The voice of freedom. [volume], June 01, 1839, Image 1

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THE VOICE OF FREEDOM
ALLEN & POLAND, Publishers. Published under the sanction of the Vermont Jlnti-Slavery Society. CHAUNCEY L. KNAPP, Editor,
VOLV1TIE I. . MOiVTPELIER, VERMONT, JUNE I, 1839. IV UN BE It 22.
From the Emncipator.
SPEECHES AT THE ANNIVERSARY.
Pursuant to the notice (riven last week, we pro
ceed to publish the speeches delivered at the late
Anniversary meeting ; that of Mr. Lee, from a copy
fiirmshorl hv himself, and the others from the re
porters of the New York Observer and Evangelist,
correcting each by the other, and by our own brief
notes.
GERItIT SMITH.
Gerrit Smith, Lsq. ot Peterborough, IN. i ., in
moving the acceptance and printing of the report,
expressed his hope that when printed, the report,
with all the important statements and convincing
arguments it coniained, might reach, every portion
of our country. God, he said, would bless these
truths, and would give them efficacy on the minds
of men, in spite of the spurious religion and spuri
ous republicanism which curse our land.
MR. iuskin. ; .
Rev. John Rankin, of Ohio, seconded the mo
tion. He said he had been brought" tip in the
midst of slavery, and now lives on the borders of a
Free State, where he was every hour looking over
upon the land of oppression. All my life, said he,
except seventeen years, has been spent in the slave
States, and no person has more kindly feelings to
wards the slaveholding States than myself. There
my friends and kindred dwell. I speak the lan
guage of kindness, and would do the utmost in
tny power to persuade them to put away an evil
which threatens their destruction. I must say 1
rejoice in the triumph, of the principles of imme
pnni
diate emancipation, because
I know, from lone
observation, it is tuc only tiling that can relieve
both master and slave from inevitable ruin. The
system of slaveholding is calculated to bring ruin
upon the country where it is tolerated ; and 1
speak the language of the South, when they speak
candidly. . I was a member of an Anti-Slavery So-cu-ty
in Kentucky, Iweiily years ago, on the same
princple as this. The doctrine of immediate
emancipation i3 said to be new; but societies were
formed all over the country, twenty years ago, and
many members advocated the same doctrine. The
slaveholders confessed that it was a ostein that
would bring ruin upon the country ; but when
asked whv thev did not abolish it, they would
say, like llczckiah of old, " it will not come now
we shall have peace in our day." Others said
they believed, with the assistance of the free Sta'cs.
they could hoW them forever. Vet we aie told,
thefrce States have nothing to do with the subject.
Slaveholders have told me, if separated from the
free States, they would be in the hands of the
slaves entirely.
We feel the hand of oppression not only upon
llie slave, but upon ourselves.- Where I live, my
soul is harrowed continually with the cruelties
committed in sight of my house, where slavery ex
ists in its mildest form. There, slavery has some
times caused our town to go in mourning. Here,
lio related the case of a slave ferryman, who was
suddenly and without warning or preparation, sold
for $750, by his master, to go " down the river," af
ter having agreed to set him free, and the money
had been raised for the purpose, because an oppor
tunity of getting $200 more, so that he was sep
arated from his wife and children. The details
of the case have been already published. While
I continue to be a husband and a father I must
stand up and protest against this evil.
Laws have been passed in Ohio, imposing a
fine of $500, or imprisonment, on any person who
shall knowingly assist a slave to escape. There
was an aged mother who had been brought up in the
Presbyterian church, and who sustained an unblem
ished Christian character for twenty years, who fell
into the hands of heirs, who, it is said, wished to lib
erate her, but the guardians were determined to sell
her, old as she was, into the cruel slavery of the
South. She was obliged to fly. Now suppose
this sister in the church had come to me, and I
had assisted her to flee from her cruel persecutors,
the State would have fined me $500 or sent me
to prison. Yet, I, as a minister of Christ, should
only have been doing what U enjoined by the gos
pel I preach. I am forbidden to do an act of char
ity I am commanded to do the very hing which
the Bible forbids mo to doto deliver the fugitive
servant to his master. I should be bound to take
this sister into my house if she comes there ; and
yet such is the effrontery of slavery, that they have
come over and demanded that we, who assist our
brethren, according to the requisitions of God's
word, shall suffer bonds and imprisonment. I can
not, therefore, but rejoice in the success of this
Society ; and it shall have my prayers day and
night.
