I have been appointed by the Convention of the State
of Georgia, to present to this Convention, the ordinance of
secession of Georgia, and further, to invite Virginia, through
this Convention ' to join Georgia and the other seceded States in
the formation of a Southern Confederacy. This, sir, is the whole
extent of my mission. 1 have no power to make promises, none to
receive promises; no power to bind at all in any respect. But
still, sir, it has seemed to me that a proper respect for this
Convention requires that I should with some fulness and
particularity, exhibit before the Convention the reasons which
have induced Georgia to take that important step of secession,
and then to lay before the Convention some facts and
considerations in favor of the acceptance of the invitation by
Virginia. With your permission then, sit, I will pursue this
course.
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the
step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single
proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part
of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing
that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction,
sir, was the main cause. It is true, sir, that the effect of this
conviction was strengthened by a further conviction that such a
separation would be the best remedy for the fugitive slave evil,
and also the best, if not the only remedy, for the territorial
evil. But, doubtless, if it had not been for the first conviction
this step would never have been taken. It therefore becomes
important to inquire whether this conviction was well founded.
Is it true, then, that unless there had been a
separation from the North, slavery would be abolished in Georgia?
I address myself to the proofs of that case.
In the first place, I say that the North hates
slavery, and, in using that expression I speak wittingly. In
saying that the Black Republican party of the North hates
slavery, I speak intentionally. If there is a doubt upon that
question in the mind of any one who listens to me, a few of the
multitude of proofs which could fill this room, would, I think,
be sufficient to satisfy him. I beg to refer to a few of the
proofs that are so abundant; and the first that I shall adduce
consists in two extracts from a speech of Lincoln's, made in
October, 1858. They are as follows: "I have always hated
slavery as much as any abolitionist; I have always been an old
line Whig; I have always hated it and I always believed it in the
course of ultimate extinction, and if I were in Congress and a
vote should come up on the question, whether slavery should be
excluded from the territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision,
I would vote that it should."
These are pregnant statements; they avow a sentiment,
a political principle of action, a sentiment of hatred to slavery
as extreme as hatred can exist. The political principle here
avowed is, that his action against slavery is not to be
restrained by the Constitution of the United States, as
interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States. I say, if
you can find any degree of hatred greater than that, I should
like to see it. This is the sentiment of the chosen leader of the
Black Republican party; and can you doubt that it is not
entertained by every solitary member of that same party? You
cannot, I think. He is a representative man; his sentiments are
the sentiments of his party; his principles of political action
are the principles of political action of his party. I say, then;
it is true, at least, that the Republican party of the North
hates slavery.
My next proposition is, that the Republican party of
the North is in a permanent majority. It is true that in a
government organized like the government of the Northern States,
and like our own government, a majority, where it is permanent,
is equivalent to the whole. The minority is powerless if the
majority be permanent. Now, is this majority of the Republican
party permanent? I say it is. That party is so deeply seated at
the North that you cannot overthrow it. It has the press, it has
the pulpit, it has the school-house, it has the organizations-the
Governors, Legislatures, the judiciary, county officers,
magistrates, constables, mayors, in fact all official life. Now,
it has the General Government in addition. It has that
inexhaustible reserve to fall back upon and to recruit from, the
universal feeling at the North that slavery is a moral, social
and political evil. With this to fall back upon, recruiting is
easy. This is not all. The Republican party is now in league with
the tariff, in league with internal improvements, in league with
three Pacific Railroads. Sir, you cannot overthrow such a party
as that. As well might you attempt to lift a mountain out of its
bed and throw it into the sea.
But, suppose, sir, that by the aid of Providence and
the intensest human exertion, you were enabled to overthrow it,
how long would your victory last? But a very short time. The same
ascendancy which that party has gained now, would be gained again
before long. If it has come to this vast majority in the course
of twenty-five years, from nothing, how long would it take the
fragments of that party to get again into a majority? Sir, in two
or three Presidential elections your labor would be worse than
the labor of Sisyphus, and every time you rolled the rock up the
hill it would roll back again growing larger and larger each time
until at last it would roll back like an avalanche crushing you
beneath it.
