Author . 
 
 Title 
 
 Imprint. 
 
 ....S.C.S. 
 
 XO— -47372-2 GPC 
 

PRICE m CENTS. 
 
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 THE WAR, 
 
 AND 
 
 TO END IT. 
 
 B Y 
 
 AV^ILLI^M N. SLOOUIM, 
 
 OOISTTEHSTTS- 
 
 1. Results of Emancipation in the West Indies. 
 
 2. Abolition of Slavery as a War measure, 
 
 3. Necessity of Congressional action on the subject. 
 
 4. Schemes for Colonization. 
 
 5. Final emancipation inevitable. 
 
 6. Present aspect of our foreign relations. 
 
 7. Political and commercial changes to follow the war. 
 
 Appendix, containing facts and arguments concerning the 
 cause of the Florida War ; Massacres in St. Domingo; 
 Abolitionism not the cause of the extension of slavery; 
 An aristocracy of officeholders ; Reasons for a restric- 
 tion of the elective franchise. 
 
 THIRD EDITION— REVISED. 
 
 SAN FKANCISCO, 
 1861. 
 
 --^-^^^iS^^^S 
 
> 
 
\/ 
 
 • rwv ;|p(— 
 
 THE WAR, 
 
 AND 
 
 B Y 
 
 t^ili.ia.m: n. slooxjm. 
 
 COITTEnSTTS. 
 
 1. Results of Emancipation in the West Indies. 
 
 2. Abolition of Slavery as a War measure. 
 
 3. Necessity of Congressional action on the subject. 
 
 4. Schemes for Colonization, 
 
 5. Final emancipation inevitable. 
 
 6. Present aspect of our foreign relations. 
 
 7. Political and commercial changes to follow the war. 
 
 Appendix, containing facts and arguments concerning the 
 cause of the Florida War ; Massacres in St. Domingo;* 
 Abolitionism not the cause of the extension of slavery; 
 An aristocracy of officeholders ; Reasons for a restric- 
 tion of the elective franchise. 
 
 THIRD EDITION— REVISED. 
 
 SAN FRANOlSeO, 
 1861. 
 
0^ 
 
 0^" 
 
 "". • •<■£ ->■ 
 

 \\ 
 
 INT]RODUCTIOIsr. 
 
 The anti-slavery principles laid down in tte Chicago Platform, 
 though not in all respects such as many earnest men desired to 
 see put forth by a great party, were the best the people at that time 
 could be induced to accept ; and, as such, practical men, who pre- 
 ferred to secure something really good, rather than lose all by main- 
 taining an unpopular though indisputably just theory, acquiesced in 
 and gave them a cordial support. The people (at the East, if not in 
 this State,) are now prepared to take another step in advance ; but 
 the Administration seem to act as if bound by the party platform, 
 although that platform was made for a time of peace, and the war 
 has put an entirely different face upon public affairs. The people, 
 however, are not bound by any effete party theory, and the people, 
 when convinced of the desirability of a new course of action, always 
 compel the Government to change its policy. To assist in convincing 
 them that a change is not merely desirable, but that the sooner 
 it is effected the better, the following pages were written. Public 
 opinion ( not always an enlightened public opinion by any means,) 
 rules, in this country, and often directs the course of Grovernnient 
 before it finds expression through the ballot-box. Public opinion is 
 ripening in favor of the abolition of slavery, but information is re- 
 quired to remove many prejudices. The writer believes Eman- 
 cipation must be proclaimed — either soon, as a laudable object to be 
 obtained by the war, or later, as an unavoidable necessity resulting 
 from it ; and as delay must be productive of great evil, he believes 
 immediate and complete Emancipation is our best policy, and hopes 
 this pamphlet may be the means of directing the public mind 
 to the investigation of a subject which must ultimately force itself 
 upon ua, and perhaps in a manner less agreeable than now, when w« 
 have time to give it a cordial welcome and a careful study. 
 

 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The first edition of this pamphlet was published anonymously, because 
 the writer desired to have it judged according to its merits, entirely dis- 
 connected with personal considerations. Having, in the Appendix, made 
 some statements which would not appear well if from an unknown source, 
 and being willing to assume the responsibility which attaches to the ut- 
 terance not only of those statements, but of every sentiment advocated in 
 the pamphlet in its original form, the author publishes this edition with 
 his name endorsed. 
 
 The term "anti-constitution abolitionists," used on the 22d page, refers solely to the 
 Garrisonian abolitionists. It would be unjust to Gerrit Smith, and others who think like him, 
 to class them among those who are opposed to the Constitution. They are really its most 
 ardent supporters, believing, as they do, that the Constitution does not in any manner 
 sanction slavery, and thut in spirit it is diametrically opposed to the institution. 
 
 This pamjphlet will he sent hy mail, post-pxid, on 
 receipt of Twenty-five cents in stamps. Address, 
 
 Lock Box 605. 
 
 San Francisco. 
 
 Friends of emancipation desiroits of circidating this 
 pamphlet will he supplied at cost price, %\b per hundred. 
 
THE WAR, 
 
 AND 
 
 BE O ^Vv^ TO ENDIT 
 
 Fellow Citizens : 
 
 Believing that the people of tlie United States will soon 
 be required to determine upon some mode of abolishing 
 slavery, I have collected from many sources the most reli- 
 able information obtainable concerning the results of 
 emancipation in other countries ; and though you may not 
 sustain my deductions therefrom, yet for the/acte present- 
 ed I ask your careful consideration. 
 
 John C. Calhoun, in a report to the United States Sen- 
 ate, made by him as chairman of a special committee of 
 the Twenty-fourth Congress, used the following language : 
 
 " Emancipation would ruin families and individuals, impoverish 
 and prostrate an entire section of the Union, and give a fatal blow to 
 the production of the great agricultural staples on which the com- 
 merce, navigation, manufactures, and revenue of the country entirely 
 depend. To destroy slavery would be to place the two races in a 
 state of conflict which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of 
 one or the other." 
 
 This opinion was not Calhoun's merely, but may be 
 said to have been the popular opinion concerning the 
 effects of emancipation. The planters of the West Indies, 
 notwithstanding the financial ruin that had been brought 
 upon them by slavery, were strongly opposed to the act of 
 emancipation passed in 1834. " They predicted that the 
 most disastrous results would follow. The slaves, they 
 said, were too lazy to work without the whip, and the few 
 
6 
 
 who might be willing to work would be robbed by the 
 others. This would lead to continual fighting a:ad prodi- 
 gious slaughter. Thousands would die for wivut of the 
 fostering care of their masters ; in short, blacJcs and whites 
 would be swallowed up in one great gulf of swift destruc- 
 tion. To the very last they remonstrated, threatened, and 
 entreated the home government not to consign them to 
 such an inevitable fate." Their remonstrances were in 
 vain, the act was passed, and Mr. Thome, in hifj work on 
 the "West Indies, says : " The great mass of negroes spent 
 emancipation day in the churches ; and in every quarter 
 the day was like a Sabbath." Planters and 2iii3sionarie8 
 in every part of the islands reported that there were no 
 drunken carousals, no riotous assemblies, no excesses of 
 any kind. Rev. James A. Thome was the son of a Ken- 
 tucky slaveholder. He visited the West Indies in 1836, 
 and published an account of his investigations soon after 
 his return, in 1837. A great number of planters made 
 statements to him, most of whom reported that a larger 
 number of workmen than they ever before had in their 
 fields turned out the week after emancipation. The estates 
 were in far better order than ever before. Dr. Daniell, 
 Member of the Council, owner of an estate in Antig-ua, 
 and manager of others, a very old resident, and formerly 
 much opposed to emancipation, told Mr. Thome there had 
 been no deficiency of labor; the negroe-: accomplished 
 twice as much as before, and were more tractable. He 
 said that love of home was such a passion with negroes 
 that nothing but bad treatment could force thora away 
 from an estate. Dr. Nugent, manager of a large estate, 
 and Speaker of the Assembly, reported that emancipation 
 had proved the greatest of blessings. The estates were 
 better cultivated, and at less cost. The s'ck house used 
 to be thronged with pretended invalids, but after emanci- 
 pation, when the negroes were paid for their ••#bor, they 
 seldom went to the hospital, and the one on his estate had 
 been turned into a stable. Mr. Thome reports the names 
 and experience of scores of planters confirming these state- 
 ments. The testimony of the magistrates and teachers 
 was equally favorable. The Governor of Antigua said 
 
the planters of that island assured him that the negroes 
 were inddstriously disposed, the schools were prosperous, 
 and the churches well attended. The police reports prove 
 that capital offenses much decreased in numher; that the 
 principal 'rimes were breaches of contract, owing as much 
 to the injustice of the planter as to the dishonesty of the 
 negro. The Governor, of Tabago, in 1857, said that a 
 more indn&trious class does not exist in the world than 
 the freed slaves of that island. Rev. Mr. Bleby, for thirty 
 years a missionary in the West Indies, asserts that in Bar- 
 badoes, v^here lie resided after emancipation, the crimiual 
 statistics compare favorably with any cpuntry under 
 heaven. Lord John Russell says: "l^Tone of the most 
 inveterate opponents of emancipation now allege that the 
 free negroes have turned robbers, plunderers, or blood- 
 thirsty insurgents." 
 
 The good results of British West India emancipation 
 were much more ajDparent in those islands where the slaves 
 were freed unconditionally, as in Antigua, and the Baha- 
 mas, and less favorable in the others, where the slaves 
 were held several years as apprentices to prepare them for 
 freedom. Jamaica shows a darker picture than any other, 
 but even there the condition of the negro has been much 
 improved since complete emancipation. Rev. Mr. Bleby 
 says : 
 
 "Being cete mined to perpetuate slavery, the planters resolved to 
 do all they could to keep their people in heathen darkness. The 
 whole while po}:ulation of Jamaica banded themselves together in an 
 association whicb they called the Colonial Union, the avowed object 
 of which vas tc drive every instructor of the negro from the island. 
 Eighteen churches were levelled to the ground. They dragged the 
 missions ries to -aison, treated them with brutal violence, and did 
 everything tU^y could to put an end to their labors." 
 
 Mrs. L. Maria Child, to whose work, ''The Bight Way the 
 
 Safe Way," I am indebted for much information, says: 
 
 "It is obvious that men so completely under the dominion of pas- 
 sion and ] reiudi3e were not likely to use power judiciously; and, 
 unfonuaav jly, the apprentice system, which was intended as a prepa- 
 ration for freedom, proved a source of exasperation to both parties." 
 [The pl:\r.t-3r£ cared for nothing so much as to get all the labor pos- 
 sible from tAi apprentices before their complete emancipation.] " The 
 fact that til i pc .ver of punishment was transferred from master to 
 roagistrate, proved very insujficient protection; for the magistrates 
 
were themselves planters, or friends of planters, and a large propor- 
 tion of them were the mere tools of despotism." 
 