KEV. LUTHER LEE's SPEECH.
" Resolved, That the system of American sin
Very usurps the prerogatives of God, tends to blot
the divine image from the soul of man, degrades
Jiim from the dignified rank his Maker gave him
in the scale of creation, and subverts all the so
cial relations which God and nature have made
essential in his earthlv allotment."
Mr. President, were I to attempt to give a brief
but comprehensive view of the sinfulness ot sla-
very, I would do it in the words of St. Paul to
Bar-Jesus, ' Thou full of all subtlety and mischief,
thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all right
eousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right
ways of the Lord V and then I would answer the
question in a thrilling and emphatic INU, mat
would make every heart feel that slavery, bad as
it is, can be made no better. I have it not in my
heart so much to undervalue the intelligence, mor
al sense and humanity of this assembly, as to
suppose that they are pro-slavery in judgment,
n heart, and in feeling, yet as there is a vast dif
ference between believing that slavery is wrong,
and seeing and feeling how great a wrong it is, 1
trust it will not be considered a breach of charity
to suppose that there may he many, now within
the sound of my voice, who have never consider
ed the masrnitude of this great sin. I wish then
to be understood as not making the present effort,
so much to convince you that slavery is wrong, as
to cause you to see and feel the greatness of the
wrong, that in its guilt it rises to heaven, and in
jts corruption It sinks to hell,
The resolution which I have had the honor of
presenting, lays four distinct crimes to the charge
of slavery, which I will attempt briefly to sustain.
i. ine resolution charges slavery with usurp
ing the prerogatives of God. To be convinced of
this, I need only compare the requisition which
uod makes upon Ins creatures with the assump'
lions of slavery. The divine requisition is sum
med up in the first and great commandment, in
these words: ' lliou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind, and with all thy might.' Now,
nothing can be plainer than that slavery usurps
what God has here reserved to himself, when it
says : ' A slave is one who is in the power ot a
master, to whom he belongs. The master may
sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and
his labor : lie can do nothing, possess nothing, nor
acquire any Hung but what must belong to his
master." ljnvmana Lint Lode, art. 6o. Here
it is seen that slavery sets up a claim to man which
contravenes the claim of God, it seizes upon the
subjects of God's moral government, and wrests
them from Ins administration, and subjects them
to the will of n despot, who is not satisfied with
trampling upon the rights of man, but who arro
gantly attempts to wrest the reins of government
from him whose throne is in the heavens. Ihe
claim of slavery equals the claim of God, it claims
the whole man, and asserts its absolute right to
the whole soul and body, mind and muscle, all
that the man is, all that he can do, all he can pos
sess, and all that. he can acquire, and what more
than this can God claim ? Have these human
hattels souls that must be forever saved or lost?
and can they do nothing in the work of saving or
damning their souls, but what must belong to their
masters ? Suppose they obey God, so far as cir
cumstances will permit, and through Jesus Christ
acquire eternal life, will that belong to the master ?
and will he appear at the judgment seat and claim
the crown by virtue of his title to the slave, who
' can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any
thing but what must belong to his master V Or
suppose the slave to be as wicked as his master,
and 10 live and die a child of the devil, and an
leir of hell, will the master appear and take the
f 1 fi t . I '1.1.
nacres oi sin as ins own : n may oe saici mat
nothing is meant more than that slaves can do,
possess and acquire nothing of a temporal nature
but what must belong to their masters. I know
this is what is meant, but I know with equal cer
tainty, that man's future destiny depends upon
what he does and possesses in this life. Christ
represents himself as saying at the last day, ' Come
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre
pared for you from the foundation of the world,
for I was an hungered and ye gave me meat, na
ked and ye clothed me, sick and ye visited me, in
Erison and ye came unto me. Inasmuch as ye
ave done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren ye have done it unto me.' And again
he says, Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, j
prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was an
hungered and ye gave nie no meat, I was thirsty,
and ve gave nie no drink, I was a stranger and
ve took me not in, naked and ve clothed me not,
sick and in prison and ye visited me not Verily
I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one
of Ihe least of these, ye did it not to me."