The Republican party is the permanent, dominant party
at the North, and it is vain to think that you can put it down.
It is true that the Republican party hates slavery, and that it
is to be the permanent, dominant party at the North; and the
majority being equivalent to the whole, as I have already stated,
we cannot doubt the result. What is the feeling of the rest of
the Northern people upon this subject? Can you trust them? They
all say that slavery is a moral, social and political evil. Then
the result of that feeling must be hatred to the institution; and
if that is not entertained, it must be the consequence of
something artificial or temporary-some interest, some thirst for
office, or some confidence in immediate advancement. And we know
that these considerations cannot be depended upon, and we may
expect that, ultimately, the whole North will pass from this
inactive state of hatred into the active state which animates the
Black Republican party.
Is it true that the North hates slavery? My next
proposition is that in the past the North has invariably exerted
against slavery, all the power which it had at the time. The
question merely was what was the amount of power it had to exert
against it. They abolished slavery in that magnificent empire
which you presented to the North; they abolished slavery in every
Northern State, one after another; they abolished slavery in all
the territory above the line of 36 30, which comprised about one
million square miles. They have endeavored to put the Wilmot
Proviso upon all the other territories of the Union, and they
succeeded in putting it upon the territories of Oregon and
Washington. They have taken from slavery all the conquests of the
Mexican war, and appropriated it all to anti-slavery purposes;
and if one of our fugitives escapes into the territories, they do
all they can to make a free man of him; they maltreat his
pursuers, and sometimes murder them. They make raids into your
territory with a view to raise insurrection, with a view to
destroy and murder indiscriminately all classes, ages and sexes,
and when the base perpetrators are caught and brought to
punishment, condign punishment, half the north go into mourning.
If some of the perpetrators escape, they are shielded by the
authorities of these Northern States-not by an irresponsible mob,
but ,by the regularly organized authorities of the States.
My next proposition is, that we have a right to argue
from the past to the future and to say, that if in the past the
North has done this, in the-future, if it shall acquire the power
to abolish slavery, it will do it.
My next proposition is that the North is in the course
of acquiring this power to abolish slavery. Is that true? I say,
gentlemen, the North is acquiring that power by two processes,
one of which is operating with great rapidity-that is by the
admission of new States. The public territory is capable of
forming from twenty to thirty States of larger size than the
average of the States now in the Union. The public territory is
peculiarly Northern territory, and every State that comes into
the Union will be a free State. We may rest assured, sit, that
that is a fixed fact. The events in Kansas should satisfy every
one of the truth of that. If causes now in operation are allowed
to continue, the admission of new States will go on until a
sufficient number shall have been secured to give the necessary
preponderance to change the Constitution. There is a process
going on by which some of our own slave States are becoming free
States already. It is true, that in some of the slave States the
slave population is actually on the decrease, and, I believe it
is true of all of them that it is relatively to the white
population on the decrease. The census shows that slaves are
decreasing in Delaware and Maryland; and it shows that in the
other States in the same parallel, the relative state of the
decrease and increase is against the slave population. It is not
wonderful that this should be so. The anti-slavery feeling has
got to be so great at the North that the owners of slave property
in these States have a presentiment that it is a doomed
institution, and the instincts of self-interest impels them to
get rid of that property which is doomed. The consequence is,
that it will go down lower and. lower, until it all gets to the
Cotton States-until it gets to the bottom. There is the weight of
a continent upon it forcing it down. Now, I say, sir, that under
this weight it is bound to go down unto the Cotton States, one of
which I have the honor to represent here. When that time comes,
sir, the free States in consequence of the manifest decrease,
will urge the process with additional vigor, and I fear that the
day is not distant when the Cotton States, as they are called,
will be the only slave States. When that time comes, the time
will have arrived when the North will have the power to amend the
Constitution, and say that slavery shall be abolished, and if the
master refuses to yield to this policy, he shall doubtless be
hung for his disobedience.