 The magistrates took little notice of the complaints of 
 blacks, but condemned, without a hearing, on complaint 
 of the whites. The records of their courts, imperfect as 
 they are, show that, in the short space of two years, sixty 
 thousand of the apprentices of Jamaica received in the 
 aggregate, by order of the magistrates, one quarter of a 
 million lashes, besides over fifty thousand other punish- 
 ments by the tread-wheel, the chain-gang, and similar 
 modes of legalized torture. The Encyclopcedia Britanica 
 says the planters were more overbearing and tyrannical 
 during the apprentice system than under slavery. " They 
 seemed determined to make the apprentice act a failure, 
 and displayed their bitterness against it by turning the 
 negroes out of their houses, destroying their provision 
 ground, and subjecting them to every kind of annoyance." 
 Rev. James Phillipo, who was a missionary in Jamaica for 
 twenty years, says: "Instead of a diminution of the mise- 
 ries of the negro population under the apprentice law, 
 there was a frightful addition to them, inducing a degree 
 of discontent and exasperation never manifested even 
 under the previous system." In 1838, " convinced that 
 slavery, by its very nature, does not admit of any modifi- 
 cation," Parliament proclaimed complete emancipation ; 
 after which "the conduct of the emancipated negro would 
 have done credit to Christians of the most civilized coun- 
 try in the world. All seemed to have a sense of the obli- 
 gations they owed to each other and to the civil authorities. 
 The laborers, with few exceptions, went to work on the 
 following day, and many of them gave their first week of 
 free labor as an offering of good will to their former mas- 
 ters." How many white Christians, think you, would have 
 done the same ? Not a single instance of violence or insu- 
 bordination, of serious disagreement or intemperance, oc- 
 curred in any part of the island. Labor was cheap ; it 
 might have continued plentiful ; and, notwithstanding the 
 women and children were withdrawn from the field, a 
 larger, instead of a smaller crop of sugar might have been 
 sent to market, in consequence of the greater activity of 
 
9 
 
 free laborers, it being fully deraonstrated that one freed 
 negro would do more work for fair wages than two slaves. 
 But "the planters, not the slaves, proved themselves unfit 
 for the great change inaugurated by the act of emancipa- 
 tion." Not having sufficient capital, they cheated the 
 laborers, and in other ways continued to oppress them, 
 until they were compelled to sacrifice their feelings of at- 
 tachment to their doraicils, and establish themselves in 
 free-holds of their own. But even this proves their indus- 
 try and economy, for in twenty years after emancipation 
 one hundred thousand of the colored men of Jamaica had 
 become freeholders, notwithstanding the price of labor was 
 only twenty-four cents per day. Rev. W. G. Barrett, a 
 missionary, slated, at a meeting in London last j-ear: 
 
 "After a lengthened residence in Jamaica, after liavinc: visited 
 every one of the West India islands, the Mauritius, French and Bri- 
 tish, after having resided some time in British Guiana, and gathered 
 the feeling resulting from those different colonies, I have no hesitation 
 in saying that when the emancipated negroes welcomed that first of 
 August, they were prepared to bury in oblivion all the injuries of the 
 past. Had the conduct of the planters of the West Indies been as 
 wise as the conduct of the negro was forgiving, had their acts been as 
 just as the demeanor of the emancipated slaves was good, there would 
 have been none of those complaints we have heard of, none of that 
 abandonment of estates, and those heart-burnings of which we are 
 repeatedly reading both in the columns of the colonial and the British 
 press." 
 
 "Wm. G. Sewell, in his work on the West Indies, says : 
 " Disaster and misfortune have followed, not emancipation, 
 but the failure to observe those great principles of liberty 
 and justice upon which the foundations of emancipation 
 were laid." Lord Brougham, in one of his speeches, said 
 be had positive proof, from undoubted authority, that 
 wherever the freed negroes were well treated, the supply 
 of sugar produced by their labor had not diminished since 
 the act of emancipation. 
 
 The English Baptist Missionary Society, in 1859, sent 
 commissioners to the West Indies to make a minute exa- 
 mination into the condition of tlie islands. This deputa- 
 tion, after a research of more than a year, have recently 
 made their report, in which they assert that emancipation, 
 has not only produced the most gratifying moral results 
 but has enormously enhanced the material prosperity of 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 all of the islands, including Jamaica, concerning which so 
 much has been said to the contrary. ' As to the religious 
 condition of the people of Jamaica, they reported that they 
 had built, since emancipation, two hundred and twenty 
 chapels, independent of the Established Church, of which 
 there was no record showing the number. The people 
 regularly attending these chapels amounted to 91,000, one 
 fourth of the entire population, and the Sabbath Schools 
 contained 22,000 children, being one-third of all the chil- 
 dren old enough to attend school. The money contributed 
 by the negroes to sustain these churches amounted to more 
 than $100,000 per annum. The educational statistics of 
 the island were very incomplete, but from a census taken 
 by the missionaries of one district in Jamaica, at the time 
 of emancipation, and another taken twenty-five years after, 
 it was found that whereas, at the first census only three 
 negroes in five thousand were able to read and write, at the 
 last census one thousand seven hundred were able to do 
 so. The people are now well governed and well behaved ; 
 persons and property are perfectly safe, and serious crimes 
 very rare. These facts, the commissioners state, contrast 
 most forcibly with the awful condition of society in Jamaica 
 before emancipation. 
 
 In 1851, Mr. Bigelow, now United States Consul to Paris, 
 published a work on the West Indies, in which he gives a 
 sad picture of the degradation of the people of Jamaica; 
 and other travelers, especially those who merely visited 
 Kingston, and took that dirty city as a specimen of the 
 whole island, have made similar reports. Mr. Charles 
 Tappan, who visited Jamaica in 1858, says : 
 
 *' On landing at Kingston, I was inclined to believe the story that 
 the emancipated slave is more idle and vicious than any other of God's 
 intelligent creatures; but when I rode through the valleys, and over 
 the mountains, and found everywhere an industrious, sober people, I 
 concluded that all the vagabonds of the island had moved to the sea- 
 shore to pick up a precarious living by carrying baggage, begging, 
 etc., and such, upon inquiry, I found to be the fact. Wherever I 
 went in the rural districts, I found contented men and women culti- 
 vating sugar cane, vegetables, and fruits on their own account. Their 
 neat, well furnished cottages compared well with the dwellings of 
 pioneers in our own country. I found in them mahogany furniture, 
 crockery and glass-ware, and shelves of useful books." 
 
11 
 
 At a meeting held in London, presided over by Lord 
 Brougham, and composed of many eminent men of Eng- 
 land, America, and the West Indies, Sir Francis Ilincks, 
 Governor of the Barbadocs, offered the following resolu- 
 tion, which was unanimously adopted: 
 
 " Resolved, That, on the 25th anniversary of the abolition of slavery 
 in the British colonies, this meeting joyously records its satisfaction 
 in the retrospect of that great act of national justice and sound policy, 
 and emphatically aflftrms that the emancipated population of those 
 colonies have triumphantly vindicated the justice of the act of eman- 
 cipation by the signal progress they have since made, morally, reli- 
 giously, and politically." 
 
 At this meeting, George Thompson, M.P., made a speech 
 in which he said : 
 
 " Twenty-five years have passed away since the slaves were eman- 
 cipated, and what are they now? They are industrious cultivators 
 and independent freeholders of the soil; they are the liberal promoters 
 of education; they are devout members of Christian churches; they 
 not only sustain, out of their own resources, the religious institutions 
 of their own locality, but they even send to societies in England their 
 liberal contributions. There is no department of agricultural, com- 
 mercial, mechanical, or political life into which they have not entered, 
 and in which they have not creditably distinguished themselves," 
 
 Considering the degraded condition of the negroes of the 
 British colonies before emancipation, this statement of their 
 progress is remarkable. More than two million slaves had 
 been taken to the West Indies, but only eight hundred 
 thousand remained alive at the time of emancipation, many 
 of whom were born in a state of barbarism in the wilds of 
 Africa. In America, on the contrary, all the importations 
 of which we have any record are only about three hundred 
 thousand, while we 'now have four million slaves. At the 
 present day, a native African on a Southern plantation is 
 as great a rarity as a white blackbird. They are not so 
 numerous by far as those slaves called octoroons, but in 
 whose veins scarce a drop of African blood can be traced. 
 The moral and intellectual character of American slaves, 
 therefore, is infinitelj^ above that of the slaves of the West 
 Indies in 1834. In the West Indies, at the time of eman- 
 cipation, there were more than five times as many blacks 
 as whites ; in the Slave States of America there are twice 
 as many whites as blacks, making the proportion of ©©lored 
 
men to whites in the Indies ten times greater than in the 
 Soutliern States, and the danger of emancipation ten times 
 as much, supposing there to be any danger ; though that is 
 hardly supposable, as I have just proved there is none. 
 
 At successive periods, between 1816 and 1828, the South 
 American republics, Buenos Ayres, Chili, Bolivia, Peru, 
 Colombia and Guatemala, emancipated all their slaves. 
 In 1828 thirty thousand Hottentot helots were emancipa- 
 ted in Cape Colony. In 1857 the Dutch abolished slavery 
 in their West India colonies, and in 1859, in all their 
 possessions in the East Indies, while at this moment the 
 abolition of serfdom is taking place in Russia ; yet in no 
 one instance, (except in Russia, where there has been a 
 trifling trouble in consequence of adopting a system of 
 partial or gradual abolition,) have these changes been pro- 
 ductive of any injury to life or property. So much for 
 the moral aspect of emancipation. I^ow let us look at the 
 matter as a financial question. 
 
 The financial troubles of the British West Indies com- 
 menced more than one hundred years before emancipation, 
 and the planters' petitions to Parliament for relief began 
 more than fifty years previous to that event. Instead of 
 emancipation being the cause of these troubles, they were 
 the cause of emancipation. As Jamaica is the island 
 almost always referred to by pro-slavery men, let us exam- 
 ine the condition of Jamaica previous to and after emanci- 
 pation. In 1792 the Jamaica Assembly reported to Par- 
 liament, that in the course of the preceding twenty years, 
 177 estates in Jamaica had been sold for the payment of 
 debts ; 55 had been abandoned ; 92 were in the hands of 
 creditors ; and the 80,121 executions, lodged in the Mar- 
 shal's office, amounted to $109,012,500. That does not 
 look much like the prosperity in Jamaica, pro-slavery 
 men, without giving figures, assert to have been the con- 
 dition of the colony previous to emancipation. But it 
 grew even worse than this before slavery was abolished. 
 From other reports made by the Jamaica Assembly to 
 Parliament subsequent to 1792. I extract sentences as 
 follows : 
 
18 
 
 1804. — '^ British merchants holding securities on real estate in 
 Jamaica, hesitate to enforce decrees of foreclosure, because if they 
 do they must become proprietors of the plantations, of which, from 
 fatal experience, they know the consequences. All credit in Jamaica 
 is at an end ; confidence has ceased, and a faithful detail of our dis- 
 tresses would have the appearance of a frightful caricature." 
 
 1805. — " The condition of the planter is one of increasing embar- 
 rassment and impending ruin." 
 
 1807. — "The estates now in chancery [not including those previ- 
 ously sold] amount to one-fourth of the whole number in the colony." 
 
 1812. — "The ruin of the original possessors of property has been 
 completed ; estate after estate has passed into the hands of mortgagees 
 and creditors absent from the island, until there are large districts, 
 whole parishes, in which there is not a single proprietor of a sugar 
 plantation resident." 
 
 1826. — " The present proprietors are fast going into bankruptcy 
 [as did their predecessors]. Commerce is deserting the shores of 
 Jamaica. Ruin, in the most dreadful shape, is advancing with rapid 
 strides." 
 
 In 1830, four years before emancipation, Lord Chan- 
 
 dos presented to Parliament a petition from the Jamaica 
 planters for relief, stating that their distress was unparal- 
 leled — many families reduced to absolute penury — and 
 that without speedy and efficient relief, the ruin of a great 
 number of the planters must inevitably take place. Par- 
 liament granted them relief, not as they wanted it, but in 
 the shape of em.jncipation. The island was utterly insol- 
 vent at the time the emancipation bill passed. The sugar 
 exports of Jamaica from 1801 to 1807 averaged 133,000 
 hogsheads annually. From 1807 to 1814 the average an- 
 nual exports were 118,000 hhds. ; from 1814 to 1821, only 
 96,000 hhds. ; and from 1828 to 1835, the exports were but 
 90,000 hhds., showing plainly that sugar exports com- 
 menced falling off long before emancipation. The same 
 causes have produced a still greater decrease in the exports 
 from Jamaica since emancipation, but in most of the 
 islands tliere has been a large increase, so much that 
 although the sugar exports of Jamaica now average but 
 30,000 hhds. per annum, the total sugar exports of the 
 West Indies nearly equal the amount exported before 
 emancipation. But let us see what became of Jamaica in 
 other respects after emancipation, Joseph J. Gurney, who 
 visited Jamaica in 1840, says: 
 
 "The imports of the island are rapidly increasing; trade improv- 
 ing; towns thriving; new villages rising up iu every direction; pro- 
 
14 
 
 perty much enhanced in value; and the people, wherever they are 
 properly treated, are contented, industrious and gradually accumula- 
 ting property. Real estate is as valuable loithout the slaves as for- 
 merly with them. Land that sold for SI 5 per acre before emancipa- 
 tion, readily brings $60 per acre, and a great deal of the land leased 
 for more money in one year than it would have sold for under slavery." 
 
