplications for aid. The Emir dismounted 
 and hastened to help the afllicted stranger. At that moment 
 the chief, for it was he, sprang from the ground, leapt into the 
 saddle, and galloped off on his prize. The Emh\ waking from 
 his surprise, called out to the flying robber to pause for an 
 instant. " My friend," said the Emir, "you have gained your 
 end, but, I pray you, never tell any one in what way you 
 have succeeded. It may prevent travellers from doing deeds of 
 
charity by the way side." The story adds,lthat the plunderer 
 repented, restored the horse, and the parties became good 
 friends ever after. You would rob us of property and good 
 name ; whether the attendant circumstances are not similar, 
 and whether the last act of tlie repentant robber be not worthy 
 of imitation, it is for you to decide. 
 
 We can see nothing new or strong in your attack on slavery. 
 •Your reasonings, however applauded by your hearers, are 
 feeble and flimsy to us. Notwithstanding your emphatic decla- 
 ration to the Southern people, " you are in the wrong ; you 
 are certainly in the wrong; your judgment is wrong; your 
 course is wrong"; the argument of your speech does not weigh 
 with them a straw, and your solemn assurance is without 
 authority. 
 
 " If a man," you tell us, " should throw his lasso, in the 
 hunting grounds of Africa, over the neck of a wild horse and 
 subject him to domestic use, it would be right. But if he 
 should throw his lasso over the neck of a man roving; wild 
 and free in the wilderness, should tear him from his wife and 
 children, put chains on his limbs, and sell him into hopeless 
 bondage, we should, pronounce that a monstrous wrong." 
 " And no talk," yon add, " about civilizing or christianizing 
 or improving the African race, could ever stand against that 
 conviction." It is characteristic of the mode of reasoning 
 which the Abolitionists use, on the subject of slavery, that 
 something is always introduced into the statement which does 
 not necessarily belong to it, and so uses and abuses, substance 
 and accident are mixed up in endless confusion. Divest your 
 statement of the mere rhetoric, the pomp and circumstance, 
 the lasso, the hunting ground, the tearing from wife and chil- 
 dren, which would vitiate your argument if thrown into logical 
 form, and it amounts to this — you mean to say that the seizure 
 of a tribe of wild Africans, and transporting them to a country 
 where they will be civilized, christianized and improved, would 
 be a monstrous wrong. This is your proposition, fairly stated, 
 and relieved from the ornaments which a professed rhetorician 
 so naturally finds in his way. This is your position, and, if I 
 were accustomed to deal in ex-cathedra phrases, I would say, 
 
as you say to us, " you are in the wroni^ ; you are certainly in 
 the wrong ; your judgment is wrong ; your course is wrong." 
 You undervalue the blessings of civilization, the far greater 
 blessings of Christianity, if you think them dearly bought by 
 the restraints imposed, in a Christian land, on heathen savages. 
 You prefer to those blessings the wild freedom of the barbarian, 
 helpless and hopeless, for ages past and ages to come. Are 
 you not confounding the means with the end ? The wild raan*s 
 brute freedom is not the end of existence. Freedom is a means 
 only for reaching the great purposes of huma)i life. These are 
 trutli, virtue, sound morals, pure religion, human happiness 
 here and hereafter. The terms of your proposition admit that 
 the wild man reaches them, :ind can reach them, not by his 
 freedom, but by slavery only. You decide that they are not 
 worth the price thus paid — better a wild free savage, than a 
 Christian slave ! You belong to those who " bawl for freedom 
 in their senseless mood," and do not know that they who would 
 be free " must first be wise and good." The freedom that you 
 would preserve has neither wisdom nor goodness. It is license, 
 not liberty. It is the freedom of the wild horse. It is attended 
 with brutal ignorance, superstitions, gross, stupid, devilish, with 
 the cruelty of the canibal, the carnage of endless strife, the 
 horrors, so hideous, of heathen African life. The African who 
 is brought from it to slavery, blesses God for the change. But 
 you think all these things are better, with wild freedom, than 
 civilization and Christianity, witii the restraints of slavery in 
 a Christian land. Surely, sir, this is strange doctrine for a 
 Christian teacher. It is not the doctrine of the Apostles and 
 Prophets. Paul and Moses would repudiate it, and brand it 
 as heresy, as hostile to the teachino- which accounts all thinsrs 
 to be but dross, in comparison with the excellency of a life in 
 Christ. In civilized society we fetter this wild freedom which 
 you so much admire, by the involuntary servitude of the peni- 
 tentiary, for long years, and for life. We subdue it by the 
 prison, the hangman and the gallows. We limit it, at every 
 turn, in every department of society. Why will you permit 
 these abuses of wild freedom to exist ? You take life to ensure 
 order in the State for others, and you think it a monstrous 
 
wrung to restrain the wild freedom of the African savage, in 
 order to impart religious truth to the savage himself. The 
 conquered barbarian gives his freedom for his life. Is the life 
 of the civilized white of less value than the freedom of the 
 savage black? If the lasso is bad, surely the gallows, garote 
 and gillotine are worse. If no talk, as your phrase goes, of 
 Christianity or civilization or moral improvement can justify 
 the taking of savage freedom, can any talk excuse the taking 
 of the civilized man's life? 
 
 But suppose your argument sound, and that no talk of giving 
 to the African the freedom with which Christ alone can make 
 him free, will justify us in going into his hunting grounds and 
 depriving him, with lassos, of his wild liberty. This will not 
 affect the merits of the true question. Your statement of the 
 case is not candid. Our fathers, to whose opinion you love to 
 appeal, did not go, as your fancy implies, with lassos, into the 
 African hunting grounds, to make slaves. They found them 
 ready made to their hands. The negroes were slaves already. 
 In all time they have been slaves. Captives in war, conquered 
 slave soldiers, prisoners whose skulls would have formed pyra- 
 mids or paved the court square of the King of Ashantee or 
 Dahomy — they were saved from slaughter to continue slaves. 
 It is better, you think, that they should die heathens, that their 
 heads should become paving stones for a Pagan potentate, than 
 that they should be civilized, christianized and improved by 
 slavery in a land of Christian liberty. This is your position. 
 