My proposition, then, I insist, is true, that the
North is acquiring this power. That being so, the only question
is will she exercise it? Of course she will, for her whole course
shows that she will. If things are allowed to go on as they are,
it is certain that slavery is to be abolished except in Georgia
and the other cotton States, and I doubt, ultimately in these
States also. By the time the North shall have attained the power,
the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have
black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black
everything. [Laughter.] The majority according to the Northern
idea, which will then be the all-pervading, all powerful one,
have the right to control. It will be in keeping particularly
with the principles of the abolitionists that the majority, no
matter of what, shall rule. Is it to be supposed that the white
race will stand that? It is not a supposable case. Although not
half so numerous, we may readily assume that war will break out
everywhere like hidden fire from the earth, and it is probable
that the white race, being superior in every respect, may push
the other back. They will then call upon the authorities at
Washington, to aid them in putting down servile insurrection, and
they will send a standing armv down upon us, and the volunteers
and Wide-Awakes will come in thousands, and we will be
overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like
vagabonds all over the earth; and as for our women, the horrors
of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination. That is the
fate which Abolition will bring upon the white race.
But that is not all of the Abolition war. We will be
completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the
possession of the blacks, and then it will go back into a
wilderness and become another Africa or St. Domingo. The North
will then say that the Lord made this earth for his Saints and
not for Heathens, and we are his Saints, and the Yankees will
come down and drive out the negro.
Sir, this is Abolition to the cotton States. Would you
blame us if we sought a remedy to avert that condition of things?
What must be the requisites of any remedy that can do it? It must
be one which will have one of two qualities. It must be something
that will change the unanimity of the North on the slavery
question, or something that shall take from them the power over
the subject. Any thing that does not contain one of these two
requisites is not a remedy for the case; it does not come to the
root of the disease.
What remedy is it that contains these requisites? Is
there any in the Union that does? Let us take the strongest that
we have heard suggested, which is an amendment of the
Constitution guaranteeing the power of self-preservation, of
dividing the public territory at the line of 36 deg. 30 min.,
giving the South all below that line. I know that remedy has not
been thought of as in any degree practicable. But, let us look at
it. Suppose they grant us the power of self-preservation suppose
they give to each Senator and member the veto power over any bill
relating to slavery. That is putting it strong enough. Would that
be sufficient now, to make it protective? I say it would not, and
for two reasons. The first is that the North regards every such
stipulation as void under the higher law. The North entertains
the opinion that slavery is a sin and a crime. I mean, when I say
the North, the Republican party, and that is the North; and they
say that any stipulation in the Constitution or laws in favor of
slavery, is an agreement with death and a covenant with hell; and
that it is absolutely a religious merit to violate it. They think
it as much a merit to violate a provision of that sort, as a mere
stipulation in favor of murder or treason.
Well, sir, a people entertaining this opinion of a
covenant of that sort, is beyond the pale of contract-making. You
cannot make a contract with a people of that kind, because it is
a bond not as they regard it, binding upon them. That being so,
how will it be any protection to us, that our senators and
representatives shall have the power of saying this bill shall
not pass. Suppose the bill to pass giving protection to slavery,
they would say hereafter, we proclaimed from the mountain tops,
from the hustings, from the forum, and wherever our voice could
be heard, that we did not regard stipulations in matters relating
to slavery as binding upon us. We recognize a higher law, and
will not obey these stipulations-you might have so expected from
our proclaimed opinions beforehand.