 This highly favorable state of affairs continued till the 
 year 1846, when the British Parliament repealed the tariff" 
 on sugar. For many years the "West India planters had a 
 monopoly of the sugar market in Great Britain, so com- 
 plete that not even the British East Indies were allowed 
 to compete with them. Eight years after emancipation 
 this tariff" was repealed, and sugar suddenly fell from 
 $11.86 per cwt. to ^5.65. Business in the West Indies 
 had been carried on by credit for more than one hundred 
 years, but now credit was at an end ; mortgages were fore- 
 closed; estates were sold, and thousands of families re- 
 duced to poverty. Their cries of distress resounded 
 through the world, and pro-slavery men in America exult- 
 ingly proclaimed, "Behold the effects of emancipation." 
 Eeal estate in Jamaica fell 50 per cent, and in 1850, Mr. 
 Bigelow said : " It is difficult to exaggerate, and still more 
 difficult to define, the poverty and industrial prostration 
 of Jamaica." Notwithstanding this great depression, the 
 effect of the shock soon passed away, and in 1858 the re- 
 ports to Parliament from all the West India islands, show, 
 ed that in the four years preceeding there had been an 
 increase in the West India trade over the preceeding four 
 years amounting to |21,802,000. The total trade of 1857 
 was over fifty-two million dollars. 
 
 I have not been able to obtain any official reports of the 
 West India trade later than 1857, but it is true that the 
 exports of the islands, though nearly as great as they were 
 immediately preceding emancipation, are not yet, even 
 with this great increase, half as large as they were in what 
 are called "the prosperous days of the colonies," in other 
 words, when men were captured, enslaved, and sacrificed 
 by the thousands in order that sugar might be exported 
 and sold to fill the pockets of English speculators. But a 
 decrease in trade, however great, does not prove emanci- 
 paticm a failure to any one who believes a human soul 
 
15 
 
 worthy of higher regard than a hogshead of sugar, and the 
 comfort and happiness of men of more consequence than 
 the profits on the export of a barrel of rum or bag of coffee. 
 "When a cultivated people consider reasons like these suf- 
 ficient to decide the greatest of moral questions, it is time 
 for barbarians to teach us a better lesson. The gross ma- 
 terialism such exclusively pecuniary considerations imply 
 is enough to overwhelm with shame any christian nation. 
 Let us not advance such an argument in this age of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 But, setting aside all sentiments of humanit}', justice, 
 morality and religion, it is safe to assert that not even the 
 material progress of a country can be determined hy the 
 exports alone. The best indication of the prosperity of 
 California is not her large exports of gold, but the general 
 advancement of the people in agriculture, manufactures 
 and the mechanic arts. So also with the Indies ; their 
 pecuniary condition is to be judged more by the progress 
 of the laborers in the accumulation of property, their in- 
 creased means of enjoying the comforts of life, and the 
 amount of f)roduce consumed at home, rather than that 
 which is sent abroad. Ernest ISToel, writing from Jamaica 
 to the N. Y. Times, last year, says ten pounds of coftee are 
 now consumed in that island where one pound was used 
 previous to emancipation. Every laborer now has his cup 
 of coftee. So it is with sugar. Noel gives it as his opin- 
 ion that the amount grown has not so much decreased as 
 the exports indicate, but that it is used by the natives 
 themselves. Instead of being sent oft' to enrich foreign 
 capitalists, it is retained at home to add to the comforts of 
 the producer. The commissioners sent to the Indies by 
 the Baptist Missionary Society state that, while the annual 
 export of sugar from all the islands for several years before 
 emancipation averaged 3,600,000 cwt., the sugar exports 
 of 1858 amounted to 3,500,000 cwt., being a diminution 
 of only 2,000 hogsheads. The annual earnings of the 
 70,000 negro families of Jamaica are estimated by the com- 
 missioners at about eleven million dollars, and the amount 
 saved by them since emancipation, estimating at a low 
 rate the value of their real and personal property, is not 
 
16 
 
 less than twelve million dollars. This shows that some of 
 them, at least, do not spend all they earn, and that the 
 whole of them, as a people, are far from being the idle, 
 vicious, thieving vagabonds they are so often represented. 
 
 In view of these facts, gathered from such a variety of 
 sources, and substantiated by witnesses of such unim- 
 peachable character, is it not evident that the slave power, 
 besides being the curse of America, is the most audacious 
 liar in Christendom ? The upholders of slavery, by their 
 persistency in lying, have made nine-tenths of the Ameri- 
 can people believe that the abolition of slavery would 
 bring inevitable ruin upon the country. For more than 
 twenty years the}'^ have lied about the results of emancipa- 
 tion in the West Indies ; and having succeeded in deceiv- 
 ing man}^ honest people, they coolly point to the general 
 belief in their lies as proof of their integrity, and as evi- 
 dence of the necessity as well as justice of their iniquitous 
 system. Their audacity is unparalleled. 
 
 I will close this portion of the subject with an extract 
 from the Edinburgh Remew of April, 1859, which, after fur- 
 nishing statistics on the progress of the West Indies for the 
 ten years previous, appended to its array of figures the fol- 
 lowing statement : 
 
 "A long and thorough investigation has borne us to the conclusion 
 that, merely as a dry question of policy, emancipation has paid. 
 Slavery and monopoly were bearing the West Indies to ruin; under 
 free labor and free trade they are rising to wealth, and are yearly 
 enriching us more and more with the overflowing wealth of their fer- 
 tile soil. Instead of being tlie plague of statesmen and the disgrace 
 of England, they are becoming invaluable possessions of the British 
 crown." 
 
 During my examination of this subject, I have found 
 evidences in favor of emancipation sufficient to fill a volume 
 of five hundred pages — sufficient, at least, to convince all 
 rational men that immediate and unconditional emancipa- 
 tion, viewed as a question of morals and finance, would be 
 the o-reatest blessino- this o-overnment could confer upon 
 the Southern people, both master and slave. 1 have spent 
 more time in collecting these statistics than my inclination 
 prompted, in order to meet the objections of that large class 
 of men who consider the question of the continuance of 
 
17 
 
 slavery as purely one of profit and loss, on which conside- 
 rations of humanity or justice have no practical bearing. 
 Except in recognition of this prevailing opinion, I would 
 -not have taken the trouble to prove slavery a financial 
 blunder to be remedied, while my sense of justice tells me 
 it is a most monstrous crime to be extirpated. There are 
 far higher considerations in favor of emancipation than 
 those which concern our material prosperity. By making 
 this war a war for the freedom of the slave, we make it a 
 war for human rights. The rights which pertain to men 
 because they are men — the rights of humanity — are far 
 hio-her and more sacred than those which /are derived from 
 any form of civil government. Human rights are inherent 
 and immutable, while the rights of a subject or citizen are 
 conferred by statute, and liable to constant modification. 
 One is as much higher than the other as God is higher than 
 man. It is said to be glorious to give up your life for your 
 country. I think it more glorious to do so for the sake of 
 humanity; and it has been given to this people and this 
 generation to contend for the establishment of principles 
 which lie at the basis of human rights and progress. As 
 a mere struggle for the ascendency, between parties one of 
 which is only more wrong than the other, (though a great 
 deal more, it is true,) I, for one, feel very much disposed 
 to stand aside, and allow those who love fighting to fight 
 it out. The struggles of the battle-field, which some na- 
 tures look upon as the grandest and most sublime exhibi- 
 tion of human passions, seem to me, apart from any noble 
 object that may be attained thereby, as illustrative only of 
 gross brutality and barbaric folly. The sight of human 
 gore, and the sound of human woe, the hissing shot and 
 bursting shell, the groans of the wounded and the gasps 
 of the dying, make a scene the boasted sublimity of which, 
 merely as a sublime sight, I have no desire to witness. But 
 elevate the standard of the war; make the contest one for 
 the rights of man, for the destruction of tyranny, for the 
 establishment of the principles of justice; inscribe on our 
 banners " Emancipation for the Slave " and " Equal Kights 
 for All," so that, overlooking the brutality and the suffer- 
 ing, we may see, not far beyond, the realization of our 
 
18 
 
 hopes for the cause of humanity, and feel that through all 
 this trial and these sufferings a glorious future awaits us, 
 which shall be a rich atonement for all, and I am ready to 
 stake my life in the contest. What matters individual ill 
 or welfare in a war such as this should be ? If America, 
 cursed with slavery, has been the hope of the world, what 
 may not America free become ? If we can save our repub- 
 lican form of government, and destroy slavery, this war, 
 indeed, will not have been in vain ; but if our President 
 and his advisers desire to have the evil that caused the war 
 still continue to exist, then surely they are endeavoring to 
 retain that which has cursed every country on which it 
 ever rested ; and if we, the people, do nothing to aid this 
 and other reforms which should take place in our system 
 of government in order better to adapt it to our present 
 condition, then we are wilfully closing our eyes to evils 
 which the war gives us a grand opportunity to put an end to. 
 Three objects are before the American people at this 
 time for attainment — the preservation of the Union, an 
 honorable peace, and the abolition of slavery ; the first and 
 second of which may be easily and quickly secured by pro- 
 claiming the third, and enforcing it as fast as our armies 
 move southward. The abolition of slavery must soon be 
 followed by the disbanding of the rebel army. Every 
 Southern soldier would desire to protect his own family 
 against the possible vengeance of the slaves. Peace would 
 soon follow, and slavery being destroyed, the peace would 
 be permanent between the two sections, though quiet at 
 the South cannot be restored for years. The estates of 
 rebels should be divided and apportioned among the 
 Northern soldiers, upon condition of immediate settlement. 
 This course would infuse a new element into Southern so- 
 ciety, which in less than ten years would revolutionize the 
 character of the Southern people. It is an absolute fact, 
 (all lies to the contrary notwithstanding,) that the white 
 man can perform more and harder labor at the South than 
 the negro. It has been proved over and over again in the 
 ditching and railroad building of the Southern States. 
 Labor too arduous for the negro is performed by the white 
 man with ease. The "poor white trash" of the South, 
 
19 
 
 being acclimated, are better able to labor even than the 
 whites of the North, and on finding that other white men, 
 more intelligent than themselves, are not ashamed to 
 work for a living, they too would earn enough to live 
 decently; and the next generation, educated in the schools 
 introduced by the Northern men, would be a superior race. 
 In the meantime, laws would require to be passed for the 
 regulation of labor, and to prevent the oppression of the 
 negro by white tyrants. 
 