Now, I ask, can those who can do nothing but
what must belong to another, visit the sick and
those in prison ? Can those who can possess noth
ing and acquire nothing but what must belong to
another, feed the hungry and clothe the naked ?
V ou all know they cannot, and hence you see that
slavery disqualifies men for subjects of God's
moral government, it denies them the means ol
complying with the first precepts of the gospel,
it therefore contravenes the claims ot Liod, and
sets at nought the great law of our being, which
holds all intelligent creatures in allegiance to the
throne of the Creator. If this is not high trea
son against the government of God, treason i3 a
nonentity. If it is not trespass upon the prerog
atives of God, it can never be proved that the dev
il has committed trespass in the case ol all the
souls he has seduced from their allegiance to the
divine throne, for he never claimed more of man
than slavery claims, and never received more from
the most accomplished and zealous nena mat ever
served his cause, disembodied or incarnate ; no,
not on the black throne of hell, wielding a scep
tre of unmingled despotism over unblessed ghosts
whose ruined immortality exerts its perverted en
ergies under cover of that dark night of despair
that mantles the damned. Mow great a sin is
slavery ? It is the sum of all sin, it is a monopo
ly of crime '. For a worm of earth, a man, to at
tempt to throw off his own allegiance to his Ma
ker is an awful thought ; but awful as it is, it is
as much below the crime of slavery, os he who
would simply expatriate himself from his govern
ment, is less chargeable with treason, than he,
who instead of expatriating himself, should at
tempt to expel his sovereign for the purpose of
seizing the throne himself. The common sin of
refusing to obey is outdone and lost in the blacker
shades of the slaveholder's guilt, who not only re
fuses to obey himself, but refuses to let others
obey, seizing upon the subjects of God's moral
government, and, usurper-like, attempts to reign
in the place of the Almighty. It must be seen
from this, that slavery usurps the prerogatives of
God, and that so far as slavery prevails, the gov
ernment of God is blotted from the world.
II. Slavery is charged in the resolution with
a tendency to blot the divine imago from the soul
of man.
So far as the image of God, in which man was
created, consisted in the rectitude of his character
as a moral leing, I shall not now discuss the sub
ject, for so far the divine image must be lost be
fore slavery could exist ; for none but fallen and
depraved beings would ever be found in the rela
tion of master and slave. To know what consti
tuted the image of God, in which man was made,
we ueod only inquire what distinguished him from
the lower creatures; for it appears to me that
whatever the image was, it distinguished man as
more emphatically the offspring of God, and con
stituted the difference between him and the brute
creation. What then distinguished man from the
brutes t
1. While brutes were made wholly of inferior
elements, with spirits that tend downward, man
claims affinity with the heavenly world, God hav
ing superadded to his earthly nature a living soul,
which he infused of his own immortal breath.
Now, it must be admitted that slavery can never,
in point of fact, blot this feature of the divine im
age from the soul of man, by making him any
thing but an immortal being; yet it overlooks his
immortality, and treats this undying spirit as tho'
it were mere matter, having no higher origin than
the earth, and looking forward to no higher .desli
n y than the brutes; that perish." This immortal
being, this living soul, which God kindled in man
with the quenchless fires of his own immortality,
which is to return to its author to dwell with God
forever, to sing with nngels, and swell the loud
triumphs of heaven and the glories of the throne ;
or sink in endless perdition, as a fallen spirit un
worthy a higher sphere :- this being is made "a
personal chattel to be bought and sold, is made an
instrument of gratification to the hell-born passions
of ambition and fust, is yoked with the brute, and
driven through life by the sting of the task mas
ter s lash like tho ox that perishes, as though
there were no heaven for the negro beyond the
delusive dream that intrudes itself upon his short
hours of slumbering repose, so soon disturbed by
the well known sound of the horn that summons
him to a renewal of his toils, and as though there
were no hell for him to shun beyond the limits of
the cotton-held, the sugar-planti tion or the rice
swamp.
