What shall be done with the People of Color in the Fnited States! A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IX THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OP PENN YAN, NEW YORK, November 2d, 1862. BY REV. FREDERICK, STARR, JR., I'ASTOK OF TUB CHUUCH ALBANY: WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 18G2. ' C_ What shall be done with the People of Color in the United States? A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OP PENN YAN, NEW YORK, November 2d, 1862. BY REV. FREDERICK STARR, JR., PASTOR OF THB CHURCH. ALBANY: WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1862. Bancroft Ubnury PENN YAN, November 3d, 1862. Rev. F. STARR, Jr. : Dear Sir The undersigned having listened with pleasure to the able dis- course delivered by you, from your pulpit on the 2d inst., and believing that the circulation of it among the people at this time would do much good, would respectfully ask of you a copy of the same for publication. We are very respectfully yours, HENRY WELLES, GUY SHAW, C. G. JUDD, WM. C. JOY, M. BROWN, N. R. LONG, A. V. HARPENDING, WILLIAM STARK, F. HOLMES, J. 0. WAKEMAN, CHAS. N. BURRILL, S. H. WELLES*, E. M. WHITTAKER, F. M. HAMMOND, LEANDER REDDY, JOHN HATMAKER, D. MORRIS, ALVA TAYLOR, D. W. ADAMS, A. ARNOLD. PENN YAN, November 4th, 1862. To HENRY WELLES, C. G. JTJDD, M. BROWN, A. V. HARPENDING, and others : Gentlemen Your kind letter, requesting for publication a copy of my dis- course last Sabbath morning, has been received. Sickness in my congregation and unavoidable interruptions compelled me to write the greater portion of the entire sermon in a few hours, not permitting me even a second reading. You will, therefore, in receiving it in answer to your request, please extend to some awkward constructions and infelicitous expressions found in it, a leniency of criticism, which under other circumstances would not have been required. If in any manner the publication of the discourse can do good through the community, my object in writing and delivering the sermon will be more fully obtained ; I cheerfully, therefore, place the discourse itself at your service. I am most truly and respectfully yours, FREDERICK STARR, Jr. Bancroft Ubrtnt SERMON. Proverbs xiv. 28 " IN THE MULTITUDE OF PEOPLE is THE KINGS HONOR, BUT IN THB WANT OF PEOPLE IS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRINCE." Question, (Discussion continued from last Sabbath) WHAT is TO BE DONE WITH THK BLACK RACE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?* WE ARE passing as individuals, and as a nation, through the greatest and darkest crisis the earth has ever beheld ; one where the most gigantic crime that can be committed against man, struggles for conquest, against the highest blessings he can enjoy ; wherein the noblest nation upon the globe, with agonizing exertions, is trying to save its bared throat from the bloody knife in the hands of her own children children nursed from her own bosom, and reared by her with excess of all tenderness while others of her children seek to pinion her hands and stifle her cries, that the diabolic deed may be accomplished. Rousing suddenly from the long cherished belief that the government was stable as the mountains, that the principles of democracy in the consti- tution were loved and cherished loyally by all, we see millions tear that instrument, refuse to be bound by it, and find them involving all the loyal in war and carnage for doing things as directed in that constitution, and attempting to preserve it inviolate. And amid the roaring of the cannons, the clashing of arms, and the groans of the dying, we find others, with bland faces and sleek tongues, justifying them in what they have done, and still others threatening by means * See Appendix. of the army of the constitution to depose and execute the officers and executive of that constitution, and forever to oblit- erate the instrument from existence. Earth has never beheld so much of treason, where all should be loyalty ; so much of ambition, where all should be humility ; of hate, where all should have been love ; and so much of suffering and death, where only joy and peace should have smiled. In this world results flow from causes, and occasions stimulate causes and accelerate results. A land so filled with woes as this, to-day, must have about it some cause of terrific power, some occa- sion of unwonted significance. What that cause is, every person of intelligence distinctly understands. It is the presence of the black population in these United States. What the peculiar occasion, the observ- ing Christian supposes this : That the time has come when God has taken into his own hands the abolition of the slavery of a Christian people, robbed of every human and social right of which man could deprive them. The cause as stated, none who hear me will deny. Some may deny the occasion as stated. But in order to a full understanding of a question, so important to this nation and to the Afri co- Americans What shall be their future loca- tion and situation ? an investigation into the questions How came they here ? Why have they occupied that situa- tion ? How do they now obtain their freedom ? and What influences will now surround them ? should all be consi- dered. 1. The people of the infant colonies did not of themselves introduce slavery or desire its establishment. The great majority of them were poor, dependent upon their own direct labor for subsistence, they desired to be their own masters, and to be paid for their labor the highest market value. To those thus dependent, the injustice and inhumanity of slavery came home with intense power. Their lands were not large, their funds were limited, and their circumstances, abilities, and natural repugnance were not in favor of its introduction. 2. But many of the early colonists had not only such influ- ences operating upon them, but their education, religious faith and conscience made them refrain from slavery. The Puritans, who had just gone out from civil and ecclesiastical oppression, with the motto " A church without a bishop ; a state without a king," could not tolerate slavery. The protestant Hollanders, who settled New York, found in their well-conned bibles no scripture which made it their duty, or gave them the privilege, to be slaveholders. And William Penn and his followers, who came with an open hand, an open heart, and an open Bible men who, because Christians, could not cheat the poor Indian, would not rob the poor African ; and, even yet, after 250 years, their children have not learned how. But in all communities exist those of con- tracted views, dull moral perceptions, feeble consciences, strong selfishness, and keen greed for gain open subjects for the first temptation and determined in their own minds beforehand to fall. An opportunity soon presented. 