 There is no doubt that an openly avowed abolition policy 
 would create dissatisfaction in the Slave States still loyal 
 to the Government, but it must not be forgotten that there 
 are eight million white people in the South, and only three 
 hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders, and it is possible 
 that if a fair vote could be taken a majority would be found 
 in favor of abolition. If not, it is solely owing to their igno- 
 rance, and in the more enlightened future they will thank 
 us for forcing upon them the blessings of free society. It 
 is much better to have a little more trouble quickly to end, 
 than a little less to last for years. But the troubles will 
 not end immediately. Anthony Trollope says, in reference 
 to the abolition of slavery, " the discontinuance of an evil 
 is always the commencement of a struggle." We must 
 expect a struggle for years between the various elements 
 that will compose Southern society after the close of this 
 war. I do not look for a conflict of races when liberty is 
 proclaimed, but simply for the minor difliculties that must 
 inevitably result from a disorganized state of society. Time, 
 however, will bring peace, and happiness will again settle 
 upon our now distracted country. What murders, what 
 outrages, what bloody butcheries may intervene, it is need- 
 less to imagine. Let us fix our eyes upon the happy future. 
 Yet, in view of the fact that slavery is the sole cause of 
 insurrections, and that freedom would remove this cause, 
 and in view of the mild character of our American slaves, 
 it is highly improbable that any massacre of whites by 
 blacks would follow emancipation. But if any excess oi: 
 the kind should occur, it certainly would be far preferable 
 to a long and bloody civil war, which must, if emancipation 
 be not adopted, result inthe destruction of our government, 
 3 
 
20 
 
 and an enormous loss of valuable lives. Better exterminate 
 every master by the hand of the slave, than sacrifice the 
 lives of men who are true to their country and humanity. 
 I know not why we should be so careful of the safety of 
 slaveholding traitors, and so lavish of the blood of our loyal 
 soldiers. The doom of slavery is written in the Book of 
 Fate. It is only a question' of time ; but how long a time, 
 and at what an expense of blood and treasure, depends 
 upon the method of conducting this war. The campaign 
 of Patterson in "Western Virginia is said to have cost the 
 government ten million dollars, and the total results were 
 the capture of twenty fugitive slaves, every one of whom 
 were returned to their masters. Millions of dollars ex- 
 pended to maintain an army of negro catchers, for the 
 benefit of slaveholding rebels ! That is one way to conduct 
 a war; but it is not my way, and I have reason to believe 
 that a great many men of my way of thinking are deterred 
 from ofiering their assistance to the Government, because 
 they do not feel that the present policy of the Administra- 
 tion is what it should be. It has been reported that many 
 ofiicers in the Federal army would resign if the Govern- 
 ment should proclaim emancipation. None of this class 
 did resign when Fremont issued his proclamation, but if 
 any actually threatened to do so, their services should be 
 dispensed with now, and men put in their places who will 
 not resign when time and events compel the Government 
 to adopt this policy. It is well to prepare for the inevitable 
 future. TViere is another and much larger class of soldiers 
 who earnestly desire the abolition of slavery, and knowing 
 the war will end in that, they are satisfied to obtain a good 
 result under false pretences. I am not; and in this case 
 I am more strongly opposed to such a sneaking course for 
 the reason that it wi-ll cause a greatly increased loss of life, 
 to say nothing of the loss of national self-respect and the 
 respect of the world. This war should speedily end. Al- 
 ready it comes home to the bosoms of each one of us whose 
 relatives or friends have bled or died on fields made memo- 
 rable by incompetency and mismanagement. Continue as 
 we have commenced, and we will have a guerilla warfare 
 for an indefinite number of years. We may obtain pos- 
 
21 
 
 session of every Southern seaport, and station soldiers in 
 every inland Southern city, (when we have captured them, 
 which will not be in a hurry,) yet the rebels will retain the 
 mountain defences, and keep the country in a state of insur- 
 rection for 3^ears ; and after they are crushed, if ever, then 
 slavery again will cause a turmoil from that time on to 
 eternity, unless we take a new tack. I believe in striking 
 home — in the very citadel of the enemy's strength. What 
 folly to suffer a servile race to cultivate fields to furnish 
 food to those who are fighting against us ! What inanity 
 to -allow four millions of people to assist our enemies, when 
 two millions of them would gladly assist us ! It probably 
 would not be necessary to admit ertiancipated slaves to the 
 military service of the Government. The good feeling 
 that in many cases exists between master and slave should 
 not be disturbed more than necessity requires. The desi- 
 rability of a harmonious relation between all parties after 
 the war is over forbids this, I know the negro's intense 
 love of home, and his deep gratitude to those who treat him 
 kindly. The house servants at the South are, in many 
 instances, bound to their master's family by the ties of 
 friendship, and not a few of them by the ties of consan- 
 guinity. But there are on the plantations many thonsands 
 who have no white associates but the overseer, and no 
 friends but themselves. These would gladly aid a Govern- 
 ment that would show a disposition to aid them. They are 
 ignorant, but could soon be made to understand their new 
 position, and, if unyielding necessity at last required it, 
 many an efficient regiment could be formed of this "raw 
 material." It is barely possible that after a few Federal 
 victories, the deluded people of the South will return to 
 their allegiance ; but in such an event their curse will re- 
 turn with them. In any aspect of the case, therefore, is it 
 best to wait for a temporary success, by our armies alone, 
 waile it is evident that by freeing the slave and arming 
 the negro, the war would end almost immediately; and by 
 merely freeing the slaves, without accepting their armed 
 service, we could secure permanent peace in six months? 
 The latter mode would be far preferable. By refusing to 
 adopt it, the country will be distracted by war for years, 
 
22 
 
 and emancipation will be found the only remedy at last, 
 because by defeating the rebels, without emancipation, we 
 shall have conquered and brought back the old evil to 
 harass us and cause fresh troubles. Emancipation will be 
 just as necessary then as now. I am not strenuous as to 
 the particular mode by which slavery shall be abolished, but 
 I am fearful of delays. The military is stronger than the 
 civil power; it performs its work more quickly and more 
 effectually ; it hesitates not at slight difficulties ; it does 
 not wrangle over petty details; a few leading minds con- 
 trol all its operations, and its results are produced quietly. 
 But take the matter into Congress after the rebels have 
 laid down their arms ; let the demagogues, the Presidential 
 aspirants, and the corrupt politicians of that body expend 
 their volumes of gas on the subject, and the country will 
 again be agitated from center to circumference; jealousies 
 will be excited, sectional interests raised, and the final dis- 
 solution of the Union rendered unavoidable. If it is going 
 to Congress at all, it better go there now, when there is a 
 chance of unanimity. 
 
 Strictly considered, the Constitution does not sanction 
 slavery ; it does not expressly recognize its existence. But 
 take Contiitutional pro-slaveryists and anti-Constitutioa 
 abolitionists upon their common ground, which is, that 
 slavery, sustained by State laws, and sanctioned by the 
 Federal Constitution, cannot, by the General Government, 
 be legally abolished until the Constitution is amended. 
 Then, I assert, if it may not be interfered with bj^ the civil 
 power, it can be b;^ the military, and that power should be 
 exercised. The upholders of slavery, in the States where 
 it exists, have rejected the Constitution, and voluntarily 
 withdrawn from its protection ; they have defied the Gov- 
 ernment, and raised an armed force to fight against it ; 
 they have adopted another constitution, and claim no rights 
 under the old one. Shall we give them what they do not 
 ask ? Shall we thrust upon them a protection which they 
 spurn ? Since this contest commenced the President has 
 deliberately ignored a law of Congress, in order that armies 
 might be speedily raised for the protection of the Govern- 
 ment. Acknowledging the justice of his action in this 
 
23 
 
 respect, I claim that he has equal reason, in his capacity as 
 Commander in Chief of the army, to disregard those pro- 
 visions of the Constitution which protect and encourage 
 its enemies. (I refer to Art. X of the Amendments, con- 
 cerning the reserved rights of the States, which is so con- 
 strued as to authorize the holding of slaves under State 
 laws.) This is no time for a blind adherence to those 
 Constitutional provisions which, by unjust constructions, 
 are made to favor men who defy the Constitution in 
 nearly half the States of the Union. 
 
 I do not believe that any government can permanently 
 endure that is not based upon, or at least progressing 
 towards, the eternal principles of truth and justice ; and I 
 do not believe ifus Government, which is now afloat on a 
 sea of troubles, will ever again be firmly established until 
 our rulers, guided by the land-marks of righteousness, lay 
 anchor on the rock of immutable truth. Yet, not now 
 ol^ould we talk of constitutional amendments. This is a 
 time for action. Under existing circumstances gradual 
 emancipation is impracticable. We have had a dalliance 
 with evil long enough. Slavery is an ensnaring harlot, 
 which cannot be touched without contamination. It bru- 
 talizes everything with which it comes in contact, blinds 
 its votaries with ignorance and besots them with a worse 
 than drunken foolishness. It is the sin and shame of our 
 country ; the one evil that overtops all others — that sinks 
 to the foundation of iniquity and reaches to the very apex 
 of villainy. 
 
 We just begin to understand the new relations in whici- 
 we are placed by this rebellion ; and although the Consti- 
 tution defines treason, we just begin to understand what 
 that means : and I have come to the conclusion that the 
 system of slavery itself has been " organized treason' 
 ag-ainst this Government ever since its formation. Its 
 spirit is contrary to the spirit of democracy, and all 1 ws 
 by which it is fostered are, and necessarily inusi be, in 
 direct opposition to a republican form of government. 
 Yet the people of California have been told by their most 
 popular preacher that " Slavery is not the cause of this 
 war, and has nothing to do with it," The man who tells 
 
 you this manages to keep on the top wave of public opinion 
 as much by his tact as his eloquence. I have the charity 
 
24 
 
 to suppose that when he encourages an unjust popular 
 prejudice, he is actuated by the belief that whoever goes 
 far in advance of the people places himself in a position 
 where he is incapable of doing them much good ; so, 
 through pure love of his fellow-men, whose welfare he 
 keeps constantly in view, our popular preacher desires to 
 avoid a radicalism that would weaken his influence. This 
 is very considerate, surely ; nevertheless, I believe in the 
 truth, when I can find it, no matter how many people be- 
 lieve the contrary. And as to the truth of this statement, 
 let us examine : 
 
 The rule of slavery is the rule of brute force. It is 
 founded upon the ignorance and degradation of the en- 
 slaved — " upon the annihilation of the most sacred rights 
 of man." It has no sympathy whatever with free institu- 
 tions, and has ne\ er ceased its warfare on the best interests 
 of this people. It has been the bane of the nation from 
 its foundation. I need not detail the workings of the in- 
 stitution, but will, in brief language, remind you of some 
 of them : Slavery intrenched itself in the Colonies before 
 the United States Government was formed ; it obtained 
 recognizance in the document which we still acknowledge 
 as our Constitution ; it acquired territory from foreign 
 Powers for its future growth ; it repudiated the Ordinance 
 of 1787 prohibiting its extension, and broke the compact 
 of 1820 defining its limits. It was the principal cause of 
 the Florida war; it produced also an unjust war with a 
 neighboring republic in 1846, and endeavored to inau- 
 gurate its villainous system of labor in California in 1849. 
 It "wasted the fair fields of Kansas," and stained its soil 
 with the blood of hundreds of its liberty-loving people. 
 It took possession of New Mexico and Arizona, and en- 
 deavored to extend its rule over Utah and Is^'evada. It has 
 bribed Presidents and Cabinets, controlled Congresses, 
 corrupted Courts, and declared all the territory of the 
 United States slave territory. It has robbed the U. S. 
 mails, and destroyed papers which the people desired for 
 their instruction. It has mutilated school books and reli-' 
 gious writings, in order to expurgate from them every sen- 
 timent favorable to a spirit of freedom. It has mobbed, 
 
