FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE
THR SOURCE
OF POLITICAL POWER—OF MATERIAL PROGRESS,
OF SOCIAL INTEGRITY,
AND OF SOCIAL EMANCIPATION TO THE SOUTH.
BT
Ij. WL 8PRATT
CHARLESTON :
STEAM POWER PRESS OE WALKER, EVANS & CO.,
NO. 3 BROAD STREET.
1858.
PREFACE.
The substance of the following articles appeared originally in the editorial col-
umns of the Charleston Standard, but they assumed their present shape more
recently in the pages of the New Orleans Delta. They are thought to have con-
tributed in some degree, to raise the Foreign Slave Trade Question at the South,
and for that reason, and for the reason that they touch upon some of the more
important features of that subject, it has been considered proper by friends of the
measure in Charleston to give them again to the public in their present form.
Several numbers of the series are omitted, but enough are left to show the leading
landmarks of the argument, and, as we affect opinion less by what is written than
by what is read, the author is content to forego the further infliction in the hope
that so much will be submitted to complacently.
THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE QUESTION.
No. I.
THE SOURCE OF POLITICAL POWER TO THE SOUTH.
There is a common feeling at the South that in the present aspect
of our fortunes there is the necessity for some settled course of action.
There is the tendency to political aggression, which it is important
to resist, and the tendency to disturb our social constitution, which
it is extremely important to arrest. The institution of domestic
slavery has been arraigned before the public opinion of the world;
it is tried by other forms of society upon foreign laws, and while
we have acknowleged jurisdiction, and have entered our defence,
there has never been the room for hope that sentence shall not
pass upon us.
But while this is so, there has come to be a feeling of repugnance
to such humiliation; a conviction that it is possible and proper
for slavery to erect itself, to withdraw from foreign jurisdiction,—to
become to itself the source of law and centre of opinion,—to as-
sume the moral strength of an aggressive attitude,—to take judg-
ment of others as they take judgment of us, and grasping the
sovereign rights and powers of an equal constituent of the social
world, to march upon the plan and meet the issue.
This feeling is daily growing stronger, and as it casts about for
means to meet the crisis, and as the source of slavery was the
slave trade, there is a natural tendency of opinion in favor of that
measure, and to some of the most obvious considerations it pre-
sents I will now address attention.
The first consideration in favor of the Foreign Slave Trade is in
the fact that it will give political power to the South. It were a fatal
blindness to ignore the truth that the two great sections of this coun-
try are distinct, and a fatal error to suppose that there can ever be
an equality of rights without an equality of political power to sus-
tain them. If the North shall have an excess of population, and
an excess of States, the North will govern. If the South shall
have an excess of population, and an excess of States, the South
will govern. It is utterly impossible that all the paper instru-
ments upon earth can give political equilibrium without an equi-
librium of social and political conditions. At present the North
has a majority of two votes in the Federal, and of more than fifty
4
in the Representative branch of the National Legislature ; the
North has a population of 16,000,000, while the South has a popu-
lation of but 10,000,000. The North has the natural increase of 16,-
000,000, while the South has the natural increase of only 10,000,-
000, and the North has, in addition, an exclusive increase of
350,000 per annum from abroad. Under such circumstances it
were simplicity to suppose that political power between them
can be equal. The North must expand to vacant territory ;
she must exclude and circumscribe the South; she must in-
crease her relative strength in Congress; she must control the
government, and through the government, the South, and though
an army of martyrs from the North should spring upon the breach,
to stay the progress of aggression, it would still roll on and crush
them from its path. Such martyrdom is not to be expected, but
should it happen it will be of little value. In great social move-
ments, the men upon the surface are but its exponents; they are
powerful with it, but powerless without, and though thousands of
them might be swept away, the popular purpose would never be
without an organ. The purpose to control the government has been
already indicated; it was indicated in the last Presidential elec-
tion; it is indicated in the efforts to exclude Kansas; it is indi-
cated in the proscription of men, who have respected more the
obligations of the constitution than the dictates of democratic power,
and if the stranger spectacle of a people having power and forbear-
ing the use of it, is ever to be exhibited upon this earth, we have
already the assurance that it is not to be exhibited within this Union.
Under these circumstances, the only road to security is the road to
political power. A dissolution of this Union is not to be con-
sidered. The causes for a dissolution have existed, but they have
not been acted on. The proposition to dissolve the Union has been
tendered, but it has not been adopted. That end may come, and
will come, doubtless, without the road to social and political se-
curity shall be sooner opened. The collisions necessary to subjec-
tion will break the bonds and set us free, but it is not to be resolved
on. No State ever has, or ever will, perhaps, be able to resolve
upon an act of political dissolution. In States, as in men, the
instincts of life are stronger than the motives to destroy it, and
without dependence on the chances of collision, therefore, the
battle between the great antagonistic sections of this country is to
be fought within this Union.
The slave trade will give us political power. Every 50,000
slaves that come will give us the right to 30,000 votes in the Na-
tional Legislature, and thus, therefore, will contribute directly to
the political power of the South. But more than this. The labor
basis at the South is too small to sustain even our present super-
structure of direction. Slave labor is too efficient and too cheap
to permit of hireling labor in competition with it. It is too valuable
in agriculture to be used at cotton prices in manufactures and the
machanic arts. There is no room, therefore, in the present condition
of our labor system for the emigrant from other countries. By his
5
own labor, he cannot live in competition with the slave here, and
employing slave labor at cotton prices, he cannot live in competi-
tion with mechanical enterprises elsewhere. But by an increase of
slaves the bases of our system would be widened. With more
abundant operatives, there would be occasion for more abundant
intelligences to direct them. The 4,000,000 slaves we have, give
employment and support to 6,000,000 white people; 1,000,000
more would but add to their capacity. In this regard, therefore,
each slave might be said to bring his master with him, and thus
to add more than twice his political value to the fortunes of the
South.
Nor is this all. We have wanted Kansas, and men have periled
their lives and have perished to preserve it; but its preservation
would have been easy with the Slave Trade. Ten thousand mas-
ters have failed to effect the social condition of that Territory.
They have, perhaps, determined its political constitution, but it is
to be doubted whether they have firmly fixed its fortunes to
the South. But if, instead of 10,000 masters, we had sent
10,000 slaves, we would have effected every object we could have
wished. Ten thousand of the rudest Africans that ever set their
foot upon our shores, imported in Boston ships by Boston capital,
and under a Boston slave driver, would have swept the free soil
party from that land. There is not one amongst them who would
not have purchased a slave at 1150, (which would give an ample
profit on the costs of importation,) and there is not a free-soiler
alive, who, purchasing a slave at $150, would not be as strong
a propagandist of slavery as ever lived. With the foreign slave
trade, the South need sacrifice no other son in such a cause,
but with cheap slaves we can subsidize the North to whip the
North from every field of territorial competition.
So taking Kansas, with her population of 100,000; so also we
could take another State in Texas; another, or three or four, in
New Mexico; another in Lower California; and as the slave,
under the discipline and economies of slavery, has been capable
of enduring any climate to which he has been taken, so also
might we take Kansas, Utah, Oregon, and perhaps drive hireling
labor back to its sterile fastnesses in New England, whence only it
would be unprofitable to drive it further. It is said the negro will die
in colder countries; but if he dies in Canada, so also does he die in
Domingo and Jamaica, and so must he ever die when charged
with the trusts of preservation. But under the guards of slavery
he has ever been secure, and, perhaps, upon the northern borders of
Maryland and Virginia are to be seen the finest developments of
the negro character and negro form to be met with in existence.
Slaves constitute the condition of slavery. Without them, there
is no hope of making a slave State; but with them, and represent-
ing as they do the cheapest form of labor, we may send them into
any market where labor is to be paid for ; and with them, there-
fore, in numbers sufficient to supply the wants of the expanding
South, we must come to equality with the North in the popular
6
branch of the national Legislature; we must equal and must
soon surpass the North in States, and in this way, therefore, th£
road is direct and open to the utmost possible security of political
power.
No. II.
THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE VALUE TO VESTED INTERESTS.
Another consideration in favor of the Foreign Slave Trade is in
the fact that it will advance the value of vested interests at the
South. In respect of such interests the South has been singularly
unfortunate. At the North men sleep to opulence. Hemmed in
by more restricted limits, and with a vast foreign population
poured upon them, whose energies have given progress to every
line of business, and value to every article of property; wealth
rose around them; one road constructed paid from its profits the
capital for another; lands purchased one year were worth twice as
much the next; material, space, opportunity, and steam and water
power, all came to have a market. The constant tendency was
upward; every object touched by human want was turned to
gold, and thus it was that, without any extraordinary degree of
enterprise, without any special, natural or political advantages,
the people of that section have spread their sails upon billows of
wealth, and have come to be regarded as the most enterprising
people upon earth.