While God created the brute animals with
nothing to rule their spirits and guide their ac
tions but the impulse of an instinctive nature, he
endowed man with the more noble faculty of
reason, and thus formed him nfier the model of
his own nature, who is the only being in the uni
verse possessing reason in absolute perfection.
Now it is too plain to need proof that slavery la
bors to keep the enslaved in ignorance, and even
tries to extinguish the lamp of reason with which
God lit up the soul of man. Slaveholders admit,
yea, contend that human beings cannot be held in
slavery without being also held in ignorance, and
hence no provision is made for the instruction of
slaves; yea, more, laws are enacted to prevent
their instruction under heavy penalties, and every
effort possible is made to shut out light and to
close every avenue to the soul, lest one enkindling
ray should lighten and ignite the dark spirits ol
the enslaved, lhus you see that slavery does all
it can to blot the image of God from the soul of
man, by degrading him, in point of intelligence,
as' nearly as may be, to a level with the brutes,
While the lettered master boasts of his knowledge,
pressing onward in the course of science and phi
losophy, until he makes the heavens the play
ground of his thoughts, and regales himself with
flowers plucked from the pathway of revolving
worlds, he imposes the blackest ignorance upon
the spirits he holds in bonds, suffering not one
beam of light to fall upon their rayless orbs ;
spirits by God himself made capable of constant
and endless improvement, destined to blaze and
shed their light upon the spheres of a cloudless
world, are by the very system ol slavery consigned
to a night of ignorance as black as the brow of
despair, and as perpetual as the roll of successive
generations.
III. The resolution charges slavery with the
crime of degrading man from the dignified rank
which his Maker gave him in the scale of crea
tion. God placed man over the work of his hands,
saying, ' let him have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth.' This glory and
honor, with which God crowned his new-made
creature man, slavery plucks from his brow, it dis
mantles him of the authority which his Creator
gave him, and with its profane and heaven-provoking
hand, hurls him down from the sphere as
signed him by God himself, and gives him a
place among the brutes that perish. It should be
remarked that the authority with which God
crowned the first man, to subdue, rule, and possess
the world, belongs equally to all men, for it was
conferred equally upon all men in the person of a
common father. God hath made of one blood
all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the
ear'.h,' and it was when the blood of all men, the
blood of the whito and black man, flowed undis
tinguished in the veins of a common father, and
rushed through its arterial way at the pulsations
of the same undivided heart, that God bestowed
on him the right to possess and rule the world, and
hence, this right of possession and control belongs
equally to all men without distinction of color or
nation. This right is evidently wrested from man,
for the law of slavery declares that he can pos
sess nothing, which is so far from suffering him to
rule any part of the world, that it will not sutler
him to rule himself, no, not his own limbs, but
compels him to submit them to act as they are act
ed upon by the dictates of another's will. God
says, as much to the black man as to the white
man, 'Have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle
and over all the earth,' but slavery says, ' Not so,
Lord, he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor can
he acquire any thing but what must belong to his
master,' and which tells the truth, God or slavery,
I will leave you to judge.
IV. Slavery is charged in this resolution with
the crime of subverting all the social relations
which God and nature have rendered essential to
man's earthly allotment,
Man is a social being, his Maker formed him
for society and gave him a nature which claims re
ciprocal enjoyments from kindred spirits ; hence,
wherever man is found, he is known to exist in
some kind of society, and taste- though loo often
with a savage appetite, the sweets of friendly in
tercourse. God having created man to exist in a
social state, he has given us rules by which we
should be governed in our intercourse with each
other, but slavery!, tramples upon these rules, and
pours its full cup pfj wormwood and gall into the
very fountains of human society. I cannot par
ticularize, but will note one or two points as speci
mens of the whole.