3. Slaves were imported into this country by traders and companies, and by national British patronage. In 1620, the same year our pilgrim fathers stepped on Plymouth rock, a Dutch ship landed and sold at Jamestown, Virginia, twenty slaves : these were the first slaves in the United States. The trade once commenced, competition between buyers and im- porters sprang up, and the evil began to spread, until it was soon found scattered along the whole coast. But the work of supplying slaves to this country was not left wholly to individual enterprise. Four companies, to trade in slaves, were chartered by the English government, and two of the kings of England! were members of two of those companies. They brought many slaves, but the influences we have men- 8 tioned were constantly operating to keep the community from becoming demoralized, so much so, that more than fifty years had passed by and there were comparatively few. The opposition was such that several of the colonies petitioned the English government to prevent their further importation. The government refused to grant their prayer, being influ- enced by the companies by whom it was subsidized. Slaves and slavery were thus forced upon an unwilling people, and they were purchased by those having the most means and the least moral principle ; and thus, the avarice of the trader and the cupidity of the buyer, with a corrupted distant govern- ment, set up a small minority-, in the democratic colonies of America, as a privileged class, against the pecuniary interest, the natural sentiment, and the religious convictions of the great majority of the citizens. 4. Slavery thus established advanced with great rapidity. In 1776, when the United States declared their independence, there were in the colonies 600.000 slaves. In the one hun- dred and fifty-six years intervening between the landing of the first twenty slaves at Jamestown and the Declaration of our Independence, there had been imported, mostly directly from Africa, about 330,000 ; and as the heaviest part of that importation had taken place within thirty or forty pre- ceding years, probably 250,000 of the 600,000 were sto- len and forcibly brought from Africa. In reference to moral questions, the strangest inversions of logic are made by men to act as conscience plasters, and to ward off both human and divine truth. We are continually told by slaveholders and their admirers that they are not responsible for the slave trade and slavery ; that they bought men who were already slaves, and who had lost their rights before. Now, surely, no slaver ever fitted out a ship, exposed himself to African fevers, and the dangers of slave ship insurrections, and capture as a pirate, without the knowledge that there were men who stood ready to buy the slaves, at prices remunerating his cost and labor, at the rate of from two hundred to six hundred per cent. The piratical slaver, who by law dies at the yard-arm, is not the principal in the transaction : he is but an agent paid for his services. Neither can he lay off his crime upon the heathen African chief, and say that he bought a man already enslaved ; for the chieftain would not drive his cap- tives to the barracoons, unless he expected there to find the trader, and receive his pay. The southern slaveholder is the principal, and upon his soul rests the blazing dwellings, the murdered men, the bereaved families of Africa ; on his head rests the horrors of the slave barracoons, the woe and death of the passage, the loss of liberty for the poor slave and his long line of posterity. Were there no slave holder, there would be no barracoon, no slave ship, no slave pirate, no human auction block, no unholy usurpations of human rights, and no slave. Let not the slaveholder shelter himself behind the brutalized slave factor, the pirate, and the heathen : let him stand forth : he is the principal : his desire demanded, and his money paid, and the free African lay panting beneath his foot a slave : and the three were but his agents ; and in the purchase of the slave he assumes all the cruelty, crime and outrage perpetrated upon that particular slave, and a general connivance with that of all the traffic. And men wrest the Scriptures, and if they are so good for slavery, they may have a little virtue for freedom. A man, within the past week, in this village, declared to me that slavery was right, because Noah prophesied the servitude of the children of the son of Ham, and therefore that he, if able, would buy and be justified in holding slaves. It is a little troublesome to see just how he would hitch the pro- phecy upon his own case. He must first prove his Shemitic genealogy, then the Canaanitish extraction of his slave, then must by the prophecy acknowledge him as his brother, and then by some little point should indicate the wish of God 10 that he particularly, 4,200 after the prophecy, when the nationalities and descents of the nations have become a little mixed, should hold the particular man, woman or child as his slave a problem somewhat difficult of solution. But there is a scripture some 800 years fresher than the other, a little more explicit, a little more active in its essence, a positive command, not a prophecy, that reads thus : " And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." If Noah is such good authority for the propriety and right of slavery and the slave trade, then Moses is just as good, and a little better, for the capital execution of all slave traders, buyers and holders for each is "particeps totius criminis" a partaker of the whole crime. Such then was the state of the colonies containing about 3,000,000 inhabitants. A small minority held in their hands as chattels one-twelfth of the population, actually stolen from Africa ; and another one-tenth of the people, descend- ents from those previously so stolen. With what an incubus did that infant nation start into being ! with what small faith could they pray to God for success, in their war for