Not so, however, at the South. Here our limits were more ex-
tended by two hundred and forty-four thousand square miles, the
energies and wants of no foreign people have been poured upon our
soil, every source of external labor was cut off by the suppression
of the Slave Trade. With a smaller population, and a larger
surface, there has been no rise in the value of lands, for there
have been no limits to rise against; no market for opportunity or
powers, for there were enough for all; no want of space except
in the vicinity of large cities; no profits, except in rare instances,
for the want of a more abundant population, to canals and railroads.
The single plane of agriculture is sufficient to hold the entire
South. There has been little super-position of employments;
little contests for the same object; no accumulation of value,
therefore, over the South generally ; and thus it is, that while our
labor has been unusually efficient, while our lands have been
extensively cultivated, and while our products have been
unusually valuable, and while we have taken more directly
from our labor than any other ten million people, there has
been no increase of wealth from accidental causes; few in-
vestments have been profitable; millions upon millions have
been poured into projects that would never pay, and it is to be
doubted whether the permanent property of the older Southern
7
States would sell for more to-day than it would have brought in
market fifty years ago.
Such is not the future promised to our early history. In passing
over the rural parishes of Charleston District, we are met by the
remains of a most magnificent civilization. Upon the Ashley and
Cooper rivers there are mansions, some sustained and some in
ruins, which attest prosperity and princely wealth. The Oaks,
Otranto, Crawfield, Bloomingdale, Oak Hall, Archdale, Accabe and
others must have been the scenes of a most expanded hospitality.
They are yet surrounded by the lines of costly pleasure grounds,
and are approached by avenues of oaks, perhaps the finest in the
world. These were expanded to beauty and grandeur by the native
Africans. Turned from the marts of Charleston upon the plantations
of the District, they gave value to every foot of surface; they were
purchased at moderate prices; the profits of one year's service
were sufficient to purchase as many more the next; property
accumulated in the hands of proprietors; every dollar invested
was productive of another; swamps were drained ; the landscape
brightened; trades were started; arts flourished ; commerce took
up here her American home ; ships sailed to every quarter of the
world; and a land so favored and so promising was never seen as
that adjacent to the metropolis of South Carolina.
Such was the state of facts coincident with the importation of
crude labor into South Carolina; but when discontinued, the
condition of affairs became greatly altered. When labor came
from abroad, it flowed over the land and naturally subsided into
the first places that afforded the opportunity of its profitable em-
ployment; with each wave the frontier widened, and land and labor
were played out from the metropolis in just proportions; interests
vested in land were permanently profitable, from the certainty of
sufficient labor to develop them; the costliest structures could be
sustained by the proprietor, or were sure to find a purchaser;
foreign capital was attracted to a place where land and labor were
both cheaper than any where else; enterprise found a profitable
field, and necessarily, therefore, the fortunes of the country
bloomed and brightened; but when the fertilizing stream of labor
was cut off, when the opening West had no fresh supply to meet
its requisitions, it made demands upon the accumulations of the
seaboard; the limited amount became a prize to be contended for.
Land in the interior offered itself at less than one dollar per acre.
Land on the seaboard had been raised to fifty dollars per acre, and
labor, forced to elect between them, took the cheaper. The heirs
who came to an estate, the men of enterprise who came from
abroad, or the men of capital, who retired from business, sought
a location in the West. Lands on the seaboard were forced to
seek for purchasers ; purchasers came to the seaboard to seek for
slaves. Their price was elevated to their value, not upon the
seaboard, where lands were capital, but in the interior, where the
interest upon the cost of labor was the only charge upon
production. Labor, therefore, ceased to be profitable in the one
8
place as it became profitable in the other. Estates which were
wealth to their original proprietors, became a charge upon the
descendants who endeavored to sustain them. Neglect soon came
to the relief of unprofitable care; decay followed neglect.
Mansions became tenantless and roofless. Trees spring in their
deserted halls and waive their branches through dismantled
windows. Drains filled up ; the swamps returned. Parish
Churches, in imposing styles of architecture, and once attended
by a goodly company in costly equipages, are now abandoned.
Lands which had ready sale at fifty dollars per acre, now sell for
less than five dollars; and over all these structures of wealth,
with their offices of art, and over these scenes of festivity and
devotion there now hangs the pall of an unalterable gloom.
It was thus that the tide of African labor swept upon the
seaboard of the South to brighten every spot it touched; and thus,
as it swept on, it left to gloom and desolation the ungrateful coasts
so closed against it. It was a grave mistake—as grave in morals
as in policy—to shut our ports upon the African. The civilization
we possess was less a property than a trust for all the human
race, and it was not for us to shut its light from those who, in no
other way, could take its brightness. The outcast from the plains
of Africa had shown as well the willingness as the ability to pay
for all he came to ask, and the blight and desolation of our
seaboard are but a retribution for the wrong of his rejection.
The experience of Charleston District has been the experience,
to a greater or less extent, of every other section of the South.
Along the whole Atlantic seaboard, and, in fact, throughout all the
Atlantic States, while the Slave Trade was open and labor came in
excess of lands redeemed from the Western wilderness, lands rose
in value, space was in requisition, improvements paid a profit, and
every subject of human want came to value and found a market;
but when lands came to be in excess of labor, values rolled off to
the West. Extending over such a surface, they could not be
sustained to elevation at any particular point, and, like Charleston
District, almost the entire South has felt its interests vibrate with
the tide of labor.
So vibrating once, it is reasonably certain that, from the same
cause, they will so vibrate again. Foreign Slave Labor might not
stop now, as it did before, upon the seaboard. It may roll into the
interior; but, in either case, the result will be the same. If it
shall stop upon the seaboard, values will rise there, and roll, step
by step, with labor to the West; or if it shall go first to the West,
it will satisfy the wants for labor there. It will arrest the
transportation of labor from the older States, and force it back
to work upon itself. In either case population would be in-
creased, labor would become more abundant, and to the extent
to which these results shall be effected will there be advance-
ment to vested interests at the South.
Considered simply as a constituent of population, the native
African will give a value to vested interests which few are apt to
9
estimate sufficiently. In the Southern States, where there is an
average of only about twelve persons to the square mile, the
average value of land is about six dollars per acre. In Northern
States, where there are one hundred to the square mile, the
average value is about $50 to the acre. In England, where there
are 333 to the square mile, the average value is about $175 to the
acre. In towns where there are 1,000 to the square mile, the
value is not far from $500 to the acre. And in cities where there
are 50,000 to the square mile, the average is not far from $25,000
to the acre. And so it is that with an increase of population there
is a necessary increase in the value of lands; and so also to a
greater or a less extent, is the value of every other thing; and the
whole territory, which may be of no possible value to the solitary
inhabitant, may be a fortune to every one of a hundred thousand
proprietors.
But in his capacity as the exponent of cheaper labor, his
influence will be even more decided. If slave labor shall be no
cheaper than free labor, then lands in the two sections North and
South, will rate in proportion to their relative destiny of population ;
but if slave labor shall be cheaper than free labor, then another
element will be introduced. Investments in agriculture, for
instance, are compounded of land and labor. If an investment
will yield $1,000 clear, it may fairly be estimated to be worth
$10,000; and if the slaves cost $7,000 the lands can only be worth
$3,000; but if the slaves cost only $3,000 the lands will be
worth $7,000—and so with every other subject upon which it is
proposed to emploj'- slave labor—what is saved in the cost of
working, will be added to the value of the machine, and like a
see-saw, the one constituent cannot go down without the other
rising.
That slave labor for all the ruder offices of life, with the slave
trade, will be cheaper than free labor, there can be no question.
The slave can be landed on our coast for fifty dollars; his
training may cost fifty dollars more; he can be fed and clothed
under the economies of a plantation for less than twenty-five
dollars per annum, and twenty-five dollars therefore and the
interest and insurance on $100 will be all the cost of his
employment. It is not possible, therefore, that with the popula-
tion equally dense, lands at the South will not be more valuable
than at the North. If this cheaper labor will give increased
value to lands, so also will it give increased value to timber,
mines, water-power, factories, establishments for industry and
art, and to every other thing in fact which can become the
subject of its employment; and lands will rise, and swamps will
be drained and rendered property—limber, mines, ways, powers
and privileges will come to market. Values will swell around us.
