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THE

National Controversy;

OR,

THE VOICE OF THE FATHERS

UPON THE

STJTE OF THE COUNTRT.

By JOSEPH C. STILES.

t&

NEW YORK :
Rudd & Carleton, 130 Grand Street.
brooks building, cor. of broadway.
M DCCC LXI.

_. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
JOSEPH C. STILES,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New Tork.

R. CRAIGHEAD,
Printer, Stereoiyper, and Electrolyper,
(laiton tfuilbuig,
Bl, 83, and 85 Centre Street.

PREFACE.

There are three ways of investigating our national
controversy. I may inquire, 1. To which of the con
tending parties the wrong is mainly attributable ; 2.
Whether the principal blame lies at the door of the
South ; or 3, at the door of the North. I have chosen
the last.
Let it be remembered it is not my object to labor
directly to spread out the wrong-doings of the South.
By so doing I should break up the logic, unity, and
strength of the argument advanced to establish the end
in view. If I am skilful, I shall do two things : to the
best of my ability, prove the guilt of the North directly,
by pertinent argument ; and indirectly, by sustaining the
defences of the South. By this course I do not lay
myself open to the charge of prejudice. I set out to
investigate one branch of the subject, and should not be
censured because I do not introduce another.
If my convictions are well founded, the causes of
erroneous judgment may lie at two points. The founda
tions of the justification of the South and of the crimi
nation of the North — or rather the facts and principles

11 PREFACE.
which decide the relative right or wrong of the parties
— lie far back in the history of the country, and do not
now exert their proper influence upon the public mind;
while the heated state of popular feelings, for many
years, upon our vexed question, has thrown up a false
halo which invests with still deeper obscurity the true
moral features of our national strife.
Touching the influence of this appeal, may I remind
the reader, that adverse views will certainly bring up the
sins of the South and the defences of the North at every
step. Yet he should not deem me unfair because I do
not give them a hearing. All I ask of him is this — let
him look at the fact or argument before him, give it a
just consideration, and judge whether he should not in
candor renounce in whole or in part some objection to the
conduct of the South, or concede in whole or in part the
charged misconduct of the North. I cannot now pro
mise to exhibit the same impartiality. My little book
has already found its way into your hand. But this
I will say — if the sentiment to which you object is
unfounded — then may our Heavenly Father forgive the
transgressor, nor permit his ignorance to damage you or
any brother man on earth. If, however, that to which
you object is truth and righteousness in the case — Oh,
look at our beloved country ! and unite in my prayer
that these pages may be sent home to do their work in
the hearts of all our countrymen.

THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.

Our unhappy Country ! Is there anything in the his
tory of the past which may relieve the complications of
the present? Is there no class of truths, no course of
argument, which can bring the people to one mind, and
restore the happy confidence of early years ? The capi
tal wrong may lie at the South, or it may be chargeable
to the North. A southern man, by birth, sentiment, and
sympathy, for our common country's sake, will not my
northern brethren and countrymen, in all earnest heed,
accept my invitation, and join me in the discussion of
the four following propositions ?
1. "Were our northern fathers encouraged to expect
that, within a short period after the formation of the con
stitution, slavery would disappear for ever?
2. Has the South transgressed her constitutional rela
tions to the subject of slavery, and encroached upon the
North ?
3. Has not the North violated her constitutional obliga
tions upon this subject, and encroached upon the South ?
4. Where shall we find the origin and the healing of
this unhappy strife ?
I. Were our fathers encouraged to " expect lhat within a
short period, slavery would disappear for ever?"
It is not contended that the South expressly stipulated
in the constitution that slavery should be speedily abo
lished; but the grand aggravating element of almost

4 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
every modern charge is this: the history, principles,
language, conduct, and condition, both of the North and
of the South in that day, encouraged and measurably au
thorized " the fathers to expect that within a short period
slavery would disappear for ever." We respectfully sub
mit whether every argument advanced to establish this
expectation of the fathers does not involve a contradiction
of the averment, and rather prove the enduring than the
evanescent condition of the institution in early days.
1. The declining slate cf slavery in the times of the
fathers. — That the institution of slavery had long been
dying out at the North is undeniable; but the very
causes which worked decay at the North wrought invi-
goration at the South. The cold climate of the North,
uncongenial to the African constitution of the negro,
shortened his days, and diminished his strength and
value ; while the warm climate of the South, more suit
able to his physical nature, proportionably augmented
his powers, both of labor and of enjoyment. In like
manner, it had been demonstrated that the commercial,
manufactural, and skilful avocations of the North could
extract but a profitless service from the contracted intel
lect of the negro, while the agricultural pursuits of the
South found, in his remarkable physical endurance, even
in a sultry climate, an exact provision for her simple
culture of tobacco, indigo, and rice. Thus, that very
intellectual and physical structure of the slave, which so
naturally worked out his rapid disappearance from the
North, must exert an equal power to secure his perma
nent value at the South.
2. The anti-slavery spirit of the day. — It cannot be denied
that, during the debates which gave birth to our noble

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 5
constitution, anti-slavery principles were abundantly and
vehemently avowed, both by northern and by southern
men. Let it be remembered, that the grand struggle
lay between the Northern and the Middle States on the
one hand, and the extreme Southern States on the other.
Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, on many points
sympathized with the North — on one, certainly, their
anti-slavery zeal was even more conspicuous.* But
he undertakes an arduous task who sits down to build
up the " expectation" of the fathers upon the foundation
of the anti-slavery sentiments of the day. It is freely
granted that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason,
Eandolph, and other Representatives of the northern tier
of Southern States, were all in language decided, and
some of them violent, opponents of the institution of
slavery. Surely they were most noble men. Their like
earth rarely sees. God knows we should deeply honor
them, but not for the power of their anti-slavery prin
ciples. One fact speaks volumes. If we mistake not,
every man of them lived and died a slaveholder : Wash
ington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Randolph, and pro
bably every other prominent delegate from the South.
We believe, moreover, that they all left their slaves
in unlimited bondage, save Washington, who willed the
liberty of his after the death of his widow. With entire
respect, we are forced to inquire, what reason had our
Southern fathers to expect that their principles would
work the destruction of slavery in others, when they
were too weak to abolish slaveholding in themselves ?
We repeat it — what right had any man of that day to
expect that the principles of our Southern fathers would
* See Note A.

6 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
do at a distance, in the hands of their posterity, what
they did not do at home, in their own hands?
Nor did the anti-slavery principles of our Northern
fathers seem much more reliable. Franklin and Morris,
Martin and Wilson, Lansing and Hamilton, Sherman
and Elsworth, Gorham and Gerry, and a host of others,
were noble and powerful men, well worthy of enrolment
amongst the most distinguished and gallant patriots of
the Revolution. But as emancipationists, they were
entitled to no such praise. The Convention had well
nigh decided to limit the importation of slaves to the
year 1800. General Pinckney, of South Carolina, moved
to extend the privilege of importation to the year 1808.
Where was the anti-slavery principle of our Northern
fathers when this wide door of national slave-importation
was thrown open? Massachusetts, by her delegate,
seconded the motion ; and though two slave States,
Virginia and Delaware, voted against it, it is a fact that
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire voted
unanimously in its favor, and carried the motion. Let
it be remembered, that of all the Northern and Middle
States, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were the only two
who recorded a vote against the constitutional extension
of the right of importation. Where, too, was the anti-
slavery principle of our Northern fathers, when a motion
was introduced to levy a tax of ten dollars a head upon
every slave thus imported ? 'Tis true they did deeply
disrelish the proposition, and vainly endeavored to put
a fair face upon the transaction ; yet when it was thus
proposed, to1 all intents and purposes, to enrol slaves
amongst the taxable commodities of commerce, the
records of the country incontestably declare that not

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 7
a single Northern vote was entered up against the
constitutional provision. We ask now, what reason
had our Northern fathers, or we, their sons, to expect
that their anti-slavery principles would accomplish the
rapid downfall of slavery in the country, when with one
hand they themselves opened the door to the extensive
introduction of slaves into the country, and with the
other graded them as property on their arrival ?
The singular inefficiency of open opposition to slavery
in the days of the fathers may find its secret partly in
two things. First, it was temperate, not maddened.
Had the fanaticism which, to a greater or less extent,
imbues so large a portion of Northern mind in our day,
equally affected anti-slavery men in the Constitutional
Convention, they -would have burst a world sooner than
consent to be pent up and tied down as revolutionary
anti-slavery was and is by the American Constitution.
Again, anti-slavery was then political, not religious.
The Honorable John Jay informs us, " that prior to the
Revolution, the great body of our people had been so
long accustomed to the practice and convenience of
slavery, that very few of them ever doubted the pro
priety or rectitude of it!" Our Revolution, then, was
the parent of the anti-slavery sentiments of the fathers.
They had so much to say about natural rights, that they
very naturally discovered a sort of incompatibility
between the practice of slavery and the principles of the
Revolution; nor can it be doubted that this sense of incom
patibility was greatly quickened in all American minds
at this time by Tom Paine's infidel but popular and
powerful discussion of associated topics. But bear in
mind, it was a sentiment just started up and sustained

8 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
by an excited glance at the political surface of things,
and had yet taken no such hold of the mind as enabled
it to overthrow the long entrenched lust of gain arrayed
against it on every hand. Now the protection of natural
rights is not the great work which the Scriptures assign
to man on earth. Remember ! not one syllable had God
uttered to incite man to set a high value upon his right
of property, or his right of character, or his right of
liberty, or even his right of life. On the contrary, Sal
vation! Salvation ! is the great order of the day. And
if our Northern fathers had but been content to carry out
the principle they so frequently and honorably avowed,
that " the morality and wisdom of slavery are considera
tions belonging to the states themselves :" had they
exercised the Christian sobriety to reflect, that if the
villany of man had torn away the poor slave from his
native country, the mercy of God had well supplied the
home of his captivity with most valuable facilities for
his social and spiritual redemption : and had they taught
themselves to honor the Southern master for all that was
worthy in the treatment of his protege", congratulated
him on his slave's improvement in character and condi
tion, and kindly co-operated with him, to the extent of
their ability, in all wise undertakings for the good of his
slaves, the Christianity, the noble Christianity of the prin
ciple would have made its powerful mark both upon the
bond and the free. But the anti-slavery of the fathers
had neither the bad power of fanaticism, nor the good
power of Christianity. In the Southern man it failed to
do what it purposed to accomplish. And in the Northern
man it came near to yielding to that which it was prin
cipled to resist.

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 9
Two things, therefore, are perfectly clear. On the
one hand, the fathers had no reason to expect that their
principles of opposition to slavery would work its speedy
banishment from society ; on the other, they had great
reason to expect its sturdy endurance — for there must
have resided somewhere in that institution a mighty
power of self-preservation — since it did so long and so
perfectly paralyse all the adverse efforts of the mightiest
men of the nation, North and South.
3. Language: pledges and predictions. — It is contended
that the language of the framers of the Constitution,
uttered in their prolonged conventional debates, afford
abundant testimony of a prevalent conviction in that
day, that the institution of slavery was near its end ; and
moreover, that the half-way concessions of the South,
and predictions of the North, contributed to warrant
such a persuasion.
I apprehend that this is a great mistake. The records
of the Constitutional Convention furnish two classes of
utterances bearing upon this subject.
The first respects the abolition of the slave trade. The
fraternal and powerful appeals of Northern brethren
did sometimes, though very rarely, wring out from
the extreme Southern delegate some such sympathetic
response as the following — " If the, Southern States were
let alone, they will probably of themselves stop importa
tion. He would himself, as a citizen of South Carolina,
vote for it." (Charles Pinckney.) " If the States be all
left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may per
haps by degrees, do, of herself, what is wished, as Vir
ginia and Maryland already have done." (C. C. Pinckney.)
" Georgia, left to herself, may probably put a stop to the
1*

10 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
evil." (Baldwin.) Langdon, of New Hampshire, ventured
to extract some hope from the opinions expressed that
"the Southern States left to themselves will cease to
import slaves." Other Northern delegates reminded the
convention of the suggestion of Southern members that
"Carolina and Georgia were themselves disposed to get
rid of the importation of slaves in a short time." But
Northern members were not long left to a state
of conjecture concerning Southern purpose upon this
subject. The very delegates from the South, who, under pow
erful appeals, had encouraged some little hope of the
abatement of the slave trade, when they perceived that
Northern members were relying upon their guarded
suggestions, substantially recalled all they had declared,
and affirmed their solemn conviction that they never
could persuade their respective states "to adopt the con
stitution," if importation was forbidden : that " Carolina
and Georgia must have slaves" — and that the rejection
of the importing clause " was an exclusion of them from
the Union." While other Southern delegates, yet more
decided, abruptly exclaimed, that every expectation of
the North upon this subject would be disappointed —
" that the people of the South were not such fools as to
give up so important an interest," &c. Nor was it long
ere the Northern delegates themselves abandoned all
hope of arresting the traffic. Wilson, of Pennsylvania,
avowed his firm conviction " that the Southern States
could not be members of the Union if the clause (import
ing) should be rejected." Governeur Morris, of the same
State, after a long and gallant opposition, was " compelled
to express his decided belief that the Southern States

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 11
would never confederate on terms that would deprive
them of the slave trade." Roger Sherman, of Con
necticut, counselled, that " it was better to let the States
import slaves, if they made it a sine qua non." Oliver
Ellsworth, of Connecticut, " declared his willingness to
take the clause as it is. Let every State import what it
pleases. What enriches a part enriches the whole. Let
us not intermeddle. This widening of opinions had a
threatening aspect. If we do not agree on this moderate
and middle ground, he was afraid we should lose two
States — and have several confederations — and not with
out bloodshed." Such at large was the graceful yield
ing of the North before the unflinching demand of the
South. So exactly stood and struggled the parties, when sla
very itself became the bone of contention. During the
early part of the debate, a very few expressions were
uttered — not by Southern, but by Northern delegates —
indicating an opinion that slavery would decline. Sher
man remarked that " the abolition of slavery is going
on in the United States, and that the good sense of the
several states would probably, by degrees, complete it."
Ellsworth, his colleague, supposed that "as population
increases, poor laborers will become so plenty as to ren
der slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck
in our country." But the battle raged desperately on
this main issue. On the one hand, the assailants pro
nounced the system of slavery "a nefarious institution"
— " the curse of Heaven on the community where it
prevailed" — "inconsistent with the principles of the
revolution" — "dishonorable to American character" —
" pernicious alike to morals and to manners " — " pre-

12 THE NATIONAL CONTROVEESY.
venting immigration of whites, the strength and riches
of a country " — " in social development a desert and a
wilderness beside the budding fields of freedom " — " in
the state, a weakness and a burden through liability to
insurrection, which the North is bound to suppress," &c,
&c. On the other hand the Southern delegates respond:
— "That slavery is justified by the example of all the
world, since in all ages half of mankind have been
slaves " — " is a blessing to the subject, for it civilizes the
savage and converts the pagan " — " to the whole Union,
for the more slaves, the more the produce, and therefore
the more employment for the carrying trade " — " the
more consumption, and therefore the more revenue to
the treasury of our common country." " Slaves raise
the value of lands " — " supply armies with food and
clothing, and may become soldiers themselves." " To
us of Carolina and Georgia, slavery is as necessary as a
home, in this latitude ; for who else upon earth could
cultivate rice and indigo in our sultry swamps ? "
" Entertaining such views, as free and independent
states, we shall assuredly preserve our domestic institu
tion." On this point, as on the other, the North gave
way before the unyielding adhesion of the South to the
claims of her social organization.
Thus, candor compels us to conclude that so far as
language is concerned, " the fathers " had no encourage
ment to expect that slavery would rapidly disappear.
On the contrary, the strong words of southern men must
have carried home deeply to the hearts of Northern
delegates, the resolute, inflexible purpose of the South
to maintain their ancient institution against all opposi
tion.

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 13
4. Conduct: relative, yielding, and controlling. — There
was nothing in the conduct of the parties, nothing in the
practical issues of their deliberations, which justified the
slightest expectation of " the fathers " that slavery was
dying out in the land. On the contrary, the pro-slavery
delegates carried their main points so perfectly, against
such powerful odds, that, to the end of time, the specta
tor of the conflict in the published debates of the con
stitutional convention, will pronounce the Southern
victory an inexplicable enigma, apart from an enormous
inherent power in the slavery of that day, which the fathers
must have felt.
The South held their slaves both as persons and as
property, and insisted that the constitution ofthe country
should distinctly recognise this two-fold claim. When
they presented their first point, that slaves as persons
should have a representation in the government, — the
delegates of the Northern and Middle states were out
raged. They substantially declared — "If you your
selves will first treat them as men, and give them the
dignities of freedom, we will cheerfully welcome them to
a participation in citizenship with our people and our
selves. But while you strip them of their humanity,
and degrade them to a level with the brutes of your
plantations, we cannot go back and tell our constituents
that we have allowed you to go still further, and enrol
your servile dependents in the same political category
with themselves. They would not endure the revolting
degradation, and we cannot, we will not do it." The
delegates of the South, in substance, reply: — "Slaves
are our wealth, and wealth should be represented in the
government instituted largely for its protection. Slaves

14 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
are persons dwelling in the country, and working for it,
and if inferior in intelligence and influence, we do not
demand for them an equal representation. They are our
fellow-men, with rights of life, labor, and happiness to be
guarded ; as such, we expect the government to recog
nise them. Finally, we are sovereign and independent
states ; we must look to the vital interests of ourselves
and our people ; and if you nullify the half of our popu
lation, make our slaves a dead letter in the government
of the country, and thus destroy the force of our social
organization, we shall never belong to your Union."
It was ultimately decided, after a hard struggle, that a
clause should be inserted in the constitution, securing to
slaves a " three-fifths " representation. (Art. 1, Sec. 2.)
Let it be observed, too, that by the constitutional rule,
"direct" taxation is ot persons. Slaves, therefore, are
treated a second time in the constitution as persons — by
being subjected to a " threefiftlis direct taxation." Thus
there are four ways in which the constitution clearly
establishes the personality of slaves : by its census, its
representation, its taxation clauses, and by expressly
speaking of them as " other persons."
When the second grand claim of the South was brought
forward, that slaves should be recognised as property, the
anti-slavery sentiment of the convention was still more
deeply shocked. But a similar struggle ultimately led
to a similar issue. It is true you do not find the word
"slave" in the constitution; neither in the thirty pages of
our chartered rights, do you find any such phrases as
"the nation," — "our country," — "our government," —
" national treasury," — "national legislature," — " national
government." The reason is this. Those who framed