25 
 
 persecuted, and finally expelled from its borders, men who 
 were not upholders of its iniquities. In the North it has 
 triumphed by political intrigue, and in the South has been 
 upheld by ruifian brutality. Its histoiy is one continued 
 story of outrages. Wherever it has had the power to do 
 so, it has burned, maimed or killed all who dared utter 
 anything in opposition to its barbarities ; where it has not 
 had this power, it has distributed political rewards for acts 
 of party subserviency. Words of remonstrance at the 
 North have produced the politician's defeat and the busi- 
 ness man's ruin ; while even a lack of sympathy at the 
 South has been sufficient to insure physical torture or 
 death. For fifty years, by its unity of interest, the Slave 
 Power in this country has managed to control public opin- 
 ion, to direct the Government, and to impede the progress 
 of free institutions. After a long series of uninterrupted 
 successes, it has, at last, received a check ; it perceives 
 that the acme of its power has been reached ; and, in the 
 phrenzy of despair, it strives to overturn the Government 
 which has so long protected it. The census reports and 
 the indisputable evidence within every man's observation, 
 have demonstrated to the slaveholders the growing power 
 of free labor, and the consequent early doom of slavery. 
 They saw themselves surrounded by Free States, and in- 
 truded upon within their own territory by the advancing 
 hosts of free labor. In some of the border Slave States 
 the hard-working immigrants from Germany, the ever 
 restless sons of the emerald isle and the invincible yankee 
 purchased homes adjoining the plantations of slaveholders, 
 and demonstrated to them that "men who are bred in the 
 customs of free societ}^, inured to labor, and economical of 
 their resources, have both the ability and the will to take 
 advantage of the planter's necessities, and purchase his 
 lauds at low prices." This process was continued until 
 slavery was crowded out from whole sections of Virginia, 
 Missouri and Texas. These things, it would seem, ought 
 to have convinced the people of the South that the boasted 
 economy of slave labor is a delusion. But it did not. 
 Many of them believe it a necessity, and they are encour- 
 aged in this belief by their politicians, who continually 
 
assert that the abolition of slavery would be the ruin of 
 the South. Cotton cannot be produced by free labor, they 
 say, and, in order to sustain slavery in the cotton States, 
 it must be perpetuated in the border States and extended 
 into the Territories. So it has been extended, against the 
 entreaties, the protestations, and all the efforts of good 
 men to stay its progress. Although, in the early days of 
 the Republic, the Slave Power lost some of the States that 
 were once under its dominion, it has since succeeded in 
 devoting a greater number of new States to its service. 
 This increase has been charged as the effect of abolition 
 agitation at the North creating a feeling of opposition at 
 the South. As well might you assert that fire engines are 
 the cause of conflagrations, as to say that abolition agitation 
 perpetuates slavery. George M. Weston says: "It is an 
 insult to the intelligence of the Southern people to suppose 
 them capable of being influenced by motives so puerile in 
 connection with a subject of such vital interest." The 
 true cause of the increased power of slavery lies in the 
 unsound opinions concerning the profitableness of slave 
 labor, and in the immense pecuniary interests of the slave- 
 holders. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, in his 
 letter to Thomas Clarkson, places this matter on the right 
 ground. He says the political movements against slavery 
 had no effect at the South, neither would a Y>^re\j persua- 
 sive attempt to remove slavery, such as Clarkson proposed, 
 succeed any better. The Southern people were not excited 
 to further " aggressions" by the abuse of abolitionists ; they 
 were impelled to extend slavery by altogether different 
 causes. Nature and the requirements of trade, pecuniary 
 interests, and long established custom demand the perpetu- 
 ation of slavery, Mr. Hammond says, and neither threats 
 nor entreaties will ever prevail against it. Hear him : 
 
 " Supposing we were all convinced, and thouo-ht of slavery pre- 
 cisely as you do ; at what era of ' moral suasion' do you imagine you 
 could prevail on us to give up two thousand millions of dollars in the 
 value of our slaves, and a thousand millions more in the depreciation 
 of our lands in consequence of the want of laborers to cultivate 
 them ? * * * You see the absurdity of such an idea. Away 
 then with your pretended moral suasion. You know it is mere 
 
27 
 
 Although Senator Hararaoiid falls into the common 
 error concerning the effects of emancipation, yet I agree 
 with him that slavery is not to be remedied by moral sua- 
 sion, on the contrary, it is to be put down by the strong 
 arm of military force— an evil to be crushed at once, and 
 at whatever cost. We all know emancipation to be just; 
 experience has proved it to be profitable ; but this war 
 makes it inevitable; so we have no choice, except the 
 choice of time, and no duty except to make the time short. 
 
 The longer the delay the more will be the cost in the end 
 
 cost, not in money alone, but in life, in national honor, 
 and perhaps in the total destruction of our government. 
 The most efiectual mode of curing an evil is to remove 
 its cause, and the cause of this war is too obvious to be 
 mistaken. We can trace all our present national troubles 
 directly to one point — that is slavery. The impoverishino- 
 effect of slavery, "its tendency to band together all con- 
 nected with it, and isolate them from the people of other 
 States," its exclusive interests, the jealousy it fosters, the 
 brutality and ignorance it causes, and the spirit of lawless- 
 ness which it naturally gives rise to, have kept the nation 
 in a ferment for the last thirty years. This war is the 
 natural and inevitable culmination of the troubles caused 
 by slavery, and we shall never again have peace except by 
 its extinction. Geo. M. Weston, in his history of the 
 " Progress of Slavery," says : 
 
 "Virginia and the Carolinas, with exhausted soils, stationary popu- 
 lations, and decaying towns, saw, with regret and ahirin, that the free 
 States, with inferior natural advantages, were rapidly surpassing 
 them in numbers and wealth. With jaundiced eyes, they beheld 
 the vigorous commerce, the thriving manuflictures and the opulent 
 cities of the North, and insisted that they alone were the producers 
 of real wealth, and that the North was thriving at their expense. * 
 * * Without the products of the South, where would Northern 
 ships find freights? Without Southern customers, where could 
 Northern manufactures find markets ? Such questions, and the ideas 
 that prompt such questions, are common in all the slave States." 
 
 Senator Hammond, in a speech in the U. S. Senate, 
 March 4th, 1858, addressing the Senators from the North- 
 ern States, said : 
 
 " Transient and temporary causes have thus far been your preser- 
 vation. * * * The South has sustained you in a great measure. 
 You are our factors. You bring and carry for us. One hundred 
 
, 28 
 
 and fifty million dollars of our money passes annually through your 
 hands. Much of it sticks ; all of it assists to keep your machinery 
 together and in motion. Suppose we were to discharge you ; sup- 
 pose we were to take our business out of your hands ; we should con- 
 sign you to anarchy and poverty." 
 
 Is it any wonder that the Southern people remain 
 grossly ignorant of the resources and character of the 
 North, while one of their most intelligent leaders utters 
 such absurdities as these ? Mr. Forsyth, of Alabama, ten 
 years ago, said to the people of the South in a public 
 address : 
 
 " I have no more doubt that the eflFect of separation would be to 
 transfer the energies of industry, population, commerce and wealth 
 from the North to the South, than I have that it is to the union with 
 ug — the wealth-producing States — that the North owes its great pro- 
 gress in material prosperity. The Union broken, we should have 
 what has so long been the dream of the South — direct trade and com- 
 mercial independence." 
 
 The whole tribe of Southern disuuionists, blinded by 
 slavery, or wilfully closing their eyes to the true cause of 
 their misfortunes, have held similar views for a quarter of 
 a century, and, by their continued efforts, have " embit- 
 tered the South against the North, have created a spirit of 
 uneasiness, and destroyed the patriotic feelings of the 
 Southern people." Therefore I assert that slavery is the 
 sole cause of our national troubles, and emancipation the 
 only remedy. In no other way can we have permanent 
 peace. In no other way,can we as a nation ever reach 
 that high state of cultivation and prosperity at home, and 
 that commanding influence and respect abroad which will 
 be ours when freed from the curse that has already done 
 so much to lower the national character, to brutalize a 
 large class of our people, and to endanger the existence of 
 the Government itself. Slavery has caused this rebellion 
 against a government in most respects the best that ever 
 existed, and it is now the duty of the Government to rebel 
 against slavery — not by law, to be passed by authority of 
 constitutional amendments, some months or some years 
 hence, but immediately, by proclamation enforced by the 
 sword. I despair of seeing the President assume the re- 
 sponsibility. He even shrinks from the contemplation of 
 his first assumption of unlawful power, just as it was, and 
 
29 
 
 has wholly repudiated the policy of Fremont, which mip^ht 
 have been the entering wedge to split and finally destroy the 
 iniquitous system that has come so near destroying us. 
 But I look to Congress for a speedy remedy. Though it 
 should be done by the military, it may first be authorized 
 by the civil power — not, I trust, by any slow-moving at- 
 tempt to amend the Constitution, but by means of a dec- 
 laration made necesRary by the extremity of our danger. 
 Let us say to our representatives : We will have no further 
 subservience to the behests of this tremendous evil — no 
 more compromises, and no more delay. 
 
 " Hear it, ye who sit in council, 
 
 We, the people, tell you so ! 
 Will you venture ' Yes ' to whisper, 
 
 When the millions thunder ' No i" 
 Will you sell the nation's birthright — 
 
 Heritage of toil and pain — 
 While a cry of shame and vengeance 
 
 Rings from Oregon to Maine ? " 
 
 You all remember the words of the eloquent Curran, 
 
 used in the defense of Mr. Rowan, in allusion to that most 
 
 noble decree of the British courts, which, in the case of 
 
 Somerset, declared the freedom of every man whose feet 
 
 trod British soil : 
 
 " No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced ; 
 no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or 
 an African sun may have burned upon him; no matter in what dis- 
 astrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down ; no matter with 
 what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; 
 the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and 
 the god sink together in the dust, his body swells beyond the measure 
 of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, 
 regenerated and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal 
 emancipation." 
 
 Shall we, who boast so much of freedom, let monarchi- 
 cal Britain longer thus put us to shame ? Shall we con- 
 tinue in the future all the absurdities of the jtast, and in- 
 vite the nations of the earth to witness our inconsistencies ? 
 Claiming our Constitution as the palladium of the liber- 
 ties of the people, we have held millions of our fellow 
 men in bondage; holding up to the gaze of mankind the 
 Declaration of Independence as the most sublime expres- 
 sion of man's equality, we have, in practice, acted as if 
 
30 
 
 it really were what one of our Northern doughfaces pro- 
 nounced it, " a tissue of glittering generalities." How 
 long are these things to coatinue? I trust not long. Al- 
 ready, by this rebellion, has this noble decree of Great 
 Britain been practically extended from the borders of tlw 
 northern lakes to the verge of old Virgini?. ; and, already 
 has Fremont indicated a mode by which the human chat- 
 tels of rebels, even on the very plantiftions of the disloyal 
 South, might be confiscated to the Grovernment, and by 
 the Government consecrated to freedom — a policy which, 
 if adopted, would leave nothing to be done except for 
 Congress to provide some means of finally remunerating 
 the loyal men of the South, when their slaves might, by 
 the military power, be declared free also. And, in my 
 opinion, to grant the delay that waiting for Congressional 
 action would require, is granting a great deal. "When, to 
 prevent the spread of a conflagration, it becomes necessary 
 to destroy any man's property, it is not customary to wait 
 for a committee to assess damag-es : the danofer is sumrna- 
 rily removed, and the question of damages is an after con- 
 sideration. So it should be with emancipation ; and for 
 another reason, also, which is, that the amount of damage 
 in individual cases cannot be estimated for years after 
 emancipation. Many slave owners would grow rich by 
 the operation, without the receipt of a dollar from Govern- 
 ment, caused by the incresjBed value of their lands, and the 
 better system of labor they would be compelled to adopt. 
 " But Avhat would you do with the slaves?" Do with 
 them? What would be the necessity of doing anything 
 with them, except to pass laws for their protection ? Is 
 not their labor needed where they are ? Has it not been 
 demonstrated bj'-the results of emancipation in other coun- 
 tries that as freemen t\\&j are less dangerous than as slaves, 
 and that their willingness to labor will induce them to con- 
 tinue in the service of kind masters for wages, to the moral, 
 mental, physical, and pecuniary benefit of both ? Has the 
 freed slave been a curse in those States of the North where 
 slavery has been abolished? Our history proves the con- 
 trary. They have always taken care of themselves when 
 freed, and found it much easier than before freedom, when 
 