He who owns one hundred acres of land will have a comfortable
support. He who owns one thousand can retire from business,
and while enriched in ways we never could have dreamed of, we
will have the further satisfaction of being regarded as the most
10
enterprising, prosperous and progressive people upon all the conti-
nent.
It will doubtless be excepted to the sufficiency of this argument
that imported slaves will lower the price of those already in the
country, and that thus therefore what may be gained in one spe-
cies of property may be lost in another. But the objection is
invalid. The Slave Trade will not cheapen slaves, but will only
give a cheaper form of slave labor. Those we have will not be
less valuable to us (the products of slave labor being as profitable
as they are,) if native Africans were offered in the market at $100
per head. We would not sell, but we would buy, and all we have
would be of even greater value in bringing the recruits into subjec-
tion. There are men in debt who look to the sale of slaves to pay
them out; but even these would find it cheaper to double their
force and pay their debts by their production.
The products of slave labor would still be as profitable. It is
possible, if the energies of a much larger force were concentrated
upon cotton, the price of that single staple might sink at least to
the point at which it would stop production in Egypt and the
East; but it is to be doubted whether this would be a very great
calamity. In the first place, it is to be doubted whether it is best
that the energies of a people should be absorbed by a single pro-
duct. The energies of the Spanish colonists of South America
were absorbed by gold; and though the soil was fertile, the climate
mild, the air salubrious, and all things invited to a residence and
cultivation; yet gold glittered on the hill-side, and they were
maddened at the sight of it. It was a waste of time to build them
homes, to till the soil, to practise the courtesies of social life, to
make their bread, even, apd the land which yielded millions upon
millions to the treasuries of the world, is still the waste it was
three hundred years ago. So here also is it even now a waste of
time to decorate our homes, and hardly worth our while to make
our bread; and if cotton were to range for twenty years at twenty
cents per pound, it is to be feared that every other product would
be abandoned, and that the South would become not only the
province but the plantation of the North. If, therefore, the price
should be reduced to the range of other occupations, it is by no
means certain that the enlightened economist could much deplore
it. But slave labor is by no means dependent upon cotton : sugar,
coffee, rice, tobacco, hemp, the fruits and the grains, the grasses
and the arts, are waiting and ready to its hand. For the reason
that it is the most efficient form of labor this world has ever known,
it has taken the monopoly of cotton ; and for the reason that cotton
is the most common want of the world, it has found in that pursuit
alone, a sufficient sphere for its employment. But let it drug the
world with cotton, and it will find the harvest of a monopoly in
every other field on which it enters. The value of slave labor
remaining the same, it can be no cause of complaint that slaves
may be purchased cheaper. But if foreign slaves shall be pur-
chased cheaper, it by no means follows that trained slaves will be
11
cheaper also. On the contrary, it is to be questioned whether
they will not be elevated to the higher office of instruction, and
in that office find even a higher range of value.
No. III.
THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE REINTEGRATION OF SOCIETY AT THE
SOUTH.
Another consideration in favor of the Foreign Slave Trade is in
the fact that it will tend to restore integrity to the social system
of the South. It is not known what are the due proportions of
masters and slaves to the proper constitution of what is known as
slave society. The thing itself, as it here exists, is new to human
history, and this perhaps is the first effort that has ever yet been
made to form a social being from the union of unequal races. But
there are many reasons for believing that due proportions
have not been preserved in this experiment. Our society is good,
the best perhaps the world has ever seen, and much of its excel-
lence is attributable to the fact that, to an extent at least, it is ef-
fected by the condition of domestic slavery. But the system has
not been formed to perfect purity. Up to the suppression of the
Foreign Slave Trade the two constituents were free to come.
The white race took the offices of direction, the black the
offices of labor. When direction was in excess it attracted
labor, when labor was in excess it attracted direction, and
hand in hand they went together to the formation of a balanced
system. But when colored labor was cut off there was no
possibility of continuing further the process of a natural form-
ation. Without more slaves there was no room in slavery for
more wlnte men; such as came must come not to union with the
slave, but to competition with him. By the pressure from Europe
and the North, many white laborers, notwithstanding a natural
repugnance to slavery, were forced in. They retained the nature
and tendencies of that society they had left behind them. They
did not extend the existing system, but started another. In so
far as the white race was neutralized by the black race, there was
the slave condition ; in so far as it was not so neutralized, there
was the free, or Democratic condition. Of the 10,000,000 popula-
tion, 3,500,000 are slaves and perhaps as man)T as 3,500,000 white
persons are in legitimate connection with them; but there are
3,000,000 more who are denied the opportunity of a natural asso-
ciation. They are unfixed in the social compound—to that extent
the system of our country is disintegrated and to the order and
efficiency of slavery, perhaps, to its existence as a distinct order
of society, it is of the last importance that its integrity shall be
restored.
I know that it is common to pass this subject lightly, for it is
12
not thought best to arouse the slumbering spirit of Democracy. I
know, also, that with respect to an external enemy, the men who
own no slaves will be as staunch defenders of the South as those
who do own them ; perhaps they will be even more prompt in
responding to insult or aggression ; for when in prospect of the
election of Mr. Freemont, it was proposed to make that act the oc-
casion of resistance, the brigade in this State most ready for the
issue was in that district, where, in proportion, there are the fewest
slaves. But it is not the part of men to ignore a truth because it is
unpalatable, or to yield to the illusion that slavery is safe because
the South is safe—it is a fact that in many sections of the South
there is free labor in competition with slave labor—free sentiment
in conflict with slave sentiment—free society with slave society—
and that this is a condition dangerous, if not to the South, at least
to slavery as a living system at the South, is a truth about which
it were madness to be mistaken.
I will not argue now the question whether slave or free society be
the better; b.ut we have adopted the form of slave society, and have
based our interests and our hopes upon it—and the question now
is, not whether it be right, but what are the conditions of its pres-
ervation.
One of these is, that it shall be pure, and the evidences of a
want of purity are abundant. In Delaware and Maryland there
is scarce the effort to defend slavery. In Virginia the proposition
to receive d colony of Abolitionists is not exceedingly offensive.
In Kentucky it has been proposed to emancipate their negroes.
In Missouri there is a Free-soil party to contend for power, and there
is the disposition to transport their slaves to regions farther South.
In Tennessee it is not so popular to speak of slavery as of equality
and fraternity. In Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and
Arkansas, there are more whites than blacks; and there, also, while
all parties would whip the North, it is abundantly evident that
many of them even there would strike rather for the South than
for Slavery at the South.
In South Carolina alone, of all the Southern States, there is an
excess of slaves, and in that State only is the slave sentiment
composed and steady. I do not arrogate to the people of that
State especial merit. It is, perhaps, the result of accident that
slaves and whites have been brought together there in the propor-
tions of four to three; but in virtue of that fact that proprietory
interest is in the ascendant. Every representative, is not only a
slave owner but the representative of slaveowners; and there
is no party, for that reason, or the fraction of a party, which is
not in perfect fidelity, not only to the South, but to the peculiar
institutions of the South.
There can be no doubt as I have said that free labor is true to
the South, but it is naturally and necessarily conservative of its
own peculiar interests. It will not abolish slavery, for it must
share in the ruin of its abolition. It will not let the institution be
touched by foreign hands, for, if "an ulcer," it is at least their
13
own, and they will "let no others scratch it," but it will prescribe
the slave. It has excluded him from New York and New Jersey.
It excludes him from Delaware and Maryland. It encroaches
upon him in Western Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennes-
see, it drives him out from Richmond, Charleston, Mobile, New
Orleans, St. Louis, and other large cities. It exacts of legisla-
tion not what may suit labor, but what may suit free labor. It
imposes taxes on the slaves that are not shared by the free laborer;
it seeks to restrict him to particular employments. It finds no charm
in a distinct pro-slavery party, and it gives rise to that most odi-
ous distinction between the slave owner and the non-slave owner
that at some other time may much disturb the repose and temper
of the country.
Now, this condition is not natural and necessary to the South.
Free laborers are not in competition with our slaves from any
fancy which they have for that position. Each would own a slave
if he could get him, and owning one slave would be as much a
slave owner as if he held a hundred. But under present circum-
stances there is no chance to alter his position. Six millions of
freemen can not each own one of three millions slaves; nor does
the difficulty consist in the disparity of numbers merely. It is
long before the common laborer can make the one thousand dol-
lars necessary to the purchase of an able bodied slave; and ma-
king it, he is long in coming to the assurance that it is safe to stake
so much upon a single venture. But with slaves in excess of whites,
there would be none excluded from a chance of sharing in thesys-
tern, and with slaves at prices approaching to the costs of import-
ation, there is no laboring man who could not raise the fund, and
scarce a man who would not make the purchase.
