A sectional party, inimical to our institutions, and
odious to our people, is about taking possession of the Federal
Government. The seed sown by the early Abolitionists has yielded
a luxurious harvest. When Lincoln is in place, Garrison will be
in power. The Constitution, either openly violated or emasculated
of its true meaning and spirit by the subtleties of New England
logic, is powerless for protection. We are no longer partners to
a federal compact, but the victims of a consolidated despotism.
Opposition to slavery, to its existence, its extension and its
perpetuation, is the sole cohesive element of the triumphant
faction. It did not receive the countenance of a single vote in
any one of the ten great cotton States of the South The question
is at length plainly presented: submission or secession. The only
alternative left us is this: a separate nationality or the
Africanization of the South.
He has not analyzed this subject aright nor probed it
to the bottom, who supposes that the real quarrel between the
North and the South is about the Territories, or the decision of
the Supreme Court, or even the Constitution itself; and that,
consequently, the issues may be stayed and the dangers arrested
by the drawing of new lines and the signing of new compacts. The
division is broader and deeper and more incurable than this. The
antagonism is fundamental and ineradicable. The true secret of it
lies in the total reversion of public opinion which has occurred
in both sections of the country in the last quarter of a century
on the subject of slavery.
It has not been more than twenty-five years since
Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope
around his neck, for uttering Abolition sentiments; and not
thirty years since, the abolition of slavery was seriously
debated in the Legislature of Virginia. Now, on the contrary, the
radical opinions of Sumner, Emerson and Parker, and the
assassination schemes of John Brown, are applauded in Fanueil
Hall and the whole Southern mind with an unparalleled unanimity,
regards the institution of slavery as righteous and just,
ordained of God, and to be perpetuated by man. We do not propose
to analyze the causes of this remarkable revolution, which will
constitute one of the strangest chapters of history. The fact is
unquestionable. To understand rationally the events which are
transpiring, and to foresee their inevitable issue, it is
necessary to examine this element of discord between the Northern
and Southern people, to investigate its true nature and extent,
and weigh carefully the prospect of its cure.
The Northern mind has become thoroughly anti-slavery
in sentiment. Even those who contend for our constitutional
rights share in the universal opinion that slavery is a great
moral and social evil. Those who have adopted the pro-slavery
view are exceedingly few in numbers, and are regarded by the mass
of Northern people as more fanatical than the most extreme
Abolitionist. The press, the pulpit, the rostrum of the North are
clamorous with declamation against us and our institutions.
Slavery is considered not only immoral but debasing to both owner
and owned. It is, they say, a relic of barbarism and a disgrace
to an enlightened people. We are not regarded as equals but are
merely tolerated, as persons whom they in their wisdom may
possibly reform and improve. Churches refuse us participation in
religious rites, and a baleful element of religious hate adds
fuel to the fire of political dissension. From present
appearances, the North will before very long be unanimous in
opinion, and if it has the power or can invent the means, it will
be ready to reduce the South to the condition of Hayti and
Jamaica, and expect the approval of God upon the atrocity.
It is unquestionably true, although it be upon false
issues, that the sympathies of the civilized world are united
against us. The name of slavery is hateful to the ears of freemen
and of those who desire to be free. The wise and just
subordination of an inferior to a superior race, is rashly
confounded with the old systems of oppression and tyranny, which
stain the pages of history and have excited the righteous
indignation of the world. We are supposed to have proved recreant
to the great principles and examples of the liberators of
mankind. It is almost impossible at present to disabuse the
public mind of Europe and of the North of this shallow prejudice.
In the meantime, whilst carrying out the designs of Providence in
relation to the negro race, we must rest for a while under a
cloud of obloquy and abuse. Let us be faithful to our sublime
trust, and future ages will appreciate the grandeur and glory of
our mission.
The pro-slavery sentiment is of recent development. It
is more recent than any of the great inventions which have
created the distinctive forms of our modern civilization. It is
more recent than many of the great innovations of thought which
now agitate mankind. The great and good fathers of our Republic
unquestionably entertained anti-slavery sentiments or
predilections, and the flippant Abolitionist thinks he has
silenced us forever by quoting the opinions of Washington and
Jefferson and Madison on this subject. The anti-slavery sentiment
of that era was partly derived from the radical influence of the
French revolution, the mad frenzies of which fearful convulsion,
the fanatics of the North may yet repeat in the Western
hemisphere. It was partially also deduced from narrow, uncertain
and sometimes false premises. The lapse of time has secured us a
better stand-point. Africa has been explored and the African
studied, anatomically, socially, morally, ethnologically and
historically. Not only the physical science of man but the
philosophy of history itself has been almost created since the
days of the revolution. The question of slavery has been
thoroughly sifted. The metaphysical and theological as well as
the political bearings of the subject have been closely
scrutinized. Liberia is before us with its feeble and precarious
existence, with its little torch of civilization nearly
extinguished by the foul atmosphere of surrounding heathenism.