1. Slavery annihilates the matrimonial institu
tion. This lies oi '! very foundation of society,
it is the fountain u In- !t ; nds out its living streams,
and fertilize this :U world with the buds and
flowers and rifli li trvi 't of social animation, This
inslltation Is the- oUk-si known to man, its plan was
laid by Gad himself when he declared, It is not
good that the man should be alone,' it was estab
lished when God,1 having formed a woman, bro'l
her to the man and presented a bride fair and in
uocent in the lietit ot the lirst morn, ana it was
first celebrated in Eden's undefiled bowers, ere de
pravity had corrupted the fountains of the heart, or
one blush ol guilt had reddened the countenance
serene. , And God,, having instituted matrimony,
Christ says, I-or this cause shall a man leave hi
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his
wife, and they twain shall ba one flesh, therefore
those whom God hath joined together let not man
put asunder;' and yet slavery does this ; it lavs its
unholy hands upon the bridal pair & rends them as
under as though God had not joined them together.
But it may be a question with some whether there
is any such thing as matrimony among slaves. I
know there is not, there cannot be, so far as matri
mony is to be regarded as a legal contract, but are
.1 1 -I I r f, i . r. r i
uiey marneu in uie sigiu oi uou s do lar as this
argument is concerned, it matters not whether thev
are married or not, for I will take a position which
will make the argument good in either alternative
I say, then, they are married or they are not ; if
t'ley are married, then slavery parts those whom
God hath joined together ; and if they are not
married, then slavery annihilates the institution,
and so far as the three million of slaves are con
cerned, the entire south is one scene of corruption,
pollution and rottenness. Take which horn of the
dilemma you please, and the argument is (rood :
say that slaves are married, and you charge sla
very with parting husbands and wives, and of ma
king twain of those whom God has pronounced
one i or say that slaves arc not married, and you
charge slavery with the entire subversion of a di
vine institution. I repeat, take which horn of the
dilemma you please, cither will hang up slavery
to the contemptuous gaze of all who have pure
and virtuous eyes, and to be pierced by the liery
arrows of God Almighty's law.
2. Slavery annihilates the obligation growing
outol the relation subsisting between parents and
children. The command of God is, ' Children.
ooey your parents m the lord.and ye lathers, pro
voke not your children to wrath, but train them
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.'
God says, Children obey your parents in the Lord,
but slavery says, No, not so, Lord, they must obey
their masters who own both parents and children.
and have the right of separating them forever by
selling the one at auction and the other by the
pound. 1 he son is robbed of all interest in his
sire out of whose loins he came, is denied all right
of obeying him during Jhe years of his minority,
or of assisting him in the riper years of his man
hood ; he cannot even reach out his hand to wipe
the tear from his grief-furrowed cheek, or to sup
port his faltering limbs as he is hastened down
life's declivity by the sting of the driver's lash.
1 he daughter has no right to obey her mother.
cannot administer to the comfort of her who in
anguish gave her being, cannot pour one drop of
consolation into that grief-charged bosom from
which she drew her first nutriment, and at which
she was nurtured and reared from helpless infan
cy to endure the woes of riper years.
Parents are also denied the right of responding
to the obligations due to their offspring. God
commands parents to ' train up their children in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord,' but sla
very says, No, parents, ye shall not train up your
children, or if you do, it shall not be for yourselves
nor for the Lord, but for me, that I may sacrifice
your sons on the altar of my avarice, and your
daughters upon the altar of my lust.
Thus you see that the resolution is true to the
very letter: Slavery usurps the prerogatives of
God, tends to blot the divine image from the soul
of man, degrades him from the dignified rank his
Maker gave him in the scale of creation, and sub
verts all the social relations which God and nature
have rendered essential to his earthly allotment.