It is thus that the differences at the South will be harmonized
by the Foreign Slave Trade. Every white man of capacity will own
his slave. Every man of enterprise will own his labor. All of
the ruling race w ill come to the same social stand point; all will
cast their votes from the same position; as well at home as abroad,
they will have a common interest, and a common cause; the insti-
tution of American slavery will become reintegrated and erect and
so compact and firm, will stand not only to sustain itself, but to sus-
tain the South, sublime and composed among all the storms that rage
among other nations of the earth.
As an act of justice to the poor as to the rich, to non-slaveholders
as to slaveholders, it is important that this state of things shall
come about. The basis of slave labor, as I have said, is too nar-
row for all to stand on. To men of wealth it does not matter
much; it is equally well with them whether they are on or off the
platform. If off, they can purchase back again, and it does not
matter whether the ticket of admission be at one hundred or one
thousand dollars. It will be the index of its value, and it is of
little concern to him whether his wealth have this or any other
representative. But to men compelled to work their way,it makes
all the difference between their being slave owners or non-slave-
14
owners. They are out of the rank of masters, not from choice.
They may affect indifference to a privilege from which they are
excluded, but they have no repugnance to that condition; perhaps
the most common wish is that they may approach it; and it is but
fair and just to that large class of our citizens that slaves shall be
allowed to come in numbers sufficient for them all, and that they
shall have not only the opportunity of joining the class of slave
proprietors, but shall have every motive of interest, as of feeling
to do so, and affirm the nature and expand the fortunes of that
particular form of society with whose fortunes they have chanced
to be associated.
No. IV.
THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE NECESSARY TO THE SOCIAL EMANCIPATION
OF THE SOUTH.
Another consideration in favor of the Foreign Slave Trade is the
fact that it will give social emancipation to the South. In after
years it will be curious to look back upon the present position of the
South. I have no doubt but that slavery will stand; and standing
with this Union or without it, will come to be the constituent of a
most imposing nationality. When this shall happen it will be
difficult to realize that we have ever stood in our present social
and political relations to the North. The slave States were par-
ties to the original contest for American Independence; they
shared in the perils and privations of that struggle; they came as
equal members to the convention that formed the Constitution;
they took their equal stations under the present Government; they
brought a social system as vital to themselves as is the democratic
system to the North. That system exhibited as many evidences
of propriety and power; it has been distinguished by as many
indications of Divine approval; it has contributed as much'to
raise the character of the nation; it gives order to the South; it is
the stay of order in the Union; by its peculiar products, it binds
the world in peace towards us; it gives elevated names to history—
fair and virtuous women to their homes—three million five hundred
thousand of a race of savages to the works of civilization, and
three-fourths of our exports to the commerce of the country; and
yet, through this career of great achievements, it has borne the
brapd of reprobation. The North takes credit for piety and virtue
in condemning us, and we ourselves—instinct with this great prin-
ciple—the depositors of the great trust, have, shrunk from its
affirmance; we hesitate to declare its truth; we shrink from vin-
dicating its integrity; we acknowledge the justice of its condem-
nation, and barely supplicate that, though outlawed of human
sentiment, we may be spared the boon of its existence.
As to the fact that the Government of the United States presents
15
itself to the world as the representative of free society alone, there
can be no misapprehension. That attitude was assumed by Con-
gress in the Act of 1794, prohibiting the transportation of slaves
by American citizens, or in American vessels, from the coast of
Africa to the foreign countries. There was a clause in the Con-
stitution of the United States restricting Congress from prohibiting
the importation of slaves, but there was no clause restricting Con-
gress from prohibiting their transportation to other countries.
Slavery was not agreeable to the world; it was offensive to the
tender sensibilities of our own Government, and Congress, there-
fore, to throw off from itself as far as possible the odium of such
an institution, gave this assurance to the world, that the extent of
their ability, they would keep it under. This purpose to repress
slavery was further exhibited in the Act of 1807, the year before
the period to which its power of prohibition had been postponed.
There was no obligation upon Congress to restrict the slave trade.
The provision was that they should not restrict it, but no power of
prohibition at that time was expressly given. If it arose by impli-
cation, it was applicable as well to migrations as to importations—
to foreigners from Europe as to slaves from Africa; and while
Congress therefore might have doubted of its power, or have with-
held itself from the exercise of that power, it might with equal
propriety have put the prohibition as well upon emigrants as
slaves. But it did not do so; free society was right, and there-
fore foreigners should come. Slave society was wrong, and there-
fore slaves should not come. And thus did the Government of the
United States more unequivocally assume the position as repre-
sentative of one only of the two great social sections of the country.
This position was further expressed in the act known as the Mis-
touri Compromise, by which the evil of slavery was confined to
she region below 36° 30' lat., and it was reiterated in the Act
of 1820, declaring the slave trade piracy, and further still in the act
of receiving petition against slavery, in prohibiting the slave trade
in the District of Columbia, and in the stipulation of the Ash-
burton Treaty to sustain a squadron on the coast of Africa.
It is not my present purpose to inquire as to the correctness of
this position. Slavery may seem right or wrong to Congress, but
it is enough for us that it is our form of society—the institution
with which our hopes and fortunes are associated. We are the
equal party in this Government. In this Government we find no
representative; it condemns us at home and refuses to acknowledge
us abroad ; and it is time that the social emancipation of the South
should come; it is time that Congress should stand before the
world in equal relations to the North and South; and time, there-
fore, that the discrimination to the prejudice of slavery, consisting
in restriction on the Foreign Slave Trade, should be removed.
This act to the prejudice of slavery is distinct and unequivocal—
the spread of slavery may be wrong, and, therefore, the Missouri
Compromise; but slavery must itself be wrong when it is the pre-
cept of humanity that the further union between the races shall
16
be arrested. By no dexterity can we dodge the logical accuracy
of this conclusion. We may show, as we can show, that this
union of unequal races exhibits the best form of society that the
world has ever seen; that it exhibits order, and the securities of
order; that it has raised the savage to an agency in civilization;
that it has given the ruling race a higher point to start from to
higher thoughts and nobler purposes. Still the mind will follow
the wrong to its results. Still if the trade be piracy, the slave is
plunder. If it be a crime to take him, it is a crime to keep him,
and sense and reason tell us that we abandon slavery when we
admit a wrong in the means to its formation.
This reprobation is the more emphatic that it is our own volun-
tary act. We are an equal constituent of this Government, its
acts are the expressions of the South as well as of the North, and
not only therefore does slavery stand before the world condemned,
and branded, but the South herself concurs in such a sentence;
the wrong is fixed upon us with the perfect verity of a judgment
by confession. And in further defence of slavery we have no
position left us but that of the outlaw, who strikes for advantages
he has no right to claim, and against the form of a society he can-
not question.
But even this were better than the one which we really assume.
Disguise it as we will, it is the assumption of evil in slavery that
sustains restrictions on the slave trade. If this form of society be
right; if, in the nature of things, there can be a union of unequal
races; if, from this union there comes a form of society true to its
members and strong for all the exigencies of perpetual progress,
there can be no wrong in the natural steps to such a union. It
would be as logical in those who favor matrimony to object to
marriage, and yet to abandon the principle but persist in the prac-
tice, and become miserable mendicants for the toleration of a vice
which we confess to be offensive to the sense of all enlightened
people, is a condition of abasement from which no ingenuity or
genius can redeem us.
This abasement is not only unbecoming, but gratuitous; there
is nothing in the course and constitution of the South to induce a
consciousness of insufficiency. There is nothing in the attitude
and actions of the North to inspire a sentiment of awe and admira-
tion. While the North has been desultory, the South has been
constant; while the North has been aggressive, the South has been
erect and just; while the North has exhibited the feverish activi-
ties of an unnatural condition, but has made no certain step to
substantial greatness, the South has gone with measured tread to
higher ranges of purpose and perception, and in doing this has
exhibited a sweetness of repose, a tranquil dignity of power and
progress, a calm sublimity of social order, without a parallel in
the history of any civilized community upon earth.