St. Domingo is before us with its bloody teachings, and Jamaica
with its silent monitors of pauperism and decay. The meagre slave
population of the last century has increased to four millions.
Cotton and sugar have risen to an unparalleled political and
industrial importance, so that the whole civilized world is
deeply interested in its maintenance of African slavery. And
lastly, though not leastly, the free negro settlements in the
North and in Canada are social experiments for our analysis and
instruction.
This pro-slavery party includes, with insignificant
exceptions, nine millions of people of Anglo-Saxon blood. It is
diffused over territory sufficient for a mighty empire. It
contends that its principles are based upon large and safe
inductions, made from an immense accumulation of facts in natural
science, political economy and social ethics. It holds the most
prominent material interests, and thereby the peace of the world
in its hands; a wise provision of Providence for its protection,
since those who cannot be controlled by reason, may be withheld
by fear.
In opposition to the prevailing sentiment of the
North, we believe that men are created neither free nor equal.
They are born unequal in physical and mental endowments, and no
possible circumstances or culture could ever raise the negro race
to any genuine equality with the white. Man is born dependant,
and the very first step in civilization was for one man to
enslave another. A state of slavery has been a disciplinary
ordeal to every people who have ever developed beyond the savage
condition. Those who cannot be reduced to bondage, like the
American Indian, perish in their isolated and defiant barbarism.
Freedom is the last result, the crowning glory of the long and
difficult evolution of human society. Few nations have yet
attained to that lofty standard. Those who say that the French,
the Italians or the Prussians, are not yet fit for freedom, and
are still unable to appreciate the blessings of constitutional
liberty, would thrust the splendid privilege of Anglo-Saxon
superiority upon the semi-barbarous negro! What folly, what
madness!
Man has no "inalienable rights"-- not even
those of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
If the life he leads, the liberty he enjoys, and the happiness he
pursues, are not consistent with the order and well-being of
society, he may righteously be deprived of them all. Instead of
that "glittering generality," which might serve as a
motto for the wildest anarchy, the truth is, that men and races
of men have certain natural capacities and duties, and the right
to use the one and discharge the other. That government is the
best, and its people the happiest, not in which all are free and
equal, but in which equal races are free, and the inferior race
is wisely and humanely subordinated to the superior, whilst both
are controlled by the sacred bonds of reciprocal duty. The negro
is a permanent variety of the human race, inferior to almost all
others in intellect, but possessing an emotional nature capable
of the most beautiful cultivation. The greater part of this race,
in its native Africa, is sunk in the deepest barbarism. What
little civilization a few tribes may have, has been imposed upon
them by Arabic and Moorish conquerors. Left to themselves, these
poor people would no doubt remain barbarous forever; but when
domesticated by the white man, they are elevated and
Christianized. The transfer in their bondage, from black men to
white men, by the slave trade, was the first dawn of promise to
the benighted children of Africa. It was permitted by God in
order to teach us the way in which the dark races are to be
elevated and civilized. Jamaica and Hayti have also been
permitted, as timely and salutary warnings, not to desert the
path which was marked out by Providence.
African slavery is therefore a certain relation of
capital and labour, in which capital owns its labour and is bound
to maintain and protect it. It is only thus that an inferior race
can exist in contact with a superior one. In the Sandwich
Islands, in Australia, in New Zealand, the aborigines are passing
away before the encroachments of English power and at the mere
presence of English civilization. The free negroes of the North
are dying out beneath the cold climate and the colder charities
of that region. Freedom and competition with the white man would
ultimately annihilate the negro race in the South. The only hope
of the African is in his just subordination to the superior type.
Certain physical and spiritual peculiarities of the
negro necessitate his subjection to the white man. It is for his
own good that he is subjected. As long as this was doubtful or
not clearly seen, the South itself was opposed to slavery. It
remonstrated with England for imposing the institution upon it,
and with Massachusetts for insisting upon a continuance of the
slave-trade for twenty years after the adoption of the federal
compact. The South is now fully convinced of the benefits and
blessings it is conferring upon the negro race. It is beginning
to catch a glimpse of the true nature and extent of its mission
in relation to this vast and growing institution. The government
of the South is to protect it; the Church of the South is to
Christianize it; the people of the South are to love it, and
improve it and perfect it. God has lightened our task and secured
its execution by making our interests happily coincide with our
duty.