But though I think I have sustained the resolution,
yet I feel that I have come far short of giving a
"full view of the sinfulness and horrors of slavery :
I have only discovered to you the points of the
serpent's forked tongue ; the body of the viper, in
hideous form, still lies concealed and i known in
the ever-abiding miseries, and dark horrors of the
cotton field, the sugar plantation, and the rice
swamp, from which I have not attempted to draw
the veil, Let no one think that I have given an
exaggerated view of the subject; exaggeration is
impossible, the reality transcends the power of fic
tion, and every nttemptnt declamation lessens the
sublime horror of slavery. To describe it would
require words that should, at the same time, shriek
with terrors of death, shade with the night of des
pair, and glow with the fires of hell. Q could I
wake the winds of the south, and cause them to
pour into the ears of this assembly, the sighs and
groans and shrieks of tortured fathers, and tortur
ed mothers, and tortured sons, and tortured daugh
ters, I should need no other argument, for such
sighs and groans and shrieks, coming up from the
dark land of slavery, and concentrating at this
point, would howl in the ears of the assembly in
notes as wild as the cheer of assembled ghosts.
But I must forbear, or my indignant soul will sub
stitute execration for argument, whereas Michael,
when contending with the devil, brought not a
railing accusation against him, but said, The Lord
rebuke thee ; and may the Lord rebuke slavery :
rebuke it as Christ rebuked intruding devils, with
a rebuke that sent them back in scampering haste
to their native hells, and may it not, like the eject
ed legion, be permitted to enter into the swine, but
be driven naked and unattended down the gulf of
everlasting chaos and oblivion, never more to lilt
its serpentine head this side of the bourne that di
vldes this from the world of wo. Let it be blotted
from the polluted records of the church, let it lie
blotted from the disgraced annals of the State and
Nation, ic if it must have an enduring pnjjc assign
ed it on which to write its dark crimes, let it be
in tho biography of some damned ghost, or in the
history ot Beelzebub the prince of (he devils, ,
11ES DR. WH.SON.
The Rev. James R. Wilson, D. D of the Re
formed (Covenanters') Church, Orange co N.
Y, seconded the motion, and said that hulf a cen
tury ago, iiinotecn-tWOiitleths of the people of the
northern states, would second the motion in the
abstract, and he proceeded to show ihnt the con
demnation of slavery in the abstract, while it is
justified in the concrete, is as inconsistent as to
say that two and three make six. He followed
slavery through the Old and New Testament,
along "the coast of Africa, through the horrors of
the middle passage, among the plantations of the
south, in its demoralizing effects upon the public
mind at Washington and elsewhere, and snowed
that it was evil, and only evil, and that continual,
ly, loathed in the eyes of God, and detested by
all moral aud godly men. The whole second ta
ble of the decalogue, he said, proceeded on the
principle that man has a right to himself. He
therefore concluded slavery was evil in the ab
stract, and in the concrete, condemned and odious
in the eyes of God and good men, and the voice
of both declared that the general jubilee of eman
. . iii , , .1. i j
opation snouia oe prociaimea inrougnoui uie ianut
Other speeches will be given in onr next.
Unprecedented Literary Baseness.
The character of a man of letters belongs to his
country and to mankind. We are not among tW
devotees ol that department of literature to which
our present secretary of the Navy has been chiefly
devoted. But his claims to be considered one of
the literati of our country must be questioned.
The number and popularity of his writings, and
especially the fact thai Messers. "Harpers are now
engaged in publishing a uniform edition of his
works, more voluminous, probably, than those of
any living writer among us, establish his standing.
and give to the American peoplea more than ordi
nary interest in any charge of literary delinquency
which may be brought against them. It is. mor-
over, generally supposed that he is indebted, in no
small degree, to his literary reputation for his pres
ent political advancement. What will the world
say, then, and how will honorable minded Ameri.