81 
 
 they had to earn their master's living as well as their own. 
 Yet people still say that they are dependent upon a master 
 for support, and that when freed they become public nui- 
 sances, to get rid of which some colonization plan must be 
 invented for their removal. If there is anything I abomi- 
 nate more than slavery, it is the schemes that are some- 
 times-hatched for colonizing men against their will. The 
 inevitable failure of such schemes, in a financial point of 
 view, only saves them from condemnation by making them 
 supremely ridiculous through their absurdity. Whenever 
 the eggs of colonizationists do not become disgustingly ad- 
 dled during the process of incubation, the chicks that come 
 out of them are sure to die young, in consequence of the 
 utter inability of their progenitors to furnish enough of the 
 "wherewith" to keep the breath of life in their gluttonous 
 bodies. All the colonization chickens yet hatched have 
 proved to be natural gourmandizers, the pecuniary suste- 
 nance of which is a financial impossibility. This being 
 the case, the spasmodic eftbrts of colonizationists are, at 
 present, unworihy of opposition ; but if, in the future, 
 public interest should be so aroused and absurd prejudice 
 so excited as to make involuntary colonization practicable, 
 then would come a time to enter an earnest protestation in 
 the name of justice and humanity. Yet, if you could per- 
 suade negroes to emigrate to Central America, or elsewhere, 
 where they might have some hope of retaining their iden- 
 tity, and possibly building up a nation superior to that of 
 any other colored people, and thereby establish a national 
 character which would elevate the colored race in the eyes 
 of the world, — if you could induce them to try this, so that 
 they would go cheerfully and hopefully, I would be glad 
 to see it, for their own sakes, in order that they might be 
 removed beyond the reach of the white man's i jjustice; 
 but the idea of exporting freemen against their will, as if 
 they were criminals, is only a little less cruel and unjust 
 than slavery itself. The long time that has elapsed since 
 their ancestors were brought to America , their association 
 here with a cultivated race, their religion, their education 
 in some of the arts of civilization, and, more than all, the 
 spirit of pride and aspiration that characterizes many of 
 
32 
 
 them, have estahlished a much greater difference between 
 them and the people of Africa than exists between them 
 and us. Henry Clay's scheme of emancipation and coloni- 
 zation was a project for the sole benefit of the white people 
 of Kentucky. He represented to them how disastrous 
 slavery was to all their interests, and inserted in the scheme a 
 clause providing for the sale, in other States, of slaves the 
 owners of whom might desire to dispose of them before 
 the advent of the distant period when the progeny of such 
 slaves, if born within the State previous to the specified 
 time, should become subject to the provisions of the law. 
 In this way the curse would be transferred from Kentucky 
 to the neighboring States, after the style of the young con- 
 vert who, believing that her artificial flowers were drawing 
 her soul down to hell, took them off and gave them to her 
 sister. Neither had justice to the slave any part in Clay's 
 scheme, notwithstanding his pretensions at the close of the 
 following extract from his letter of advice to the people of 
 Kentucky: "I am utterly opposed to emancipation," writes 
 M r. Clay, " without the colonization of the free blacks.' 
 He then urges the benefits that will result from the adop- 
 tion of his scheme as follows ; 
 
 " We shall acquire the advantage of the intelligence, the fidelity, 
 and the constancy of free labor, instead of the carelessness, the 
 infidelity and the unsteadiness of slave labor ; we shall elevate the 
 character of white labor, and elevate the social condition of the white 
 laborer ; augment the value of our land, improve the agriculture of 
 the State, attract capital from abroad to all the pursuits of commerce, 
 manufacture, and agriculture ; redress, as far and as fast as we pru- 
 dently can, any wrong which the descendants of Africa have sufi"ered 
 at our hands, and we should demonstrate the sincerity with which we 
 pay indiscriminate homage to the great cause of the liberty of the 
 human race." 
 
 The first portion of this extract is worthy of considera- 
 tion, because it is true ; but the latter part is deserving of 
 nothing but contempt for its inconsistency and insincerity. 
 To illustrate the absurdity of such a method of redressing 
 the wrongs of the slaves, I will cite a parallel case: A cer- 
 tain New England sea. captain, thirty years ago, brought 
 home from one of the South Sea islands a female child, as 
 a servant for his family. The girl grew to womanhood, 
 and, the passions of some Northerners not being very un- 
 
33 
 
 like those of our Southern slave-breeders, a child was born 
 to this woman, of which the son of the captain was the 
 reputed father. The old man was just. He acknowledged 
 the paternity of the child, (which is not often done by white 
 grand-parents, or white parents either, down South,) he 
 nurtured it kindly, (which is occasionally done at the 
 South,) he provided for its education, (which is sometimes 
 done at the South also,) and it grew up in all respects an 
 American, except the tinge of foreign blood derived from 
 its mother. Suppose now, the mother dies, (as the native 
 Africans have all died at the South,) and the old man's son 
 should say to the native-born American, in whose veins his 
 own blood runs, " M}^ father did you great injustice by 
 bringing your mother to this country, where you can never 
 be on an equality with white people. She is dead, but I 
 will redress your wrongs by sending you to the South Sea 
 islands, after you have worked for me till you earn 
 money to pay the expense of your transportation," The 
 boy looks up in alarm, and replies, "Why, I do not want 
 to go to the South Sea islands ; I know nothing about that 
 country; I was born here; educated here; this is my natu- 
 ral home, and I could not be happy in the climate and 
 among the people of a region to which I am not accus- 
 tomed." "Tut! tuti" says the man, "what do you know 
 about such things ? Has not the great statesman of Ken- 
 tucky declared that this is the only way to redress your 
 wrongs?" Argument is quite unnecessary on this ques- 
 tion ; a simple illustration is sufficient to overturn all that 
 could be advanced in favor of the justice of colonization 
 But there is one other point in Mr. Clay's letter worthy of 
 notice as a curiosity of inconsistency. It is the closing 
 assertion that the emancipation scheme, a prominent fea- 
 ture of which was a provision for the sale of men into end- 
 less bondage, ''•would demonstrate the sincerity with which we 
 [the aiders of such a scheme] pay homage to the great cause 
 of the liberty of the human race." Funny old fellow was that 
 same Harry Clay — " Clay the philanthropist " — a curious 
 example of the ridiculous spectacle a talented man can 
 make of himself by endeavoring to clothe the most terrible 
 fo crimes in the garb of justice and benevolence. 
 5 
 
34 
 
 But — to return to the subject — with freedom, the slaves 
 would rapidly improve. In ISTew York, where I have re- 
 sided during most of my life, and have taken pains to 
 inform myself on this subject, — which always interested 
 me, — I can testify that the records of the courts exhibit a 
 greater comparative freedom from crime among the colored 
 men than among the whites, with all their advantages of 
 social position, education, and freedom from the disabili- 
 ties of an insane prejudice. Even in l!^ ew York city, where 
 a disproportionately large number of the more degraded 
 among the colored race reside, the statistics show that they 
 are far less burdensome to the poor fund, in proportion to 
 their numbers, than the whites ; while in the colored schools 
 of the city there is a larger number of children, in propor- 
 tion to the population, than in the same class of schools for 
 white children. This, of course, is attributable, in a mea- 
 sure, to the large number of white children that attend a 
 higher class of schools, to which tho blacks are not ad- 
 mitted. When we consider that, although slavery was 
 provisionally abolished in 1799, yet it is now less than forty 
 years since it ceased to exist in that State, and that, during 
 the earliest portion of that time the acquirement of educa- 
 tion and the accumulation of property were lightly regarded 
 by the negroes, in consequence of the dependent and thrift- 
 less habits engendered by slavery, we may safely assert that 
 the progress they have made is far more creditable to them 
 as a race than white people are generally willing to admit, 
 especially in California, where the colored man is driven 
 from our courts of justice (!), and his claims for the rights 
 of citizenship laughed to scorn. Yet Chancellor Kent 
 
 says: 
 
 " Citizens, under our Constitution and laws, mean free inhabitants 
 born in the United States, or naturalized under the laws of Congress. 
 If a slave, born in the United States, be manumitted, or otherwise 
 lawfully discharged from bondage, or if a black man be born in the 
 United States, and born free, he becomes thenceforward a citizen." 
 
 This opinion was written long before the Dred Scott de- 
 cision ; and, 1 think, is not only older hnt- better authority. 
 When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, 
 colored men voted in a majority of the States, — in New 
 York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, lihode 
 
35 
 
 Island, New Jersey, Delaware, and jSTortli Carolina ; and 
 long after that they continued to vote in North Carolina, 
 and also in Tennessee, after the admission of that State 
 into the Union. I do not say they should, as a class, be 
 allowed to vote now. I would neither give nor refuse the 
 privilege of voting on account of color. There are other 
 and far higher qualifications that should be required in a 
 voter than a white skin merely. We have too many voters 
 already for the good of the country, jSTo right of govern- 
 ing others shoald be accorded to a man who is incapable, 
 either through ignorance or immorality, of governing him- 
 self. There is far too much license in America for the 
 good of the people. Yet am I an advocate for " equal 
 rights," just so far as men prove themselves equal to exer- 
 cise them ; and wherever men are not fit for the exercise 
 of all the rights of citizens, qyqyj eifort should be made to 
 improve them. During the past ten years, — or since I have 
 been able to think discriminatingly, — I have felt less and 
 less pride in the greatness and glory of my country, and 
 more and more desire for the progress and elevation of 
 humanity. Man, the world over, is my brother — be he 
 black, red, or white. We all have one origin, one destiny, 
 one God to rule over us, and one common grave waiting 
 to receive us. Men are unequal in capacity and cultiva- 
 tion, but they have the sayne natural rights. It is maintained 
 as one of the laws of nature that, throughout every grade 
 of the animal creation, the stronger invariably governs the 
 weaker. I admit it; but, among men, the right to govern 
 does not give the right to oppress. On the contrary, it 
 involves the duty to protect, to nourish, and to elevate, in 
 order that the whole human family may move on harmo- 
 niously, in accordance with that other and higher law — the 
 law of progress. That all men may have opportunity to 
 advance according to their capacity, I would remove every 
 bond that holds them down — and especially where it is evi- 
 dent that the same bond that keeps down the slave degrades 
 also the master. "Emancipation should [iiof] be the last 
 resort of the Government in this war," but it probably ?677^ 
 be the last, because by no other means shall we put down 
 the rebellion ; and this fact being clear to my mind, I am 
 
36 
 
 m favor of making "the last first," in order that the war 
 may end quickly. 
 
 Final emancipation is our only hope, and sjjeedy emanci- 
 pation our best policy. In urging this policy upon the 
 people, I have not referred to the threatening aspect of our 
 foreign relations, for I believe we should do the right thing 
 because it is right, and not through fear of a war with a 
 foreign power if we persist in the wrong. "We have never 
 been in the habit of looking to the monarchies of Europe 
 for any approval of the acts of a republican government; 
 nevertheless, at this crisis, we cannot close our eyes to the 
 fact that hostilities with foreign powers are liable to com- 
 mence at any moment. There is a great difference between 
 the spirit of the British Government towards this country, 
 and that which animates a majority of the British people. 
 The sympathies of the people of England not being, as yet, 
 strongly enlisted in favor of the Union, as would be the 
 case if our policy were emancipation, the British Govern- 
 ment is left free to wage war against a republic of which it 
 has always been jealous, and which, if again united, will 
 be its greatest rival ; while, in case of disunion, an immense 
 trade will be opened between England and the Southern 
 Confederacy, (now almost monopolized by the i^orth,) an 
 alliance will be formed between them, (because it will then 
 be too late for the people to restrain the Government,) and 
 the material prosperity of England will be much enhanced. 
 Though France and Spain would be less directly benefited 
 than England, the rulers of those countries see in the down- 
 fall of this republic the more permanent establishment of 
 monarchical rule throughout the world ; and, though pro- 
 fessing friendship, they stand ready to make use of any 
 Yjretext that would enable them to insure the permanent 
 disruption of this Government. While we maintain our 
 present policy, they may safely aid the rebellion without 
 giving offence to their own people; but let our Government 
 proclaim emancipation, and the enthusiasm of the people 
 of France would warn the Emperor of the danger of run- 
 ning counter to such an immense public opinion ; while 
 the British Ministry, controlled by the British people, would 
 foresee itself crushed b}^ any attempt to interfere against a 
 
37 
 
 cause so holy as would then be the cause of our Govern- 
 ment; and Spain, without England and France, would be 
 powerless. We should have the sympathy of the people 
 of the world, the approval of our own consciences, and the 
 smiles of a benignant Providence. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Having investigated the results of emancipation in other 
 countries, elucidated the true and only cause of the war, 
 and indicated what I conceive to be the sole remedy, I 
 have now to consider some of the changes which must in- 
 evitably follow this contest. 
 