This abasement is not only gratuitous, but it has little to redeem
it from a blunder. We gain no friends, for there are none to de-
fend those who will not defend themselves. We avoid no contro-
IT
versy, for it is weakness and not strength that invites attack. We
shrink from perils which have no existence, for if there were want-
ing any evidence of the Divine appointment of slavery—any
assurance that it is destined to a bright career of greatness and
glory through indefinitely distant ages, these would be found in
the fact that, alone, of its own intrinsic strength, against the judg-
ment of the age, against the power of the general Government,
and without even affirmance of its own people, it has stood and
it stands, and shows that it will stand up to its own vindication
and complete establishment.
The restrictions on the slave trade are assumptions of the wrong
of slavery. With that institution are bound the fortunes of the
South; the South is party to this Government, and that she may
vindicate her form of Society, that she may bring it to the recog-
nition of the world, or at least that she may sustain and strengthen
it, it is of imperative obligation upon her that she shall have this
judgment of reprobation erased from the records of the country.
No. v.
THE FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE OBJECTIONS: FIRST, THAT IT IS WRONG.
Having presented the most obvious considerations in favor of
the Foreign Slave Trade, I come next in order to objections. Of
these, the most prominent is, that it is wrong, and to this 1 would
solicit the serious attention of the country; for, if established, it
is not only in bar of any further proceeding in the matter, but is
vital, also, to the institution of domestic slavery.
There are slaves in Africa—writers say that these amount to
five-sixths of the entire population. The number may be over
estimated, but of the fact of the existence of that condition, there
can be no doubt. Now, it is asserted that it is wrong to import these
slaves, while it is not wrong to transport domestic slaves from the
seaboard to the west. But is there ground for this distinction?
Men affect to find it in the fact that native negroes have been held for
generations and are property by prescription, therefore, but this
is not sufficient. If it would do for him who owns the slave, it will
not do for him who buys him. With respect to the slave that is
offered in the markets of Charleston, I am as far from the owner-
ship by prescription as I am of the slave that is offered on the coast
of Guinea. Whatever others may have, I at least have no right to
hold him by prescription; and if I may buy him and transport
him where I please, for the reason that he is already in a condition
of subjection in the one case, §q also, may I in the other, and he
who finds no wrong in purchasing a slave he never owned at home
has nothing to say to me for purchasing a slave I never owned
abroad.
2
18
But I go farther. It is weakness to seek a refuge in prescription
from the wrong of slavery. Prescription gives no right against
the slave. If he has a natural and inalienable right to freedom it
never can be extinguished by prescription. That may give me
the title to property as against another, and to a slave, therefore,
as against his master, but no right to the slave as against himself,
and it were as just to hold that the imprisonment of man for one
year will warrant his imprisonment for another, that we may beat
a neighbor until it shall be no battery to beat him, and, generally
that the repetition of any other wrong will make it right as that
by holding the negro in violation of his natural rights so long we
have acquired the right to hold him longer.
Unpleasant as the conclusion may be, I yet believe it to be
true, and so affirm it, that there is no warrant for slavery in the
fact of its existence. If wrong in its commencement, it is wrong
in its continuance. If wrong to take him, it is wrong to hold him.
And at last we are forced inexorably back to the alternatives
either of abandoning the defence of slaverjr or of marching boldly
to the stand of its integrity. We must say that it is right—that
it is right there should be this union between unequal races; that
in the nature of society there is room for this relation; and that
with the relation of master and slave as with the relation of hus-
band and wife and parent and child, society is better, and the
parties are better than they are without, or we must give it up.
In advancing this position we are met by the difficulty that it
is a departure from the social idea of the age. The common
mind has come to the conclusion that equality is right, and a pure
democracy, therefore—a social state, in which all are absolutely
equal, has come to be the ideal of the enlightened world. This
principle was announced in the declaration of American indepen-
dence, it has been carried to extravagance in the revolutions of
France and Mexico; it has been the theme of orators and poets,
and in this age of reason it has been almost the only political
dogma of which it has been heresy to doubt.
But slavery makes dissention. It breaks up the captivating
harmony of opinion upon this subject. It holds that equality is
not right except among equals; that among unequals the right
relations are those of inequality, and that a social being formed of
unequals in relations of inequality is in every way as commendable
a creation and as consonant to the plans and purposes of an over-
ruling Providence as is the social being formed of any single race
to the exactest precepts of equality. So holding, it forms upon
the theory. It Admits democracy amop^ equals, but among
unequals it insists on aristocracy, and so adopting not one only,
but both great principles of social conformation, it raises the
question with the world as to the propriety of- such adoption.
If it were reasonably certain that human opinion is right; that
the great ruler of this Universe has committed to man the office
of determining the limits and the forms of his creation, it might be
wrong in slavery, or in that society affected by slavery, to depart
19
from the opinion of the world. But we have no such certainty;
no indication that the developments of this great diorama are at
all to be determined by human preconception; and those who
look for the right of slavey, therefore, cannot expect to find it in
the judgment of per-existing forms of society, these must neces-
sarily oppose it—as necessarily if it be right as if it be wrong,
for society like any other thing, must be conservative of its own
condition, and if to be affirmed, we must look for its affirmance
in the plans and purposes of a higher power.
Is there then the reason for believing that there is eternal
prohibition upon the existence of unequal orders in society? This
is the question, and as it is grave enough to justify a slight ab-
straction, I will crave the indulgence of my readers, should I
chance to have any, while I make that venture.
That the races which concur in the formation of slavery at the
South are unequal, there is scarcely room to doubt. The one is
capable of progress, the other is not capable of progress. The
one stands up to civilization; the other falls away from it.
The one rules when in contact; the other yields obedience.
The one comes, slowly perhaps, but still comes, to a percep-
tion of the laws of the great Universe; the other illuminates
no single truth with the rays of genius. It may be that they
do not differ radically; that they are only at different stages
of progress; but that they do differ, that the centers of char-
acter and intelligence in the one race are below those of the
other, now, at least, is so certain that I could confidently rest
the right of slavery on that simple proposition. These races,
so unequal, are upon the surface of the same earth, both
possess powers of expansion, there is no impassable barrier
between them, and it must have been foreseen and must have
been intended, therefore, that their circles of expansion should
intersect; that at some point or other they should come in con-
tact, and unless it can be inferred that the stronger was intended
to crush out the weaker, as has been done with the savages on
this continent, we must infer the intention that some form of union
should occur between them.
Having no reason to infer a wrong in this union between
unequal races, we have no reason to infer a wrong in the relations
of inequality resulting from it. On the contrary, admitting that
they are unequal—relations, to exist at ail, must be of inequality.
There is no evasion of this necessary law. In theory we may
take what pleases us for true; we may assume lead to be as light
as feathers; and, as at the North, we may assume the negro to
have the social weight of white men; but, in fact, the one will
sink while the other floats. In spite of efforts to disturb the
process, oil and water, poured into the same vessel, will settle at
unequal plains of elevation ; and while nature is the same, superior
power will find its office in a superior position.
Nor, in fact, does human sentiment oppose this principle of aris-
tocracy. The fact is offensive to the fashionable opinion of this
20
age, bat not the law which underlies it. On the contrary, we con-
stantly admit the principle in social practice. If men of unequal
abilities are up for office, we elect the best; or, if we do not, there
is not one of us, not even an abolitionist, who has the hardihood to
own the fact. And why is this, except upon the supposition that
the best should govern ? And if excellence were transmissible,
how could it be in accordance with the principle of election, that
power should not be transmitted also? The office of election is
to elevate ability, and thus it is that democracy itself bears tribute
to the truth of aristocracy.
If, then, the races are unequal; if there is no impediment to
contact and co-existence; if co-existence can only occur in rela-
tions of inequality, and if even radical democracy itself admits
that the superiority of the best is right, there would seem to be no
further impediment to the intellectual recognition of this form of
social order. But still there is the conviction that it is a flying in
the face of Providence, and this logic of the " fact accomplished,"
can never be met except by the logic of another fact accomplished,
and slavery must be approved and recognized before it can be
right. To this, however, I will still address one other argument.
We are not at the point of time, nor are we vested with the
intelligence to preconceive the purposes of an overruling Provi-
dence. If society be a creature, it is not improbable that, like
every other creature, it may have forms for its development, and
as the inorganic world was brought to the point at which it was
fit for animal life, and animal life was raised by successive stages
to the point at which it was fitted for society, so also may society
be intended to progress to other ranges of creation.