 But admit it to be a monstrous wrong to interfere in these 
 enjoyments of African freedom, and to bring the African from 
 the blessings of his native land, under any circumstances, still 
 your argument is wide of the true question at issue. If that 
 question were, shall the slave trade with Africa be re-opened . 
 if your ships were about to go again to the coast of Guinea to 
 bring emigrants after their former fashion, to the Southern 
 States, to be made useful Christian laborers, blessing, with their 
 industrv, all the peoples of the world, in a greater degree than 
 the African tribes, taken together, have been able to do since 
 the beginning of their race — if, in obtaining slaves, the crews 
 employed were about to seize upon free men of Africa and 
 
10 
 
 drag them into slavery — then yonr argument, whatever it may 
 be worth otherwise, would at least have the merit of being to 
 the point. But it is not to the point in the great practical 
 question now at issue. It is like that of Dr. Wayland, entirely 
 outside of the matter in dispute. Dr. Wayland says, "I have 
 wished to make it clear that slavery, or the holding of men in 
 bondage, is always and everywhere a moral wrong, a trans 
 gression of the law of the Creator. To put this subject in a 
 proper light, suppose that your family and mine were neigh- 
 bors ; suppose that T should set fire to your house, shoot you 
 as you came out, and seizing on your wife and children, compel 
 them to work for my benefit, without their consent, &c., &c., 
 would I not, in doing so, violate the supreme law of the Cre- 
 ator; would this be to do as we would be done by?" You 
 oppose the same slavery by a similar argument. I will answer 
 the one supposition by another. Suppose, my dear sir, that 
 one of your landless ISTorthern socialists should deliver lectures 
 on the subject of property to those who own farms, maintaining 
 that all appropriation by individuals of houses and lands was 
 a monstrous wrong; that property was theft, and therefore 
 clearly a violation of the moral law. To place the subject in 
 a simple light, suppose that he should say to the audience, your 
 families and mine are neighbors ; you seize me with a lasso, or 
 you drag me and my children away from our natural rights ; 
 you take what ought to be, in part, my farm, and appropriate 
 to your exclusive use the fruits and fields which are the common 
 gift of nature to all ; in doing this, are you not violating the 
 supreme law of the Creator? Would this be doing as you 
 would be done by ? Your proposition is, that all property in 
 man is sin, the Socialists, that all property in land is a sin. If 
 he begs the question as to one kind of property, so do you of 
 the other. You think your principle clear, so also does he. 
 You maintain your position by irrelevant suppositions, he does 
 the same. His doctrine is as tenable as plausible, and will 
 be, by and by, more acceptable to your masses, than your own 
 is now. 
 
 You both rest on the same fallacy, that, it is wrong to possess 
 a certain property at all, if it is wrong to acquire it by violent 
 
11 
 
 means. We do not advocate arson or murder, or the capture 
 of free men with lassos, as you and Dr. Way land suppose ; we 
 only vindicate our right to the property actually in our pos- 
 session. 
 
 Your mind distorts and discolours every thing connected with 
 slavery. With the declaration that the slave trade is piracy, 
 you connect the assertion that " those who deal in slaves at 
 the South now are held infamous and excluded from all good 
 society, and you never talked with a Southern man who did 
 not say, "this selling of slaves is a fearful part of oor system." 
 
 To call the slave trade piracy is a mere abuse of words. We 
 should perpetrate a similar one to call the slander on the South 
 murder or manslaughter. 
 
 Your assertion is an insult to the brokers of the Southern 
 States. It is as groundless as it is reckless. The dealing in 
 slaves, like other branches of business, is dependent for its 
 character on the parties engaged in it, and the mode in which 
 it is conducted. Bank presidents and directors who sell and 
 buy notes and acceptances share, we presume, the first ranks 
 of society ; but there are forgers and swindlers dealing in the 
 same wares, in Wall-street, and elsewhere, who would tho- 
 roughly disgrace it. You say, without condition or reservation, 
 that in the South dealers in slaves are infamous, and excluded 
 from all good society. Why, sir, we venture to say, they were 
 admitted to your own. You accepted their courtesies, shared 
 their hospitality, enjoyed their company, and found them as 
 refined in manners and morals, as elevated in character and 
 pure in conduct, as the most perfect examples of society in 
 Boston or New York, — we will not say as Dr. Dewey himself, 
 for this would be thought an equivocal compliment by the 
 parties in question. 
 
 The appeal you make to the conversation of Southern gentle- 
 men, in confirmation of your assertions, is neither creditable 
 nor admissible. We know how easily the loose language of 
 conversation is misapprehended, warped and changed by the 
 bias of the hearer, especially when that bias is a strong one. 
 If the selling of slaves is a fearful thing in slavery, there are 
 sights far more fearful in your system of free labour. It is a 
 
12 
 
 fearful thing to see women, with^_scanty wages, prostituting 
 themselves for support. It is a fearful thing to see the hungry 
 hireling asking for work, and unable to get it ; knowing that 
 his children starve at home for bread, and unable to find em- 
 ployment by which he must obtain it. It is a fearful thing to 
 see the squalid mass of beggary, in what are called free States, 
 importunate for alms and consigned to hopeless filth, vice and 
 degradation. It is fearful to visit certain parts of Boston, 'New 
 York and Philadelphia. It is fearful to see the multitudes of 
 European free labourers who abandon their homes, friends, 
 relatives, parents ; decimated hj disease on the voyage ; crowd- 
 ing your hospitals, and exhausting the resources of your public 
 and private charities. The selling of the slave is what preserves 
 him from the miseries of the unemployed hireling. It is the 
 mode by which he is transferred from the master who cannot 
 support him to the master who can. There is no interval in 
 which he is unemployed, and none in which lie is not secure 
 of food, shelter and clothing. He is never, therefore, in danger 
 of starving to death. When your hirelings are safe from the 
 risk, and equally confident of commanding subsistence, it will 
 be when the laws of free States enable the labourer to demand 
 a new employer before he is dismissed by the old. The selling 
 of the slave is a transfer of the obligation to labour, and this 
 transfer carries with it a right to be supported for himself and 
 his children. It is liis labour only that is sold and bought, and 
 not his body and soul, as your writers profess to consider it. 
 His body is as much his own as the hired operative's, and his 
 soul as free to engage in its proper occupation. When your 
 fancy shall be again on the wing in pursuit of the fearful things 
 in slave selling, let it liui^^er for a season on the sufiPerino-s of 
 feeble and diseased labourers, tiirust out of sight in lanes and 
 cellars, incapable of employment or unable to procure it. 
 