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 15
that instrument well knew that they had a thousand
conflicting interests to reconcile. They therefore resolved
to employ no word or phrase which would give umbrage
to any class or party in the country. Yet, as Luther
Martin says, " they were willing to admit into their sys
tem those things which the expression signified." There
were those in the country who loved the Confederation,
and opposed " the formation of a national government."
The convention accomplished the work, the formation of
a national government, but avoided all offensive lan
guage. There were those, too, who abhorred slavery.
The convention here in like manner avoided the term,
but admitted the thing the term expressed.
You will find properly in man clearly implied in the
clause requiring the rendition of fugitives. (Art. 4, Sec. 2.)
Fix your thought upon the operation. Form a concep
tion, if you can, of the shadow of a reason for the
restoration of the fugitive, apart from the fact that the
master has a right to control his servant — has a, property in
his services. How clearly is the doctrine taught by the
language of the first resolution passed upon this subject
by the convention, August 27th. The closing words
are these: — "shall be delivered up to the person justly
claiming their service or labor." By the framers of the
constitution, obviously the master has a just claim to his
servant — a property in his services. When this section
was put into the hands of the " committee of style and
language " — mark ! it comes out thus : " but shall be
delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service
or labor may be due." Thus the constitution decides
that the services of the slave are the due of his master.
His master owns them — has a. property in them. In like

16 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
manner, the imposition of a tax or duty on the imported
slave, with equal clearness, establishes the constitutional
doctrine oi slave-property. " A tax, or duty, not exceeding
ten dollars for each person." (Art. 1, Sec. 9.) How pal
pable is the constitutional recognition here. The slave
is set down amongst imports and taxed as such. No
wonder Roger Sherman "was opposed to a tax on
slaves, as making the matter worse, because it implied
they were property." When he repeated his objection
the next day, Mr. Goram, Mass., attempted to put a bet
ter face upon the transaction, and " thought that Mr.
Sherman should consider the duty not as implying that
slaves are property, but as a discouragement to the
importation of them." But Sherman honestly replied,
that the smallness of the duty showed that revenue
was the object, not the discouragement of the importa
tion." A second attempt was made to break the force
of its application to slaves, by considering tbe tax as
equally extending to the " migration " of foreigners. But
unfortunately, the very words of the constitution destroy
the effort — for the word " migration " is dropped in the
latter part of the clause, and the " tax " is " imposed "
on such " importation " only. When this section was
called up on Friday 24th, Mr. Livingston, of New York,
offered an amendment allowing importation, but impos
ing a tax or duty in the words, " at a rate not exceeding
the average of the duties laid on imports." Here cer
tainly the language places slaves in the category of
"imports," and of course adjudges them properly. The
next day Mr. Baldwin, in order to define more accurately
the " average duty," moved to strike out the second part,
the words — " average of the duty laid on imports " —

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 17
and insert " common impost on articles not enumerated."
Thus the sentence would read, " a tax or duty may be
imposed on such importation, at a rate not exceeding the
common imposts on articles not enumerated." As this
motion was agreed to nem. con., the entire mind of the con
vention, North and South, hereby enrolled slaves among
" articles " of import, pronounced the tax upon them an
" impost" and of course, stamped them as property, since
they were "articles" "imported" under "impost." Sher
man felt this truth forcibly, and objected a third time,
" that this second part acknowledges property in man."
King and Langdon, both northern men, very simply con
sidered " the second part (the taxing) as the price of the
first part (the importation)." Rufus King had previously
" remarked on the exemption of slaves from duty, whilst
every other import was subjected to it, as an irregularity,
which could not fail to strike the commercial sagacity of
the North." Whereupon Gen. Pinckney, adopting his
language, moved " to commit the clause that slaves
might be made liable to an equal tax with other imports,"
" admitting in the same connexion, that slaves might be
' dutiecV like other imports." On the same day, Wilson
objected, " as the section now stands, all articles imported
are to be taxed, slaves alone exempt." This is, in fact, a
bounty on that article.
So much for the testimony of the framers of the con
stitution, individually. As to the mind of the conven
tion at large — Elias Boudinot, a member of the Continen
tal Congress, in 1788, from New Jersey, " was well in
formed that the tax or duty of $10 was provided instead
of the five per cent, ad valorem, and was so expressly under
stood by all parties in the convention," that this tax was

18 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
deemed necessary, as " doing justice to all the States,
and equalizing duties throughout the Union." (Elliott,
vol. iv. 215.) The conduct of government in demanding
and receiving from the British throne a pecuniary com
pensation for slaves abducted in the Revolution, is her
own legislative construction of the constitution ; while the
numerous express decisions of the Supreme Court — that
slaves are property, is her judicial interpretation of it.
How clearly, variously, indisputably, does the consti
tution recognise the slave-property doctrine of the South.
Slaves are to be " delivered tip " as "justly " claimed, and
"due" to the master: are to be taxed as " imports" and
" articles " whose introduction should be subject to " im
post" and "priced " and " dutied" like other imports " ad
valorem," whose " exemption " from taxation might be com
plained of as an " inequality " which "commercial" sagacity
will soon detect: and whose taxation was understood by
the entire convention as doing universal "justice," and
" equalizing duties " throughout " the Union :" for whose
abduction the government demanded restitution, ad valo
rem, and who have been pronounced "property " and this
without qualification, by the highest tribunal of the coun
try, from the formation of the constitution to the present
day. We put it now to every fellow citizen in the coun
try, whatever be his principles or tastes, if the American
constitution is to be interpreted by the established laws
of construction, is he not bound in candor to concede
that that document does clearly recognise slaves both as
persons and as property I
What a strong impression of the power of the principle
of slavery in that day must have been made upon the
mind of " the fathers," as they infixed, seriatim, the

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 19
unlimited extent ofthe Southern demands upon the face
of the constitution ! Governeur Morris at one time
acknowledged the amazement and "dilemma" into which
he was thrown by the stern impracticability of Southern
adhesion to the slave-trade : at another, he was pressed
back into a temper of bitter petulance, by the advancing
demands of Southern guarantees, and indignantly ex
claimed — why attempt any loDger to blend " incompatible
things." " Let us at once take a friendly leave of each
other:" and finally, when he saw one Southern claim
after another incorporated into the heart of the constitu
tion, he sarcastically pronounced " domestic slavery " the
most "prominent feature in the aristocratic countenance
of the proposed constitution." Did not that man feel to
the very centre of his soul, that come whence it might,
be it what it may, surely there is a living power in the
slavery of this day. Did not Rufus King feel the present
and fear the future power of slavery ? Counselling that
they, the convention, should do justice to the South; he
says, " he must be short-sighted, indeed, who does not
foresee that when the Southern States should be more
numerous than the Northern (did this man imagine that
slavery would die out in a day ?), they (the South) can
and will hold a language that will awe us into justice!
If they threaten to separate now, in case injury shall be
done them, will their threats be less urgent or effectual
when force shall back their demands ? Even in the inter
vening period there will be no point of time, at which
they will not be able to say — do us justice or we
will separate!" Luther Martin seemed to be trans
ported with mortification and rage when he called up
before the Legislature of Maryland, the inexplicable power

20 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
which had been exercised over the convention by South
ern men. He breaks out in the folio win? n — " This
system of slavery, which bound hand o I ten Slates
in the Union, and placed ihem at the me e other three
and under the most abject and servih ion to them,
was approved by the majority of nbers of the
convention." Who doubts that that ma*. __ d every other
Northern man in the constitutional convention felt the
living power of slavery in the days of " the fathers?"
The conduct of our constitutional fathers : what shall
we think of it? What light does it throw upon the
debility or the strength — upon the probable disappear
ance or endurance of the institution of slavery in early
days ? Southern men put down their programme bodily
amongst the provisions of the constitution ; and with a
power that made Northern men stand amazed at the
feebleness of their opposition. Surely the practical
issues of the deliberations of our ancestors should have
estopped "the fathers" from "expecting that within a
short period slavery will disappear for ever;" and rather
forced them to feel that that domestic institution of the
South, which, at the disadvantage of three to ten, did
bind hand and foot the strongest men of the nation, had
more than a few days to live on the earth.
5. Condition. — Relative state of the two sections, pre
sent and prospective. — Beyond all question, at the time
of the formation of the American Constitution, in all
the elements of secular prosperity, the most flourishing
section of the country was the South.
The South was the wealthiest portion of the country ;
and the fathers say so. The slaves of Virginia sur
passed the entire population of the State of New York

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 21
by 50,000 ; and that of every other one of the Northern
States, Massachusetts only excepted.
The exports of Carolina were near 600,000 pounds per
annum. As to the State of Georgia, Roger Sherman
concedes that her rapid growth justified the relatively
larger allotment of representatives accorded to her in
the first arrangement upon this, subject. Indeed, during
the entire debate on representation Southern delegates
claimed the superiority of the South in property, and
Northern delegates acknowledged it. Gov. Morris
agreed " that property ought to have its weight, but not
all the weight. If Southern States are to supply the
money, the Northern States are to spill the blood."
The peculiar property of the South, we should remem
ber, too, was rapidly improving in those days. Oliver
Elsworth testifies " that slaves multiply so fast in Vir
ginia and Maryland that if was cheaper to raise them
than import them." In like manner, the fresh and fertile
lands of the extreme Southern States presented at this
period a most inviting field of emigration. Col. Mason,
a strong anti-slavery man, declared "that the Western
people are calling out for slaves for their new lands, and
will soon fill the country with them." Finally, ponder
well this fact — labor paid better, and population increased
faster at the South than at the North, and the fathers say so.
Madison admitted that the population at the North, at
that time, surpassed that of the South, but added, "popu
lation every day tended towards an equilibrium." He
continued, " where labor yielded the most, the people
would resort. Hence it is that people are constantly
swarming from the Northern and Middle parts ofthe United
States to the Southern and Western." Mason corroborates

22 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
Madison, observing that " as soon as the Southern and
Western population should predominate, which must-
happen in a few years," etc. Gov. Morris testifies to a
startling prediction of the day. " It has been said that
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia will, in a
little time, have a majority of the people of America."
Butler seemed better informed on the subject. He dis
claimed the supposition that these three States would
have more people than all the other States, but affirmed
that they would have many more relatively to the North
ern States than they now have. For, says he, " the people
and strength of America are evidently bearing Southwardly
and South- Westwardly." So well-founded and accredited
was this claim of more rapid increase in population at
the South, that Northern and Southern men were study
ing out and making ready for the results. Col. Mason,
anticipating the early preponderance of the South, was
anxious to arrange for the periodical taking of the cen
sus, lest when the Southern States should come " to have
three fourths of the population of America within iheir limits,
the Northern will hold fast to the present majority of the
representatives." Governeur Morris inferred that the
South must, in this case, "include the great interior country,
and everything was to be apprehended from their getting the
power into their hands." Wilson, on the contrary, more
calm and thoughtful, conceiving that all men, wherever
placed, have , equal rights, and are equally entitled to
confidence — viewed without apprehension the period
when a few States should contain the superior number of
people. As for the North — -intelligent, brave, enterprising, self-
reliant, and destined to rise, yet for long yea,rs her busi-

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 23
ness broken up, her ships rotting, her people impove
rished — so sad was her condition and h.er prospects at
this time, that one of her delegates on the floor of the
Convention declared that " the Northern and middle
States will be ruined, if not enabled (by a navigation
law) to defend themselves against foreign regulations."
Thus, the Southern States were the most wealthy, and
their property the most improving ; they were spreading
out their settlements to the West, and their fresh lands
were calling aloud for emigrants ; labor paid best at the
South, and the people were swarming from the North to
secure its profits ; population was increasing faster at the
South, and all anticipated its early predominance ;
power and influence were rapidly accumulating at the
South, and far-seeing men began to apprehend the
results of its change of hands.
The condition of the country in early days ! — -what
shall we say of it? One word only. Surely it must
have struck to death the very first rising of an expecta
tion in the mind of any one of " the fathers," that, within
a short period, slavery will disappear for ever.
6. The mental condition of the fathers. — It is question
able whether the anti-slavery virtue ofthe fathers was not
too feeble to admit of any such conscious claims upon the
South, to sustain any such expectations of the speedy
abolition of slavery.
Their ancestors had enacted, and carried out, probably
the very darkest slave-code recorded in the history of a
civilized people. Some of the States which the fathers
represented, justified slave-making by statute. — Ancient
Charters, Mass. ch. 12. Trumb. Col. Rec. 332. On their
own soil they practised this slave-making ; and not only

24 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
divided families, but sent Indian women and boys to the
West Indies, and sold them for slaves. — Trumb. Conn.,
vol. i. 85. They imported the product of slave-labor,
distilled the molasses into rum, exported the same to
Africa, purchased slaves with the proceeds, transported
them to the West Indies, and sold them in the market.
— (Vide Archives Conn. Hartford.) By law they author
ized every city, town, or manor, to appoint a common
whipper, who should receive a salary, not to exceed
three shillings per head for every slave whipped ; and
further authorized any person finding slaves at a certain
distance from their homes, or out after nine o'clock at
night — without a written passport — to inflict twenty
lashes on each, and recover from the master by suit, reason
able compensation for his services. — (Laws of Conn., Mass.
New York, New Jersey, &c.) They not only required
the fugitive to be surrendered upon claim, and punished.
all who " harbored," " secreted," " entertained," "aided,"
or " tolerated" the " oppressed," but laid their ven
geance on every person who, knowing that a slave is, or
has been entertained or secreted, does not make it known.
— Laws Rhode Island, New York, &c. They discour
aged emancipation in various forms — in one State inflict
ing a fine of $300 a-piece for every slave brought into
her territory to be freed. — Rhode Island, Mass., Conn.
These historical facts are not brought up reproachfully,
but simply as necessary to justice in the premises.
Such was the early face of slavery in the homes of
" the fathers ;" and though the system had long since
been modified by milder legislation, yet unsuitable as
slave-labor had ever been in northern latitudes, and con
sequently unreasonable as was the perpetuation of slavery

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 25
there, except on purely benevolent principles, they
testify upon the floor of the Convention, that they
themselves were, in general, slaveholders still — only one
State having emancipated her slaves, and one more
arranged to follow her example. Nor let it be forgotten,
that they themselves, at that very time, had just opened
a national door to the importation of slaves, for the space
of twenty years.
That our northern fathers were men of exalted talents,
patriotism, and worth, it is our pride and our glory to
concede. That in perfect consistency with all virtue,
they might have cherished the desire that their southern
brethren would adopt such a course in the premises as
they themselves deemed all-important to the welfare of
the country, we readily acknowledge. But this point we
respectfully submit. Is it consistent with the laws of
a good conscience, with the workings of truth and
virtue in the human soul, that our northern fathers, and
those they represented, with such a past history and
present position in the premises, should expect from
their southern neighbors, as a species of duty to the
North, the early abolition of slavery? Remember — it
was an institution which the South had never carried to
the same excess ; an institution which, with so little
inducement to retain, they themselves had not yet aban
doned : nay ! an institution which they themselves had
recently and greatly augmented and encouraged. I say
now — involved in such unhappy complications, would it
not have been pure phariseeism in our northern fathers to
entertain any such expectation ? And would not modesty
and rectitude, on their part, have positively incapacitated
them to cherish any such sense of southern obligation ?
2

26 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
Apart from the words of the Constitution, you perceive
there was nothing, in the whole condition of things, to
justify, but everything to nullify the alleged expectation
fathers. 6. The great official act of the fathers. — Did not the
fathers themselves bury deep in the Constitution all north
ern right to expect the speedy abolition of slavery by
the South ? Consider —
1. The Attitude of the Parties. — The manner in which
the opposing sections of the country came together to
form a common government, is vividly exhibited in the
debates of the convention. They had common ties,
but conflicting interests. The North expected to live by
her ships; the South by her slaves. The North was
deeply revolted by the slave-claims of the South ; and
the South as deeply purposed that their rejection should
work her exclusion from the union. An agricultural
people, the South required free-trade, because it would
secure low freights. While the North, a commercial
population, required a navigation act, because a prohibi
tion upon foreign bottoms would operate a premium upon
Northern ships. In a word — if the North and the South
formed a copartnership, Northern sentimeDts must con
cede to Southern institutions ; and Southern exports
must be taxed for Northern commerce. Just here it was
that the North and the South were brought to a dead
lock. Just around these conflicting points were laid down
the foundations of our government. And precisely to
this conflict and compromise must we ever come back
for all just interpretation of the Constitution of the coun
try. The Eastern states declared through their represen
tatives — " we have but one motive to Union — and that is

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 27
commerce;" without a navigation act, we "are ruined."
Tlie Southern states respond — we have no motive to
Union if slavery is not protected ; and a navigation law
would destroy its profits. Thus " the two grand divi
sions of Northern and Southern interests," as they were
styled, stood diametrically opposed to each other, not less
in the purposes of the parties, than in the nature of things.
Good reason had Pierce Butler to declare, " the interests
of the North and the South were as far apart as those of
Russia and Turkey." What was to be done ? Consider.
2. The Compromise Effected. — " Government, to be last
ing, must be founded in the confidence and affection of
the people." The convention felt the necessity of mutual
accommodation, and appointed a committee of conference
and compromise comprising one member from each state.
Specially, the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of Art.
Seventh, were referred to them ; and generally in the
language of Governeur Morris — " the whole subject" of their
differences. On the side of the South were committed
the claims of her domestic institution and her opposi
tion to commercial restrictions. On the side of the North
her opposition to the slave-claims of the South, and her
desire for commercial regulations.
Governeur Morris stated the object of the committee
in these words — " that these things (these sectional differ
ences) may form a bargain among the Northern and
Southern states." Madison subsequently alluding to the
transaction, styled it " an understanding on the two sub
jects of navigation and slavery between the two parts of
the Union." Concerning the action of the committee,
Luther Martin, a prominent member, writes thus: "I
found the Eastern states, notwithstanding their aversion

28 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
to slavery, willing to indulge the Southern states, &c,
provided the Southern states would gratify them by lay
ing no restriction on navigation acts." Through the
mercy of God the parties conferred, agreed, and thus
removed all obstacles to the formation of a National
Union. When the agreement, in detail, was carried out
in the stipulations of the Constitution, the South had
surrendered two things — her claim to indefinite importa
tion was restricted to a term of twenty years, and her
protection against navigation acts was reduced from the
two-thirds vote recommended by " the Committee of
Detail" to the vote of a majority. But she secured her
great desideratum, her slave claims, person and property
representation, taxation, &c. The North surrendered her
public opposition to the domestic institution of the South,
and secured for so doing a limitation of the right of
importation, and what was of far greater importance to
her, all necessary commercial advantages. Consider:
3. The Work Done. — The North surrendered, at once
and for ever, all political right and philosophical reason
to expect that the South would speedily abolish or depre
ciate her institution of slavery. After such a wheeling to
the right-about in the new ground assumed, with what
face could "the fathers" either require or expect that
slavery should speedily disappear ? If any power on earth
could have perpetuated slavery, that very power they
themselves emphatically employed. If any act of man
could have destroyed his right to expect the rapid disap
pearance of slavery, that very act they themselves per
formed. Bear in mind, they themselves had just
entrenched slavery in the Constitution, and built up all
the bulwarks of the government round about her every

THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 29
strong point. Say ! If strangers set up slavery, do they
thereby authorize their own expectation that masters
would throw it down f If opponents honored andpreserved
slavery, could they thereby expect its advocates to discoun
tenance and destroy it. Aye! They had made the Con
stitution itself open the door of the whole country to an
illimitable introduction of slaves for the space of twenty
years — a period, in the estimation of Mr. Madison, long
enough to insure all the mischiefs of interminable impor
tation. If Northern men so extensively augmented and
built up slavery, could they thereby acquire a right to ex
pect that Southern men would diminish and abolish it?
What shall we say now of that historical statement which
has been so industriously and indignantly bandied about
amongst the people for years past to the perpetration of
incalculable injury to the character of the South, and the
peace of the country ? What shall we think of Senator
Seward's censorious dictum* — that — The fathers expected
that slavery, within a short period, would disappear for
ever?" We answer: All history and reason pronounce
it a declaration perfectly preposterous ! Was not slavery
dying out at the north ? Yes ! But the very power
which diminished it at the north developed it at the south.
Did not a great anti-slavery wave flow over the country
at the close of the revolutionary war? Yes! But it
was a principle which did not do its work in southern
men, and could not hold its ground in northern men, and
seemed to find its principal mission in proclaiming the
power of that assaulted institution, before which it broke
down so emphatically in the debates of the convention.
Were there no words of predicted relaxations in time to
* Speeches, passim.