freedom, when holding one-fifth of the entire population under an hundredfold worse despotism and oppression than that against which they rose ? But God gave them his bles- sing, not became he approved the slavery, but in spite of it. Slavery has made rapid strides since then. The first census of the United States is that of 1790, and one is taken every ten years dating from that time, and the increase is shown in the following table : From 1790 to 1800 increase 195,160, annual increase 19,516 ' 1800 to 1810 298,307 " 29,830 " 1810 to 1820 " 336,734 " " 33,673 1820 to 1830 460,945 " 46,094 " 1830 to 1840 " 478,313 " " 47,831 " 1840 to 1850 " 716,733 " " 71,673 " 1850 to 1860 " 747,912 " " 74,791 11 Such has been the progress of slavery, partly by the direct importation, mostly by natural increase. So that our nation so pompous, so boastful of our freedom, our civilization and our religion, has stood from 1850 to 1860 manufacturing slaves at this rate, in ten years 747,912, in each year 74,791, in each day 205 ; and every seven minutes, day and night through all that period one new slave beyond all that die, has been added to that mass of down trodden and debased creatures. The good have stood aghast! the wise have pon- dered, and the benevolent have mourned, for they could see no way by which to check this growing crime, and this growing shame. 5. The founders of our nation, the j ranters of our constitution, did not contemplate the retention of slavery by this country. Massachusetts, then embracing the State of Maine, was the only State without slaves, having abolished slavery with the adoption of her new constitution. Vermont had only 17. The other States all held' them in numbers from 160 upwards. The men who made the constitution were the men who led the world in the abolition of the slave trade. In 1776 the commencement of our liberties, the old colonial congress forbade the further importation of slaves. N 1788 such efforts were made by those interested in the importation of slaves, that congress was prohibited from interdicting the traffic until 1S08. The commercial States of the north were in some instances more zealous to continue the trade than some of the slave States themselves. The State of South Carolina and the city of Charleston, which in the revolution traitor- ously surrendered to England and swore fealty to her; which now again asks a Governor General and a despotic protec- torate from Europe; a State twice in rebellion against its own government, showed its ignoble and sordid nature at that time. Seizing upon the remaining period before the termina- tion of the slave trade in 1808, " Charleston alone in the four 12 years of 1804-5-6 and 7 imported 39,075. While the nobler State of Georgia, by her own enactment, terminated the slave trade in 1798, ten years before the general government. Thus while our nation led all the modern nations in the closing of the slave trade, to Georgia belongs the honor of having anticipated by ten years the action of our nation. Let men who would now reopen the slave trade, and make slavery the corner-stone of a new government, remember that the fathers of our country hated slavery and sought its death. They abolished the slave trade ; the?/ would not admit the disgraceful word slave into the constitution. The State of Virginia would not cede to the United States the northwest territory, now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, without the express stipulation, in the words and handwriting of the immortal Jefferson, that in " all that territory east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio, slavery and involuntary servitude, except for the commission of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be and hereby is forever prohibited." The United States accepted that territory upon that prohibition, and passing it in the very words of Jefferson, made those five noble States forever free. That was the great ordinance of 1787 ! and is the true exponent of the intentions of the founders of this republic, respecting the institution of slavery, and the true interpreter of the meaning and spirit of the constitution. They killed the slave trade to stop slavery coming from abroad. They refused in the constitution to acknowledge that so loathsome a thing existed in a free nation ; and they took every foot of land then belonging to the general government and forever prohibited slavery in it. The greatest statesmen of the constitution spoke and wrote upon the institution of slavery, condemning it as inconsistent with the principles of the declaration and the constitution. They were called in those days by a term honorable in the extreme then, and beginning in these new days to return to 13 its pristine nobility they were called " Abolitionists." " Pinckney, and Jefferson, as well as Jay, and Adams, were abolitionists in name as well as in fact." (See page 138, July, 1S02, Pres. Quar. Review.) Washington, Madison, Franklin, Patrick Henry, and Hamilton, with those above mentioned, looked upon slavery as a great evil as endangering the safety and stability of the government. That was the sentiment of all the colonies. It was held by the best men, both slave- holders and nonslaveholders, that the institution would pass away as the interests of the various colonies should become better consolidated under the constitution. 6. But now commenced slowly a change of sentiment in the southern States. The North, true to the wishes and ex- pectations of our fathers, abolished slavery. Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, by gradual emancipation, and Massachusetts, by immediate abolition, disposed of the institution as early as 1780 ; New York, in 1799 ; and New Jersey in 1804. The South however, by the invention of the cotton-gin, suddenly found the value of her main pro- duct for exportation almost doubled in value. This caused a relative advance in the value of the labor of the slave, in- creasing his value, both for toil or disposal in the market. The consciousness that they were departing from the intention of the founders of the government, in retaining their slaves, made them sensitive. The increase of the political power cast into their hands by the three-fifths rule, resulting from the natural increase of their slaves the greatly enhanced value of their persons and their labor, rose to a great and a victorious temptation they could not put away slavery without trouble, expense, and great loss, and they deter- mined to keep it ; and, as a natural consequence, to extend it, to still more enhance its value by getting lands cheap. In 1804 the United States became possessor of the Lou- isiana Territory, by purchase from France; a vast tract, 14 containing what are now the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota in part, and Kansas, and the terri- tories known as Indian, Nebraska, Dakotah, Washington, and Columbia. Instead of confining slavery, as their fathers had in 1787, to its former limits, and consecrating this new soil (the first ever owned by us west of the Mississippi) to free- dom, they cut out of it the State of Louisiana, and in 1804 when the last northern colony, New Jersey abolished slavery the South made her first step in extension of slavery upon new soil. Seven years later, in 1810. the United States forced from Spain that part of old " Florida " on the Gulf of Mexico, between the Pearl and the Perdido rivers : this also was offered up to slavery. Eleven years later and Missouri applied for admission into the Union. The nation, alarmed at the departure of the South from the intention at the adop- tion of the constitution, opposed her admission with a slave constitution. The Union was at the point of dissolution. Henry Clay brought forward the Missouri compromise, which was in effect this: let us have Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian territory (as now on our maps) and you may have the rest. The result of the compromise was simply this : the South took the territory they asked for, gave a, promise to ask for no more, cajoled the nation with their promise for thirty-four years, then broke their promise, and by arson, rape, pillage, assassination, organized murder, and a military suppression of the rights of suffrage, attempted to steal Kansas and Nebraska in 1854, '5, and '6. No man can compromise either with Satan or his minions and expect to come uncheated out of the bargain. In 1820 the South, by the gloved hand of the Missouri compromise, obtained Missouri, Arkansas and Indian territory. The year following, the United States bought the present State of Florida. This was also taken by the South.t In J 845 Texas, with its immense territory ALL FREE under poor Mexico was annexed, and ALL given to slavery. But t See Appendix. 15 the Mexican war followed this addition for the comfort of sla- very, costing the nation more than 200. 000,000, and resulting in the further acquisition by the United States of New Mexico, ii, and the Californias. The South made a desperate attempt to debauch California into slavery ; failing in that, tried to divide it into two States; and failing there, tried to produce discontent, and a secession of the western slope from the United States. When the Mexican war commenced and Texas was annexed, the nation became roused to greater vig- ilance. New Mexico, Utah, and California had a new law respecting admission applied to them ; a law made to favor the South. They tried the plan and failed in California. Kansas and Nebraska were to be settled next, but the Missouri com- promise, in those same glorious words of Jefferson, in the North-West Ordinance of 1787, stood in the way, that forever prohibited slavery. " We gave the pledge," said the South with unblushing effrontery, "but we will not keep it;' 1 and they broke ihc Missouri compromise. Thousands of clergy, and tens of thousands of Christians sent in their sad and indignant pro- test against this great breach of national faith, only to receive in reply Insult and indignity, and billingsgate fit only for hell. The Kansas-Nebraska bill passed, and was set up upon the ruins of a nation's faith ; it was passed and had its birth in a most stupendous crime. Now, as in Utah and California, the people were to move in, and say by the ballot whether it should be free or slave. But the oath-breaking South in November, 1854, the sixth month after the passage of that bill, sent about three thousand armed men non-resident of the State, who took possession of the polls, and elected General Whitfield, a southern man, as delegate to Congress. I was at that election and knew many of the men who voted ; also Whitfield himself, who was present at Leavenworth and made a speech on the occasion. In April, 1S55, ten thousand armed men invaded Kansas, and elected an entire territorial legislature. I was present at the election 16 the polls being on a lot owned by an elder, and in a store owned by a deacon of my own church. I knew the four J uclges of the election one compelled to resign his seat or be murdered on the spot. I was invited to vote. I took the poll book, and turned the pages, where in one day more than nine hundred illegal voters had had their names recorded. And that was not enough ! The South had elected a dele- gate to Congress and a legislature, by invasion and the viola- tion of the ballot box. That delegate conspired with the south- ern Congressmen. That legislature passed laws against free speech and reading books or papers touching in any manner on slavery, which would prevent even the reading of the Bible with the death penalty frequently interspersed in its enactments. So afraid were they still to stand by the issue of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, that they collected through the South arms, men, and money, and commenced a civil war to exterminate the free settlers. The history you well know. The nation was aroused to its danger, and not only the party which opposed the encroachments of the South, but a large wing of the party which had always acted with them, under the lead of Mr. Douglas, now repentant for the evil he had done, came out boldly and said : " You shall encroach no further." The domineering, faithless and tyrannical south would listen not to Mr. Douglas, much less to the other party ; and by a base conspiracy for years perfecting, by the connivance of an imbecile and traitorous executive, SHE OPENED WAR upon the constitution, the liberties and the government of this country. She seized upon not only her original territory, but taking all she could grasp of that which we had acquired by pur- chase, for which the north had paid the most money, all obtained by war, for which the north had done the most fighting, all obtained by her most infamous falsehood. She concluded that she had made all she could out of the north, and, as