 Your main reason for being dissatisfied with the Southern 
 people is, ihat they have changed their views of slavery. It 
 is a change, yon say, that "alters all your moral and political 
 relations with slavery, except one— the old compact of non- 
 interference." How the compact of non-interference makes 
 an exception, it is not easy to understand. For nearly forty 
 
13 
 
 years the North has waged war on the manners, customs and 
 institutions of the South, by every mode in their power — b.y 
 speaking, writing, robbing them of their property, resisting 
 their efforts to reclaim it, depriving them of their equal rights 
 to the common territory of the Union, and exciting and fos- 
 tering a spirit of hostility against them. You cannot name 
 one mode of interference which your Northern people have 
 not habitually practised. They have held all other States, in 
 peace, friends, save only the States of the South. 
 
 You console and contradict yourself, however, in professing 
 to believe that the change is not universal. Many hold the 
 old opinion, as you think. " We are always mistaking," you 
 say, " partisan zeal for public sentiment, the agitated surface 
 for the conservative depths of society." The inference from this 
 remark is, that the mass in the South is unchanged. Accord- 
 ingly, you tell us, that "in a company of twenty gentlemen, 
 where the subject of slavery was freely discussed, seventeen 
 out of the twenty retained the opinion you are pleased to 
 approve — the opinion that slavery is an evil ; that it must and 
 would die out and disappear from the country ; that it should 
 be confined to the rice and cotton fields ; that it is here, they 
 could not help it, and must get along with it as they could." 
 Pardon me, sir, for saying this cannot be true. You have 
 mistaken, you have misapprehended their views. If unity of 
 sentiment ever existed, in any country, on any subject, it is in 
 the South, on the subject of slavery. It pervades all parties. 
 It is as nearly universal as public opinion can ever be. 
 
 But, suppose your statement to be correct, and the quoted 
 sentence about partisan zeal and public sentiment to be pro- 
 perly applied, what becomes of the change you complain of — 
 the reason by which you justify the alteration of all your 
 moral and political relations with slavery ? If three only out 
 of twenty have changed, with what propriety can you say that 
 " a change has come over the spirit of the South ? " Is a small 
 minority the South ? Because three out of twenty change, 
 do you alter all your relations with the seventeen ? Are you 
 not mistaken in supposing that you have altered these relations 
 from any cause arising in the South? The cause is among 
 
14 
 
 yourselves. It is Northern sentiment that is altered. Formerly 
 Southern families could travel in New England, with their 
 servants, without the fear of being robbed ; now they are plun- 
 dered in the first village where they stop to rest. Formerly, 
 the South was the subject of eulogy and fraternity ; now every 
 epithet of denunciation and abuse is lavished upon her. Your 
 change is immeasurable from the slave-ship to the anti-slavery 
 pulpit, and anti-slavery legislation. It involves a settled hos- 
 tility to the Southern States. The Missouri controversy, the 
 Kansas dispute, are the occasions only, not the cause of the 
 war. There are many exceptions, we know ; very many, we 
 hope. But you are not of the number. It would be unrea- 
 sonable to expect it. The moral courage of Lord and Adams 
 is not an every day virtue. It is as rare as it is admirable. 
 
 You justify, then, your alteration of moral and political rela- 
 tions with slavery because the South has changed its opinions, 
 and 3'ou assure us, at the same time, that the South is not 
 changed ; that seventeen out of twenty retain their sentiments ; 
 that the great conservative depths of society are undisturbed. 
 You approve of the old idea, that, in the South, negro slavery 
 should be " tolerated," not " espoused," because it would be 
 confined to the rice fields where " it may be modified, where 
 it may die out ; " and you condemn the new opinion, as you 
 think it, that slavery is right, because it would extend, because 
 the three millions will become thirty. Under the system or 
 sentiment that you are pleased to tolerate, the negro race would 
 die out ; under that which you consider intolerable, it would 
 increase to thirty millions. You prefer the first, we the last 
 condition of the race, as the most humane, to say the least of 
 it, What, in Heaven's name, you ask, are ive to do with it ? 
 All we ask you to do with it, in the case supposed, is not to 
 interfere. For ourselves we have no apprehensions. Thirty 
 millions of blacks will not be one too many for fifty millions 
 of whites. They will grow, you say, in intelligence. We have 
 no doubt of it. We know that every new generation is more 
 intelligent than the old. We think it to be desired, not depre- 
 cated. There is an immense distance between the negroes of 
 the present generation and their barbarian fathers. The pro- 
 
15 
 
 portion between the three millions now existing and the three 
 hundred thousand said to have been imported, is the same as 
 between the three millions and the thirty which you seem to 
 anticipate. And yet, there is no part of the world more secure 
 than the South, from disorder and violence. You apprehend 
 from their intelligence servile wars. In the great slaveholding 
 States of antiquity, in Greece and Rome, the rulers of the 
 world and parents of art and science, poets and philosophers" 
 were in the number of their slaves ; but no servile wars sprang 
 from poets and philosophers. The few that arose were from 
 escaped bands of ignorant and brutal gladiators, led on, per- 
 haps, and excited by turbulent and factious freemen, seeking 
 to trample on the rights of their countrymen. Very few these 
 wars were in number compared with the riots and disorders of 
 hireling States. We apprehend none, except it be from your 
 interference. 
 