30 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
come? Yes! a very feeble conjecture of some possible
depreciation in a mere accident of slavery. But even
that feeble note was soon drowned by the loud counter-
protestations of a host of hearts purposed to yield nothing,
but stand by their institution to the very last. Was
nothing done towards breaking the power of slavery, and
arresting its progress in time to come? Yes ! The pro
secution of a contingent operation of slavery was reduced
from an unlimited to a definite period. But slavery
established all her main positions, and by such an over
throw of mighty powers arrayed against her as must have
charged many an adverse mind with the strongest expec
tation of her vigorous future. But were there no signs
of decay in the declining hope of the master and the
stagnant condition of the country ? Precisely the
reverse ! Of all sections of the Union the south was
then the most flourishing and the most hopeful.
Besides ! tell me how that heart, whose ancestor
had oppressed the slave as the southern man never
did, which, at this very moment, is still holding on to
the slave after the last good reason in his own mind for
his detention has departed — which, in opposition to
southern votes, opened the door for twenty years to an
African influx, whose multiplied descendants may this
day make up more than half of the slaves of the nation —
Tell me, I say, how such a heart can cherish a cotem-
poraneous claim upon the south to the speedy abandon
ment of her institution. But, above all, tell me how
can that heart which has just now constitutionalized
slavery — has just now thrown around it all the protec
tions, and shed upon it all the countenance of the govern
ment, and given it all the force and power which mortal

THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 31
man can convey — tell me, I say, hoiv, how can such a heart
hold a rational or an honest expectation that the southern
man, through some insinuated pledges to the north, will
speedily set himself to the work of dismissing slavery
from the land ! In all the history of the times, in all
the reason of things, in all the obligations of virtue,
where can you find one solid inch of ground in the mind
of the fathers to hold up their alleged " expectation V
Surely not in the covetous nature of man, not in the
consistent abolitionism of the expectants, not in the
concessory pledges of the defendants, not in the practical
results of the Convention, not in the more flourishing
prospects of the southern people, not in the covenant to
hand up southern slavery to the platform of the consti
tution upon the proviso that she will consent to shake
hands there with northern commerce.
II. Has the south transgressed her constitutional rela
tions to the subject of slavery and encroached upon the
north ? What were the relations of the south to slavery
as established by the founders ofthe government.
Be it remembered : Not one word of discountenance
of the essential principles of the institution is recorded in
the constitution of the country. Not one word of pledge
has the south ever uttered, either that she would not
uphold slavery through all time, or that she would sur
render one of its principles, or abandon therefor one of
the immunities of the government, or that she would
diminish its force in the future, or consent to its confine
ment within specified limits. On the contrary, the deci
sive fact is this : barring the limitation of the slave-
trade, the national compact expressly recognised all the

32 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
principles, practices, and claims of slavery which were
represented in the convention by the delegates of the
planting States.
Behold the programme bodily imbedded in the heart of
the constitution. For all time to come, and for all the ter
ritory and population of the earth, now belonging to the
great American Union, or that "may be included" within
her dominions hereafter, there stands the great constitu
tional status of all national enumeration, representation,
and taxation, there it stands — mark ! embracing the " three-
fifths of all other persons!" When these slaves fly from
the service of the master, while this government exists,
there stands the constitutional guarantee that on any
foot of the nation's soil to which he may have escaped,
on claim of that master, to whom the constitution says
his services are justly due — the fugitive " shall be de
livered up." When these slaves rise in revolt against
the master, while this government has a name on earth,
there stands the constitutional guarantee, that Congress
shall stretch out her strong arm in defence of the master,
and in suppression of the insurgents. Thus, in the
very clearest and strongest language, the constitution
guarantees to the South all maintenance and carrying
out of the principles and practices of slavery, to which she
had been accustomed before the formation of the Union.
The very feeblest statement, therefore, of the true
slavery position of the South, we take to be this : By
constitutional enactment, the South is entitled to all such
tolerance and countenance on the subject of slavery, both in
language and in conduct, as shall afford her a reasonable
opportunity of securing the profits of the institution, without
being scandalized for its practice.

THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 33
We hold that the provisions of the constitution, fairly
interpreted, furnish ample proof of this definition.
The nature of the guarantees supports it. When they
built up all the bulwarks of the constitution around
every principle and practice of slavery, what did the
fathers mean ? Surely to fortify to the South all the
ordinary customs of slavery, without insult or encroach
ment, while the government stands. He who grants a
privilege conveys all that is necessary to the reasonable
enjoyment of that which is granted. The North gua
rantees Slavery to the South. If now she defames
Slavery, will not arrest the abstraction of slaves, and
even obstructs the rendition of slaves, just so far she
takes back what she had granted, diminishes the benefits
and comforts of the relation, and breaks her guarantees.
Again, if, on the one hand, the North sincerely deems
slavery a state of society whose impiety, impolicy, and
outrage should be publicly exposed on all occasions, then
she makes herself particeps criminis by her guarantee of
toleration ; but if, on the other, slavery, under the cir
cumstances, might be justifiably tolerated, then she lies
under every obligation to secure to the slaveholder —
what constitutional language so obviously implies — a
comfortable, unobstructed prosecution of his guaranteed
custom of society. If any man still denies that the
nature of the guarantees demands a practical and respect
ful toleration of the institution, let him compare the
warring attitudes of the North, first in framing, and then
in interpreting the constitution. Standing up to form
the constitution, the Northern man says to his Southern
neighbor, " Yes ! we will concede all you require. On
the one hand, your slaves shall enjoy all the dignities you

34 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
would have conferred upon them. Like other men of
the country, they shall be counted in tbe national census,
constitute subjects of direct taxation, and be represented in
all the dignities and authorities of the country. Nor, on
the other hand, will we refuse to exact from them all the
degradation you yourselves have been pleased to pre
scribe. When they come from Africa, as you say, they
shall be ' articles' — 'taxed,' 'dutied,' and 'priced,' like
all ' other imports.' When they fly from your service,
cost the nation what it may, from any foot of her soil —
by her military arm, if necessary — they shall be de
livered up to him to whom his service is ' justly' ' due.'
Should any man dispute your right of service, our
courts shall stand by the constitution, and pronounce the
slave the property of his master. And finally, should
that slave ever venture to rise up against you, the strong
arm of the nation shall shoot him down at your feet,
but he shall be subdued to your just dominion. Yes!
all this will we do. Come, now ! let us shake hands in
an honorable, fraternal national covenant." The com
pact is made. But the moment the Northern man comes
to officiate as interpreter, his construction destroys his
contract ! How changed his language and tone ! " Now
that we have constitutionally anchored you in the Union,
you must allow us to say, we hate your institution, and
can never fraternize with you fully until you abandon it.
We claim unrestrained liberty to denounce and disgrace
it on every hand ; nor shall we ever cease our obloquy
and opposition until we degrade and drive it from the
free soil of our country." Our sketch is boldly drawn,
we acknowledge ; but we need hardly say, that any such
construction of our national constitution as warrants

THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 35
either an abusive or an obstructive intermeddling with the
subject of slavery, is a palpable destruction of its face
and force. Clearly, protection of the principles and cus
toms of slavery in language obliges to the protection of
the principles and habits of slavery in practice. Where
is the consistency of that man who says, " I will solemnly
authorize you to hold man in slavery, but I will habi
tually castigate you for the rascality of the deed. By all
the power of the nation, judicial and military, I will
assuredly return to you your flying slave ; but I will
spit upon the baseness that demands the rendition ?"
We hold, therefore, that the guarantees of the constitu
tion, in themselves considered, demand of the North that
she secure to the South such a peaceful carrying out of
her peculiar state of society as shall never be disturbed,
either by provoking defamation or practical interruption.
2. The origin of the guarantees fully corroborates
the definition laid down. At the close of the Revolu
tionary war, when the South set out to meet the North
to form a national government, she was in a great
strait. The North would put down slavery. The South
must uphold slavery. Her character, peace, honor,
power, prosperity, business, and home, were all insepa
rably identified with her institution. A man had almost
' as well covenant to tear out and surrender a bone of his
body, or a faculty of his mind, as the South agree to
surrender or disparage her inherited social organization,
or constitutionalize such treatment of it by others. She
travelled to the Convention every way compelled and
resolved to have the rights of her institution written out
in full in the Magna Charta of the country, or return to
her home as independent as she left it. Nor did the

36 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
North and the South confer many days before the North
became perfectly convinced, that the South, in position
could not, and in temper would not, yield on the subject
of slavery. As the only term of union, the South de
manded that she should be allowed to transact her own
affairs in her own way ; and since her ways of slavery
were not ways of pleasantness to the North, she dis
tinctly demanded all constitutional protection in carrying
out her social views and customs as she had done from
time immemorial. Now, let it be remembered, it was in
consideration of this demand of the South, that the
North, after mature deliberation, subscribed the slavery
guarantees of the constitution. Most certainty, then,
the North intended to give what the South required, as
the sine qua non of her confederation. These constitu
tional guarantees, therefore, which in terms convey
every right of slavery to parties interested, and which
in history were subscribed in view of a resolute, inflex
ible demand of all reasonable protection, most certainly
do secure to the South, while the government stands, a
constitutional right to prosecute her system of domestic
slavery without defamation, intermeddling, or obstruction
on the part of the North.
3. The objectt of the guarantees confirms our definition
of the rights of the South. The North and the South
had set out to form a harmonious national family; to
construct a peaceful, happy, and prosperous Union of the
two sections of the country. The object of confedera
tion decides the conduct of the parties. Whatever con
tributed to accomplish this object was right and cove
nanted; whatever exerted au opposite influence was
wrong and covenanted against, N>w these slavery

THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 37
guarantees were granted expressly to carry out this fra
ternal co-existence of the parties. They were delibe
rately framed and subscribed to prevent all dissatisfac
tion and collision ; and to promote mutual respect and
friendly co-operation. In view of the special object of
all the slavery clauses of the Constitution, therefore,
the South was and is entitled to a peaceful, respectful,
and profitable prosecution of her inherited social cus
toms ; and the North was, and is proportionably bound
to abstain from all such courses of language and conduct
as were calculated to disturb the peace, destroy the
respect, or obstruct the profits of her institution.
We are forced to conclude, therefore, that the language
of the constitutional guarantees, the demand they were
framed to meet, and the object for which they were sub
scribed, incontestably establish two facts. First. By the
Constitution of the United States of America, the South
has secured to her while the government stands, a
national right to hold slaves, and of course to buy, sell,
employ, transport, and universally manage them as
she had ever been accustomed to do. While, by the
same Constitution, the North has deliberately surren
dered all right, while the government stands, to dis
honor, and provoke, or confine the South by any sort of
intermeddling with her institution.
Has the South ever stepped beyond this broad, well-
guarded Constitutional platform of Southern rights? It
is said that she has. Her attempt lo take her slaves into
ihe Territories is pronounced an encroachment upon
Northern rights. But wherein lies the trespass ?
1. Were not the Territories equally won by the
prowess or purchased by the treasure of the South ? If

38 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
you deny the Southern man's right to carry his slaves
with him into the Territories, you destroy his Constitu
tional property. For the use ofthe owner — is the primary
idea of property, and that use you obstruct.
2. The explicit language of the Constitutional guaran
tees sustains this general view, and settles the question.
The Constitution has distinctly settled the rule of appor
tionment^?- representatives and direct taxes — in two rela
tions. First, for the states already included in the
Union. The Constitutional rule of apportionment for
these, requires that you add " to the whites," ,f three-fifths
of all other persons." Mark ! The act of the Constitu
tion is this : in the Stales — it presupposes the existence
of slavery, and secures to slavery a share in the privileges
and burdens of the government. But this is not all.
The Constitution goes out to every inch of the bounda
ries of the present states. It looks over into the Terri
tories and upon the people all around. It is familiar
with the idea of " new States." It expects their annexa
tion, and makes a rule of apportionment touching repre
sentation, not only for the states now included, but
also for those states which " may be included" hereafter.
What is that rule ? The Constitution determines that on
admission, they, too, shall be allowed, in connexion with
the whites, a " three-fift/is representation for all other per
sons," i. e. for their slaves.
Now, he who says there shall be no more slave states,
exactly crushes out the Constitution. For the Constitu
tion says to adjacent territories, "In the present condi
tion of the population of the world, it is quite possible
that you may have slaves or choose to have them ; should
it be that you so have or choose, our provision for the

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 39
contingency is this : — -when you come into the Union,
your slaves, like those of the present states, shall have " a
three fifths" representation in the government. Thus, it is
undeniable, that the great Constitutional rule for the
apportionment of the privileges and burdens of the
government, presupposes, we repeat, presupposes, that
slavery may inhabit the Territories, which are to be annexed
as states. He, therefore, who says "True! There may
be slaves in the Territories in fact, and if not, slaves are
certainly in the Territories by Constitutional admission;
but it matters not, you shall not take your slaves there ;"
palpably, that man sets himself above the Constitution,
and stamps himself the encroaching party.
3. The constitutional provision of Art. 1, quoted
above, in a large sense, nationalizes slavery. The " three-
fifths representation and taxation of all other persons,"
is not a grant or guarantee limited to the South. It is
just as applicable to the North as to the South. Every
Northern and Middle State in the Union may avail
itself, this day, of this universal provision of our
national standard. State sovereignty, it is true, may
reject slavery at will ; but if slavery does not obtain in
every State in the Union, it is not because our constitu
tion has not laid down a basis for slavery and its claims,
as large as the country — the whole country over which
it flings its authority. Where now is the consistency
of the Northern territorial doctrine ? The constitution
has spread out a foundation for slavery throughout all
her States, but denied it to all her territories. Why should
she do this ? If slavery is an evil, why is it not an evil
in the States ? If slavery may be allowed in the States,
why not in the territories ? Besides, where the consti-

40 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
tution makes rules, it makes them for all under its author
ity. And where is the first constitutional word excepting
the territories from the great broad rule ofthe constitution ?
4. Wisdom and the wise stand by our interpretation
of the constitution. James Madison, discoursing upon
the introduction of new States, remarks : " I am clear and
firm in opinion that no unfavorable distinctions are admis
sible in point of justice and policy," and adds, that " the
Western States neither would nor ought to submit to a
union which degraded them from an equality with other
States." "The best policy," says Col. Mason, "is to
treat them with that equality which will make them
friends and not enemies." Shut out, now, the South
from the territories. Express to them your operation.
" You people of the South are not upon an equality with
us. You mix yourselves up with things which should
not be admitted in a well-regulated community. We
cannot allow you to come into the common territory of
the country with your slaves." Those " unfavorable dis
tinctions " which Madison says are inadmissible violations
both of policy and of justice, and ought not to be submit
ted to, observe, if you please, the Northern doctrine does
not practise upon territories seeking admission into the
Union, though this were bad enough ; but perpetrates
upon five of the old thirteen States. It puts them in
Coventry, and says, " stand by, we are holier than you."
How inadmissible, how impracticable are all such invi
dious distinctions in a family of free States I Distraction
unto dissolution, must ever follow degradation from
political equality. We affirm, therefore, that the neces
sary fruits of the Northern territorial doctrine establish
its heretical parentage.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 41
5. Consult the contracting mind of the North and
of the South when forming the constitution. The
Southern men, though slaveholders, respected them
selves, and were deeply purposed to be respected by
others or have no union with them. Suppose our
Northern doctrine had burst into the mind of the fathers,
and found nerve enough there to address the Southern
delegates in the following language. "So long as you
keep at home with your slaves, we will endure you.
But in all coming time, when our boundaries shall be
enlarged, and fresh lands shall throw open their fertile
bosom to our people and invite their occupancy, and stir
up a mighty emigrant spirit in the country, upon this
common soil of the nation, which you have equally con
tributed to acquire, we shall never allow you to trespass
with your miserable institution. Its barbarous cruelties,
immoralities, and insufferable dishonor, we cannot away
with ! You may come in person, but you shall never
enter our national territories with your slaves." Had
this doctrine been declared on that day, in terms ever so
decorous and kind, I need say, there never had been our
United States of America. No! never! The entire spirit,
principles, language, and conduct of the Southern dele
gates throughout the five months of constitutional dis
cussion, emphatically evince this. Let one indication of
their determined protection of their institution and into
lerance of Northern intermeddling suffice. When James
Madison read his resolution in the convention, proposing
a method of altering the constitution, and Alexander Ha
milton seconded it, Rutledge, of South Carolina, sprang to
his feet and said : " I never can agree to give a power, by
which the articles relating to slaves might be altered by

42 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
the States not interested in that property, but prejudiced
against it." What an unreasonable resistance! The
power that made the constitution shall have no power to
alter it to the damage of slavery! How firmly and
fiercely those men stood by .their principles! They
would not trust Southern interests in Northern hands,
though protected by a national constitution — if that con
stitution had not the virtue of the legislation of the
Medes and Persians. It was indeed a very bold demand.
But the fathers had passed through too many conflicts.
Well they knew there could be no union, if they did not
deal quietly and wisely with the temper and position of
these men. Mr. Madison, on calling to mind the great
interest of the South in exports and importation at that
time, very ingeniously proposed an amendment, yielding
to the objection for twenty years, by stipulating that the
fourth and fifth sections of Art. 7, embracing these and
other points, should not be alterable before 1808, by any
power. The convention passed the amendment nem. con.,
and the objector was appeased.
If any man would learn the genius of the Ame
rican constitution, and the character and position of
its Southern framers, he should never forget one car
dinal interpreting fact. -The South felt that she had
no motive for union but generous appreciation of
Northern fellowship and aid in the Revolutionary
war. Their interests were all adverse to union, in
their honest judgment. They must bring their slaves
with them : it was their life. This, they knew, would
revolt the North, and work ceaseless chafing. They
must favor Northern commerce : this, they knew, would
just so far diminish the profits of slave labor. They

THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 43
frequently declared to their Northern brethren, "inde
pendent, we can now sustain ourselves, united, we gain
nothing but risk all." There, exactly, lay the secret of their
power. They felt that they did not seek union, and deeply
determined that they would not peril their vital rights to
secure it. No man can read the Madison papers and fail
to be convinced, first, that nothing could have induced
the Northern delegates to propose the present Northern
territorial doctrine in the convention ; and second, if
they had proposed and persistently pressed it, our present
national government would never have been formed.
That our national territories are as open to the South
as to the North is undeniable. Strong popular preju
dice, however, disqualifies us to sit in impartial judg
ment upon the great modern question — Whether the
Southern man may not take his slaves with him when
he seeks a home in the territories of the country ?
And yet, in defiance of all prejudice, the consider
ations advanced, which we now repeat, would seem
to place the matter beyond a question. 1. On the one
hand every man has a right to carry his property wher
ever he takes his person ; on the other, without one syl
lable of limitation, the constitution pronounces slaves
to be property, not only by the force of the plainest
words, but by the most significant disposition of them.
2. In the essential structure of its leading principles, the
constitution presupposes the existence of slaveholding
territories, and would hardly forbid a slave to go where
it supposes a slave to oe. 3. Having laid a broad basis
for the claims of slavery throughout all our American
States, the constitution could hardly have intended to
deny such a basis to all our American territories. 4.