The physical world would seem to be complete. Starting at
the polyp—an unarticulated thing, with its footstalk on a rock, and
capable only of growth and reproduction, and following the chain
of animated nature up to man, we see a grand panorama of crea-
tions, each order more complicated and more perfect than the one
before it. Of this great array of physical nature, the forms are
all determined and the requisition known; but starting at society,
as yet, an unarticulated thing, with its footstalk on man, and point-
ing out to a range of social creations unaccomplished, the forms
are not determined and the requisitions not known. It may be
that this democracy—this thing of equal elements—unarticulated
and unbalanced—is all that is intended; that this order of social
creations is to.stop at its lirst achievement, and that man is to en-
dure, and nations rise and fall with the ability to attain to nothing
more formed and more enduring than this elementary condition.
But it may be that this is not all that is intended—it may be that
society is to go by Regular graduations upwards; that it is to have
form and organism and capacities and powers as much above the
ideal of this present age as is the vertebrate above the radiate in
animated nature. I do not propose to decide this question, but I
do propose to say that by analogy to the course and constitution
of nature, it is possible that society is intended to advance, that
21
its requisitions are not to be determined by human judgment, and
that it may be right, therefore, without our approbation.
Nor does history disaffirm the idea that society is in want of
something more than is to be found in a democracy. It is true
that equality has generally prevailed. Wherever there have been
political inequalities, they have given way before it. They gave
way before it in Rome—they gave way before it in France—they
are giving way before it in England, and generally wherever there
have been artificial distinctions, they have yielded to the tenden-
cies of a natural condition." The patrician was no better than the
plebeian at Rome, therefore the patrician sunk; the plebeian whs
no worse than the patrician, therefore the plebeian rose, and by
the natural force of social gravity, both settled in the plane of a
military democracy. So also was there an equilibrium in France;
so also at the North; so also is there the tendency to equilibrium
in England, and, in fact, in all the States of modern Europe. But
the precept of this experience is not that inequalities are wrong,
but only inequality among equals. On the contrary, it will be
noticed that while inequalities among the same people have always
yielded to the force of social gravity, still these very inequalities
would themselves seem to have been the causes of social movement.
We have no record of any people who have ever started to greatness
without them, and none of any people who have long survived
their obliteration. There was phosphorescence over the putridities
of old Rome, but there is no evidence of natural vitality after
social inequalities were dissolved; there are fitful gleams of great-
ness over France, but a despotism is the stay of social order, since
the natural props of social order have been strifcken down. So
also at the North they exhibit strength and rejoice in the prospects
of endurance, but it might be painful to inquire how much of their
strength is attributable to the blood which they have drained from
the veins of the more athletic South, and how much of their order
and endurance is attributable to their sloughing off their mortify-
ing members in the West.
While, therefore, equality among equals has been right, it has.
not been shown to be sufficient. Society, of its own motion, has
exhibited the want of something more. Without unequal races,
it has been forced to take unequal classes of the same race—to
adopt an artificial dualism—in order to commence a social move-
ment; and so, hasbeen capable of the only great achievements that
illuminate the race. These political distinctions have not endured,
but that does not show that they were not necessary; it only shows
that there were no natural inequalities to sustain them, and a na-
tural dualism—a state of society composed of unequal races which
will have the distinct classes necessary to progress, and in such
condition as that they can never merge, is, perhaps, the requisition
of humanity.
Slavery meets the requisition. I have shown that there is no
apparent purpose against such a union of unequal races; that in
a union of unequal races there is nothing wrong in relations of
22
inequality; that a consideration of the course and constitution of
nature, suggests the probability that society requires such a union
to a higher form of development; and if of her own spasmodic
workings through human history, society has herself declared the
want, we must believe that it is right. If slavery be right, there can
be no wrong in the foreign, whatever there may be in the domestic,
slave trade. It may be wrong to drag the slave about and tear
him from the roots of his affections, but it can never be wrong to
bring him to the point at which his union with a higher race is
possible, and where he may become thl^part of a living system of
the social world.
No. VI.
OBJECTION SECOND INHUMANITY OF THE SLAVE TRADE.
It is further objected to the Foreign Slave Trade, that it is
attended by too many barbarities to be tolerated by a civilized
people; and men who see no wrong in slavery or in the trade in
slaves, at home, are yet intensely sensitive of some great enormity
in such a traffic the instant it extends beyond the water. I remem-
ber once to have been particularly penetrated by the eloquence of
a friend from Upper Mississippi upon this subject, when the feel-
ing was removed by the inquiry whether he could not purchase
some five or six young negroes to advantage in the market of
Charleston. This gentleman is really humane, and more than
usually intelligent—but the domestic slave trade is enforced by
the resistless logic of adoption, and therefore the domestic slave
trade is right—the Foreign Slave Trade is repelled by the equally
resistless logic of reprobation, and therefore the Foreign Slave Trade
is wrong—and he was utterly unconscious that a principle in one
case was applicable to the other. But it is indeed so—as I have
shown in the preceding number—that the grounds of right in both
cases are the same, and it only remains to be determined whether,
in its necessary incidents, the one preceding is more offensive
than the other.
Are there indeed grounds for this distinction? The native
African is a poor, uninformed, brutal creature—at best the slave of
his appetites and passions; and, if a slave, the slave of appetites
and passions as brutal as his own. If a slave, therefore, there
can be no question of advantage in his advancement to a life of
service in a civilized community. But if a freeman, even, he pre-
sents but little claim to commiseration. He comes from barbar-
ism to civilization; from heathenism to Christianity, from a life of
war to one of peace; from liability to be taken and eaten at any
moment by a lurking adversary, to a condition in which external
harm can never happen to him, and though this be a life of servi-
tude, it is one of usefulness, and one in which there is abundant
23
room for the exercise of virtue and every valuable power he may
possess. In this there is little to excite the commiseration of
enlightened philanthropy, and it is indeed to be doubted whether
there have been other savages born in the wastes of Africa, or
upon the wastes of any other savage country, so truly blessed as
have been the 400,000 Africans who, during the continuance of
the slave trade, were transported to the South.
Bui such is not the condition of the five or six girls and boys in
contemplation of my friend from Mississippi. These to suit him
must have been well raised and have become attached to a home
as good as he could offer; they must have relatives and friends,
perhaps lovers—for such things happen sometimes even to slaves—
or wives and husbands. They must leave a life to which they are
accustomed for one to which they are not accustomed, and a land
particularly favored for one not more favored in the West, and it
is doubted whether such a change of condition, such a rupture of
ties, such an abandonment of all that is dear and familiar, from
no motive of their own, but from the feeling or interest of some
other perso^ in no way related to them, is not the sadder object
of the two. I do not believe that the negro has strong local attach-
ments. They generally seem cheerful at the prospect of removal.
But it would seem, if we have sympathy, that this, like other
charities, should begin at home.
There are those, however, whose chief objection to the Foreign
Slave Trade is in the horrors that attended its operation. They
are taught to believe that the masters of slave vessels are cruel
and blood-thirsty; that the vessels are necessarily small; that the
accommodations and comforts are necessarily insufficient; that a
large proportion must die, and be thrown overboard; and that the
rest can scarcely live. Much of this, as a fact, has been doubtless
true. The earlier navigators were rather rude; there was less
philanthropy, perhaps less humanity, in those days than there is
at present. The lives of slaves were not much regarded, and it
is probable, therefore, that in the slave trade, as in most great
movements during the 17th and 18th century, there was much to
disapprove of; but of these pictures the larger part was doubtless
fancy. About the beginning of the present century it became
fashionable, and afterwards profitable, to decry the slave trade.
No book alluding to that subject could sell without some execra-
tions, and many sold for the reason only of their execration of this
traffic. With abuse on one side, and without defence on the other,
it could not chance but that the truth should be lost sight of. But
I would ask whether it ever could have happened but that the
slave on board the vessel was not worth his value to the owner—
whether he was not at the risk of the owner? and whether, while
then, as now, men were considerate of their interests, it could
have been that these owners threw away their slaves unneces-
sarily? or that they did not take every reasonable care of them?
The emigrant who comes to labor at the North has no especial claim
upon the consideration of the one in charge of transportation. His
24
passage money is paid in advance. If he shall be maimed, it
will be no loss to the proprietor; and if he shall die, it will be a
gain to the extent of his room, and the costs of his subsistence.
He has no security for good treatment, except that which is to be
found in the obligations of a contract he may never have the
power to enforce; and he is at the mercy, therefore, of an arbi-
trary master, whose interest rather is to crowd him to the limits
of existence. Not so the slave; he sets his foot upon the slave-
ship the property of his master, and, as such property, he takes a
bond in the precise amount of his value that he will be transported
safely, and that he shall come in good condition. To this bond
there is no defence; it wants no courts, no officers of law; it is>
registered in nature's chancery, and is forfeited, and the penalty
enforced, the instant that he comes to harm. It is impossible,
therefore, that he shall not have every care, even without the aid
of legislation, which may be necessary to his health and comfort;
and if his mode of exodus were not looked at through the spec-
tacles of an illusive philanthropy, he would appear to be the
most favored voyager that ever crossed the ocean.