 We must differ with you, then, as to the future of the black 
 race in America. We desire that it should increase and mul- 
 tiply, living in the continued enjoyment of peaceful homes, 
 giving to the world new comforts and riches, and, to their 
 native land, the promise of brighter and better days. Xor 
 can we understand how a teacher of Ethics, as you are, can 
 hold the opinions you profess. So long as the South only 
 tolerated slavery, you were able to approve ; but when they 
 changed from a mere toleration of it as a wrong, to the "espou- 
 sal " of it as a right, they lost, you say, the sympathy of all 
 men. While they confess that slavery is a sin you are willing 
 to bear with them, but when they defend it as none, you 
 adjudge them to be insupportable. Now, sir, we do not see 
 how a Christian teacher can tolerate or excuse one who lives 
 in the habitual commission of a sin and makes no effort to 
 forsake it. If slavery is a sin, it ought not to exist in a Chris- 
 tian land. It should be abandoned forthwith. If we admit it 
 to be a sin, and continue to practise it, we deserve no sympathy, 
 apology or forbearance from Dr. Dewey. We should have, as 
 we think, far juster claims on him, if, believing that the slavery 
 of the negro race is right, consistent with revelation, conducive 
 to the good of both white and black, we continue, under that 
 
16 
 
 conviction, to hold them as slaves. And this is most certainly 
 the conviction of the Southern people— a conviction groving 
 stronger as the question is more discussed. We ask no favors, 
 no toleration, no sympathy. We want nothing but truth and 
 justice, and if our cause cannot stand consistently with these, 
 let it fall. But, rely upon it, no rhetoric, no solemnity of 
 adjuration, no mock pathetic sentiment, will weigh with us a 
 rush in the discussion. When you declaim at the Elm Tree, 
 we see in the rhetoric nothing but the common places of the 
 Abolition pulpit; when you exclaim, "God forbid that the 
 number of slaves or slave States should be increased," we are 
 content to abide His will — if He forbid, they will not increase ; 
 if they increase, it will be evident that He does not forbid. 
 When you tell us that Southern parents send their sons to 
 Northern colleges, because they think their own home " not a 
 good home for civilization, Christianity, morality," and that 
 they say of their home, when choosing a place of education 
 for a son, " not here, he must not stay here," you pronounce a 
 libel on the parents of the South which nothing can excuse or 
 palliate. Why, sir, do you not know that, where one youth 
 from the South is educated in a Northern college, five hundred 
 are educated at home ; that every year adds to the number of 
 colleges in the Southern States ; that in each succeeding year 
 there is a smaller number of young men sent for education to 
 the North, from every Southern State. There are a few, we 
 are sorry to say it, who still send their sons to Yale or Cam- 
 bridge, either from some idle notion that they are better 
 instructed, not in morals but in learning, or because of old 
 attachments to the Alma Mater where they have themselves 
 been graduated. But you cannot lay your finger on one man 
 who places his preference of a Northern college on the basis 
 you assign — there is not one man among us so base as to 
 traduce the civilization, Christianity or morality of his own 
 country. The few who send their sons to Northern colleges 
 are among the very men who are most decided in the assertion 
 of Southern rights, either of property or reputation. We 
 believe that our churches are as pure, our preachers as devout, 
 our people as moral and refined as your own. It gives us 
 
17 
 
 no pleasure to say so, but for one act of violence with us, we 
 will show three with you. The crimes of the United States 
 which are marked with peculiar atrocity — the gigantic frauds, 
 the infernal machines, the blowing up of houses, the burning 
 and robbery of churches, the obstruction of railroads and their 
 reckless management, the murders singularly horrible, where 
 limbs of the victims are burnt, boxed up, thrown into vaults 
 to be fished up at a convenient season ; each act a repetition 
 of the murder — these things belong to your latitude, not to 
 ours. 
 
 These charges are of record ; yours on the people of the South 
 are guess, supposition, conjecture. " I do not know," you tell 
 your friends, " the body of the Southern people ; I am not 
 acquainted with plantation life ; the great evils are doubtless 
 there, not in the cities ; and I believe that they are great evils. 
 I believe that all candid and thoughtful men among the planters 
 admit it. There may be less cruelty than is often alleged, but 
 there is great cruelty ; there may not be many Legrees, but 
 there are Legrees." Your time was spent in the cities where, 
 as you intimate, the evil is not; you know nothing of the 
 plantations where, you say, the evil, cruelty and Legrees are. 
 All candid and thoughtful men among the planters, you afiirm, 
 admit these things, but you did not know, you confess, one in 
 in a thousand of these candid and thoughtful men. You adduce 
 no evidence, you saw nothing, you observed nothing, you think 
 it enough to tell us you believe. You sustain this belief not 
 by facts to prove that the planters are cruel, but by a conjec- 
 ture or argument to prove that they must be so. " When 
 irresponsible power and violent passions hold the reign over a 
 subject race, we know," you say, " that there must be cruelty ; 
 there must be a certain inhumanity." It is so ; it must be so- — 
 that is the sum of what you say. The assertion is without a 
 fact to support it ; the conjecture or argument we will proceed 
 to examine. 
 
 Irresponsible power is power subject to no restraint. Is the 
 
 slaveholder subject to none ? What are the checks in ISTew 
 
 England on those who exercise authority over others in the 
 
 various relations of life, as husbands, fathers, teachers, com- 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 raanders of ships? They are public opinion, religions and 
 moral sentiment, the laws of the land. The same checks prevail 
 here. We are not aware that there is less respect for law and 
 order in the South than the North. The religious or moral 
 sentiment is quite as strong ; the laws are as certainly executed. 
 They do not always succeed in restraining the evil passions of 
 Southern men, but are they more successful with your own ? 
 If a master here sometimes murders a slave, does it never 
 happen in the North that a husband murders his wife? Why 
 is the power existing in the one case called an irresponsible 
 power, and not in the other ? In the murder of the wife, you 
 infer that the criminal has violated all restraints, human and 
 divine ; in the murder of the slave, you conclude that there 
 are no restraints to violate. In the murder of the wife, you 
 ascribe the crime, not to the institution of matrimony, but to 
 the villainy of the criminal ; in the murder of the slave, you 
 impute it, not to the perj)etrator, but to slavery. Why this 
 difference in your conclusions ? — because, you say, the slave is 
 of a subject race, the property of the master, and therefore he 
 is more exposed to violence. But this reason operates surely 
 and strongly in the opposite way. We will lay aside all con- 
 sideration of the higher and gentler relations that naturally 
 spring up between masters and slaves ; we will forget, for the 
 occasion, that they are men with human hearts in their bosoms 
 subject to all affectionate impulses, producing, on the one 
 hand, the most unreserved confidence, and on the other the 
 noblest devotion ; we will place them on what the politicians 
 call the lowest platform — the master is the owner only, the 
 slave is the property only, or, as your friends love to call him, 
 a mere chattel. It is sad nonsense to call him so ; but if he is 
 a chattel, he is a very valuable one. Does this fact exercise 
 no restraining influence on the owner's power ? So far from 
 exciting does it not curb the disposition to injure or abuse ? 
 The farmer's best horse bears no comparison in value to the 
 negro slave ; does the farmer destroy his horse from the mere 
 wantonness of passion ; does he maim his ox or his ass ? Do 
 the ladies of your State, in a fit of petulance, batter and destroy 
 their valuable plate or jewels — or shall we conclude that the 
 2* 
 