The next reason is this, the North entertains upon the
subject of the Constitution the idea that this a consolidated
Government, that the people are one nation, not a Confederation
of States, and that being a consolidated Government the numerical
majority is sovereign. The necessary result of that doctrine when
pushed to its natural result is, that the Constitution of the
United States is, at any time, subject to amendment by a bare
majority of the whole people; and that being so, it becomes no
matter what protection the Constitution may contain, it would be
changed by a majority of the people, because a stipulation in the
Constitution can no more be binding upon those who may choose
subsequently to alter it, than the act of a legislature upon a
sub-sequent legislature. Thus it is they will have the power to
change the Constitution, alter it as you will. The President
elect has proclaimed from the house tops in Indiana that a State
is no more than a county. This is an abandonment in the concrete
of the whole doctrine. How, then, can we accept any stipulation
from a people holding the opinions that they do upon the question
of slavery, and the obligations of government. The proposition
which I have already adduced for argument sake, is infinitely
beyond anything that we have a hope of obtaining. Then I assume
that if this be true, it must be true that you can get no remedy
for this disease in the Cotton States of the Union.
The question then is, would a separation from the
North be a remedy? I say it would be a complete remedy; a remedy
that would reach the disease in all its parts. If we were
separated from the North. the will of the North on the subject of
slavery would be changed. Why is it now that the North hates
slavery? For the reason that they are, to some extent,
responsible for the institution because of the Union, and for the
reason that by hating slavery they get office. Let there be a
separation, and this feeling will no longer exist, because
slavery will no longer enter into the politics of the North. Does
slavery in the South enter into the politics of England or
France? Does slavery in Brazil or Cuba enter into the politics of
the North? Not at all; and if we were separated, the subject of
slavery would not enter into the politics of the North. I say,
therefore, that this remedy would be sufficient for this disease
in the worst aspect of it. Once out of the Union, we would be
beyond the influence of the yeas and nays of the North. Get us
out, and we are safe.
I think, then, that this conviction in the mind of
Georgia-namely, that the only remedy for this evil is
separation-was well-founded. She also was convinced that
separation would be the best, if not the only remedy for the
fugitive slave evil and for the territorial evil. It may be
asked, sir, if the personal liberty bills, if the election of
Lincoln by a sectional majority, had nothing to do with the
action of Georgia? Sir, they had much to do with it. These were
most important facts. They indicated a deliberate purpose on the
part of the North, in every case in which there was a stipulation
in favor of slavery, to obliterate it if it had the power to do
so. They are valuable in another respect. These personal liberty
bills were unconstitutional; they were deliberate infractions of
the Constitution of the United States; and being so, they give to
us a right to say that we would no longer be bound by the
Constitution of the United States, if we choose. The language of
Webster, in his speech at Capon Springs, in your own State, was,
that a bargain broken on one side, is broken on all sides. And in
this opinion many others have coincided. And these Northern
States having broken the Constitutional compact gives us cause to
violate it also if we choose to do it. The election of Lincoln in
itself is not a violation of the letter of the Constitution,
though it violates it in spirit. The Constitution was formed with
a view to ensure domestic peace and to establish Justice among
all, and this act of Lincoln's election by a sectional majority,
was calculated to disregard all these obligations, and inasmuch
as the act utterly ignores our rights in the government, and in
fact disfranchises us, we had a full right to take the steps that
we have taken.
Now, I ask the question, Georgia feeling this
conviction, what could she have done but to separate from this
Union? Was she to stay and wait for Abolition? Sir, that was not
to be expected of her? She did the only thing that could have
been done to ensure her rights.
The second branch of my case is to lay before the
Convention some facts to influence them, if possible, to accept
the invitation of Georgia to join her in the formation of a
Southern Confederacy.
What ought to influence a nation to enter into a
treaty with another nation? It ought not be, I am free to say,
any higher consideration than interest-material, social,
political, religious interests. I am free to say that unless it
could be made to appear that it was to her interest, she ought
not to enter into it. And it shall be my endeavor now, to show
that it will be to the interest of Virginia materially, socially,
politically and religiously, to accept the invitation of Georgia
to join the Southern Confederacy-and, first, will it be to her
material interests?
Georgia and the other cotton States produce four
millions of bales of cotton, annually. Every one of these bales
is worth $50. The whole crop therefore, is worth $200,000,000.