freedom is always obnoxious to tyranny, after eighty 17 years of attempted living together, the south notified the world that she had determined to set up an establishment of her ///>, and scorning to take mere unimproved lands she laid hold of all the permanent fixtures, forts, arsenals, dock- yards and vessels, and all the private property belonging to the government, and to get their possession began by ejecting from Sumter the agents of the government, and the war commenced in earnest. To one truly acquainted with the history of his country the remarks that " this war was a need- less one, and could have been averted by the north," and those others which lament " the encroachments of the north upon the south," are the sure indices of treason, or are but as the bub- lings of an infant of days, or the incoherences of the insane. No, my hearers, be not deceived ; it is the inexorable logic of events the irrefragihle sequence of sin. God's divine pur- poses will be fulfilled, and His justice will not always slumber ; and He it is who hath put this nation in the furnace, and is heaping coals upon it ; who hath it now in His mortar, and is sorely bruising it with His pestle. I have truthfully showed you the history of slavery in its national growth, extension and faithlessness. God brought slavery to this land why, we know not. But as the nation resisted and could not stay its introduction, as God has by natural means increased it, and no opposition could prevent it, so I believe that God now designs its downfall and removal : and as easily the infant's hand could cause Niagara's flood to ascend its fall ; as any party of men to stay the work of God. You all know the history of the war ; the providence of God in the three nominating conventions ; the unexpected nomina- tion of Abraham Lincoln; the request of the President for the prayer of the nation for guidance and light ; his patience, his honesty, his cautious judgment, his long deliberation. Now, after so protracted a war, so great expenditure, such loss of health and limbs and life, such wide-spread woe around him, with the wisest counsellors on both sides of the question, 18 despite his own unwillingness, with millions of prayers daily ascending for him, he has issued the proclamation declaring freedom to the slaves in all the States in rebellion on January 1st next. How foolish to hear drunken men, upstart boys, and conceited politicians of shallow brains denounce and threaten to oppose the proclamation ; it is none of their business. A merciful Heaven has entrusted to none of them either the responsibility of its announcement, or the power of its execu- tion. The God who compels the wicked to work His will, who while He scourges one nation for their sins lifts another from the lowest thraldom and debasement to liberty and joy ; who among the kings of the earth setteth up one and putteth down another, and holds the hearts of men in his hands, He, He hath given to us this proclamation. How much may directly result from the proclamation itself no one can tell. Of itself it opens questions of a legal nature which can never be closed, and where the doubt will in every case inure to the benefit of freedom ; it brings new social influences into action through the slave States ; it awakens doubt in the slave's mind whether, as he has been told so often on Sunday, it is God's decree that he and his children shall forever remain in slavery ; it lifts all the free whites a long step in their position as men ; it sets all good men at least in a profound study and devisement in reference to the future; it has already caused more serious thought about actual abolition and its possibilities, duties, methods and consequences, than an hundred years such as the one pre- ceding the war. The sanguine philanthropist had hoped it might end by economic causes in an hundred years ; to-day no man can tell but three months may see the whole fabric a mass of ruins. We know not what difficulties may arise, what perplexities and complications may occur, but we know this: no tangle is so intricate but God can unloose it, no knot so hard but He can cut it. The God who in one year and an half has brought a nation from peace and complicity 19 with slavery into this war, into a general loathing of the abominable thing, into a national approval of the proposition of compensated emancipation ; and has made the army and the navy, and almost the entire church a unit in the approval of this proclamation, can lead the people to receive with gladness every new development he may show them, and strengthen their faith when they cannot walk by sight. Let us well remember that when God had determined to bring his ancient people out from their Egyptian bondage, the opposition of the tyrannical and stubborn monarch did not prevent the accomplishment of God's design, but only served to bring ruin upon his own nation. It was an immense price that God exacted when he would make them free ; it was a terrible example that God gave of the value He sets upon oppressed humanity. Not only in one night was their a dead man, in every family of the Egyptians, and he the chief son, but a few days later, when at the Red sea Israel saw 250,000 of her foes miserably perish. For every one of 600,000 adult males that stood upon the eastern shore of the Red sea and praised God, there had died in that night of terror, or there had sunk like stone in the engulphing waters, one adult male Egyptian. God exchanged the life of one man, and he of the very best, for the freedom of one and he despised and degraded. In our own civil war, we have, on the two sides in the conflict, lost more than 250,000 lives. More than 250,000 constitutions have been broken and health permanently im- paired, and an amount of treasure paid almost incalculable. How much longer will we compel the bondmen to wear his chains ? how much longer oppose the God of freedom ? If, as we are arguing, God's time has come, he can, if we are stubborn and unyielding, by as dear a price a life of a white American citizen paid for the freedom of each dark colored slave, bring them freedom and deliverance ! Shall we contend with Him, or bow submissive to his evi- dent providence ? 