19 
 
 love of property loses its power in those cases only where the 
 property is most valuable ? We learn from friglitful revela- 
 tions in the English criminal courts how this principle of selfish 
 interest has been strong enough to annihilate the ties of kindred 
 and affection, and to sacrifice for gain the ensured lives of 
 relative and friend. If it has this fearful power to destroy, 
 has it no power to preserve ? But we disclaim this low view 
 of the relation between the master and his people. It belongs 
 to you, not to us. The relation is fruitful in kind and warm 
 attachments protecting and defending the slave ; and to con- 
 clude difierently, because there are exceptions, would be as 
 wise as to infer that there is no love in families, because there 
 are sometimes discord, hatred and death. 
 
 We are sorry to see you adopt the coarse cant of the abolition 
 school, in charging the Southern planter with breeding negroes 
 for sale. Slaves outgrow their homes, and go from Virginia, 
 or are carried, if you please, to a larger field and better soil, 
 as your laborers leave their homes in Massachusetts, or are sent 
 by your aid societies to the fertile lands of the West. In either 
 case it may be said that the old State breeds laborers for the 
 new. The phrase is as applicable in the one as in the other. 
 In both cases it is coarse and in bad taste. It suits the slang 
 of party only. Strictly taken, it is untrue. Neither hireling 
 nor slave State breeds labor for export. You assert it for the 
 South, we deny it, and ask for evidence and proof, not decla- 
 mation and the stratagems of rhetoric. 
 
 You seem to be anxious for our lives and fortunes, and gloomy 
 apprehensions fill your mind as to the future condition of the 
 Southern States. You paint coming events in sombre colors. 
 Nothing can help us. Whether in the Union or out of the 
 Union, we are never to escape the world's abuse and slander. 
 "If you could throw off Northern interference and the Northern 
 connection," you tell us, " and form a republic for yourselves, 
 your republic would lie under the social Ostracism of the w^iole 
 world." And you adjure us, " for God's sake, to consider what 
 we are doing, and where we are going." Certainly, my dear 
 sir, the world's opinion is worth something, but it is not the 
 voice of God. It is very uncertain, very subject to change. 
 
20 
 
 and is not and never will be the sole or best standard of truth 
 and right. We appeal from it to the law of God. We appeal 
 from it, from what it now is, to what it has been, until lately, 
 always and everywhere, semjper et ubique, among patriarchs 
 and the nations nearest to patriarchal times, among Jews and 
 Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, Heathens, Mahometans and 
 Christians. Serfage is hardly yet at an end in Germany. It 
 prevails in Russia. The fashion, fifty years ago, was to bring 
 the blacks f.iom Africa ; it is now, to carry them there. Can 
 you pretend to say what it may be fifty years hence ? Are 
 you willing to make this unstable public opinion the rule of 
 right and test of truth ? What, then, will become of the 
 particular church of which you are the boast and ornament? 
 What says public opinion in reference to the tenets and doc- 
 trines of the Unitarian Church? Since the days of Arius they 
 have been condemned, utterly, by Catholic, Greek, Armenian, 
 Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist. 
 Your church is outside the pale of sound opinion with all 
 Christendom. It is " Ostracised" by the whole Christian world, 
 by the most pious saints, by the profoundest sages, by the great 
 body of critics, philologists, teachers, preachers and theologians. 
 They refuse to you the appellation of Christian. In the judg- 
 ment of all Trinitarian churches, your church is no Christian 
 church. Pray understand me: I do not intend to say one 
 word on the merits of the controversy. But I ask you whether 
 this public opinion of the Christian world has the right or 
 power to decide it ? Shall I adjure you, " for God's sake, to 
 consider what you are doing, and where you are going ? " You 
 are a small people, not so large, not so compact, not so strong 
 as we are. You are not supported, as we are, by the practices 
 and opinions of nations, always and everywhere, until very 
 lately. Will you submit ? Will you leave your pulpit and 
 abandon your creed 1 Certainly not ! You appeal to the Scrip- 
 ture — so do we. You will maintain truth and right, as you 
 conceive it, against the whole world — so shall we. Even your 
 speech and authority do not make us " bate one jot of heart 
 or hope." If, sir, at any future period, you should re-visit the 
 uncivilized, unchristian and demoralized society of the South, 
 
21 
 
 you will find that even your Elm Tree oration, whatever admi- 
 ration it may have produced in Massachusetts, has aroused 
 among us no other sentiment than aversion and disgust. 
 
 You close your remarks on the subject of Slavery by a 
 number of sentences, which amount to repeated asseverations 
 only, that you do not love or admire it. " We do not like it, 
 sirs, that is wliat we say to all its advocates." It is quite true. 
 That is very much all you do say, in various shapes and forms 
 of words, from Curran's African or Indian sun, to the negro 
 songs of Christy's white minstrels with blackened faces, which 
 you seem to think are composed by Virginia slaves, and which 
 you consider " the strongest anti-slavery speeches you know." 
 They are, without doubt, as good as the best ; but the judgment 
 you express of their significance of value, is the most ridiculous 
 notion of modern times. 
 