This crop goes on growing rapidly from year to year. The increase
in the last decade was nearly 50 per cent. If the same increase
should continue for the next decade we should have, in 1870, six
million bales; in 1890,1 nine million of bales, and so on. And,
supposing that this rate will not continue, yet we have a right
to assume that the increase, in after years, will be very great,
because consumption outruns production, and so long as that is
the case, production will try to overtake it.
You perceive, then, that out of one article we have
two hundred millions of dollars. This is surplus, and a prospect
of an indefinite increase in the future. Then, we have sugar
worth from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars, increasing
every year at a pretty rapid rate. Then, we have rice, and naval
stores, and plank, and live oak and various other articles which
make a few more millions. You may set down that these States
yield a surplus of $270,000,000 with a prospect of increase.
These we turn into money and with that we buy manufactured goods,
iron, cotton and woolen manufactures ready made and many other
descriptions of goods necessary for consumption. Then we buy
flour, and wheat, and bacon, and pork, and we buy mules and
negroes; very little of this money is consumed at home; we lay it
out this way.
Now I say, why will not Virginia furnish us these
goods? Why will not she take the place now held by New England
and New York, and furnish to the South these goods? Bear in mind
that the manufactures consumed by the South are manufactures of
the United States. They have now got the whole market by virtue
of the tariff which we have laid on foreign importation. Will not
Virginia take this place? I ask, is it not to the interest of
Virginia and the border States to take this place? Most assuredly
it is. Now I say it is at her own option whether she will take it
or not. I dare say she can have the same sort of protection
against the north that she has against Europe. That being so, and
inasmuch as the same cause must produce the same effect, the same
cause that built up manufactures at the north, will operate
similarly in Virginia.
Then the question is, will you have protection
necessary to accomplish this result? I say I think you will. I do
not come here, as I said at the outset, to make promises; but I
will give my opinion, and that is that the South will support
itself by duties on imports. It has certainly begun to do that.
We have merely adopted the revenue system of the United States so
far, and are now collecting the revenue under an old law. Our
Constitution has said that Congress should have the power to lay
duties for revenue, to pay debts and to carry on the government,
and therefore there is a limit to the extent that this protection
can go, and within that the South can give protection that will
be sufficient to enable you to compete with the North. We have
got to have a navy, and an army, and we have got to make up that
army speedily. It must be a much larger army than we have been
accustomed to have in the late Union-it must be large in
proportion to the armv that it will have to meet. These things
will require a revenue of about 10 per cent, which will yield an
aggregate of about $20,000,000, and with this per cent, it would
be in the power of Virginia to compete, in a short time, with all
the nations of the earth in all the important branches of
manufacture. Why? Because manufacturing has now been brought to
such perfection by the invention of new machinery. The result
will be the immigration of the best men of the North; skilled
artizans and men of capital will come here and establish works
among you. You have the advantage of longer days and shorter
winters, and of being nearer to the raw material of a very
important article of manufacture. I have no idea that the duties
will be as low as 10 per cent. My own opinion is that we shall
have as high duty as is now charged by the General Government at
Washington. If that matter is regarded as important by this
Convention, why the door is open for negotiation with us. We have
but a provisional and temporary government so far. If it be found
that Virginia requires more protection than this upon any
particular article of manufacture let her come in the spirit of a
sister, to our Congress and say, we want more protection upon
this or that article, and she will, I have no doubt, receive it.
She will be met in the most fraternal and complying spirit.
What is the state of the cotton trade? The North by
virtue of their manufactures buy our cotton. They then take our
cotton to Europe; they buy for it European manufactures; they
take these manufactures and carry them to Boston, New York or
Philadelphia, whence they distribute to us and all over the
continent. But this all depends on the fact that they have
manufactures to buy the cotton with. New York, Boston and
Philadelphia, in fact, fatten upon the handling of cotton, and I
ask why it is you do not avail yourselves of the advantages which
these possess; why do you not take the place of New York, engage
in manufactures, sell us your goods, take our cotton and send it
to Europe for goods, and thus make this city the centre of the
earth? I know that in the outset foreign imports would come
direct to our ports, because you have not the manufactured goods
to buy the cotton with, and we would have to send the cotton
direct to Europe. But after a while you would have a monopoly of
our trade having all the facilities to build up a manufacturing
business extensive enough for the requirements of the whole
country.