We anticipate no terminus to the institution of
slavery. It is the means whereby the whiteman is to subdue the
tropics all around the globe to order and beauty, and to the
wants and interests of an ever-expanding civilization. What may
happen afar off in the periods of a millennial Christianity we
cannot foresee. No doubt the Almighty, in His wisdom and mercy,
has blessings in store for the poor negro, so that he will no
longer envy the earlier and more imposing development and
fortunes of his brethren. Some shining Utopia will beckon him
also with beautiful illusion into the shadowy future. But with
those remote possibilities we need not trouble ourselves. his
present duty is evidently "to labour and to wait."
The Southern view of the matter, destined to
revolutionize opinion throughout the civilized world, is briefly
this: African slavery is no retrograde movement, no discord in
the harmony of nature, no violation of elemental justice, no in
fraction of immutable laws, human or divine-- but an integral
link in the grand progressive evolution of human society as an
indissoluble whole.
The doctrine that there exists an "irrepressible
conflict" between free labour and slave labour, is as false
as it is mischievous. Their true relation is one of beautiful
interchange and eternal harmony. When each is restricted to the
sphere for which God and nature designed it, they both contribute
their full quotas to the physical happiness, material interests,
and social and spiritual progress of the race. They will prove to
be not antagonistic but complementary to each other in the great
work of human civilization. From this time forth, the subjugation
of tropical nature to man; the elevation and Christianization of
the dark races, the feeding and clothing of the world, the
diminution of toil and the amelioration of all the asperities of
life, the industrial prosperity and the peace of nations, and the
further glorious evolutions of Art, Science, Literature and
Religion, will depend upon the amicable adjustment, the
coordination, the indissoluble compact between these two social
systems, now apparently rearing their hostile fronts in the
Northern and Southern sections of this country.
The only "irrepressible conflict" is be
tween pro-slavery and anti-slavery opinion. Here, indeed,
collision may be inconceivably disastrous, and fanaticism may
thrust her sickle into the harvest of death. The pro-slavery
sentiment is unconquerable. It will be more and more suspicious
of encroachment and jealous of its rights. It will submit to no
restriction, and scouts the possibility of any "ultimate
extinction." Nothing will satisfy us but a radical change of
opinion, or at least of political action on the subject of
slavery throughout the Northern States. The relation of master
and slave must be recognized as right and just, as national and
perpetual. The Constitution must be construed in the spirit of
its founders, as an instrument to protect the minority from the
domination of an insolent majority. The slavery question must be
eliminated forever from the political issues of the day. No party
which contemplates the restriction of our system and its ultimate
extinction can be tolerated for a moment. In assuming this bold
attitude we simply assert our obvious rights and discharge our
inevitable duty.
Now the Northern mind is equally determined and
defiant. It has literally gone mad in its hostility to our
institutions. The most conservative of the Republican party look
forward complacently to the restriction and ultimate extinction
of slavery, in other words, to the Africanization of the South
and our national destruction. We will see to it that they
precipitate no such calamity upon us, and we warn them to look
carefully to their own fate. When a Northern Confederacy can no
longer, like a vampire, suck the blood of the sleeping and
compliant South; when agrarianism and atheism and fanaticism and
socialism do their perfect work in a crowded and crowding
population, will not the dark enigmas of free-labour civilization
press heavily upon it, and the dread images evoked by the
prophetic wisdom of Macauley arise indeed-- taxation, monopoly,
oppression, misery of the masses, revolution, standing armies,
despotism, &c.? It may yet deserve the strange epithet
written for this nation by Elwood Fisher: " Here lies a
people, who, in attempting to liberate the negro, lost their own
freedom."
Have we rightly comprehended the fearful import of
those words, the Africanization of the South? According to the
present rate of increase, in fifty years the negroes of these
States will amount to twenty millions. Suppose them to be
restricted to their present arena. Suppose them, in addition, to
be free. Imagine the misery, the crime, the poverty, the
barbarism, the desolation of the country! The grass would grow in
tile streets of our cities, our ships would rot in their harbors,
our plantations would become a wilderness of cane-brakes. The
re-subjugation of the negro, or the extermination of one race or
the other would be inevitable, and in any event our children
would be beggared with an inheritance of woe. Let us swear upon
the altar of God, that as Christians and citizens, we will resist
to the death the first step which might lead us towards this
awful abyss!
If the Republican party is permitted to get into
power, the Africanization of the South may be gradual, but it
will be sure. Their leaders already boast to applauding
multitudes that the heel of the North is at last on our necks.