 If any man supposes he is hereafter to live in this coun- 
 try under precisely the same system which has heretofore 
 governed us, he is greatly in error. We must have a 
 change — else why this rebellion ? There was never a 
 revolution without a cause, and never a war that did not 
 produce changes beyond the intention of those who brought 
 it on. So it will be with this war. It is one of the means 
 which God has ordained for the progress of man, 
 
 I look for a stronger Government in the future — for a 
 more stable Government, for a Government further re- 
 moved from the influence of the mob. The heads ot Gov- 
 ernment should have more power, still with careful restric- 
 tions, and the terms of office should be extended, that we 
 .may not, every year in the States, and every four j^ears in 
 the nation, have a straggle for office that demoralizes the 
 people and draws men away from their legitimate business. 
 Ten years constitute a period short enough to carry out 
 the policy of any Federal Administration; and as to Fed- 
 eral officers appointed by Government, they should retain 
 their places during good behavior. This would build up 
 a privileged class in America — an aristocratic class, per- 
 l^aps — but better that than a constantly recurring struggle 
 for office among men who ought to be engaged in some 
 regular pursuit. The American people will hereafter have 
 less of license, and more of law; fewer privileges as citi- 
 zens, and more rights as men ; less diversity of law among 
 the States, and more unity as a nation. Some of the pow- 
 ers now exercised by the States must belong solely to the 
 
38 
 
 General Government. Federal power and " State Rights " 
 must be more clearl}'- defined — the former extended and 
 strengthened, and the latter much weakened. The elec- 
 tive franchise should also be restricted, and the laws res-u- 
 lating it made uniform throughout the Union. We must 
 have one government in spirit and in power, as well as in 
 name, instead of a "confederation of petty nationalities" 
 with conflicting laws in cases often not required by di- 
 verse interests. The end of slavery will be. the end of one 
 cause of so much special legislation and contradictory 
 enactments by the various States. Citizens of one State 
 must be citizens of all; or else of none — citizens of the 
 nation, everywhere alike entitled to the same privileges 
 and the same immunities. If a high standard can be 
 maintained in Kew York, a low one must not be permitted 
 in California, by means of which a man who is protected in 
 the one State may be expelled from the other. Such 
 things are absurdities under a 7iational goYeviinient. If we 
 are one people, we must have one common rule. Laws 
 to apply in one section and not in another should be made 
 only to meet the requirements of local causes, and nover 
 extended to such general principles as those which deter- 
 mine claims to citizenship and secure the common rights 
 of the people. 
 
 The changes that will occur in the commercial and 
 manufacturing interests of the .country will not be less 
 important than the political reforms. It is an axiom that, 
 in the affairs of human life, no necessity can exist for the 
 possession of anything that is beyond the limits of possible 
 attainment. The wants of the greatest commercial and 
 manufacturing nation of the world render necessary, at 
 the present time, a greater supply of cotton, and a more 
 certain supply in the future. Cotton is England's neces- 
 sity. The English poor demand it ; the English capital- 
 ists will see that they have it ; and they look elsewhere for 
 it than to the United States. Already promising experi- 
 ments have been made in many portions of the civilized 
 and uncivilized world, notwithstanding the results of 
 the increased cotton culture in India are highly favora- 
 ble to the production of a cheap, plentiful and perma- 
 
39 
 
 nent supply for the looms of England. In Australia, 
 snccessliil experiments have been made, and in the 
 West Indies, also, cotton has been cultivated, even on 
 the mountains of Jamaica, three thousand feet above 
 the level of the sea, and the product of last year's crop was 
 sold in the Manchester market for sixteen cents per pound, 
 so superior was its quality. There arc millions of acres, 
 equal to the ground on which that crop was raised, now 
 lying waste in the West India colonial possessions of Bri- 
 tain, while there are thousands of persons, not employed 
 on the sugar estates, both able and willing to cultivate cot- 
 ton for wages so low that its production must be profitable 
 to the planter. In China, too, cotton is produced, and in 
 the wilds of Africa, according to the reports of Livingstone, 
 there are large tracts of country covered with the cotton 
 plant in a wild state, not of so good quality as our Ameri- 
 can article, but undoubtedly susceptible of improvement, 
 and freely gathered by the natives, and sold in exchange 
 for cheap articles of English manufacture. The Egyptian 
 cotton is also seeking a market in England, and, while ex- 
 l^eriments in Central America prove the adaptability of 
 that country to the production of an excellent staple, the 
 cotton tree of Peru is said to bid fair to revolutionize en- 
 tirely the cotton culture of the world. This war has sent 
 the English capitalist and statesman on a world-wide search 
 for cotton fields. They have found them, and five years 
 wall develop their products. We shall have peace in this 
 country before that time, (I hope,) and the products of our 
 nation's industry will again seek a market in lands across 
 the sea; but cotton will not find it, (at remunerative prices,) 
 and the consequence will be a decrease in its production 
 here, and a corresponding increase in the cultivation of the 
 cereals, which will coinmand better prices. Those fields 
 in the South peculiarly adapted to the culture of cotton 
 will still be used for the production of a crop for the home 
 market, and the great ISTorth, with its accustomed magna- 
 nimity, will consent to its protection b}^ a tariff" on the 
 foreign article. Tlien will our ISTorthern looms ao-ain be 
 supplied by Southern cotton, and our southern brethren 
 again be clothed with the goods of Northern manufacture ; 
 
40 
 
 the internal trade of the country will increase, and the con> 
 mercial transactions with foreign nations comparatively 
 decrease, till another century will witness a state of pros- 
 perity in the Union never before dreamed of. The nation 
 will be a world within itself — self-producing, self-sustain- 
 ing, self-governing — independent of all the nations of the 
 earth for any of the necessaries or comforts, and for most 
 of the luxuries of life. Then will there be free labor 
 throughout the whole country, harmonious interests afi'ect- 
 ing the whole people, and a bond of union established that 
 will grow stronger with each succeeding generation. Na- 
 ture has given America the resources, and a free people 
 will develop them. Who can picture the future of a coun- 
 try extending from sea to sea, from the torrid almost to the 
 frigid zone, embracing every variety of climate, and inhab- 
 ited by a people more generally educated than any other 
 nation on earth — an industrious, enterprising, and progres- 
 sive people, in the enjoyment of all the blessings of a most 
 liberal and beneficent government — a government which 
 though in some of its features is now too far in advance 
 of the condition of the governed, will, in that glorious- fu- 
 ture, even in most of these respects, be fitted for the people 
 which, on this continent, will become the leader of civili- 
 zation, the exemplar and teacher of the world? 
 
APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION 
 
 Less than a week has elapsed since the issue of the first 
 edition of this pamphlet, during which time so many criti- 
 cisms have appeared concerning it in the various newspa- 
 pers of the State, that the author has concluded to issue a 
 second edition, and append a few additional reasons to sus- 
 tain his positions. For himself he has no defence to offer, 
 except as to the charge of " assuming the office of adviser 
 to the people of California." To this he answers that if 
 he has taken upon himself to offer advice, it is hecause no 
 newspapers in the State, (except the San Jose Mercury,) and 
 but few public men, have dared to tell the truth with 
 regard to this war. The most gross ignorance prevails con- 
 cerning the effects of emancipation, and those who should 
 be the teachers of the people are, on this subject, their 
 greatest mystifyers. Hear what the Alta California says : 
 
 " If the Grovernment should declare emancipation the purpose of 
 the war, and should succeed in breaking down the power of the slave- 
 holders, where would the loving slaves and enthusiastic free persons 
 of color be found ? With the torch at tljeir masters' dwelling — with 
 their hands upon their masters' throats — with their feet upon their 
 masters' necks. * * * Whisper never so faintly into the ear of 
 the black man that he may become master instead of slave, and hu- 
 manity will have cause to shudder at the atrocities which would be 
 perpetrated — for human nature is human nature, no matter what may 
 be the color of the cuticle." 
 
 Talk about insurrections caused by freedom ! why, such 
 evils are the fruit of slavery, not of freedom. Slavery is 
 the natural mother of servile massacres. Destroy the 
 mother, and there can be no offspring. The best possible 
 method of premniing insurrections is to do away with their 
 cause. Without slavery, there would be no occasion for 
 the negroes to rise, having nothing to rise against. Free 
 men, surely, cannot insurrect, for they are not oppressed ; 
 they create no disturbance, for they have no evil to resist. 
 
 6 
 
42 
 
 It is fashionable in California to cry out against abolition- 
 ism; and whatever is fashionable the newspapers of the 
 State endorse. Nearly all of them are the apologists for 
 slavery, because there is a strong prejudice here against 
 abolitionists ; and they would just as readily be supporters 
 of the devil, if there was a prevailing spirit against Chris- 
 tianity. The truth is, news journals do nothing (or next to 
 nothing) towards directing public opinion. Dependent 
 upon popularity for pecuniary support, their conductors 
 adopt principles and disseminate new ideas when their 
 patrons, the people, evince an unmistakable disposition to 
 accept them, — not before. 
 
 I cannot copy in extenso the various articles that have 
 appeared concerning this pamphlet; but select from them 
 the following assertions: 
 
 1. The Florida war was not caused by slavery. 
 
 2. The ''horrors of St. Domingo" show the effects of emancipation. 
 
 3. Slavery, in some of the Border Slave States, would have been 
 
 abolished but for abolitionism at the North. 
 
 4. An extension of the terms of office would endanger the liberties 
 
 of the people. 
 
 5. A restriction of the elective franchise would be unjust and inex- 
 
 pedient. 
 
 In answer to these assertions I reply : 
 
 1. 
 
 THE ' FLORIDA WAR. 
 
 Under a treaty with the Creek Indians, in 1821, after that 
 tribe had given up their homes in Florida, the Creeks were 
 compelled to pay for slaves who had left their masters in 
 Georgia for tifty years previous to the treaty, the amount, 
 not exceeding $250,000, to be taken from money due the 
 Indians for land sold to the United States. Executive JJoc. 
 No. 128, First Ses. XX. Congress, shows that the Indians 
 were charged with the value of many escaped slaves con- 
 cerning whom there was no proof that the}^ had ever been 
 in the Indian territory. The same document assures the 
 President that tlie price allowed, for a slave was two or 
 three times his real value, yet all tlie claims amounted to 
 only $101,000, leaving $149,000 in the possession of Gov- 
 
« 43 
 
 ernment belono^ins; to the Indians, which, instead of beinsr 
 paid to them, was, by act of Congress, divided among the 
 Georgia slavehoklers as interest mone3\ The Creeks, hav- 
 ing thus been compelled to pay more than six times the 
 value of the slaves, naturally wanted their propert}'' ; but 
 the negroes had, many years previous, gone with the Sem- 
 inoles, from whom the Creeks had separated and moved 
 west of the Mississippi. The Seminoles, remaining in 
 Florida, had intermarried with the negroes, and become 
 bound to them by all the ties of social and domestic life. 
 They dared not go west of the Mississippi, as required by 
 the Government, through fear that their wives and children 
 w^ould be taken by the Creeks as slaves. The Government 
 wanted Florida as a new lield for slave labor, and waged 
 war on the Indians to drive them out. The Seminoles 
 preferred to remain in Florida and defend themselves 
 against the army of the United States, rather than become 
 subject to the Creeks. With them it was war on one side 
 and slavery on the other. 
 
 2 
 
 MASSACRES IN ST. DOMINGO. 
 