 In taking the stand you have, you are not influenced, you 
 tell us, by the excitement of the day. But, you add, there 
 are ample causes for excitement — the Kansas border war, "the 
 deed done in the Senate chamber, so atrocious that I have no 
 name for it." JSTever did man more thoroughly mistake his 
 own feelings, motives and character, if, indeed, we are to con- 
 sider you as being in earnest. You blow hot and cold with the 
 same breath. You profess to stand aloof from the tumult, and 
 trumpet on the seditious, to the fray, at the same time. An 
 unscrupulous declaimer in the Senate chooses to indulge in 
 slander and abuse for the poor reputation of imitating an 
 ancient orator, and he is caned by one of the parties aggrieved. 
 A distinguished gentleman from your own State, while he 
 condemns the chastisement, declares that, if he had made the 
 speech, he would have thought it prudent to carry an iron pot 
 on his head. The punishment naturally followed the off'ence. 
 It afi'ected neither life nor limb. It mortified the self-conceit, 
 and curbed the arrogance only of an intellectual gladiator. 
 And you speak of it, without a word of censure on the libel 
 that caused it, as an act so atrocious that you are unable to 
 find a name for it. If it had been a murder like the blackest 
 that darkens your annals, you could not describe it in more 
 exaggerated terms. And then you tell us you are not infiu- 
 
22 
 
 enced by the excitement of the time. Excuse us, sir, we can 
 neither put faith in the assurance, nor respect the man who 
 makes it. If you share the excitement around you, your 
 declaration is insincere ; if you do not, you are the more inex- 
 cusable for adding fuel to the flame that threatens to destroy 
 the countr}^ 
 
 You profess to believe that "if slavery covered the whole 
 world, it would, in a century, require another planet to sustain 
 it." In the time of the Apostles it did cover the whole world ; 
 it covered the world for ages before, for ages after ; and yet we 
 are not aware that history speaks of any assistance having 
 been required or sent from our neighbor, the moon, excepting 
 the moonshine, which she now bestows equally on hireling and 
 on slave States. We do not depend on you, either morally, 
 religiously, or physically. Our people go among you to spend 
 money ; yours come among us to make it. The South can 
 not only sustain itself, but it finds a surplus to expend on itine- 
 rant venders from the North of wares, material or intellectual, 
 clocks or lectures, tin ware or sermons. Yours were not a 
 gift to the South, nor were they considered as absolutely 
 essential to its well being. We have not the huge fortunes of 
 your great merchants, neither have we your sinks of filth, 
 wretchedness and pauperism. We have no millionaires, but 
 we have no street beggars. We have no palaces of brown 
 stone, but we have no poor to farm out to the lowest bidder, 
 as you have in New England. 
 
 The South produces and exports cotton, grain, cattle ; your 
 State is unable to grow its own bread. I will not trouble you 
 with statistical statements of the productions of the Southern 
 States, productions that, in hundreds of millions, sustain the 
 foreign commerce of the whole country. You do not descend 
 to these ordinary practical views. But we ask attention to 
 one test of the soundness of your opinion, which cannot be 
 mistaken. There are before your eyes two worlds on a small 
 scale ; one, of free negroes, the other, of slave laborers ; one, 
 made a wreck by freedom, and fast relapsing into all the want, 
 superstition and blood-thirstiness of an African State; the other, 
 a scene of unexampled wealth, prosperity and improvement, 
 
23 
 
 notwithstanding the continued introduction, by Yankee ingc- 
 nuitj, of new African barbarians. To restore slavery to Ilayti, 
 would be to restore peace and abundance. To abolisli it in 
 Cuba, would be to destroy it. How does your philosophy 
 explain the facts in these two West India planets ? Wliicli is 
 the most able to sustain the other ? Life deals, not in abstrac- 
 tions, but in practical experiences. These are the guides of 
 statesmen and States. 
 
 Your remarks, then, on slavery, are a series of fallacies 
 only. 
 
 1st. You prefer the brute liberty of the wild savage to the 
 servitude which alone can give him civilization and Christi- 
 anity; the savage himself decides differently, and more wisely; 
 you sacrifice the life of the civilized man to preserve civiliza- 
 tion, and you think the African's savage freedom too precious 
 to exchange for it. 
 
 2d. You misstate the question — it is not whether we shall 
 make freemen slaves by violence, but whether we shall hold 
 those as slaves who have never been free ; it is not whether we 
 shall seize on a farm by arson and murder, but whether we 
 shall keep one inherited from our fathers. 
 
 3d, You lived in the Southern cities, and admit that no 
 cruelty is found there ; you know nothing of the plantations, 
 and assert that they are scenes of evils, cruelties and Legrees. 
 You confess that you did not know one in a thousand of the 
 planters in the South ; and you affirm that all candid and 
 thoughtful men among them agree with you in opinion. 
 
 4th. You change your moral and political relations with the 
 South, because it has changed its opinions; and you tell us at 
 the same time, that the South is not changed. You prefer the 
 opinion under which slavery would die out and the slaves dis- 
 appear, and look with horror to their increase in number and 
 intelligence as disastrous to the country, and you forget that 
 this is inhumane ; that the slaves have already increased in 
 the proportion you apprehend, not to the danger, but the profit 
 of the country ; and that a Christian African is more easily 
 governed than an African savage. 
 
 5th. You think it more consistent with sound morality to 
 
24 
 
 believe slavery a sin, and to tolerate it, than to believe it no sin, 
 and to maintain and defend it. 
 
 6th. You assert that Southern parents send their sons to the 
 North to avoid the demoralization of their homes-; and you 
 know that where one youth goes to a college at the North, five 
 hundred are sent to those at home. 
 
 Yth. You threaten us with the coming social Ostracism of 
 the civilized world, if we retain our principles ; and you disre- 
 gard the religious Ostracism of the Christian world condemning 
 your own. 
 
 8th. You profess to believe that a slave State cannot exist 
 without being sustained ; and you know that the great nations 
 of the world, the richest, strongest, most learned, most refined, 
 have been all slave States. 
 