When the power, the patronage, the prestige of the federal
government are wielded against slavery; when Southern men take
office under it, and first apologize and then approve, when a
free-soil sentiment gradually percolates through the South
itself; when the brightness of Southern honour is tarnished, and
the integrity of Southern opinion destroyed, what will be, what
must be the inevitable result? Nothing hasty or violent will be
attempted. The iniquity will be accomplished under the forms of
the present Constitution. Remember that the coins of Nero bore
the image of the Goddess of Liberty, and that a perverted
Constitution is the choicest instrument of tyranny. Lulled by
pleasant narcotics, we will pass from dreams of security, into
the sleep of death. Or if we rouse ourselves at last, and reach
out for our fallen thunderbolts, we will be found, like Sampson,
blind and helpless, and they will make sport of our misery. The
silken cords with which they bind us now, will change to iron
fetters in our moment of revolt.
The precedent alone would be fatal. Shall we submit to
an administration which received not a single vote in ten of our
States? We could not be represented in its cabinet, nor in any
foreign mission, for what Southern gentleman of proper
sensibilities would accept office at its hands? The South would
be unrepresented at home or abroad. She would have received a
blow, politically, socially and morally, which would ensure her
destruction. This is precisely what Seward, Beecher and Greeley
are aiming at. We are to be coaxed, cheated, legislated out of
our rights and liberties. What cannot be achieved by trickery,
will at length be attempted by force. The most hateful feature in
the despotism which threaten us is its religious element. If we
are outraged because the Constitution is violated and broken,
what shall we say of those hypocrites or madmen who have
perverted the Word of God to the most detestable purposes of man!
The true test of statesmanship, according to Burke, is
to preserve and improve, not to abolish and destroy. We apply
this to the institution of slavery, and are willing to accord it
to the existing Union. Have we exhausted our Constitutional
remedies? Is not the Republican party powerless for injury, and
may we not anticipate a thorough reversion of Northern judgment?
These questions, and others like them, have been met and answered
a thousand times by the able leaders of the South. Nothing but
the speedy and universal uprising of the Northern people in
behalf of State rights and Southern equality can preserve the
Union. They have committed the aggressions, let them make the
overtures. Is this miracle to be expected, and are we to await
credulously its accomplishment? Compromises and compacts, the
temporary make-shifts of politicians and philanthropists, will be
useless. With what ingenuity the most sacred compact may be
perverted, with what facility the most perfect compromise may be
broken? You may put a new piece on the old garment, but the rent
will be made worse.
The fact is, the Constitution is dead, for it carried
with it the seeds of its own dissolution. The Union has achieved
its mission; the last page of its history is written, and it may
be safely deposited in the glorious archives of the past. The
genius of Anglo-Saxon liberty, when she emigrated to these
shores, bore twins in her bosom and not a single birth. The
Northern race, bold, hardy, intelligent, proud and free, will
receive into its embrace the heterogeneous spawn of European
civilization, and mould it to its own shape, and prepare it for
its own destiny. The Southern people are brave, courteous and
gentle, credulous and forbearing-- loving friends, chivalrous
enemies and good masters, to whose strong and generous hands
alone the Almighty would entrust the tutelage of his most
helpless and degraded children.
The time for our separation has come, and let all good
men unite to avert the calamity of civil war. But at all hazards
the dissolution must come. The evolution of history, according to
the laws of Providence, which supervise even the falling of a
sparrow, necessitates it and demands it. The diversity of
character, opinion, interest, climate and institutions in the two
sections is beyond remedy. Each has a separate mission to fill
and a glorious destiny to accomplish. In our present relations,
we incommode each other, threaten the peace of the world, and
retard the operations of Providence. Let us part in peace; let us
have an equitable distribution of the public property and the
public territory; let us have an alliance offensive and
defensive; let us scorn the idea, so mournfully entertained by
many, that constitutional liberty will perish because we are
divorced, that representative government will prove a failure
because it becomes our duty and interest to separate. Let us
prove by our wisdom and our courage that those great principles
are dearer and more powerful than ever. Let us emulate each other
only in the arts of peace, in the cultivation of friendship and
in the worship of God.
It is unfair to represent this question as one of
secession or submission. The word submission, in the sense of
political degradation, does not exist in the Southern vocabulary.
There is no man in the South so stupid, so cowardly, so base as
to be willing to live in the Union as it is. There is no
difference between us as to the fanaticism and tyranny of the
North, no difference as to the wrongs and injuries of the South.
Some of us would secede at once, unconditionally and forever.