What would be the effect of this? Your villages would
grow into towns, and your towns would grow into cities. Your
mines would begin to be developed, and would throw their riches
over the whole land; and you would see those lands enhanced,
which you have now to give away, almost, for nothing.
I say, then, it is in your power, by joining our
Southern Confederacy, to become a great manufacturing empire. If
you do not consider our organization as it is now made good
enough, go down to Montgomery, and say, change this in such and
such a form, and I venture to assert that they will meet you in
the spirit in which you go. As things now stand, there is a great
drain of wealth from the South to the North. The operation of the
tariff, which at present averages about 20 per cent, is to
enhance the prices of foreign goods upon us to that extent; and
not only foreign goods, but domestic goods, as they will always
preserve a strict ratio with the price charged for foreign
imports. The South is thus heavily taxed. What the amount of
tribute is which she pays to the North in this form, I have not
accurately ascertained. It is difficult to find out how much
tribute she pays in this form, but, from a rough estimate which I
have made out myself, putting the amount of goods consumed by the
South at $250,000,000 annually, though a Northern gentleman puts
it at $300,000,000; but putting it at $250,000,000, the tribute
which the South pays to the North annually, according to the
present tariff [20 per cent] amounts to $50,000,000. Then there
are the navigation laws which give the North a monopoly of the
coasting trade. The consequence of this monopoly is that it
raises freights, and to that extent enhances the price of goods
upon us. There is the indirect carrying trade, in which they also
have a monopoly. Instead of our goods coming to us direct, they
now come by New York, Philadelphia or Boston. Last year the
amount of goods that came to the South by this indirect route was
about $72,000,000 which were not carried at a less cost than
$5,000,000, which, of course, had to be paid by us. In the matter
of expenditures we have not more than one fifth allotted to us,
whereas we ought to have one-third. In 1860 the expenditures were
$80,000,000, and the proportion of this which is lost to us by an
unjust system of discrimination amounts to nearly $20,000,000.
This is a perpetual drain upon us.
Mr. BFNNING then referred to the drain in the matter
of fugitive slaves, and proceeded to ask what would Virginia gain
by joining the Southern Confederacy? What, said he, is the state
of things now on the border? Is it such as to prevent the escape
of slaves? It is not. There is a remedy for this. The state of
things on the other side of the line should be such that slaves
would not be induced voluntarily to run off, and if they did,
that they would again soon gladly return. If you were with us, it
would become necessary, in order to collect our revenue, to
station police officers all along the border, and have there
bodies of troops. It could be easily made part of the duty of
these officers to keep strict watch along there and intercept
every slave, and keep proper surveillance on all who may come
within the line of particular localities. Is not that arrangement
better than any fugitive slave law that you could get? Most
assuredly it is. If we were separated from the North, the escape
of a fugitive slave into their territory would be but the
addition of one savage to the number they have already.
[Laughter.]
Separate us from the North, and the North will be no
attraction to the black man-no attraction to the slaves. It is
not from a love for the black man that they receive him now; but
it is from a hatred to slavery. and from a hatred to the owners
of slaves.
Is not this a better remedy than anything that you can
get out o Congress or in any form of legislation?
As regards the Territorial evil, I will show that the
remedy for that too, is in separation. We want land, and have a
right to it. How are we to get our share of it? Can we get it in
the Union? Never. Put what you please in the Constitution, you
never can get one foot of that land to which you have so just a
claim. Why Kansas tells the reason. The policy of the Black
Republican party is to have this land settled up by those who do
not own slaves. Their policy is the Homestead bill. You can enjoy
all these things if you join us; and not only that, but you can
enjoy them in peace. Cotton is peace. It is an article of
indispensable necessity to the nations of the world, and they
cannot obtain it without peace. Whenever there is war they cannot
have it, and will therefore have peace. join us, therefore, and
you will have the advantage of enjoying all those benefits in
peace.