44 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
If disparaging distinctions, an American statesman,
discussing the constitution, pronounces so unjust, un
wise, and insufferable, that even Territories should not
submit to them, he would hardly consider them admis
sible amongst confederate States. 5. The sensitive and
resolute stand of the Southern man to secure all rights
and reject all indignities in defence of slavery, could
hardly have brooked the censorious exclusion of slavery
from the equal enjoyment of common national property.
Surely the South would sooner have parted with the
Union and kept unsullied her honor and her ancient
institution, than parted with her constitutional rights
in the territories and her honor, and kept nothing but
the name of Union and the mockeries of it. 6. Let all
these considerations be deemed invalid, yet the decision
of the Supreme Court settles the question.
National territories are obtained by purchase, gift,
and arms. That the South paid her part in all territo
rial acquisition will not be denied. When the pulse of
the North beats more generously they will find some
apology for Southern sensitiveness on this subject by a
strict comparison of her own gift of square miles to the
government, and amount of military service winning
territory, with the territorial donations and blood-shed
ding of the South.
If the South perpetrated no encroachment upon the
North when she preferred an equal claim to common
property, where shall we look for the encroachments of
the South? Verily encroachments upon the North
seem not a little like a myth in the brain of a dema
gogue. The vox populi it is which secures his per
sonal re-election and the success of his party. These

THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 45
are all he lives for. It is his very life therefore to
know, study, and practise whatever creates a sensation,
tells upon personal or party issues, gives or breaks a
blow — in a word carries the people. That the glaring
antagonism of the North, in the political world, would
raise the cry of Southern encroachment, was almost as
certain as that the constitution of things in the material
world will lift the sun every morning. But why should
the South encroach upon the North ? What has she
to gain by the effort ? What has she to encourage the
attempt ? The public sentiment of the world is against
her ! The predominant power of the North is against
her ! The very constitution of things will fling in her
face Northern soil, Northern climate, and Northern
experiment. By past agitation, galled almost beyond
endurance, what can make her so ready to provoke
heavier persecutions ? No, indeed ! Take the slavery
ofthe South as it was when Southern delegates travelled
North to make a constitution for the country ; take that
very condition of slavery as it was then and there without
stint, stereotyped in the constitution, and go now, not to
politicians, or the press, or the party spirit of the day,
but in some time of calmness, go down amongst the
planters of the South, and visit the great body of the
people at their firesides, and sound them as to their
views and feelings, and those of their fathers, on all
this subject, and, my word for it, you will come back
perfectly convinced that there has scarce been a day
since Southern men signed the constitution, when the
great body of the Southern people would not have been
content in the Union, if the North had but secured to
the slaveholder that ordinary social respect, and those

46 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
political and private rights conceded to him in the con
stitution. To deny that there have been occasions in
the history of the country when the South claimed too
much, and trespassed upon the rights of the North, is
to deny their humanity. Justice, however, requires us
to acknowledge that, in general, such transgressions
did not find their origin in the spirit and principle of
the people so much as in the schemes and arts of poli
ticians. On the whole, let a candid man inform himself in
the premises, and duly weigh — 1. The peaceful object
of confederation, and thence Southern right to kind
treatment ; 2. The preliminary requirement of the
South, involving Southern demand of respectful treat
ment ; 3. The constitutional guarantees subscribed to
meet it, carrying a Northern pledge of courteous treat
ment ; 4. The fact that these guarantees are weakened
by no concessions to Northern fathers — in connexion
with the further fact of an apparent absence of all
strong inducements to such trespass ; and he will be
prepared to believe that the South, in her general
course of procedure from the days of the Revolution,
cannot be justly charged with overstepping the consti
tutional bounds of slavery to invade the rights of the
North. We submit it now to the fair-minded, honorable man,
if our Northern fathers never received the shadow of
a pledge from the South that slavery should be speedily
abolished, then we, their sons, should not be quick to
charge her with the spirit of encroachment simply
because, in our day, Southern men stand strongly upon
their constitutional guarantees, wrhich they must do to live.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 47
Let us go farther, and throw out of our hearts all that
provocation of temper we, the sons, have suffered our
selves both to cherish and to diffuse, by acting upon the
principle that the South in this day is both retaining
and enlarging objectionable foundations, which she had
long since promised to abandon.
And finally, let us welcome the sentiment, that since
we have so deeply wronged her conduct in the past, we
are more bound to right her principles in the future.
In reference to the argument closed, and that I am
about to commence, and indeed to all I have said, or
shall say, I wish to be understood as desiring to do
ample justice and honor to the principles and motives of
a great body of my brethren and countrymen, who feel
that, for many excellent reasons, the system of slavery
should be discouraged. But the point to which I would
hold the consciences of these friends is this : — If you can
not accomplish your purpose save by countenancing the
modern system of abuse and hindrance, is not your con
duct immoral? Do you not sanction the palpable
infraction of a solemn covenant ?
III. Has not the North violated her constitutional obliga
tions upon this subject, by encroaching upon ihe South ?
What are the constitutional relations of the North to
the subject of slavery ?
We have seen that the constitutional convention
nationalized southern slavery. I know that this is
offensive language to many persons. I would disturb
no man ; but truth and justice require a candid exami
nation of the position assumed. If the convention did
not nationalize slavery, how came Governeur Morris to

48 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
say that " domestic slavery is the most prominent fea
ture of the aristocratic countenance of the proposed
constitution." If not, how came Luther Martin to
complain, " This system of slavery, which bound hand
and foot ten states of the Union, and placed them under
the most abject and servile subjection, was approved by
a majority of the members of the convention." Let me
hasten to explain. I do not say that slavery was nation
alized in any such sense as to compel any man to become
or remain, a slaveholder; nor that state sovereignty
may not admit or exclude it, at pleasure ; nor that every
man may not entertain any opinion of the institution he
pleases. But the constitution has nationalized the insti
tution of slavery in these two important respects : every
man in the country, so far as the constitution is con
cerned, may hold slaves if he pleases ; and every slave
holder has the government of the country both to secure
and to enforce all its recorded immunities and liabilities.
In view of this undeniable fact, the constitutional
relations of the North to the South may be stated thus .
The North covenanted, by all the sanctions of the con
stitution, that they and their posterity, while the govern
ment stands, would never harass, dishonor, or obstruct
the South in the reasonable maintenance and enjoyment
of that domestic institution which makes up so large a
part of Southern society.
This position has been substantially discussed, and we
trust sustained in view of the language, the origin, and
the object of the constitutional stipulations upon the sub
ject. If corroboration is required, we shall find it by
changing our line of investigation from generals to par
ticulars. The South sought protection. The North con-

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 49
ceded guarantees— guarantees, protection — of what ?
Clearly of all that needed and sought protection in the
circumstances. Clearly then the South required, and
the North granted, protection of those great natural rights
which the South felt must be greatly exposed by an inti
mate union with the North.
Nations, as well as individuals, have a right of charac
ter— -a right to be considered to be what they are. By
nature all mankind feel this right — and the value of it,
both to their power and their peace. The South did not
disrespect herself on account of her connexion with
slavery; yet for this very connexion she knew the
North would be strongly tempted to depreciate her.
Whatever, therefore, might be the private opinions of
her northern neighbors, she demanded of the North a
demonstration of respect which should protect her cha
racter against all such public wholesale defamation as
would destroy her reputation, peace, self-respect, and
influence in the Union. It is utterly preposterous to
imagine for an instant that the South would have
accepted the northern guarantees, had it been announced
at the time that they should constitute no protection
against that flood of vilifying speeches, paragraphs, and
epithets poured out upon her, through a multitude of
northern channels, during the last twenty years.
Every nation, as well as person, is entitled to civil
treatment. Self-respect in all humanity feels this right,
and understands perfectly how much power in the world
and comfort, in life depend upon its preservation. The
South well knew that her claims to ordinary courtesy
would be greatly exposed by close confederation with
the North. Nor did she consent to the proposed union
3

50 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
until she considered her claims to common civility pro
tected by the articles of the Constitution. How utterly
preposterous is the thought, that the South, with all her
quick, high-strung sensibility, would have entered into
the union, had it been published at the time that the
provisions of the Constitution were not designed to
protect her feelings from all the scandal and abuse — all
the scoffs and taunts which have been so lavishly show
ered upon her from the North for many long years.
Every nation, too, has its right cf property. This the
South well knew she must protect, and sought to do so.
But there had been no union of these States, if the
South in early days had been thus addressed: — "It
shall be deemed no impeachment of the constitutional
integrity of the North, if she stands by for a long
course of years, and does nothing to arrest the outrage,
while -slxe-is divested of tens of millions of southern—
moneys by the adverse agency of northern men, private
and organized, and often published and boasted ; no
impeachment of her constitutional integrity, though
there should spring up in the bosom of northern popu
lation a wide-spread and violent prejudice against the
constitutional rendition of the fugitive, and northern
legislation give it countenance.
Finally, nations have a right of happiness ; and who
will contend that there has been a faithful protection of
the guaranteed rights of the South on this head, when
he reflects how deeply her peace has been disturbed by
unkind, unceasing assaults upon her reputation, her feel
ings, her property, and all her foundations of comfort
and prosperity ?
Can a reasonable man pretend to deny that the South

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 51
sought and the North granted constitutional protection
of her great natural rights? Ifthe great personal rights
of the South were not shielded by the guarantees of the
Constitution, of what use were they ? If they were not
framed and proffered for this purpose, how came the
South to accept them ? If, on the contrary, they did
cover the great natural rights of the South, and were
framed and offered for this express purpose, then the
North covenanted, by all the sacred authorities of the
Constitution of the country, that they and those who
should represent them through the following genera
tions, while the government stands, would see to it
that the South should not be harassed, dishonored,
or obstructed while legitimately sustaining the institu
tion of her fathers, but that her valuable rights of
character, courtesy, property, and happiness, should be
duly guaranteed under the wing of the Union. Is not
this argument irrefragably sealed by that great principle
of interpretation pertinent to all language, and especially
to that of contracts, viz. — that words are to be inter
preted as bearing the sense in which the speaker knows
that the party addressed understands them. Did not the
North know that by her constitutional guarantees, the
South would expect from her an honorable and a peace
able union, although she brought her institution of
slavery with her ?
An embarrassing question springs up here. The
North, we contend, is bound to protect the character
of the South. But the North may sincerely believe
that there are many serious evils connected with this
Southern institution. Has she now surrendered all her
rights of judgment and speech in the premises?

52 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
Certainly not. Where then shall we draw the line of
discrimination between the duties and the rights of the
Northern man under the guarantees of the constitution ?
On the one hand, we are free to say, that the rights
of private judgment and free speech are so undeni
able and inestimable that, rather than submit to the
mischiefs of their permanent invasion amongst men,
far better sacrifice forthwith the noblest nation earth
ever saw. We hold therefore, if any man conceives
that slavery is sin against God, or a political mischief,
or involving personal and social degradation, &c,
he has a perfect right to entertain such views ; a per
fect right to express them to his fellow-men ; a perfect
right, by all decorous, earnest, and protracted discus
sion, to convince him of their truth, and if possible bring
him to adopt them. Yes, indeed ! A more sacred,
vital, and inalienable right — human nature never
received from the hand of God. But on the other
hand, the moment a Northern man goes beyond fair
argument and decorous persuasion on the subject of
slavery, and commences any form of uncourteous
address, censorious charges, belligerent agitation, or
irritating conduct, that moment he not only departs
from the rules of ordinary decorum, but violates the
great sectional compact, and exerts a power delibe
rately surrendered in the constitution. Evidently all
such conduct has a tendency to irritate and alienate
Southern men, and thus break the national union. It
is therefore a style of procedure from which the
Northern man, by the object of confederation, stands
pledged to abstain. Evidently all such conduct is a
departure from that spirit of civility and forbearance,

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 53
on the subject of slavery, for which the Southern man
substantially stipulated, and which the Northern man
substantially agreed to exercise. It is consequently
conduct in violation of his solemn covenant in the con
stitution. In a word, since the objects of our national
union never could be accomplished, if one party were
interminably exposed to the harassing and degrading
assaults of the other, therefore beyond the civil utterance
of truth — whatever in feeling, language, or conduct
brought to bear upon the relation of slavery is calcu
lated to inflame the Southern man, and disaffect him
towards the North, and stir up the Northern man and
disaffect him towards the South, is a breach of the great
covenant of union. Clearly, therefore, all malignant,
contemptuous, and hostile feelings ; all wounding, pro
voking, and defamatory language ; all depreciating,
scandalizing, and injurious publications ; all speeches
delivered, parties organized, and papers published pur
posely to invalidate, unsettle, and overthrow the South
ern institution ; all public and private denials of the con
stitutional claims of the South ; all political declarations
that slavery has no reliable guarantees in the constitu
tion and must be abolished ; all administration of the
government with a view to undermine and eradicate
slavery ; all popular prejudice and state legislation that
obstructs the enforcement of recorded rights; all under
handed attempts to disaffect the slave at home, and all
organizations and efforts public or private to bear the
fugitive beyond the reach of recovery ; all attempts to
stir up insurrection by incendiary publications, secret
conspiracy, or open invasion — all, all such agencies,
and all justifications or apologies for the same, are a

54 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
palpable breach of faith, a provoking denial of the great
American sectional compact. Who questions the im
morality of such conduct ? That it tends to break up
that harmony of the national family we had engaged to
promote, all must see. That it works this mischief by
dishonorable abandonment of constitutional obligations,
none can doubt.
Thus that the guarantees obliged the North by
language and conduct to practise all such tolerance on
the subject of slavery as would tend to secure to the
South reasonable enjoyment of her natural rights, in
order to a quiet, honorable, and happy fraternity in the
Union — is established by the following considerations :
1. All such toleration was demanded by the South as a
condition precedent to ^i confederation, and granted as
such. 2. All such toleration is so emphatically embraced
in the provisions of the constitution, that they mean
nothing without it. 3. All such toleration is indis
pensable to the preservation of the union formed.
If we were allowed to express the compact on the
part of our Northern fathers we should employ sub
stantially such language as the following : " We
covenant— not that we surrender those opinions on
the subject of slavery which we brought with us to the
convention, but that we will practise all respectful
tolerance of yours : not that we shall adopt your
customs upon the subject of slavery, but that you shall
not be molested in the support of them during the
entire period of our confederation : not that we will
honor or promote your institution, but that beyond the
language and influence of courteous suasion we will
not suffer it to be dishonored or opposed in any such

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 55
manner as shall wound, irritate, or alienate" your feel
ings, or molest and imperil our happy union.
If this is the j ust interpretation of the great laws of
the constitution on the point of Northern and Southern
differences, it is no difficult matter to decide which
party has adhered most closely to its constitutional obli
gations on the subject of slavery.
We do not believe, as we have contended above, that
the South can be fairly charged with any general spirit
or habit of disobedience to her constitutional duties.
But has the North kept her covenant ? Has she main
tained her integrity in carrying out her constitutional
engagements on this unhappy subject ? Has she always
or prevailingly spoken and acted with such considerate,
conscientious moderation and forbearance in the pre
mises as to give the South no ground of complaint ?
Has she said and done nothing calculated to disaffect
Southern men and break up their honorable and happy
co-operation in the Union ? Go and listen to any Re
publican speech on the floor of Congress. Go and
read any issue of the Republican press from one end of
the country to the other. Go and attend any Republi
can meetings, and give heed to their words and spirit
touching slavery and the South. Open your ears to
the conversations of men on the highways and at their
firesides. In a word, gather up from every outlet of
popular temper, from every exhibition of the spirit of
the people, the beatings of the public heart at the
North upon the subject of our sectional relations. Far
be it from any man to charge every utterance of every
member of the dominant party with intolerant hostility
to Southern institutions — far be it from us to deny that

56 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
many an American, while standing in the ranks of those
who are opposed to the social institutions and political
claims of the South, has yet manifested a generous and
high-souled appreciation of the character, condition,
and constitutional rights of the Southern section of our
common country. But who is he, so destitute of intel
ligence and candor as to aver that the every-day
national exhibitions of the mind of the nation bear no
testimony to him of a wide-spread and bitter anti-sla
very spirit, every way well calculated to provoke, dis
honor, and disunite the Southern branch of the national
family? The truth is, there is no need of specifica
tion upon this subject, for it must be obvious to every
candid mind that by every natural development, the
North has been making perpetual aggressions upon the
constitutional rights of the South, and lately with a
recklessness which seems to have utterly forgotten that
all this severe anti-slavery tone and movement in our
day is a palpable infraction of the very compact which
lies at the foundation of the American Union.
Let no man suppose that this antagonistic element in
Northern population is either limited or feeble. Study
its two great fountains of supply. Self-styled Aboli
tionism ! Its organizations and its organs may be
found in almost every portion north of the Potomac,
and beyond a question have been steadily augmenting
in number and power for the quarter of a century.
In 1840, Abolitionism changed its field — the Church for
the State — and set up apolitical in the place of ^religious
operation. The American Anti-slavery Society was
divided at that time. Those who retained the name —
from centres of influence, such as Boston, New York,

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 57
Pennsylvania, and Ohio, instead of struggling to intro
duce the community into their organizations, rather
labored to impress themselves upon the community,
employing for this purpose journals, agents, advocates,
conventions, lectures, tracts, &c. The measure of the
power and growth of Abolitionists, therefore, is to be
learned rather from the growth and power of their
principles in the community at large, than from any
appreciable catalogue of the body.
Judge its progress from its impression upon the
political world. That portion which seceded from the
parent society in 1840, threw themselves fully upon
the political arena, and started the so-called Liberty
Party. In 1840, they voted 7,000 ; in 1844, 64,000 ;
in 1848, about 100,000 ; in 1852, 150,000 ; and in 1860
elected Lincoln.
Judge its progress by its impression upon the reli
gious world. The American Missionary Association
seceded from the American Foreign and Home Mis
sionary Society, some fifteen years ago, because of their
silence upon the subject of slavery, and are supposed
in general to be immediate emancipationists. They
made their first report in 1847. They had received
but a small sum, and assisted but four Home Mission
aries. In 1852, they raised $30,000, and aided about
sixty Missionaries. In 1854, they collected $50,000,
and assisted near one hundred Missionaries. In 1860,
they report $64,000, and near one hundred and fifty
Missionaries. 'Tis true you cannot measure Abolitionism accurately
by any or all of these standards ; yet Abolitionism lies
at the foundation, and has been the moving power in
3*