Others would give the North a last chance to abandon her false
position, to make apologies and amend, and to secure us in the
strongest bonds imaginable, against not only the encroachments
but the existence of the Republican party. The difference is
rather nominal than real, for all the conservatives doubt, and
many despair of proper concessions from the North. With those
concessions, disunion is probable, without them it is inevitable.
It is the business of the Cotton States to move first
in this important matter. They alone are the great conservators
of the institution of slavery. The people of Maryland, Virginia,
Kentucky and Missouri are unquestionably with us in spirit and
principle, but we cannot disguise the fact, that the tenure of
our social system in those States is feeble and failing. Those
great communities must do as in their wisdom they see best, but
we cannot wait for their decision nor promise to abide by it.
Whether they go with the North or declare for a separate
sovereignty, the mission of the Cotton States must be equally
accomplished. We cordially invite their cooperation and believe
they will share largely and richly in the benefits of a Southern
Confederacy, and in event of trouble, we pledge our lives and
fortunes to the defence of their border.
To the professed Abolitionists, that motley crew of
men who should be women and of women who should be men; who see
in Fred Douglass a hero and in John Brown a martyr, whose venom
is proportioned to their ignorance, as some animals are said to
be fiercest in the dark; and who are ready to perpetrate the
blackest crimes in the name of liberty and under the garb of
virtue, we have nothing to say.
The Republican party itself, the best and worst of it,
we charge with having outraged our feelings, violated our rights,
and initiated a policy which, if carried out, will be destructive
of our liberties. It is not an election but a usurpation, and if
we acquiesce, we are not citizens but subjects. The forms of
constitutional liberty may have been observed, but the spirit of
tyrannic dictation has beep the presiding genius of the day.
Suppose the people of the North were to repeal their obnoxious
laws, to confirm and abide by the decision of the Supreme Court,
to divide the territories in an equitable manner, and to
recognize the equality as well as the Union of the States, what
and where would the Republican party be? Dissipated into thin
air, dissolved like an empty pageant, not leaving a trace behind.
With the Republican party, therefore, as it exists at this hour,
we have no parley. If it questions us, we have no reply, but the
words of the gallant Georgian: "Argument is exhausted, we
stand to our arms."
To the conservative men of the North, who sacrificed
their time, treasure, interest and popularity in our behalf, and
who have proffered their blood in our defence, we have no
language which can truly express the gratitude of our hearts.
Generous and faithful spirits! Stand bravely a little longer in
the imminent deadly breach, which is yawning between the North
and the South, and stay if it be yet possible, the bloody hand of
fanaticism. Raise your eloquent voices once more for equality and
fraternity, for justice and union. If it prove in vain, as alas!
it will, keep firm at least to your principles and your faith;
work without ceasing as a leaven of good in your infatuated
communities; infuse into the contest before us some chivalric
element, worthy of yourselves and of us, which, if the worst
comes, shall mitigate the horrors of war, and hasten the
returning blessings of peace. When we think of you in the future,
we will forget the violence of individuals and the disloyalty of
State governments; we will forget the calumnies of Sumner and
Phillips and Giddings, the blasphemies of Emerson and Chever and
Beecher, and the vile stings and insults of the aiders and
abettors of thieves and assassins; we will willingly forget them
all, and entwine you tenderly in our memories and affections,
with the immortal friends and compatriots of our own
revolutionary sires-- with Otis and Warren, and Hancock and
Putnam, and Wayne and Hamilton and Franklin. And in the fearful
troubles which may come also upon your fragment of this
dismembered nation, may the sign of our covenant be found upon
every one of your door-posts, to ward off the destroying angel
from your favoured and happy homes!
Southerners! In this great crisis, which involves the
welfare of the present and the future, let us be united as one
man. Let us survey the whole question in all its bearings,
immediate and prospective. Let us act calmly, wisely, bravely.
Let us take counsel of our duty and our honour, and not of our
danger and our fears. Let us invoke the guardian spirit of
ancestral virtue, and the blessing of Almighty God. Let us
remember that, although precipitancy is a fault, it is better, in
a question so vital as personal and national independence, to be
an age too soon than a moment too late. If we succeed in
establishing, as we shall, a vast, opulent, happy and glorious
slave-holding Republic, throughout tropical America-- future
generations will arise and call us blessed! But if it be
possible, in the mysterious providence of God, that we should
fail and perish in our sublime attempt, let it come! Our souls
may rebel against the inscrutable decree of such a destiny, but
we will not swerve a line from the luminous path of duty. With
our hands upon our hearts, we will unitedly exclaim, let it come!
The sons and daughters of the South are ready for the sacrifice.
We endorse the noble sentiment of Robert Hall, that he has
already lived too long who has survived the liberties of his
country!
Waterproof, Tensas Parish, La.
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