 Concerning this portion of the history of St. Domingo, 
 the authentic accounts given by Malenfant and Lecroix, 
 wa-itten at the time, prove clearly that it was not the grant- 
 ing of rights to the colored people that produced bloodshed, 
 but the attempt to restore slavery, eight years after it had been 
 abolished, although, in the language of Gen. Lecroix, the 
 colony, during those eight years, had " marched, as if by 
 enchantment, tow^ard its ancient splendor. Cultivation 
 prospered, and every day furnished proofs of progress." 
 There had been much trouble several years before in con- 
 sequence of the outrages committed on the negroes by the 
 wdiites, but at this time the negroes were orderly and 
 industrious, and everything was going on peacefully ; but a 
 few of the planters, unwilling to pay wages to negroes, 
 petitioned for restoration to power over them ; and I^apo- 
 leon Bonaparte, thinking it good policy to conciliate this 
 class, even against the remonstrances of other plaiiters and 
 proprietors of estates in St. Domingo, tried to restore 
 
44 
 
 slavery by military force, and the result was that the 
 French were driven from the island with great bloodshed. 
 The war between France and England increased the dis- 
 turbances in St. Domingo, and although it is true that the 
 negro Emperor, Dessalines, did incite the people to the 
 massacre of the whites which occurred on the 28th of April, 
 1804, yet it was only after innumerable acts of treachery 
 and villainy on the part of the whites had destroyed all 
 confidence in them. The crowning one of these was the 
 imprisonment by iSTapoleon of Toussaint L'Ouverture, for- 
 mer President of the island, in open violation of the treaty 
 of peace by which the negroes acknowledged the autho- 
 rity of France, and the French granted a general amnesty. 
 Soon after this treaty was made, Toussaint was treacher- 
 ously seized and conveyed to France, from whence he was 
 sent to a prison on the icy summit of the Alps. After 
 three years imprisonment he died, and the outraged peo- 
 ple of his native island avenged his sufferings. The mas- 
 sacre incited by Dessalines was one of the disastrous re- 
 sults of an attempt to enslave people, not to free them, 
 and it is time to correct the common misapprehension 
 concerning the cause of that bloody tragedy. 
 
 3. 
 
 SLAVERY STRENGTHENED BY ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 It is not true that any of the Southern States were pre- 
 paring to abolish slavery at the time the abolition move- 
 ment commenced in the North in 1835. Some efforts had 
 been made to that end many years previous, but none were 
 being made at that time. Virginia made the last move of 
 the kind previous to 1835 ; her Legislature actually came 
 within two votes of passing a bill for the extinction of 
 slavery; but the increased value of slaves, caused by the 
 increased profit of cotton culture, put an end to the scheme 
 before the year 1835. In the year 1797, Henry Clay recom- 
 mended his State to pass a law that would do away with 
 slavery in Kentucky in the course of a hundred years ; and 
 this scheme, in connection with a system of colonization, 
 he continued to advocate during his half century of public 
 life, including fifteen years after the abolition party was 
 
45 
 
 organized in the Norftiem States. In 1849 he wrote a 
 letter in favor of emancipation, in hopes it might influence 
 the action of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention held 
 in that 3'ear. His scheme provided for the emancipation 
 of the children of all slaves horn in the State after the year 
 1860, such children to he hold as slaves until twenty-five 
 years old, then as apprentices until their earnings were 
 sufhcient to pay the expenses of their colonization in 
 Africa. This scheme of gradual emancipation, it was 
 supposed, would do away with slavery in Kentucky in 
 about the year 1940, — very gradual indeed, — but the Ken- 
 tuckians rejected even that shadow of abolition, not in con- 
 sequence of abolition excitement at the North, but because 
 they never had any intention of giving up the system. The 
 Southerners were just as ardent and as unanimous in their 
 eiForts to extend slavery over Missouri iu 1820, fifteen years 
 before abolition excitement, as they were to extend it over 
 Kansas in 1854, twenty years after the excitement com- 
 menced. In 1824 the South made a desperate efibrt to 
 establish slavery in Illinois; and the acquisition of Texas, 
 though not fully consummated, was all planned before the 
 year 1835. 
 
 4. 
 
 AN OFFICIAL ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 " He would establish an aristocracy of office-holders to lord it over 
 the people." 
 
 No, not quite so bad as that. I would, however, prevent 
 the frequent recurrence of struggles for official position ; 
 which have the efi'ect of turning honest men into rogues, 
 industrious men into idlers, and men of all professions into 
 ranting politicians; whereas they should be attending to 
 their own business, and endeavoring to provide for the 
 maintenance and education of their families. A nation's 
 prosperity is dependent upon the people's industry. Re- 
 move any of the causes that induce men to neglect the 
 cultivation of their fields and the manufacture of market- 
 able ofoods, and vou not onlv add to individual and natio- 
 nal wealth, but you promote the morals and general welfare 
 of society. One of these causes, (and the greatest one iu 
 
46 
 
 this country,) could be removed by abolishing the system 
 of short terms in office. The longer a man is kept in office, 
 the better for the people, provided he can be turned out 
 whenever he proves dishonest or incompetent. 
 
 5. 
 
 RESTRICTION OF THE ELECTIVE FRAXCFISE. 
 " Is this the kind of man to talk of ' equal rights ' ? " 
 Yes, I believe in equal rights, using the term in an ab- 
 stract sense, but when one man fits himself to vote under- 
 standingl}^, and another does not, the latter has not theo- 
 retically, and should not have practically, an equal right 
 with the former to vote ; because he lacks the intelligence 
 which makes the freedom of choice expressed in the elec- 
 tive franchise a^^rac^ica? right: i. e., anything more than a 
 latent right. He has a right to demand that the laws en- 
 acted by those who do vote, for the protection of person 
 and property, the punishment of crime and the redress of 
 grievances, shall be equal in their application. Here the 
 poor and the rich, the ignorant and the learned, should all 
 be on an equality ; but unrestricted suffrage exercised by an 
 uncultivated people is productive of greater evils than can 
 be caused by a privileged class bound to be just by consti- 
 tutional restraints. Except for crime, it would not be just 
 to disfranchise any who are now voters ; but hereafter no 
 man should become a voter who cannot read and write the 
 English language. A self-governing people must necessa- 
 rily be an intelligent and a virtuous people. Universal 
 suffrage is adapted onlj'to a people of a high state of culti- 
 vation. Every citizen of a government like ours should be 
 educated. No people on earth have yet reached that state 
 of general cultivation which tits them, without exception, 
 to take part in the government. The American people 
 approach nearer to it than any other, but it is not difficult 
 to prove that even we fall far short of that standard. Look 
 at the incompetent men chosen to office ; witness the dis- 
 graceful appeals that are made to the prejudices and super- 
 stitions of the ignorant; see the rewards that are bestowed 
 upon those who are known to be able to influence the votes 
 of any class, society, or nationality; think of the character 
 
 ^ 
 
47 
 
 of the men who, in most of onr large cities, control the 
 party caucuses, procure their own nominations, and, by 
 means of party machinery, secure their election to' places 
 which they disgrace by their incompetency or corruption. 
 Could these things bo done if there were no ignorant voters 
 to be wheedled by demagogues, and no corru[)t voters to 
 be bought and sold for the benefit of unscrupulous politi- 
 cians, to the great detriment of the people? I think not. 
 The thirst for ofhce in this country is appaling. The 
 disgraceful scrambles to obtain official position brino- the 
 blush of shame to the cheek of every modest man who has 
 occasion to witness them. Not only is modesty put to the 
 blush, but honesty even ; lor the means often taken to 
 obtain office are such as no honorable man would be 
 guilty of using. With regard to one, at least, of the 
 Federal establishments in this city, (superintended by a 
 man who held office under Buchanan) Republicans and 
 Democrats have meanly contended with each other to 
 obtain or retain official position, and the most unscrupu- 
 lous man has often est won.''' Such charges are seldom sus- 
 ceptible of legal proof; but their truth is evident to every 
 one who has become familiar with the course jDursued by 
 some of the ofiice-seekers and office-holders on this coast 
 and elsewhere under the Federal Government. A scurvier 
 
 ® Of the large number of anti-ReiJuLlioan employees still retained in this estab- 
 lishment several of them are men of notoriously bad character, and but very few of 
 them " experts," whose services cannot be dispensed with. The truth is, the labors 
 of earnest Republicans during the past few years have resulted in little more than 
 the election of a President who blindly adheres to the skeleton of a dead party 
 platform, while he appoints the enemies of that platform to office instead of those 
 who were its faithful supporters when it had sufficient vitality to command an honest 
 respect. In this State, not content with conferring the important office of Svperin- 
 tendent of the 3Iint upon an unvar^^ing opponent of the principles of the partv — an 
 officeholder and strong supporter of that miserable old •'dirt-eater,"' Buchanan — he 
 gives the Surveyor Generalship of the State to another Democrat, ( said to be a very 
 good man, by the way,) and the A])pra{ser Generidshij) to another, — an importation 
 fri/m Boston, an old i)olitical hack who has been fed with federal )i:ip by every iJeni- 
 ocratic Administration fir the last twenty years. The man, too, who, from iSyfi till 
 the summer of 1860, did most to keep down the Republican party in Santa Cruz, floated 
 into the current when success seemed c« tain, and was made Collector of Monterey. 
 He was Democratic candidate for Sheriff in 185'J, andthe Rejjublican party being too 
 weak to make a separate nomination, the Santa Cruz News advocated his election, 
 ( as a matter of policy, to prevent the success of a worse man, ) yet, when the pub- 
 lisher had expended all his means, and the office was attached by creditors, he 
 
 refused to assist the one who had assisted him, because the paper was "a d d 
 
 Black Republican concern." ( He did pay his year's subscription, .'?3.J The eleva- 
 tion of such men to office by a Republican Administration is in accordance with the 
 well-established rules of political justice ; and it was very verdant in old Republi- 
 cans to expect any other result. The retention of the Democratic incumbents would 
 have been more decent ; for they, at least, did not turn their coats to save their hides, 
 and like a pack of cowardly jackals steal what they dared not earn. This is net 
 
48 
 
 set of political scoundrels than some of the politicians 
 of California have not an existence on any portion of the 
 globe. This class of men cannot be deprived of the privi- 
 lege of voting. I wish they could. They are, however, 
 quite beyond reach. Villainy, when united with ability, 
 becomes respectable in America. That is a characteristic 
 of American society. There is, however, a lower class of 
 political reprobates, some of whom may be brought "with- 
 in the dominion of a healthful restraint." They are the 
 political ruffians and petty criminals of society. The right 
 of such men to vote is not entitled to as much respect even 
 as the cUxim that is set up in behalf of the uneducated. 
 The influence exercised over the ballot-box by the ignorant 
 man is weaker and less dangerous than that of the con- 
 demned criminal or political bully. Therefore, I would 
 have a moral qualification also. Nine men in ten, without 
 reflection, pronounce this wholly impracticable. But any- 
 thing may be called impracticable until it has been tried. 
 Already our laws provide for the disfranchisement of men 
 who have been convicted of a capital oifence ; but many 
 men, under peculiar circumstances, have committed a sin- 
 gle great crime, who are much better men and citizens than 
 those contemptible wretches who habitually commit petty 
 offences, and escape capital punishment in consequence of 
 the very littleness of their meanness. I assert that for a 
 series of pettj- crimes (say five in number) a man should 
 be disfranchised, and the law might direct that the records 
 of the various courts should be certified to on the require- 
 ment of any citizen, and such certificate presented to a 
 judge of elections in the district where the convict resides, 
 should be entered in a register containing the names of 
 voters in that district, and of all not entitled to vote ; then 
 if any disfranchised villain presumed to offer a ballot, after 
 having been informed of his disfranchisement, the law 
 should provide for his arrest and imprisonment, for inter 
 fering with the operations of a government the laws of 
 which he habitually disregards. 
 
 prompted by personal feeling. The writer did not at^k the President for an office. 
 The scramble at AYashington was too disgusting for a man of self-respect to join. He 
 does not deny, however, that he did at one lime imagine there would be among the 
 federal appointees in this State at least one man capable of perceiving the justice of 
 offering to assist a Republican editor to pay debts unavoidably incurred in the partj 
 service ; but no such disinterested gentleman has yet made himself known, and it is 
 to be presumed that it will be a long time before auy such will be heard from. He 
 does not, however, renounce politics because he has learned to despise a low class of 
 politicians. So long as he lives he will never have done with political contests, while 
 there is a wrong to repress, or a right to uphold ; but as for o&ce-seekiiiff, either for 
 his own benefit or that of his creditors, he believes himself much better fitted for a 
 more holiest business. 
 
JUL 10 190 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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