58 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
these and other growing bodies, political and religious ;
and it is fair to infer from their steady, rapid growth in
numbers and power, the steady growth of the Abolition
principle during the last twenty years.
As to the temper of these fellow-citizens, with what
a demoniacal hate do they curse the Constitution and
its guarantees, and practically expel Southern men from
all possible affiliation with themselves ! What a divi
sive virus do they perpetually and resolutely radiate
through all the population of this latitude ! The second
fountain-head is strong anti-slavery or rank Republican
ism,. Its advocates strenuously disclaim the designa
tion of Abolitionists, but seldom fail to prove their
consanguinity by answering when Abolitionists are
called, and defending when Abolitionists are assailed.
This class of Northern population is far more nume
rous and influential. It must be admitted, too, that
like the Abolitionists, they do breathe out a public and
virulent hostility to slavery, by all their doctrines,
deliverances, and measures, which practically expels
the Southern man, if not from all possible, yet from all
comfortable political fellowship. Through all their
well-arranged and efficient organizations, journals, and
public and personal habits, as from a mighty magazine,
what a countless multitude and diversity of hostile
missiles are constantly showered upon the South ! The
circulation of the most powerful and mischievous politi
cal anti-slavery journal amounts to something like one
hundred thousand daily and two hundred thousand
weekly copies. If each paper goes to a family, and
each family consists of five persons, then this sheet, too
often spiced with a rich assortment of anti-Southern

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 59
arguments and flings, to a greater or less extent reaches
more than a million of Northern minds every week.
The most powerful and mischievous religious anti-
slavery journal has a subscription of near seventy
thousand — a circulation far outstripping that of any
religious paper of milder sentiments in the country —
and of late more rapidly increasing than ever. If these
two stand at the head of the catalogue, what a multi
tude of subordinate journals are perpetually running
through all parts of the North, publishing evil tidings
of the South ! Oh, let all our countrymen dwelling
this side the Potomac, ponder this fact. The North has
an appetite that demands, devours, and digests this
perpetual and prodigious flood of the very bitterest
anti-Southern aliment. Tell me, now, which party is
it that encroaches upon the other? Where are all the
solemn constitutional guarantees of the Southern insti
tution ? How can the North fulfil her covenant to
embrace the South in honorable union, while vigorously
training herself to kick the South out of all endurance ?
The growing power of anti-slavery sentiment is fur
ther manifested in its numerous secessions, in late years,
from the old foundations of Christian union. Time
was when Presbyterians and Congregationalists, as a
band of brethren, conducted all their missionary opera
tions in concert. But Anti-slavery forced off a strong
minority, who, for several years, have managed Home
and Foreign Missions upon their own principles. Until
recently, the same brethren could toil side by side in
the Tract cause ; but here, too, Anti-slavery has split
the body, and thrown a gulph between the parts.
Once Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and New-

60 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
School Presbyterians, could all march together under
their respective denominational banners ; but in late
years Anti-slavery has ruptured them all. Christian
union is powerful union : and that agent that can step
through the land and sunder all sorts of the most
venerable Christian families, cannot be feeble. It
should certainly enhance our conviction of the power
of extreme anti-slavery principles at the North, that
the sacred pulpit, and exalted political statesmanship,
the two strongest citadels of political rectitude, the two
last bulwarks against national dissolution, have long
been giving way before the resistless energy of this
desolating fanaticism. Alas ! the pulpit ! Would
you form some conception of the divisive poison
which it has spread through the land, reflect how
many of its commissioned occupants have already
reached the bitterest extremity of intolerance, and
'have revealed the fact by avowing their determined
purpose to part with the Bible sooner than obey the
constitution, and affiliate with the South. When the
appointed expounders of the booh of the church, in such
numbers are content to lead the van in this crusade
against the South — the country's last hope for the pre
servation of political fraternity must rest upon eminent
statesmen of every party stripe. These are the men to
whom in times of trouble the country must ever look
for sound expositions of the booh of the state ; the men
whom she expects to come to her help, and make a
stand against the profane violation of that early sec
tional covenant which composes the corner-stone of the
government. But here, too, the patriot's last hope has
failed him. Those fundamental guarantees, upon

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 61
which, in an eventful hour, our venerable ancestors
built the constitution of the country, and the Union of
the States — where, oh, where are they now ? If our
constitutional fathers could arise from their graves
and look over the history of their beloved country for
the last twenty years, what grief would bow them
down as they surveyed the progress of the irrepressible
conflict; the manifold encroachments of the North
upon the constitutional prerogatives of the South !
But what amazement and horror would seize them as
they pondered the responses returned by the President
Elect and his Premier, the acknowledged leaders of the
dominant party, to their own anxious interrogatories
concerning the present fearful condition of the
country. Our fathers well knew that they had secured
to the South, indisputably, the peaceful enjoyment of
their Southern institution by all the sanctities of the
constitution they had framed. Yet, when they inquire
of the now head-men of the nation, — " What is the
object of your party ?" The answer is : " The party of
freedom seek complete and universal emancipation."
(Seward's Cleaveland Speech.) The fathers well knew
their constitutional decree in the event of an escape —
that the combined power of the nation should rise up
and remand the bond-man to the control of his master,
and this, that the rights of the slaveholder, by Northern
compact, to the unobstructed service of his every slave
might be untouched before the eyes of the world. Yet,
when our fathers inquire further : "What is the work
of your party ?" The response comes back — " Slavery
can be, and it must be abolished, and you and I must
do it." {Ibid.) Finally, when the fathers inquire —

62 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
" What are the plans of your party ?" The answer
returns in the triumphant shout ofthe leader to his par
tisans : By these measures you " shall soon bring the
parties of the country into an effective aggression upon
slavery. If this is too slow — then go faster if you can,
and I will go with you."* {Ibid.) But we will not
enlarge, nor need we do so. Call to mind that early
day when Southern men, under the shelter of the con
stitution, travelled constantly through the country with
their family and servants, and were welcomed by all
the North, save, perhaps, here and there a solitary
Quaker, and compare it with the present condition of
Northern society — and who so ignorant or uncandid
as to deny that while the South, in general, has main
tained her fidelity to her sectional stipulations in the
constitution, there has sprung up in late years a power
ful adverse sentiment at the North, which, powerfully
organized, perpetually and provokingly encroaches
upon rights which the constitution secures, and under
mines an institution which the constitution over
shadows. Let it not be said that your condemnations are too
sweeping. You breathe an unkind, a reproving spirit
upon the whole North. He that does this is a great
transgressor. Thank God ! A very large body of the
people would this day do justice to the South, if her
rights in the constitution were brought fairly and fully
before them. Besides the very many who have ever
* We are very happy to observe Mr. Seward's recent indisposition to
carry out his extreme views. The unhappy condition of things in the
country, in part, is surely the legitimate result of his earlier doctrines.
May his future conservatism counteract the radicalism of the past

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 63
stood up nobly in her defence, not a few of those who
are numbered amongst opponents to her policy are yet
very far from being oppressors of her principles. God
grant that all the large remains of mutual respect and
kindness, North and South, may be preserved and
developed. God grant that a kind heart and a good
spirit may spring up, and be cherished here and there,
and the country and the world be summoned to praise
that most benign interposition of God, which shall heal
our breaches, and reunite our warring sections by a
warmer, closer, firmer bond than made us one people
in the past. But if these earnest longings of many
hearts are ever realized, we must fix our eyes upon one
fact. We must assure ourselves that there is an adverse
spirit in the land ; that this fierce spirit it is which has
principally wrought our disorganization ; and that obli
gation is upon us, and we must bestir ourselves to win
it to our views, if we can, or overturn its strongholds,
if we must.
Let it not be said that the South would rob men of
the rights of private judgment and free speech. May
we not retort the charge, and say, It is not the South,
but the North herself, who imposed the prohibition.
A man may do what he will with his own. It was the
North that deliberately covenanted, for consideration
received, that she would never make such use of her
personal rights as must damage the interests and dis
turb the peace of her neighbors.
Let it not be said that the South demands impracti
cabilities of the North. For how is it possible that a
great, intelligent, intrepid, and free people, in this free
age, when national shackles are falling off in every

*64 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
land, should be gagged, and forbidden to express their
abhorrence of a barbarous relic, which in the heart of
the freest nation under heaven, is bolstered up to frown
upon all tlie liberties of the earth ? May we not
retort the charge, and say, The responsibility of pro
viding the Southern man a peaceful, honorable partici
pation in the Union — remember, slavery to the contrary
notwithstanding — the North herself, with her eyes
open, deliberately assumed. If now she provokes,
disaffects, aud alienates Southern men, or allows it to
be done, her contract is broken, and she alone is
responsible. Let it not be said, " But we insist upon it, you
expect an impossible performance at our hand. Who
can put a bit upon the mouth of man in this free
country ? In the United States of America, who can
rule down the very sheets of liberty — the daily jour
nals of the country — to a definite tone of respect and
courtesy, upon the most exciting, irritating subject
under heaven ? The winds and the rains that purge
the heavens and fertilize the earth can be chained up
to no such precision as shall covenant against occasional
storms and floods ; so the spirit of liberty cannot be
ruled down to an inviolable tenor of decorous phrase,
especially when discussing the most flagrant outrages
of freedom itself. My friend, you deceive yourself.
The only inability in the case lies in the lack of a heart
true to covenant. Public sentiment is the dominant
power among a free people. Let the North stand up
honestly to her constitutional covenant ; let one neigh
bor, under a sense of its obligation, check the violence
of another ; let the man who has been compelled to

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 00
read in his daily, a week's unbridled vituperation of
the South, say to the editor — Sir, we are under a solemn
covenant of toleration on this subject, and if you do
not stop your abuse of our countrymen, I shall stop my
paper. Let him who hears a bitter tirade from a poli
tician, accustomed to pay such compliments to Southern
institutions, hear it said on every hand — The man who
has no better sense of national obligation than this,
cannot represent me in the councils of the nation. In
a word, just cherish a heart which feels, that when our
fathers, for benefits received, shook hands with the
South, and pledged a courteous treatment of her pecu
liar institution, they enforced upon their posterity
a solid obligation, which dies with the government,
and not before. Yes ! only let the North stand honestly
to her contract, and our sectional controversy instantly
comes to an end.
But when it becomes something like the settled state
of society at the North — that the tongue in private and
in public is frequently heard in violent denunciation of
the South — that the press, daily issues paragraphs and
columns of the bitterest scorn and contempt of the South
— that more than a million of money, largely through the
decoying encouragements of the North, is annually
abstracted from the South — that regions of country rise
up in violent opposition to the constitutional rendition
of fugitives from the South — that a dozen states pass
laws palpably tributary to this faithless prejudice against
the South — that incendiary hand-bills are freely scat
tered over the plantations of the South — that secret
conspirators here' and there are ever planning and work
ing to stir up insurrections in the South ; and finally,

66 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
when it has come to pass that there can be found men
who will both execute and defend raids upon the South
— I say now — If you have a heart so perfectly swept of
all sense of obligation in the premises, that to all this
you naturally respond — " Oh, you cannot chain free
speech ; you cannot fetter the liberty of the press ; you
cannot guard against every violent act of bad men ;
you cannot arrest the waves of popular prejudice in a
free-thinking, independent community ; you cannot pre
vent legislation itself from taking an occasional step
beyond the bounds of exact prudence and rectitude ; and
if there are vile men at the North, where do you find
the community exempt from such an element of popula
tion ? " — then I beg leave to put this appeal, solemnly, to
my Northern friends : On this point of constitutional
obligation to the South, is there not an universal demo
ralization of Northern society ? And is not the solemn
covenant of our fathers abandoned ? Yes, my Northern
brother ! and it should thrill your conscience to reflect
that the Southern man has never uttered the very first
word — never entertained the very first thought of divest
ing you of that which he placed in your hand, when, for
the same, you covenanted so solemnly to treat his insti
tution with toleration and civility. Oh, yes ! it should
start up your slumbering conscience, to think that if
Southern men were, to-day, to inaugurate the very
slightest movement designed to throw you back for
your present commercial privileges, upon the status quo
before the national compact, and insist that from this
day nothing short of a two-thirds vote in Congress should
sustain any one regulation of commerce in the country
— you know, my Northern friend, you know that you

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 67
would turn the world upside down to crush to instant
death the faithless outrage. But lo ! when, bereft for
twenty years of your own equally clear constitutional
guarantee to him, the Southern man comes to you to-day
and claims his rights once more, what is your reply ?
You send him away, substantially, under the accustomed
treatment of long years — " I am not sensible of any prac
tical obligation in ihe premises!" Oh, should it surprise
you that the South is out of heart, and dead to all hope
of justice from the North ? Candidly — is not the seces
sion of the South chargeable to the unfaithfulness of the
North ?
Finally. Let it not be said, " But you reflect not that
we, of this nineteenth century, have emerged from the
darkness of other days ; that a great new light has been
shed upon us ; that we see, as with a beam from Heaven,
that slavery is an unrighteous, odious, nefarious crime,
and feel as though we had heard a voice from God,
charging us to discountenance, denounce, and destroy
the accursed thing. Under these new lights, and heaven-
prompted ' cognitions,' how can we sit still and connive
at this outrageous inhumanity ? " But stay, friend !
That light is very questionable which conducts you to a
breach of faith ! That progress is more than doubtful,
which brings you to falsify your word, and nullify a
sacred covenant ! You must permit me yet once more
to call you back to the recollection of early days. When
your fathers and my fathers assembled to build a nation,
your fathers entertained just such sentiments of slavery
as you now express. They indulged just such feelings,
employed just such words, and evinced a disposition to
do just what you have done in the past, and propose to

68 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
do in the future. But my fathers calmly and firmly
replied, that they entertained no such sentiments of the
institution themselves, and would be associated with no
men who proposed to act upon them. Your fathers
were reduced to a dilemma. They longed for the union
of the South. They wanted her help in their commerce.
A question sprang up in the bosom of your fathers :
" Although, in our judgment, slavery, in the abstract, is
such an evil, and should be treated with such decided
and public discountenance, yet circumstances alter cases.
To obtain all the advantages of union to fraternity,
morality, Christianity, and universal national prosperity,
may we not virtuously covenant, that from this time we
will withhold all depreciating, provoking treatment of
the subject ; that we will moreover pledge ourselves to
our Southern brethen to manifest all such toleration of
the practice as will enable and incline them to live in the
spirit and habits of hearty peace and friendship with
us ? " They conferred, and decided this question —
affirmatively. And now slavery from the South, and
commerce from the North, were committed, with a view
to see whether there could not be framed such "a bar
gain " in the premises as would satisfy both parties, and
secure a sincere national union. " The bargain " — never
forget this — the Northern fathers themselves called it by
that name — " the bargain," the bargain was made.
"The South gave her part — commercial regulations. The
North gave hers — an agreement, from that time forth, to
give to slavery such practical toleration as would be
acceptable lo a Southern man. Hear me now ! My
Northern friend, your right to abuse slavery perished
ihen and there. Your fathers — for you — " bargained " it

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 69
away. It was surrendered in the constitution. Its
grave lies buried deep amongst the foundations of the gov
ernment. You may go and read its epitaph to-day, and
every day, in the capitals of our Magna Charta ! !
This whole controversy between the North and the
South, we apprehend, may be shut up within a very
narrow compass. Either slavery is such an institution
as may be virtuously tolerated in its American circum-
sta"nces, or it is not. If slavery may be justifiably tole
rated, then the covenant of the constitution binds you,
and you must cease your encroachments upon its gua
rantees, or be a guilty man. If you feel that you can
not consent to throw down the weapons of your abusive
warfare upon the institution, then in conscience and in
honor one only course is yours. Come squarely up to
the Southern man and say to him, " My fathers made
a covenant for me which I cannot carry out. You must
reconstruct the government to meet my scruples, or I
must beg leave to give up my part in it, and retire from
the Union." This is the one only honest course for a
Northern man. To remain in the Union and abuse
slavery and slaveholders as you do, is to avail yourself
of the commercial privileges of the government and
pay nothing for them. It is to withdraw your capital
from the firm, but insist upon your share of the profits.
It is to take the specified government protection for
your own rights, but deny me the specified government
protection for mine. Settle this question. Is a man
bound by his word ? Are covenants to be kept ? And
when you do this, you settle our national controversy.
But national hope begins to sink just here — the violent
anti-slavery man never studies his position. He plants

70 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
the soles of his feet upon the most sacred right ever
sealed between man and man, and draws his eword
upon the proprietor. What a pulpit this from which
to preach " The encroachments of the South ! " " The
wrongs of the North ! " This man never goes by the
reins, never feels his check ! If he must curse slavery,
let him wheel to the right-about and go North, and
begin with his fathers for making such a constitution.
In rectitude, surely he cannot take a single step to
the South. Bitted, and curbed, and reined up, held
back by the strong arm of the government, if he
does go South, it is a runaway from beginning to
end. My friend, regularly dissolve your contract
or go by it. Never open your mouth to blame
another, if you have to break a covenant by breaking
silence. In this hour of the nation's darkness, let us look to
God. He brings day out of night, and he can cause
love and justice to spring up out of all this wrangling
and wrong. Yes ! He who combines the incom
patibilities of day and night, to heave out all blessing
upon the world, can make North and South kindly
work together, to accomplish all those grand re
sults to liberty and religion, which we had so long
trusted was the glorious mission of our common
country. IV. Where shall we find the Origin and the Healing
cf this unhappy Strife ?
No man comprehends the sources of our national con
troversy, who does not include the different origin,
history, character, avocation, and interest of the con-

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 71
tending sections. Nor is he any better informed, I
apprehend, who does not set down the practical substi
tution of Deism for Christianity, or rather deistieal
and fanatical anti-slavery, as the grand exciting cause,
the present efficient agent of the strife. Let no one
understand me to say that the anti-slavery man is a
deist, or a sinner, or a disunionist. On the contrary, I
need not affirm, that the anti-slavery brother may be in
general as orthodox as scripture itself ; as holy as man
ever is this side heaven ; and as full of love, peace, or
union, as mortal man can be. That there is nothing.
necessarily divisive in simple disapprobation of slavery,
is established by one august historical fact. Anti-
slavery views were spread out in strongest exhibition
before our Northern and Southern fathers in the con
vention, and yet they shook hands over the subject,
and formed ihe Union. But that there are influences,
which, imbibed by anti-slavery sentiment, do impart
to it a fearful capacity to reduce all social organizations
to their elements, the whole history of North American
society for the last quarter of a century, abundantly
proclaims. Observation sustains analysis, and proves
that deism, and fanaticism incorporated with opposition
to slavery, compose a sentiment which depreciates
moral principle, and thus cuts the chord of moral union
in the heart of the abolitionist ; unhesitatingly tramples
under foot all rights and interests that cross its path,
and thus cuts the social chord of union in the breast
of the so-called pro-slavery man ; and by its fierceness
and bitterness chafes to ultimate rupture and incapacity
of toleration every remaining bond of fraternity. Should
the reader require clearer proof of the proposition, he