Suppose you join the North, what can they give you?
Nothing. They will maintain, in the matter of manufactures, a
competition that will destroy you. You cannot go into any market
in the world and compete with them. They have the start of you,
and you cannot catch up. How will it be with agricultural
enterprise? Manufactures give the most active stimulant to
agriculture, and when you cannot build up manufactures, you must
suffer in your agricultural pursuits. Then there is the social
and religious aspect of the question. Go with us, and the
irrepressible conflict is at an end. We are the same in our
social and religious attributes. We have a common Bible; we kneel
at the game altar, break bread together, and there can be no
difficulty between us on this score.
Then there is the political question. Suppose you join
us, and also the other border States, which they will, if you
come in. We shall have a territory possessing an area of 850 or
900,000 square miles, with more advantages than any similar
extent of territory on the face of the earth, lying as it is
between the right parallels of latitude and longitude, having the
right sort of coast facilities, and abounding in every production
that can form the basis of prosperity and power.
Mr. BENNING referred to the probability of the Pacific
States forming a distinct Confederacy after a separation shall
once occur, and then discanted briefly on the general corruption
which seems to exist at the North, where men make politics a
profession, requiring property to be taxed for their support. He
instanced the enormous burdens amounting to nearly $2,000,000 a
year, to which the city of New York is subjected through the
corrupting influences of politicians, and deduced from this state
of things the decay and ultimate disintegration of the North
after she shall have been cut off from the rest of the Union, and
circumscribed with the narrow limits of her own unproductive
inhospitable area.
If, said he, you join in the Southern Confederacy, you
will become the leader of it as you are now. You will have the
Presidency and Vice Presidency and other advantages which it is
unnecessary here to mention.
Join the North, and what will become of you? In that,
I say, you will find yourself much lower than you stand now. No
doubt the North will now make fine promises, but when you are
once in, they will give you but little quarter. They will hate
you and your institutions as much as they do now, and treat you
accordingly. Suppose they elevated Sumner to the Presidency?
Suppose they elevated Fred. Douglas, your escaped slave, to the
Presidency? And there are hundreds of thousands at the North who
would do this for the purpose of humiliating and insulting the
South. What would be your position in such an event? I say give
me pestilence and famine sooner that that.
As regards the African slave trade, we have done what
we could to expel the illusion which is said to deter some timid
persons from uniting with us. Our State has given her voice
against it, and so has Alabama, and finally the Convention at
Montgomery has placed the ban upon it by a Constitutional
provision. Suppose we re-open the African slave trade, what would
be the result? Why, we would be soon drowned in a black pool, we
would be literally overwhelmed with a black population. If you
open it, where are you going to stop? There is no barrier to it
but that of interest, and that will never be a barrier until
there will be more slaves than we want. But go down to Montgomery
and we will stipulate with you, and satisfy you, I have no doubt,
upon that, as upon all other questions. What danger is there in
your going with this Confederacy? You will have, with the other
border States, a population of eight millions, while we will have
only five. What danger is there then with such a preponderance in
your favor?
I heard another objection urged to your joining us,
and that is, that we held out a threat in the way of a provision
in our Constitution that Congress shall have power to stop the
inter-State slave trade. I do not hesitate to say to you, that in
my opinion, if you do not join us but join the North, that
provision would be put in force. I think that these States would
do all in their power to keep the border States slave States. It
would be a mere instinct of self-preservation to do that, and I
think that it would be done. But is this to he regarded as a
threat held out to deter you from joining the North? You might as
well say that a provision in respect to a tax is a threat against
you.
After meeting the objection urged against the seceding
States for seceding without consultation with the border States,
with the argument of necessity, he closed with an expression of
thanks to the Convention, and submitted the Ordinance of
Secession passed by Georgia, which was read by the Clerk.
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