cans feel, at the developementmade by Judge Ja)'t
in regard to a bare-laced and literary lraud, in
which Mr. Paulding has allowed himself to be en-
gaged, for the purpose of securing slavery from
the rising tide ol reprobation r We do not know of
a case that is parallel to it, And taking it en all
bearings, we must say, it aflbrds at least colorable
for the stinging interrogatory with which our ex
tract closes. Has it come to this? What new
sacrifices will Moloch exact, when it has constrain
ed Paulding to lay on its bloody altar his literary
integrity ? Are there to be no limits to our nation
al degradation ? We fully believe the idol him
self to be as insatiable as Juggernaut, and that he
will go on increasing in his exactions, unless the
public mind can be roused to throw off the scrvilo
yoke,
J. lv. i'aulding, the present Seretary of the-
Navy, gives us the following picture of a scene ho
witnessed in Virginia
"' Ihe sun was shining out very hot, and m
turning an angle in the road we encountered tho
following group : first, a little cart drawn by one
horse, in which five or six half naked black chil
dren were tumbled in like pigs together. The
cart had no covering, and they semed to have been
actually broiled to sleep. Behind the cart march-
d three black women, with heads, necks and
breasts, uncovered, and without shoes or stockings ;
next came three men, bear-headed, half naked, and
chained together with an ox chain. Last of all,
came a white man a white man, Frank! on
horseback, carrying pistols in his belt, and who,
as we passed them, had impudence enough to look
us in the face without blushing. I should like?
to have seen him hunted by blood-hounds, At '
a house where we stopped a little further on, we
learned that he had bought these miserable being
:., i i i . i i . ,n
hi iiuijw uu, uuu was iiiuicuiiig iiieiii 10 suine 01
the more southern States. Shame on the State
of Maryland ! I say and shame on the State of
Virginia ! and every State through which this
wretched cavalcade was permitted to pass. Du
they expect that such exibitions will not disl.oner
them in the eyes of strangers; however they may
be reconciled to them by education and habit?"
"Letters from the South, written during an ex
cursion in the Summer of 1S16." New York,
1817. Vol 1. Letter XI. p. 117.
" It may be thought by some that the elevated
seat in the cabinet, of a gentleman who expresses
himself with so much warmth and fearlessness
against one of the 'peculiar institutions of the
South,' militates against our idea that the infl.ii
ence of the Federal Government is exerted, in bt-.
half of slavery. Singular as it may appear, tho
appointment of Mr. Paulding is nevertheless
strongly corroberative of the opinion we have ad
vanced ; and the explanation is at once easy nud
amusing. The ' Letters from the Sonth' were re
printed in 1S35, and from the fifth & sixth volumes
of an edition of Paulding's Works.' The letter
from which we have quoted consists of fourteen
pages, devoted to the suject of slavery. On turn
ing to the corresponding letter in the recent edi
tion we fiind it shrunk to three pages, .containing
no allusion to the internal trade, nor any thing elsq
that could offend the most sensative southerner,
In the ninteenth letter as prlutcd in 1817, there is
not a woru aooui siaverv. in the same letter
as nuuiisneu in iojo, we meet witn tne io owintr
most wonqeriui preaiciton; a prediction tiiat has.
I... .1.-1 -.J .L - .
iaieiy uecu cneu in wie newspapers as a proof o
the sagacity and foresight of the Secretary of tho
Navy
" ' The second cause of disunion will be found in
the slave population of the South, K'eweiTrlhemis
guided, or wilfully malignunt zeal of the advocates
of emancipation, shall institute, a? it mini, J.ht.
less will, a crusodegainst the constitutional rights j
of the slave owners, by sending amoung them fa- j
naticnl agents and fanatical tracts, calculated to
render the slave disaffected, and the situation of
the master and his family dangerous; when ap
not) u l' 1 1 1 1 1 1 ha rtndii m.sl. ... f ! . r 1' " ' T
li .....I, imuri tuc auiiL iiun qi rengioi
to the passions ol these ignorant and excited black
..i....i......i aJ ; .1-
iu u u in K.-u umi niiouMcu io rouse ineir worst nn
mium u.iiigriuus jmtMuii, nnu io piace the verv
lives of their masters, their wives, and their clnj,.
uren, m me deepest peril ; when societies are form
.i :.. .1.- .!... o.... - .l . , '
ru in me biii-i pinws lur uie avowed purpose o
iiruiiiiiy uesiroyiinj tue vaiue oi tins principle iter
in uie property oi a southern planter ; when t h
comes a question mooted in the legislatures of the
amies, or me general government, whether tho
rijrhts of the
be recognized or maintained, and when it is nt In. if i
evident that nothing will preserve them but J I
sion then will certain of the gtnrs of our beautiO
full constellation "start madly from their sphere
and jostle the others in their mad career," i I