72 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
will find an attempt to advance it in the Appendix.
Be the suggested causes of our national disagreement
ever so just or faulty, there is another question of far
greater importance. How may this national strife be
appeased ? How may mischiefs afflicting or impending
be averted ?
A very feeble hope of thorough deliverance, I appre
hend, is to be derived from conciliation or compromise,
from secessions or force-bills, from peace congresses or
national conventions ; even from acts of Congress, or
amendments of the constitution. None of these con
trivances seem to reach the foundation of our troubles,
which I take to be providential displeasure on account
of the general religious dereliction of the people : nor to
touch the method of tlieir action, which I suppose to
be the radical diversity of sentiment between the con
tending sections. Where then shall we go to find true
deliverance from the surrounding, overshadowing cala
mities ofthe country?
The great God of man has given him a great rule to
go by, especially under all the anxieties and perils of
life. At such a time as this, when earth offers no solid
ground of hope, let us look up and encourage ourselves
in the Lord. Let us go to lli m for counsel. Oh, let us
lay our blessed Christianity alongside the great wounds
of the nation, and we shall soon learn that our religion
is the great Healer of the earth — national as well as
individual. 1. Christianity will correct the temper of the North
concerning the institution of the South.
I am aware that many persons apologize for their anti-
slavery zeal on this principle — they feel responsible for

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 73
Southern slavey, because, as the people in mass made the
Government of the United States, therefore, every man
is directly accountable for all that the government coun
tenances. The political theory is this : just as the people
of a territory or a state make a territorial or a state
government — so the people embraced by the old confede
ration in the aggregate, made the constitution of the
United States. So says the constitution itself. " We,
the people of the United States, do ordain and establish,"
&c. This, I apprehend, is a mistake. The true doctrine
may be stated thus : The subscribing states as such, and
not the people in mass, made the constitution. 'Tis true
that they did this, not second-hand, as they had been
accustomed to act, through their legislatures, or by depu
ties, but primarily by their people. That the states
separately, and not the people collectively, made our
government, is proved. Visibly : If the people in mass
made the government, all prior political organizations
must have been thrown down, in order that the people
might have their self-governing power uncommitted and
free for exercise. But see ! Here are thirteen organized
states. Whence came they ? The constitution did not
make them. Account for their existence after the forma
tion of the general government, if you can, except upon
the principle that they made it. Historically: We know
by the record, that the states respectively appointed
delegates to draw up a constitution, and then that the
states respectively ratified the constitution presented.
Theoretically: " All powers not delegated to the United
States by the constitution are reserved to the states
respectively or to the people." The import of this sec
tion is made perspicuous by the action of the several
4

74 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
states assembled in convention to ratify the constitution.
Massachusetts declared, of all powers not expressly
granted, " that they are retained lo the several states to be
by them exercised." Precisely, this is the declaration of
New Hampshire. South Carolina resolves that, " every
power, not relinquished by the states and vested in the gene
ral government of the union," the states do retain. Vir
ginia claims " that each state in the union shall respectively
retain any power not delegated" by the same, &c, &c.
Thus the power that made the United States government
came out ofthe states respectively, and of course was not
exercised by the people collectively. Literally: Surely
the delegates of the convention that framed the constitu
tion, of all men, should know who its authors are. When
they acted in the formation of the constitution they
expressed their action precisely in these words — Not
" We, the people of the United States," — but " we, the
people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, &c, &c, do
ordain, declare, and establish the following constitution."
When this resolution was passed, like every other act of
the convention, it was placed in the hands of " The Com
mittee of Style and Language," not to alter but to express
the act. For brevity and euphony, instead of recording
it in the language brought in — " We, the people of"- —
thirteen long, rough, proper names, they simply general
ized what before had been specified, and said — " We, the
people of the United States," &c, in view of the resolu
tion passed, — " We, the people of the subscribing states
(in union), do ordain and establish this constitution."
Authoritatively : The Federalist tells us what every intelli
gent patriot knows, that our United States government is

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 75
partly federal, partly national, and partly mixed, both
federal and national. In relation to this express point,
" the foundation on which the government is built," James
Madison thus expresses himself: " On one hand, the
constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratifica
tion of the people of America, given by deputies elected
for the special purpose ; but on the other, this assent and
ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals
composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct
and independent states to which they respectively belong. It
is to be the assent and ratification of the several slates
derived from ihe superior authority in each state — the
authority of the people themselves. The act therefore of
establishing the government will NOT be a NATIONAL, but a
federal act." (Fed. p. 213.) Now if this be true, and
if our Southern fathers never surrendered in the consti
tution the control of their domestic customs upon the
subject of slavery, then the responsibility of a Northern
man founded upon his power to control or touch the
subject of slavery, is exactly as great and no greater than
his responsibility and his power touching, an alleged
immorality in the British "government. Most especially
has he no right or power of interference, since the con
stitution itself places the whole subject beyond his reach.
He may fight against the constitution on account of its
slavery guarantees if he pleases, but never, never against
slavery under the constitution.
It is a melancholy fact, which candor must concede,
that so far from according to the South its double inde
pendence upon this subject, both original and constitu
tional, to an unhappy extent, the anti-slavery assaults of
the North have been so persistent, belligerent, and abu-

76 THE national controversy.
sive, that they virtually deny to the South her rights
of private judgment, independent agency, self-respect,
domestic privacy, personal peace, private property, and
covenanted toleration.
Breathe now the spirit of Christianity into the heart
of the North and South upon this subject, and what is
the issue? All indecorous excess at the North will be
instantly restrained ; all personal rights at the South will
be instantly restored ; and the North and the South —
slavery to the contrary notwithstanding — will entertain
feelings of mutual respect and kindness, and preserve all
desirable mutual influence. Oh, what a seasonable,
refreshing boon ! The restoration of a becoming national
temper upon this irritating subject!
2. Christianity will correct the judgment of the North
concerning the institution of the South.
The man of color, like every other man, has two great
interests. The one temporal, call it liberty ; the other
spiritual, the scriptures call it salvation. Especially in
his present state of unpreparedness for freedom, in rela
tive importance the former is as nothing compared with
the latter. But the practical judgment of the North, so
far as the influence of deistieal anti-slavery extends, has
precisely reversed this order, and thereby largely
wrought all the convulsions of the country. The social
and religious improvement of the man of color, his
all-in-all, awakens comparatively no interest, is prac
tically reckoned of no importance in the Northern
mind, while his personal freedom, which it were mur
der to put into his hands to-day, the man of color must
have, though it cost the instant overthrow of universal
social order. What an unbalanced intellect! What a

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 77
perverted judgment ! You meet a man upon the streets.
He has two rights : a right to draw a breath, and a
right to take a step. You can destroy either of these
rights of his at pleasure. You can put a bullet through
his heart and overthrow one, and jostle his person and
overthrow the other. What madmen would the passers-
by be deemed if they exerted all power to prevent your
execution of the latter, but none to prevent your exe
cution of the former ! Touching the slave's right to
take the step of temporal freedom, and to draw the
breath of life eternal, anti-slavery has judged and acted
very much as in the case supposed.
But now let our noble Christianity take the case in
hand, and what a wholesome balance she instantly
restores ! Without depreciating one whit man's right
of liberty, or any other natural right of man, Christian
ity looks at the case as it is. It sees that these parties
possess no present qualifications for freedom ; that the
masters have no present right to decree their freedom,
but stand under prior obligations to train them for ulti
mate enjoyment of all human rights. What then is the
judgment of Christianity in the premises? That the
liberty of the slave is so important, you may disturb
the foundations of society to secure it for him ! Far
from it. Christianity rather decides, that for the pre
sent, progressive social and religious improvement of
the slave is his supreme good. He therefore who
would befriend the slave should cherish a wholesome,
practical, and supreme regard for his sound worldly
and religious culture. Who now can describe the solid
comfort and profit which would accrue to the black
mam our country, and the world, if our Christianity

78 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
were only permitted to rectify the practical judgment
of the North touching the true interests of the man of
color, and the true obligations of the white man, North
and South.
3. Christianity will correct the conscience of the
North upon this subject.
The providence of God lends its sanction to the view
of obligation suggested. Six capital acts comprise the
history of the slave in America. By the first, he was
separated from his native land and thus cut off from the
fountains of paganism. By the second, he was landed
on American shores and exposed to all the lights of
civilization. By the third, he was placed here in the
relation of a slave, and thus, preserved, he could become
the object of a benevolent plan of progressive eleva
tion. By the fourth, he became extensively christian
ized, and thus qualified to save others. By the fifth,
an expulsive power returns him to his native country
as fast as he obtains his freedom in this. And by the
sixth he is re-established there in civilized, Christian
colonies, and thus most effectually empowered to radiate
recovering light among the degraded»masses of the
surrounding aborigines. I forget, not man's evil part
in all this history, but I would not close my eyes to the
good use which God would make of man's bad con
duct.* And, oh, if we could but concentrate the atten
tion of the North upon these facts; if we could per
suade her to remember that by votes in the constitu
tional convention her fathers opened the door for the
importation of these African natives : that by their own
ships they bore a prominent part in transporting them
* See Note C.

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 79
from their native homes and selling them as slaves to
the South ; and especially, that the inherited proceeds
of these slave sales are, this day, in the hands of their
posterity ; should we not thereby plant one truth
deep in her conscience, viz. That the great present
duty of the North to the man of color in our country
is, as much as in her lies, to do her part and work har
moniously with the South in accomplishing that bene
volent purpose for which God in providence allowed
his importation. Instead of doing this, to give the
South no credit for all she has done in elevating these
imported Africans ; to give the South no credit for all
she has done in christia.nizing these imported Africans ;
to take no interest and lend no aid in the one operation
or the other, but, even to the destruction of the nation,
to fight the South in behalf of abstract rights, which
these fellow-men, even yet, have no capacity to enjoy,
seems to me just the most unwise, unkind, and unfaith
ful mind for which, in the premises, the North could be
responsible. Oh, let our Christianity come to our help, and rectify
the consciences of the North, and bring up a strong
sense both of the honor and of the duty, just so far as
the Southern man will open the way, to stand by his
side and work with him for the solid social and spiritual
welfare of the slave. Let the North but do this, and
what a healing of breaches ? What a dispensation of
mercies ! what a brightening of prospects ! should we
witness on every hand.
4. Christianity will correct the aims of the North,
touching the institution of the South.
What are the great interests of the colored population

80 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
of the South, and of the world, in the principles of their
management? Decree the immediate and universal
O
emancipation of the slaves of the South, and from one
end of Christendom to the other, countless multitudes
shall shout the praise of the edict. Yet a more censur
able mismanagement of the case it were hard to plan.
As for the black man's liberation, it would be a death
blow to him, and he would disappear from the earth in a
very few generations ; and as for the liberties and hopes
of men in such a condition, in all time to come, libera
tion would be a death-blow to the true principle of their
protection. Would you seek the true interests of our
colored fellow-men, set it down, that the social elevation
ofthe man of color, his capacity to take care of himself
— this, this is his very greatest, because most needed
blessing in this life. Behold the four millions of slaves
of the South ! For physical comfort, general intelli
gence, and the prospect of improvement in both, another
such community of colored men cannot be found upon
the face of the earth. You arrange, therefore, for the
best good of the slave of the South at present, by per
petuating and improving the very causes which have
brought up such multitudes of his color to a social sum
mit level, so far above that of any similar number in
the world ? His conversion to Cod ! I need not say, is
pre-eminently his very highest good. There are this day in
the United States, probably 600,000 colored communi
cants of the church of Christ. Collect all the work
achieved by the combined missionary energies of the
world, measure it by souls saved, and you would pro
bably fail to find 200,000 hopeful, heathen converts — all
told. To Christian philanthropy, is not this multitude

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 81
of colored Christian professors a most delightful and
encouraging fact ? If a greater number of colored
Christians have died in the past than live at present,
then probably millions of souls have already been
redeemed among the slaves of the South. When of old
God brought the black man from his country, and
placed him in our hands, He said to America, " Keep
this man. If by any means he be missing, then shall
thy life be for his life." In the keeping of this pri
soner the South has not done what she should have
accomplished. The North has been yet more remiss in
her part of the common charge ; but we will both shout
our thanksgivings to God in view of the glorious work
He himself has principally wrought.
Let the North study what God has done, and take
counsel of our glorious Christianity. If she does, she
will instantly dismiss from her aims her wild attempt to
inaugurate, in behalf of the man of color, a liberty-
triumph, which he has no present culture to appreciate,
and discard from her soul that feverish apprehension of
the political power of the South, which has led her to
plan the eternal confinement of the slave in his geogra
phical prison (see Appendix). She will fix her heart
upon this imported, intrusted stranger, and cherish a
generous interest in his destiny. She will love to feel if
God has done so much for his truest, best interests in
the past, when the philanthropy of his fellow-men,
North and South, was so feeble and questionable, what
might not God do for him and his posterity in the
future, if North and South would now shake hands in a
covenant of sincere kindness to their humble protege?
She will say to the bondman of the South, " Even to
4*

82 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
promote human weal, I may not do wrong ; go forth,
therefore, into all the earth ; increase and multiply, and
the God of thy fathers be with thee. All that wercan
do, through the direction of those intrusted with the
more immediate supervision, by hearty good-will, pecu
niary contribution, wise suggestion, and earnest prayer
to advance your progressive training towards an ulti
mate capacity for all secular and spiritual blessing, we
pledge ourselves henceforth to consecrate. When we
look into the future, should the heavens be overcast at
times, and terrors spring up again, and sight fail, we
will bring up • the better vision of faith, and say,
' Hitherto the Lord hath helped thee.' ' Surely good
ness and mercy shall follow thee all the days of thy
life.' And finally, under all the fearful peculiarities of
thy condition, and the dark forebodings of our own
unbelief, we will strive to cherish the cheerful confidence
that the consummation of thy destiny will be as glorious
as its commencement was unparalleled. ' For ask now
of the days that are past, which were before thee, since
the day that God created man upon earth, and ask from
the one side heaven unto the other, whether there hath
been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been
heard like it ? Did ever God assay to go and take him
a nation from the midst of another nation, by tempta
tions, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a
mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm, and by great
terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for
you before the eyes of the world.' " Who can believe
that our God — at work to save the world — by all this
stupendous power, at all this terrific cost, has taken a
nation from the very bosom of the darkest degradations

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 83
of the fall, transported them half around the world, and
set them down amidst the brightest shinings of the
saving light of heaven, and meant no good' by it ?
Duties are ours — events are God's. Let us bring up our
faith to the loudness of the call of Providence. Let us
look away from the comfortless temporal to the glorious
spiritual bearings ofthe subject! Side by side let us
work with God, for God's benign ends. And though
thick darkness hangs over our vision of the issue, let us
remember, that He who directs the movement is omni
scient. In our place, under his lead, let us work faith
fully, for the glory of our leader, and the present and
eternal good of our African fellow-men ; and let us keep
up a good heart ; and for one, I am free to express my
trust, that in some way — nor do I care to know his plan —
God is able, and has purposed to make the consum
mation of this movement as transcendently glorious as
he has made its commencement in our day pre-eminently
peculiar. Oh, that I could heave up all my fellow-men
of this nation from the miserable littleness of quarrelling
over the social relations of this mighty subject, to the
Christian elevation of looking to the hand of God,
and working supremely for the best good of the fellow
men he has intrusted to our keeping !
Oh, my country, what is to become of thee ? Is
there then to be no more a United States of America !
So long the pride of the North American, and the
glory of the world ? How it wrings the heart to think
of it ! What can be done in this dark hour ? Com
promises may connect, but can never unite the people.
Organizations band the body, sentiment only welds the
parts. Oh, friend and brother of the North, I fear you

84 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
have had too much to do in working out these
dark issues. Wrong is rarely confined to one party —
nor do I insist upon it here. But in behalf of yourself
and our Northern brethren, for God's sake, and for
man's — will you not give impartial heed to the serious
convictions addressed to you on these sheets ? Pray,
think of it ! If the opinions here expressed are true,
and you will heartily adopt them — this shall save the
nation, as nothing else can ! Before the God of our
country, do you not believe them, in the main, to be
true ? Are you not assured that the Northern fathers
were never authorized by Southern delegates in the
constitutional convention to expect that slavery should
be brought to a speedy close ? In your heart, then, let
the South have the benefit of this solid truth. In con
sideration for commercial privileges granted by the
South, are you not assured that the North covenanted
to yield to the South all such claims and toleration
upon the subject of slavery as would secure to her, in
this relation, a comfortable, honorable, and profitable
participation in the Union ? Then, in your very soul,
give to the South the full benefit of this most important
right. Whatever pride, passion, assumption, and mis
conduct may have been justly laid to the charge of the
South, are you not convinced that, on the whole, the
South has not wandered very far from her stipula
tions in the great constitutional compact upon which
the government was founded ? Let the South then
have the full advantage of this important admission in
your mind. Are you not assured, that the North, for
long years, has allowed her people to carry out a vexa
tious persecution of the South, in the very teeth of her

THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 85
own slavery guarantees, which has largely despoiled
Southern men of that peace, respect, and profit in the
Union, so sacredly pledged ? If this be indeed so — and
surely you will not deny it — should you not be willing
to concede the wrong and make amends for it ? Finally
— Has not our national controversy its origin very
largely in this unhappy truth : viz. that the religion of
the Lord Jesus Christ has had too little to do with
almost all Northern virtue upon the subject of slavery ?
In the leading class of opponents, and in all others
under their influence, has not a fanatical spirit been
allowed to disturb kind relations, unsettle sound judg
ment, demoralize good conscience, and set- the heart
upon disorganizing ends ! Come now, friend ! Speak
out from the sincerities of your soul — to save our glori
ous country — will you not do right ? Will you not act
sensibly, honorably, justly ? Will you not permit the
God of the nation, by his most blessed book, in all the
matter of our difference, to breathe a kinder temper
into your heart, to shed sounder light upon your under
standing, to set up a juster rule in your conscience, and
place before yon wiser ends than you have sought?
But do this, and think of it — It shall save our people,
as nothing else can. For — justice to the South ! On the
one hand, it is the very last element of hopeful recon
struction of our divided country ; on the other, the most
potent agent of a sound fraternity between our
bordering nations ! Only let the North do right — only
let her see, feel, and say — " We have all gone wrong
in this matter of slavery. The South never troubled
us in her part of tlie contract, but fairly gave us all
she engaged to surrender. We, on the contrary, have

86 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY.
not secured to her what we covenanted to convey.
We have disturbed her where we promised peace. We
have suffered her to be dishonored where we vowed pro
tection. And we have allowed to be taken away from
her what we ourselves promised to restore. In a word,
we have not kept our bargain with the South. No !
we have not ! !" Now, my Northern friend ! Let the
South do or fail to do what she may — will you do
right ! For the sake of our country, the church, and
the world — do right, my friend — do right. And by the
constitution of things, aud the fidelity of its author,
heaven and earth shall see what the North and the
South shall feel — that the work of righteousness is —
peace.