 "We have resorted to recriminations with pain. We make 
 them in self-defence only. Then, surely, if ever, " to recrimi- 
 nate is just." When we are unjustly, falsely, and scandalously 
 assailed, we owe it to ourselves and to the world's opinion, 
 which you so much revere, to protest against the wrong, and 
 to show the unworthiness of those who make the attack. We 
 lament the necessity. Nothing would induce us to stoop to 
 the vein of remark which such a protest and reply involves 
 but the arrogance that presumes to place the South, for any 
 conceivable cause, material or moral, in a position of depend- 
 ence on those whose impulses of vanity or calculations of 
 interest can abuse the confidence of social life, and turn its 
 sweets to gall and wormwood. We would gladly return to 
 the mutual respect and confidence that prevailed with the 
 North and South at the close of the Revolution, and for thirty 
 years afterwards. We have no sympathy with those who 
 desire the destruction of the Federal Union. We would joy- 
 fully preserve it, and see its great and growing resources 
 devoted, as they are, to the arts of peace, rather than wasted 
 on the necessities of war. And this we say with the perfect 
 conviction that if the South should form a separate republic, 
 it would grow in strength and wealth, compact and complete, 
 teres atque rotundus, able to defy all enemies, and to confer 
 benefits on every ally and friend. But to preserve peace and 
 
25 
 
 the Union, your eternal attacks on us must cease. There can 
 be no peace if you are forever presenting to us a sword. 
 
 We have no ill will towards you, sir. Your conduct produces 
 no feeling so strong among us as resentment. It would have 
 been wiser and purer for you, we think, to keep ah)of, within 
 the serene air of your hopeful and genial philosophy. But if 
 you prefer the slough of party turmoil to the shady grove and 
 smooth shaven green, we can only leave you in your mire, 
 pity your moral taste, and hope to see you and hear you no 
 more. 
 
 SOME OF YOUR FORMER FRIENDS. 
 
•4. 
 
 r 
 
EXTRACTS 
 
 REV. ORVILLE DEWEFS ORATION. 
 
 If a man should go into the hunting grounds of Africa, and 
 should throw his lasso over the neck of a horse, and bring it 
 home and subdue it, and subject it to domestic use, we should 
 say it was right ; for we believe that God made that animal 
 for our service. But if he should throw his lasso over the neck 
 of a man, roving wild and free in the wilderness — should tear 
 him from his family and his home ; should put chains on his 
 limbs and bring him over the sea, and sell him, and his children 
 after him, into hopeless bondage, wo should pronounce that a 
 monstrous wrong. And no talk about civilizing, or christian- 
 izing, or improving the African race, could ever stand against 
 that conviction. It is a conviction, I say, intrenched in the 
 very breast of humanity ; all the world has agreed to call the 
 slave trade piracy ; the man with the lasso is a pirate ; there 
 is no darker name for crime than slave-trader ; the very men 
 who deal in slaves at the South noiv are held infamous, and 
 excluded from all good society ; and I never talked with a 
 Southern man who did not say, " this selling of slaves is a fearful 
 part of our system." Well may they say it; and now I say, 
 all this being admitted, can any man in his heart pronounce 
 and feel that this system is a good thing, an excellent thing, 
 an admirable system ! 
 
 Our fathers did not think so. The colonies protested against 
 it. The men of the Revolution looked upon it as an evil, not 
 as a good ; and they agreed, North and South together, by an 
 
28 
 
 ordinance, to exclude it from the Korth-western territory. They 
 never thought — nobody ever thought — that it was possible it 
 might spread far West and South, till it enveloped half the 
 continent. It had retired from the North ; it would retreat 
 from the Middle States ; it would be confined to the rice and 
 cotton fields; it might be modified there, or it might die out; 
 at any rate it was there — they could not help it — they must 
 submit to it, and get along with it as they could. 
 
 But now a great change has come over the spirit of the 
 South ; and it is a change which alters all our moral and 
 political relations with slavery, except one — the old compact 
 of non-interference. I do not say that this change is universal 
 at the South. I believe that many hold to the old opinion. 
 We are always mistaking partisan zeal for public sentiment — 
 the agitated surface for the conservative depths of society, I 
 was in a company of twenty Southern gentlemen a year and 
 a half ago, when the subject of African slavery was freely 
 discussed, and seventeen out. of the twenty held that it must 
 and would die out and disappear from this country. But it is 
 the determination of certain public leaders, and of a large 
 party at the South, now to espouse the system ; to maintain 
 that it is a good institution, and ought to be perpetual ; to 
 demand for the slave interest an equal share in the partition 
 of the States between slave and free labor — an equal share in 
 the Government— a share, not as other property, but tnore than 
 any other property or population in the land ; and, in conse- 
 quence, Texas has been admitted, with leave to form four new 
 States ; the Missouri compromise has been broken down ; and 
 the most violent efforts are made to introduce and establish 
 slavery in Kansas. 
 
 Now, against all this, against the whole opinion and this 
 whole course of conduct, with all my miglit, I protest. I am 
 an humble individual ; I have but little influence to exert ; by 
 my profession, or by the public opinion concerning it, I am 
 excluded from all share in the government of the country; but 
 if I had influence and power, I would say to my brethren of 
 the South — if I was confronted with them now face to face, I 
 would say to them respectfully, but frankly and firmly, " You 
 