20 But the proclamation is not mere paper. The finest navy in the world, the noblest and best appointed army on earth, are prepared and waiting only the word to give it effect. It may be years before all is quiet and all the new relations that shall arise will be consolidated ; but I believe, from the effects of this army and navy and proclamation, slavery can never escape can never recover. It is a monster of hideous and gigantic proportions, and may be long in dying, but die it must. Home lost her very nationality and tongue, and with her sank her 60,000,000 of slaves. 7. Slavery in the United States is different from that of any other known nation, and thus becomes more degrading and dangerous than any other. (a.) The slavery of the ancients did not regard color; they were of all nationalities ; were prisoners of war, or captives taken expressly for slaves. It was therefore easier for slaves to rise in the scale of character and position, and to be adopt- ed by their masters as companions and friends. (b.) The ancients prided themselves upon the abilities and learning of their slaves. Many were poets, orators, painters, sculptors, professors, musicians, literary men ; the masters sometimes being both pupils and patrons to their own slaves. But in this land of quick intellect, of nervous energy, it is dangerous to permit the slaves to know too much : there are laws which forbid any one teaching him to read or write. I very innocently, for seven months, taught a school of eight slaves at my house, evenings, with the consent of their mas- ters, according to the law of 1820. I learned that the law of 1820 was changed for another in 1847, which forbid any one to teach them, and my school stopped ; but I am owing to the State of Missouri, under that law of 1847, $740,000 of fine, and 740 years in the county jail of Platte county, (recently burned by the rebels,) for simply trying to teach eight slaves to read the Bible and learn of Christ, the Re- deemer ! 21 (c.) It is a Protestant Christian country, and the one Chris- tian holds his fellow Christian, and buys and sells " the temple of the living God " as chattels ; and if I mistake not, this is the only Protestant nation, the only one that has an open Bible, which retains slavery. (d.) It is made the standard of gentility and social privilege, degrading the poor white man to a level akin to that of slaves, and giving him no access to the society of slaveholders until he will consent to their ways, and become an abettor and sharer of their crimes. How degrading ! Neither wealth, intelli- gence, nor character can give a man standing, but he must own at least one negro to be respectable! how contemptible! (e.) Slavery gives to the slaveholder two political and oppressive powers. By the three-fifths rule the owner exerts the same power as one who, in a free State, could coerce the ballots of his employees : he therefore, as compared with his fellow-citizens, has unequal and greater power than they; and true democracy demands equal power at the ballot-box for each citizen. (/.) But sadder still, it violates all the democratic principle involved in the ballot itself. Just as the drunkard goes to the polls, and in pursuit of his own vile appetite, casts a ballot that misrepresents his wife and children and dooms them to want and suffering, so the slaveholder forever misrepresents the inte- rests of the slave, and seeks so to use his legal authority as to quench the last spark of liberty in his soul. Such are some of slavery's peculiar characteristics in this intelligent, free, democratic, Protestant and Christian land. 8. Slavery presents to the human heart the strongest earthly temptations, and gratifies more of the sinful emotions than any other wickedness. (a.) The love of idleness and ease, the desire to be waited upon and served. It produces enervation and helplessness 22 in the man, and the habit grows upon him ; but nowhere is the otiosity of man's nature so much developed and enjoyed as with him who owns chattel slaves. (b.) Covetousness here is complete, demanding not only some- thing which the slave has, but the whole man body, mind, faculties and all he may transiently or permanently possess, achieve or become; and then demands his posterity in like manner. (c.) Avarice here finds play so full that the only point to be settled by the master is this : how much can I withhold from him of aid? how much can I exact from him of service without impairing his ability to serve? (d.) Dishonesty, which takes without consent or compensa- tion that which is another's. Not like the thief, or highway- man, occasionally abstracting or compelling clisgorgement of a portion of the man's wealth, slavery robs continually and takes all. The negro, in the master's hand, becomes but a sheep, on whom the shears are applied with unceasing and relentless vigor. (e.) The pride of name, as possessed of wealth and servants. One of the strongest passions of the heart finds a deep and peculiar gratification in the ownership of immortal souls. ( f.) The love of domination and tyranny, found in every heart, is completely met by slavery. To send, or call, to bind, to scourge, to wreak all wrath and displeasure on a slave, gluts petty tyranny to the full. (g.) There comes another strand in this cable of sin. The love of lust, and the reveling of an unrestrained licentiousness, an influence which has helped sustain slavery, second scarce to avarice itself. (h.) The aristocrat in man, which is rewarded by place, honor and distinction, by those in league with him, on the ground that he is the holder and owner of a human victim whom he is continually fleecing. 23 (/.) The political ambition engendered and sustained by the special, but unjust, powers delegated to him as a slaveholder, constantly increased by the increase of his slaves. It has seemed strange to you that slavery fights so fiercely in this contest with our government. WELL IT MAY. Every man who is a slaveholder from choice will lose with his slaves that which he considers next to his own life. He loses ease, money, tyranny, pride, lust, privilege in society, and caste in politics. From suck a, bondage! so unprepared ! emerges the slave a free man under the proclamation, and through the army. Where shall he go ? what shall he do ? . We saw last Sabbath that Africa was his true and best home ; shall he go there ? How shall he go ? who will give him food and passage ? will lead him to port and embark him ? and when arrived on the other side, who furnish a home for one who never owned one here ? Who instruct him in the use of a will so long inactive ? who make