APPENDIX.

Deism is that working of human faculties which accepts
the existence, but rejects the character of God. It is the
child of the fall, and therefore, spiritually, the perfect anta
gonism of the God of the Scriptures. It cannot shut out
nature's displays ofthe majesty, wisdom, power, and good
ness of Jehovah, but it does not like to retain in its know
ledge his stricter attributes — holiness, justice, truth, and
immutability — and therefore repudiates the entire revela
tion of God in Jesus Christ. Thus, deism reaches God by
the very narrowest possible glance ; and this, as we have
said, altogether one-sided ; embracing his natural, but
excluding his moral perfections. The primary result is
this: Deism never sees the law of God ; because this is
built upon God's moral perfections as well as his natural
relations. Consequently, to any valuable purpose, the deist
never feels religious responsibility, nor natural depravity,
nor divine condemnation, nor salvation by Jesus, nor glory
beyond the grave. The ultimate result leaves the deist no
heaven which he can appreciate beyond the fruition of
natural rights. The illimitable enjoyment of property,
character, liberty, or life, constitutes the highest good
that ever visited the imagination of deism. American
history very naturally fixed the American heart upon
liberty. British oppression had qualified us to relish.it, by
privation. The struggles of the Revolution endeared it,
through hope deferred. The Declaration of Independence

88 APPENDIX.
brought it near, by heroic assertion. The surrender of
Yorktown flushed the soul with its conscious achievement.
The praise of foreign nations for its happy developments
amongst us, filled our hearts with an exultant? sense of its
admirable properties ; while the Fourth of July, our day
of liberty-worship, annually feeds our devotion with its
glorious reminiscences.
It was perfectly natural that our passionate embrace of
liberty should ultimately swell into fanaticism. Why not ?
Fanaticism is a compound of two mental forces: the one
direct, seizing its object ; the other collateral, shutting off
intermeddling claimants. Destroy the deism of the mind,
and you open it to the inlet of a spiritual world, which
must break up the maddening absorption ofthe soul in any
single secularity. The immortality of man, his responsi
bility to God, the corruption of his nature, damnation to
the sinner, salvation to the believer, the last great day, the
fires of hell, the raptures of heaven — such topics as these
must exert a mighty attraction upon human thought, and
furnish lofty standards for the measurement of mere secu-
larities, and of necessity must lower down earthly liberty
to its proper comparative insignificance. But deism nul
lifies all superior objects, and thereby protects the soul
against all foreign intrusion, and leaves it to spend itself
exclusively, intensely, and perpetually (in our case) upon
the glories of liberty, and thus philosophically breeds
fanaticism. Liberty, therefore, with very many in our
country, is the heaven of deism. It is the one highest,
cbiefest good of man. All else is nothing to it. He who
is stripped of his liberty is the accursed ofthe earth.
Now, when this fanatical liberty of the North fixes its
eyes upon the slave of the South, is it any wonder that it
should have roused creation to overthrow Southern insti
tutions ? The fanatic's eye sees nothing to relieve the

APPENDIX. 89
calamity it surveys. One dark, forbidding object fills the
entire range of his vision. For his own advantage, a
tyrant has robbed a fellow-man of the supreme good, and
infixed upon him the sum of all evils. No wonder he
heaves and swells. O the fancies ! the fancies that live
in this world ! This man's mind has lost its balance, and
been turned upside-down. I shall shock and enrage him
to the very core of his heart by the utterance of a simple
truth. In view of Christianity's doctrine of an immortality,
at hand, of unmixed and immutable good or evil, it is a
matter of the most consummate non-importance whether
man's brief life on earth is spent in slavery or in freedom.
Place liberty at the head of all secularities, and yet there
is no one spiritual element of an immortal being, in itself
considered, that is not worth more than all the natural
liberties of the generations of the earth. So thinks the
infinite mind. For during all the ages wherein the spirit
of knowledge dwelt in the souls of men, this very liberty,
to every possible extent, on every hand, was both crushed
and enjoyed, both individually and nationally ; yet, though
that spirit was charged with worlds upon worlds of all sorts
of messages to man from the God of light, not one single
word did he ever utter to speak the ignominy of slavery
or the glory of liberty. The enormous misconception
which makes up this fanatical idea of liberty, which turns
everything upside-down, and makes the highest and the
lowest to change places — surely, in a world built to be
governed by truth, such a principle must work incalculable
mischief. Let us rapidly trace the course of this deistieal
fanaticism in our country.
I. — It depreciates moral principle.
I say not that extreme anti-slavery men have no principle
— that, in general, they are not as good or even better than

90 APPENDIX.
other men. But I say that their fanaticism is immoral in
its tendency, and rather damages than improves their virtue,
because by inherent necessity it exerts a power unfriendly
to a sense of moral obligation. This is indicated by its
temper. Love is the basis of all virtue. Excite the man ;
start his fanaticism, and you will mark two things. His
every breath seems to be violence and bitterness : nor does
he appear to possess, on this point, anything like love in his
nature. Recollect, the Spirit of knowledge, the Spirit of
holiness, and Spirit of love, is one and the same Spirit. If,
therefore, you drive the Spirit of love out of your heart on
any one subject, by that very act you have probably
expelled the Spirit of truth and righteousness also. It is
still more clearly indicated by its structure. The mind of
the fanatic holds one dominant thought, to which all else in
the mind, or that enters it, must yield. In our case the
ruling thought is this : To hold afelloio man in bondage is
probably the greatest, certainly the clearest sin in the
world. Whatever comes along therefore, call it argument,
obligation, or what you will, to modify his sentiments — has
less evidence to commend it to his adoption than his
governing thought has. Remember, too, that there is a
furor in the heart as well as a halo in the intellect of the
fanatic. The moment, therefore, any separating element,
no matter what, arises between his heart and its object, so
ferocious is the adhesion that his soul will hate it instantly,
assail it vehemently, and expel it violently. The result is
that all moral considerations, like everything else, have but
little power over such a mind, and will certainly be depre
ciated. Tell him that the constitution of the country is
built upon the compact ofthe fathers — that in consideration
of the solid advantages surrendered by tbe South, we and
our posterity have solemnly promised to concede the
authority of tlie master. What is his reply? Let the

APPENDIX. 91
constitution and the covenant slide — freedom is inalienable !
Tell him the powers that be are ordained of God — that
submission to law is Christian duty — and that our govern
ment demands of its citizens that they acknowledge the
bondage of the servant. What will he say ? Down with
the government ! It traverses man's clearest conviction
to disparage man's highest weal. Bring the Bible itself to
lay its teachings upon the mind of this man. Tell him that
God says to the bondman : " Art thou called being a slave,
care not for it ! When you have lost your liberty you
have not lost your all. Obey your master faithfully."
What does he reply ? " Liberty ! liberty ! ! This is the
grand primary right ! This the chief blessing of all !
Away with the Bible if it crosses all natural instincts to
break down all natural rights." The fact is, all adverse
obligation is a dead letter in the line of this man's excite
ment. You cannot touch his conscience. Try the experi
ment. How can he conscientiously receive the protection
of the government when, so far from rendering allegiance,
he tears away from his master that slave which the govern
ment orders him to retain if he should find him a fugitive ?
He feels no difficulty. How can he trample southern rights
under his feet, and yet consent to go on accumulating the
blessings of commerce in the use of a privilege put into
his hand by the southern man expressly in consideration
of his promise to respect southern rights ? But he is
sensible of no compunctions. A very good man he
may be in a thousand respects : on this point his moral
nature is laid in the dust. The decisive fact is this :
The inspiration of his object is the only law of the
fanatic. To him this is all rectitude. All covenants
and principles that would break the hold of his mad
dened mind are withs upon the limbs of the Hebrew
giant. Thus, you perceive, fanaticism breaks every moral

92 APPENDIX.
ligament which should hold a man in union with his
neighbor. II. — Deistieal anti-slavery tramples upon all rights and
interests icJiich cross its path. — Love for the slave, in the
bosom of the abolitionist, soon began to give way before
the fierce passion of hate to the master. Now, it would
appear that the best interests of the beneficiary must be
sacrificed to insatiate hostility to the slaveholder. No
ordinary demonstration of this fact would seem to be fur
nished by that proposed interminable confinement of the
slave within the limits of his present geographical abode,
in which the soul of the fanatic appears to find such exult
ant satisfaction. To lay off impassable jail-bounds for four
millions of rapidly growing colored population in the heart
of the most civilized nation under heaven — what a singular
offspring from that mind which boasts of its love of liberty,
especially the liberty of the black man.
Before entering upon the discussion of this subject, I
would premise again that I do not primarily embrace here
a large class of persons, who, like the abolitionists, object to
Southern claims touching fugitives, territories, slave states,
etc., and who hold to slave confinement, etc. etc., but have
a very different mind on the whole subject — different views,
motives, and ends. Yet this, in general, is true of such per
sons. They are more or less open both to the influence
and the charge of abolitionism as they do in a greater or
less degree sympathize with its doctrines and its spirit.
On this topic the characteristic difference is this : In pro
portion to his separation from fanatical anti-slavery the party
Avill be apt to look out upon the interests of the world
and seek to stay evil and do good; while the abolitionist,
under the dominion of his too fierce fanaticism, will
be more strongly prompted to look in upon slavery and
the slaveholder, and by a cordon of free states drawn

APPENDIX. 93
close around, work to incarcerate, environ, and strangle the
monsters. 1. This measure of slave confinement upon a gigantic
scale must idtimately destroy the liberties and hopes of the
slave by preventing their natural development. Supposing
the South to enjoy in the future her ancient liberty of loco
motion, and that the same privileges hereafter shall sustain
the same ratio of increase, it is calculated that her colored
population will amount to near fifty millions in 1 960. This
stupendous result ! Who does not see that it must prove
an enormous abortion, if you undertake to develop it
within the geographical bounds prescribed ? But tell me !
Why have not these colored fellow-men at the South, as good
a right to live, and grow, and flourish in the earth as any
other people under heaven ? Why are not their natural
rights equal to those of any other branch of Adam's family ?
When God gave the products and liberties of the earth to
man in the garden, did he not design that the man of color
should have an equal share with the white man ? When
God commanded the race to increase and multiply and fill
the earth, did he not address the one as certainly as the
other ? Simply for the color of his skin, my Northern
friend, why should you cast a fellow-man from a gift and a
privilege which God himself has made the common heri
tage of the race ? Under his former auspices, for genera
tions he has been steadily growing in a host of the richest
natural gifts. He certainly has constantly improved in
physical health, comeliness, and power ; in intelligence, cha
racter, piety, happiness, and universal culture. He has
certainly made steady progress from the beginning towards
a development which may ultimately qualify him, every
way, to take his full part in all the social responsibilities,
dignities, and enjoyments of his race. Why will you cut
down at a blow all these richest blessings and hopes of the

94 APPENDIX.
black man ? After the God of Providence, through his
Southern master, has done so much for him and brought him
on so far from the very darkest and cruellest barbarism
towards hopeful deliverance from his every native degrada
tion — by your barbarous edict of slave imprisonment, oh,
why would you tear him away from the bright hopes which
have long been very slowly but very certainly dawning
upon his future, and throw him back into a condition far
more calamitous than that from which the slave-ship
rescued him ? My Northern brother, change your heart
towards the black man. Love him warmly, as many a
Southern man does ; in his place, let him go out freely into
all the earth, and increase, and multiply, and improve, and
enjoy himself, as other men do ; and go thou down and
stand beside his master, your brother and neighbor, and
kindly converse with him touching all those wholesome
laws, institutions, and arrangements which may most hap
pily develop all his faculties, rights, and interests through
time to come ; and give him the full enjoyment of his pre
sent happy opening for his own temporal and eternal good,
and the elevation of his continent ; and you will put your
hand to one of the very noblest and largest works man
ever undertook since he fell from the likeness in wdiich God
made him. Yes ! Do this, and you will prove yourself a
far more sincere and sensible friend of the bond and the
free than your insufferably tyrannical edict of Southern
impalement bids fair to make you.
2. But this abolition discipline of the master, by the
eternal confinement of the slave, does not limit its malice
to the lower class of natural rights. There is a sense in
wdiich it virtually strikes at human life itself with the most
unsparing hand. The nature and objects of Southern society
require that the whites should dwell amongst the blacks in
equal if not superior numbers. This Northern project of

APPENDIX. 95
Southern impalement is responsible therefore for crowding
within the present territorial limits of the South in the year
1960, an agricultural population of near one hundred mil
lions of souls. Domesticate this enormous multitude of
human beings upon the territory around which deistieal
anti-slavery would build such insurmountable walls, and the
gloom and the havoc which, though not planned, must
inevitably follow, who can depict? So dense a population
in so hot a climate, cholera, yellow fever, and plague must
mow them down by tens of thousands ! Forced to go out
and build their domiciles, and breathe the air along the sick
liest swamps of the country, climate fever must waste them
fearfully through all the hot months of the summer ; com
pelled to go forth and plant the arid sands and exhausted
fields wrhich cover half a hundred square miles in many
portions ofthe land, what multitudes must starve to death
for the lack ofthe common bread of life?- The unprosper-
ous condition of the master, and the darkening lot of the
servant, must breed mutual discontent, and what ill-blood,
insurrection, and murder, from time to time, must agonize
and depopulate the universal region ! In a word, this dark,
malignant decree, whatever benign intentions may sustain
it in many minds, must eventually roll forth one broad
wave of desolation and destruction over the entire popula
tion of the district inclosed. Remember ! In point of
criminality, it matters not much whether I put a bullet
through a man's heart and kill him instanter, or employ a
month in gradually strangling an embryo ere it comes
forth to breathe in this world of life ! Look out now upon
communities which the past and the present assure you do
certainly possess all the capacities, surroundings, and gene
rative power, under ordinary providence, to throw out
upon earth a hundred millions of healthy, hopeful people in
1960. Move up and seize these nations ! By confinement,

96 APPENDIX.
oppression, and strangulation, deliberately prevent the
birth of this prodigious population ! Before God and man,
is it not somewhat as though you had regularly set to work,
upon just such a multitude, the necessary causes of their
destruction? And does it require you to stretch your
imagination very far beyond the boundaries of reason to
enrol the probable issues of this incarceration of the South
amongst the most stupendous catastrophes that ever
stained the records of humanity? When poor Lopez was
strapped hard and fast to the Spanish chair, and the exe
cutioner behind began to screw up the metallic girt about
his throat, I almost wonder that the earth did not shriek
out from beneath, when, in an instant, the blood, cut off
from its return to the heart, rushed out to the extremities
of the skin, blackened every pore of his face, blood-shot
both his glaring eyes, and before a crowd of living men,
put the poor wretch to a death that forcibly bereft him of
nature's last relief, a groan or a struggle. Look ! my mad
dened friend of the North, look upon your worse than
metallic throttle ! Have you not thrown it around the
necks of the forthcoming generations of a whole family of
civilized states ? By your own cruel, penal impalement
may you not be near to turning the screw that shall
garotte on this free soil of America scores of millions of
your countrymen ? Is this a becoming work for the gal
lant friend of liberty and ofthe black man ? The most inhu
man suffocation of one hundred and forty-six English
prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta ! The pestilence,
death, and putrefaction of thousands of African natives
cruelly crowded between the decks of the slave-ship ! are
terrible tragedies. But how narrow their dimensions !
How speedy their relief! Ah, think ! In your great black
dungeon of the South, when population shall become too
dense for production, and labor and living too hard for

APPENDIX. 97
content, and hope can extract nothing but the blackness of
darkness from the future, and starvation, and insurrection,
and pestilence shall become the order of the day, and
untold disasters shall agonize the souls and mow down the
bodies of struggling generations, then shall be practically
portrayed not the catastrophe which deistieal anti-slavery
malignantly set out to accomplish, but what would seem to
be the legitimate result of that lack of philanthropy, of that
unreflecting malignity which animates its persecution of
the slaveholder.
We had seen that the fanatic would tread down the Con
stitutional rights of the slaveholder, and the august author
ity of the government. Now, we are assured that there is
nothing too dear or sacred to be sacrificed to the demands
of his inexorable will. The man of color, he whose patron
he had assumed to be before the eyes of the world, he
in whose defence he had drawn his sword and perilled his
peace — even he — must suffer the loss of all, if vengeance
upon the grand enemy calls for it. He must be thrown
into a dungeon, cut off from God's primary gift to man of
the liberties and blessings of the earth ; bereft of the
divine privilege of unrestrained propagation and universal
progress ; nor matters it much whether he be wasted from
the face of the earth, so the fanatic's vengeance upon his
enemy be glutted.
What, on earth, can safely confederate with such a prin
ciple ? We have seen that there is no such moral charac
ter as can bind the fanatic to any course of procedure at
variance with his special object; and now we observe that
there is no interest or class of men which should or will be
willing to trust either his justice or his mercy in a social
union. IH. — Finally, it destroys political structure. In a repub
lic, no union, no government. Without common consent,
5

98 APPENDIX.
there can be no public control. He therefore destroys the
government, who makes the political association of grand
sections of the people insufferable. From its earliest rise,
fanatical anti-slavery, with a steadily augmenting force, has
been pressing out upon the South its adverse doctrines,
charges, demands, and procedures, until its violent, inexo
rable opposition has destroyed primitive affinities, set up
invidious distinctions, and multiplied fretting hostilities
beyond further endurance, and by its direct and resulting
influence compelled the South to seek her peace in secession.
To a considerable extent, all the forces of society have been
subordinated, very naturally, to the accomplishment of this
work. Learning — with her schools, colleges, lectures,
periodicals, novels, and graver works : politics — with her
parties, platforms, speeches, papers, and patronage : reli
gion — with her tracts and organs, her family and Sabbath-
school training, her sanctuary prayers and sermons, and
her ecclesiastical protests and prohibitions : in a word,
almost every power amongst men, organized or irregular,
is subsidized to get up and bring out an " effective aggres
sion" upon slavery throughout the country. Upon the
feelings of the South, by all these forces, through all these
channels, this severe spirit, directly or indirectly, for long
years has been pouring out a flood of irritating defamation.
From the ownership of the South, Northern population
along the borders, for long years, through byways and,
railroads above ground and below it, have stood ready
to bear away every slave who could be disaffected and
removed. Against the Constitutional rights ofthe South,
for long years, throughout large portions of the North, a
strong public sentiment and strong State legislation have
sprung up, ostensibly to prevent Southern kidnapping of
Northern freemen, but purposely to oppose Northern
rendition of Southern fugitives. Against the honorable