It is urged, however, as another ground of inhumanity, that the
trade in slaves will start the tribes to war upon each other. This,
if true, would be important, but is it true that those tribes would
be at peace without the slave trade ? On the contrary, it is the
testimony of all who have ever known that country, that there
never was, there is not, and as far as human judgment goes, there
never will be, a period when they are not at war upon each other.
They were at war before the slave trade was started with the
Western World; they were at war while the slave trade lasted,
and they have been at war since it was supposed to have been
arrested. It is, in fact, the condition of savage life—not in Africa
alone, but the world over, that they are to war upon each other
until each poor tribe is exterminated by the one that, by some
accident, becomes the stronger. It is so with the tribes in Africa
and the Southern and Pacific Islands. It wras so with the savages
on this continent, and it must be so while there is a race on earth
that cannot find sufficient range for its energies in arts or peace.
Nor is there any tendency in the slave trade to intensify the hor-
rors of this condition. It does not occasion the more rapid exter-
mination of the races, for the savages in North America have
disappeared without the slave trade, while the tribes in Africa
have been only more populous and stronger with it than without.
It occasions the taking of no captives. It is true, perhaps, that some
are spared to slavery who else might be butchered on the field, but
all who come within their power are taken or slain as certainly
without as with the slave trade. It occasions no cruelty to cap-
tives; on the contrary, it is to be doubted whether any human
institution can so mitigate the barbarities of savage warfare.
Without this, there is no hope for the captive but of death to ter-
minate his life of suffering; but with this, he has value. Even
his savage master, when in the vicinity of a slave market,
25
comes under bond to that amount to, spare his life and treat him
to a good condition.
I have said that if our sympathies are for the negro race, it were
as well to give a share to those amongst us, and in one respect the
stoppage of the slave trade has not advanced their fortunes. When
the Foreign Slave Trade was in operation, the location of the slave
was permanent. When planted upon one spot he was generally per-
mitted to remain, and further importations, to a great extent,, sup-
plied the further requisitions of the West. While that condition
lasted he was in the way of advancing from the nature of a mere
chattel to a kind of inheritance in the estate. In fact it had become
the custom to sell lands and slaves together, and even yet there is
the feeling in this State for such relation, and there is unwilling-
ness to sell or buy the one without the other. Under this custom
the negro became fixed in his relations; he acquired a kind of pro-
perty in the soil; usage became a law upon the plantations; rudi-
mentary institutions, suited to his capacity and estate,.appeared
and grew upon him; a cabin and a patch of land became his own,
and protected from external harm by the arm of his master, and
allowed room within for the expansion of his social nature, he had
come to a position as favorable for him as any to be devised by
the most solicitous philanthropy. But when the slave trade was
arrested, the wants of the West came rudely in; they tore him
from home; his little community was scattered; his customs
broken up ; he was taken to one place but to be removed to an-
other; all sense of his right to a permanent relation to the soil has
been lost, and he is now as mere a chattel as was his progenitor
when he was landed one hundred years ago upon our shores.
Serfdom, with all his mitigating features, seemed to open to the
slave at the South, and the loss to him in being deseated of this
hope, has not been compensated, it is to be feared, by any advan-
tages which the suppression of the slave trade has conferred upon
the natives of Africa.
In fact, it would be difficult to perceive what other effect these
acts of Congress have than to send the slave, that else might come
to us, to Cuba and Brazil, and to intensify the sufferings of his
transportation. They certainly do not arrest the slave trade. Mr.
Buxton, Vice President of the Society in England for the Suppres-
sion of the Slave Trade, who wrote in 1840, showed that it had
been increased to 150,000 per annum. Mr. Slidell, Chairman of
the Committee on Foreign Relations, in his report to the Senate of
the United States, in 1854, showed that from 1842, the time when
the squadron was ordered to the coast of Africa, the shipment of
slaves had been constantly increasing, and that, therefore, for all
the ills to the political and social fortunes to the South, we have
not the reason for believing that we have protected one single
slave from transportation to a foreign country.
26
No. VII.
FOREIGN WAR VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION DISSOLUTION OF
THE UNION.
I have d my readers upon the Slave Trade Question
to an extent, perhaps, that has not been warranted by the impor-
tance of the views I have had to offer, but this article will have at
least the merit of being the last.
In the course of this discussion I have shown, or sought to show,
that "the Foreign Slave Trade will restore political power to the
South :" " that it will give material progress to the South ;" " that
it will give value to vested interests of the South;" " that it will
give integrity to society at the South;" and " that it will give
social emancipation to the South." I have also sought to show
"that it will not contravene the apparent purposes of an over-
ruling Providence"—" not necessarily occasion injury or suffering
to the slave"—"not excite servile insurrection"—"not lead on to
social suffocation," and " not unfavorably affect the interests of
even slave owners at the South." But if I shall have succeeded
in establishing all these propositions, I am conscious, still, that I
will not have cleared the question. The resistances of preconcep-
tion but yield to form again. If clouds shall have been swept
from over head, they only hang in accumulated horrors on the
horizon. We are still assured that this movement will occasion
foreign war; that it will violate the Constitution; and last, and
worst of all, that it will certainly cause a dissolution of the Union;
and to the consideration of these questions I will devote the closing
number of this series.
If the Foreign Slave Trade will lead to war, it is, perhaps,
enough to say we cannot shrink from even that emergency.
Vested with the trusts of a great truth, if we can only advance to
the greatness and glory of its promise through the fiery trials of a
foreign war, then to even that ordeal we must commit the arbitra-
ment of the great question.
But there will be no foreign war. It is a mistake that European
States are tender on the score of human rights. England crushes
India; France, Algeria; Russia, Austria and Prussia have parted
Poland—all march to the opportunity of aggrandizement, and if
forced to look for European morality, in the history of European
States, we will find a mournful picture, exhibiting but the two
great principles, that strength is virtue and weakness crime.
Nor have they repugnance to slavery. Russia has the serfdom
of an equal race, with no crusade against her; Spain has slaves
and incurs no war in adding to their number; Turkey has slaves,
and States combine to bolster up her nationality; England still
retains her fleet in the Black Sea to keep open the trade in Cir-
cassians to the markets of Constantinople; both England and
France are taking slaves (though under subterfuge, 'tis true,) from
27
Africa to their West India Islands, and the very Africa for whose
rights and interests it is supposed they will go to war, has four-
fifths of her savages in hopeless bondage to masters as savage as
themselves.
Nor have they, in fact, a repugnance to slavery, or the extension
of slavery, in the United States. They have repugnance to the
power of the United States, and to slavery, therefore, as the source
and condition of that power. Like the Romans in the time of
Pyrrhus, they have apprehensions of the engines of their adver-
sary and an antipathy of the elephants, on the backs of which
those engines are advanced upon them—and they kill the inofFen-
sive beast to escape his burthen. So it is that to slavery in the hands
of the North—to slavery that energizes the arm of a competitor
which gives him, by its superior efficiency, the monopoly of cot-
ton—which brings them to the feet of an imperious rival—which
puts them under bonds to do not what may be just—not what may
be profitable to slavery—but what may be convenient and agreeable
to those who control the fortunes of slavery—to this institution,
so connected, they have repugnance—and England regards it,
doubtless, with the perfect entirety of Anglo-Saxon hatred. And
while she crushes India to make 500,000 bales of cotton, and
would crush the whole of Africa to make 500,000 more, she would
crush, with a triumph and a trance of pleasure, the social prin-
ciple in this country which forces her to such extremity.
But to slavery not in the hands of the North—to slavery sui
juris—to slavery in a condition of political independence, or in a
condition to control the North—to slavery enough to make all the
cotton wanted by the world—to slavery in a condition to give open
markets to the world—to stand fair and square before the world—
to act from the promptings of no other interests than its own—to
slavery in such condition there would not only be no repugnance,
but it would be loved and cherished. The South, in charge of
such an institution, would not only not he liable to the abuse and
injury she now incurs from being found in bad company, but she
would be singularly favored. Champions would spring to her
defence; crowns would bend before her; kingdoms and empires
would break a lance to win the smile of her approval and in quit-
ting her free estate, it would be to become the bride of the world
rather than the miserable mistress of thfe North.