him, so utterly dependent, able to judge and rely upon himself? Before answering those questions another rises. It may be for the interest of the black race to go to Liberia, but is it for the interest of (his nation for them to go ? Bancroft ISibfM9 I answer without a hesitation : pecuniarily it is not, morally it is. Our text declares that the honor of the throne depends upon the multitude of the people, and that the weakness of a nation lies in scarcity of population. The wealth of any nation lies not in its lands or its general improvements, but in the amount of available productive force, in its inhabitants ; they are more necessary than ma- chinery ; the industry and intelligence of the people can buy and invent machinery, while the opposite is not true. The more intelligent and industrious a man, the greater his value to the State and its prosperity ; the greater is his ability to 24 add to its productive wealth the greater his ability to be a consumer. Now the mere increase of the number of such men makes a community, a State, a nation, self-reliant, inde- pendent, honored and powerful. When the slaves are set free every one who leaves this nation diminishes its wealth in two ways : there is one producer less, there is one consumer less than before. Every able bodied man who is thoroughly industrious, who is taken from this nation, is an annual loss, taken as producer and consumer, of some $500 per annum. If there are one million able bodied and industrious blacks male and female among the slaves, and they were taken away, it would be to the public aggregate wealth and prosperity a loss of nearly if not quite $500,000,000 every year, an amount almost as large as our entire national debt. But another consideration forces itself upon our attention. God has settled the policy of the United States for at least thirty years to come in reference to a question that has agi- tated the government from its foundation. The south, and their northern servants in the interest of slavery, have opposed a protective tariff and repeatedly defeated it. The war, so wickedly commenced by the south, has settled that question for a long time to come ; the country will have a high tariff, almost a prohibitory one. The political economist sees from afar the inevitable result. All species of manu- factures will spring to power and energy through this whole country ; all the lower kinds of labor, especially agricultural will become more valuable ; the negro will be more needed from the day this war closes than ever before, as a laborer. He now is so important that the south is impoverished with- out his labor that she maintains this war by the support she wrenches from him. If the slave has been a great con. sumer of northern manufactures, far more will the 4,000,000 consume when free men and receiving ample and just remu- neration for their labor. This is another of God's works, causing the nation by the very war he is compelling theni to 25 wage, (one act of which gives freedom to the oppressed,) to lay deep and strong the foundations of a great national pros- perity; that we may in His fear have the means to do our duty to the race by whose degradation as a nation we have been enabled to rise ; and on whom we must still continue when free for a while greatly to lean. But I hear some timid one exclaim : " We shall be overrun with blacks at the north, they will destroy the value of labor by their competition." The fear is ridiculous arid groundless. The skin of the black man, both absorbing and radiating heat and cold, as that of the white man cannot, tells us that he belongs in a warm climate, and without knowing the reason, obstacles removed, he gravitates to hot climates with even temperatures. But the census proves it false in point of fact. More than 50,000 slaves were set free in the north more than sixty years ago ; and yet with all the emigration from the slave states since the government was founded there were in all the northern states but 1S5, 296 free blacks in 1850; while the same year there were in the slave states 248,199, being an excess of 62,000 in the slave states. Once set the slaves free and there might be, it is true, an influx for a few months or years, until they were sure they could return and be cer- tainly free, when the reflux tide would bear back to the south with it more than half of those now in the northern states. But another fears that there will take place, a general amalgamation of the races. Banish that fear ; do not insult a race already so degraded, robbed and oppressed. I spurn, for them, your assumption of a desire on their part to commingle bloods with the whites. The mulattoes are the products of black mothers, and for every one there has been an approach by a white man, either with his power as a despot who could not be resisted ; and against whom the law gives no protection to religion and chastity ; or by the flattery of a higher race ; or by the bribe 4 26 of wealth offered to poverty and ignorance. I say in every case the desire and the petition has come from the white race- Shame on our color ! You fear amalgamation ! The slaves of America taunt each other in the bitterest terms, when they apply the words " yellow man," and " yellow woman," and awake the deep- est resentment. They are prouder of pure black blood than the whites are of theirs. The census will tell you a little story on that point. Go to the slave States and you will find, in 1850, 246,656 mulattoes sons and daughters of the chivalry of the South for the slaves are taught to look with contempt on the poor white man. There were also in the slave States, 1 02,255 more mulattoes, who were free ; making a total of mulattos, in the slave States, 348,911. There was in 1850, in the slave States, one mulatto to every 3 white men over twenty-one years old. In the whole North there were but 56,840 mulattoes, being but one to each sixty white men over twenty-one years of age. Talk of amalgamation ! In the southern States, in 1850, there was one mulatto for each slave holder in the United States, and 1,400 to spare. Slavery ! SLAVERY is amalgama- tion; it is lust; it cries to Heaven for worse than Sodom's vengeance ; it ravishes chastity ; it tramples on religion. Is there a Christian, a patriot, a human being, whose heart lies cold and unrejoiced when he hears God's voice speaking deliverance ? But emancipation will make one level of manhood in the southern States, instead of three. The free blacks can choose, to a great extent, their own employers, or employ them- selves. The enterprising or consciencious whites, too pure, or too poor, to become slaveholders, can become employers. There is as much land to be cultivated as before ; it is just as productive ; a greater demand than ever before will exist for those products at the close of the war. Why then should they not remain ? 