APPENDIX. 99
equality of ihe South, from the political heights of the
nation you may now hear these dominant pronunciamentos:
"No more slave States!" — though slave States took part
in forming the Constitution, have a door opened to their
admission in the very foundations of the Constitution, and
from the earliest days have been constantly added to the
Union. "No more- transportation of slaves into the terri
tories /" — though the Constitution was constructed to
accommodate slave-holding territories, and though in early
days slaves were permitted to dwell for generations in the
only territories of the country permanently free — made so,
by the way, through the generosity of the South. " Per
petual impalement of aU slaves within their present geo
graphical limits /" This, though it is undeniable that any
and every one of these imprisoning States, if it pleases so
to do, has the most perfect right, by the Constitution of
the country, to import all these slaves of the South, and
domesticate them as such within their own territorial
boundaries. All this fanaticism has done, not by one act of its own
power, but by enlisting the co-operation of all sympa
thizing sentiment as far as she was able to secure it, seek
ing therein, however, more violent ends than many proposed
who sustained the same measures. Now when the South
reflected that from year to year it was in vain that she
lifted her voice in solemn protest against all this unconsti
tutional persecution of Southern rights; that an anti-
Southern party, if not perfectly, yet considerably imbued
with this anti-Southern spirit, holds now the reins of gov
ernment in its hands ; and that recently, when the South
was in the very act of secession, the dominant party, though
strongly pressed, declined to provide satisfactory security
against those mischiefs which the South felt she had great
reason to apprehend from -.he unfriendly spirit and uncon-

100 APPENDIX.
stitutional progress of those now in power; in view of
these and other considerations, she concluded that in order
to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, pro
mote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty
to herself and her posterity, it became her solemn duty to
dissolve her connexion with those States whose opposite
and dominant principles and interests had now placed
beyond her hope the legitimate objects of political union. -
Does any man inquire — What is it that has dissolved the
American Union ? Address your attention to that deistieal,
fanatical opposition to slavery, whose ferocious appreciation
of natural rights knows nothing of the balancing power of
Christianity ; which has long been dividing conventions,
families and parties; churches, societies and denominations,
all over the country ; beyond all question this agent exerts
a still higher power, and dissolves States and breaks gov
ernment. Ah, how true is this ! Were it possible to
extend an arm over the past, and lay hold of the very first
stirrings of this principle, and tear out from American
history all its direct and remote agency to the present
hour, you would thereby leave the North and South so
heartily united that creation could hardly drive them
asunder. What now shall we think of deistii-al anti-slavery P* I
will not say that no promptings of sympathy, no sense of
justice, no generous bearing, no manly intrepidity, have
throbbed in the breast of our misguided fellow-man. I dare
not say that there dwell not in his soul elements whieh every
noble man is forced to admire. Bnt this I do say : His
fanaticism, analysed, reveals, in astounding development, the
unconscious but enormous hostility of shi to reason as well
as to rectitude. In springing into life, abolition cuts ofi
* Note 0.

APPENDIX. 101
God from man, and man from God, by nullifying that law
whiph connects them. Mentally, it upturns the constitution
of things by lifting liberty above praise and sinking Chris
tianity belowr contempt. Morally, it tramples under foot
love, conscience, compacts, government, and revelation
itself, if they cross its creed, and would unlock its hold upon
its object. Practically, it ruptures all it touches — families,
parties, churches, nations. And. finally, such is its malignant
and reckless will, it never stays to mark that the liberties,
hopes, and lives of patronized nations are under its feet, if
this but seems the shortest way to run dowti and crush out
that which it burns to destroy.
Is it any wonder that our nation is divided ? What else
could be expected of a principle so self-willed, unreasonable,
immoral, malignant, and reckless, set to work within the
dominion of regnant, wise, holy, and immutable perfection.

102 APPENDIX.

Note A.

Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, in early days, entertained the
most honorable views upon the subject of slavery, if they were not the
most efficient. Virginia, by the ordinance of '87, ceded to the general
government her north-western territory, embracing the States of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, now containing a population
of 7,000,000 souls. Unlike Connecticut, Virginia made no reservation,
and when the second half of the land shall have been sold at the price
paid for the first, will have placed in the treasury of the United States
$200,000,000. This entire territory, vastly against her pecuniary interest,
in demonstration of the sincerity of her anti-slavery opinions, she dedicated
to freedom. She expressed her sincere conviction, moreover, by a vote
of her legislature, that it became her to manumit her slaves, at a proper
time. Private emancipation had been practised for a long time. Through
a course of years the mind of Virginia was undergoing a change as to the
benefits and duty of this practice. In 1832 she made the definitive conclu
sion that the experiment was a failure ; that emancipation wrought injury
alike to the servant and the commonwealth. It is a mistake to ascribe
this change of views to the high price of cotton. The average price of
cotton for twelve years previous to 1832, by American and British records,
was more than twelve and a half cents per pound ; since that period to
the present day, the average price has been less than ten cents and a half-
In 1833, it should be remembered, tbe American Anti-slavery Society was
formed, and the abolition agitation commenced at the North, and has never
ceased from that day to drive the South further and still further from every
thought of emancipation.
Let it be observed, first, that although the fathers may have entertained
the opinion that the Northern tier of Southern States would probably
emancipate their slaves, these States made no concession to the North on
this subject, nor was there anything like » pledge given by them.
Observe again, that the North were in no condition either to demand or
even receive a pledge. They had exhibited a mental instability which
prevented the possibility of any such thing. They came near, as frontier's-
men say, to rolling logs with the pro-slavery States. " Tou help me to roll
my log of commerce into the constitution, and I will 'help you to roll your
log of slavery into the constitution." Virginia and Delaware stood firm on
their anti-slavery ground, and any such notion as a pledge on this subject

APPENDIX. 103
by tho border States to the North is preposterous. But observe once
more, the expectation of the fathers that slavery would be speedily aban
doned by the South, in an important sense, could not rest upon Virginia,
Maryland, and Delaware. The difficulty did not rest with ihem, and could
not be removed by them. It was the extreme South that needed slavery,
that desired slavery, and was determined to preserve slavery. It was the
extreme South only, then, whose co-operation was necessary to encourage
ihe expectation of the fathers. But the Northern fathers, for their own ends,
leagued themselves with the South, and encouraged the importation of
slaves, and justified their own expectation of the continuance rather than
the disappearance of slavery.

Note B.
I am aware that, in its February issue, the New-Englander, through one
of its contributors, professes to review this position, aud devotes to it some
five or six pages, somewhat after the fashion of a rambling, infidel bur
lesque. The effort betrays little thought and less argument.
My proposition consists of three ideas — a missionary — plan— of provi
dence. I suppose that God had his part in the transportation of Africans
to this country : this he seems to discredit. That this act of God was
according to plan : this he explicitly denies. That God's object was the
salvation of the African : this, too, he seems to disbelieve.
1. By denying God's agency in the slave trade, the doctrine of the
review destroys God's attributes. Save that exercised by God, is there any
independent power in the universe ? Has there ever occurred an event in
the production of which God employed no power? If tlie slave trade is
such an occurrence, then here is a moving agent whom God does not
pervade. Where is his omnipresence t Here is an effect produced inde
pendent of God's power. Where is his omnipotence ? Here is an element,
a means, of which neither God's knowledge nor his goodness makes use.
Where is his infinite wisdom? Where his infinite goodness? Not so
the Scriptures — " Who loorlcelh all things.'" If this is truth, then God
wrought the slave trade, and my first position is Scriptural.
2. By denying God's plan in the slave trade, the doctrine of the review
destroys God's reign. Does God ever act by chance, or by fate, or igno-
rantly, or unconsciously ? If not, then God always acts by plan. But
the review contends that God had no plan embracing the slave trade,
beeause this fact would make God the author of sin. On this principle,

104 APPENDIX.
if God governs the world, he controls what he does not touch. In nine
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, there is nothing in
man but sin : and in the one case of every thousand there is not one act
unmixed with sin. What can that mind mean by God's providence over
the world, if providence makes no use of human wickedness to accomplish
the ends of divine mercy ? I had supposed that the chiefcst glory of
providence lay precisely in' this fact, that God can and does employ man's
folly, and wickedness, and malice, and self-destruction, and divine dishonor,
to develop his own wisdom, and holiness, and grace, in man's salvation,
and all to his own glory. Clearly the doctrine of the review in the
New-Englander, that God does not work up man's sin in his providential
plans, expels God from the government of the world. Not so the Scrip
tures. "Who worketh all things" — how? "After the counsel of his
own will." Everything, therefore, that occurs in this world, good or bad,
is embraced in the schemes of providence, and my second position is
Scriptural. 3. The doctrine of the review destroys all the dignities and prerogatives
of ihe Almighty. It places what, I affirm to be God's agency in the slave
trade, side by side with man's agency in the same, and pronounces the
moral character of both to be identical. Calling up the fact that men
speak of an operation as "noble and grand," when its instrumentalities
are " adapted to the end and worthy to be chosen," the review inquires —
" Does Dr. Stiles also mean that in this ' stupendous scheme of provi
dence' the Lord chose the African slave trade and slavery as worthy
instrumentalities for carrying out his plan of salvation ? And does he
give glory to God for his wisdom and preference of so excellent a means
as the slave trade and slavery to save Africa ? Then let him be con
sistent, and give some honor to men, too, for choosing the same, and for
now practising them, provided only that they seem to be guided by a
purpose in sympathy with Africa's salvation. Let him condemn no one
for being ever engaged in slavery and the slave trade," &c. " But if you
praise God for the choice of slavery and the slave trade, do not blame
men for the same choice ; only blame them because they are wanting in
good motives, no matter what their iniquities." A man full of iniquities
engaged in the slave trade, pray what kind of good motives can he have?
The morality of an act depends mainly upon its motive — and you have
given up almost everything iu a bad act when you have given up the bad
motive. This clumsy lugging in of good motives in this connexion seems
to indicate a starting back from the ground the mind set out to take.
But let us examine the comparison instituted. There are three parts to

APPENDIX. 105
every act — motive, means, and object. In tho premises, God's motive is
holy : for it is grace to the guilty. God's means are holy. As creator,
preserver, and proprietor of the slave-trader, his ship, the wind, and the
sea, he has a perfect right to make any use of them most pleasing to him
self. As creator, preserver, and proprietor of tho slave, he has a perfect
right to send him this instant to perdition as a heathen man and an
idolater. Every greater contains the less. God, therefore, has a perfect
right to subject the slave to every possible degree of human oppression or
temporal suffering. All, all are his own, and he does perfectly right to do
with all just what he pleases. God's object is holy, for in mercy he would
overrule all for the salvation of the perishing. On the contrary, man's
motive in the slave trade is purely wicked : for it is love of filthy lucre.
Man's means are purely wicked : for it is shameless, cruel injustice to a
fellow creature. And man's object is purely wicked : for he seeks to enrich
himself upon the wrongs and tears of his unfortunate neighbor. How
insane and blasphemous to place these two acts in the same category !
But this is not all. How can he accomplish this, and bring down God's
act in the premises to the moral level of man's ? In one way only. He
must first demolish God's rights as creator, preserver, benefactor, proprie
tor, and king of the universe. We repeat, the doctrine in the New-
Englander, of necessity shipwrecks all the dignities and prerogatives of
Godhead. 4. The doctrine destroys the word of God. Search ever so diligently,
and you will fail to find in all the history of the African slave trade of
modern days an approximation to an act of African slave-traffic in
the days and in the family of the patriarch Jacob. Jacob's sons kid
napped -a free man, their own brother, and sold him in slavery out
of a Christian into a heathen land. In these three respects, the en
slaving of Joseph has no parallel in all the abominable outrages of
the modem slave-trade. Now just what I have said of God and the
modern slave-trade, the Bible says of God and this most inhuman act.
Not at all so as to make him the author of sin, yet for the good of man
God planned and executed it. Says Joseph to his brethren, "Ye sold me
hither." This is true, and you may well be humbled for it. But this is
not all the truth of the case, " for God did send me before you io preserve
life." Just so in the numerous captivities of his people, God abundantly
teaches us, no matter how shocking tho atrocities of the human oppressors,
that he himself planned and executed them all. What a thoughtless
reader of the Bible our reviewing brother seems to have been. " Why
does not Dr. Stiles call on us to ponder the stupendous scheme of provi-
5*

106 APPENDIX.
dence, and see that spiritual achievement, the religious good of mankind
in God's employment of all the hatred, and lies, and murderous intents
of the Scribes and Pharisees resulting finally in the death of his Son, in
order to accomplish the atonement. Does Dr. Stiles preach in that way ?'>
Ves 1 exactly in that way, and so does the God of the Scriptures. "Eim
being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknoioledge of God, ye have
taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." Does not God
himself aver that through the acts of the Scribes and Pharisees He accom
plished the crucifixion of his Son, and "delivered" him into their "hands.''
" Ye have taken," — "determinate counsel and foreknoioledge," — their deed,
but God's plan. Should any man feel disposed to quibble, and say, that
by his own words God went no further than to place Christ in the hands
of his persecutors, let him give ear to another word of God. " Of a truth
against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and
Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered
together for to do — ." Let me pause and inquire of the reviewer, have
we not here all the hatred, and lies, and murderous intents of the Scribes
and Pharisees " resulting in the death of God's son ?" Aye, and more
too ! for God includes also the cruelties of the Gentiles. Now, had God
no plan, no agency in all this faithless, murderous hate of Jew and
Gentile ? Let the Bible speak for Him. All these " were gathered
together" — be pleased to observe — "for to do what thy hand and thy
counsel determined before to be done." Thus in that most noble shout of
glory to God, endorsed by the sensible presence of the Holy Ghost, the
apostles and apostohc church, praised as " a scheme of Providence," those
very transactions which the reviewer seems so unwilling to ponder and
praise God for. This truth has been held up before the whole world, in
every way, in all ages. Behold it in the institution of the Passover. On
the fourteenth day of the month " the vjhole assembly of the congregation
shall slay the Paschal Lamb." Behold it far earlier, for Christ is a lamb
slain from the foundation of the world ! Nor is this prediction only.
" Determinate counsel and foreknoioledge of God — ." Is not this planning 'I
"What thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done — ." Is not
this "a scheme?" Without plan or scheme, where is ruling or reason?
The fact is, this doctrine lacks only potency to destroy God's word, his
throne and his being.
Finally, the unfortunate reviewer falls into the very pit which he digged
for his brother. My chief objection to the doctrine under discussion is its
shocking profanity. The writer strives to lay this to my charge, but
verily he himself is the only and the eminently guilty party. The one
distinguishing principle of the review is this : it makes God such an one as

APPENDIX. 107
man. Forgetting that God's exalted nature and relations place his rights
and rule of action beyond all human comprehension; and that man's rebel
lion against the law and Gospel makes it almost an impossibility for God
to wrong man : forgetting that he crosses an impassable gulph who goes
from all the moralities which make up any one act of God to all the crimi
nalities which compose every wicked act of a wicked man, the author
seems to have imbibed an astounding error, and to suppose that if the body
of God's act and the body of man's act are but the same, then the morality
of the two acts is the same. Acting therefore upon the principle that he
understands all the deep things of God, and has found out the Almighty
unto perfection, he decides that any guilty conduct of the creature makes
God equally guilty if he embraces that conduct in his plan of providence.
No doubt he speaks from the sincere opposition of his heart when he
says, " Now, for our part, we are not going to ponder a stupendous scheme
of providence, and admire it, and praise its author, when the same
thing in man we call 'wickedness' and 'outrageous cruelty.' " Come, my
thoughtless friend 1 bring your heart right up to God's face, and hear
God's own mouth say, " I planned and predetermined ihe enslaving of
Joseph " Does your heart dare to say, " / am not going io admire you for
it t" Hark again to the word of God, " I planned and carried out all the
murderous hate ofthe Scribes and Pharisees." How does your heart beat,
friend? Are you saying to God's face, "lam not going to praise you for
it t" Is not all this rebellion against God, and a deliberate repudiation
of the palpable Calvinism of the Scriptures 1
Note C.
" Tou mean me, and caU me an abolitionist." Friend, you are rude. I
did not mean you. I did not call you an abolitionist. I spake distinctly
of the extremest man — the deistieal anti-slavery man. I knew that
you would make this charge, and burdened my sheets to give you no
ground for it. I repeatedly admitted a partial similitude of sentiment, but
distinguished you from the extreme man, exactly in the degree in which
you had distinguished yourself from him, by your different sentiments and
sympathies. Was not this perfectly just ? How comes it, friend, that no
book, sermon, or paragraph assails the abolitionist, but you instantly start
up and say, " You mean me!" I will tell you. You know that abolition
ism is a flagrant wrong, and you feel that you are too near to it. That is
the secret. I have not charged you with abolitionism, but your own con
science confesses you are an accessory of the party indicted.

108 APPENDIX.
Suffer me to officiate as your teacher for a moment. In unconscious
self-defence, you pronounce abolitionism perfectly insignificant and unwor
thy of notice. We have seen above, that you hug to your heart a great
mistake on both points. The fact is, abolitionism in its 'nature is, hate,
energy, and self-will personified : in its influence, the prominent agent of
religious and political division: in its treatment, the first arm that should
be broken to reunite the people : and in its force working vast results, by
conversion and neutralization. There are three classes of anti-slavery sen
timent in the country. The two first — Fanatical and Christian — need no
definition. The third and largest class of anti-slavery men in North Ame
rica, are the neutrals. They are middle-men, precisely; some of them
nearer to one extreme, and some to the other, but all having this charac
teristic mark — perfectly, they have neither the bad quality of the first nor
the good quality of the second. I do not charge you with the malignity
of the radical, but have you not lost the sympathies of the conservative?
Do you cherish any reasonable interest in the Southern man and his slave 7
Do you ever listen with fraternal sympathy to statements of advance in
secularities, morals, or religion, amongst the masters or slaves? Do
you spend one hearty dollar in Christian or benevolent enterprises at the
South ? Friend I is it not a fact that your sympathies have been para
lysed? That your heart has been chilled? Have you not a half-way
feeling as though you should not heartily approve, admit, or admire any
thing as good and worthy at the South ; and do you not live along, to a great
extent, spiritually incapable of any such open-hearted sincere fraternity as
you do give to Northern men and objects, and should give to all? Why,
my friend, you are exactly half-way to abolitionism. There are but iwo
steps, and you have taken the first. If not of you, it is true of more than
half that stand by your side, that through a thousand channels, the spirit,
principles, publications, and agencies of extreme men have something to
do in destroying, in the mind, impartial estimation of the claims of the South.
Say, friend, would he not be a blockhead who would take counsel of you,.
and go to work to heal the broil of the nation, and point out the causes
which have produced it, but say nothing of extreme anti-slavery sentiment.
Your own outcry settles the question, and proves, first, the wisdom, and
next the efficiency, of that class of truths which you have felt so suitable to
yourselC

THE END.

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