In re-opening the Foreign Slave Trade, the South will exhibit
the purpose to control her own fortunes, and to that purpose,
instead of war, I verily believe, if it were necessary, she would
have the ships and soldiers of every State in Europe to sustain her.
With respect to the objection that the Foreign Slave Trade
would violate the compromises of the Constitution, but little need
be said. If true that the Constitution has been found restrictive
of advancement in any section of the Union, that of itself would
be sufficient to justify a change of that instrument. But it is not
true. The Constitution says the slave trade shall not be arrested
before the year 1808, but it no where says that it shall be arrested
28
then or at any other time, and as the "powers not expressly
granted to Congress" are "reserved to the States respectively,"
it may he justly argued that not only was it not obligatory on
Congress to restrict the Slave Trade, but that there never was the
power to do so, and that the States are still as sovereign with
respect to this power and as much at liberty to continue that
branch of commerce as they were before the Constitution was
adopted.
The power can only arise by implication, and if by implication,
and that be a sufficient consideration for its enforcement, then
there will be an equal obligation to exclude emigrants as well as
slaves. The clause declares that "the migration or importation of
persons" shall not be prohibited before the period above men-
tioned. If "importation" referred to slaves, "migration" must
have referred to free persons; it was so understood at the time
the Constitution was considered. If by force of this clause of the
Constitution the one must be excluded, so must the other also,
and while therefore a strict regard for the obligations of the Con-
stitution might defeat Congress of any power upon the subject, a
regard for the compromises of the Constitution would require that
while one section of the country is restricted in its powers of pro-
gress, so should be the other also, and that thus the equilibrium of
political power should be transmitted.
Nor is there danger of a dissolution of the Union. The North
wants cotton. She is scarcely less dependent upon it than Eng-
land, and the logic is conclusive to the common mind, that more
slaves will give more cotton. She also wants profits from Her
capital and the use of her ships, and no trade in the world will
pay so much as the trade in Foreign Slaves. The proposition to
re-open the Foreign Slave Trade, therefore addresses the two most
powerful interests of the North. The manufacturing interest has
not only been able to control the North, but has controlled the
Union in the passage of a Protective Tariff; the mercantile and
commercial interest has controlled the Union in the passage of the
Navigation Laws. These interests quickened into activity again
and concurring with the South, can pass the act removing restric-
tions from the Foreign Slave Trade; and when the South is ready
to call upon them, there can be little doubt of their readiness to
respond.
It is a mistake to suppose that there is commercial or material
antagonism between the North and South. There is political an-
tagonism. The North has power and makes profit in the use of
it, but all her interests are parasitic, and flourish only the more
with every step of advancement at the South. The South, there-
fore, has only to indicate her wants to have the strongest interests
at the North to assist her in their attainment. The North wants a
master. Her institutions and interests, not self-sustaining, like
the ivy, want a tower of strength at the South to cling to. I do
not say that, interrogated upon the subject, the North would con-
fess the want, as the wife in the habit of wearing the breeches
29
would hardly confess the wish that her husband should become
man enough to take them away from her—hut she wants it as the
condition of a more firm and comfortable position than she holds
at present, and if the South shall affirm herself, if she shall
open the channels of her power to their sources—if she shall
spread slavery to its work—if she shall erect herself to her true
position as the controlling power in this Government—if she shall
oust the North of the dominion for which she is every way unfitted,
and if she shall bear the interests and institutions of that section
as the salutary depleting agents upon her vigorous and athletic
system, she will do as much for the North as for herself, and will
be as little likely by expansion to lose the North as is the oak the
mistletoe that clings about its branches.
Still, however, if this Union must break in this adventure, then
let it break. The paricidal act is not with us but with those who
will have forced us to that stern necessity. Throughout the whole
course of our political connection we have asked nothing of the
North but to be let alone; and if this poor privilege shall have
been denied us—if they shall persist in proving that the Union
holds no sphere to progress for the South, and that security is
only to be purchased by submission—it will be for them, and not
for us, to answer for the crime. Our fathers consecrated the bonds
of a Union, not the chains of vassalage; and they break the Union
who divert it from its purpose.
Nor is the Union, indeed, the sacred thing which men have
sometimes the convenient fancy for considering it. As it now
exists, it was not in contemplation at the opening of the Revolu-
tion. It was not the Union, but liberty, which inspired the efforts
of our fathers; not the institution, but the power of choosing in-
stitutions; not the temple, but the spirit of human right for whose
cultivation the temple was erected; and it is a perversion and a
wrong to substitute the idol, and to claim for it a tribute of eternal
veneration.
Instead of its being the commandment of our fathers that, at all
events, we should preserve existing institutions, it was in fact the
precept of their lives, that, for proper causes, we should break
them down. Bound to England by the most endearing ties—by
the memories of a common ancestry—by the glories of a com-
mon history—by habits of association, by affection and the dread
of her imposing power—they broke away; they aroused themselves
from the lap of a luxurious abundance; they tore themselves from
the embrace of relatives and friends; they renounced their share
in the greatness and glory of the empire; they dared the ven-
geance of the strongest power upon earth, and "gave their homes
to the flames and their flesh to the eagles," rather than submit to
a union inconsistent with the principles of human rights with
which they were commissioned, and it can not be that they have
left it, as an eternal precept, that, in like condition, we are not to
follow their example. It was not submission, but resistance, that
they periled life to teach us, and if, perchance, from other spheres,
30
they look upon us now, we can not raise our eyes to that great
presence and own, 11 O, fathers ! that we fear to act in such emer-
gency; we can not trust the promptings of genius or the precepts
of experience, but can only cling in abject veneration to the deeds
of your achievement.''
Such a sentiment as this would be unworthy of the race for
whom our fathers made such sacrifices. They gave us the hope
of a future, not alone the memories of the past—a home and not a
prison—a sphere for great conceptions, and not a plan of constant
practice. They gave us the world, improved to the extent of their
utmost capacities, and it is rather for us to carry on this work than
to sink to an indolent dependence upon their memory. When the
Union may be inconsistent with the ends for which they labored,
it is not their precept to preserve it, but it is rather, with every
energy we possess, and at every sacrifice of hopes and life, to
break it down.
So much may be said with respect to the moral obligation to
preserve the Union. Nor is it true that we will leave the great-
ness and the glories of our country in the hands of the North.
On the contrary, as I have said, I believe that when the South
shall have asserted her independence, she will have asserted a
right to a much more conspicuous position in the commonwealth
of nations. At present we furnish material for the commerce of
the continent, and the North appropriates its advantages. While,
without the contributions from our Southern ports, her commerce
with European countries would dwindle to a trade in peltries; yet
in political connection, New York stands forth as the great unit,
and all our Southern cities are ranged beside her, as but the
noughts to multiply its value. To assert our position—to assume
to ourselves the emoluments and importance of our own trade,
would give the South a power and influence that would command
the respect of every leading nation of the earth.
Nor is it true that the North would thus be left in possession of
the common glories of the country. It is true they write our his-
tory, and industriously assume the first position upon its pages,
and, with extreme solicitude to claim advantages, they might pos-
sibly, to some extent, secure them; but there are facts of our
country's history of which they can never rob us. They can
never rob us of the names of Washington, Jefferson, Henry,
Campbell, Shelby, Morgan, Rutledge, Laurens, Pinckney, Marion,
Sumter, and a host of others ; they can never rob us of the battle
fields of Eutaw, King's Mountain, Cowpens, Yorktown, and the
recollection of the facts that while the Union fought the battles of
the North throughout the Revolutionary war, the South, through
many dreary years of that contest, sustained herself unaided and
alone.
It is not safe, therefore, to assume that the South is under any
especial obligations of sentiment or interest to preserve the Union.
The Union is dear to us—dear from the history of its achieve-
ment, and dear from the advantages which have resulted and
31
which may yet result. Under its cover from external interference
we have securely framed the most admirable contrivances for
civil liberty, and if secure under its protection, wre yet may make
still greater progress; but dear as it is, there are objects dearer—
dearer are the rights which we have inherited, and dearer are the
hopes and duties of advancement; and, dear as is this Union, if
we can only share it with delirium and ribaldry—if our life of
existence is to be an eternal war with madmen, whose only checks
are the guards we have the strength to throw around them, with-
out a helping hand from that society whose proper charge it is to
relieve us from the pressure and the peril, and if the trust of our
society is a trespass upon these, and its progress is an outrage for
which it is merit and magnanimity to drag us before the tribunals
of the world, then are we compelled to leave it.
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