27 But some say: You rob and impoverish the 347,553 slave- holders. Well, if we do, they lose only stolen property that they had in possession ! If they lose 4,000,000 of slaves, there are 4,000,000 who each receive the present of a free- man. If the aristocratic, tyrannous traitors to God, human- ity, and conscience, lose a little wealth, 4,000,000 are raised from what shall I say ? to a position below that of the poorest man you ever saw, and then are raised immeasurably high ! to the ownership of his own body, but with a mind blurred, and held in darkness by wicked legal oppressions. If one half of each face in the nation should weep and be- moan the slaveholder's loss ; why, the other half of each face should be radiant with joy, and bless God, at the black man's gain. But one thing of great importance is secured. That annual increase of 205 slaves each day, or 1,435 each week, or 74,000 each year is stopped. They become free ! Ought we not to rejoice in all God's wonderful ways, bless him for them, and ask him to make them a perfect end ? You remember the arguments of last week for the emigra- tion of the colored man to Liberia.* Now comes their place : IT is BETTER for the black race, better for the manhood and the morality of the whites. But we have showed we cannot spare them now. They have toiled a century and are robbed of their gains ; they have nothing with which to go ; they have never depended on themselves, or been allowed to ; they are not fit to go. Liberia is not strong enough to bear a mil- lion unprepared men thrown on her society in a single year. But there were 527,040 free blacks in the United States in 1860. Many have some means ; all can get away. Many of those in the South are skillful mechanics. Let us every- where urge them to go first ; give them generous assistance ; pray for them ; and stimulate them by the highest hopes of usefulness and honor. If in four or six years 1,000,000 emi- grants can, by private and government aid, be placed in * See Appwadix. 28 Africa, a nation great, powerful, industrious is established, and the national causes of attraction will each year increase, drawing from the American continent the last remnant of the race, while their places would gradually be filled by other laborers. And this plan is perfectly feasible. In 1856, '57, 58, by ordinary causes of emigration, 550,000 foreigners came to this country and found a home, with no national aid, and paying their own charges. Three hundred and forty thousand emigrants left the United Kingdom in 1854. In forty-three years, 4,500,000 had left. In thirty-six years, ending December 31, 1855, 4,212,624 had emigrated to this country, and about a million more have come since. Oh, it will be a cause of thanksgiving for all Africa, America, the world, if by this war, God having cradled that strange nation in our midst, in slavery, shall set it free; making us the unwilling patron, and the slaves the instru- ment of Christianizing that benighted continent. What then becomes us as citizens to do. Sustain the govern- ment which God has chosen for this very crisis ; PRESS ON THIS WAR against treason and every crime ; and let every man, pray- ing for the army and the government, in his place, cheerfully bearing every burden God makes it his part to bear, stand and behold the salvation of our God. And let his name have endless praise. Amen, and Amen. APPENDIX. * On the Sabbath preceding that upon which this discourse was delivered, the pastor preached a sermon examining the intellectual, the social and the moral condition of the free black men in the United States, and the obstacles to their progress and elevation in this country. He examined the same points in view of a residence in Liberia, and set forth the influence, political and religious, which that infant republic has already exerted upon Africa and her tribes. He noticed the fact that Liberia had done more for thirty years past for the direct suppression of the slave trade than any other nation. Also made statements in reference to the high literary and professional institutions within a year past opened in Liberia and founded by the benevolence of American citizens. The opportunities of unlimited acquisitions of territory as the republic might desire expansion ; the rapid increase of popula- tion which she might receive from systematic and governmental colonization ; and the political and religious future of that nation were portrayed ; and this sermon was designed but a sequel to the other, to show that God brought them here, has kept them here, and will remove them to Africa again. f By oversight hi the summation of the graspings of the slave power for territory, I omitted one of the highest importance. In the year 1836, by an act of congress, a triangular piece of land, known as the " half breed triangle," or the " Platte Purchase," was cut out of the Nebraska territory and added to the State of Missouri. The triangle was one hundred and four miles long north and south, and sixty miles across at the north end. It was land that the Missouri compromise said should never have a slave on it. Six- teen years after the compromise passed, it was thus broken in cold blood by the south, and the Missouri compromise still unrepealed in 1850, that triangle presented this front for slavery it was divided into six counties : 30 Free. Slave. Total. Atchison, 1,648 30 1,678 ISTodaway, 2,048 70 2,118 Holt, 3,828 127 3,955 Andrew, 8,773 661 9,434 Buchanan, , 12,074 902 12,976 Platte, 14,131 2,798 16,929 Totals, 42,502 4,588 47>090 In fourteen short years the south had planted on that stolen triangle almost 5,000 slaves. I lived in Platte county free soil under the Missouri compromise, but under the treachery of the south slave territory at the same hour ; and there under two acts, neither repealed, both passed by the south, and for the south's benefit, an American citizen, I for five and a half years saw the deformities and endured the outrages of American slavery.