29 
 
 are in the wrong ; you certamly are in the wrong ; your judg- 
 ment is wrong, your course is wrong ; the moment you left the 
 toleration for the espousal of tliis system of human slavery, 
 you lost the sympathy of all men ; you cannot make it an 
 honored and praiseworthy act to huy and sell men ; no, no, 
 you cannot ; the whole civilized world is against you ; it will 
 be against you more and more ; even if you could throw off 
 Northern interference or the Northern connexion, and form a 
 republic for yourselves, your republic would lie under the 
 social Ostracism of the whole world. For God's sake, consider 
 what you are doing, and where you are going ! " Pardon, my 
 friends, the solemnity of the adjuration. I speak only in the 
 right of my own poor thought, but it cries to Heaven in its 
 very weakness. But I would say to the whole country — 
 consider, and consider soon. If extension — extension of the 
 system — is to go on, the three millions of slaves will in time 
 become thirty millions. What, in Heaven's name, are we to 
 do with them ? They will grow in intelligence ; they will band 
 in servile wars ; it is impossible to hold in safe hands such a 
 tremendous element as this expanding humanity, thirty mil- 
 lions strong. Tlie only safe measure, in my opinion, is to stop 
 this expansion before the mass of evil and peril becomes too 
 unwieldy for our grasp ; to contract, not expand, the area of 
 slavery ; to let Yirginia, and Maryland, and Kentucky, and 
 Missouri become free States — the point to which they are 
 tending — and in due time, either to prepare these people for 
 freedom and emancipate them, or else to induce multitudes of 
 them to return to Africa, and enable them to do it by all the 
 resources of the nation applied to that end. I am not a legis- 
 lator, but if I were, I would never vote for another step of 
 extension to the slave area, and for such a stand on this question 
 I have the decisive words of Clay and Webster themselves. / 
 would never vote Kansas to the doom of Virginia — to impov- 
 erishment, to poor culture, to breeding and selling men for a 
 living! I would never vote Kansas to slave labor, which, by 
 long and solemn compromise, was pledged to free labor. If 
 Kansas must come in as a slave State, it would be because I 
 could not help it. 
 
30 
 
 Heaven is my witness that I do not say these things in any 
 unkindness to the South. I know many of its people but to 
 esteem, very highly to esteem and honor them, I do not know 
 the body of them — I am not acquainted with plantation life at 
 the South. The great evils of the Southern system, doubtless, 
 are there- — not in cities ; and I believe that they are great evils. 
 I believe that all candid and thoughtful men among the planters 
 admit it. There may be less cruelty than is often alleged, but 
 there is great cruelty; there may not be many Legrees, but 
 there are Legrees. When irrespousil)le j)ower and violent pas- 
 sions hold the reign over a subject race, we know there must 
 be cruelty ; and there must be a certain inhumanity ; and a 
 passionate self-will, prompt to strike ; and an enervating, very 
 fearful self-indulgence nurtured under such a system, especially 
 in the young. Why do Southern parents send their sons to the 
 North to be educated ? Let them give the reasons, and they 
 will give a terrible argument against slavery ! That cannot 
 be a good home for civilization, for Christianity, for morality, 
 concerning which the parent, when choosing a place to educate 
 his child, says, " ISTot here ; he must not stay here." 
 
 I am accounted a moderate man on this subject, as I said 
 before ; and I am v/illing to be thought to speak from the mode- 
 rate side of the question. I will endeavor, for my part, to see 
 both sides of it. I have talked much with good men at the 
 South, who said, and honestly said, " The introduction of the 
 African people into this country, though no blessing to us^ is a 
 blessing to them ^ it is a grand means, under Providence, for 
 civilizing and christianizing them." Nay, and strange as you 
 may think it, I have heard the slave-owner himself fervently 
 thank Heaven that his progenitors were brought to this country; 
 because, by that means, he had attained to the Christian's joy 
 and hope. And I have seen churches that numbered from live 
 hundred to twenty-five hundred colored communicants ; and I 
 have seen men and women (holders of slaves) who, even not 
 only humane, but conscientious and considerate towards their 
 people, watching over them, listening to their complaints, 
 giving medicines for their ailments, instructing them in Sunday 
 schools, instructing their children in the week time, laboring 
 
31 
 
 in every way for their comfort and improvement. And who- 
 ever would truly describe the life of our Southern people, 
 should not leave out this class, for it is a class. J have listened 
 also to what Southern apologists have said in another view — 
 " that this burthen of slavery was none of their choosing ; that 
 it was entailed upon them; that they cannot immediately 
 emancipate their people ; that they are not able to take care 
 of themselves; that this state of things must be submitted to 
 for a while, till remedial laws and other remedial means shall 
 bring relief." And so long as they said that^ I gave them my 
 sympathy. But when they say, " spread this system — spread 
 it far and wide," I cannot go another step with them. And it 
 is not I that has changed, but they. When they say, "spread 
 it over Kansas and Nebraska ; spread it over the West ; annex 
 Cuba ; annex Central America ; make slavery a national insti- 
 tution ; make the compact of the Constitution carry it into all 
 the territories ; cover it with the national aegis ; set it up as part 
 of our great republican profession ; stamp on our flag, and our 
 shield, and our escutcheon, the emblem of human slavery ; " I 
 say no, never ; God forbid ! 
 
 In taking this stand I am not influenced by the excitement 
 of the day. I know there are causes for this excitement. There 
 has been a deed done in the Senate chamber, so atrocious 
 that I have no name for it. There is a border war in Kansas, 
 involving evil and mischief and wrong enough to stir the indig- 
 nation of any just people. But if these things had not been 
 done, I should still take the ground I now take — against the 
 extension of the slave system. It is a wrong to humanity ; it 
 is more to the soil. If slavery covered this whole planet to-day, 
 in less than a century it would want another planet to sustain 
 it. It tends to the demoralization of the people. It is in con- 
 flict with our free institutions, and with all the ideas of the 
 age. " We do not like it, sirs ; " that is what we say to all its 
 advocates ; that is the feeling at the bottom of our hearts. 
 Humanity is everywhere rising against it. Did you ever con- 
 sider the significance of those negro songs that are so much 
 sung in these days ? The negro is singing his loves, his domestic 
 affections, his sorrows, into the ears of all the world; and 
 
^2 011 932 681 3^ 
 
 humanity listens with sympathy. Who would not listen ! Are 
 they not the lovers, the holy ties, the sacred sorrows of men ? 
 Hallowed shall they be to me — sacred shall be the lot of those 
 who feel them — no matter " what complexion an Indian or an 
 African sun may have burnt upon them." I would advise the 
 friends of slavery to pass statutes against the singing of these 
 negro songs. They are the strongest anti-slavery speeches I 
 know. But it would be in vain. There is a tide rising in the 
 world that will sweep away this system. The very Czar is 
 meditating the freedom of the slaves in his empire. All the 
 world is demanding the freedom of all men. With equal 
 calmness and confidence I wait the result. 
 
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